NORTH SOUTH

UNIVERSITY
Lecture 15
PHI 104
Introduction to Ethics
Spring Semester 2021
06/04/2021
Application of
Ethical
Theories
Appliedethics is a branch of ethics
devoted to the treatment of moral
problems, practices, and policies in
personal life, professions, technology, and
government.

Applied Ethics
In contrast to traditional ethical theory—
concerned with purely theoretical
problems such as, for example, the
development of a general criterion of
rightness—applied ethics takes its point of
departure in practical normative
challenges.
Applied ethics is a field of ethics that
deals with ethical questions specific to a
professional, disciplinary, or practical
field. Subsets of applied ethics include
medical ethics, bioethics, business ethics,
legal ethics, and others.
Many analytic philosophers did not focus
on normative or practical ethical questions
during the early part of the twentieth
century.
However, throughout the century various
issues such as pollution, human rights
abuses, abortion, human cloning, poverty,
and others raised pressing ethical
questions and applied ethics became an
increasingly important field of philosophy.
There are generally two approaches taken
in applied ethics. The first is to apply
ethical principles such as utilitarianism
and deontological ethics to each issue or
question; the second is to generate a
situation-based discourse that uses
multiple ethical theories.
Although applied ethics is often referred
to as a component study of the wider sub-
discipline of ethics within the discipline of
philosophy this does not mean that only
philosophers are applied ethicists, or that
fruitful applied ethics is only done within
academic philosophy departments.
The three branches of ethics are
metaethics, normative ethics, and applied
ethics. Metaethics deals with whether
morality exists. Normative ethics, usually
assuming an affirmative answer to the
existence question, deals with the
reasoned construction of moral principles,
and at its highest level, determines what
the fundamental principle of morality is.

Applied Ethics distinct from Normative

Ethics and Meta Ethics
Applied ethics, also usually
assuming an affirmative answer to
the existence question, addresses
the moral permissibility of specific
actions and practices.
Subsets of applied ethics include medical
ethics, bioethics, business ethics, legal
ethics, moral reasoning and personhood,
professional ethics, social ethics,
distributive justice, environmental ethics,
and others.

Branches of applied ethics

 Business ethics is a form of applied
ethics. Business ethics deals with ethical
rules and principles within a business or
commercial context, the various moral or
ethical problems that can arise in a
business setting, and any special ethical
duties or obligations that apply to persons
who are engaged in commerce, including
workers and managers, customers and
suppliers, and the larger group of people
who have some interest in the business.
E.g. Corporate Social Responsibility.

Business ethics
The term bioethics was first coined by
American biochemist Van Potter to
describe a new philosophy that integrates
biology, ecology, medicine, and human
values.

Bioethics
In the broader sense of the term,
bioethics encompasses both biomedical
ethics, dealing with questions of ethics
related to medicine, and environmental
ethics, dealing with ecological ethics, such
as respect for the environment, treatment
of animals, and maintenance of
biodiversity.
Bioethics, then, should be understood as a
study of morality as it concerns issues
dealing with the biological issues and facts
concerning ourselves, and our close
relatives, for examples, almost any non-
human animal that is sentient.
E.g. Beginning of life issue (Abortion), End
of life issue (Brain death), research ethics,
population ethics, animal ethics.
Professionally accepted standards of personal
and business behavior, values and guiding
principles. Codes of professional ethics are
often established by professional
organizations to help guide members in
performing their job functions according to
sound and consistent ethical principles.

Professional ethics
Professional ethics are principles that
govern the behaviour of a person or group
in a business environment. Like values,
professional ethics provide rules on how a
person should act towards other people
and institutions in such an environment.
Unlike values, professional ethics are
often codified as a set of rules, which a
particular group of people use.
This means that all those in a particular
group will use the same professional
ethics, even though their values may be
unique to each person.
Ethical principles underpin all professional
codes of conduct. Ethical principles may
differ depending on the profession; for
example, professional ethics that relate to
medical practitioners will differ from those
that relate to lawyers or real estate
agents.
 However, there are some universal ethical
principles that apply across all professions,
including:
honesty
trustworthiness
loyalty
respectfor others
adherence to the law
doing good and avoiding harm to others
accountability.
Engineers need to be aware of ethics as
they make choices during their
professional practice of engineering.
Engineering ethics will be defined as the
rules and standards governing the
conduct of engineers in their roles as
professionals.

Engineering ethics
Most engineering educational institutions
include discussion of ethics in their
curriculum; in fact the Accreditation Board
of Engineering and Technology (ABET) has
mandated that engineering educational
programs include ethics in their
undergraduate curriculum.
Itis important for engineering students to
study engineering ethics so that they will
be prepared to make (sometimes difficult)
ethical decisions during their professional
careers.
The Challenger Space Shuttle Accident
brings up a number of ethical issues, but
one worth discussing is the role of
engineer/manager. When one is both an
engineer and also in upper or middle-level
management, and when one has the
responsibility as an engineer to report
safety problems with a design but also
has the pressure of project completion
being a manager.
One philosophically interesting issue that
is brought up by engineering is the
assessment of safety and risk. What
constitutes something being safe? 
There are also concerns with respect to
what kinds of projects engineers should
participate in. Should they participate in
the development of weaponry?  If so,
what kind of weapon production is morally
permissible?  Furthermore, to what extent
should engineers be concerned with the
environment in proposing products and
their designs?  Should engineers as
professionals work to make products that
are demanded by the market? 
 THANK YOU!!!

Thanks