Branches of Ethics

Ethics has three main branches. They are metaethics, normative ethics and applied ethics. The three are distinct, but they are related.

What does each branch ask?

Metaethics asks what morality is. Normative ethics builds reasoned moral rules. Applied ethics asks whether real actions are right or wrong.

Why do we need applied ethics?

Applied ethics usually assumes morality exists. It then relies on the other two branches for its principles. Take a question such as whether abortion is permissible under certain conditions. That is an applied question about one practice.

Which fields count as applied ethics?

Business ethics and bioethics are both fields of applied ethics. Environmental ethics and professional ethics sit in the same family.

What is the memory hook?

Meta asks if. Normative asks what. Applied asks this case.

Personal ethics means the moral rules a person lives by. Organizational ethics means the rules a workplace sets for its people.

Where do moral rules come from?

A morality can be a code of conduct put forward by a society or a group. A religion is one such group. So a person’s own rules often come from the group they belong to.

How do governments write their rules down?

For Indian central government employees, the Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules, 1964 act as the code of conduct. The Department of Personnel and Training says they were framed on the advice of the Santhanam Committee on corruption. Their aim was to keep integrity in public service.

What is the contrast?

A personal rule may stay unwritten. A service rule is written down and can be enforced. This is why civil servants study both.

What is the memory hook?

Personal is lived. Organizational is written.

Medical ethics covers the bond between doctor and patient. It rests on four principles. They are autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence and justice.

What do the four principles mean?

Autonomy means the patient may govern their own life and choices. Nonmaleficence means the doctor must not harm the patient. Beneficence means the doctor must act for the patient’s benefit. Justice means fair and equitable treatment of persons.

Where do they come from?

The first two trace back to the teaching of Hippocrates, “to help and do no harm.”

What does autonomy add?

Autonomy underpins informed consent. The patient must be competent to understand and decide, and must receive full disclosure. It also underpins confidentiality. A doctor must not share a patient’s private information with another party without the patient’s authorization.

How did consent become law and practice?

The Nuremberg Code was a response to Nazi experiments. It states that the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. In the 1970s autonomy became the main justification for informed consent. The Belmont Report of 1979 belongs to this period.

What is the memory hook?

Help, do no harm, let the patient choose, treat fairly.

Bioethics is wider than medical ethics. The word has an older and a newer story.

Who used the word first?

The first documented use dates to 1927. Fritz Jahr gave the title “Bio-Ethik” to an article in the journal Kosmos. He held that living beings should be treated as ends in themselves, not merely as means.

What did Potter add?

Van Rensselaer Potter wrote “Bioethics, the science of survival” in 1970. He used the term to mean a wide concern for solidarity in the biosphere. He later called his idea a global ethics, a science of survival for humans and other animals.

What does the field cover today?

Bioethics covers beginning-of-life and end-of-life issues. It also covers research and access to care. Medical ethics is treated inside it.

What is the memory hook?

Jahr 1927 coined it. Potter 1970 spread it.

Business ethics studies the ethical side of exchanging goods and services. It also looks at the firms that offer them.

Why is it needed?

In competitive markets, people may be tempted to deceive, cheat, exploit or manipulate others to gain an edge. Writers treat deception in advertising as one issue. They also write much about the relationship between employers and employees.

Is it an old or a new field?

People have thought about the ethics of trade since the Code of Hammurabi. As a field of study, it grew out of research by moral philosophers in the 1970s and 1980s.

What is a stakeholder?

A stakeholder is anyone with a stake, or interest, in the firm. That includes a financial interest. Freeman first put forward stakeholder theory in the 1980s.

How do philosophers do it?

One way is to choose a normative framework and apply it to a range of issues.

What is the memory hook?

Business ethics asks whom the firm owes, not just what it earns.

Environmental ethics studies the moral relationship of human beings to the environment. It asks what nature is worth.

What is anthropocentrism?

Traditional western ethics is anthropocentric, or human-centered. Here nature matters because it serves people. On this view, cruelty to animals is wrong only as a means, because of its bad effects on humans.

What is the rival view?

Environmental ethics emerged by challenging that view. It asks whether nature has intrinsic value. Intrinsic value means value as an end in itself.

Who is Arne Næss?

Næss, in 1973, separated two movements. The shallow ecology movement fights pollution and the loss of resources. The deep ecology movement holds that all living things have value in their own right.

When did the field begin?

It emerged as an academic discipline in the 1970s. It arose almost at once in the United States, Australia and Norway.

What is the memory hook?

Anthropocentric means human-centered. Deep ecology means nature-centered.

Religious ethics gets its moral rules from a religion. Religion and morality are related, but they are not the same thing.

How are they related?

The morality of a group may come from its religion. Even then, the two are not the same thing. Morality is only a guide to conduct. Religion is always more than that.

Do religious traditions agree on where right and wrong come from?

No. In medieval Islamic thought, one view said human reason knows right and wrong without revelation. This was the view of Abd al-Jabbar. Al-Ashari taught the opposite. For him God sets the standard, and nothing can be wrong for God.

What is the memory hook?

Religion can shape morality, but morality is not all of religion.

Real problems rarely fit one box. Return to the drug company. Its price is a business question about profit and fairness. It is a medical question about who can reach treatment. It is also an organizational question about who made the decision.

How should a case study be answered?

Name every branch that applies. Then weigh them against each other. This is an illustration, not a rule from a source.

What are the traps?

• Business, medical, environmental and professional ethics are applied ethics, not metaethics.
• Medical ethics is one part of the wider field of bioethics.
• Jahr used “Bio-Ethik” in 1927. Potter used “bioethics” in 1970.
• Næss drew the shallow and deep ecology line in 1973.
• Freeman’s stakeholder theory belongs to the 1980s.

What is the memory hook?

Applied ethics is one tree. Each field is a branch.