Re-Reasoning Ethics

Abstract

The ethics in this book is unique. It is not about philosophy’s moral theories and principles and their logical application. That standard conception of ethics is too simple, too spare, too abstract, and ultimately too impersonal. Real moral problems are complex, contextual, and dynamic. They need to be framed, examined, and settled, and these constructions, analyses, and resolutions need to be rational. The normativity of this novel conception of ethics is embedded in judgment, which is ubiquitous in our lives, and good judgment emanates from rational processes of deliberation, that is, the ones that have been well designed. This book is about non-formal reason, a conception of rationality that subsumes formal reason, both logic -- deducing what ought to be done from moral principles -- and calculating optimal net benefits among options, but it is a more expansive, more creative conception of rationality. Re-reasoning ethics is about designing rational processes of deliberation that produce rational judgments in ethics and bioethics, as well as other domains such as science and our lives. In ethics it marks problem solving as deliberative design for human flourishing. This conception of ethics is unusual because it is grounded in the empirical realities of human beings and their worlds, and its naturalism takes rationality to be an empirical learnable, improvable deliberative skill. Given this orientation, the examples offered are real and drawn from anthropology and sociology. The ethics of this book is about the best that finite, fallible human beings can do and should do.