Author: Chelsea Haramia
Categories: Ethics, Bioethics
Wordcount: 999
1. What Is Applied Ethics?
If you’ve ever wondered, say, whether you ought to recycle, whether the death penalty is wrong, or whether using recreational drugs is morally permissible, then you’re thinking about applied ethics, also called practical ethics.[1]
Applied ethicists try to evaluate whether, when, and why real-world choices and actions are ethically appropriate or not.
This essay introduces this very practical area of philosophy.
2. Areas of Applied Ethics
Any practical issue of ethical significance could be a concern of applied ethics. However, certain topics receive more attention than others. Canonical and emerging areas of applied ethics and example questions include the following:
- Animal Ethics: e.g.: Is eating meat wrong?[2]
- Biomedical Ethics: e.g.: On whom should we be allowed to perform medical tests?[3]
- Business Ethics: e.g.: What obligations do businesses have besides making money for their owners?[4]
- Environmental Ethics: e.g.: Should we curb climate change for the sake of future generations?[5]
- Poverty and Aid: e.g.: To what extent ought we give to charity?[6]
- Reproductive Ethics: e.g.: Is it permissible to abort a fetus?[7]
- Sexual Ethics: e.g.: Is prostitution wrong?[8]
- AI and Digital Ethics: e.g.: Is it permissible to use generative AI when writing papers?[9]
Applied ethicists apply their understanding of ethical reasoning to the study of specific, practical issues and questions. This is different from normative ethicists who develop general theories of rightness or wrongness that could apply to any activity.[10]
3. How to Do Applied Ethics
As a sub-discipline in philosophy, applied ethicists use standard philosophical methods, such as rigorously evaluating arguments and seeking adequate definitions of key terms.[11] But it also involves methods particularly useful for addressing practical ethical issues.
A. Understanding the Facts
An essential task for applied ethicists is developing an accurate understanding of the activity or issue in question: mistaken factual assumptions can lead to mistaken ethical arguments. So, e.g., to do medical ethics, one must know relevant facts about how medicine is practiced. To do environmental ethics, one must know relevant facts about the natural world. To do AI ethics, one must know relevant facts about machine learning and large language models.
With an adequate understanding of the relevant facts, the applied ethicist can then use methodological and theoretical tools to develop arguments about the ethical issues involved.
B. Ethical Theories, Principles, and Intuitions
With respect to theoretical tools, one could approach applied ethical questions using a given normative theory. For example, a utilitarian might argue for the impermissibility of eating meat by appealing to the intense suffering endured by most, if not all, animals raised for consumption.[12]
It can also be useful to consider what a variety of ethical theories would say and then draw conclusions based on that more comprehensive analysis: if many plausible ethical theories support the same practical conclusion, that generally provides stronger support for that conclusion than if fewer theories support it.[13]
The founders of the applied ethics field of biomedical ethics dealt with the problem of conflicting normative theories by identifying core ethical principles that are specific to medical practice but do not require accepting any particular ethical theory, such as respecting autonomy, reducing harms, promoting benefits, and acting fairly and justly. This approach is known as Principlism.[14] It can arguably be useful for analyzing the ethics of other activities as well.
Finally, applied ethicists can appeal to widely shared ethical intuitions or judgments about particular cases. They can then examine these judgments to identify what features of the cases seem morally relevant and use those insights to draw conclusions about other cases: we’ll see this below.
C. Arguments from Analogy
A famous example of an applied ethics question that employs an argument from analogy is the following:
If you woke up one day to find that you had been kidnapped by the Society of Music Lovers and hooked up to an unconscious, famous violinist who needed to be attached to your body for nine months in order to survive, would it be permissible to unhook yourself and go about your own business?[15]
While this case might seem overly fantastical, it is meant to serve as an analogy to certain abortion cases: a judgment about this case may provide reason to make similar judgments about relevantly similar cases.[16]
Of course, there are many ways in which the two cases are disanalogous. The applied ethicist must therefore consider whether any of these differences are morally relevant differences. If the cases are similar in all the morally relevant respects, then a judgment about the violinist case can provide reason for a similar judgment about abortion. Arguments from analogy thus allow applied ethicists to use judgments about one case to help evaluate another.
D. Bare-Difference Arguments
Here is a famous example that employs the method of a bare-difference argument:
Smith and Jones both stand to split a large inheritance with their respective cousins; each resolves to kill his cousin; Smith drowns his cousin; and Jones sees his cousin go underwater and lets his cousin drown.[17]
The apparent bare difference between the cases is that Smith kills his cousin whereas Jones lets his cousin die. Is Smith morally worse than Jones, or are they equally bad?
Answering this question can help us determine whether the difference between killing someone and letting someone die is itself morally relevant. If there is sometimes no moral difference between killing and letting die, we can then apply this conclusion to practical questions about euthanasia.
4. Conclusion
Despite these methods and approaches, disagreements remain about how best to do applied ethics. So, abstract, theoretical work must still be done to justify the ways that one might choose to do applied ethics.
Nonetheless, the world has many ethical problems that we can think about in systematic and rigorous ways. Thus, applied ethics research is clearly important for philosophers and non-philosophers alike and should be encouraged. And applied ethics research is itself proof that philosophy is highly practical and relevant to issues that matter in our everyday lives and in society more broadly.
Notes
[1] See The Death Penalty by Benjamin S. Yost. This essay mentions only a few areas in applied ethics: for more introductions to topics in these areas, see the essays in Ethics category of 1000-Word Philosophy. For popular anthologies compiled mostly of research articles in applied ethics, see, e.g., Boonin and Oddie (2009) and LaFollette (2025).
The “boundaries” of applied ethics are not clear and so some applied ethics issues are also addressed in Social and Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Race, Philosophy of Sex and Gender, and other subdisciplinary areas of philosophy.
[2] For an applied ethics research article on these topics, see, e.g., Norcross (2004). For an introduction, see Vegetarianism and Veganism: The Ethics of Eating Animals by Zach Ferguson.
[3] See, e.g., Brody (1998). For an introduction, see Ethics and Animal Research by Paul Bali and Theories of Moral Considerability: Who and What Matters Morally? by Jonathan Spelman. Also see Principlism in Biomedical Ethics: Respect for Autonomy, Non-Maleficence, Beneficence, and Justice by G. M. Trujillo, Jr.
[4] See, e.g., French (1984), for discussion of the unique question of how, in addition to individual people, groups or collective entities, like corporations, might have ethical obligations. For an introduction to many of the concerns of business ethics, see Business Ethics by Thomas Metcalf.
[5] See, e.g., Gardiner (2011). For an introduction to related issues, see Longtermism: How Much Should We Care About the Far Future? by Dylan Balfour.
[6] See, e.g., Singer (2009). For introductions, see Ethics and Absolute Poverty: Peter Singer and Effective Altruism by Brandon Boesch and Distributive Justice: How Should Resources be Allocated? By Dick Timmer and Tim Meijers.
[7] See, e.g., Boonin (2003). For an introduction, see The Ethics of Abortion by Nathan Nobis.
[8] See, e.g., Nussbaum (1999). For discussion of another topic in sexual ethics, see The Ethics of Homosexuality: Is It Morally Wrong? by Nathan Nobis.
[9] See, e.g., Rentier (2025). For an introduction to related issues, see Artificial Intelligence: Ethics, Society, and the Environment by Thomas Metcalf.
[10] For introductions to some of the most influential ethical theories—proposed explanations of what makes wrong actions wrong and right actions right—see Consequentialism and Utilitarianism by Shane Gronholz, Kantian Deontology: Immanuel Kant’s Ethics by Andrew Chapman, and John Rawls’ ‘A Theory of Justice’ by Ben Davies.
[11] For an introduction to common philosophical methods, see What is Philosophy? by Thomas Metcalf.
[12] See Consequentialism and Utilitarianism by Shane Gronholz and Vegetarianism and Veganism: The Ethics of Eating Animals by Zach Ferguson.
[13] See the many introductions to influential ethical theories—some of which are generally considered more plausible than others—in the Ethics category of 1000-Word Philosophy.
[14] For a recent statement of principlism from its founders, see Beauchamp and Childress (2026). For an introduction, see Principlism in Biomedical Ethics: Respect for Autonomy, Non-Maleficence, Beneficence, and Justice by G. M. Trujillo, Jr. A common objection to principlism is that it may fail to be “action-guiding”—meaning, have clear implications for what should be done—when principles conflict: e.g., respecting someone’s autonomy may harm them, or harm others, and so those principles might conflict, and the theory does not appear to provide adequate guidance on how to resolve these conflicts.
[15] See Thomson (1971) for this case. For further discussion, see The Ethics of Abortion by Nathan Nobis.
[16] What makes analogies better and worse is identified in the study of arguments and critical thinking. See Arguments: Why Do You Believe What You Believe? by Thomas Metcalf and Critical Thinking: What is it to be a Critical Thinker? by Carolina Flores.
[17] See Rachels (1975) for this case. For further discussion see Euthanasia, or Mercy Killing by Nathan Nobis.
References
Beauchamp, Tom L. and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 9th ed., Oxford University Press (2026).
Boonin, David. A Defense of Abortion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2003).
Brody, Baruch A. The Ethics of Biomedical Research: An International Perspective, Oxford: Oxford University Press (1998).
French, Peter. Collective and Corporate Responsibility. New York: Columbia University Press (1984).
Gardiner, Stephen. A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2011).
LaFollette, Hugh (ed.). Ethics in Practice: An Anthology, 6th Edition. Wiley (2025).
Metcalf, Thomas. “The Underdetermination Objection to Deductive Bare-difference Arguments” in Southwest Philosophy Review, 29:1 (2013).
Norcross, Alastair. “Puppies, Pigs, and People: Eating Meat and Marginal Cases” in Philosophical Perspectives 18 (2004).
Nussbaum, Martha. Sex and Social Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press (1999).
Rachels, James. “Active and Passive Euthanasia” in The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 292 (1975): 78-80.
Rentier, Eline. “To Use or Not to Use: Exploring the Ethical Implications of Using Generative AI in Academic Writing” in AI Ethics 5, 3421–3425 (2025).
Singer, Peter. The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty, New York: Random House (2009).
Thomson, Judith Jarvis. “A Defense of Abortion” in Philosophy and Public Affairs 1:1 (Autumn 1971): 47–66.
For Further Reading
Nobis, Nathan. “Moral Experts’ Understanding and Skills” in Quillette (2022).
Related Essays
The Death Penalty by Benjamin S. Yost
Vegetarianism and Veganism: The Ethics of Eating Animals by Zach Ferguson
Ethics and Animal Research by Paul Bali
Theories of Moral Considerability: Who and What Matters Morally? by Jonathan Spelman
Principlism in Biomedical Ethics: Respect for Autonomy, Non-Maleficence, Beneficence, and Justice by G. M. Trujillo, Jr.
Business Ethics by Thomas Metcalf
Longtermism: How Much Should We Care About the Far Future? by Dylan Balfour
Ethics and Absolute Poverty: Peter Singer and Effective Altruism by Brandon Boesch
Distributive Justice: How Should Resources be Allocated? By Dick Timmer and Tim Meijers
The Ethics of Abortion by Nathan Nobis
The Ethics of Homosexuality: Is It Morally Wrong? by Nathan Nobis
Artificial Intelligence: Ethics, Society, and the Environment by Thomas Metcalf
Consequentialism and Utilitarianism by Shane Gronholz
Kantian Deontology: Immanuel Kant’s Ethics by Andrew Chapman
John Rawls’ ‘A Theory of Justice’ by Ben Davies
What is Philosophy? by Thomas Metcalf
Epistemology, or Theory of Knowledge by Thomas Metcalf
Consequentialism and Utilitarianism by Shane Gronholz
Euthanasia, or Mercy Killing by Nathan Nobis
Arguments: Why Do You Believe What You Believe? by Thomas Metcalf
Critical Thinking: What is it to be a Critical Thinker? by Carolina Flores
Translation
Revision History
This essay was originally posted on February 13, 2018; a revision was posted on October 23, 2026.
About the Author
Chelsea Haramia is a philosopher and ethicist serving as Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bonn’s Center for Science and Thought, where she works on the Desirable AI project. She is also co-Director of the SETI Institute’s new Discovery & Futures Lab. She is an Advisory Board member of the Cosmic Footprint Society, a member of the SETI Post-Detection Hub and Chair of the Human Factors Working Group, a Science Advisory Board member, and Affiliate of the SETI Institute, and a Management Committee member of the European COST Action FOGOS (Futures-Oriented Governance of Outer Space: Toward Peace, Equity, & Environmental Integrity). Her research takes place at the intersection of science, technology, values, and the environment, with special attention to issues in AI ethics, the ethics of space exploration, astrobiology ethics, and environmental ethics—as well as work in feminist philosophy, global and intergenerational ethics, and public philosophy. ChelseaHaramia.com
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