TYPES OF ETHICS

Types of Ethical Inquiry

 Normative Ethics
 Metaethics
 Applied Ethics
 Normative Ethics
 Attempt to decide or prescribe values, behaviors and ways
of being that are right or wrong, good or bad, and
admirable and deplorable
 concerned with the content of moral judgments and the

criteria for what is right or wrong.

 Normative Ethics
 Inquiries on the following:
• How humans should behave

• What ought to be done in certain situations

• What type of character one should have or how one should

be
 Outcomes:

• Accepted moral standards and codes

• Common morality–normative beliefs & behaviors that

members of society generally agreed about, and familiar to

most human beings
 Virtue theories
 Duty theories
- duties to God
- duties to oneself
- duties to others
 Rights theories
- rights are natural
- rights are universal
- rights are equal
- rights are inalienable
 Kant’s obligatory duty to do good
 Ross’ prima facie duties
 Consequentialist’s Theory
- Ethical Egoism
- Ethical Altruism
- Utilitarianism
 Meta-ethics
 Concerned with understanding the language of morality
through an analysis of the meaning of ethically related
concepts and theories
 deals with the nature of moral judgment. It looks at the
origins and meaning of ethical principles.
 Examples:
the meaning of good, happiness and virtuous character
 Determining the meaning of a good nurse-patient
relationship
 Descriptive Ethics
 Referred to a scientific rather than philosophical
ethical inquiry
 An approach used to describe what people think
about morality and how people actually behave,
that is, their morals
 looks at controversial topics like war, animal rights
and capital punishment
 Ex: research that identifies nurses’ attitudes
regarding telling patients the truth about their
terminal illness
 Applied Ethics
  branch of ethics devoted to the treatment of moral problems,
practices, and policies in personal life, professions, technology, and
government
 takes its point of departure in practical normative challenges
  is the philosophical examination, from a moral standpoint, of
particular issues in private and public life that are matters of moral
judgment, thus the attempts to use philosophical methods to
identify the morally correct course of action in various fields of
human life.
 Examples: 1) Under what conditions is an abortion morally
permissible?  And,
2) what obligations, if any, do we have toward
the world’s global poor?
 Normative Principles in Applied Ethics

 Personal benefits
 Social benefits
 Principle of paternalism
 Principle of Harm
 Principle of Lawfulness
 Principle of Autonomy
 Principle of Justice
 Rights
Issues in Applied Ethics
 Biomedical ethics
 Business ethics
 Environmental ethics
 Sexual morality
 Social morality