What Does Ethics Mean?

business ethics | a specialized study of the moral standards that apply to business policies, institutions, organizations, and behavior. | consistency requirement | the necessity of moral principles to be applied the same way to everyone in similar circumstances | ethical relativism | the theory that morality varies according to culture and/or time. | Ethics | the study of morality or the moral standards of a society or an individual. | law of agency | a law that specifies the duties of persons who agree to act on behalf of another party and who are authorized by agreement so to act. | moral reasoning | the reasoning process by which human behaviors, institutions, or policies are judged to be in or out accordance with moral standards. |
moral responsibility | the idea that agents are culpable for acting or neglecting to act. | moral standards | norms about the kinds of actions believed to be morally right and wrong. | Morality | the standards that an individual or a group has about what is right and wrong or good and evil (also, the subject that ethics investigates). | nonmoral standards | standards by which we judge what is right/ wrong or good/bad in a nonmoral way.
| prisoner’s dilemma | a situation where two parties must choose whether to cooperate or not; both gain when both cooperate, while if only one cooperates the other gains even more, and if both do not cooperate both lose. | | | Negative utilitarianism | There is no duty to increase happiness or maximize benefits unless you have voluntarily agreed to do so. |

capitalist justice | the belief that benefits should be distributed according to the value of the contribution made by the individual to a group. | categorical imperative | the requirement that I must act such that the maxim of my action could be made universal law (or the requirement that in acting I always treat others as ends in themselves and never as a means to an end). | compensatory justice | Fairness when compensating for wrongs or injuries | cost-benefit analysis | analyzes desirability of a project by comparing present and future economic benefits to present and future economic costs. | distributive justice | concerned with the fair distribution of society's benefits and burdens; the belief that individuals who are similar in all relevant respects should be given similar benefits and burdens.
| economic equality | equality of income and wealth, and equality of opportunity. | egalitarian justice | the belief that every person should be given exactly equal shares of a group's benefits and burdens. | ethic of care | emphasizes care for the well-being of those close to us.
| ethic of virtue | evaluates the moral character of individuals or groups. | instrumental goods | goods valued only because they lead to other good things. | intrinsic goods | things desired independently of any benefits they may produce. | Justice | how benefits and burdens are distributed among people | justice as fairness | associated with John Rawls; the belief that the distribution of benefits and burdens in a society is just only if each person has an equal right to the most extensive basic liberties compatible with similar liberties for all, and social and economic inequalities are arranged so that they are both to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged and attached to offices and positions open to all fairly and equally. | legal rights | entitlements derived from a legal system. | Libertarianism | the belief that freedom from human constraint is necessarily good, and thus that constraints imposed by others are necessarily evil. | Maxim | the reason a person in a certain situation has for doing what she or he plans to do. | moral rights | rights possessed by all human beings simply by virtue of being human.
| moral virtue | an acquired disposition that is valued as part of the character of a morally good human being and that is exhibited in the person habitual behavior. | negative rights | duties others have to not interfere in certain activities of the person who holds a given right. | noneconomic goods | goods such as life, love, and freedom, whose value cannot be equaled by any quantity of any economic good. | original position | according to Rawls, the situation of a group that would say a principle is morally justified; they must be rational self-interested persons who know they will live in a society governed by the principles they accept but who do not know the race, sex, religion, social position, interests, or abilities that they will have. | political equality | equal participation in, and treatment by, the means of controlling and directing the political system. | positive rights | the duty of some other agents to provide the rights-holder with whatever is needed to pursue the rights-holder’s interests. | principle of equal liberty | each citizen’s liberties must be protected and must equal the liberties of each other citizen’s. | principle of fair equality of opportunity | everyone deserves equal opportunity to qualify for privileged positions | puritan ethic | each individual is obliged to work hard at his or her calling. | retributive justice | Fairness when blaming or punishing persons for doing wrong | Reversibility | parties choose principles that will apply to themselves. | Rights | in general, an individual's entitlement to something; legal rights are those dictated by a system of laws; moral rights are those that permit or allow all humans to do or to have something done for them; negative rights prohibit others from interfering with an individual's actions; positive rights grant others the duty to provide an individual with something she or he needs. | rule-utilitarianism | the view that an individual action is right when it is required by correct moral rules and if the sum total of utilities produced if everyone were to follow the rule is greater than the sum total utilities produced if everyone did not follow the rule. | socialist justice | the belief that benefits should be distributed according to need and burdens according to ability. | universalizability | principles must apply equally to everyone. | utilitarianism | the view that actions are right when they produce the greatest net benefits or the lowest net costs. | utility | any net benefits produced by an action. | veil of ignorance | in Rawls’ original position, the rational person’s ignorance of his or her own status. | virtue theory | belief that the aim of the moral life is to develop moral virtues, and to use them. | work ethic | the high value placed on individual effort; belief that hard work leads to success. | | |