Descriptive Ethics, Normative Ethics, Metaethics

(Biomedical Ethics) Charles Lohman

Descriptive EthicsNormative Ethics

• DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS is concerned with how people behave.– What do people think is right is the question of

DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS• NORMATIVE ETHICS is concerned with how people

ought to act, what sort of person one ought to be or what sorts of policies ought to be implemented.– In other words, it is normative in the sense that it

identifies the norms and/or standards of right and wrong actions and behaviors.

– How people ought to act is the question of NORMATIVE ETHICS

Two Criteria of Normative Ethical Theories

• 1.) OBJECTIVITY is where the right course of action is based on the best reasons for doing it, and where these reasons can be recognized universally.

• 2.) IMPARTIALITY is where reasons for action assume that each person’s needs and interests are equally important and that the claims of all people are given equal weight.

• TOGETHER these two criteria are safeguards against arbitrariness and personal or group bias in justifying behavior.

Metaethics

• METAETHICS deals with the basic question of the point of ethics.– It’s basically concerned with whether there are

ethical FACTS independent of our normative judgments and conventions.

– It focuses on the meaning of terms like “right,” “wrong,” “good,” “bad,” and on the form of arguments used to justify actions.

– What does right mean is the question of Metaethics.

Summed Up

• DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS focuses on how people behave.

• NORMATIVE ETHICS focuses on CONTENT of morality.

• METAETHICS focuses on the NATURE of morality.