Ethics

• Ethics is the systematic study of morality
• Ethics is prescriptive, focusing on what people ought to do and how we should view morality
• Ethics examines the moral standards of an individual or society, questioning if these standards are reasonable or morally permissible
• Metaethics involves the nature, meaning, scope, and foundations of moral values and discourses
• Normative ethics determines moral standards that distinguish right from wrong conduct
• Applied ethics involves the analysis of various ethical issues to guide moral judgment
• Descriptive ethics is generally not considered an area of moral philosophy, incorporating research from anthropology, psychology, and sociology
• Descriptive ethics focuses on what morality is rather than what morality should be
• Moral statements are normative statements expressing what ought to be or should be the case
• Moral statements are not factual statements, as they do not express something that is the case
• Examples of normative statements include moral, aesthetic, grammatical, legal, and etiquette standards
• Examples of factual statements include historical research, observation, scientific research, and experiments
• Ethical relativism is the view that all moral principles are valid relative to a particular individual or society
• Ethical relativism includes subjectivism, where the rightness or wrongness of an action lies on the individual's commitments, and conventionalism, where it depends on society's culture or norms
• Diversity of moral beliefs does not prove that morality is relative, and there are still universal moral standards that exist