Yes. To kill a man is immoral, but to kill a man in defence of self or others is ethical sound. To steal is immoral, but if you steal food because your children are starving, its ethical.

We tend to create morals for society, and then use ethics as a means to define them. Morals are the absolutes by which we aim to live, and ethics are the pragmatic reality of acceptable.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
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I think so.

Oh god, it's a trap.

You said it exists. I also agree that thinking is real, but what I'm questioning is 'How do you adjudicate that the judgements made, from common sense, are sound and prudent, or that your interpretation of situations and facts is reliable?'.

To a lesser extent, I'm also asking whether common sense is real, as in being consistent to each person as the same thing, or if its real as a subjective experience that varies from person to person.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

So ethics beyond pure morality are a caveat on morality to opt out of it via common sense or the greater need?

So in other words, morality is totally flexible in the event that its implementation might create or allow for an even greater immorality to occur and this is called ethics?

OK

No, because ethics must be reasoned, and logical sound - and typically serves towards the morality to which it transgresses.

So killing someone is morally wrong. But in acting in self defence, we would claim that the action of self defence or the defence of others serves that morality because it paradoxically prevents the killing of someone else.

As such, we are still acting within that ideal (that its wrong to kill by establishing that taking a life to save a life, serves the same good.

Ethically, we then proscribe certain 'ethical' actions around such an action, such as the use of reasonable force, that the party acted in a manner that did not provoke the situation - ie that the action was 'regrettably but necessary to preserve 'morality'.

So something is ethical, even if its immoral, because it serves a greater good.

This is tricky for me, because I don't really ascribe to the idea that morality is anything more than the current socially defined limits of societies ethics.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

As I've said, by looking at the outcomes. You know, communist philosophers like Marx predicting a utopia, eg: "In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic."
Yet, in contrast, the mass of people living in Marxist utopias, looked at their situation, applied common sense, tried to escape and welcomed the demise of the philosophical heaven.
Similarly, here in the UK, the question of whether we should stay in the EU is put to the people, and they look at the question, apply common sense, and vote to leave.
At the next general election, if Corbyn is still in charge of the Labour Party, the electorate will look at the choices, apply common sense, and return the Tories with a thumping majority.
It's pretty straightforward this common sense business, it is just philosophical types who try to come up with all sorts of nonsense to muddy the waters.

Edited by hedgehog50 (09 Mar 2017 5.08pm)

We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. [Orwell]