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Ethics is the deliberate reflection on the concepts, principles, and theories by virtue of which people judge actions, motives, character and institutions.
Philosophers usually divide the field of ethics into four subdivisions, descriptive ethics, metaethics, normative ethics and applied ethics.
- Descriptive ethics.
Descriptive ethics is not a branch of philosophy. Its subject matter is factual evidence, the way people actually behave.
- Normative ethics. It is a branch of philosophy. Its focus is the identification and defense of the basic principles and rules that ought to guide behavior. The major theories of normative ethics are deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics. While deontologists and consequentialists are interested in what makes actions right or wrong --consequentialists emphasize results and dontologists emphasize motives -- virtue ethicists are interested in what makes a person good and the kind of character traits one ought to nurture. see next lesson
- Metaethics. Metaethics is also a branch of philosophy. The subject matter of metaethics is ethical language. Metaethicists are concerned with three things:
- The meaning of ethical terms such as "good," "bad," "right," and "wrong."
- The status of moral judgment, i.e., whether judgments such as "stealing is bad" are informative like "grass is green," expressive like "hurray!" or prescriptive like "do no go outside!."
- The kind of reasoning that is moral reasoning.
- Applied ethics. It is the application of moral philosophy to problems in biomedical ethics, business, the environment, the law, etc.
- Questions about the readings
- Is descriptive ethics relevant to biomedical ethics? How?
- How are ethicists who believe that moral judgments are expressive called? Can you name one?
- Does it make any difference whether moral judgments are descriptive or expressive?
- Is moral reasoning different from other kinds or reasoning? Explain.
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