Synonyms

Moral philosophy; Moral principles; Rules of conduct

Introduction

Ethics are the principles guiding one’s moral behavior. Ethics is also the study of these principles – namely, what is good, and which actions are right or wrong. Normative ethics is concerned with what people ideally ought to do (Kagan 1997). Typically it is thought that people ought to do the right thing, and ought not to do the wrong thing. People should be good, not bad. People ought (or ought not) to do certain things and when such claims are made, they set forth norms of behavior – the way things ought to be. Ethical behavior is not always common, and this is why it is frequently said that it is difficult to do the right thing. Normative ethics also play an important role in providing moral justification for one’s own behavior. One may ask, “why did you make this decision?” and what is being asked is “what is your moral justification for doing this? – why did you think this was the right thing to do?” and in asking this, one is asking them to provide a moral justification for their action. The goal is to know which normative ethical principles were underlying their deciding to do this instead of something else. If they say “I was just tired” that is not a moral reason (although it is a reason of sorts). A moral reason is what is sought – and it is best to see a moral reason which can demonstrate that they did what someone did makes sense in terms of an understandable normative ethic, so one can see why they thought they ought to have done what they did. So this is what normative ethics tries to discover – how one ought to live, behave, and act in the world.

First, consideration will be given to some of the typical ways by which normative ethics are frequently established, but first, to help clarify what normative ethics is, one should be clear about what is not normative ethics.

What Normative Ethics Is Not

Descriptive Ethics: There are studies of behavior – ethical behavior – which tell us what people do, or tend to do. Such studies are not normative, but rather descriptive. Of course one can describe what sorts of principles guide someone’s behavior, for example “Sally is always selfish” or “it’s hard for John to tell the truth – he is a natural liar” and in those cases again one is providing descriptions of people’s ethics. This is descriptive ethics. Descriptive ethics tells us how people do behave (what is the case), but not how they ought to behave (what ought to be). Traditionally, the study of ethics is normative – meaning that one is trying to discover how one ought to behave, not how people actually are behaving. This is why it is often said that it is hard to be ethical – to do the right thing – because frequently people do not act ethically. Those familiar with the saying “you need to walk the talk” already understand the difference between the way people say one should behave and the way that they do in fact behave. So normative ethics will be principles helping us to know the good live to be and the right way to act.

Behavioral ethics/Moral psychology: There are also studies of ethical behavior which examine why people do what they do, and why they make the ethical or unethical decisions which they do. While ethics would pursue the question of why they ought to or ought not to have done such a thing, moral psychology or behavioral studies simply want to know why (from a nonmoral perspective) people act in those ways. Psychological empirical studies pursue the psychological why to why the person acted as they did, but not the ethical why. Such studies may be quite helpful in understanding people’s moral blind spots, for example, pointing out how people rationalize particular sorts of bad behavior for example. Such studies may also help us understand how to help encourage moral behaviors through particular institutional policies or programs. For example, it may be shown that workers who work in an environment which has a lemon scent are actually shown to act more ethically, or that people tend to make more moral misjudgments when they are not well rested or under stress. These are all interesting facts to consider, and while it is very important to understand physiological factors affecting why people do what they do – particularly if you want to manage them and get them to act in certain ways – such studies are not normative because they are not trying to understand what ought to be done, but rather, why people do what they do.

Legal rules: It is common for people to justify their behavior as being moral because it does not break any laws, and this applies to business practice as well. For example, when accused of immoral behavior, people will often defend themselves by pointing out that they did nothing illegal. Very frequently, corporate “ethics policies” appear to be nothing more than whatever the law will let them get away with. But there are two problems with using the law to determine normative ethics. First, many laws are not oriented toward ethical practices, and so provide no moral guidance. Many laws simply provide policy requirements to provide conformity and consistency in civil, business, or other activities. Wills must be written in a certain way, particular documents must be signed and sealed by a notary, marriages must be documented in a particular standard manner, and so on. Such procedural requirements, while codified into law, are not ethical requirements. For example, people frequently make handshake agreements without writing things down in a legal contract, and such handshake agreements are often not legally enforceable, because they are based only on a promise – and ethical commitment. But the people who make such handshake agreements frequently say “my word is my bond” and if the two people making the agreement trust each other, then the agreement still is morally binding, although not in a court of law.

A second problem with using the law to determine normative ethics is that frequently the laws people pass are trying to catch up with ethics, and there are many behaviors which may not be ethical, which are not restricted by law, at least yet. A society should not want laws for all ethical behavior in fact. It would be a very strange world where society had laws requiring that children do not speak disrespectfully to their parents, where society made it a legal requirement that one be kind to others, or to think of others before yourself. Of course many laws are established to legally prohibit behavior which society determined to be morally wrong (whether effectual or not, this is the intent of Sarbanes-Oxley act, and laws prohibiting collusion, extortion, bribery, or monopolistic practices). But the law is sometimes challenged on the basis that it is unjust, or unethical. For example, the US has had many laws which were later determined to be unethical and so changed (i.e., Jim Crowe and other segregationist laws, prohibition of women or the landless from voting). Finally, the law often lags behind in providing laws for right behavior in certain areas. There is such lag-time in rapidly developing fields such as bio-engineering, artificial intelligence, and big data use, areas which have evolved so quickly that it has been difficult for legislators and regulators to establish thoughtful useful policy to give directions for compliant behaviors.

Types of Normative Ethics

Normative ethics is an attempt to systematically provide a coherent set of rules or aims for behavior, including for professional fields, such as medicine or business (Smith 2008). What are the ideal ways people think people ought to behave? What are the values which people believe should guide and direct us in our activities? What kinds of behavior are to be encouraged, and which are unacceptable behaviors? The study of normative ethics supports these aims systematically by providing reasons for how one should act, and why one should behave this way instead of some other way. Most of these systems have particular starting points. One could say that there are different starting points, or first principles for ethical reasoning.

Authority-Based Ethics

Divine Command Theory: One traditional view of ethics is that it is based on the divine decrees of God. On this view, what is right and good is whatever God says is right and good. The difficulty is, of course, determining what it is that God has decided.

Theological Ethics: Also called moral theology, theological ethics provides answers for how one ought to act by deriving it from theological truths of scripture and church teachings. This approach helps believers to determine what they should do in a particular instance.

Faith or Upbringing: A less philosophical but very common basis for determining norms for moral behavior is from your parents or family, for example, or your religion. Many of us have strong convictions about what is right or wrong from authorities which helped instill those beliefs in us – our family or our faith. Religions have guiding rules for personal conduct, and provide ideals for how life should be lived. If one is a member of a particular religion, you strive to live out your religious ideals in practice. For example, if I am a Christian, my faith will provide some guides of what is right and wrong behavior for me. The teachings of Jesus Christ and the Bible and the Church will provide helpful guidance for my personal behavior as well as my civil and public behavior – including my business practices. Once one is a believer, the belief system provides the outcomes and reasons for right actions. But this basis for having norms of behavior is limited, because when one has encounters with people who are outside of our faith or our family norms, one may have difficulty finding common ground. For example, if I am a corporate executive of a public company, it will not work to establish all of the corporate ethics policies simply on the basis of “what my mom always said” or “these are the teachings of Mohamed” or “this is what the Bible says,” etc. For public ethical norms, I need to have some other common basis of deciding right and wrong, since not everyone shares our family or faith norms of behavior.

Reason-Based Ethics

In the public sphere, and in the realm of business, normative ethics is more often derived from non-religious sources, especially in western cultures. Because not all of the people involved in business transactions in the public sphere have the same religious beliefs or convictions, normative ethics is usually based on reasons which do not require adherence to a particular religion. These norms are usually thought to be discovered through reason – so that anyone with properly functioning reasoning abilities will see the reasoning and potentially agree with the norms.

Even if there is not always agreement, when normative ethics is grounded in reasons which are generally accessible to everybody, there is at least opportunity for everyone to join in the discussion and possibly come to agreement with others. There are a variety of ways to try to derive ethical norms. The field of normative ethics might be divided according to the various ways of conceiving of and justification of what is right and wrong behavior. Here consideration will be given to a few of the more common systems of normative ethics.

One important distinction is between consequentialist and non-consequentialist norms (Gustafson 2018). Those who determine what is right or wrong according to consequences are consequentialists. For example, you may think that an action is right or wrong depending on whether or not it brings about the greatest happiness overall. Non-Consequentialists derive ethics from ideals or formal principles, not from consequences.

Egoism is the view that the right action is whatever will benefit me personally the most. An advantage of egoism is that it is one of the most simple of normative ethical theories, because it has only one consideration – what benefits oneself. But egoism has great difficulty accounting for many of our traditional moral intuitions. It seems that ethics usually require us to make sacrifices for others, or at least consider the interests of others – and that I have certain duties I should perform. Egoism has little place for such concerns. Yet it seems that frequently we find our moral conscience is asking us to give up our own satisfaction. I may want a third piece of chocolate cake, but my moral conscience speaks up saying “you’ve already had two and some have had none – you must let others get some and not be a pig” but for an egoist, such a concern for others would be nonsensical, and so it seems egoism does not capture many of our common ways of thinking about ethics.

Social Contract Theory (contractarianism or contract theory) arrives at ethical norms through discussion and agreement (Donaldson and Dunfee 1999). The legitimacy of ethical principles is rooted in demonstrating that the principles are those which would be agreed to by objective actors in a fair and impartial decision procedure (Rawls 1971).

Utilitarianism, rather than considering the interest of just myself, is concerned with the greatest happiness overall. Basing ethics on the consequences of actions, Utilitarianism is the view that one can determine which actions are right which ones are wrong on the basis of whether those actions will bring about more or less happiness overall (Gustafson 2013). Actions which bring about more happiness will be the right ones, and actions which bring about less happiness or unhappiness would be the wrong ones. Utilitarianism may require me to make sacrifices and give up some of my happiness for the greater happiness overall. It also is primarily empirically based on outcomes – the right act is the one which has the best outcome of greatest happiness. A key difficulty is trying to determine or calculate the greatest happiness (Eggleston and Miller 2014).

Deontological Ethics, sometimes called duty or rule-based ethics, is the view that ethics is not determined by consequences, but rather by a formal criterion. What makes an action right or wrong is due to its being in line with particular rules (Guyer 1992). For example, Kant said that one can determine which actions are right and which ones are wrong by asking ourselves the question “could I make this into a universal rule?” He also believes the rules one follows must consider people as ends in themselves, not as a means to an end. All individuals have dignity, and that should not be traded as a means for some other end (Arnold and Harris 2012).

Virtue Ethics, traditionally conceived, is concerned primarily with what sort of person I should be – and what kind of positive character traits (or virtues) I should develop in myself through habit (Crisp and Slote 1997). Of course there are actions I should practice to become a virtuous person, but the goal is to be virtuous. Its normative focus is on proper character traits, not merely right action in a given instance (Hartman 2015).

Natural Law: This is the view that one can discover the rules of what people ought to do by rationally examining our inclinations. For example, from my inclination to try to not get killed (by falling pianos, etc.) one can derive that life is good and one should preserve it (our own and others). Natural law is thought to be available to anyone with a properly functioning mind and inclinations.

Intuitionism is the view that basic ethical truths are self-evident, and then one must reason from those to make ethical decisions. Your intuition gives you the fundamental ethical principles (i.e., do not lie) and then reason helps us to determine how to choose what to do in a given circumstance.

Pragmatic Ethics consider the discovery of ethical principles as akin to scientific inquiry – ethical norms and principles, like science, are able to be improved upon through discovery, and they may change over time due to societal evolution, which is why the inquiry is ongoing (Rosenthal and Buchholz 2000).

Market Failures Approach or Ethics of Competition: More recently, some have attempted to develop a market failures approach to provide normative business ethics by reference to the basic rules of the market itself (Heath 2014). For the market failures approach, norms will come from regulation, but beyond that, individuals and companies need to follow ethical imperatives, which avoid market failures that arise from negative externalities, information asymmetries, barriers to entry, opportunistic behavior, and other activities which undermine the markets proper functioning.

What all of these theories of ethics share in common is a belief that there are norms of behavior which one ought to follow or live by, and that it is possible for us to discover them. Despite the fact that there are so many differing starting points or reasons given for deciding what is right or wrong, in fact there is often a great deal of agreement about the norms of ethics, even from different theoretical perspectives.

Cross-References