Paper is divided into two parts. The first contains two philosophical discussions about comprehension of courage and the second focuses on the findings in an empirical study with care home managers about the virtue of courage. First discussion revolves around the question whether the virtue of courage is expressed a) only in life–threatening situations or is it a virtue trained and exemplified in b) everyday life settings, while the second emphasises the difference between i) courage of efficiency as a skill (...) and ii) courage of excellence as a virtue. Arguments here support a vision of courage as the virtue of excellence expressed in everyday life settings. The second part of the paper highlights a new perspective of courage with regards to the notion of care towards the aim of the courageous endeavour. The ‘courage of care’ supports the idea that the courage practised as the virtue of excellence aims to develop the moral character of the actor fundamentally outside of the life–threatening situation. Care for the self, other people, animals and intangible moral principles inspire us to do brave deeds. Thus, by accepting Alasdair MacIntyre’s statements that a) in the times of the peace managers represent moral idols and b) idea that the notion of courage should be closely related to the practice of care and compassion, the research continued with the interviews with the care home managers in Kent county in England. Conversations with care home managers released further insights into how care and compassion influence the understanding of the virtue of courage. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to clarify what is properly common to the common good and to support its irreducibility as a guarantee of overcoming an atomistic conception of civil society. We begin by addressing the notion of individual freedom and the questioning of the selfish condition of the human being. Then, we delve into the normative possibilities offered by an ethical interpretation of the common good. The difference of the common good from other notions used in late-modern discourses (...) is key in determining the intrinsic commonality of social relations. In concluding, we argue for a conception of the common good that accommodates individual freedom, understanding it no longer in isolation, but as part of intersubjectivity. (shrink)

This paper starts from the presupposition that moral codes often do not suffice to make agents understand their moral responsibility. We will illustrate this statement with a concrete example of engineers who design a truck’s trailer and who do not think traffic safety is part of their responsibility. This opinion clashes with a common supposition that designers in fact should do all that is in their power to ensure safety in traffic. In our opinion this shows the need for a (...) moral philosophy that helps engineers to interpret their responsibility and think more critically about it. For this purpose we will explore the moral philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre, which is particularly interesting because he locates the beginning of moral thinking in the daily practice of a profession. This is consistent with the history of moral codes, for codes are also the product of moral reflection by professionals. We will use MacIntyre’s philosophy to (1) explain what is wrong with the designers’ understanding of their responsibility and (2) show a possible way to bring their reflection to a more self-critical level. We will also inspect MacIntyre’s proposal critically. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis essay explores the concept of phronesis in two contexts: phronesis as a virtue, in fact a meta-virtue because it guides the exercise of other virtues; and phronesis as an element in theories of practice. I argue that these two aspects are closely related, because ethics – especially virtue ethics – is best understood as a kind of practice. The second part of the essay explores some of the consequences of thinking about ethics in this way.

Purpose Professional ethics is explored with three main foci: a critique of codes of conduct and the value of creating a global code for information and communication technology ; a critique of ICT professional certification; and the debate over whether ICT is really a profession. Design/methodology/approach This is a conceptual reflection on the current state of the ICT industry internationally, informed by the literature. Findings Compared to a mature profession, such as health, ICT is a young profession. This is evidenced (...) in the disparity of domains of practice, the lack of agreement on universal values governing the industry and the ongoing difficulties in creating international certification. Originality/value Until now, there has been little recognition of the corporatisation of ICT professionals and the effect that has on their ability to engage in appropriate professional ethics. More research is needed to explore appropriate ways in which ethical behaviour can be encouraged in the corporate workplace, including how professional development can be strengthened through building learning organisations. (shrink)

How should state schools respond to the plurality of values in a multicultural society? The liberal response has been that it is unacceptable to promote only the traditional, mainstream values of dominant groups and impose them on others. During the 1980s this response gradually evolved into an ideology of extreme subjectivism, commonly referred to as cultural relativism. This ideology is rejected and it is argued that the school must make crucial judgements about which values should be promoted, tolerated or condemned.

How should state schools respond to the plurality of values in a multicultural society? The liberal response has been that it is unacceptable to promote only the traditional, mainstream values of dominant groups and impose them on others. During the 1980s this response gradually evolved into an ideology of extreme subjectivism, commonly referred to as cultural relativism. This ideology is rejected and it is argued that the school must make crucial judgements about which values should be promoted, tolerated or condemned.

This case study details how and why integrating storytelling, empathy, and inclusive practice shifted QSuper, a large Australian finance organisation, from minimal awareness to moral awareness then moral capability in the delivery of services to Indigenous customers. During the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation, and Financial Services Industry, QSuper were recognised for their exemplary service with Indigenous customers (Hayne, Interim report: Royal commission into misconduct in the banking, superannuation and financial services industry, Volume 1. Commonwealth of Australia, (...) 2018; _Transcript of Proceedings, 13 August_, Commonwealth of Australia, 2018). This position was in stark contrast to the inaccessible service offerings of other financial organisations where some used predatory practices to sell unethical financial products to Indigenous Australians (Hayne, Interim report: Royal commission into misconduct in the banking, superannuation and financial services industry, Volume 1. Commonwealth of Australia, 2018; Hayne, Final report: Royal commission into misconduct in the banking, superannuation and financial services industry, Volume 1. Commonwealth of Australia, 2019a). Storytelling garned from visiting customers in remote communities and other meaningful activities involving inclusive practice to facilitate ethical decision-making in finance is different to standard functionalist finance approaches (Schinckus, Int Rev Financ Anal 40:103–106, 2015). Two empathetic questions asked within QSuper complementing the storytelling, were: “What is the right thing to do by the customer?” and “How would I feel if this were my mother?” Exploration into the lived reality of moral capacity is important based on the Commission finding many of the 490,000 finance staff do not know how to provide ethical services to vulnerable customers, in particular remote Indigenous customers (Australian Bureau of Statistics. Labour force, Australia, detailed. ABS. Retrieved from https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/employment-and-unemployment/labour-force-australia-detailed /latest-release, 2021; Hayne, Final report: Royal commission into misconduct in the banking, superannuation and financial services industry, Volume 1. Commonwealth of Australia, 2019a). Furthermore, there is minimal literature on the role of Indigenous storytelling to heighten moral awareness in the finance industry which was found to lead to better ethical outcomes. (shrink)

In this paper I unpack a realistic conception of politics by tightly defining its constitutive features: conflict and order. A conflict emerges when an actor is disposed to impose his/her views against the resistance of others. Conflicts are more problematic than moralists realize because they emerge unilaterally, are potentially violent, impermeable to content-based reason, and unavoidable. Order is then defined as an institutional framework that provides binding collective decisions. Order is deemed necessary because individuals need to cooperate to survive, but (...) groups cannot spontaneously secure collective decisions and are prone to conflicts. Particularly, the fact that potentially violent conflicts emerge unilaterally means that order requires coercion. I conclude that mischaracterizing conflict and order leads to undesirable normative principles, and that this criticism can be leveraged not only against Rawlsian liberals who moralize conflicts away, but also against some agonists who underestimate the need for order and some communitarians who underplay both circumstances. (shrink)

In this paper I unpack a realistic conception of politics by tightly defining its constitutive features: conflict and order. A conflict emerges when an actor is disposed to impose his/her views against the resistance of others. Conflicts are more problematic than moralists realize because they emerge unilaterally, are potentially violent, impermeable to content-based reason, and unavoidable. Order is then defined as an institutional framework that provides binding collective decisions. Order is deemed necessary because individuals need to cooperate to survive, but (...) groups cannot spontaneously secure collective decisions and are prone to conflicts. Particularly, the fact that potentially violent conflicts emerge unilaterally means that order requires coercion. I conclude that mischaracterizing conflict and order leads to undesirable normative principles, and that this criticism can be leveraged not only against Rawlsian liberals who moralize conflicts away, but also against some agonists who underestimate the need for order and some communitarians who underplay both circumstances. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine how the design of characteristics and use of practices incorporated in customer relationship management information systems (CRM‐IS) impact on the expression and realisation of moral agency within organisations.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on the findings from an in‐depth UK case study of a CRM‐IS implementation.FindingsThe paper finds that some characteristics and practices within CRM‐IS can restrict the expression and realisation of moral agency in organisational life, resulting in a number of problems. For a greater (...) consideration of MacIntyre's virtue ethics approach in order to respond to such challenges is argued.Originality/valueThe paper offers a relatively rare insight into the significance of the ethical issues arising from the organisational use of CRM‐IS and strategies. The paper should be of interest to managers, computer professionals and academics. (shrink)

The article aims at contrasting the autopoietic understanding of an individual and her or his actions as described by Niklas Luhmann with Paul Ricoeur’s notion of narrative identity, focusing on people as legal subjects. The article assumes that when legal subjects necessitate ethical engagement and evaluation, the law could cease to deal with problems in a mere legalistic fashion but is allowed the freedom to appeal to norms of justice external to itself as in other natural law theories. Through narrative (...) identity the deeds of role players are to be understood in greater complexity than what a self-referential legal system is comfortable in dealing with. (shrink)

The principle of non-maleficence, primum non nocere, has deep roots in the history of moral philosophy, being endorsed by John Stuart Mill, W. D. Ross, H. L. A. Hart, Karl Popper and Bernard Gert. And yet, this principle is virtually absent from current debates on social justice. This article suggests that non-maleficence is more than a moral principle; it is also a principle of social justice. Part I looks at the origins of non-maleficence as a principle of ethics, and medical (...) ethics in particular. Part II introduces the idea of non-maleficence as a principle of social justice. Parts III and IV define the principle of justice as non-maleficence in terms of its scope and coherence, while Part V argues that the motivation of not doing harm makes this principle an alternative to two well-established paradigms in the literature on social justice: justice as mutual advantage (David Gauthier) and justice as impartiality (Brian Barry). (shrink)

At the heart of entrepreneurship are imagination, creativity, novelty, and sensitivity. It takes these qualities to develop a new product or service and bring it to market, to envision the possible impacts a new product may make and come up with novel and creative solutions to problems that may arise. These qualities go to make up what could be called the spirit of entrepreneurship, a spirit that involves the ability to handle the experimental nature of entrepreunerial activity. These same qualities (...) are crucial for moral decision making, and an ethical approach which emphasizes imagination, creativity, and has an experimental thrust is much better adapted to the entrepreneurial activity and much more relevant to the unique situations that entrepreneurs face. In this sense, the process approach to ethics developed in this article is a unifying framework that brings together the activity of entrepreneurship and moral decision making. (shrink)

A recurrent challenge in applied ethics concerns the development of principles that are both suitably general to cover various cases and sufficiently exact to guide behavior in particular instances. In business ethics, two central approaches—stockholder and stakeholder—often fail by one or the other requirement. The author argues that the failure is precipitated by their reliance upon “universal” theory, which views the justification of principles as both independent of their context of application and universally appropriate to all contexts. The author develops (...) a contextual interpretation of “constructivism” as an alternative approach, and argues that this alternative meets the above challenge. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis study aimed to throw light on the implied and tacit moral philosophical features of rulings from an apparently effective and well-respected press council. Statements from the Norwegian Press Council are analyzed from the perspective of 3 ethical theories. The analysis shows that the institutionalized media ethics as presented by this authoritative body have distinct features of discourse ethics, while perspectives of virtue ethics are surprisingly absent. The Norwegian Press Council is preoccupied with procedural norms for the public discourse and (...) pays less attention to the character of the journalist and the quality of the journalism. Some reflections in accordance with ethics of proximity can be traced in the council’s statements but take second place in relation to other considerations. (shrink)

Recent interest in the alleged rationality and fatalism of Russian peasants illustrates persistent tendencies to objectify certain social actors—and to assign normative labels to their vexing behavior. Sometimes those labels are demeaning. I call attention to this unpleasant tendency, and ask why some social actors attract our analytical interest, while other social actors escape such scrutiny. This disparity is particularly interesting when the two social actors are engaged in a setting where extractive power is present yet unnoticed.

This paper contributes to the debate on whether we can have reason to do what we are unable to do. I take as my starting point two papers recently published in Philosophical Studies , by Bart Streumer and Ulrike Heuer, which defend the two dominant opposing positions on this issue. Briefly, whereas Streumer argues that we cannot have reason to do what we are unable to do, Heuer argues that we can have reason to do what we are unable to (...) do when we can get closer to success but cannot have reason to try to do what we are unable to do when we cannot get closer to success. In this paper, I reject both positions as they are presented, on the grounds that neither can accommodate an important category of reasons, which are the reasons to realise and to try to realise dimensions of value that lie at the boundary of what is realisable, specifically, genuinely valuable ideals. I defend a third view that we can have reason to do and to try to do what we are unable to do even when we cannot, in Heuer’s sense, get closer to success. Moreover, I argue that we can have reason to realise and to try to realise genuinely valuable ideals for their own sake and not simply for the sake of achieving mundane, realisable ends. (shrink)

Once upon a time, medicine dismissed narrative as unimportant and uninteresting. Then, in the late 1980s, physicians and scholars became interested in how the study of narrative could enhance our understanding of illness and health care, and the field that came to be known as “narrative medicine” developed. Some of this scholarly activity focused on the idea of narrative ethics.After a flurry of activity around the turn of the twenty‐first century, narrative ethics seemed to stall. The general interest in narrative (...) in medicine continued but with few new ideas on how one might use narrative toward ethical ends. In the last few years, however, forward momentum has returned. The timing seems appropriate, therefore, for a “state of the field” report of sorts. (shrink)

In this paper, I make a case for the view that we have special relationship duties (also known as “associative duties”) that are not identical to or derived from our non-associative impartial moral obligations. I call this view “moral partialism”. On the version of moral partialism I defend, only loving relationships can normatively ground special relationship duties. I propose that for two capable adults to have a loving relationship, they must have mutual non-trivial desires to promote each other’s interests or (...) flourishing and to respect each other’s core values. Along the way, I critically ascertain three alternative accounts of what normatively grounds special relationship duties and argue that my proposed view avoids the problems plaguing the alternatives. (shrink)

My aim is to vindicate two distinct and important moral categories – ideals and aspirations – which have received modest, and sometimes negative, attention in recent normative debates. An ideal is a conception of perfection or model of excellence around which we can shape our thoughts and actions. An aspiration, by contrast, is an attitudinal position of steadfast commitment to, striving for, or deep desire or longing for, an ideal. I locate these two concepts in relation to more familiar moral (...) concepts such as duty, virtue, and the good to demonstrate, amongst other things, first, that what is morally significant about ideals and aspirations cannot be fully accommodated within a virtue ethical framework that gives a central role to the Virtuous Person as a purported model of excellence. On a certain interpretation, the Virtuous Person is not a meaningful ideal formoral agents. Second, I articulate one sense in which aspirations are morally required imaginative acts given their potential to expand the realm of practical moral possibility. (shrink)

The central aim of this article is to set out the essential elements of Hegel’s conception of evil. I demonstrate that Hegel understands evil primarily as a moral phenomenon. In particular, he identifies evil as a pernicious subjectivism and hypocrisy that undermines the social and institutional conditions for ethical action. An appropriate understanding of his conception of evil points to the centrality of trust to ethicality (die Sittlichkeit).

The idea of a logical and metaphysical gap between facts and values is taken for granted in much psychology. Howard Kendler has recently defended the standard view that human values cannot be discovered by psychology. In contrast, various postmodern approaches have sought to attack the fact-value dichotomy with the argument that psychological facts are inevitably morally and politically laden, and therefore relative. In this article, a third line of thought is pursued, significantly inspired by philosopher of science, Hilary Putnam. It (...) is argued that knowledge of facts presupposes knowledge of values, and that value judgments can be objectively right. In this light, the objectivity of scientific facts is not threatened by their entanglement with values. Psychology's objects can be described accurately only with value concepts, among them "thick ethical concepts." Different ways in which psychological science presupposes values are outlined. Finally, it is suggested that the distinction between epistemic and moral values is rarely useful in psychology, and should not be thought of as absolute. (shrink)

In writing The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession, Farr Curlin and Christopher Tollefsen have provided a helpful, accessible resource for clinicians seeking to conscientiously practice medicine in pursuit of health. These authors identify a major threat to such a practice, which they call the provider of services model (PSM), and compare it to a historic way of practicing that they seek to recover, called the Way of Medicine. Throughout the book, they contrast the PSM and the Way (...) in ways that are helpful. However, the process of continual contrasts and the reliance on controversial cases presents several counter-productive drawbacks that weaken their project. (shrink)

In education issues to do with insider and outsider understanding arise in debates about religious education and about certain areas of research, and in argument about education for international understanding. Here I challenge the dichotomy between insider and outsider, arguing that a more collectivist view of human identity combined with elements of 'the self which we share with our fellows' means that we always stand in part as an insider and in part as an outsider in relation to others. I (...) argue further that 'understanding' needs always to be thought of in the plural, as a matter of 'understanding s ', since members of any community, and even any one individual, have different understandings at different times. Against what may seem the strong case in favour of the superiority or exclusivity of insider understanding, I note the force of claims in a variety of theoretical traditions (expressed notably in the Marxist tradition in the notion of 'false consciousness' and in psychoanalytic attention to the unconscious) concerning the limitations of the exclusively insider perspective and in contrast the particular authority of the outsider perspective. Finally, I acknowledge the discomfort with which people respond to outsiders' claims to understand them, especially where such understanding fails to support their own self-understanding, and identify ethical considerations, which might shape sensitive negotiation between insider and outsider perspectives. (shrink)

This paper discusses criticisms of survey research in business ethics as conceptually naive and methodologically unsound. A query is raised about the neglect of case-study methods by business ethics researchers — probably for prudential and ideological reasons. It is argued that the case-study approach is more appropriate to inquiries into the complex, diverse contents and contexts of business ethics. Investigatory case study in particular can do much to rectify the inadequacies of the prevailing positivist paradigm by evolving grounded theoretical questions (...) for further research. Case study offers an alternative to the measurement of ethical behaviour, i.e., naturalistic generalisation which is rooted in the context of organisational cultures and economic systems. It results in enhanced conceptual understanding of the interaction between ethical beliefs of individuals and corporate and market pressures on business decision-taking. (shrink)

Departing from frequent use of moral conflict cases in business ethics teaching and research, the paper suggests an elaboration of a moral conflict approach within business ethics, both conceptually and philosophically. The conceptual elaboration borrows from social science conflict research terminology, while the philosophical elaboration presents casuistry as a kind of practical, inductive argumentation with a focus on paradigmatic examples.

This paper contends that principles of virtue ethics have the potential to both supplement and complement academic integrity policy in the adjudication of undergraduate student academic integrity breaches. The paper uses elements of grounded theory to explore responses from 15 Academic Integrity Breach Decision Makers at an Australian university, and in particular, the process they use to determine outcomes for student breaches of academic integrity. The findings indicate that AIBDMs often use principles of virtue ethics to help provide nuanced judgement (...) on sometimes complicated breaches of ethical behaviour. The findings demonstrate that many AIBDMs supplemented their knowledge of institutional academic integrity policy with a deep commitment to their own virtuous behaviour. (shrink)

When a series of corporate scandals erupted soon after the collapse of the 1990s bull market in equities, policy makers and reformers chiefly responded by augmenting and refining the checks and balances surrounding publicly traded corporations. Through measures such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, securities regulations were intensified and corporate governance was tightened. In essence, reformers followed the tradition of modern political philosophy, developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, in its insistence that pro-social outcomes are best produced through (...) institutional mechanisms that harness self-interest. The empirical evidence, however, suggests the institutional approach will do little to prevent future ethical breakdowns. To corroborate this finding, we survey the literature on board composition, auditor consulting practices, shareholder activism, and executive compensation. Consequently, we look to another stream of political philosophy, the ancient tradition comprising Plato and Aristotle, which argues that social groupings, such as corporations, work best when led by individuals of good character. Applying the ancient view to modern commercial realities, the paper concludes that Benjamin Franklin's attempt to connect virtuous character with enlightened self-interest offers a compelling ethic for corporate leaders. (shrink)

In June 2008 the UK government, supported by the Royal College of Nursing, stated that nursing care would be measured for compassion. This paper considers the implications of this statement by critically examining the relationship of compassion to care from a variety of perspectives. It is argued that the current market-driven approaches to healthcare involve redefining care as a pale imitation, even parody, of the traditional approach of the nurse as “my brother’s keeper”. Attempts to measure such parody can only (...) measure artificial techniques and give rise to a McDonald’s-type nursing care rather than heartfelt care. The arguments of this paper, although applied to nursing, also apply to medicine and healthcare generally. (shrink)

This paper develops a Kantian account of the moral assessment of institutions. The problem I address is this: while a deontological theory may find that some legal institutions are required by justice, it is not obvious how such a theory can assess institutions not strictly required (or prohibited) by justice. As a starting-point, I consider intuitions that in some cases it is desirable to attribute non-consequentialist moral value to institutions not required by justice. I will argue that neither consequentialist nor (...) virtue-ethical accounts account for these intuitions, suggesting that a distinctive deontological account is needed. The account I give is drawn from Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals; I distinguish it from Kantian views of institutions developed by Barbara Herman and Onora O’Neill. Throughout, I use marriage as an example. (shrink)

A popular view about why death is bad for the one who dies is that death deprives its subject of the good things in life. This is the “deprivation account” of the evil of death. There is another view about death that seems incompatible with the deprivation account: the view that a person’s death is less bad if she has lived a good life. In The Ethics of Killing, Jeff McMahan argues that a deprivation account should discount the evil of (...) death for previous gains in life. I argue against discounting evils, and show how a version of the deprivation view can accommodate McMahan’s examples. (shrink)

In the field of business ethics, expositions of ethical theory have tended to focus on deontology and utilitarianism. More inclusive reviews of ethical theory tend to be historical and unsystematic. This paper approaches the task of representing the variety of ethical theories systematically. It does so by constructing a schema of possibilities in ethical theory which maps out six "voices", or theoretical positions, all of which are relevant and important for understanding ethics in business. This approach helps to account for (...) the continual presence of dilemmas and conflicts in ethics. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of emerging medical technologies that promise transgression of temporal limits, this paper aims to show the importance that an individual lifetime’s finitude and fugacity have for the question of the good life. The paper’s first section examines how the passing of an individual’s finite lifetime can be experienced negatively, and thus cause “suffering from the passing of time.” The second section is based on a sociological analysis within the conceptual framework of individualization and capitalism, which characterizes many (...) modern individualized and consumerist societies and explains how the described problem of time’s passage is particularly relevant today. The paper then proceeds to show and discuss how individuals employ various, primarily medical, enhancement-technologies like social egg freezing, anti-aging-medicine and physical- and neuro-enhancement in an attempt to overcome time’s passing. Finally, the paper seeks to explain why such attempts fail and, moreover, why it is exactly the awareness of time’s passing that can constitute a prerequisite for a good life. (shrink)

For all the recent discoveries of behavioral psychology and experimental economics, the spirit of homo economicus still dominates the contemporary disciplines of economics, political science, and sociology. Turning back to the earliest chapters of political economy, however, reveals that pioneering figures such as Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and Adam Smith were hardly apostles of economic rationality as they are often portrayed in influential narratives of the development of the social sciences. As we will see, while all three of these thinkers (...) can plausibly be read as endorsing “rationality,” they were also well aware of the systematic irrationality of human conduct, including a remarkable number of the cognitive biases later “discovered” by contemporary behavioral economists. Building on these insights I offer modest suggestions for how these thinkers, properly understood, might carry the behavioral revolution in different directions than those heretofore suggested. (shrink)

The din and deadlock of public life in America--where insults are traded, slogans proclaimed, and self-serving deals made and unmade--reveal the deep disagreement that pervades our democracy. The disagreement is not only political but also moral, as citizens and their representatives increasingly take extreme and intransigent positions. A better kind of public discussion is needed, and Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson provide an eloquent argument for "deliberative democracy" today. They develop a principled framework for opponents to come together on moral (...) and political issues.Gutmann and Thompson show how a deliberative democracy can address some of our most difficult controversies--from abortion and affirmative action to health care and welfare--and can allow diverse groups separated by class, race, religion, and gender to reason together. Their work goes beyond that of most political theorists and social scientists by exploring both the principles for reasonable argument and their application to actual cases. Not only do the authors suggest how deliberative democracy can work, they also show why improving our collective capacity for moral argument is better than referring all disagreements to procedural politics or judicial institutions. Democracy and Disagreement presents a compelling approach to how we might resolve some of our most trying moral disagreements and live with those that will inevitably persist, on terms that all of us can respect. (shrink)

Many engineering ethics classes and textbooks introduce theories such as utilitarianism and Kantianism (and most others draw from these theories without mentioning them explicitly). Yet using ethical theories to teach engineering ethics is not devoid of difficulty. First, their status is unclear (should one pick a single theory or use them all? does it make a difference?) Also, textbooks generally assume or fallaciously ‘prove’ that egoism (or even simply accounting for one’s interests) is wrong. Further, the drawbacks of ethical theories (...) are underestimated and the theories are also otherwise misrepresented to make them more suitable for engineering ethics as the authors construe it, viz. the ‘moral reasoning’ process. Stating in what various theories disagree would allow the students to frame the problem more productively in terms of motive–consequence or society–individual dichotomies rather than in terms of Kant–utilitarian. (shrink)

How do we determine whether individuals accept the actual consistency of a political argument instead of just its rhetorical good looks? This article answers this question by proposing an interpretation of political argument within the constraints of political liberalism. It utilises modern developments in the philosophy of logic and language to reclaim ‘meaningless nonsense’ from use as a partisan war cry and to build up political argument as something more than a power struggle between competing conceptions of the good. Standard (...) solutions for ‘clarifying’ meaning through descriptive definition encounter difficulties with the biases of status quo idioms, as well as partisan translations and circularity. Collectively called linguistic gerrymandering, these difficulties threaten political liberalism’s underlying coherency. The proposed interpretation of political argument overcomes this with a new brand of conceptual analysis that can falsifiably determine whether rhetoric has hijacked political argument. (shrink)

Some have suggested that Jon Stewart of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (TDS) and Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report (TCR) represent a new kind of journalist. We propose, rather, that Stewart and Colbert are imitators who do not fully inhabit the role of journalist. They are interesting because sometimes they do a better job performing the functions of journalism than journalists themselves. However, Stewart and Colbert do not share journalists' moral commitments. Therefore, their performances are neither motivated nor (...) constrained by these commitments. Using a virtue theory framework, we suggest that this distinction between journalists and their imitators is morally significant because it implies differences in the kinds of excellence these moral agents are pursuing in their work. Rather than evaluating the work of Colbert and Stewart in the role of journalists, we propose analyzing their contributions to media ethics in the role of media critics. (shrink)

This study suggests that news obituaries have a role to play in educating practical reason using The New York Times’ Overlooked project to illustrate. The argument draws from virtue ethicist Alasdair MacIntyre’s book Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity. A close reading of Overlooked’s15 initial obituaries used the biographies in MacIntyre’s book as templates. The analysis concluded that the articles on LGBTQ activist Marsha P. Johnson and novelist Charlotte Brontë illustrated lives that were happy in an Aristotelian sense despite misfortune. (...) The articles on journalist Ida B. Wells and mathematician Ada Lovelace illustrated incomplete lives despite overall directedness. The articles on novelist Nella Larsen and Brooklyn Bridge supervisor Emily Warren Roebling illustrated the challenge of reconciling different aspects of one’s life to achieve unity of character. This finding was closely tied to how structural injustice prevents or distorts the kinds of relationships MacIntyre says agents need to flourish. (shrink)