What is ethics and an example?
Ethics is a prescriptive claim of how a person should act in a
given situation. Prescriptive in this sense means a claim of how
someone ought to act.
Ethics can be either positive duties or negative duties.
Positive duties are what you ought to do. Negative duties are what
you ought not to do. A positive duty would be to give to charity. A
negative duty would be to refrain from stabbing kittens with forks,
assuming you grant animals moral consideration.
Examples of ethical claims would be:
1. You ought not to murder.
2. You ought to give to charity.
3. You ought to maximize pleasure, (or happiness)
4. You ought to not treat a person as a means.