Normative ethics is the branch of philosophical ethics that investigates the set of questions that arise when considering “how ought one to act, morally speaking?” Normative ethics is distinct from meta-ethics because it examines standards for the rightness and wrongness of actions, while meta-ethics studies the meaning of moral language and the metaphysics of moral facts. Normative ethics is also distinct from descriptive ethics, as the latter is an empirical investigation of people’s … [Read more...]