ABSTRACT
Ethics has been understood and practiced in different ways at different times. Some of these differences are the result merely of changes in fashion, others result from changes in intellectual climate or developments in science or technology, others mark a genuine development in subject. Philosophers automatically think of ethics as identical with moral philosophy. Ethics as a branch of philosophy is not simply identical with ethics as a branch of study, in which are studied problems of conduct and character as they relate to either another branch of study. Ethics, as the study of the principles, standards, and methods for distinguishing right from wrong and good from bad, though a branch of philosophy, nonetheless can have branches capable of developing into a science. Psychology once was a branch of philosophy and developed into a science and was thence no longer a branch of philosophy. Instead we have as branches of philosophy philosophical psychology, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of mind.
