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=                           Applied ethics                           =
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                            Introduction
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Applied ethics refers to the practical application of moral
considerations. It is ethics with respect to real-world actions and
their moral considerations in the areas of private and public life,
the professions, health, technology, law, and
leadership.[http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396577/
obo-9780195396577-0006.xml
"Applied Ethics"] Oxford Bibliographies.
Retrieved June 25, 2017. For example, the bioethics community is
concerned with identifying the correct approach to moral issues in the
life sciences, such as euthanasia, the allocation of scarce health
resources, or the use of human embryos in research. Environmental
ethics is concerned with ecological issues such as the responsibility
of government and corporations to clean up pollution. Business ethics
includes questions regarding the duties or duty of 'whistleblowers' to
the general public or their loyalty to their employers.

Applied ethics has expanded the study of ethics beyond the realms of
academic philosophical discourse. The field of applied ethics, as it
appears today, emerged from debate surrounding rapid medical and
technological advances in the early 1970s and is now established as a
subdiscipline of moral philosophy. However, applied ethics is, by its
very nature, a multi-professional subject because it requires
specialist understanding of the potential ethical issues in fields
like medicine, business or information technology. Nowadays, ethical
codes of conduct exist in almost every profession.

An applied ethics approach to the examination of moral dilemmas can
take many different forms but one of the most influential and most
widely utilised approaches in bioethics and health care ethics is the
four-principle approach developed by Tom Beauchamp and James
Childress.Beauchamp, T. L. and Childress, J. F. (1994) Principles of
medical ethics, New York: Oxford University Press.
The four-principle approach, commonly termed principlism, entails
consideration and application of four prima facie ethical principles:
autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice.


                        Underpinning theory
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Applied ethics is distinguished from normative ethics, which concerns
standards for right and wrong behavior, and from meta-ethics, which
concerns the nature of ethical properties, statements, attitudes, and
judgments.

Whilst these three areas of ethics appear to be distinct they are also
interrelated. The use of an applied ethics approach often draws upon
certain normative ethical theories like the following:

# Utilitarianism, where the practical consequences of various policies
are evaluated on the assumption that the right policy will be the one
which results in the greatest happiness. This theory's main
developments came from Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill who
distinguished between an act and rule utilitarianist morality. Later
developments have also adjusted the theory, most notably Henry
Sidgwick who introduced the idea of motive or intent in morality, and
Peter Singer who introduced the idea of preference in moral decision
making.
# Deontological ethics, notions based on 'rules' i.e. that there is an
obligation to perform the 'right' action, regardless of actual
consequences (epitomized by Immanuel Kant's notion of the Categorical
Imperative which was the centre to Kant's ethical theory based on
duty). Another key deontological theory is Natural Law, which was
heavily developed by Thomas Aquinas and is an important part of the
Catholic Church's teaching on Morals.
# Virtue ethics, derived from Aristotle's and Confucius's notions,
which asserts that the right action will be that chosen by a suitably
'virtuous' agent.

Sometimes, these normative ethical theories clash which poses
challenges when trying to resolve real-world ethical dilemmas. One
approach which attempts to overcome the seemingly impossible divide
between deontology and utilitarianism (of which the divide is caused
by the opposite takings of an absolute and relativist moral view) is
case-based reasoning, also known as casuistry. Casuistry does not
begin with theory, rather it starts with the immediate facts of a real
and concrete case. While casuistry makes use of ethical theory, it
does not view ethical theory as the most important feature of moral
reasoning. Casuists, like Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin ('The
Abuse of Casuistry' 1988), challenge the traditional paradigm of
applied ethics. Instead of starting from theory and applying theory to
a particular case, casuists start with the particular case itself and
then ask what morally significant features (including both theory and
practical considerations) ought to be considered for that particular
case. In their observations of medical ethics committees, Jonsen and
Toulmin note that a consensus on particularly problematic moral cases
often emerges when participants focus on the facts of the case, rather
than on ideology or theory. Thus, a Rabbi, a Catholic priest, and an
agnostic might agree that, in this particular case, the best approach
is to withhold extraordinary medical care, while disagreeing on the
reasons that support their individual positions. By focusing on cases
and not on theory, those engaged in moral debate increase the
possibility of agreement.


                              See also
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*Bioethics
*Business ethics
*Effective altruism
*Ethical codes
*Ethics
*Medical ethics
*Outline of ethics
*Philosophy
*Precautionary principle


                            Bibliography
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*
*  (monograph)
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                           External links
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* Standard Bibliography PhilPapers
[https://philpapers.org/browse/applied-ethics Applied Ethics -
Bibliography - PhilPapers]
* Chris Young,
[http://www.chrisyoung.net/writings/how-to-teach-intro-to-applied-ethics.html
How to teach an introduction to applied ethics]
* [http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/aapae/ Australian Association for
Professional and Applied Ethics]
* [http://www.bioethicsinstitute.org Berman Institute of Bioethics,
Johns Hopkins Institute]
* [http://www.ccepa.ca/ Canadian Centre for Ethics in Public Affairs]
* [http://www.etica-aplicata.ro Centre for Advanced Research in
Management and Applied Ethics]
* [https://www.practicalbioethics.org Center for Practical Bioethics]
* [http://www.crb.uu.se/ Centre for Research Ethics and Bioethics]
* [http://macleanethics.uchicago.edu MacLean Center for Clinical
Medical Ethics]
* [http://www.scu.edu/ethics Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at
Santa Clara University]
* [http://www.ethics.ubc.ca W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics
at the University of British Columbia]
* [http://nuffieldbioethics.org Nuffield Council on Bioethics]


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