from Purpose thro’ Ethics to Values…

Ethics, Morals, Purpose… and Values

What is meant by them? What are the differences between them?

For this ‘Sensible‘ political philosophy :

an individual’s “Morals” are the codes and values he actually uses to decide whether something is ‘right or wrong’ and a society’s morals are those which are expected to be displayed by a typical citizen.
Ethics is the study, examination, assessment and development of morals and moral systems. One’s morals are one’s own, but – to be meaningful and justifiable – those morals must be based on ethics – rationally defensible principles. Morals that come from religious books or revelations or from faith in a god (or any guru) and that cannot be defended rationally are not enough to found a sustainable Civilisation on, because …

Civilisation requires open, honest, rational, evidence-based assessment of our shared situation – because that situation changes in ways we may never understand. This requires us to be as open to each other and the world as possible – not ideologically bound, not own-culture bound.

As Peter Singer explains in “The President of Good and Evil” (Text, 2004), open, rational discussion is the only way in which all voices have a chance to be heard, while making it possible to distinguish what anyone is saying…

[There's a brief review of the book at http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/30/1083224569232.html ]

Since Ethics is about rationally distinguishing right from wrong, it must exist in a broad framework – right or wrong for what? [Assuming there is no absolute moral scheme which exists independently of or outside our own consciousness.] There must be reasons – which we can be conscious of and can agree – for something to be ethically correct or not, for there to be meaningful ways of deciding between alternatives. There must be shared ‘preferences’ – a hierarchy of desires [ i.e. a Value System] – and these preferences must be rationally explicable so they can be assessed, justified publicly and worked for. The only way we can have a consistent moral scheme is to have goals – goals shared across society against which we can judge rightness. From, and only from, these shared Goals (or Objectives or Aims) we can derive a Value System that we can all use to assess public decision making, that is ‘meaningful‘.
The only meaningful Goals for a member of an on-going group are those which accord with Purpose that’s shared across the group over time. The only sensible purpose for such a group has to involve improving life for its members – most directly done [over time] by improving the potential of life available to the group as a whole…

So, the only ‘sensible‘ [i.e. useful to all, everywhere, everywhen...] definition of ‘Good’ must be in terms of raising the potential of human life, in terms of ‘flourishing’…