HUMS 11 Ethics

Name: Ople, Crisnem John A. Block 15

Activity 1.1 Definition of Terms
1. Ethics is a branch of philosophy which studies the principles of right or wrong in human
conduct.
2. Morality is the quality of human acts by which they are constituted as good, bad, or,
indifferent.
3.Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the principles of beauty and artistic
taste.
4. Etiquette is the customary code of polite behavior in society or among members of a
particular profession or group.
5. Technique is a way of carrying out a particular task, especially the execution or performance
of an artistic work or a scientific procedure.
6.Descriptive is describing or classifying in an objective and nonjudgmental way.
7. Normative is relating to an evaluative standard. Normativity is the phenomenon in human
societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good or desirable or permissible and
others as bad or undesirable or impermissible.
8. Positive Law is human-made laws that oblige or specify an action. Positive law also
describes the establishment of specific rights for an individual or group.
9. Divine Command Theory (also known as theological voluntarism) is a meta-ethical theory
which proposes that an action's status as morally good is equivalent to whether it is
commanded by God.
10. Cultural Relativism is the idea that a person's beliefs and practices should be understood
based on that person's own culture. Proponents of cultural relativism also tend to argue that
the norms and values of one culture should not be evaluated using the norms and values of
another.
11. Subjectivism is the doctrine that our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of
our experience, instead of shared or communal, and that there is no external or objective
truth.
12. Psychological Egoism is the view that humans are always motivated by self-interest and
selfishness, even in what seem to be acts of altruism.
13. Ethical Egoism is the normative ethical position that moral agents ought to act in their own
self-interest. It differs from psychological egoism, which claims that people can only act in
their self-interest.