Final answer:
Ethics in the philosophical sense sets the framework for acceptable conduct by establishing moral principles and standards. Normative ethics specifically focuses on moral behavior and provides principles for identifying right conduct. It encompasses consequentialist, deontological, and virtue ethics approaches to morality.
Step-by-step explanation:
In the philosophical sense, ethics provides the basic rules or parameters for conducting any activity in an acceptable manner. Ethics is a discipline that is concerned with what is morally good and bad, right and wrong. This field is a form of inquiry involving the philosophical study of morality through a systematic approach. It is divided into metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics.
Normative ethics is central to the question as it focuses on establishing moral behavior and provides criteria or principles to guide correct behavior. It involves systematized accounts of morality that suggest standards of right conduct, and includes three main approaches: consequentialism, deontological ethics, and virtue ethics. Each of these approaches uses different criteria (consequences, duty, or character) to determine what is ethically appropriate.
Understanding the difference between morality and ethics is crucial in the philosophical discourse. Ethics refers to the formalization and reasoning behind moral choices, whereas morality is the adherence to those ethical principles or rules.