Descriptive ethics
Descriptive ethics, also known as comparative ethics, is the study of people's beliefs about
- 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?
Description
Descriptive ethics is a form of
Because descriptive ethics involves empirical investigation, it is a field that is usually investigated by those working in the fields of evolutionary biology, psychology, sociology or anthropology. Information that comes from descriptive ethics is, however, also used in philosophical arguments.[2][3]
Value theory can be either normative or descriptive but is usually descriptive.
Lawrence Kohlberg: An example of descriptive ethics
Lawrence Kohlberg is one example of a psychologist working on descriptive ethics. In one study, for example, Kohlberg questioned a group of boys about what would be a right or wrong action for a man facing a moral dilemma (specifically, the Heinz dilemma): should he steal a drug to save his wife, or refrain from theft even though that would lead to his wife's death?[4] Kohlberg's concern was not which choice the boys made, but the moral reasoning that lay behind their decisions. After carrying out a number of related studies, Kohlberg devised a theory about the development of human moral reasoning that was intended to reflect the moral reasoning actually carried out by the participants in his research. Kohlberg's research can be classed as descriptive ethics to the extent that he describes human beings' actual moral development. If, in contrast, he had aimed to describe how humans ought to develop morally, his theory would have involved prescriptive ethics.
See also
- Experimental philosophy
- List of ethics topics
- Moral reasoning
- Moral psychology
References
- ^ "comparative ethics | philosophy | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2022-01-19.
- S2CID 9063016.
- .
- ^ Kohlberg, Lawrence, (1971). "Stages in Moral Development as a Basis for Moral Education." In C.M. Beck, B.S. Crittenden, and E.V. Sullivan, Eds. Moral Education: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Toronto: Toronto University Press.
Further reading
- Hämäläinen, Nora (2016). Descriptive Ethics: What does Moral Philosophy Know about Morality?. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-58617-9.
- Coleman, Stephen Edwin, "DIGITAL PHOTO MANIPULATION: A DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF CODES OF ETHICS AND ETHICAL DECISIONS OF PHOTO EDITORS" (2007). Dissertations. 1304. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/1304