Moral relativism is an important topic in metaethics. It is also widely discussed outside philosophy (for example, by political and religious leaders), and it is controversial among philosophers and nonphilosophers alike. This is perhaps not surprising in view of recent evidence that people's intuitions about moral relativism vary widely. Though many philosophers are quite critical of moral relativism, there are several contemporary philosophers who defend forms of it. These include such prominent figures as Gilbert Harman, Jesse J. Prinz, J. David (...) Velleman and David B. Wong. The term ‘moral relativism’ is understood in a variety of ways. Most often it is associated with an empirical thesis that there are deep and widespread moral disagreements and a metaethical thesis that the truth or justification of moral judgments is not absolute, but relative to the moral standard of some person or group of persons. Sometimes ‘moral relativism’ is connected with a normative position about how we ought to think about or act towards those with whom we morally disagree, most commonly that we should tolerate them. (shrink)

Some philosophers – notably Bernard Williams, Martha Nussbaum and Ruth Barcan Marcus – argue that agents in moral dilemmas are blameworthy whatever they do. I begin by uncovering the connection these philosophers are presupposing between the agent’s judgement of wrongdoing and her tendency to self-blame. Next, I argue that while dilemmatic choosers cannot help but see themselves as wrongdoers, they both can and should divorce this judgement from an ascription of self-blame. As I argue, dilemmatic choosers are morally sui generis (...) in that their actions result in a diminishment of their personal integrity with no corresponding failure of character. It is this that makes them non-blameworthy wrongdoers. This way of seeing the problem should provide dilemmatic choosers with a novel conception of their own moral psychology, one that allows them to view their actions in a manner that is given neither to moral insensitivity nor to pathological self-accusation. (shrink)

A central aspiration of the ‘Britishness’ agenda in UK politics is to promote community through the teaching of British values in schools. The agenda’s justification depends in part on the suppositions that harmony arising from agreement on certain values is a necessary condition of social health and that conflict arising from pluralism connotes a form of dysfunction in social life. These perceptions of harmony and conflict are traceable to the ancient Greeks. Plato used the device of the soul-city analogy to (...) provide a form of independent justification for his favoured model of community according to which harmony was essential. However, the soul-city analogy involves an intellectual sleight-of-hand. The idea that conflict connotes a defect in social life, which continues to haunt contemporary debates about community and values education, is the vestige of an ancient aristocratic ideology and we must learn to see it as such. There is no more reason to accept the Platonist portrayal of the place of conflict in social life than there is to accept a diametrically opposed Heraclitean account, which interprets harmony as the central threat to social flourishing. The implications of this ancient dispute for modern education are considerable: there is nothing natural or inevitable about the association of conflict with social dysfunction that partly supports the Britishness agenda; it is a political prejudice. Coming to see it as such will reveal new pathways to belonging and new ways of understanding the role of education in fostering the good society. (shrink)

Overview of the main issues about value pluralism.

Philosophy strives to give us a firmer hold on our concepts. But what about their hold on us? Why place ourselves under the sway of a concept and grant it the authority to shape our thought and conduct? Another conceptualization would carry different implications. What makes one way of thinking better than another? This book develops a framework for concept appraisal. Its guiding idea is that to question the authority of concepts is to ask for reasons of a special kind: (...) reasons for concept use, which tell us which concepts to adopt, adhere to, or abandon, thereby shoring up—or undercutting—the reasons for action and belief that guide our deliberations. Traditionally, reasons for concept use have been sought either in timeless rational foundations or in concepts’ inherent virtues, such as precision and consistency. Against this, the book advances two main claims: that we find reasons for concept use in the conceptual needs we discover when we critically distance ourselves from a concept by viewing it from the autoethnographic stance; and that sometimes, concepts that conflict, or exhibit other vices such as vagueness or superficiality, are just what we need. By considering not what concepts are absolutely best, but what concepts we now need, we can reconcile ourselves to the contingency of our concepts, determine the proper place of efforts to tidy up thought, and adjudicate between competing conceptions of things—even things as contested as liberty or free will. A needs-based approach separates helpful clarification from hobbling tidy-mindedness, and authoritative definition from conceptual gerrymandering. (shrink)

Bernard Williams articulated his later political philosophy notably in response to Ronald Dworkin, who, striving for coherence or integrity among our political concepts, sought to immunize the concepts of liberty and equality against conflict. Williams, doubtful that we either could or should eliminate the conflict, resisted the pursuit of conceptual integrity. Here, I reconstruct this Dworkin–Williams debate with an eye to drawing out ideas of ongoing philosophical and political importance. The debate not only exemplifies Williams's political realism and its connection (...) to his critique of the morality system. It also illustrates the virtues and hazards of contemporary efforts to ameliorate or engineer our concepts; it indicates what political philosophy might look to in appraising political concepts; it adverts to the different needs these concepts have to meet if they are to sustain a politics of pluralism, deal with polarization, and secure the consent of those who end up on the losing side of political decisions; and it presents us with two starkly contrasting conceptions of politics itself, of the place of political values within it, and of our prospects of reducing the uncomfortably conflictual character of those values through philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, I identify a central problem for conceptual engineering: the problem of showing concept-users why they should recognise the authority of the concepts advocated by engineers. I argue that this authority problem cannot generally be solved by appealing to the increased precision, consistency, or other theoretical virtues of engineered concepts. Outside contexts in which we anyway already aim to realise theoretical virtues, solving the authority problem requires engineering to take a functional turn and attend to the functions of (...) concepts. But this then presents us with the problem of how to specify a concept’s function. I argue that extant solutions to this function specification problem are unsatisfactory for engineering purposes, because the functions they identify fail to reliably bestow authority on concepts, and hence fail to solve the authority problem. What is required is an authoritative notion of conceptual function: an account of the functions of concepts which simultaneously shows why concepts fulfilling such functions should be recognised as having authority. I offer an account that meets this combination of demands by specifying the functions of concepts in terms of how they tie in with our present concerns. (shrink)

International business faces a host of difficult moral conflicts. It is tempting to think that these conflicts can be morally resolved if we gained full knowledge of the situations, were rational enough, and were sufficiently objective. This paper explores the view that there are situations in which people in business must confront the possibility that they must compromise some of their important principles or values in order to protect other ones. One particularly interesting case that captures this kind of situation (...) is that of Google and its operations in China. In this paper, I examine the situation Google faces as part of the larger issue of moral compromise and integrity in business. Though I look at Google, this paper is just as much about the underlying or background views Google faces that are at work in business ethics. In the process, I argue the following: First, the framework Google has used to respond to criticisms of its actions does not successfully or obviously address the important ethical issues it faces. Second, an alternative ethical account can be presented that better addresses these ethical and human rights questions. However, this different framework brings the issue of moral compromise to the fore. This is an approach filled with dangers, particularly since it is widely held that one ought never to compromise one’s moral principles. Nevertheless, I wish to propose that there may be a place for moral compromise in business under certain conditions, which I attempt to specify. (shrink)

Should those who get dirty hands be punished? There is strong disagreement among even those who support the existence of such scenarios. The problem arises because the paradoxical nature of dirty hands - doing wrong to do right - renders the standard normative justifications for punishment unfit for purpose. The Consequentialist, Retributivist and Communicative approaches cannot accommodate the idea that an action can be right, all things considered, but nevertheless also a categorical wrong. This paper argues that punishment is indeed (...) appropriate for those who dirty their hands and that there are three normative justifications that can be used to support this claim. These are the justifications from ‘Catharsis’, ‘Recognition of Evil Suffered’ and ‘Causal Responsibility’. Together they provide the sui generis justifications for punishing dirty hands. (shrink)

(1991). Everything is what it is. Inquiry: Vol. 34, No. 4, pp. 525-538.

The theory of revealed preference, which lies at the core of the neoclassical economic method, asserts that people's preference orderings are revealed by their actions. This assertion has two possible meanings, of which one is a truism and the other false. When a person joins a riot against the government, he reveals through this action that he would rather riot than not. This is the sense in which the assertion is a truism. But if one means that the person must (...) want a change of government, this is certainly false. His decision to riot could mean only that he considers it dangerous to stay on the sidelines. (shrink)

This essay discusses implications of incommensurability of values for justified decision-making, ethics and justice. Under particular conditions incommensurability of values causes what might be called ‘incomplete comparability’ of options. Some leading theorists interpret this in terms of ‘imprecise equality’ and ‘imprecise comparability.’ This interpretation is mistaken and conceals the implications of incommensurability for practical and ethical reasoning. The aim of this essay is to show that, in many cases, incommensurability prevents the assignment of determinate weights to competing values. This may (...) have problematic consequences for a complete and impartial justification of decisions concerning conflicting values to the extent that they depend on the need of weighing them. (shrink)

Someone is “verballed” in the Anglo-Australian idiom if they have attributed to them statements they did not actually make and indeed have explicitly denied. We will examine the evidence that Kuhn and Feyerabend were verballed in this sense by their critics and that the role of the idea of incommensurability in their argumentation has been systematically misunderstood and -represented. In particular, we will see that neither Kuhn nor Feyerabend, despite what their critics often say about them, held that incommensurability of (...) theories implies the rational incomparability of theories. This is especially clear in the case of Feyerabend, whose argument is NOT that theories in a scientific tradition are on occasion incommensurable, but, rather, that, when the relations of theories in a tradition are represented in a particular way, they may on occasion be incommensurable according to that representation and hence incomparable if that representation is taken as providing the mechanisms of comparison. And the point of this claim is not to establish something about science, but, rather, to establish something about the representations of science which yield this result (i.e. that two theories might be incommensurable). Feyerabend in other words invokes incommensurability (according to the standards of a particular representation) as a reductio of that mode of representation. And this argument in fact depends precisely on the comparability of theories which are, according to the representation, incommensurable. Feyerabend’s argument is about the ways in which we should understand progress in science and he is concerned, in particular, to establish that a historically informed approach is superior to an approach which, if applicable, is applicable only to what he calls “abstract traditions”. Kuhn’s work, especially in the Postscript—1969, provides complementary materials, especially in relation to a collectivised and non-“algorithmic” account of theory choice across formally incommensurable paradigms. (shrink)

This book is a discussion of some of Kierkegaard's central ideas, showing their relevance to contemporary debates in epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. Anthony Rudd's aim is not simply to expound Kierkegaard's ideas but to draw on them creatively in order to illuminate questions about the foundations of morality and the nature of personal identity, as discussed by analytical philosophers such as MacIntyre, Parfit, Williams, and Foot. Rudd seeks a way forward from the sterile conflict between the view (...) that morality and religion are based on objective reasoning and the view that they are merely expressions of subjective emotions. He argues that morality and religion must be understood in terms of the individual's search for a sense of meaning in his or her own life, but emphasizes that this does not imply that values are arbitrary or merely subjective. (shrink)

It is often thought that tolerance must be painful; the absence of pain is taken as an indication of indifference, an indication that the agent does not really disapprove of the object of her professed tolerance. This article challenges that view by arguing that the association of tolerance and pain depends ultimately upon the contentious assumption that inner conflict is a form of dysfunction. By unsettling that assumption, it is possible to unsettle the idea that one?s tolerance of others must (...) be painful. More positively, coming to recognize the normality of inner conflict might actually serve to reinforce the disposition to tolerate, as the agent realizes that she must strive to contain and perpetuate the conflicts and tensions which form a necessary feature of her life. If this is right, then the emphasis often placed upon the etymological association of tolerance with patience and suffering could be unhelpful. It might be fruitful to devote more attention to the neglected notion of calmly abiding the behaviour of those of whom we disapprove. (shrink)

Three years ago Robert Saltonstall, Jr., Associate Vice President for Operations at Harvard University, faced an increasingly common problem in business and institutions today when he severed 68 long-service, wage employees to solve a problem of low productivity in a particular trade group. He did this using relatively conventional and creative techniques. But now three years later, he asked Nona Lyons of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who is researching the ethical dimensions of executives' decisions, to assist him in (...) evaluating how these employees felt about the process. The employees' loyalty in spite of everything has caused Saltonstall to rethink the ethics of both his decision and its execution. In this article Saltonstall asks and answers many of the questions executives face when challenged to handle work reduction decisions in a more ethical way. And Lyons assists him with commentary on some of the current research on moral decision-making which will help executives to understand why they find some of their decisions to be moral dilemmas. The article challenges executives to think about reorganization decisions in a participative way and suggests seven central issues executives should consider before commencing a participative approach. The article reaches no specific conclusion, but introduces some new ways to think about lay-off decisions and their ethical implications for those affected. (shrink)

(2006). Gray’s Elegy for Progress. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 9, The Political Theory of John Gray, pp. 227-241.

Genuine rules cannot capture our intuitive moral judgments because, if usable, they mention only a limited number of factors as relevant to decisions. But morally relevant factors are both numerous and unpredictable in the ways they interact to change priorities among them. Particularists have pointed this out, but their account of moral judgment is also inadequate, leaving no room for genuine reasoning or argument. Reasons must be general even if not universal. Particularists can insist that our judgments be reflective, unbiased, (...) informed, and sensitive, requiring a background of experiences that expand sympathy and empathy for others. But beyond this, our judgments must be coherent. This requirement provides a way to reason to the correct answer to a controversial issue—the answer most coherent with or body of settled judgments. Rawls' account of coherence in terms of reflective equilibrium, where we adjust particular judgments to match rules and adjust rules to match judgments, is rejected since rules have no independent force. Instead, the central requirement is that we not judge cases differently without being able to cite a morally relevant difference between them. Such differences must make a difference else-where as well, although they need not do so universally. Factors cannot be relevant in only one context because they reflect values that must recur to be maintained. The method of moral reasoning based on this requirement is specified as follows: first, the specification of competing values or interests in the problematic case; second, the location of paradigm cases in which these competing values are prioritized, making sure that these settled judgments are reflective, informed, and sensitive; third, the search for relevant differences between the settled and problematic cases or the location of alternative, more closely analogous paradigms. The paper ends with an illustration of the method applied to the issue of doctor assisted suicide. (shrink)

This paper presents criticisms of the method for moral and political philosophy known as ?reflective equilibrium? (RE), or in its fuller form ?wide reflective equilibrium? (WRE). This negative purpose has an ulterior positive aim: to set off, by favourable contrast, an alternative approach based on analogical argument as an instrument of an evolving (liberal) tradition. WRE derives from John Rawls but has been broadly endorsed. Though a meta?theory, it involves a certain way of construing liberalism. This essay's target is in (...) key part that construal. It seeks an approach to moral?political philosophy, and to liberalism in particular, that is at once rationally grounded and contextually oriented, and provides for explanation as well as justification. WRE fails on all counts, plus others. Section I presents WRE and suggests the alternative. Section II presents the critique of WRE, partly drawing on established criticisms and partly presenting new ones. Section III opposes the application suggested for WRE by (surprisingly) a critic of Rawls, M. Sandel. The preferability of the analogical alternative is demonstrated throughout. (shrink)

(2006). The Social Theory of Anti‐Liberalism. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 9, The Political Theory of John Gray, pp. 137-154.

H.L.A. Hart’s lost and found essay ‘Discretion’ has provided new insight into the issue of how legal systems can cope with indeterminacy in the law. The so-called ‘open texture’ of law calls for the exercise of judicial discretion, which, I argue, renders judges susceptible to the problem of dirty hands. To show this, I frame the problem as being open to an array of appropriate emotional responses, namely, various senses of guilt. With these responses in mind, I revise an example (...) from Michael Walzer’s original analysis in a way that highlights purely personal sacrifices in solutions to dirty hands situations. I then turn to an account of moral emotions in legal decision-making and show how judges—in failing to advance all interests—might be left with a unique sense of guilt. With an application of this account to Hart’s legal positivism, it can be seen that a judge’s hands are often dirtied in resolving borderline cases. If discretion leaves judges in situations where they must do wrong in order to do right, Hart’s endorsement of a closure view of wrongdoing will lead to difficulties in how he can explain the presence of moral remainders in jurisprudence. (shrink)

The authors propose the integrity capacity construct with its four dimensions (process, judgment, development and system dimensions) as a framework for analyzing and resolving behavioral, moral and legal complexity in business ethics' issues at the individual and collective levels. They claim that moral progress in business comes about through the increase in stakeholders who regularly handle moral complexity by demonstrating process, judgment, developmental and system integrity capacity domestically and globally.

A traditional association of judgment with "reason" has drawn upon and reinforced an opposition between reason and emotion. This, in turn, has led to a restricted view of the nature of moral judgment and of the subject as moral agent. The alternative, I suggest, is to abandon the traditional categories and to develop a new theory of judgment. I argue that the theory of judgment developed by Justus Buchler constitutes a robust alternative which does not prejudice the case against emotion. (...) Drawing on this theory I then develop how to conceptualize the ways in which feeling and emotion can be (or be components of) moral judgments. (shrink)

‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing’. -Archilochus quoted in Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox, 22The fragment from the Greek poet Archilochus, quoted in Isaiah Berlin’s essay ‘The Hedgehog and the Fox’, serves as a metaphor for the long-standing contrast and rivalry between two radically different approaches to public ethics, each of which is couched in a radically different vision of the structure of moral value. On the one hand, the way of the hedgehog (...) corresponds to the creed of value monism, reflecting a faith in the ultimate unity of the moral universe and belief in the singularity, tidiness and completeness of moral and political purposes. On the other hand, the way of the fox corresponds to the nemesis of monism, the philosophical tradition of value pluralism, to which this collection of essays is devoted. This dissenting countermovement, which emerges most clearly in the writings of Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire, Bernard Williams and John Gray, is fuelled by an appreciation of the perpetuity of plurality and conflict and, correspondingly, by the conviction that visions of moral unity and harmony are incoherent and implausible. In the view of the value pluralists, ‘there is no completeness and no perfection to be found in morality’. (shrink)

Institutional ethics committees in health care facilities now create moral policy, provide moral education, and consult with physicians and other health care workers. After sketching reasons for the development of IECs, this paper first examines the predominant moral standards it is often assumed lECs are now using, these standards being neo-Kantian principles of justice and utilitarian principles of the greatest good. Then, it is argued that a feminine ethics of care, as posited by Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings, is an (...) unacknowledged basis for /EC discussions and decisions. Further, it is suggested that feminine ethics of care can and should provide underlying theoretical tools and standards for lECs. (shrink)

One of Thomas Kuhn's profoundest arguments is introduced in the 1970 “Postscript” to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . Kuhn is discussing the idea of a “disciplinary matrix” as a more adequate articulation of the “paradigm” notion he'd introduced in the first, 1962, edition of his famous work . He notes that one “element” of disciplinary matrices is likely to be common to most or even all such matrices, unlike the other elements which serve to distinguish specific disciplines and sub-disciplines (...) from one another. This is the element which he calls “values”, which, as he notes , being common to a number of otherwise distinct disciplinary matrices, “do much to provide a sense of community to natural scientists as a whole”. On the other hand, they also do much, and crucially in Kuhn's view, to promote and sustain a healthy diversity among the practitioners who share any specific disciplinary matrix. In particular, Kuhn claims that “individual variability in the application of shared values may serve functions essential to science.”. (shrink)

Institutional ethics committees (IECs) in health care facilities now create moral policy, provide moral education, and consult with physicians and other health care workers. After sketching reasons for the development of IECs, this paper first examines the predominant moral standards it is often assumed IECs are now using, these standards being neo-Kantian principles of justice and utilitarian principles of the greatest good. Then, it is argued that a feminine ethics of care, as posited by Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings, is (...) an unacknowledged basis for IEC discussions and decisions. Further, it is suggested that feminine ethics of care can and should provide underlying theoretical tools and standards for IECs. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 9, Page 1277-1301, November 2022. The realist injunction to attend to the ‘realities of politics’ when we do political philosophy, though obviously appropriate, is highly platitudinous. By drawing on the underappreciated realist insights of Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire and Hannah Arendt, we elaborate a neglected distinction between two antagonistic conceptions of political reality – the realism of surface and the realism of depth – and consider its implications for the recent realist turn. We (...) illustrate how that distinction reveals some neglected tensions and incoherencies within contemporary realism and go some way towards untangling and addressing these. Specifically, we enrich the realist charge and highlight two directions which realist scholarship can pursue in its endeavour to offer a meaningful alternative to moralism: an emphasis on i) Vichian fantasia – a kind of knowledge which entails historical awareness but also sensitivity to philology; and ii) suffering and injustice as a basis for critique and for developing a suitable political sphere. (shrink)

If philosophical moral reflection tends to promote moral behavior, one might think that professional ethicists would behave morally better than do socially comparable non-ethicists. We examined three types of courteous and discourteous behavior at American Philosophical Association conferences: talking audibly while the speaker is talking (versus remaining silent), allowing the door to slam shut while entering or exiting mid-session (versus attempting to close the door quietly), and leaving behind clutter at the end of a session (versus leaving one's seat tidy). (...) By these three measures, audiences in ethics sessions did not appear to behave any more courteously than did audiences in non-ethics sessions. However, audiences in environmental ethics sessions did appear to leave behind less trash. (shrink)

Critically examining what most people take for granted is central to philosophical inquiry. Philosophers who accept positions on policy making commissions, tasks forces, or committees cannot, however, play the same uncompromisingly critical role in this capacity as they do in the classroom or in their personal research or writing. Still, philosophers have much to contribute to such bodies, and they can do so without compromising their integrity or betraying themselves as philosophers. Keywords: compromise, critical reflection, embryo research, integrity, organ transplantation, (...) policy development, Warnock Committee CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Declining levels of political trust and voter turnout, the shift towards populist politics marked by appeals to ‘the people’ and a rejection of ‘politics-as-usual’, are just some of the commonly cited manifestations of our culture of political disaffection. Democratic politics, it is argued, is in crisis. Whilst considerable energy has been expended on the task of lamenting the status of our politics and pondering over recommendations to tackle this perceived crisis, amid this raft of complaints and solutions lurks confusion. This (...) paper seeks to explore the neglected question of what the precise nature of the crisis with which we are confronted involves, and, in so doing, to go some way towards untangling our confusion. Taking my cue from Machiavelli and his value-pluralist heirs, I argue that there is a rift between a morally admirable and a virtuous political life. Failure to appreciate this possibility causes narrations of crisis to misconstrue the moral messiness of politics in ways that lead us to misunderstand how we should respond to disenchantment. Specifically, I suggest that: we think that there is a moral crisis in politics because we have an unsatisfactorily idealistic understanding of political integrity in the first place; and it is a mistake to imagine that the moral purification of politics is possible or desirable. Put simply, our crisis is not moral per se but primarily philosophical in nature: it relates to the very concepts we employ—the qualities of character and context we presuppose whilst pondering over political integrity. (shrink)

In his 2011 book Justice for Hedgehogs, Ronald Dworkin makes a case for the view that genuine values cannot conflict and, moreover, that they are necessarily mutually supportive. I argue that by prioritizing coherence over the conceptual authenticity of values, Dworkin’s ‘interpretivist’ view risks neglecting what we care about in these values. I first determine Dworkin’s position on the monism/pluralism debate and identify the scope of his argument, arguing that despite his self-declared monism, he is in fact a pluralist, but (...) unusual in denying conflict between plural values. I then set out the structure of his interpretive theory of value relations and present a case of value conflict which I think interpretivism cannot deal with. Following this I argue that there are structural reasons why cases like this are liable to occur and suggest that interpretivism will frequently fail to properly reflect people’s moral commitments because reinterpretation of values has the side effect of excluding important moral commitments from our conceptions of values. While, as Dworkin argues, there are no brute moral facts concerning values, moral psychology constrains the range of acceptable conceptions of values. Given the shortcomings of interpretivism I conclude that we should acknowledge that values may conflict. (shrink)

© Swanson 2017How Propaganda Works is a brilliant, rich, and wide-ranging exploration of the interactions between ideology, inequality, democracy and propaganda. Read as a piece of analytic political philosophy, it is radical, arguing for bold theses about democracy: legitimate democratic deliberation, Stanley contends, requires not only political equality but also substantive material equality. Read as a piece of analytic epistemology and philosophy of language, it is more modest, but nevertheless very compelling, extending well-established work in fascinating but methodologically conservative ways. (...) In particular, on Stanley’s view ‘the truth-conditional, cognitivist picture … gives us an elegant account of what happens when communication fails, due to propagandistic manipulation’. Stanley is thus not trying to think outside the box so much as trying to move or expand the box, using familiar, proven tools to make the job easier. The book generously rewards careful study and thought, and any short summary... (shrink)

This paper draws on the underappreciated realist thought of Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire and Judith Shklar, rehearses their critique of moralism and extends it to a position which seems far from obvious a target: the dirty hands thesis, which is mostly owed to Michael Walzer, and which a number of contemporary realists have recently appealed to in their endeavour to challenge moralism and/or tackle the insufficiently addressed question of what a more affirmative, realist public ethic might involve. In illustrating that (...) the DH thesis is a thinly disguised brand of the moralism which realists reject, I shall not merely put some flesh on the bones of Shklar’s scattered, unsystematic objections to Walzer’s thought – the only realist who explicitly criticized his DH thesis. Rather, I wish to cast doubt on the internal coherence and ‘realism’ of contemporary realist positions which invoke that thesis and to illustrate that the discrepancy between Berlin’s, Shklar’s and Hampshire’s thought and the DH thesis: i) enriches our understanding of how we might wish to distinguish more meaningfully realism from the ideal/non-ideal theory debate; and ii) enables us to pursue a particular direction in which a more positive realist approach to public ethics and integrity might be developed – an approach which we might term Heraclitian realism, and which follows from their idiosyncratic, innovative, and radical account of the place of conflict in human life. (shrink)

Medical educators invoke professionalism as a core competency in curricula. This paper criticizes classic definitions. It also identifies some negative traits of medicine as a profession. The call to professionalism is naive nostalgia. Straightforward didactics in professionalism cannot do the desired work in medical education. The most we can say is that students should adopt the good aspects of professionalism and the profession should stop being some of what it has been. This is a platitude. If the notion is to (...) be more than shallow, each student and practitioner will have to engage in much dialogue, reflection and refinement over many years. (shrink)

This study explored identity conflict dynamics in interpersonal interactions in professionals facing ethically charged situations. Through semi-structured interviews, we conducted a qualitative study among doctors and nurses working for the English National Healthcare Service and analyzed the data with grounded theory approaches. Our findings reveal that identity conflict is triggered by three micro processes, namely cognitive and emotional perspective taking, as well as identifying with the other. In these processes, identity conflict is signaled by emotions and recognized as a clash (...) not only between identities and their values, but also within one identity and its multiple values. Behavioral and psychological outcomes of identity conflict involve seeking peer support, doing reflective practices and identity growth. This article contributes to identity literature by providing a multilevel approach of identity conflict dynamics able to account for both interpersonal and intrapsychic processes, deeply hold values and emotions, as well as crucial behavioral and psychological consequences. (shrink)

Within this thesis, I argue for an interpretive approach to bioethics in pediatric intensive care. I begin by outlining the dominant bioethical doctrine that defines standards for ethical care in critically ill children. I critique this doctrine as legalistic and acultural. Drawing largely on the ideas of Charles Taylor, I call for a reconception of bioethics and propose an interpretive framework that is centred on culture and context. Finally, I illustrate this interpretive approach through a comparative study of two cases (...) in pediatric intensive care: the narratives of Marc and Larry. (shrink)