be ethical..

A. Descriptive Ethics or Morals: a study of human behavior as a consequence of beliefs about what is right or wrong, or good or bad, insofar as that behavior is useful or effective. In a sense, morals is the study of what is thought to be right and what is generally done by a group, society, or a culture. In general, morals correspond to what actually is done in a society.


B. Normative Ethics or Prescriptive Ethics: the study of moral problems which seeks to discover how one ought to act, not how one does in fact act or how one thinks one should act.


C. Metaethics or Analytical Ethics: the discipline concerned with elucidating the meaning of ethical terms or the discipline concerned with the comparison of ethical theories.
Reference: http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Ethics ETHICS,
the name generally given to the science of moral philosophy. The word " ethics " is derived from the Gr. r)OtKOS, that which pertains to rlOos, character

1. Definition And Subject-Matter Of Ethics In its widest sense, the term " ethics " would imply an examination into the general character or habits of mankind, and would even involve a description or history of the habits of men in particular societies living at different periods of time. Such a field of study would obviously be too wide for any particular science or philosophy to investigate, and moreover portions of the field are already occupied by history, by anthropology and by the particular sciences (e.g. physiology, anatomy, biology), in so far as the habits and character of men depend upon the material processes which these sciences examine
2. (2) Ethics is a philosophy and not a science. Philosophy is a process of reflection upon the presuppositions involved in unreflective thought. In logic and metaphysics it investigates either the process of apprehension itself, or conceptions such as cause, substance, space, time, which the ordinary scientific consciousness never criticizes. In moral philosophy the place of the body of sciences, which philosophy as the theory of knowledge investigates, is taken by the developed moral consciousness, which already pronounces moral judgment without hesitation, and claims authority to subject to continual criticism the institutions and forms of social life which it has itself helped to create.

Reference: http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Ethics




"Ethics has to do with what my feelings tell me is right or wrong.""Ethics has to do with my religious beliefs.""Being ethical is doing what the law requires.""Ethics consists of the standards of behavior our society accepts.""I don't know what the word means."
Reference: http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/whatisethics.html