Final answer:
Applied ethics is the use of moral principles to analyze and decide upon the rightness of actions in specific controversial issues, often requiring an interdisciplinary approach and intersecting with law and policy-making.
Step-by-step explanation:
What is Applied Ethics?
Applied ethics is a branch of ethics that focuses on the practical application of moral norms and principles to specific controversial issues, with the goal of determining the rightness of specific actions. It is an interdisciplinary field, requiring knowledge from philosophy, law, sociology, and sometimes theology, as well as the specific field in which the ethical issues arise. This can include diverse topics such as bioethics, environmental ethics, business ethics, and the ethical implications of emerging technologies.
While metaethics examines the origins and meanings of ethical principles, and normative ethics establishes the basic rules for determining what is ethically right and wrong, applied ethics deals with the actual application of these rules in real-life scenarios. It might examine, for instance, the ethical dimensions of informed consent in healthcare, the permissibility of physician-assisted dying, or the moral considerations surrounding environmental policies.
Given its practical nature, applied ethics often intersects with policy-making and legislation, expanding beyond philosophical discourse to real-world implementation and making it a critical field for societal governance and moral progress.