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. |
| 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.
| 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.