Consequentialism

Consequentialism, also referred to as teleological ethics,^{[19][lower-alpha 1]} holds that morality depends on consequences. According to the most common view, an act is right if it brings about the best future. This means that there is no alternative course of action that has better consequences.^[21] A key aspect of consequentialist theories is that they provide a characterization of what is good and then define what is right in terms of what is good.^[22]

Consequentialists usually understand the consequences of an action in a very wide sense that includes the totality of its effects. This is based on the idea that actions make a difference to the world by bringing about a causal chain of events that would not have existed otherwise.^[23] A core intuition behind consequentialism is that what matters is not the past but the future and that it should be shaped to result in the best possible outcome.^[24]

The act itself is usually not seen as part of the consequences. This means that if an act has intrinsic value and disvalue, it is not included as a relevant factor. Some consequentialists try to avoid this complication by including the act itself as part of the consequences. A related approach is to characterize consequentialism not in terms of consequences but in terms of outcomes with outcome being defined as the act together with its consequences.^[25]

Most forms of consequentialism are agent-neutral. This means that the value of consequences is assessed from a neutral perspective, i.e., acts should have consequences that are good in general and not just good for the agent. It is controversial whether agent-relative moral theories, like ethical egoism, should be considered as types of consequentialism.^[26]

Utilitarianism

Main article: Utilitarianism

The most well-known form of consequentialism is utilitarianism. In its classical form, it is an act consequentialism that sees happiness as the only source of intrinsic value. This means that an act is morally right if it produces "the greatest good for the greatest number" by increasing happiness and reducing suffering. Utilitarians do not deny that other things also have value, like health, friendship, and knowledge. However, they deny that these things have intrinsic value. Instead, they hold that they have extrinsic value because they affect happiness and suffering. In this regard, they are desirable as a means but, unlike happiness, not desirable as an end.^[37] The view that pleasure is the only thing with intrinsic value is called ethical or evaluative hedonism.^[38]

Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are the founding fathers of utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism was initially formulated by Jeremy Bentham and further developed by John Stuart Mill. Bentham introduced the hedonic calculus to assess the value of consequences. Two key aspects of the hedonic calculus are the intensity and the duration of pleasure. According to this view, a pleasurable experience has a high value if it has a high intensity and lasts for a long time. Some critics of Bentham's utilitarianism argued that it is a "philosophy of swine" whose focus on the intensity of pleasure promotes an immoral lifestyle centered around indulgence in sensory pleasures. Mill responded to this criticism by distinguishing between higher and lower pleasures. He stated that higher pleasures, like the intellectual pleasure of reading a book, are more valuable than lower pleasures, like the sensory pleasure of food and drink, even if their intensity and duration are the same.^[39] Today, there are many variations of utilitarianism, including the difference between act and rule utilitarianism and between maximizing and satisficing utilitarianism.^[40]

Deontology

Deontology assesses the moral rightness of actions based on a set of norms or principles. These norms describe certain requirements or duties that all actions need to follow.^[41] Examples are that one should tell the truth, keep promises, and not intentionally harm others.^[42] Unlike consequentialists, deontologists hold that the validity of general moral principles does not depend on their consequences. They state that these principles should be followed in every case since they express how actions are inherently right or wrong. For example, according to David Ross, it is wrong to break a promise even if no harm comes from it.^[43] In this regard, deontologists often allow that there is a gap between what is right and what is good.^[22] Many tend to follow a negative approach by holding that certain acts are forbidden under any circumstances.^[44]

Divine command theory, contractualism, and discourse ethics

Main articles: Divine command theory, Contractualism, and Discourse ethics

Divine command theory sees God as the source of morality. It states that moral laws are divine commands and that to act morally is to obey and follow God's will. While all divine command theorists agree that morality depends on God, there are disagreements about the precise content of the divine commands, and theorists belonging to different religions tend to propose different moral laws.^[52] For example, Christian and Jewish divine command theorists may argue that the Ten Commandments express God's will^[53] while Muslims may reserve this role for the teachings of the Quran.^[54]

Contractualists reject the reference to God as the source of morality and argue instead that morality is based on an explicit or implicit social contract between humans. They state that actual or hypothetical consent to this contract is the source of moral norms and duties. To determine which duties people have, contractualists often rely on a thought experiment about what rational people under ideal circumstances would agree on. For example, if they would agree that people should not lie then there is a moral obligation to refrain from lying. Because of its reliance on consent, contractualism is often understood as a patient-centered form of deontology.^{[55][lower-alpha 2]}

According to discourse ethics, as formulated by Jürgen Habermas, moral norms are justified by a rational discourse within society.

Discourse ethics also focuses on social agreement on moral norms but holds that this agreement is based on communicative rationality. It aims to arrive at moral norms for pluralistic modern societies that encompass a diversity of viewpoints. A universal moral norm is seen as valid if all rational discourse participants do or would approve. This way, morality is not imposed by a single moral authority but arises from the moral discourse within society. This discourse should follow certain requirements characteristic of an ideal speech situation. One of its key aspects is that discourse participants are free to voice their different opinions without coercion but are at the same time required to justify them using rational argumentation.^[57]

Virtue ethics

The main concern of virtue ethics is how virtues are expressed in actions. As such, it is neither directly interested in the consequences of actions nor in universal moral duties.^[58] Virtues are positive character traits, like honesty, courage, kindness, and compassion. They are usually understood as dispositions to feel, decide, and act in a certain manner by being wholeheartedly committed to this manner. Virtues contrast with vices, which are their harmful counterparts.^[59]

Virtue theorists usually hold that the mere possession of virtues by itself is not sufficient. Instead, people should manifest virtues in their actions. An important factor in this regard is the practical wisdom, also referred to as phronesis, of knowing, when, how, and which virtue to express. For example, a lack of practical wisdom may lead courageous people to perform morally wrong actions by taking unnecessary risks that should better be avoided.^[60]

Different types of virtue ethics differ concerning how they understand virtues and their role in practical life. Eudaimonism is the classical view and draws a close relation between virtuous behavior and happiness. It states that people flourish by living a virtuous life. Eudaimonist theories often hold that virtues are positive potentials residing in human nature and that actualizing these potentials results in leading a good and happy life.^[61] Agent-based theories, by contrast, see happiness only as a side effect and focus instead on the motivational and dispositional characteristics that are expressed while acting. This is often combined with the idea that one can learn from exceptional individuals what those characteristics are.^[61] Feminist ethics of care constitute another form of virtue ethics. They emphasize the importance of interpersonal relationships and hold that benevolence by caring for the well-being of others is one of the key virtues.^[62]

Philippa Foot was one of the philosophers responsible for the revival of virtue ethics in the 20th century.

Influential schools of virtue ethics in ancient philosophy were Aristotelianism and Stoicism. According to Aristotle, each virtue is a golden mean between two types of vices: excess and deficiency. For example, courage is a virtue that lies between the deficient state of cowardice and the excessive state of recklessness. Aristotle held that virtuous action leads to happiness and makes people flourish in life.^[63] The Stoics believed that people can achieve happiness through virtue alone. They stated that people are happy if they are in a peaceful state of mind that is free from emotional disturbances. They advocated rationality and self-mastery to achieve this state.^[64] In the 20th century, virtue ethics experienced a resurgence thanks to philosophers such as Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Martha Nussbaum.^[65]

Others

There are many other schools of normative ethics in addition to the three main traditions. Pragmatist ethics focuses on the role of practice and holds that one of the key tasks of ethics is to solve practical problems in concrete situations. It has certain similarities to utilitarianism and its focus on consequences but concentrates more on how morality is embedded in and relative to social and cultural contexts. Pragmatists tend to give more importance to habits than to conscious deliberation and understand morality as a habit that should be shaped in the right way.^[66]

Postmodern ethics agrees with pragmatist ethics about the cultural relativity of morality. It rejects the idea that there are objective moral principles that apply universally to all cultures and traditions. It asserts that there is no one coherent ethical code since morality itself is irrational and humans are morally ambivalent beings.^[67]

The practices of compassion and loving-kindness are key elements of Buddhist ethics.

Ethical egoism is the view that people should act in their self-interest or that an action is morally right if the person acts for their own benefit. It differs from psychological egoism, which states that people actually follow their self-interest without claiming that they should do so. Ethical egoists may act in accordance with commonly accepted moral expectations and benefit other people, for example, by keeping promises, helping friends, and cooperating with others. However, they do so only as a means to promote their self-interest. Ethical egoism is often criticized as an immoral and contradictory position.^[68]

Normative ethics has a central place in most religions. Key aspects of Jewish ethics are to follow the 613 commandments of God according to the Mitzvah duty found in the Torah and to take responsibility for societal welfare.^[69] Christian ethics puts less emphasis on following precise laws and teaches instead the practice of self-less love, such as the Great Commandment to "love your neighbor as yourself".^[70] The Five Pillars of Islam constitute a basic framework of Muslim ethics and focus on the practice of faith, prayer, charity, fasting during Ramadan, and pilgrimage to Mecca.^[71] Buddhists emphasize the importance of compassion and loving-kindness towards all sentient entities.^[72] A similar outlook is found in Jainism, which has non-violence as its principal virtue.^[73] Duty is a central aspect of Hindu ethics and is about fulfilling social obligations, which may vary depending on a person's social class and stage of life.^[74] Confucianism places great emphasis on harmony in society and sees benevolence as a key virtue.^[75] Taoism extends the importance of living in harmony to the whole world and teaches that people should practice effortless action by following the natural flow of the universe.^[76]

Bioethics

Bioethics is a wide field that covers moral problems associated with living organisms and biological disciplines.^[85] A key problem in bioethics concerns the moral status of entities and to what extent this status depends on features such as consciousness, being able to feel pleasure and pain, rationality, and personhood. These differences concern, for example, how to treat non-living entities like rocks and non-sentient entities like plants in contrast to animals and whether humans have a different moral status than other animals.^[86] According to anthropocentrism, only humans have a basic moral status. This implies that all other entities only have a derivative moral status to the extent that they affect human life. Sentientism, by contrast, extends an inherent moral status to all sentient beings. Further positions include biocentrism, which also covers non-sentient lifeforms, and ecocentrism, which states that all of nature has a basic moral status.^[87]

Bioethics is relevant to various aspects of life and to many professions. It covers a wide range of moral problems associated with topics like abortion, cloning, stem cell research, euthanasia, suicide, animal testing, intensive animal farming, nuclear waste, and air pollution.^[88]

Bioethics can be divided into medical ethics, animal ethics, and environmental ethics based on whether the ethical problems relate to humans, other animals, or nature in general.^[89] Medical ethics is the oldest branch of bioethics and has its origins in the Hippocratic Oath, which establishes ethical guidelines for medical practitioners like a prohibition to harm the patient.^[90] A central topic in medical ethics concerns issues associated with the beginning and the end of life. One debate focuses on the question of whether a fetus is a full-fledged person with all the rights associated with this status. For example, some proponents of this view argue that abortion is a form of murder.^[91] In relation to the end of life, there are ethical dilemmas concerning whether a person has a right to end their own life in cases of terminal illness and whether a medical practitioner may assist them in doing so.^[92] Other topics in medical ethics include medical confidentiality, informed consent, research on human beings, organ transplantation, and access to healthcare.^[90]

Harm done to animals is a particular concern in animal ethics, for example, as a result of intensive animal farming.

Animal ethics examines how humans should treat other animals. An influential consideration in this field emphasizes the importance of animal welfare while arguing that humans should avoid or minimize the harm done to animals. There is wide agreement that it is wrong to torture animals for fun. The situation is more complicated in cases where harm is inflicted on animals as a side effect of the pursuit of human interests. This happens, for example, during factory farming, when using animals as food, and for research experiments on animals.^[93] A key topic in animal ethics is the formulation of animal rights. Animal rights theorists assert that animals have a certain moral status and that humans have an obligation to respect this status when interacting with them.^[94] Examples of suggested animal rights include the right to life, the right to be free from unnecessary suffering, and the right to natural behavior in a suitable environment.^[95]

Environmental ethics deals with moral problems relating to the natural environment including animals, plants, natural resources, and ecosystems. In its widest sense, it also covers the whole biosphere and the cosmos.^[96] In the domain of agriculture, this concerns questions like under what circumstances it is acceptable to clear the vegetation of an area to use it for farming and the implications of using genetically modified crops.^[97] On a wider scale, environmental ethics addresses the problem of global warming and how people are responsible for this both on an individual and a collective level. Environmental ethicists often promote sustainable practices and policies directed at protecting and conserving ecosystems and biodiversity.^[98]

Business and professional ethics

Business ethics examines the moral implications of business conduct and investigates how ethical principles apply to corporations and organizations.^[99] A key topic is corporate social responsibility, which is the responsibility of corporations to act in a manner that benefits society at large. Corporate social responsibility is a complex issue since many stakeholders are directly and indirectly involved in corporate decisions, such as the CEO, the board of directors, and the shareholders. A closely related topic concerns the question of whether corporations themselves, and not just their stakeholders, have moral agency.^[100] Business ethics further examines the role of truthfulness, honesty, and fairness in business practices as well as the moral implications of bribery, conflict of interest, protection of investors and consumers, worker's rights, ethical leadership, and corporate philanthropy.^[99]

Professional ethics is a closely related field that studies ethical principles applying to members of a specific profession, like engineers, medical doctors, lawyers, and teachers. It is a diverse field since different professions often have different responsibilities.^[101] Principles applying to many professions include that the professional has the required expertise for the intended work and that they have personal integrity and are trustworthy. Further principles are to serve the interest of their target group, follow client confidentiality, and respect and uphold the client's rights, such as informed consent.^[102] More precise requirements often vary between professions. A cornerstone of engineering ethics is to protect the public's safety, health, and well-being.^[103] Legal ethics emphasizes the importance of respect for justice, personal integrity, and confidentiality.^[104] Key factors in journalism ethics include accuracy, truthfulness, independence, and impartiality as well as proper attribution to avoid plagiarism.^[105]

Others

Many other fields of applied ethics are discussed in the academic literature. Communication ethics covers moral principles in relation to communicative conduct. Two key issues in it are freedom of speech and speech responsibility. Freedom of speech concerns the ability to articulate one's opinions and ideas without the threats of punishment and censorship. Speech responsibility is about being accountable for the consequences of communicative action and inaction.^[106] A closely related field is information ethics, which focuses on the moral implications of creating, controlling, disseminating, and using information.^[107]

Nuclear ethics address the moral implications of nuclear technology, such as atom bombs.

The ethics of technology has implications for both communication ethics and information ethics in regard to communication and information technologies. In its widest sense, it examines the moral issues associated with any artifacts created and used for instrumental means, from simple artifacts like spears to high-tech computers and nanotechnology.^[108] Central topics in the ethics of technology include the risks associated with creating new technologies, their responsible use, and questions surrounding the issue of human enhancement through technological means, such as prosthetic limbs, performance-enhancing drugs, and genetic enhancement.^[109] Important subfields include computer ethics, ethics of artificial intelligence, machine ethics, ethics of nanotechnology, and nuclear ethics.^[110]

The ethics of war investigates moral problems in relation to war and violent conflicts. According to just war theory, waging war is morally justified if it fulfills certain conditions. They are commonly divided into requirements concerning the cause to initiate violent activities, such as self-defense, and the way those violent activities are conducted, such as avoiding excessive harm to civilians in the pursuit of legitimate military targets.^[111] Military ethics is a closely related field that is interested in the conduct of military personnel. It governs questions of the circumstances under which they are permitted to kill enemies, destroy infrastructure, and put the lives of their own troops at risk.^[112] Additional topics are recruitment, training, and discharge of military personnel as well as the procurement of military equipment.^[113]

Further fields of applied ethics include political ethics, which examines the moral dimensions of political decisions,^[114] educational ethics, which covers ethical issues related to proper teaching practices,^[115] and sexual ethics, which addresses the moral implications of sexual behavior.^[116]

Basic concepts

Metaethics examines basic ethical concepts and their relations. Ethics is concerned with normative statements about what ought to be the case, in contrast to descriptive statements, which are about what is the case.^[123] Duties and obligations express requirements of what people ought to do.^[124] Duties are sometimes defined as counterparts of the rights that always accompany them. According to this view, someone has a duty to benefit another person if this other person has the right to receive that benefit.^[125] Obligation and permission are contrasting terms that can be defined through each other: to be obligated to do something means that one is not permitted not to do it and to be permitted to do something means that one is not obligated not to do it.^{[126][lower-alpha 3]} Some theorists define obligations in terms of values, such as the good. When used in a general sense, good contrasts with bad. In relation to people and their intentions, the term evil rather than bad is often employed.^[127]

Obligations are used to assess the moral status of actions, motives, and character traits.^[128] An action is morally right if it is in tune with the obligations and morally wrong if it violates the obligations.^[129] Supererogation is a special moral status that applies to cases in which the agent does more than is morally required of them.^[130] To be morally responsible for an action usually means that the person possessed and exercised certain capacities or some form of control. People who are morally responsible deserve evaluative attitudes from others, such as praise or blame.^[131]

Realism, relativism, and nihilism

A key debate in metaethics concerns the ontological status of morality and encompasses the question of whether ethical values and principles form part of reality. It examines whether moral properties exist as objective features independent of the human mind and culture rather than as subjective constructs or expressions of personal preferences and cultural norms.^[132]

Moral realists accept the claim that there are objective moral facts. This view implies that moral values are mind-independent aspects of reality and that there is an absolute fact about whether a given action is right or wrong. A consequence of this view is that moral requirements have the same ontological status as non-moral facts: it is an objective fact whether there is an obligation to keep a promise just as there is an objective fact whether a thing has a black color.^[132] Moral realism is often associated with the claim that there are universal ethical principles that apply equally to everyone.^[133] It implies that if two people disagree about a moral evaluation then at least one of them is wrong. This observation is sometimes taken as an argument against moral realism since moral disagreement is widespread and concerns most fields.^[134]

Moral relativists reject the idea that morality is an objective feature of reality. They argue instead that moral principles are human inventions. This means that a behavior is not objectively right or wrong but only subjectively right or wrong relative to a certain standpoint. Moral standpoints may differ between persons, cultures, and historical periods.^[135] For example, moral statements like "slavery is wrong" or "suicide is permitted" may be true in one culture and false in another.^[136] This position can be understood in analogy to Einstein's theory of relativity, which states that the magnitude of physical properties like mass, length, and duration depends on the frame of reference of the observer.^[137] Some moral relativists hold that moral systems are constructed to serve certain goals such as social coordination. According to this view, different societies and different social groups within a society construct different moral systems based on their diverging purposes.^[138] A different explanation states that morality arises from moral emotions, which people project onto the external world.^[139]

Moral nihilists deny the existence of moral facts. They are opposed to both objective moral facts defended by moral realism and subjective moral facts defended by moral relativism. They believe that the basic assumptions underlying moral claims are misguided. Some moral nihilists, like Friedrich Nietzsche, conclude from this that anything is allowed. A slightly different view emphasizes that moral nihilism is not itself a moral position about what is allowed and prohibited but the rejection of any moral position.^[140] Moral nihilism agrees with moral relativism that there are different standpoints according to which people judge actions to be right or wrong. However, it disagrees that this practice involves a form of morality and understands it instead as one among many types of human practices.^[141]

Cognitivism and non-cognitivism

The metaethical debate between cognitivism and non-cognitivism belongs to the field of semantics and concerns the meaning of moral statements. According to cognitivism, moral statements like "Abortion is morally wrong" and "Going to war is never morally justified" are truth-apt. This means that they all have a truth value: they are either true or false. Cognitivism only claims that moral statements have a truth value but is not interested in which truth value they have. It is often seen as the default position since moral statements resemble other statements, like "Abortion is a medical procedure" or "Going to war is a political decision", which have a truth value.^[146]

The semantic position of cognitivism is closely related to the ontological position of moral realism and philosophers who accept one often accept the other as well. An exception is J. L. Mackie's error theory, which combines cognitivism with moral nihilism by claiming that all moral statements are false because there are no moral facts.^[147]

Non-cognitivism is the view that moral statements lack a truth value. According to this view, the statement "Murder is wrong" is neither true nor false. Some non-cognitivists claim that moral statements have no meaning at all. A different interpretation is that they express other types of meaning contents. Emotivism holds that they articulate emotional attitudes. According to this view, the statement "Murder is wrong" expresses that the speaker has negative moral attitudes towards murder or dislikes it. Prescriptivism, by contrast, understands moral statements as commands. According to this view, stating that "Murder is wrong" expresses a command like "Do not commit murder".^[148]

Moral knowledge

The epistemology of ethics studies whether or how one can know moral truths. Foundationalist views state that some moral beliefs are basic and do not require further justification. Ethical intuitionism is one foundationalist view that states that humans have a special cognitive faculty through which they can know right from wrong. Intuitionists often argue that general moral truths, like "lying is wrong", are self-evident and that it is possible to know them a priori without relying on empirical experience. A different foundationalist view relies not on general intuitions but on particular observations. It holds that if people are confronted with a concrete moral situation, they can perceive whether right or wrong conduct was involved.^[149]

In contrast to foundationalists, coherentists hold that there are no basic moral beliefs. They argue that beliefs form a complex network and mutually support and justify one another. According to this view, a moral belief can only amount to knowledge if it coheres with the rest of the beliefs in the network.^[149] Moral skeptics reject the idea that moral knowledge is possible by arguing that people are unable to distinguish between right and wrong behavior. Moral skepticism is often criticized based on the claim that it leads to immoral behavior.^[150]

The trolley problem is a thought experiment about the moral difference between doing and allowing harm.

Thought experiments are a common methodological device in ethics to decide between competing theories. They usually present an imagined situation involving an ethical dilemma and explore how moral intuitions about what behavior is right depend on particular factors in the imagined situation.^[151] For example, in the trolley problem, a person can flip a switch to redirect a trolley from one track to another, thereby sacrificing the life of one person in order to save five. This scenario explores how the difference between doing and allowing harm affects moral obligations.^[152] Another thought experiment examines the moral implications of abortion by imagining a situation in which a person gets connected without their consent to an ill violinist. It explores whether it would be morally permissible to sever the connection within the next nine months even if this would lead to the violinist's death.^[153]

Moral motivation

On the level of psychology, metaethics is interested in how moral beliefs and experiences affect behavior. According to motivational internalists, there is a direct link between moral judgments and action. This means that every judgment about what is right motivates the person to act accordingly. For example, Socrates defends a strong form of motivational internalism by holding that a person can only perform an evil deed if they are unaware that it is evil. Weaker forms of motivational internalism allow that people can act against moral judgments, for example, because of weakness of the will. Motivational externalists accept that people can judge a behavior to be morally required without feeling a reason to engage in it. This means that moral judgments do not always provide motivational force. The debate between internalism and externalism is relevant for explaining the behavior of psychopaths or sociopaths, who fail either to judge that a behavior is wrong or to translate their judgment into action.^[154] A closely related question is whether moral judgments can provide motivation on their own or need to be accompanied by other mental states, such as a desire to act morally.^[155]

Value theory

Value theory, also referred to as axiology,^{[lower-alpha 4]} is the philosophical study of value. It aims to understand what value is and what types of value there are. Further questions include what kinds of things have value and how valuable they are.^[157] A central distinction is between intrinsic and instrumental value. An entity has intrinsic value if it is good in itself or good for its own sake. An entity has instrumental value if it is valuable as a means to something else, for example, by causing something that has intrinsic value.^[158] Another key topic is about what entities have intrinsic value, for example, whether pleasure has intrinsic value and whether there are other sources of intrinsic value besides pleasure.^[159]

There are disagreements about the exact relation between value theory and ethics. Some philosophers characterize value theory as a subdiscipline of ethics while others see value theory as the broader term that encompasses other fields besides ethics, such as aesthetics and political philosophy.^[160] A different characterization sees the two disciplines as overlapping but distinct fields.^[161] The term axiological ethics is sometimes used for the discipline studying this overlap, i.e., for the part of ethics that studies values.^[162] The two disciplines are sometimes distinguished based on their focus: ethics is about moral behavior or what is right while value theory is about value or what is good.^[163] Some ethical theories, like consequentialism, stand very close to value theory by defining what is right in terms of what is good. But this is not true for ethics in general and deontological theories tend to reject the idea that what is good can be used to define what is right.^[164]

Moral psychology

Moral psychology explores the psychological foundations and processes involved in moral behavior. It is an empirical science that studies how humans think and act in moral contexts. It is interested in how moral reasoning and judgments take place, how moral character forms, what sensitivity people have to moral evaluations, and how people attribute and react to moral responsibility.^[165]

One of its key topics is moral development or the question of how morality develops on a psychological level from infancy to adulthood.^[166] According to Lawrence Kohlberg, for example, children go through different stages of moral development as they understand moral principles first as fixed rules governing reward and punishment, then as conventional social norms, and later as abstract principles of what is objectively right across societies.^[167] A closely related question is whether and how people can be taught to act morally.^[168]

Evolutionary ethics is a subfield of moral psychology and sociobiology. It explores how evolutionary processes have shaped ethics. One of its key ideas is that natural selection is responsible for moral behavior and moral sensitivity. It interprets morality as an adaptation to evolutionary pressure that augments fitness by offering a selective advantage.^[169] Altruism, for example, can provide benefits to group survival by improving cooperation.^[170]

Descriptive ethics

Descriptive ethics, also called comparative ethics,^[171] studies actually existing moral codes, practices, and beliefs. It investigates and compares moral phenomena in different societies and different groups within a society. It aims to provide a value-neutral and empirical description without judging or justifying which practices are objectively right. For instance, the question of how nurses think about the ethical implications of abortion belongs to descriptive ethics. Another example is descriptive business ethics, which describes ethical standards in the context of business, including common practices, official policies, and employee opinions. Descriptive ethics also has a historical dimension by exploring how moral practices and beliefs have changed over time.^[172]

Descriptive ethics is a multidisciplinary field that is covered by disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, psychology, and history. Its empirical outlook contrasts with the philosophical inquiry into normative questions, such as which ethical principles are correct and how to justify them.^[173]

Notes

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