non-standard, completely personalized definitions of words should be avoided
It’s not a definition problem here, it’s a concept problem. My concept of morality differs from the standard one. I could, of course, start inventing new words for it or decorate the word with qualifiers, but that doesn’t seem to be called for in this case.
Words are used for communication—did I make myself sufficiently clear about what I mean by the word “morality”?
This means you cannot even judge others on the basis of your own morals!
I should have expressed myself better. What I mean is that morality for me is local rather than global. It’s a personal, individual yardstick, not a universally agreed-upon measure. That’s why it’s applied to me (or, for any given person, to her) and not to the entire world. Having said that, I see no problem with judging other people’s behavior on the basis of my own morals. If I believe doing X is bad it’s still true when person A does X.
Your definition seems to just lump everything together under “moral”.
Not really. Again, I probably should have been clearer. Notice how I talked about values (which are similar to your terminal preferences) and wasn’t keen on using terms like good and evil? That’s basically the reason—you can say that I lump everything under “moral” but then my “moral” is much wider and less judgemental that standard “moral”.
We can use the more common definition of morality, but in the territory of my mind there is no bright line between values which are “moral” and values which are “terminal preferences”. So it’s not particularly useful for describing my beliefs.
It’s not a definition problem here, it’s a concept problem. My concept of morality differs from the standard one. I could, of course, start inventing new words for it or decorate the word with qualifiers, but that doesn’t seem to be called for in this case.
Words are used for communication—did I make myself sufficiently clear about what I mean by the word “morality”?
I should have expressed myself better. What I mean is that morality for me is local rather than global. It’s a personal, individual yardstick, not a universally agreed-upon measure. That’s why it’s applied to me (or, for any given person, to her) and not to the entire world. Having said that, I see no problem with judging other people’s behavior on the basis of my own morals. If I believe doing X is bad it’s still true when person A does X.
Not really. Again, I probably should have been clearer. Notice how I talked about values (which are similar to your terminal preferences) and wasn’t keen on using terms like good and evil? That’s basically the reason—you can say that I lump everything under “moral” but then my “moral” is much wider and less judgemental that standard “moral”.
We can use the more common definition of morality, but in the territory of my mind there is no bright line between values which are “moral” and values which are “terminal preferences”. So it’s not particularly useful for describing my beliefs.