Ethics - comes from the greek word ethos which can mean custom, habit, character or

disposition. Ethics is also called moral philosophy, the discipline concerned with what is morally
good and bad and morally right and wrong. The terms ethics and morality are closely related. It
is now common to refer ethical judgments or to ethical principles where it once would have
been more accurate to speak of moral judgments or moral disciplines.

Ethics covers the following dilemmas:

 How to live a good life

 Our rights and responsibilities
 The language of right and wrong
 Moral decisions - what is good and bad?

3 types of ethics

Philosophers nowadays tend to divide ethical theories into three areas: metaethics,
normative ethics and applied ethics.

1. Meta-ethics - deals with the nature of moral judgments. It looks at the origins and
meaning of ethical principles.
2. Normative ethics - is concerned with the content of moral judgments and the criteria
for what is right and wrong.
3. Applied ethics - looks at controversial topics like war, animal rights and capital
punishment.

4 Branches of ethics

 Descriptive ethics - deals with what people actually believe (or made to believe) to be
right or wrong, and accordingly holds up the human actions acceptable or not
acceptable or punishable under a custom or law.
 Normative ethics - deals with "norms" or set of considerations how one should act.
Thus, it is a study of "ethical action" and sets out the rightness and wrongness of the
actions.
  Meta ethics - or "analytical ethics" deals with the origin of the ethical concepts
themselves. It does not consider wether an action is good or bad, right or wrong.
 Applied ethics - deals with the philosophical examination, from a moral standpoint, of
particular issues in private and public life which are matters of moral judgment.

Different types of ethics

 Moral realism - is the meta-ethical view that there exist such things as moral facts and
moral values.
 Subjectivism - holds that truth, ineffect, resides only in the mind. For a subjectivist, a
particular statement can be true for one person and false for another, based solely on
one's mental choices, subjective processing, or emotions.
 Objectivism - holds that truth and falsehood are aspects of conceptual knowledge.
 Supernaturalism - the quality or state of being supernatural. Belief in the supernatural,
esp. a belief that some supernatural, or divine, force controls nature amd the universe.
 Moral instuitionism - refers to the philosophical belief that there are objective moral
truths in life and that human beings can understand these truths intuitively.
 Moral relativism - is the view that moral judgments are true or false only relative to
some particular standpoint and that standpoint is uniquely priviledged over all others.
 Consequentialism - belief that judges whether or not something is right by what its
consequences are.
 Prescriptivism - is the attitude or belief that one variety of a language is superior to
others and should be promoted as such.

Najmah D. Matod