Ethics: The term "ethics" is used in several different ways. First, it means the study of morals. It is also the name for that branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of morals and moral evaluation - e.g., what is right and wrong, virtuous or vicious, and beneficial or harmful (to others). Second, the term ethics or morality is used to mean the standards for ethical or moral behavior of a particular group, such as "Buddhist ethics" or "nursing ethics" or "Roman Catholic morality" or "the professional ethics of engineers in the twentieth century United States." To give a description of such ethical codes and standards is descriptive ethics, . Descriptive ethics does not require making a judgment as to whether the code or standards of behavior have ethical justification. Examination of the adequacy of moral or ethical values, standards or judgments is normative ethics. Third, some authors even use the term "ethics" or "morality" more loosely to mean any code of behavior, even one that does not claim to have moral justification. For example, Robert Jackall in Moral Mazes describes what he calls a corporation's "ethics" or "morality" and takes it to include such judgments as "What is right is what the guy above you wants from you."(p. 6) Such a judgment is about the best (i.e., most effective) way to survive in the organization, but does not pretend to be a statement about what is morally/ethically justified. It may be important to examine such codes of behavior and see how they affect the opportunities for moral action, but not every code of behavior has, or is even claimed to have moral/ethical justification. The term "moral" tends to be used for more practical elements, such as "moral problems" and "moral beliefs", and "ethical" tends to be used for more abstract and theoretical elements, such as "ethical principle", but the distinction is by no means hard and fast. Some philosophers and theologians have drawn a distinction between the moral and the ethical. They have drawn such a variety of different distinctions, however, that to use any one of them invites confusion with the others. Therefore the terms "ethical" and "moral" are used interchangeably here.

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