application (of a function) See COMBINATORY. LOGI. applied ethics, the domain of ethics that includes professional ethics, such as business ethics, engineering ethics, and medical ethics, as well as practical ethics such as environmental ethics, which is applied, and thus practical as opposed to theoretical, but not focused on any one discipline. One of the major disputes among those who work in applied ethics is whether or not there is a general and universal account of morality applicable both to the ethical issues in the professions and to various practical problems. Some philosophers believe that each of the professions or each field of activity develops an ethical code for itself and that there need be no close relationship between (e.g.) business ethics, medical ethics, and environmental ethics. Others hold that the same moral system applies to all professions and fields. They claim that the appearance of different moral systems is simply due to certain problems being more salient for some professions and fields than for others.
The former position accepts the consequence that the ethical codes of different professions might conflict with one another, so that a physician in business might find that business ethics would require one action but medical ethics another. Engineers who have been promoted to management positions sometimes express concern over the tension between what they perceive to be their responsibility as engineers and their responsibility as managers in a business. Many lawyers seem to hold that there is similar tension between what common morality requires and what they must do as lawyers. Those who accept a universal morality hold that these tensions are all resolvable because there is only one common morality.
Underlying both positions is the pervasive but false view of common morality as providing a unique right answer to every moral problem. Those who hold that each profession or field has its own moral code do not realize that common morality allows for conflicts of duties. Most of those who put forward moral theories, e.g., utilitarians, Kantians, and contractarians, attempt to generate a universal moral system that solves all moral problems. This creates a situation that leads many in applied ethics to dismiss theoretical ethics as irrelevant to their concerns. An alternative view of a moral theory is to think of it on the model of a scientific theory, primarily concerned to describe common morality rather than generate a new improved version. On this model, it is clear that although morality rules out many alternatives as unacceptable, it does not provide unique right answers to every controversial moral question.
On this model, different fields and different professions may interpret the common moral system in somewhat different ways. For example, although deception is always immoral if not justified, what counts as deception is not the same in all professions. Not informing a patient of an alternative treatment counts as deceptive for a physician, but not telling a customer of an alternative to what she is about to buy does not count as deceptive for a salesperson. The professions also have considerable input into what special duties are incurred by becoming a member of their profession. Applied ethics is thus not the mechanical application of a common morality to a particular profession or field, but an independent discipline that clarifies and analyzes the practices in a field or profession so that common morality can be applied. See also BIOETHICS , ETHICS, MORALITY, PRACTICAL REASON , RATIONALITY. B.Ge.