What is ethics?

-moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an activity.

-Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and
recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct. The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns
matters of value, and thus comprises the branch of philosophy called axiology.

-Ethics seeks to resolve questions of human morality by defining concepts such as good and evil, right
and wrong, virtue and vice, justiceand crime. As a field of intellectual inquiry, moral philosophy also
is related to the fields of moral psychology, descriptive ethics, and value theory.

What are moral standards and non-moral standards?

-Moral standards involve the rules people have about the kinds of actions they believe are
morally right and wrong, as well as the values they place on the kinds of objects they believe are
morally good and morally bad. Some ethicists equate moral standards with moral values and
moral principles.

-Non-moral standards refer to rules that are unrelated to moral or ethical considerations. Either
these standards are not necessarily linked to morality or by nature lack ethical sense. Basic
examples of non-moral standards include rules of etiquette, fashion standards, rules in games,
and various house rules.

What are moral dillemas?

- A moral dilemma is a situation where an agent’s obligations conflict. Debate in this area
focuses on the question of whether genuine moral dilemmas exist. This question involves
considering not only the nature and significance of dilemmas, but also the connections between
dilemmas, the logic of obligation and moral emotions.
Certain cases involving difficult choices suggest that moral dilemmas exist. These cases also
suggest that dilemmas are significant because they show that moral theory cannot help with these
choices. If this is right, morality may be unimportant because it may be a system of inconsistent
rules that cannot be used as a guide that tells us what to do. But this understanding of the cases is
disputable. Perhaps the cases show that agents can be ignorant about what they ought to do. Or
perhaps dilemmas are not significant because moral theory tells agents to do the most important
of their obligations.
On the other hand, principles from the logic of obligation or deontic logic can be used to argue
against the existence of moral dilemmas. Principles of deontic logic such as the ‘ought’ implies
‘can’ principle and the agglomeration principle, which says that if you ought to do a and ought to
do , then you ought to do a and b , taken together with the assumption that moral dilemmas exist,
turn out to entail a contradiction. This means that one of these principles must be given up, or
else it must be the case that moral dilemmas do not exist.