Ethics vs Morality

Ethics and morality are perceived to be synonyms, sometimes they are, sometimes they are not. An action can be moral as well as ethical but sometimes an ethical action can be immoral and a moral action can be unethical. 

Ethics as a subject is a part of philosophy which deals with moral, immoral and unmoral actions.
Moral actions: Actions which are considered to be in sync which humanitarian conscience and are accepted by most of the societies or people. e.g helping a poor, feeding a hungry etc.
Immoral actions are just the opposite of moral actions.
Unmoral actions: Actions which are neither considered to be moral nor immoral like drinking water, evening walk etc.

But here we are talking about ethics in another sense as action in terms with morality.



Let’s see a situation, there is an old poor person whose child is suffering from a disease and needs urgent surgery. You are a counsellor of a multi-speciality hospital named “X”. The person has an option to go to a not so elite hospital “Y” where the cost of surgery is 2 lakhs while the cost of surgery in hospital “X” is 12 lakhs. The poor old man can take loans up to 2 lakhs but has to sell his house and other assets to accumulate additional 10 lakhs. The man asks you considering you as his guide, mentor whether he should go to hospital “X” or “Y”. You are well aware of his financial status and know that the success rate of the surgeries done at both the places to be same. 

What will you advise?
Your morality and human values say to tell him to go to the hospital “Y” but your ethics, the code of conduct say to tell him to get operated at hospital “X” since they employ you for the same.

Another story, assume you are an advocate appointed by the court to fight a case for a criminal as a defence counsel. The criminal has confessed to you that he has committed a heinous crime of murder but pleads you to save him from being convicted. The professional ethics say that you can’t and shouldn’t leave the case rather make all your efforts to make it extremely difficult for the public prosecutor to prove that the accused is guilty of the crime charged but your human conscience/ moral values don’t allow you to fight for the accused.
These both stories are examples of the conflict between ethics and morality.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Colonialism and its impact on world economic order

Image
Have you ever wondered why African countries are still underdeveloped or developing. Most of the former colonies still lag behind in technological development and their economies are not yet mature. So, we'll try to understand the post-colonial world economic system from Marxist perspective. First will try to understand what is colonialism ? The policy of acquiring political control of a country and exploiting it in such a way that it completely alters the economic structure of that country and destroys its industries, manufacturing and trading sector and the country remains only the supplier of raw material with all other sectors disabled. How the sectors were destroyed is a topic of discussion for another article. Explaining briefly, the colonizers used to gain the political control of the colony, procure the raw materials from the territory and send it to their country to manufacture finished goods while barring the entry of all other European traders into their colony for tradi...
Read more

Money Multiplier

Money is primarily used to quantitatively measure the value of goods or services and supply of money plays an important role in the determination of inflation and interest rates. As the name suggests, money multiplier means ‘some’ supply of money creates a multiplier effect. Let’s see it in detail. Now let’s say there is a country called “Gokul Dham” and this country has infinite banks and infinite population but one central bank and the central bank has deposited Rs 100 in one bank named Bank#1. We know that all the deposits in the bank are the bank's liability since they are obliged to give it back to the depositors at some point in time and loans are the bank's asset. Let’s consider for the sake of understanding that the Cash Reserve Ratio is 10%. Cash Reserve ratio (CRR) is the proportion of money that banks are asked by the RBI to keep with themselves i.e they have to maintain some cash reserve with themselves and can’t loan all the money they have. Bank#1 can now loan Rs ...
Read more

Fiscal policy: Tool for economic stability and growth

In the realm of economics, fiscal policy plays a pivotal role in shaping a country's economic landscape. While monetary policy falls under the purview of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), fiscal policy is primarily in the domain of Finance Ministry.  Fiscal policy deals with following activities: Revenue management Expenditure management Borrowing strategies All these activities are aimed at mobilizing resources, fostering growth, reducing inequality, and stabilizing the economy. In this article, we delve into the intricacies of fiscal policy.  The Union budget is prepared in two heads namely revenue account and capital account of the budget.  Revenue account contains revenue receipts and revenue expenditure while the capital account contains capital receipt and capital expenditure. Let's see what these accounts actually mean.  Revenue receipts : Revenue receipts are the day-to-day earnings of a government, and the source these income can be from taxation or from the ...
Read more