Today it is common to separate ethics into three sub-branches: 1. Descriptive ethics, 2. metaethics and 3. Normative ethics
1. Descriptive ethics aims at empirically and precisely mapping existing morality or moralities within communities and is there-fore linked to the social sciences. Another-aim is to explain the development of existing moralities from a historical perspective. No normative prescriptions are intended
2. Metaethics is a relatively new discipline in the ethical arena and its definition is the most blurred 0f all. The Greek meta means after or beyond and indicates that the object of metaethical studies is morality and ethics itself. The aim is to better understand the logical, semantic and ethical argumentation as such, their origin and meaning. Other fields of inquiry are e.g. whether morality exists independently of humans, and the underlying mental basis of human judgements and conduct.
3. Normative ethics means the methodological reflection upon morality tackling its critique and its rationale. Norms and standards for acting and conduct are being set up or tore down, and argued for or against. When “ethics”is talked about in a common sense then we talking about this general normative ethics. When enquiry is directed towards the principles of moral judgment or the criteria for the ethical analysis of morality, then we talk about fundamental ethics.
Finally in the realm of normative ethics, there is applied ethics. Here normative theories are applied to specific, controversial moral issues like animal rights, abortion. euthanasia etc.–generating socalled hyphen-ethics, e.g. bio-ethics, medical
ethics, business-ethics, nano-ethics etc. Inversely, these special issues constantly challenge theory and demand improvements, changes and specifications.
Alongside hyphen-ethics it is also possible to distinguish between ethics that focuses on societal and institutional dimensions (socialethics) or on individuum(individualethics).
While we consider applied ethics to be a sub-branch of normative ethics, other moral philosophers treat it as a discipline on the same level as normative ethics, arguing that it
ETHIS
meta descriptive normative
ethic applied fundamental
social
individual
hyphen
uses normative elements but is independent otherwise.
In normative elements but there are different theories as to how criteria of moral conduct should be defined. The three main theories can be sketched as follows:
1. Deontological, i.e. duty theories locate the basis of morality on specific, foundational principles of duty and obligation. These principles are binding regardless of the consequences that acting on their basis might bring.
2. Consequentialist theories on the other hand determine the value of an action on the grounds of a cost-benefit analysis of its consequences. If the positive consequences outweigh the negative ones then the action is morally proper.
3. Virtue theories focus on a given set of rules like “do not steal” etc. But instead of defining them merely as obligatory duties, the emphasis lies on the individual to develop good habits of character based on these rules (and avoid vices). Thus virtue theory emphasizes moral education.
Q : What are “codes of ethics/conduct” or what is “ethical research”? Shouldn‘t that be called moral? A : By calling research or a code “ethical”, the authors want to point out that the moral rules they set up are based on rational deliberation and can be subject to critique.
Q : Looking at the definitions of ethics and morality-what is moral philosophy? A : It is mostly used as a synonym for ethics. Some, like the French philosopher Jean-Pierre Dupuy use it differently. For him ‘ethics’ stands for the effort to force everything into universal harmonized principles while ‘moral philosophy’ endures colliding or incompatible values or concepts in the discourse.