What is Applied Ethics?

Overview

Applied Ethics is one of the sub-branches of Moral Philosophy, a domain of Philosophy that attempts to systematize concepts of right and wrong conduct [1], along with Metaethics (study of the nature, origin, and meaning of ethical concepts) and  Normative Ethics (systematization of basic moral principles) [2]. Applied Ethics focuses on the application of the principles of Normative Ethics in different domains. The main aim of Applied Ethics is to establish a normative foundation that can later be used as a blueprint for policies and legislation.

The Applied Ethics Domains

There are several Applied Ethics domains, such as Medical Ethics, Research Ethics, Business Ethics, and, more recently, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Ethics. The most prominent and well-studied approach to Applied Ethics is Medical Ethics. The four classic principles Beneficence, Non-Maleficence, Autonomy, and Justice), established in the Belmont Report in the aftermath of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, are well-established in the medical literature and provide a common ground that professionals can refer to in complex moral situations. These principles are often re-contextualized in other Applied Ethics domains. For instance, AI Ethics relies on five core principles that resemble the classical Medical Ethics Principles (Beneficence, Non-Maleficence, Autonomy, Justice, and Explainability [3], yet rather than providing guidance in morally complex situations, these principles are construed mainly to embed normative considerations in the design and governance of technology.

The Applied Ethics Toolkit

Applied Ethics research relies on several tools, namely Ethical Principles, Thought Experiments, Ethical Roadmaps, and Empirical Ethics Studies. Ethical Principles are mandates that serve as core theoretical normative pillars in a particular domain. The abstraction of these mandates allows great flexibility in their application in a wide range of morally charged situations, but often, additional operationalization efforts are required. 

Thought Experiments are stylized narratives that serve the purpose of testing moral intuitions. Perhaps the most famous thought experiment is the trolley problem, which was popularized by Philipa Foot in 1967 and revived recently with the advent of Autonomous Vehicles [4]. In this thought experiment, an agent needs to make a difficult choice of allowing a runway trolley to proceed its course and kill five track workers or divert the trolley from its course killing only one worker [5]. There are many variations and extensions to this thought experiment but its core can be defined as a moral choice between actions in traffic which will result in different combinations of lives saved and sacrificed. 

Ethical Roadmaps serve as action plans to ensure to ensure that ethics is included in a particular process. Typically, in these Roadmaps, core ethical challenges are outlined alongside proposed solutions and guidelines to address such challenges. Empirical Ethics Studies rely on data to identify normative issues that arise in a particular domain of practice or to make sense of the relevant experiences, understandings, judgments, or intuitions of individuals concerning those issues or to operationalize normative principles with the aim of practical implementation.

References:

[1] Anscombe, G. E. M. (1958). "Modern moral philosophy." Philosophy 33(124): 1-19.

[2] Kagan, S. (2018). Normative ethics, Routledge

[3] Jobin, A., Ienca, M., \& Vayena, E. (2019). The global landscape of AI ethics guidelines. Nature machine intelligence, 1(9), 389-399.

[4] J.-F. Bonnefon, A. Shariff, and I. Rahwan, The social dilemma of autonomous vehicles, Science 352, 1573 (2016)

[5] P. Foot, The problem of abortion and the doctrine of the double effect, Oxford Review 5, 5 (1967).