normative ethics what is it in this video we'll go over normative ethics I'm also going to zoom out and just go over ethics in general so you know what normative ethics are not I'm also going to give you examples of normative ethical theories and a few ways that they are the same and different let's get started we should get started with the idea of Ethics in general normative ethics is one way you could be thinking about ethics I want to explain applied ethics and meta ethics so that you understand what normative ethics is not all of these things they're all United because they are all different parts of things you'd be studying in ethics it's all about what it is permissible or impermissible for us to do and in ethics you're asking the questions that have to do with what is contingent and what is Poss possible contingency means that it does not need to happen it is not necessary it's possible that it doesn't happen and possibility means that it can happen it also can not happen and when you're dealing with ethics you're dealing with scenarios or questions that are in the realm of things that can happen but don't need to happen and then the question arises should it happen happen so anytime you're talking about ethics you're talking about things that are contingent and yet possible in normative ethics you are literally looking at the Norms what it would be normal to do the standard the criteria what you should aim to do the ideal dos and don'ts for your action to be ethical or in other words for ethical actions and this is a big question what are the standards or if there's just one then what is the standard for acting in a way that is ethical permissible righteous and that's when you get different theories in normative ethics you're studying the different theories that each tell you what the Norms are or what the standards are or what the criteria are for ethical action before we dig a little deeper into normative ethics let's see how all three of these are entangled you want to call some action wrong well wrong according to what say you think that euthanasia is unethical well according to what according to what theory where are the standards coming from you're able to apply your ethics if you have an ethics and so normative Theory provides what those standards are that you can use to judge an action as being right if it meets that standard or wrong if it falls short of that standard so that's this connection and this one's involved as well meta ethics that is when you're calling some action right or wrong according to some ethical Theory some ethical normative theory in the back of your mind somewhere that you might not even be thinking about you have idea about whether that applies to only this case or if it's Universal what does it even mean to call that action wrong uh what makes that action wrong so there's more to think about in meta ethics but let's put it aside more to think about an applied ethics but let's put it aside and let's dig deeper into some examples of normative ethical theories five examples of normative ethical theories are on the board now what I want to do is show you what they have in common and how they're different if you have an ethical normative theory that is consequentialist that would mean that the outcome of the action could justify whatever you had to do if what you did produced outcome consequences something that was good then whatever you did must have been right Hedonism Hedonism has that root word Hedon and it's all all about pleasure if your ethical theory is hedonistic it means that what is ethical is going to be aligned with what feels good or what pleases somebody let's also talk about the scope about the objectivity when this ethical Theory makes a claim that something is wrong is it saying that it's wrong always so let's see which one of these theories are consequentialist and and which ones are hedonistic and which ones are objective here are a few ways to compare these normative ethical theories this is the water down version each one of these could have a 45 minute video