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Applied ethics is the practical aspect of moral considerations. It is ethics with respect to real-world actions and their moral considerations in private and public life, the professions, health, technology, law, and leadership. For example, bioethics is concerned with identifying the best approach to moral issues in the life sciences, such as euthanasia, the allocation of scarce health resources, or the use of human embryos in research. Environmental ethics is concerned with ecological issues such as the responsibility of government and corporations to clean up pollution. Business ethics includes the duties of whistleblowers to the public and to their employers.
Business ethics is a form of applied ethics or professional ethics, that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that can arise in a business environment. It applies to all aspects of business conduct and is relevant to the conduct of individuals and entire organizations. These ethics originate from individuals, organizational statements or the legal system. These norms, values, ethical, and unethical practices are the principles that guide a business.
Ethics or moral philosophy is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. It investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. It is usually divided into three major fields: normative ethics, applied ethics, and metaethics.
In metaphilosophy and ethics, metaethics is the study of the nature, scope, and meaning of moral judgment. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normative ethics and applied ethics.
Normative ethics is the study of ethical behaviour and is the branch of philosophical ethics that investigates questions regarding how one ought to act, in a moral sense.
Rationality is the quality of being guided by or based on reason. In this regard, a person acts rationally if they have a good reason for what they do or a belief is rational if it is based on strong evidence. This quality can apply to an ability, as in a rational animal, to a psychological process, like reasoning, to mental states, such as beliefs and intentions, or to persons who possess these other forms of rationality. A thing that lacks rationality is either arational, if it is outside the domain of rational evaluation, or irrational, if it belongs to this domain but does not fulfill its standards.
Technology assessment is a practical process of determining the value of a new or emerging technology in and of itself or against existing technologies. This is a means of assessing and rating the new technology from the time when it was first developed to the time when it is potentially accepted by the public and authorities for further use. In essence, TA could be defined as "a form of policy research that examines short- and long term consequences of the application of technology."
Alfred Schutz was an Austrian philosopher and social phenomenologist whose work bridged sociological and phenomenological traditions. Schutz is gradually being recognized as one of the 20th century's leading philosophers of social science. He related Edmund Husserl's work to the social sciences, using it to develop the philosophical foundations of Max Weber's sociology, in his major work Phenomenology of the Social World. However, much of his influence arose from the publication of his Collected Papers in the 1960s.
Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health, including those emerging from advances in biology, medicine, and technologies. It proposes the discussion about moral discernment in society and it is often related to medical policy and practice, but also to broader questions as environment, well-being and public health. Bioethics is concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, theology and philosophy. It includes the study of values relating to primary care, other branches of medicine, ethical education in science, animal, and environmental ethics, and public health.
Medical ethics is an applied branch of ethics which analyzes the practice of clinical medicine and related scientific research. Medical ethics is based on a set of values that professionals can refer to in the case of any confusion or conflict. These values include the respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice. Such tenets may allow doctors, care providers, and families to create a treatment plan and work towards the same common goal. It is important to note that these four values are not ranked in order of importance or relevance and that they all encompass values pertaining to medical ethics. However, a conflict may arise leading to the need for hierarchy in an ethical system, such that some moral elements overrule others with the purpose of applying the best moral judgement to a difficult medical situation. Medical ethics is particularly relevant in decisions regarding involuntary treatment and involuntary commitment.
In moral philosophy, deontological ethics or deontology is the normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules and principles, rather than based on the consequences of the action. It is sometimes described as duty-, obligation-, or rule-based ethics. Deontological ethics is commonly contrasted to consequentialism, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, and pragmatic ethics. In this terminology, action is more important than the consequences.
Applied philosophy is a branch of philosophy that studies philosophical problems of practical concern. The topic covers a broad spectrum of issues in environment, medicine, science, engineering, policy, law, politics, economics and education. The term was popularised in 1982 by the founding of the Society for Applied Philosophy by Brenda Almond, and its subsequent journal publication Journal of Applied Philosophy edited by Elizabeth Brake. Methods of applied philosophy are similar to other philosophical methods including questioning, dialectic, critical discussion, rational argument, systematic presentation, thought experiments and logical argumentation.
The ethics of technology is a sub-field of ethics addressing the ethical questions specific to the Technology Age, the transitional shift in society wherein personal computers and subsequent devices provide for the quick and easy transfer of information. Technology ethics is the application of ethical thinking to the growing concerns of technology as new technologies continue to rise in prominence.
Secular ethics is a branch of moral philosophy in which ethics is based solely on human faculties such as logic, empathy, reason or moral intuition, and not derived from belief in supernatural revelation or guidance—a source of ethics in many religions. Secular ethics refers to any ethical system that does not draw on the supernatural, and includes humanism, secularism and freethinking. A classical example of literature on secular ethics is the Kural text, authored by the ancient Indian philosopher Valluvar.
Research ethics is a discipline within the study of applied ethics. Its scope ranges from general scientific integrity and misconduct to the treatment of human and animal subjects. The societal responsibilities science and reseach has are not traditionally included and less well defined.
Engineering ethics is the field of system of moral principles that apply to the practice of engineering. The field examines and sets the obligations by engineers to society, to their clients, and to the profession. As a scholarly discipline, it is closely related to subjects such as the philosophy of science, the philosophy of engineering, and the ethics of technology.
Moral particularism is a theory in meta-ethics that runs counter to the idea that moral actions can be determined by applying universal moral principles. It states that there is no set of moral principles that can be applied to every situation, making it an idea appealing to the causal nature of morally challenging situations. Moral judgements are said to be determined by factors of relevance with the consideration of a particular context. A moral particularist, for example, would argue that homicide cannot be judged to be morally wrong until all the morally relevant facts are known. While this stands in stark contrast to other prominent moral theories, such as deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics, it finds its way into jurisprudence, with the idea of justifiable homicide, for instance. In this case, the morally relevant facts are based on context rather than principle. Critics would argue that even in this case, the principle still informs morally right action.
Ethics in the public sector is a broad topic that is usually considered a branch of political ethics. In the public sector, ethics addresses the fundamental premise of a public administrator's duty as a "steward" to the public. In other words, it is the moral justification and consideration for decisions and actions made during the completion of daily duties when working to provide the general services of government and nonprofit organizations. Ethics is defined as, among others, the entirety of rules of proper moral conduct corresponding to the ideology of a particular society or organization (Eduard). Public sector ethics is a broad topic because values and morals vary between cultures. Despite the differences in ethical values, there is a growing common ground of what is considered good conduct and correct conduct with ethics. Ethics are an accountability standard by which the public will scrutinize the work being conducted by the members of these organizations. The question of ethics emerges in the public sector on account of its subordinate character.
Lucas D. Introna is Professor of Organisation, Technology and Ethics at the Lancaster University Management School. He is a scholar within the Social Study of Information Systems field. His research is focused on the phenomenon of technology. Within the area of technology studies he has made significant contributions to our understanding of the ethical and political implications of technology for society.
Criminal justice ethics is the academic study of ethics as it is applied in the area of law enforcement. Usually, a course in ethics is required of candidates for hiring as law enforcement officials. These courses focus on subject matter which is primarily guided by the needs of social institutions and societal values. Law enforcement agencies operate according to established police practices and ethical guidelines consistent with community standards in order to maintain public trust while performing their responsibilities.
References
- ↑ Vallero D.A. (2007). Beyond responsible conduct in research: new pedagogies to address macroethics of nanobiotechnologies J Long Term Eff Med Implants. 2007;17(1):1–12.
- ↑ Komesaroff PA (1995). "From macroethics to microethics". In Komesaroff PA (ed.). : Critical Perspectives on Postmodernism, Medical Ethics, and the Body. Duke University Press. ASIN B00HMJUEOY.
- ↑ Komesaroff PA, Experiments in love and death. Australia, University of Western Australia Press, 2008
- ↑ Komesaroff PA, Riding a crocodile: A physician’s tale. Australia, University of Western Australia Press, 2014
- ↑ Husserl E. Ideas. The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1975
- ↑ Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, translated by Alphonso Lingis, The Hague/Boston/London, M. Nijhoff, 1981
- ↑ Bassingthwaighte J.B. The macro-ethics of genomics to health: the physiome project. Comptes Rendus Biologies. 2003 Oct–Nov;326(10–11):1105–10.
- ↑ Herkert, J.R. (2004). Microethics, Macroethics, and Professional Engineering Societies. In National Academy of Engineering, Emerging Technologies and Ethical Issues in Engineering: Papers from a Workshop, October 14–15, 2003. ISBN 978-0-309-09271-5
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