Talk:Morality

Towards some objections

There have been several weighty objections made earlier this year by the user ~2026-31792-67.

On the article as a whole:

The article relies almost exclusively on Western philosophers (Kant, Aristotle, Hume, Haidt, Kohlberg) and Western academic frameworks. Non-Western traditions (Confucian ethics, Hindu dharma, Indigenous moral systems, African ubuntu) are absent or relegated to a single 'Religion' section. Add subsections on moral philosophy from Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Include sources like Confucius' Analects, the Bhagavad Gita, and contemporary non-Western ethicists.

On the Ethics section:

The article defines both descriptive and normative morality but then devotes nearly all its length to descriptive morality (how people do behave: evolution, cultural differences, neuroscience). Normative questions – what actually is right or wrong – are barely addressed beyond the short 'Realism and anti-realism' section. Add a substantive normative section discussing major normative theories (consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics) with examples, and explain how normative ethics differs from descriptive moral anthropology.

On the Religion section (since partly removed):

The Religion section opens with 'Religion and morality are not synonymous' and disproportionately quotes critics (Blackburn, Anderson, Hume, Paul, Zuckerman) who highlight negative aspects of religious morality. Defenses of religious morality are relegated to footnotes. Present positive arguments for religion as a source of moral knowledge (e.g., divine command theory, virtue ethics in religious traditions), and balance empirical findings. Note that meta-analyses show a moderate deterrent effect of religion on crime.

These are thought-provoking and a welcome springboard for further discussion, and I thank for them.

In my opinion, at the outset, any author of this article is presented with a conundrum: how to give forth a separate article on morality, presupposing there already exists a complex article on ethics, a term that it is often confused for or deliberately synonymized with.

One possible avenue of providing two distinct articles on these topics is to comprehend morality as an observable social and psychological phenomenon, while tractating ethics as a philosophical study thereof. This does allow two articles of wildly differing scopes, but also has the consequence of keeping the article on morality highly physicalist. Such a limitation notwithstanding, it is nonetheless not a feature of lacking a geographical universality per se, rather simply a viewpoint one.

As per the succinct discussion of ethics, which however has to occur in this article, it does mention both normative and descriptive ethics, but, given the above, it is inevitable that the rest of the article may be perceived as being informed by the latter approach.

On the topic of religion, it does at a cursory look seem difficult to distinguish religion from other evolutionary processes described and thus deploy any needlessly negative assessments thereof, save for any intentional moralizing. BasicWriting (talk) 01:20, 30 August 2026 (UTC)

Cisero has No connection to morality.

Proposed Wikipedia Update: Etymology The English word morality does not originate in Roman moral philosophy. The Latin adjective moralis was coined by Cicero as a translation of Greek ēthikos, meaning “pertaining to character, habit, or custom,” and was used in that sense throughout classical Latin. It did not refer to moral right and wrong, moral obligation, or any universal moral law.

The first term that clearly denotes the modern concept of morality is moralitas, which appears in medieval Latin in the 12th–13th centuries within Christian theological and scholastic contexts. Medieval writers used moralitas (moral doctrine) alongside moralis (pertaining to manners), indicating that moralitas was a new word for a new conceptual category.

From moralitas, the term passed into Old French as moralité, and then into Middle English in the late 14th century. The earliest recorded English use of moral appears in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (c. 1386–1390), predating Chaucer. The broader sense of “a system of ethical duties” develops in English during the mid‑15th century.

Although moralis is etymologically related to Latin mos (“custom”), this linguistic derivation does not imply that the concept designated by the later word existed in the earlier period. ~2026-46935-15 (talk) 03:22, 30 August 2026 (UTC)

Additional Sources

I feel as though a lot of the bias in this article towards more western view points could be resolved by making sure to include more diverse sources. The article disuses morality abstractly and then in relation to a lot of western philosophy, but never really expands into what exactly morality can look like in different regions. I also feel as though the article could discuss the topic of a lack of morality more in depth. EditorC22 (talk) 00:31, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

Context: the above comment is an article evaluation by a student editor as part of their course. Schazjmd (talk) 11:56, 13 September 2026 (UTC)