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Books |
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Making Morality: Pragmatist Reconstruction in Ethical Theory
Todd Lekan
In this contribution to moral theory, Todd Lekan argues for a pragmatist conception of morality as an evolving, educational and fallible practice. Drawing on the work of John Dewey, he asserts that moral norms are not timeless truths or subjective whims, but habits transmitted through practices.
Making Morality: Pragmatist Reconstruction in Ethical Theory |
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Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach to Moral Theory
by Lawrence
M. Hinman
This book covers the major approaches to ethical decision making. It is in-depth, but not overly technical in nature. This is perhaps its greatest value, as it allows the novice student to become familiar with the major lines of discussion within the discipline without burdening them with some of the more intricate discussions that are more difficult. EXCELLENT study questions at the end of each chapter are another plus. Though I ultimately disagree with the authors conclusions as to how best to approach the study of ethics; I do, nevertheless appreciate the irenic spirit in which the material is covered. I am a Professor of Philosophy and Systematic Theology at a conservative bible college. Given the differences in worldview perspective, I still found myself in agreement with his assessments of most of the approaches covered. I do, of course, disagree with many of the conclusions Hinman draws in respect to his chapter on Religious Ethics (divine command theory) Still, I would suggest this book to fellow educators as a balanced and irenic introductory text regardless of ones religious commitment.
Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach to Moral Theory |
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The Moral Sense
by James
Q. Wilson
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Reviewer: Kendal
Brian Hunter. A good mix of data and theory!
Even criminals believe in morality, at least as they grow older.
. . . When asked, at aged thirty-two, whether they would be
'very angry' if their son or daughter committed a criminal offence,
over three-fourths of those men who had themselves been convicted
of a crime (and often several crimes) answered yes. Even the
most hardened criminals - those with at least eight convictions
- agreed. They may not be very good fathers, but they don't
want their sons or daughters to be very bad children. This is
quite an interesting book. It focuses on the moral sense, an
idea whose heyday was coeval with the Scottish Enlightenment
and the American Revolution. |
The Moral Sense |
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Asian and Jungian Views of Ethics
Carl B. Becker ed. Under the auspices of The Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education
ISBN: 0-313-30452-1, 160 pages
Greenwood Press february 28, 1999
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More than fifty years ago, Tetsuhiko Uehiro looked down on the radioactive ashes of Hiroshima and dedicated his life to more ethical resolutions of human disagreements. He founded an association which attracted millions of Japanese people, to promote traditional ethics. His son, Eiji Uehiro, seeking a more universal and international basis for ethics, founded the Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education, which became a partner of the Carnegie Council. To commemorate the Foundation's tenth anniversary, leading scholars of Asian philosophy and Jungian psychology were brought together to find new grounds for ethics in human experience which would not depend on religious affiliation and which would apply ethics to the interpersonal and global problems of the modern world.
All the authors reach for new decision-making paradigms giving new ways of learning about morality. They suggest that our bodies, feelings, dreams, and synchronous experiences give us clues to ethics. Their scholarship illusrates that people are invisibly, inescapably interconnected with each other and with our environment. An important resource for scholars in the fields of comparative cultures, counseling and ethics, Jungian psychology, and Asian religions.
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http://www.praeger.com/books/BookDetail.asp?dept_id=1&sku=GM0452 |
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Natural Law Ethics
ISBN: 0-313-30702-4
216 pages, Greenwood Press May 30, 2000
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Reviews: ...faculty scholars and graduate students will find it a stimulating and challenging approach to a familiar subject matter.
- Choice Reviews: Natural Law Ethics is beautifully written and will prove popular to a wide range of readers because it avoids the excesses, such as being too cerebral, often associated with books and articles on the topic.
The natural law tradition, which takes as central to moral discussion an appeal to our common humanity, provides a sustainable and attractive approach to problems of ethics and morals. This volume presents a contemporary version of natural law ethics, one that does not rely for support on the authority of Aristotle or St. Thomas Aquinas, however much it is indebted to them and their followers for inspiration and arguments. The author discusses the mutual relations of four key moral concepts--the good, virtue, duty, and rights--as well as their application to various issues, including environmental concerns, homosexuality, and suicide. While examining the role of morality in a way of life and the relation between morality and religion, he defends the natural law tradition against a range of philosophical and theological opponents.
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http://www.praeger.com/books/BookDetail.asp?dept_id=1&sku=GM0702 |
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Articles |
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The Mystery Of Morality
(1), Manuel M. Davenport, Department of Philosophy, Texas A&M University. Journal of Power and Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Review. A Symposium on Power, Ethics, Warfare, and the Military, 2000 (1), 2.
In explaining the origin of "the moral law within," Western philosophers first claimed the source to be reason alone, later they argued that its source was some combination of reason and will, and most recently they argue that the source is the irrational will alone. If the sole basis of morality is the irrational will, then there is no objective basis for morality and, indeed, "everything is permitted." There is, however, evidence from neurophysiology that the source of morality is the tendency of the self to maintain integrity and that what is meaningful in past theories of morality rests upon this objective tendency.
http://spaef.com/JPE_PUB/1_2/v1n2_davenport.html |
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Of Reason, Morality, and Ethics: The Way of Effective Leadership in a "Multicultural Society"
Gordon L. Campbell, United States Army Combined Arms Support Command. Journal of Power and Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Review. A Symposium on Power, Ethics, Warfare, and the Military, 2000 (1), 1.
This article examines both the pitfalls of the "post modernist" viewpoint, whose blind avocation of religious and cultural relativism has allowed the tribalization of American society, and political "leadership", which survives on such division. It advocates the utilization of ethical rules of conduct and discourse derived through reason, sans religion or culture, and prescribes the leadership qualities essential for its inculcation. This article was originally presented at the Joint Services Conference on Professional Ethics XVIII, Washington, D.C. (January 25-26, 1996).
http://spaef.com/JPE_PUB/1_1/v1n1_campbell.html |
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Why Principles Cannot Justify: A Pragmatist Commentary on the Affirmative Action Debate
Harmon, Michael
The argument of this paper, chiefly informed by a Pragmatist viewpoint,
holds that the contradictory principles that supposedly frame the
debates over racial profiling and affirmative action actually reveal
neither irony nor hypocrisy, and that, insofar as partisans try to
justify their positions by means of principled argument, they can
have nothing "useful to say" to one another. More directly, I hope
to show that principled argument, at least as its rules of engagement
are typically construed, can offer no support or guidance whatsoever
with respect to substantive policy positions, and therefore that moral
admonitions that policy makers, administrators, and citizens ought
to employ principles to decide or justify particular positions presuppose
a logical impossibility. By extension, the sin of hypocrisy stems,
at least mainly, not from the inconsistent application of
principles, but from the misguided belief that they can be "applied"
at all in formulating sensible positions.
http://www.pat-net.org/HARMON.html |
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 TEEN TALK
from NPR's Weekend Edition - Sunday, Sunday, September 27, 1998
At Catonsville High School in suburban Maryland, students in Beverly Hickman's philosophy class examined the morality of President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. We hear excerpts of their discussion.
http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/segment_display.cfm?segID=738 |
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CHARACTER
from NPR's All Things Considered, Sunday, April 12, 1998
NPR's Bob Mondello reviews two foreign films dealing with morality. "The Butcher Boy" by filmmaker Neil Jordan, of "The Crying Game" fame, and "Character" this year's winner for Best Foreign Film. (4:45)
http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/segment_display.cfm?segID=6934 |
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THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON
1781 by Immanuel Kant as translated by J. M. D. Meiklejohn - PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION, 1781
Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind.
THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON |
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Immanuel Kant, German Philosopher (1724-1804)
One of the greatest figures in the history of Metaphysics. After 1755 he taught at the Univ. of Kšnigsberg and achieved wide renown through his teachings and writings. According to Kant, his reading of Hume woke him from his dogmatic slumber and led him to become the "critical philosopher," synthesizing the rationalism of Leibniz and the skepticism of Hume. Kant proposed that objective reality is known only insofar as it conforms to the essential structure of the knowing mind. Only objects of experience, phenomena, may be known, whereas things lying beyond experience, noumena, are unknowable, even though in some cases we assume a priori knowledge of them. The existence of such unknowable "things-in-themselves" can be neither confirmed nor denied, nor can they be scientifically demonstrated. Therefore, as Kant showed in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), the great problems of metaphysics-the existence of God, freedom, and immortality-are insoluble by scientific thought. Yet he went on to state in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) that morality requires belief in their existence. Kant's Ethics centers in his categorical imperative, or absolute moral law, "Act as if the maxim from which you act were to become through your will a universal law."
Immanuel Kant, German Philosopher (1724-1804) |
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Critique of Pure Reason - Immanuel Kant
I first sat down to read Kant's Critique in March of 1994, and after about 60 pages, I realized that I was in way over my head. Kant defines his terms precisely and uses them just as precisely as he builds his arguments. Miss a definition and you're lost for good.
So, I started over with a pencil in hand and copied out every definition and paraphrased each argument in outline form so I could review as I went along. Periodically I sat down and transcribed my notes as a further review, making sure that I still understood what the heck I wrote and why it seemed important at the time.
It probably goes without saying that the entire work made quite an impression on me. What follows is a summary or outline, not an analysis, of the First Critique, although I did allow an occasional personal comment to slip in.
http://www.bright.net/~jclarke/ |
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MORAL RESPONSES AND MORAL THEORY: SOCIALLY-BASED EXTERNALIST ETHICS
P. S. Greenspan, University of Maryland
In this paper I want to outline a metaethical view that I think represents an addition to the standard alternatives in metaethics. I shall indicate how it connects to historical approaches and to some leading views in the contemporary literature. There are several recent authors working along similar lines, but the view emerged in my own work from an extended treatment of emotion, which supplies a somewhat different moral- psychological basis.
MORAL RESPONSES AND MORAL THEORY: SOCIALLY-BASED EXTERNALIST ETHICS |
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LAW/BEHAVIOR/SOCIETY
from NPR's Talk of the Nation, Wednesday, July 1, 1998
GUESTS: Wendy Kaminer, Public Policy Fellow, Radcliffe College, author of several books including, -It's All the Rage: Crime and Culture- [Addison-Wesley, 1995], Stephen Carter, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Yale University and Author, -Civility: Manners, Morals and the Etiquette of Democracy- [Basic Books, 1998]. It's called the land of the free, but being free doesn't mean there are no rules. America is a country of laws based on morality, religion and tradition. Flag-burning, owning a gun, doctor-assisted suicide, even gambling are behaviors we seek to control through laws. But is it really possible to legislate civic virtue? What role do religion, tradition and politics play? Join Ray Suarez and guests to discuss how our morals and beliefs have helped shape the rules we live by.
http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/segment_display.cfm?segID=10516 |
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Postmodern Ethics
Richard Rorty & Michael Polanyi
The editors of the Southern Humanities Review honored this
essay with the Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award for the best essay
published by the journal in 1995.
In this essay I hope to answer some of the charges made against postmodernism
in general and against Richard Rorty's work in particular by critics
who often feel caught in the position of being attracted by the philosophical
allure of postmodern epistemology but angry at finding themselves
on a slippery slope sliding towards what they fear is moral decay
and intellectual anarchy. Christopher Norris' prolific work may speak
for many who feel this way. In "Consensus 'Reality' and Manufactured
Truth" (Southern Humanities Review, 26.1; Winter, 1992),
Norris excoriated the least restrained -- or most poetic -- member
of the French postmodern contingent, Jean Baudrillard, for being so
caught up in his enthusiasm for the simulated "realities" of computer
"worlds" that he found it difficult to tell the difference between
an arcade game, CNN programming, and the actual military event of
the Persian Gulf War. The consequence was a loss of moral judgment.
In "'New Times,' Postmodernism, and the Politics of Distraction" (Southern
Humanities Review, 26.3; Summer, 1992) Norris argued that postmodernism
is a "convenient alibi for thinkers with a large (if unacknowledged)
stake in the 'cultural logic of late capitalism'" (269). The suggestion
is that moral judgment is subsumed by ideological rhetoric.
Postmodern Ethics |
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Links/Websites |
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Ethics and Morality - A listing of sites from the University of California, San Diego and the Ethics Research Center.
Organizations, Journals
Association for Practical and Professional Ethics
http://ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu/~appe/home.html
Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science
http://www.onlineethics.org/index.html
Ethics Updates (University of San Diego)
http://ethics.acusd.edu/
American Journal of Bioethics
http://www.bioethics.net
Science and Engineering Ethics
http://www.opragen.co.uk
Responsible Conduct
On Being a Scientist: Responsible Conduct in Research
http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/obas
The Responsible Conduct of Research in the Health Sciences
http://stills.nap.edu/books/0309062373/html/
Responsible Science, Volume I: Ensuring the Integrity of the Research Process
http://stills.nap.edu/books/0309047315/html/
Responsible Science, Volume II: Background Papers and Resource Documents
http://search.nap.edu/books/0309047889/html/
Other Resources
Codes of Science Ethics Online
Codes of Science Ethics Online
AAAS Professional Ethics Report
http://www.aaas.org/spp/sfrl/per/per.htm
On-Line Science Ethics Resources
On-Line Science Ethics Resources
Ethics-related Web Sites
Institute for the Study of Applied and Professional Ethics (Dartmouth College)
Institute for the Study of Applied and Professional Ethics (Dartmouth College)
Good Laboratory Practices Online
http://www.glpguru.com:80/links.shtml
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