Differentiating Normative and Meta Ethics Research Paper 2022

Running head: DIFFERENTIATING NORMATIVE AND META ETHICS
Differentiating Normative and Meta Ethics
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Notes:

DIFFERENTIATING NORMATIVE AND META ETHICS1
Introduction
Ethics refer to the moral codes or philosophies that might be practiced or followed by
an individual. In daily lives, people have to follow specific sets of rules that might be
different from field to field. These are known as laws and are the regulations that must be
maintained to abide by the regulatory constraints (Will, 2019). However, laws and ethics are
not the same. Something that might be ethical might not be lawful, however, something that
is law might or might not be ethical. There are various types of ethics that must be ingrained
into the daily activities and proceedings of individuals. The aim of the paper is to compare,
contrast and discuss the difference between normative and meta ethics.
Discussion
Normative ethics are ethics that investigate the morality of actions that are taken by
individuals (Everett, Pizarro & Crockett, 2016). Normative ethics are ethics that determine
the implication of actions taken by human beings. It is with the help of normative ethics that
individuals determine whether the activity or action that they are carrying out in their daily
lives. The main purpose of normative ethics is to determine what makes and activity just and
ethical. Normative ethical theories and standards of normative ethics are moral problems
concerned with applied ethics. Issues such as human rights, moral implications of activities,
social equity and other factors can be adjudged with the help of normative ethics (Miller,
2019). The main scope of normative ethics is to look for morality and non-morality in factors
such as actions and behaviors of individuals, the aspirations that they have, their intentions,
emotions, fears, thought. s and commitments. For example; the normative ethics of a person
will guide them towards actions that will make that person just, moral and respectable in the
eyes of the society and most importantly in their own eyes.

DIFFERENTIATING NORMATIVE AND META ETHICS2
While normative ethics look into the morality of an action, meta ethics are concerned
with the judgement of the factors that makes people perceive an action as moral. Meta ethics
look into the foundation of judgements regarding the morality or immorality of judgements
(Schroeder & Schroder, 2017). The basic difference between normative ethics and meta
ethics is that the former is concerned with what are the right actions that an individual can
take and the latter that is meta ethics is concerned with what can be deemed to right.
Ontological questions such as the nature of morality of a decision are framed by meta ethics.
It establishes the foundation of an ethically appropriate decision and traces back the core
aspects of that type or decision making to understand the true meaning of the ethical behavior
or morality that is thought of, or considered before doing something.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be said that both normative ethics and meta ethics are important
paradigms of ethics and ethical behavior. As mentioned above, normative ethics investigate
the reasonability or morality or actions, meta ethics analyses what makes the moral or ethical
behavior moral or ethical.