What is Ethics?

Ethics is referred to as moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of an activity. It can also be described as the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principle (oxford dictionary 2001).

Ethics is two things. First, ethics refers to well based standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues. Put another way anytime you ask yourself “what you should do,” the question involves an ethical decision. Ethics, for, example, refers to those standards that impose the reasonable obligations to refrain from rape, stealing, murder, assault, slander, and fraud. Ethical standards also include those that enjoin the virtues of honesty, compassion, and loyalty. And ethical standards include standards relating to rights, such as the right to life, the right to freedom from injury, and the right to privacy. Such standards are adequate standards of thinking because they are supported by consistent and well-founded reasons.

Secondly, ethics refers to the study and development of one’s ethical standards. In other words, ethics are standards or rules you set for yourself that you use to guide your efforts do what is right and wrong, or what you should do. For example, if a friend asks you to copy your homework, you must choose whether or not you will tell the teacher. Whenever you have to make a decision where your actions will impact someone else, you face an ethical dilemma. The decision is ethical because you must decide what your obligation is (especially when another person is involved), and it’s a dilemma because there is more than one option to choose from. A decision you make is ethical when you choose to do the right thing.