Practical ethics is the study of specific, practical ethical problems such as abortion, euthanasia, war and our treatment of animals. Clearly, the study of practical ethical issues is not independent of the study of general normative principles. General normative principles have implications for specific practical ethical problems, so acceptance of a general normative principle may lead one to change one's opinions about a specific practical issue, and one's firm conviction concerning a specific practical issue may lead one to see the failing of a general normative principle. Meta-ethics is not concerned with which moral principles we should follow, or how they relate to specific practical problems, but investigates abstract conceptual and metaphysical issues which arise for any moral principle. Emotivism claims that moral judgements are simply expressions of emotions.
Descriptivism claims that moral terms are purely descriptive.
Ethical relativism is the doctrine that moral judgements are true or false only relative to a particular context. Some hold that murder is wrong because God has commanded us not to commit murder. Ethical intuitionism is the doctrine that there is a special faculty of moral intuition which gives us access to moral facts, to facts about how we ought to behave. Deontology Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought 2. Descriptivism And Prescriptivism Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought 3.