What is ethics mean

So if I say something is good, I'm recommending you to do it, and if I say something is bad, I'm telling you not to do it. There is almost always a prescriptive element in any real-world ethical statement: any ethical statement can be reworked with a bit of effort into a statement with an 'ought' in it. For example: "lying is wrong" can be rewritten as "people ought not to tell lies".

Supernaturalism makes ethics inseparable from religion. It teaches that the only source of moral rules is God. So, something is good because God says it is, and the way to lead a good life is to do what God wants.

Intuitionists think that good and bad are real objective properties that can't be broken down into component parts. Something is good because it's good; its goodness doesn't need justifying or proving. Intuitionists think that goodness or badness can be detected by adults - they say that human beings have an intuitive moral sense that enables them to detect real moral truths.

They think that basic moral truths of what is good and bad are self-evident to a person who directs their mind towards moral issues. So good things are the things that a sensible person realises are good if they spend some time pondering the subject.

This is the ethical theory that most non-religious people think they use every day. It bases morality on the consequences of human actions and not on the actions themselves. Consequentialism teaches that people should do whatever produces the greatest amount of good consequences. The most common forms of consequentialism are the various versions of utilitarianism, which favour actions that produce the greatest amount of happiness.

Despite its obvious common-sense appeal, consequentialism turns out to be a complicated theory, and doesn't provide a complete solution to all ethical problems. Non-consequentialism is concerned with the actions themselves and not with the consequences. It's the theory that people are using when they refer to "the principle of the thing".

It teaches that some acts are right or wrong in themselves, whatever the consequences, and people should act accordingly. Virtue ethics looks at virtue or moral character, rather than at ethical duties and rules, or the consequences of actions - indeed some philosophers of this school deny that there can be such things as universal ethical rules.

Virtue ethics is particularly concerned with the way individuals live their lives, and less concerned in assessing particular actions. It develops the idea of good actions by looking at the way virtuous people express their inner goodness in the things that they do. To put it very simply, virtue ethics teaches that an action is right if and only if it is an action that a virtuous person would do in the same circumstances, and that a virtuous person is someone who has a particularly good character.

Situation ethics rejects prescriptive rules and argues that individual ethical decisions should be made according to the unique situation. Rather than following rules the decision maker should follow a desire to seek the best for the people involved.

There are no moral rules or rights - each case is unique and deserves a unique solution. Some philosophers teach that ethics is the codification of political ideology, and that the function of ethics is to state, enforce and preserve particular political beliefs. They usually go on to say that ethics is used by the dominant political elite as a tool to control everyone else.

More cynical writers suggest that power elites enforce an ethical code on other people that helps them control those people, but do not apply this code to their own behaviour. One of the big questions in moral philosophy is whether or not there are unchanging moral rules that apply in all cultures and at all times. Some people think there are such universal rules that apply to everyone.

This sort of thinking is called moral absolutism. Moral absolutism argues that there are some moral rules that are always true, that these rules can be discovered and that these rules apply to everyone. Immoral acts - acts that break these moral rules - are wrong in themselves, regardless of the circumstances or the consequences of those acts.

Absolutism takes a universal view of humanity - there is one set of rules for everyone - which enables the drafting of universal rules - such as the Declaration of Human Rights.

Moral relativists say that if you look at different cultures or different periods in history you'll find that they have different moral rules. Therefore it makes sense to say that "good" refers to the things that a particular group of people approve of. Moral relativists think that that's just fine, and dispute the idea that there are some objective and discoverable 'super-rules' that all cultures ought to obey. They believe that relativism respects the diversity of human societies and responds to the different circumstances surrounding human acts.

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This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Find out more about page archiving. Ethics guide. Ethics: a general introduction. On this page What is ethics? What use is ethics? Ethics and people Are ethical statements objectively true?

Four ethical 'isms' Where does ethics come from? Are there universal moral rules? Being ethical is also not the same as following the law.

The law often incorporates ethical standards to which most citizens subscribe. But laws, like feelings, can deviate from what is ethical. Our own pre-Civil War slavery laws and the old apartheid laws of present-day South Africa are grotesquely obvious examples of laws that deviate from what is ethical.

Finally, being ethical is not the same as doing "whatever society accepts. But standards of behavior in society can deviate from what is ethical.

An entire society can become ethically corrupt. Nazi Germany is a good example of a morally corrupt society. Moreover, if being ethical were doing "whatever society accepts," then to find out what is ethical, one would have to find out what society accepts.

To decide what I should think about abortion, for example, I would have to take a survey of American society and then conform my beliefs to whatever society accepts.

But no one ever tries to decide an ethical issue by doing a survey. Further, the lack of social consensus on many issues makes it impossible to equate ethics with whatever society accepts. Some people accept abortion but many others do not. If being ethical were doing whatever society accepts, one would have to find an agreement on issues which does not, in fact, exist. Words related to ethical honest , honorable , humane , principled , proper , virtuous , clean , conscientious , correct , decent , elevated , equitable , fair , fitting , good , just , moralistic , noble , respectable , right.

How to use ethical in a sentence They were given info about three main ethical issues in this area — fairness, privacy and their sense of self. New technology can get inside your head. Are you ready? Can privacy coexist with technology that reads and changes brain activity? Laura Sanders February 11, Science News.

Derived forms of ethical ethically , adverb ethicalness or ethicality , noun. Of, relating to, or dealing with ethics. Being in accordance with the accepted principles of right and wrong that govern the conduct of a profession.

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