Descriptive ethics, also known as comparative ethics, is the study of people's beliefs about morality.[1] It contrasts with prescriptive or normative ethics, which is the study of ethical theories that prescribe how people ought to act, and with meta-ethics, which is the study of what ethical terms and theories actually refer to. 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?
Meta-ethics: What does "right" even mean?
Normative (prescriptive) ethics: How should people act?
Applied ethics: How do we take moral knowledge and put it into practice?
Descriptiveethics, also known as comparative ethics, is the study of people's beliefs about morality. It contrasts with prescriptive or normative ethics...
topics belong to descriptiveethics and are studied in fields like anthropology, sociology, and history rather than normative ethics. Another contrast...
g. if, or when, abortion is acceptable). Normative ethics is also distinct from descriptiveethics, as the latter is an empirical investigation of people's...
evolutionary ethics is quite broad. Supporters of evolutionary ethics have claimed that it has important implications in the fields of descriptiveethics, normative...
Behavioral ethics is a field of social scientific research that seeks to understand how individuals actually behave when confronted with ethical dilemmas...
business organization. Business ethics have two dimensions, normative business ethics or descriptive business ethics. As a corporate practice and a career...
wrong, but only refers to that which is considered right or wrong. Descriptiveethics is the branch of philosophy which studies morality in this sense....
between the fields: Descriptiveethics: What do people think is right? Normative ethics (prescriptive): How should people act? Applied ethics: How do we take...
psychology that overlaps with moral philosophy, and is the foundation of descriptiveethics. Starting from a young age, people can make moral decisions about...
notion of value, like ethics, aesthetics or philosophy of religion. It is also closely related to value theory and meta-ethics. The term was first used...
conflicts between such values. Pragmatic ethics has been criticized for conflating descriptiveethics with normative ethics, as describing the way people do make...
Marxist ethics is a doctrine of morality and ethics that is based on, or derived from, Marxist philosophy. Marx did not directly write about ethical issues...
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...
(philosophy) Agency (philosophy) Altruism Business ethics Character education Community psychology Descriptiveethics Experimental philosophy Internalism and externalism...
"feudal" barony in Scotland Prescriptive ethics, normative ethics, as distinct from meta-ethics and descriptiveethics Prescriptive notation, a type of Chinese...
could be resolved through mutual dialogue grounded in comparative descriptiveethics. Groups such as Amnesty International and War Resisters International...
Economic ethics is the combination of economics and ethics that uses judgements from both disciplines to predict, analyze, and model economic phenomena...
Adiaphora Axiology Beneficence (ethics) Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche) Common good Descriptiveethics Devil Ethics Evil Form of the Good (Plato) Graded...
to both themselves and their co-inhabitants. A related concept in descriptiveethics is psychological egoism, the thesis that humans always act in their...
part of human development, eventually joined Gilligan in starting a descriptiveethics of relationship conduct in what they called the ethical community...
ethical principles found cross-culturally: ethics of autonomy, ethics of community, and ethics of divinity. Ethics of autonomy (rights, freedom, justice)...
standardized testing or as homework for high school and college students. Descriptive writing is characterized by sensory details, which appeal to the physical...
In moral philosophy, deontological ethics or deontology (from Greek: δέον, 'obligation, duty' + λόγος, 'study') is the normative ethical theory that the...
The ethics of care (alternatively care ethics or EoC) is a normative ethical theory that holds that moral action centers on interpersonal relationships...
cultures. An advocate of such ideas is often referred to as a relativist. Descriptive moral relativism holds that people do, in fact, disagree fundamentally...