Abstract

The aim of the article is to distinguish for a medical readership different senses of and connections between the words 'ethics', 'morals', and 'moral philosophy'. 'ethics' and 'morals' can be used as synonyms to refer to first order morality; they can be used to distinguish different areas within morality; 'professional ethics' can be a specialized form of first order morality; or it can refer to codified procedures; 'ethics' can be a synonym for moral philosophy, which is the study of first-order morality