Really. To unpack that statement, “unethical” = “what one shouldn’t do”. If you’re choosing to do something, you think you should do it, so you obviously can’t be thinking that you shouldn’t do it.
Yes, we seem to be having terminology problems.
For the record, let me briefly define the words I’m using.
Morality (=morals) is a system of values along with the importance (=weight) that people attach to them. In most real-life situations any course of action will conflict with some values so decision-making is an exercise in balancing values and deciding on acceptable trade-offs.
Ethics is a collection of action guidelines driven by the morals. Because most decisions are trade-offs, it’s common for actions to match some ethical guidelines and not match other ones.
Generally speaking, our conscious mind does the balancing act and comes up with a “what should I do” decision, but the unconscious mind does its own calculation and may come with a another decision. If the decisions are different you have the usual problems under the umbrella of hypocrisy, guilty conscience, etc.
People usually speak of morals and ethics meaning the calculations done by the conscious mind. So it’s perfectly possible for one to think “I should not eat that pint of ice cream” while gobbling it up. The mind is not a single agent.
I usually use the terms “morality” and “ethics” interchangeably, and in the sense in which “X is moral” and “one should do X” are synonymous.
The extent to which you attribute differences in beliefs and behavior seems unrealistic.. Certainly, people sometimes fall into habits, aren’t mindful, forget what they’re doing, etc, but it seems implausible that it would lead to such wide disparities between what your conscious mind thinks you should do and what you actually do. It would mean that if I were to remind someone who professes that eating meat is wrong of their belief while they’re reaching for a piece of steak at the store, they’d consider what they’re doing and choose to not buy the steak. While this may be the case some of the time, it would have to happen much more often than it actually does.
Yes, we seem to be having terminology problems.
For the record, let me briefly define the words I’m using.
Morality (=morals) is a system of values along with the importance (=weight) that people attach to them. In most real-life situations any course of action will conflict with some values so decision-making is an exercise in balancing values and deciding on acceptable trade-offs.
Ethics is a collection of action guidelines driven by the morals. Because most decisions are trade-offs, it’s common for actions to match some ethical guidelines and not match other ones.
Generally speaking, our conscious mind does the balancing act and comes up with a “what should I do” decision, but the unconscious mind does its own calculation and may come with a another decision. If the decisions are different you have the usual problems under the umbrella of hypocrisy, guilty conscience, etc.
People usually speak of morals and ethics meaning the calculations done by the conscious mind. So it’s perfectly possible for one to think “I should not eat that pint of ice cream” while gobbling it up. The mind is not a single agent.
I usually use the terms “morality” and “ethics” interchangeably, and in the sense in which “X is moral” and “one should do X” are synonymous.
The extent to which you attribute differences in beliefs and behavior seems unrealistic.. Certainly, people sometimes fall into habits, aren’t mindful, forget what they’re doing, etc, but it seems implausible that it would lead to such wide disparities between what your conscious mind thinks you should do and what you actually do. It would mean that if I were to remind someone who professes that eating meat is wrong of their belief while they’re reaching for a piece of steak at the store, they’d consider what they’re doing and choose to not buy the steak. While this may be the case some of the time, it would have to happen much more often than it actually does.