Normative Ethics

Haha, Norm-ative....
...What? Anyway, Normative, or First Order Ethics is the search for what makes actions morally good or bad and there are three main ways of approaching it.
 * First, there is the consequentialist approach that argues good and bad comes from the outcomes of actions, this is approach taken by Mill and Bentham in Utilitarianism, a good decision here is one that maximises the amount of happiness while minimising suffering, I.e. saving children from a burning building or not. Saving them would make more people happy than not as they are alive/ they don't have to get new children and minimise suffering as the parents do not have to go through the pain of child loss.
 * Secondly, there is the Deontological approach, put forward by Kant, that suggests morality lies in intention: It doesn't matter that you stopped a bank heist by tripping the robber over if you didn't know that he was holding the place up; you were just tripping someone up, you arsehole. Kant put forward two formulations of a thing called the Categorical Imperative in order to make judge whether your intentions were truly good
 * Finally, there is Virtue Ethics. Aristotle's theory believes that morality lies in developing a virtuous character and making sure that you act in the most virtuous way, focuses on the inherent character of a person, rather than on specific actions.

So what about applying this knowledge?
Well as it so happens, you may just get a question that is a variation on 'What does it mean to say that an ethical theory is normative? ', and that can basically be surmised by saying that it seeks to show that actions can be right, or wrong and how one would arrive at this conclusion. [[Category:N]]