WHAT IS THE NATURE OF APPLIED ETHICS?

The term applied ethics came into use around 1970s by some philosophers and
academicians who wanted to address the pressing moral problems in the society,
professional ethics, specifically medical and business ethics. To talk about applied ethics
they chose the areas of abortion, racism, sexism, affirmative actions, problems in
workplaces, legal enforcement of morality, animal and human rights, and euthanasia.
Applied ethics, which is also the practical aspect of ethics consist of the systematic
application of moral theory to particular moral problems. It is ethics applied to the cases
of morally dilemmatic situations, where a person must act but does not know the
morally correct course of action. It maybe an actual situation, a possible future situation,
or maybe a fictitious one taken as thought experiment to provide a paradigm case which
may include the real world. Substantive, normative, and meta ethical considerations do
enter into applied ethics in a sense that the moral theory which is applied to a moral
dilemma maybe a product of this combination. So, the primary concern of applied ethics
is more of a practical nature, rather than a theoretical one.
According to Brenda Almond, co-founder of Society of Applied Ethics, “Applied ethics is
the philosophical examination from moral stand points of particular issues in private
and public life, that are matters of moral judgement.
In the situations of moral dilemma, where man faces a conflict of “what I ought to do?”,
and encounters this conflict in various fields of human life, which applied ethics
attempts to resolve. There are man examples for this such as: issue of abortion brings
the dilemma between rights of the mother and rights of the fetus; Euthanasia raises the
question whether one has the right to die with dignity vis-à-vis doctor’s moral
obligation to the rights of the patient. There are innumerable examples such as conflicts
in business ethics, press and journalism, environmental ethics, legal ethics etc.
When you talk about applying a moral principle to a complete morally dilemmatic case,
we have to take the help of applied ethics. Dr. Rajendra Prasad in his article ‘Applying
ethics: modes, motives and level of commitment’ talks about the logistics of applying
ethical concepts to morally conflicting situations. He spoke of modes of motivation
behind the applications, as well as the level of commitment in such application. So, he
maintains that ethical theory can be applied at various levels – judgement, decision, and
persuasion.

Moral Content of Applied Ethics and its problems

In applied ethics there are three influential types of answers which are source of the
moral content. They are: internal account, external account, and mixed internal-external
account. These three categories are designed for the analysis of professional ethics but
they also can be generalized to other areas like group ethics and institutional ethics. So,
in brief, we can say that the internal account defends ethics which is derived from
professional or institutional or group practice standards.
The second is the external account maintains that applied ethics rely upon and also
need the justification in public opinion, common morality, and religious ethics.
The mixed account contains a distinctive form of practical ethics to which includes both
internal and external account and is again influenced by external cultural framework.
Internalism – It is one of the influential types of source of content in applied ethics.
According to it, the established practices provide the source of practical ethics. Here, the
practice is to designate a cooperative arrangement in pursuit of goods that are internal
to structured, communal lives. Each profession has a history and specific character that
sustains a tradition which requires the profession to cultivate its virtue. Here, they
maintain that moral framework in professionalism is derived from the role specific
duties, and the professional virtues.
Criticism of Internalism: In internalism, we can find numerous reasonable disputes
which are there in the professional roles incorporating the moral obligations and ideas.
The traditional professional standards are no guarantee for moral adequacy.
Unfortunately, the professional codes in medicine, business, journalism, engineering are
over simplifying the moral requirement. They made it rigid, and claim more moral
completeness and authority, than they are entitled to.
Broody and Miller, the two applied ethics philosophers address the problem by
distinguishing the core moral norms and the dogmatic and unsystematic provisions
found in many codes of professional ethics. According to them, the internal morality can,
and should evolve in the face of social change. Even the core of medical ethics should be
thoughtfully revaluated to fit in the lives of modern society which is influenced by social
values.
Externalism: When we take Ethical ideas from outside we call it Externalism. Show an
external morality is one that incorporates the norms and values that sustains,
supplements and corrects the internal morality. So in the sources of applied ethics
external moralities are the public opinion, law, religious institutions and philosophical
ethics.
the external context we can analyze the moral content of applied ethics by contrasting it
with moral internalism. When we take ethical ideas from outside, we call it externalism.
An external morality is the one that incorporates the norms and the values that sustain
supplement and correct the internal morality. So, the sources of external morality are
public opinion, laws, religious institutions and philosophical ethics.
In this way external morality provides an appropriate basis for applied ethics. To make
a sound judgement in applied ethics, there must be a single, unified ethical theory. The
goal of a theory is to provide a common framework on which all disputing parties
should agree and it will give a guidance in the circumstances where we are not morally
clear or we are in moral dilemma.
Criticisms: There are many philosophers who have criticized this theory. According to
them it is fatally flawed and is incapable of giving sound advice. It gives a partisan
approach independent of any confusion in a morally authoritative manner. It is often
unclear whether one can criticize any external source by taking the help of any
philosophical theory in moral context.
At present, we have no such theory or general consequences which exists in case of
externalism. In fact, the morally informed individuals refute this theory because they
know that philosophical theory primarily attempt to understand and unify the morality
and does not attempt to specify the practical commitments.
Mixed internal and external account
The content of the third type of approach of applied ethics includes the elements of both
external & internal approach. It starts with the conviction that moral commitments are
implemented in different ways in diverse cultural context. The authority to practice is
itself granted by society on the condition that its profession and institution will be
responsible for the high morals accepted by the society.
So, the reform of the practices is prevalent to the moral rules and the social practices.
Acc. to this theory the philosophers hold the view that profound disagreement exists
about the nature and req. of professional practices in larger communities like orthodox
Judaism, Roman Catholics, Hinduism, and secular humanism.
Criticism
Many philosophers have criticized this moral thesis as being skeptical. There is no
substantive foundation in these secular A.E. So, lacking such foundations these A.E. may
not have any historical roots in communities because no internal morality can escape its
roots in the external morality of a particular culture. We all agree that this theory shows
an insight into the relation b/w external and internal morality, but by emphasizing the
diversity it overlooks the basic similarities, and it neglects the core identical moral
goals. Paradoxically, this theory also overstates the degree of the shared agreement
within the community. Another witness is that this makes internalism and externalism
account effectively precludes a cross-cultural and cross-community judgement.

Problems of methods in Applied Ethics

In applied ethics there are three important models which are used for the justification
of the methods of the applied ethics. They are the top-down model to bottom-up model
and the third one is called the coherent model which refuses to assign priority either to
top-down or bottom- up strategy. Let us briefly discuss each one of them. These namely
are;
1. The top-down model
2. The bottom-up model
3. The coherent model
Let us briefly discuss each one of them.
1. Top-Down Model: this model approaches applied ethics by emphasizing the
general norms and the ethical theory. This model applies the pre-existing general
norms to new particular situations. So, this follows a deductive form for applying
a rule.
 - Every act of description A is obligatory;
- Act B is a description of A;
- Therefore, act B is also obligatory.
This model is a very simple case of judgement which comes directly under a
general principle. In our day to day moral life we give priority to this conception
of morality.
Criticisms
There are many types of problems which are involved in this type of moral
priority thesis.
First, the moral judgement in hard cases always requires the moral specific rules,
which is not possible in a general way. We can bring a particular instance under
a general principle, but for specific moral cases we have to give importance to
multiple general rules.

Secondly, the fact of a moral situation is such that no general norms can be
clearly applied.
Thirdly, the top-down model creates a potentially infinite regress of justification,
which implies a never-ending demand for the final justification. In theory, we
could not handle this problem or could not find a self-justifying rational principle
which can occupy the status which justifies all other principles or rules.
2. Bottom-Up Model; This model emphasizes the moral tradition, experience, and
the particular circumstances as the method to approach A.E. It believes that the
moral reasoning and justification proceeds bottom-up, and not top-down. It
refers to the existing social agreement, practices, and the comparative case
analysis as the starting point from which we make the moral decisions. This
bottom-up model includes several distinctive methodologies such as casuistry,
various form of pragmatism, and particularism.
So, here the moral principles are derivative in the order of knowledge and not
primary.

Criticisms
This bottom-up theory has several problems.

Firstly, it defends something as if a paradigm case in particular circumstances. It

informs the moral judgement by the facts alone which is not sufficient enough.
All analogical reasoning requires a connecting norm to indicate another object,
but here it is not possible because the creation of the circumstances, or the
norms cannot be achieved by analogy itself.

Secondly, it also encounters problems where there is existing conflicting

analogies, judgements, and case interpretations. So, the bottom-up account has
 no clear methodological resource to prevent a biased development. It has critical
cultural blindness, rash analogy, and mere popular opinion. In the end we can
say that this may present a method without any content or a tool of thought
which has fundamental importance for our moral thinking. It also lacks the initial
moral premises.

3. method of coherence (Reflective equilibrium) – Now we have come to know that

both the models are regarded as insufficient resource for Applied Ethics, because
neither the general principle nor the particular circumstances have a sufficient
power to generate conclusion with needed reliability. John Rawls has talked
about this theory in Reflective Equilibrium and has accepted it as more
influencing model in developing and maintaining a system of ethics. This method
investigates in ethics as reflective testing moral principles and theoretical moral
beliefs in a coherent way.
"Considered judgments" is a technical term referring to judgments in which
moral beliefs and capacities are most likely to be presented without a distorting
bias. The goal of reflective equilibrium is to match, prune, and adjust considered
judgments in order to render them coherent with the premises of our most
general moral commitments. We start with sound judgments of moral rightness
and wrongness, and then construct a more general and more specific account
that is consistent with these paradigm judgments, rendering them as coherent as
possible. We then test the resultant action-guides to see if they yield incoherent
results. But when we analyze this method we face, a never ending search for
incoherent challenges in our current normal framework.
For example; Consider the ethics of organ transplantation: suppose we are
drawn to one of two policies: the first is to distribute organs based on expected
years of survival in order to maximise the procedure's benefits, and the second is
to distribute organs based on time on the waiting list in order to give every
candidate an equal chance. Choosing one policy over the other will stifle or even
eliminate the effectiveness of the other. In a theory of fair distribution, we can
keep both, but we'll need to impose constraints on both principles, as well as a
way to describe our promises.

Criticism: One of the problem which we face in this is that a bare coherent norm
never provides a sufficient basis for the justification. The judgements
presumably have a history rich in moral experience. So the ethics for centuries
has turn out that is generally limited and unreliable. In addition to these criticism
we see that there is vagueness surrounding the precise nature and scope of the
method of this coherence model. The focus might be on judgement of policies
finding moral truth and we are also not clear how should we achieve this
coherence.

The Problems of Applied Ethics in conflict, disagreement and

specification
After analyzing all the methods and nature of applied ethics we can say that the
applied philosophers appears to do what the philosophers have always been
doing, that is, they analyze the concept examine the hidden presupposition of
moral opinion and offers criticism and strategy to justify the belief, policies and
action. They seek a reasonable defense of moral viewpoint and use the moral
framework to distinguish the Justified moral claims from the unjustified ones. By
doing so they face a problems in conflict, disagreement and specification. The
general theory and principles must be made specific for the content otherwise,
moral guidelines will be empty and in effective. This implementation of general
norms must be taken into account, figure feasibility, efficiency, cultural
pluralism, political procedures, uncertainty about the risk and moral dilemma. In
short, we can say that the theories and the principle must be specified for a
content. The moral disagreement emerge in the moral life from several different
sources these includes the disagreement ones whose specification is appropriate
to factual disagreement, which results from genuine moral dilemma. It should be
assumed that in the contrast of disagreement, at least one party is morally biased
or mistaken. So, the conscious and reasonable moral agent should work with due
diligence and at specification and reasoning about moral problem.

Conclusion
In the end we can conclude that a proper solution in applied ethics for its
method and nature is not universal we are also, not convinced that the
traditional philosophical ethics or contemporary ethical theories can play any
significant role in in case of analysis or in policies or professional context.
Despite the suspicion raised , no morally serious individual can doubt the
importance of issues treated in applied ethics.