Why does magma rise to the Earth's surface? A: Magma rises to the Earth's surface due to a combination of differences in density with other rocks in the crust and pressure. The differences in density ca... Full Answer >
Normative ethics is the study of ethical action. It is the branch of philosophical ethics that investigates the set of questions that arise when considering how one ought to act, morally speaking.
To put it another way, descriptive ethics would be concerned with determining what proportion of people believe that killing is always wrong, while normative ethics is concerned with whether it is correct to hold such a belief. Hence, normative ethics is sometimes said to be prescriptive, rather than descriptive. However, on certain versions of the meta-ethical view called moral realism, moral facts are both descriptive and prescriptive at the same time. Broadly speaking, normative ethics can be divided into the sub-disciplines of moral theory and applied ethics.