Applied ethics, also known as practical ethics, is a branch of ethics that deals with the practical application of moral considerations to real-world problems in various fields such as private and public life, professions, health, technology, law, and leadership. It emerged as a subdiscipline of moral philosophy in the early 1970s, in response to the rapid medical and technological advances of the time. 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. Applied ethics is a multi-professional subject that 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.
Applied ethics is not limited to academic philosophical discourse, and fruitful applied ethics can be done outside of philosophy or even outside of the academy. Applied ethics is often approached by trained academic philosophers or by those trained in closely related disciplines. The field of applied ethics includes various branches such as bioethics, business ethics, political ethics, legal ethics, military ethics, and technological ethics. It examines and defines what we should do in any given situation, reflecting on personal, professional, policy, and social choices and structures and holding them up to scrutiny. Good practical ethics relies on an in-depth understanding of the relevant real-world facts and issues and is often interdisciplinary. Practical ethics examines our common and individual morality for inconsistencies, failure to apply agreed principles, and new principles that may have a radical effect on our moral behavior. The goal of practical ethics is not to tell people how to behave but to create a space for deeper, rational ethical reflection and dialogue that can change peoples hearts and better their own lives and the lives of others.
