Ethical Claims Research Articles

The insufficience of supervenient explanations of moral actions: Really taking Darwin and the naturalistic fallacy seriously

In a recent paper in this journal (Rottschaefer and Martinsen 1990) we have proposed a view of Darwinian evolutionary metaethics that we believe improves upon Michael Ruse's (e.g., Ruse 1986) proposals by claiming that there are evolutionary based objective moral values and that a Darwinian naturalistic account of the moral good in terms of human fitness can be given that avoids the naturalistic fallacy in both its definitional and derivational forms while providing genuine, even if limited, justifications for substantive ethical claims. Jonathan Barrett (this issue) has objected to our proposal contending that we cannot hold for the reality of supervenient moral properties without either falling foul of the naturalistic fallacy or suffering the consequences of postulating inexplicable moral properties. In reply, we show that Barrett's explicit arguments that we commit either the definitional or derivational form of the naturalistic fallacy fail and that his naturalistic intuitions that supervenience explanations of moral properties by nonmoral properties force us into what we call the explanatory form of the naturalistic fallacy also fail. Positively, his objections help us to clarify the nature of the naturalistic fallacy within an evolutionary based naturalistic ethics and to point out the proper role of both supervenience explanations and moral explanations in such an ethics.

Personality as a vocation: the political rationality of the humanities

In responding to periodic government demands that it provide a rational justification for its activities as a public utility, the humanities academy typically appeals to the absolute ethical and intellectual values of liberal education. This paper investigates the nature of this response and its relation to the governmental field. The historical, ethical and political claims involved in the appeal to liberal education are discussed and rejected. It is argue that the cultivation of personhood has neither a single (‘complete’) from nor a privileged home in the university arts faculty. Weber's sociology of ethical orders is used to frame a discussion of intellectual cultivation as a specific vocation or discipline of life. From Foucault's conception of ‘govermentality’ the paper draws an account of share of political rationality dependent of the historical deployment or particular intellectual and political technologies. The problem of the political rationality rationality of the humanities is then discussed...

Really taking Darwin seriously: An alternative to Michael Ruse's Darwinian metaethics

Michael Ruse has proposed in his recent book Taking Darwin Seriously and elsewhere a new Darwinian ethics distinct from traditional evolutionary ethics, one that avoids the latter's inadequate accounts of the nature of morality and its failed attempts to provide a naturalistic justification of morality. Ruse argues for a sociobiologically based account of moral sentiments, and an evolutionary based casual explanation of their function, rejecting the possibility of ultimate ethical justification. We find that Ruse's proposal distorts, overextends and weakens both Darwinism and naturalism. So we propose an alternative Darwinian metaethics that both remedies the problems in Ruse's proposal and shows how a Darwinian naturalistic account of the moral good in terms of human fitness avoids the naturalistic fallacy and can provide genuine, even if limited, justifications for substantive ethical claims. Thus, we propose to really take Darwin seriously.

Methodological foundations of systems methodologies

In social systems science generally, and in management science particularly, recent developments in the variety of types of specific problem-solving methodologies (under the rubric of “hard” and “soft” systems approaches) have given an impetus to a line of inquiry, as well as debate on the nature of those methodologies. On the one hand, there has been the view that what we are witnessing is a form of “Kuhnian crisis.” On the other hand, a complementarist view of developments has been argued and a contingency approach proposed. But one thing has been common among the competing views: a belief that the prospects for further advances in the design and application of those methodologies, and in resolving the current controversies, lie in serious attempts to reconsider and clarify the underlying metatheoretical assumptions and concerns. This paper is an attempt to contribute to such an endeavor. A brief exposition of three methodological foundations (namely, empiricism, hermeneutics, and critique) is made, not only with the purpose of highlighting the nature as well as the limits of their epistemological and ethical claims, but also as a basis for illuminating both the nature of contemporary work on systems inquiry, design, and problem solving and the ongoing debate on what constitutes appropriate criteria for choice of specific methodologies.

Canadian Policy Towards the Third World: Basis for an Explanation

Canadian foreign policy had until recently a certain responsiveness to ethical claims made upon it. This responsiveness was often quite smug and superior, but it was real.

Aristotle's Poetics and the Problem of Tragic Conflict

Despite the broad diversity in our century of views about tragedy, most critics show remarkable agreement about one point: that ‘conflict’ is a central defining characteristic of the form. Tragedy has repeatedly been discussed in terms of a struggle, which involves competing demands or forces that press in on man and shape his conduct. Although the structure of such a conflict has been variously formulated, in general it has been conceived in one of three ways: 1) as a psychological dilemma of inner decision-making, in which the hero must choose between opposing claims that he cannot mediate; 2) as a social collision between agents who hold to different but often equally valid ethical claims; 3) as a religious struggle implicating man in resistance against a force of divine necessity, such as fate, oracles, or the gods.A wide host of influences could be marshalled to explain the development of popularity of these modern conceptions. Existentialism has had a hand in forming theories of tragedy that concentrate on crises of decision-making. Hegel's critical views of drama in theVorlesungen ueber die Aesthetikhave had an impact on the idea that tragic struggle emerges within the state and the potential competition between civic and familial obligations. And German Romantic critics, for example, Schiller and Schlegel, have made their mark on the notion that the tragic hero asserts his dignity against an external force of necessity threatening personal autonomy. But it has often been argued that these relatively modern influences are themselves derivative. According to many critics, theories of tragic conflict are ultimately indebted to Aristotle's Poetics. The Greek treatise is seen as the primary source for an idea that has by now become commonplace.

Competing Ethical Claims in Abortion

In cases of abortion, as in all cases of nursing care, the nurse has the ethical obligation to provide the best nursing care possible without judging the rightness or wrongness of the patient's action or behavior. Several staff nurses at a small community hospital in the United States personally believe that abortion is ethically wrong. This personal belief is reinforced for many by their religious belief system. Because of a rotation policy at this hospital, all nurses will be assigned to work in the abortion clinic, and this presents several problems. Initially, there is the ethical dilemma of an individual nurse's personal-religious value system, and the obligation to self to live according to it. This is in opposition to the ethical obligation to care for all patients. The nursing administration also faces an ethical problem related to enforcing this policy in the fairest way possible. Another problem for the nursing administration is a legal obligation to make sure that all patients receive adquate nursing care. The nurses at this 1 community hospital asked to meet with the nursing administratio for the purpose of discussing the issue of working in the abortion clinic. The meeting took place and though exploration of value systems and issues and through mutual willingness to compromise without being compromised, decisions to resolve the dilemma were reached. It was agreed that nurses would not be made to rotate into the abortion clinic against their religious beliefs and that nurses who did not have that ethical stance would work there.

Dilemmas in Practice: Competing Ethical Claims in Abortion

Dilemmas in Practice: Competing Ethical Claims in Abortion

Ethics and Amniocentesis for Fetal Sex Identification

Two types of parents request fetal sex identification by amniocentesis: the first group risk transmitting a sex-linked hereditary disorder and the second want to select the gender of their next child. Physicians generally encourage the first type of parent but discourage the second. Prenatal diagnosis for sex choice is controversial because of ethical objections to the use of abortion for such a reason and because of the question of whether amniocentesis, a scarce medical resource, can prudently be used for this purpose.1 The issue is complex and involves many competing ethical claims. I have re-evaluated my position on this issue . . .

Millennialism in Relation to Buddhism

Weber, in his comparative studies of religion, characterized millennial eschatologies (embodying beliefs in a just redistribution of fortune through a future revolution in this world) as one possible type of solution to a problem of meaning which he considered central to all religious traditions—the problem of explaining the world's imperfections. Taking this type of solution as his point of departure, he arranged the other types in a logical order. Thus when the supervention of the messianic kingdom in this world appeared to be unduly delayed, a second type of solution became necessary and possible, a solution in terms of other-worldly expectations of heaven and hell. This second solution itself entailed difficulties of its own: when heaven and hell were conceived as intermediate realms of existence, there still remained problems regarding the eternity of salvation (and damnation); and, when they were conceived as eternal realms of existence, there arose, especially in the context of theistic beliefs, the difficulty of reconciling the punishment of human errors with the conception of a benevolent and powerful creator of the world who would ultimately be responsible for these human actions himself. The third, fourth and fifth types of solutions were seen as responses to this problem, a problem which in Christian theology came to be known as ‘theodicy’ or the problem of reconciling the two fundamental attributes of God, universal benevolence and omnipotence, in view of the existence of evil. The third type of solution, best exemplified in the Protestant doctrine of predestination, preserved God's omnipotence and resolved his lack of benevolence by placing him beyond the ethical claims of his creatures.

PRIVILEGIETS PROBLEM - MELLEM DEN HUMANITÆRE OG DEN KYNISKE FORNUFT

THE PREDICAMENT OF PRIVILEGE: BETWEEN HUMANITARIAN AND CYNICAL REASON | In this article I explore a contemporary structure of feeling closely but ambivalently related to what moral anthropologist Didier Fassin has termed ”humanitarian reason”. I label this specific affective disposition ‘the predicament of privilege’. In the first part of the article I relate the predicament of privilege to various critiques of humanitarianism for being a ”feeling culture” depoliticizing questions of inequality, justice and social conflict. The latter part of the article examines ”the predicament of privilege” by way of analyzing a recurring Danish TV-fundraiser in terms of the various ugly feelings represented, produced and circulated by this particular charity show. My overall suggestion is that we can hardly understand the affective-moral dimensions of globalization without exploring the cultural forms and social functions of the ugly, unprestigious and amoral feelings pertaining to being globally privileged: sentiments such as boredom, indifference, compassion fatigue, cynicism, bad conscience and sheer reluctance to engage emotionally in the ethical claims made on us.

Free Enterprise in a Growth World

In recent years free enterprise has become an ideological slogan which seems to invest economic organization with deep moral significance. Not only is it essential for the safeguarding of economic freedom, we are told, but for the maintenance of political freedom as well. Indeed, free enterprise has been deified and taken its place among the other gods of the western world. While economists are not guilty of the cruder forms of obeisance before free enterprise, they of necessity use the phrase so constantly in analyzing the market that they are likely to take for granted the ethical claims made on its behalf. In this paper I shall raise some issues about economic freedom in the context of economic growth which will place the former in more meaningful perspective.