Outline of ethics

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to ethics:

Ethics – major branch of philosophy, encompassing right conduct and good life. It is significantly broader than the common conception of analyzing right and wrong. A central aspect of ethics is "the good life", the life worth living or life that is simply satisfying, which is held by many philosophers to be more important than moral conduct.^[1]

What type of thing is ethics?

Ethics can be described as:

a branch of philosophy

Essence of ethics

Right vs. wrong

Branches of ethics

The following examples of questions that might be considered in each field illustrate the differences between the fields:

Descriptive ethics: What do people think is right?
Normative ethics (prescriptive): How should people act?
Applied ethics: How do we take moral knowledge and put it into practice?
Meta-ethics: What does "right" even mean?

Applied ethics

Applied ethics – using philosophical methods, attempts to identify the morally correct course of action in various fields of human life.

Economics and business
- Business ethics – concerns questions such as the limits on managers in the pursuit of profit, or the duty of 'whistleblowers' to the general public as opposed to their employers.
- Development ethics (economic development)
- Ethics in management
- Ethics in pharmaceutical sales
- Lifeboat ethics (economic metaphor)
Bioethics – concerned with identifying the correct approach to matters such as euthanasia, or the allocation of scarce health resources, or the use of human embryos in research.
- Ethics of cloning
- Veterinary ethics
- Neuroethics – ethics in neuroscience, but also the neuroscience of ethics
- Utilitarian bioethics
Organizational ethics – ethics among organizations.
Professional ethics
- Accounting ethics – study of moral values and judgments as they apply to accountancy.
- Archaeological ethics –
- Computer ethics – deals with how computing professionals should make decisions regarding professional and social conduct.^[2]
  - Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics
- Engineering ethics
- Journalism ethics and standards
- Research ethics
  - Internet research ethics
- Legal ethics
- Marketing ethics
- Media ethics
- Medical ethics (aka clinical ethics)
  - Evidence-based medical ethics
  - Military medical ethics
- Nursing ethics
Ethics of technology
- Technoethics – the ethics of technology in society
- Ethics of terraforming
- Cyberethics
- Ethics of artificial intelligence
  - Machine ethics – the moral behavior of artificial moral agents
  - Roboethics – the moral behavior of humans as they design, construct, use and treat artificially intelligent beings
- Internet ethics
- Information ethics
Social ethics – ethics among nations and as one global unit.
- Population ethics
- Sexual ethics
Bridge ethics – codes of ethics applied during play of the card game known as contact bridge.
Environmental ethics – concerned with issues such as the duties of humans towards landscapes and species.
- Animal rights – also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings.
- Climate ethics – concerned with the ethical dimensions of climate change, and concepts such as climate justice.
- Environmental virtue ethics
- Trail ethics
Ethics of eating meat
Public sector ethics

Meta-ethics

Meta-ethics or moral epistemology– concerns the nature of moral statements, that is, it studies what ethical terms and theories actually refer to.
Moral nihilism – the meta-ethical view that nothing is intrinsically moral or immoral (see also nihilism)
Moral syncretism – the attempt to reconcile disparate or contradictory moral beliefs, often while melding the ethical

practices of various schools of thought.

Moral relativism and relativism
Fallibilism – the philosophical principle that human beings could be wrong about their beliefs, expectations, or their understanding of the world
Moral skepticism – a class of metaethical theories all members of which entail that no one has any moral knowledg
Particularism
Rationalism
Conventionalism
Axiology
Formal ethics
Rationality
Discourse ethics – discovering ethical values through argument
Ethics of justice
Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development
Evolutionary ethics
Neuroethics – ethics in neuroscience, but also the neuroscience of ethics
Situated ethics – a view of applied ethics in which abstract standards from a culture or theory are considered to be far less important than the ongoing processes in which one is personally and physically involved

Non-cognitivism

Cognitivism

Normative ethics

Normative ethics – concerns what people should believe to be right and wrong.

Consequentialism – moral theories that hold that the consequences of one's conduct are the true basis for any judgement about the morality of that conduct. Thus, a morally right act (or omission) is one that will produce a good outcome (the end justifies the means).
- Utilitarianism
Deontological ethics – approach that judges the morality of an action based on the action's adherence to a rule or rules.
- Moral absolutism – view that certain actions are absolutely right or wrong, regardless of their circumstances such as their consequences or the intentions behind them. Thus stealing, for instance, might be considered to be always immoral, even if done to promote some other good (e.g., stealing food to feed a starving family), and even if it does in the end promote such a good.
- Graded absolutism
Pragmatic ethics
Virtue ethics – describes the character of a moral agent as a driving force for ethical behavior.
- Aristotelian ethics – the beginning of ethics as a subject, in the form of a systematic study of how individuals should best live. Aristotle believed one's goal should be living well and "eudaimonia", a Greek word often translated as "well-being" or "happiness". This could be achieved by the acquisition of a virtuous character, or in other words having well-chosen excellent habits.
  - Nicomachean Ethics – most popular ethics treatise by Aristotle
  - Eudemian Ethics
  - Magna Moralia
Eudaimonism – system of ethics that measures happiness in relation to morality.
Ethics of care – a normative ethical theory
Ethical egoism – the normative ethical position that moral agents ought to do what is in their own self-interest
Living Ethics
Religious ethics
- Divine command theory – claims that ethical sentences express the attitudes of God. Thus, the sentence "charity is good" means "God commands charity".
- Ethics in the Bible
- Ayyavazhi ethics
- Buddhist ethics
  - Buddhist ethics (discipline)
- Christian ethics
  - Situational ethics, a Christian ethical theory
- Islamic ethics
  - Islamic bioethics
- Jewish ethics
  - Jewish business ethics
  - Jewish medical ethics
- Religious values
- Playing God (ethics)
- Spalding Professor of Eastern Religion and Ethics
- Ethics and religious culture – a course taught in all elementary and high schools in Quebec
- Religious views on business ethics
- Ethics (Scientology)
- Ethics of circumcision
Secular ethics
Biocentrism (ethics) – an ethical point of view which extends inherent value to non-human species,[1] ecosystems, and processes in nature
Altruism (ethics) – an ethical doctrine that holds that individuals have a moral obligation to help, serve, or benefit others, if necessary at the sacrifice of self-interest
Rights ethics (thought in the American and French Revolutions)
Feminist ethics

Descriptive ethics

Descriptive ethics

Related areas

History of ethics

Main article: History of ethics

General ethics concepts

Single principles

Rights and legal concepts

Guidelines and basic concepts

Principle
Virtue
Norm (philosophy)
Universal code (ethics)
Value (ethics)
- Extrinsic value or instrumental value
- Intrinsic value (animal ethics)
- Intrinsic value (ethics)
Ideal (ethics)
Commensurability (ethics)
Moral responsibility

Human experience

Practical ethics

Law

Government agencies

Awards

Organizations

Persons influential in the field of ethics

Confucius (551–479 BCE)
Socrates (469–399 BCE)
Plato (424/423–348/347 BCE)
Aristippus (c. 435–356 BCE)
Aristotle (384–322 BCE)
Mencius (c. 372–289 BCE)
Epicurus (341–270 BCE)
Jesus (7–2 BCE – 30–36 CE)
Epictetus (55–135 CE)
Augustine of Hippo (354–430)
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274)
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677)
David Hume (1711–1776)
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
Georg W. F. Hegel (1770–1831)
Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
William James (1842–1910)
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948)
John Dewey (1859–1952)
G. E. Moore (1873–1958)
Paul Tillich (1886–1965)
Karl Barth (1886–1968)
J. L. Mackie (1917–1981)
G.E.M. Anscombe (1919–2001)
John Rawls (1921–2002)
Bernard Williams (1929–2003)
Philippa Foot (1920–2010)
Alasdair MacIntyre (1929– )
Thomas Nagel (1937– )
Derek Parfit (1942– )
Peter Singer (1946– )
Jonathan Dancy (1946– )

Events

Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA
Ethics Bowl
Foucault–Habermas debate concerning power within society

Publications

Ethics in America – television series, 1988-9
Lindner Ethics Complaint of the 83rd Minnesota Legislative Session

Books

Nicomachean Ethics – most popular ethics treatise by Aristotle
Eudemian Ethics
Magna Moralia
Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics
Encyclopedia of Ethics
Ethics, Institutions, and the Right to Philosophy
Ethics (book)
Life sciences, ethics and democracy
How to Observe Morals and Manners
Search for Destiny or the Twenty Seventh Theorem of Ethics – science fiction novel
The Ethics of Ambiguity
The Ethics of Liberty
The Methods of Ethics
Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice
Genethics: The Clash between the New Genetics and Human Values
Practical Ethics

Journals

References

↑ Singer, P. (1993) Practical Ethics, 2nd edition (p.10), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
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External links

An Introduction to Ethics by Paul Newall, aimed at beginners.
Ethics, 2d ed., 1973. by William Frankena
Ethics Bites Open University podcast series podcast exploring ethical dilemmas in everyday life.
University of San Diego – Ethics glossary Useful terms in ethics discussions
National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature World's largest library for ethical issues in medicine and biomedical research
Ethics entry in Encyclopædia Britannica by Peter Singer
The Philosophy of Ethics on Philosophy Archive
Ethics updates Provides resources and updates on current literature, both popular and professional, that relate to ethics.
Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics Resources, events, and research on a range of ethical subjects from a Christian perspective.

[1] Singer, P. (1993) Practical Ethics, 2nd edition (p.10), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

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