prin·ci·ple
- a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning.
val·ue
- a person’s principles or standards of behavior; one’s judgment of what is important in life.
mor·al
- a person’s standards of behavior or beliefs concerning what is and is not acceptable for them to do.
I don’t know about you, but these definitions aren’t as clear or specific as I’d like them to be. I understand that I’m throwing shade at the dictionary here, which is a pretty poor position to start a blog post from (especially one that I’d presumably like someone to get value out of, no pun intended).
The best way I’ve seen the distinction between a principle and a value explained is that a principle is a constraint and a value is a priority. In other words, principles are unbreakable rules that govern one’s actions, and values are something we strive for, but are sometimes deprioritized (e.g., for another value, should two be in conflict). You can see in the tail end of the definition for value it mentions “judgement of what is important.” What is important isn’t always what is prioritized, where as a principle is the foundation of a belief system (“I believe that I should never cheat”). This had me wondering though, where do morals fit in with all of this?
According to the definition above, a moral is one’s standards of behavior. Also according to the definition above, a value is a person’s standards of behavior. Let’s look at the other definition for moral then.
- a lesson, especially one concerning what is right or prudent, that can be derived from a story, a piece of information, or an experience.
That’s pretty helpful. It sounds then like a moral is a lesson learned through experience or from another source. This is starting to sound like morals are much broader in scope, and can have a cultural context, and generally speaking are more likely to come directly from an external source (or caused directly by an experience with something external to oneself).
How do we use those lessons then? According to the first definition we looked at, it is concerning the level of acceptability of behavior. It sounds like morals then guide our behavior, and are specific to context. For example, if one of my principles is truth, then I never lie. However, my morals might dictate that I shouldn’t be disruptive, in which case that could mean very different behavior depending on the situation.
So then, if principles are constraints, values are priorities, and morals shape our behavior in context, then how would we best summarize morals in a similar manner? If morals are information gathered from experiences or stories that guide our behavior, then maybe the best way to summarize them is to call them “guidelines.” They act as guidelines for our behavior, but aren’t as hard and fast like a principle, and we don’t exactly prioritze them like values. They also serve as guidance in forming our principles and values. For example, we often teach children what acceptable behavior is through story, example, or analogy.
What do you think?