Problems of ethics and of professional ethics

Conceptual confusions have a negative impact on our thinking and are among the main obstacles that prevent us from finding ethically sound solutions for the problems we face and so to overcome artificially created dilemmas. In this paper, first I shall show the differences among kinds of so-called 'ethical problems'; then I shall try to clarify the term 'ethics'. On the ground of these distinctions and clarifications, I shall attempt to exemplify how we can deal with the different kinds of ethical problems related to the issue of this conference in an epistemically and ethically sound way, beyond the alternatives created by the confrontation of different norms on the same issues, stemming from different, not rarely incompatible, world views and anthropological conceptions, i.e. stemming from the differences between cultures.