Theoretical approaches to ethics.

Normative ethical theory

Normative ethics is the descriptor that is applied to the entire caliber of a certain perspective of ethics that has various sub-categories to it. As general definition, normative ethics is the term given to the moral investigation that queries how one should act in an ethical manner. To this end, a quantity of ethical systems exists that seek to answer that question. To differentiate normative ethics from other philosophical ethical theories, meta-ethics, for instance, attempts to objectively examine standards for right and wrong in a comparative, phenomenological manner, whilst descriptive ethics -- another brand of ethics is an empirical investigation of people's moral beliefs.

Normative ethics may also be called 'prescriptive' since it recommends a certain moral route of conduct for an individual. So, for instance, descriptive ethics would be concerned with investigating and describing the proportion of people that hold ethnic discrimination...
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