Two Questions about Ethics

Abstract

The application of Ethics is something human beings do every day. If you simply look at the philosophical practice of ethics, you see the Meta-Ethics where great minds continue to clash over the meaning of ethical statements or language, Normative Ethics where intellectual war rages over what is right and wrong and Applied Ethics where all the strands of theory and belief are drawn together to reach conclusions about specific ethical questions.

However this is only a small part of the picture, every day people are consciously making decisions about right or wrong. Virtually every question of what people ought or ought not do has some ethical component lurking in the background whether it concerns the treatment of family, behaviour on the road or whether you ought or ought not obey a particular law (whether to the letter or in spirit).

This paper proposes we cognise the inevitability of ethical debate and structure within a discipline of ethical analysis.

Keywords: ethics