Applied Ethics
Abstract
Applied ethics is an academic discipline that inquires about the correctness of certain practical human activities, primarily using philosophical methods. This inquiry can be traced to antiquity since ethics is mostly concerned with the practical actions of daily life, and different professions have codes guiding such actions. As an academic discipline, it was conceived in the West in the 1960s due to secularization, technological advances, and a void in public policy. The global dimension in recent years makes these issues more acute. Applied ethics can be further specialized into bioethics, environmental ethics, sexual ethics, business ethics, and social ethics, in additional to newly emerging areas. From a global perspective, this entry will address the debates on the existence of objective moral truths, the sources of morality, the proliferation of competing models, the role of science and technology, the role of religion, and the tension between universal ethics and cultural diversity.
Keywords
Applied ethics Practical ethics Code of ethics Relativism Religious ethics Cultural diversity Global ethicsReferences
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