Situated ethics, often confused with situational ethics, is a view of applied ethics

Applied ethics

Applied ethics is, in the words of Brenda Almond, co-founder of the Society for Applied Philosophy, "the philosophical examination, from a moral standpoint, of particular issues in private and public life that are matters of moral judgment"...

 in which abstract standards from a culture or theory are considered to be far less important than the ongoing processes in which one is personally and physically involved, e.g. climate, ecosystem, etc. It is one of several theories of ethics within the philosophy of action.

There are also situated

Situated

In artificial intelligence and cognitive science, the term situated refers to an agent which is embedded in an environment. The term situated is commonly used to refer to robots, but some researchers argue that software agents can also be situated if:...

 theories of economics

Economics

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

, e.g. most green economics, and of knowledge

Knowledge

Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...

, usually based on some situated ethics. All emphasize the actual physical, geographical, ecological and infrastructural state the actor is in, which determines that actor's actions or range of actions - all deny that there is any one point of view

Perspective (cognitive)

Perspective in theory of cognition is the choice of a context or a reference from which to sense, categorize, measure or codify experience, cohesively forming a coherent belief, typically for comparing with another...

 from which to apply standards of or by authority

Authority

The word Authority is derived mainly from the Latin word auctoritas, meaning invention, advice, opinion, influence, or command. In English, the word 'authority' can be used to mean power given by the state or by academic knowledge of an area .-Authority in Philosophy:In...

. This makes such theories unpopular with authority, and popular with those who advocate political decentralisation

Décentralisation

Décentralisation is a french word for both a policy concept in French politics from 1968-1990, and a term employed to describe the results of observations of the evolution of spatial economic and institutional organization of France....

.

Embodiment

Humans pass through Kohlberg/Gilligan's stages of moral development. Up to stage 3, these stages are compatible with embodiment

Embodiment

Embodied or embodiment may refer to:in psychology and philosophy,*Embodied cognition , a position in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind emphasizing the role that the body plays in shaping the mind...

. Most philosophy of law emphasizes that the fact that bodies take risk to enforce laws, make laws embodied at least to the degree they are enforced.

However, the stages become problematic when Lawrence Kohlberg

Lawrence Kohlberg

Lawrence Kohlberg was a Jewish American psychologist born in Bronxville, New York, who served as a professor at the University of Chicago, as well as Harvard University. Having specialized in research on moral education and reasoning, he is best known for his theory of stages of moral development...

 posits a universal ethics - that is, a disembodied ethics. All ethical decisions are necessarily situated in a world

World

World is a common name for the whole of human civilization, specifically human experience, history, or the human condition in general, worldwide, i.e. anywhere on Earth....

. Carol Gilligan

Carol Gilligan

Carol Gilligan is an American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist best known for her work with and against Lawrence Kohlberg on ethical community and ethical relationships, and certain subject-object problems in ethics. She is currently a Professor at New York University and a Visiting Professor...

's view is closer to an embodied view and emphasizes ethical relationship

Ethical relationship

An ethical relationship, in most theories of ethics that employ the term, is a basic and trustworthy relationship that one has to another human being, that cannot necessarily be characterized in terms of any abstraction other than trust and common protection of each other's body...

s - necessarily between bodies - over universal ethical principles that require a God's Eye view. Some ethicists emphasize the role of the ethicist

Ethicist

An ethicist is one whose judgment on ethics and ethical codes has come to be trusted by a specific community, and is expressed in some way that makes it possible for others to mimic or approximate that judgement...

 to sort out right versus right in a given context. This is stage 4 but assumes that the ethicist is hesitant to damage relationships or violate principles, e.g. that survival or human rights

Human rights

Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

 take precedence over property rights.