Talk:unethical

More specific sense

In diff, I reverted a more specific sense from the entry since this is not what sources are doing. It looks like some kind of invention. It needs a really good substantiation IMHO if it is to be kept. The quotations may be readded if wished. I see nothing in the used quotation to support the specific new sense.

Supporting such a specific definition from attesting quotations alone without aid of other kinds of inputs seems hard to do.

The quotation is of the form "Professional societies consider it unethical ...". The word "consider" is key; they do not create a new meaning of "unethical" but merely make claims about what is morally acceptable or unacceptable.

As for the usage note, it looks like some kind of original research; it does not trace to any sources. We don't have a process "request for verification of usage notes" so these should better be properly sourced right away in case of doubt. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:06, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

RFV discussion: November 2022

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unethical

Rfv-sense:

• 1. Breaching certain established standards of social or professional conduct or behavior, and so inconsistent with social or professional rectitude; not appropriate, not ethical (cf. immoral, illegal).

The other sense that we had for a long time and that dictionaries have and that is now marked "original" as if it were no longer in common use:

• 2. Not morally approvable; morally bad; not moral.

I believe such a distinction cannot be reliably extracted from quotations of use. Dictionaries do not have such a sense. To me, the definition and the usage note look like an invention or someone's original research based more on guesses than strong evidence.

This seems to be for rfv-sense rather than rfd-redundant since the sense as defined is not redundant but rather possibly incorrect and overly specific. There will be a strong subjective element in the analysis, though.

Is sense 1 a hyponym or a coordinate term of sense 2? That is, is there some conduct that is unethical:1 but not unethical:2? Also in general, do we want to have a systematic distinction in our entries between X:adj vs considered_X:adj? --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:21, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Intuitively I believe the senses are distinct, but they are confused as presently worded. I would reword it along the lines of "1. immoral, 2. (specifically) breaching a professional code of ethics". It should then be relatively easy to find citations in the latter sense. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 10:58, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Let's start with the example sentence given in the entry: "The corporation was accused of unethical behavior for knowingly producing a product suspected of harming health". There is nothing in the quotation that does not fit the generic "immoral"; one only needs to assume that knowingly producing something suspected of harming health is immoral. Ideas about what is immoral vary between people, groups and societies, but that does not produce new dictionary senses. If quotations can be found, let's start with finding at least one of them and arguing convincingly that it does not fit the generic sense. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:46, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that one is ambiguous. The more technical use of the term is fairly standard in private industry nowadays, however. Here are some less ambiguous ones:

• "For example, individuals accused of unethical conduct might challenge the decision rendered by an ethics review panel if they were displeased with the ethics review process or outcome." [1] — These individuals are being accused of a breach of specific professional standards or a code of ethics liable to authoritative review, and not simply or generically of immoral behaviour.
• "The following potentially unethical coding practices are presented along with the standard from the AHIMA Standards of Ethical Coding that they may violate." [2] — Again, the assumption is that unethical practices are specifically defined by a formal standard and not just generic immoral behaviour.
• "However, the suggested procedures for enforcing the code of ethics and processing reports of unethical practice were not approved." [3] — i.e., reports of breaches of the code of ethics.

Cf. also the definition of "unethical conduct" from West's Encyclopedia of American Law here: "Behavior that falls below or violates the professional standards in a particular field." —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:23, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

The example sentence is perhaps a little ambiguous as it could mean that knowingly harming people’s health is contrary to an ethical code or that it is against natural/divine law (hence ‘immoral’). The fact that professional bodies, businesses and charities have ‘codes of ethics’ in the first place, rather than moral codes, and the fact that hits can be found on GoogleBooks for things like ‘immoral but not unethical’ and ‘unethical but not immoral’ speaks to the fact that the concepts of being ‘immoral’ and ‘unethical’ are distinct, at least much of the time, to many speakers and writers. If we defined ‘unethical’ as ‘immoral’ and deleted its other sense then we’d be doing a disservice to readers, as they wouldn’t be able to understand people describing things as ‘immoral but not unethical’. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:31, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

There sure is a strong preference for the word "unethical" over "immoral" for specific ethical codes, but does it have to do with word meaning? Among multiple synonyms, one is often marked as canonical or authorized and the other one becomes less used by professionals relying on controlled vocabularies. Are there any quotations supporting the notion that something can be "immoral but not unethical"? --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:20, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it is easy to find usages specifying that explicitly: "However, occasionally one encounters unethical but not immoral practice, because in China, market regulations are neither sufficient nor regularly updated" [4] (unethical because it is a violation of professional standards, not immoral because alignment with standards is not sufficient to make a judgement on morality). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:56, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

That's a rather convincing quotation. However, the quotation is confused in its explanation that it has to do with insufficient "market regulations". Market regulations are all about legality, not ethics and morality. I don't think I understand the author. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:16, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

I’m not sure I understand exactly what distinction that particular author is trying to make, though he clearly thinks there is one. There’s also this passage that refers to sex outside of marriage as potentially ‘immoral but typically not unethical’ and even includes a Venn diagram distinguishing the terms, where they have ‘unethical’ as a subset of ‘unprofessional’[5].

This link[6](on page 117) also distinguishes between what is ethical and what is just or righteous. There are other possible citations that we could use but they are less clear and at least a couple of them make a separate distinction, claiming that ‘morality’ should always refer to absolute morality and ethics is less absolute and more personal - though such a distinction seems wrong to me, at least in my own idiolect. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 15:34, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you; that is some good material. Interestingly, "‘morality’ should always refer to absolute morality and ethics is less absolute and more personal" is the opposite of the distinction drawn by Fytcha below, if I understand him correctly. And it seems unlikely to be the view of philosophers doing ethics, e.g. ethical realists. Also interestingly, though, the term "moral realism" is hugely more common than "ethical realism". I am not sure what to think here. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:45, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Just dropping my two cents here as well as I currently don't have time to quote-hunt: moral and ethical as well as their morphological antonyms are often misnomed as synonyms in casual speech but I personally perceive them as clearly distinct and I have also seen this distinction borne out in philosophical literature. Everybody has their own endogenous moral framework whereas there exists a shared idea of which exogenous ethical frameworks exist. As such, it is trivial to conceive of deeds that are acceptable under one's own moral framework but not under an imposed ethical framework and vice versa. This contrast of use between scientific and casual speech should IMO be reflected in our senses, as we also do in e.g. exponential / exponentially. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 13:49, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

And yet "moral code" is a thing, and web search confirms how common it is and what it means.

Was "exogenous ethical framework" meant to be plural? There are competing ethical frameworks and codes as well as competing moral codes, and needless to say, competing legal codes. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:16, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Was "exogenous ethical framework" meant to be plural? Yes, thanks, I fixed the typo. I leave the rest of your post unaddressed because I have literally no idea what you're thinking this proves or refutes. To my mind, all I said still stands. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 14:24, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

What, then, is the argument? That "ethical" frameworks are "exogenous" and "moral" ones are "endogenous"? How does one verify that to be the case? "universal moral standard" is a phrase, to say the least. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:32, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

I will add that "ethics" ad "moral philosophy" seem to be synonyms, yet the word "ethics" finds more use in such terms as "metaethics", and "consequentialist ethics". --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:16, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

YourDictionary does draw the distinction. However, I find the article unconvincing, e.g. the claim that 'While morals are concerned with individuals feeling "good" or "bad," ethics determine what behaviors are "right" or "wrong."' I find that very implausible, and so, I assume, do "moral philosophers". A search for the term "moral philosophers" reveals these are ethicists; also “moral philosophy”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:38, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

We're not going to be able to hash out a general distinction between ethics and morality as philosophical terms of art, since their use is debated and varies according to individual philosophers (e.g. Hegel's distinction between Moralität and Sittlichkeit is often translated into English as "morality" vs. "ethics" or "ethical life", but clearly not everyone talking about "morality" and "ethics" is using the terms in a Hegelian sense). It is probably better to rein in the focus to the narrowly professional/technical meaning suggested above, "in contravention of standards within a particular profession or a code of ethics" (regardless of whether it is "moral"), which has support from reference works and fairly unambiguous citations. (I note Macmillan's definition of "unethical" also in effect distinguishes two senses.) —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:03, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

• I've removed the cruft from both senses and cited 3 of the examples above for sense 1. I've also added a usage note mentioning the distinction between unethical and immoral, with a reference (and quotation) from a prominent academic ethicist discussing it. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 02:31, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

  I think that's a fairly satisfactory solution. Might I also note that the confusion about there being a meaningful distinction or not likely comes from different philosophical standpoints. If a person believes morality to be conventional or cultural, for instance, than "ethics" (as what is universally agreed upon by a society) can readily be distinguished from "morality", which might be more personal and variable within a culture. Conversely, if someone believes in a universal, changeless morality, then "ethics" could either be perceived as the same thing as "morality," or "ethics" could be limited (as I have often seen) to the area of morality that considers harm done to other people. As an illustration of the difference, you are unlikely to find many people who think masturbation is unethical. You will find plenty, however, who think it is immoral. I would also note that "ethics" is not used in the religious sphere nearly as often as "morality", while the reverse is true for philosophical discussion. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 23:32, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

RFV-passed. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:13, 26 November 2022 (UTC)