What's the difference between morals and ethics, and should laws be evolved from, t'other or both?

Sorry to ask such a basic question, but I'm a bit of an imbecile when it comes to matters philosophical.

The consensus appears to be that ethics are based on a systemic framework, based on logical reasoning and justification that independently arbitrates right and wrong, whereas morals are subjective personal opinion on what is allowable. Thus, someone might morally believe that paedophiles should be chemically castrated, but that wouldn't be the ethical consensus on the issue.

So would it be fair to say that Morals are 'top down' (though shall not covet thy neighbors goat, etc), and ethics are 'bottom up' (maybe it would be a good idea if we didn't kill each other).

Or is that overly simplistic?

I don't think that's quite right, and I don't quite agree with DR. Often, the terms are rough synonyms, but "ethics" is also sometimes used to mean the study of morality--a kind of meta-morality. (Some people urge that it should only be used in that way, but they're on to a loser, I reckon.)

In ordinary speech "morality" has come to connote specifically sexual norms, especially those based on religious teachings, but I think that's a loose and unhelpful usage.

Yes, that's kind of what I understood. Morality is the teaching/application of "oughts," but ethics is figuring out what they ought to be.

For nearly all purposes the two are synonyms. Some technical usages distinguish between them (Hegel's system does, as does Bernard Williams') but nearly all colloquial attempts to do so are imprecisely-drawn, overlapping, and contradictory. The two are certainly used in different contexts, as noted above, but insisting on a distinction is overwhelmingly the currency of bullshit-artists.

I'm not sure what DR is referring to with the talk of "consensus". I mean, even vaguely.

Yeah, it's a bit of a mess, to be honest, what DR says. It's (to say the least of it) problematic to talk of "basing" norms on "logical reasoning" (I mean, logical reasoning from what premises?). And as for contrasting this with "subjective personal opinion"--well, ain't exactly no "consensus" on whether ethics can ever be based on anything else.

I don't really understand the top-down/bottom-up distinction either, really. There's a distinction between moral systems based on authority and those based on Other Stuff--might that be what you mean, TPC? There's also a (related but different) distinction between moral systems based on applying general ethical principles and those based on weighing the consequences of human actions--that could also be what you mean. Neither of these correspond to the "morals"/"ethics" distinction, though.

The distinction I was taught to work with, (which isn't definitive and which I don't care that much about, so .. who knows) is that morals are based on social mores which vary according to society and times, but ethics are more universal. With morals, one follows society's established rules, applying ethics might involve examining one's own conscience and possibly transgressing society's rules in order to do the truly right thing.

In brief, a lot of sex and drugs and rock'n'roll type behaviour, (e.g. having children out of wedlock or going topless) might be judged "immoral" but isn't "unethical" as it isn't hurting anyone, and might well be fashionable or compulsory the next year, or in the next country. Ethics more to do with things like abortion, investment, animal testing etc. which really touch on human good and human evil. And yeh, there are problems with good and evil etc.

More or less yes, though as I say, I have the I.Q. of a chicken when it comes to this sort of stuff.

It seemed to me that morals are handed down to us by alleged higher authorities, (organized religion, village elders, Daily Mail columnists) whereas ethics are the rules the people have developed just to enable for society to exist.

I don't really go along with the distinction MsD draws either, to be honest.

For one thing, those who condemn sex and drugs and rock and roll very largely think their grounds for doing so are universal and objective, and that we who defend (or don't mind) those things are being blinkered and parochial in our embrace of a transient set of social norms instead of the great and eternal moral (or ethical) truths. Now, I don't agree with them, but if I say my position constitutes an ethic but theirs doesn't, I'm pretty much begging the question.

To but the boot on the other foot: you come close to saying, at one point, that the only ethic worthy of the name is a consequentialist one: one that focuses on weighing benefits and harms. Well, as someone who seems to be getting more and more Kantian all the time, I'd like to speak up for the idea that, for example, human autonomy is just as important as benefits vs harms.

For example, when I wish to do X (go about my business unmolested, perhaps) and you're pretty sure if I did Y (donate a kidney to a stranger, perhaps) I would increase the sum of human happiness, the right thing for you to do may nonetheless be to let me do X instead of Y. The argument being that even if the cost-benefit analysis favours grabbing a kidney off me whether I like it nor not, you simply may not use me as a means to an end like that.

Now, you may not agree with that (and you'd have some good, powerful arguments on your side), but I don't think you get to say that my position isn't even an ethic. The hell it ain't...

Well, it's not really my distinction, but it's what I was taught when studying political sociology, and there was some overlap with ethics, jurisprudence, philosophic doodah etc. I vaguely remember reading Giddens and Durkheim on the subject(s). Was never my terrain, arguments about semantics etc. and there does seem to be widespread confusion or disagreement.

Although, I will add, we are all (mostly) products of our society so won't be wholly objective about its standards of behaviour.

Excellent stuff, Wyatt.