Ethics

Ethics and Related Constructs

The formal study of ethics is associated with the ancient Greeks. Ethics in this tradition is both the study of the frameworks underlying judgments of what is appropriate conduct and the substance of the judgments themselves. Some scholars, however, prefer to use the term ethics for the study of frameworks for judgment (e.g., consequentialism) and to use the terms morals and morality for specific injunctions (e.g., “do no harm”). Europeans conventionally view ethics and morality in binary terms such as right and wrong, good and bad, and doing the right thing and avoiding wrong action. Other cultures have formulated appropriate conduct differently. Some view it as balancing complementary or competing forces such as the Chinese yin and yang. However ethics is defined, human societies everywhere have ideas about what is appropriate conduct and how to live an exemplary or virtuous life. When these are codified into rules enforced by authority, they are considered to be laws.

Values, the study of which was called axiology by the Greek philosophers, is a broader category of what is considered to be important and significant. Values include ethics and morality but also other kinds of standards such as aesthetics or what is considered to be beautiful, manners and mores or what is considered to be socially acceptable, and taste or what individuals prefer in the choices they make. These categories are not mutually exclusive. Principles for aesthetic judgments may also have implications for ethical judgments. Ethics and values are attributes of all human [Page 274]societies. However, what differs from one group to the next, as well as among individuals within any group, is the nature of those values and how they are conceptualized. Furthermore, because virtue and appropriate conduct are central to religious and spiritual ideologies, some people view ethics as tied inextricably to religion. The development of scholarship on ethics in the West since the Enlightenment reflects, in some respects, an effort to detach supernatural arguments from moral theories and ethical decision making and to focus ethical thought on the conduct of human relationships and on individual well-being.

Kinds of Ethics

The study of ethics can be divided into two areas. First, the common area most influential in research practice is called normative ethics or moral theories. These are frameworks used to decide what is preferable to do among the choices available. The second area is called meta-ethics. These are the assumptions and values underlying normative ethics and moral theories. Meta-ethics, as discussed later, is often associated with research epistemologies and ontologies or the assumptions about what constitutes knowledge and reality and how knowledge is best developed.