Is Moral Theory Useful in Practical Ethics?

Abstract

Many applied or practical ethicists hold that ethical theories have little value in practical ethics. The theories such critics have in mind are probably most often utilitarianism and a Kantian ethics of respect for persons, which I shall refer to as RP theory. This criticism applies to both practical ethics done in the classroom and in other venues, such as professional publication. The critics of ethical theories maintain that the standard theories distort ethical analysis and contribute little to the resolution of complex ethical issues. This belief is probably based on the following paradigm of how the theories are used in ethical analysis. We subject an ethical problem to analysis in terms of one theory, such as utilitarianism, and then subject the same problem to analysis in terms of another theory, such as RP theory; then we find that the two theories give different and incompatible conclusions. This state of affairs not only leaves the problem unresolved, but suggests that one conclusion is as good as another, thus paving the way to ethical skepticism. This paradigm is both frustrating and unhelpful. While it may be true, as ethical theorists themselves have often suggested, that some ethical controversies are unresolvable, the idea that alternative ethical frameworks usually lead to different results and that the alternative frameworks are equally justifiable is not the final word which we want to leave either with students or with others who look to philosophical ethics for guidance. I believe this paradigm is seriously flawed. It expects both too much and too little of ethical theories. It expects too much because it appears to assume that each of the major ethical theories provides an equally adequate purchase on all of the considerations relevant to a complete ethical analysis and that the theories should always converge on the same conclusion. It expects too little because, when the use of the theories provides incompatible answers, the assumption is that the theories are of no use whatever. The truth, in my opinion, is somewhere between these two positions. Ethical theories may in fact sometimes converge on the same conclusion, but when they do not, all is not lost. This is because they may