1. The normative-evaluative sense of the word “moral”

The attempt to clarify the meaning of the word “moral” is, I believe, different from defining what is “moral”. The latter typically involves making normative statements or arguments about what one should or ought to do. When a moral theorist or philosopher defines what he considers to be “moral”, what he does is articulating a normative principle that he thinks should guide our actions, and justify it. For example, utilitarianism proposes that it is a “moral” act if and only if it achieves the greatest balance of pleasure over pain. This is a definition of what is “moral”; however, as a definition it is not merely descriptive, but rather is normative or prescriptive in that it is recommending or requiring us (myself and other people) to act in a certain way.

This is perhaps the most common meaning of the word “moral”. When we say “It is moral to do X”, what we mean is that we should do X; when we say “It is immoral to do Y”, we mean that we shouldn’t or ought not to do Y. Thanks to its normative meaning, the word “moral” is also evaluative: We can measure an act against our (normative) conception of the “moral” (e.g., a moral principle or a moral conviction as simple as “We shall not steal.” ) and say, for instance, lying to others for personal gain is not moral. Not just acts, persons too can be said to be “moral” or “immoral” and their “morality” comes in different degrees (e.g., “She is a very moral person”, “A is less moral than B”). But this evaluative function is dependent upon our conception of how one should act.

It should be noted that the word “moral” in this normative-evaluaive sense has a positive rather than negative character. By that I mean that when we say of an act that it is “moral”, we are saying that it is “right” or “good”, or morally valuable or worthwhile, which is contrasted with “wrong” or “bad”, morally blameworthy or reprehensible. As I will show later, there is also a neutral (neither positive nor negative) sense in which the word “moral” is referred to.

But exactly how we should act when we say we should act morally? In other words, what are the specific acts or ways of conduct that are “moral”? This can be thought of as either a philosophical question or an empirical question. In terms of the former, there are many competing philosophical arguments that specify the substantive content of the right conduct, some of which have departed quite far from our common sense (e.g., advocating for egoism or hedonism). But if we take it as an empirical question, it is not difficult to see that in everyday life, “moral” acts generally refer to those that benefit others, and in much social science research morality is also defined by reference to this “other-regarding” characteristic. In other words, to be “moral” generally means helping or caring for others, refraining from harming others, and giving equal weight to one’s own interest and other people’s interest.

2. The “moral” as contrasted with the “non-moral”

The word “moral” can also be used in a way that has a neutral meaning, such as in “Moral Theory”, “Moral Issue”, Moral Education”, “Moral Character” and so on. When we say Utilitarianism is a moral theory, for instance, we don’t mean to say that it is a “morally good” theory (although Utilitarian thinkers might believe so), but simply that Utilitarianism is a theory of/about morality. There is no contradiction in saying that someone has a “bad moral character”, as the word ‘moral’ here has a neutral rather than morally positive meaning. Similarly, when we say that abortion is a “moral issue”, we are not saying that abortion is morally right or good–we have not made that moral judgment yet. What is being stated is just a judgment that the issue of abortion falls in the category of morality, rather than, say, the category of personal preferences or tastes, or the domain of science.

But what makes abortion a “moral” issue? More generally, what makes anything “moral” as opposed to “non-moral” or what confers a “moral” character on any act?

The criteria by which the “moral” is distinguished from the “non-moral”, seems related to but not the same as the criteria that distinguishes the “moral” from the “immoral” or “morally wrong/bad”. For convenience’s sake, let’s just use abortion as an example. One may categorize abortion as a distinctive “moral” issue based on a very reasonable ground, whatever it may be, and yet still fail to suggest that abortion is “morally right or good” on that same ground.

The dissociation here may be in part due to the fact that abortion is controversial in that it is not very clear whether it is right/good or wrong/bad. For non-controversial acts such as killing babies for fun, however, almost everyone would think of it as falling in the “moral” domain (i.e., it is a moral issue) rather than just a personal preference, and would also be able to judge it as “immoral” or “morally wrong/bad”. If “killing babies for fun” sounds too extreme to be ever morally permissible, consider killing for money, lying or stealing for personal gain. I believe we can say the same thing for these acts; that is, it makes sense to say of these acts that they belong to the “moral” domain and at the same time that they are “immoral” or “morally wrong/bad”. Indeed, the evaluation “morally wrong/bad” itself suggests the domain of the act’s wrongness or badness. Thus, the dissociation (between distinguishing the moral from the non-moral, and distinguishing the moral from the immoral) seems to disappear when it comes to non-controversial issues.

But consider non-controversial but positive acts such as helping another individual. Are they “moral”? When asked this question, we must make it clear whether it is asking if they are “moral” in the sense contrasted with the morally wrong/bad, or in the sense contrasted with the non-moral. Unfortunately, sometimes people do not have such distinction in mind when they ask this question.

In ordinary thoughts, the answer seems to be this: Helping another individual is a moral rather than non-moral issue, and yet whether or not it is “moral” (in the sense of morally right or good) depends primarily on the intention or motive behind the act. Humans are certainly capable of acting altruistically for selfish reasons, and these altruistic behaviors do not qualify as truly “moral”. But if the intention is the right one, such as a genuine concern for another, or a motive to do what one thinks is right, then the act of helping is “moral” (morally right or good).

3. The morally right/obligatory and the morally good

In the above sections I have discussed two different meanings of the word “moral”. The first and also the most common use of the word “moral” has a positive meaning of being “morally right or good”, contrasted with “immoral” or the “morally wrong/bad; the second meaning of”moral” is primarily neutral since it is used to denote a category, a domain that is contrasted with the “non-moral”. In its first type of use, the word “moral” involves making a normative-evaluative judgment; in its second type of use, it primarily involves defining the nature or character of an act, behavior, or some sort of practice by classifying or categorizing it into the “moral” domain, without necessarily judging the act, behavior or practice to be morally right or good. I have also discussed the relationship between the two meanings of the same word: Whereas the positive meaning of the word contains the neutral meaning (i.e., When we say “What John did was very moral”, we have automatically conceded that John’s act belonged to the domain of morality), it is not vice versa–the judgment that some act is “moral” (versus “non-moral”) does not in itself contain any information as to whether or not the act is morally positive (right or good).

In this section, I want to zoom in on the positive (normative-evaluative) meaning of “moral” and distinguish within it two different meanings. So far, when talking about the “moral” in this sense, I have been referring to “morally right or good” interchangeably, but there is actually an important difference between the “morally right” and the “morally good”.

The morally right/wrong is particularly associated with the obligatoriness or requiredness the word “moral” has on many occasions. That is, we are obligated or required to do what is morally right or to refrain from doing what is morally wrong. Thus, when we say an act is morally wrong or immoral, we mean that it is our obligation or duty not to do it, and should someone violate it, he is subject to moral blame. But this does not capture all moral actions that have positive moral values. There are acts that are morally valuable or worthwhile but are not strictly required, and failure to do them will not fittingly subject one to blame. These are “supererogatory” or “heroic” moral acts whose moral value is not expressed in such conceptions as duty, dictate, requirement or imperative. But it is generally agreed that they are “good” and worthwhile or praiseworthy from a moral point of view.

The distinction I am trying to draw here is the same as the distinction made by William Frankena between deontic judgments (or judgments of moral obligation or duty) and aretaic judgments (or judgments of moral value and moral responsibility). Again, the central difference has to do with the degree of requiredness or obligatoriness. The “moral” in terms of the “morally right” denotes the requirements of morality, whereas the “moral” in terms of the “morally good” denotes more of moral value than a matter of moral requirement. It is worth noting, however, that the two are not mutually exclusive. Fulfilling moral obligations or acting in a way in accordance with moral requirements is not only right but also good or morally valuable. Therefore, the good seems to be a broader notion than the right.

4. The global “moral” and the domain-specific “moral”

In this last section I want to contrast two different meanings in another aspect of the word “moral”. Nowadays it is a popular view that morality is just one of many domains of human life, and the rules and values that constitute the moral domain are distinct from those that define the domain of, say, arts or science, or laws and politics, religion, etc. Call this the “domain-specific” view of morality. The “moral” and the “non-moral” distinction suggests that there is a moral domain and the rest are non-moral domains.

There is a very important function this domain-specific view of morality serves; that is, it is against reducing morality to something non-moral and in doing so retains the autonomy of morality.

But meanwhile this domain approach seems to suggest that the moral domain, being non-reducible, independent and autonomous, is in parallel with other domains of rules and values in the sense of the moral domain having equal status with non-moral domains. The significance of this is that when a moral value conflict with a non-moral value, we cannot in theory resolve the conflict by reference to a “moral” rule or standard. If there were such a rule or standard, it would involve an ordering or ranking of different domains of values, including the moral and the non-moral ones. But apparently this would be contradicting the idea that morality is just one among many different kinds of human values.

So the globalist view of morality says that morality is the overarching value, the ultimate principle that guides one’s practical decision-making. This in fact does not suppose–although often mistakenly so–that what is moral is to be given priority in decision-making whenever it conflicts with other non-moral values, because this supposition would be based on the domain-specific view of morality (i.e., There is the domain of morality and there are other domains) only with an added coordination principle that gives priority to morality. The globalist view is not like this; rather, it equates the moral with that which is the paramount and ultimate value or principle that guides our action or decision in any given situation. Utilitarianism, Kantian categorical imperative and even hedonistic egoism (as an ethical principle) all take a global approach to the “moral”, as they do not say something like “From the moral perspective you should do A, but from a non-moral (e.g., artistic) perspective you should do B”. Instead, they say “All things considered in this situation, A is the right thing to do and doing A is moral.” They do not even brother to say “morally right”, which is repetitive for them because they see “the moral” and “right” as equivalent, both indicating what one ultimately should do or is obligated to do.

It is clear from my description above that the “moral” from the globalist view is not one single system or domain of value to be coordinated with other sorts of (non-moral) values in practical decision-making, but rather is a principle by which different types of considerations, values, concerns are coordinated or ordered. The “moral” thus involves a hierarchy or ordering of different values, not merely a self-contained domain of value that does not have a say about things of other domains. It is precisely in this sense it is the global or overarching principle.

Consider the following two statements that can serve as examples of the “moral” in this global sense:

1. It is morally wrong (or not alright) to deceive another individual for personal gains.
2. It is morally right to disobey laws or conventions that are unjust to minority groups.

From a domain-specific point of view, in each of the two statements, two domains of value were involved. In the first one, it was morality (deceiving others is morally wrong) and self-interest (doing so is good for me); in the second, it was morality (it is wrong to do injustice to minority groups) and social order (obeying laws and conventions are necessary for maintaining social order). Furthermore, the domain-specific view will say that the final moral judgments were made on the basis of coordination of different domains of values, by the agent who made the final judgment and decision. However, it cannot explain why the final conclusions themselves carry the characteristics of moral judgments.

The global view of the moral has one big problem, though: It adopts a broad conception of the moral in that it equates the “moral” with what one should ultimately do (or the right thing to do) in any given situation, all things considered. In normative ethics, that is the way most ethical/moral theories understand the “moral” or the “ethical”, which is the notion of the “ultimately right”, rather than the “morally right”. But there is no guarantee that the ultimately right action rendered by the normative principle would necessarily be other-regarding. For instance, hedonistic egoism is rightly understood as an ethical or moral theory as maintains that it is right (or moral) to take the course of action that benefits oneself most in any given situation, all things considered. But such a view of what is moral is apparently contradictory to our ordinary conception of morality which is primarily defined by concern for others rather than regard for oneself. Most ethical theories, of-course, do propose normative principles that are most likely to render actions that we ordinarily consider to be moral, that is, being kind, compassionate, helpful, just, respectful, generous, courageous, etc.