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Ethical Theories (ethical + theory)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	42%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	35%

Selected Abstracts

DOES ETHICAL THEORY HAVE A PLACE IN POST-KOHLBERGIAN MORAL PSYCHOLOGY?

EDUCATIONAL THEORY, Issue 2 2010
Bruce Maxwell
Philosophers tend to assume that theoretical frameworks in psychology suffer from conceptual confusion and that any influence that philosophy might have on psychology should be positive. Going against this grain, Dan Lapsley and Darcia Narváez attribute the Kohlbergian paradigm's current state of marginalization within psychology to Lawrence Kohlberg's use of ethical theory in his model of cognitive moral development. Post-Kohlbergian conceptions of moral psychology, they advance, should be wary of theoretical constructs derived from folk morality, refuse philosophical starting points, and seek integration with literatures in psychology, not philosophy. In this essay, Bruce Maxwell considers and rejects Lapsley and Narváez's diagnosis. The Kohlbergian paradigm's restricted conception of the moral domain is the result of a selective reading of one tendency in ethical theorizing (Kantianism). The idea that moral psychology may find shelter from normative criticism by avoiding ethics-derived models overlooks the deeper continuity between "ethical theory" and "psychological theory." The confusion and barrenness of psychology is not to be explained by calling it a "young science"; its state is not comparable with that of physics, for instance, in its beginnings. (Rather with that of certain branches of mathematics. Set theory.) For in psychology there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion. (As in the other case conceptual confusion and methods of proof.) The existence of the experimental method makes us think we have the means of solving the problems which trouble us; though problem and method pass one another by.1 [source]

Ethical Theory as Social Practice

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 1 2006
MARK GOODALE
This article represents a search for a different analytical language through which anthropology can engage with human rights. This effort is intended to contribute to what is an expanding range of ways in which anthropologists conceptualize, advocate for, and critique contemporary human rights. Its central argument is that current ethnographic studies of human rights practices can be used as the basis for making innovative claims within human rights debates that take place outside of anthropology itself. To do this, ethnographic description that captures the contradictions and contingencies at the heart of human rights practices is not enough. What is needed is a different understanding of how the idea of human rights comes to be formed in context. In this article, I suggest several possible ways that an anthropological philosophy of human rights can accomplish this. I conclude by locating this approach in relation to a longer history of anthropological skepticism toward universalist discourses. [source]

Does Ethical Theory Have a Future in Bioethics?

THE JOURNAL OF LAW, MEDICINE & ETHICS, Issue 2 2004
Tom L. Beauchamp
First page of article [source]

Passion and Reason: Aristotelian Strategies in Kierkegaard's Ethics

JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS, Issue 2 2002
Norman Lillegard
Both Aristotle and Kierkegaard show that virtues result, in part, from training which produces distinctive patterns of salience. The "frame problem" in AI shows that rationality requires salience. Salience is a function of cares and desires (passions) and thus governs choice in much the way Aristotle supposes when he describes choice as deliberative desire. Since rationality requires salience it follows that rationality requires passion. Thus Kierkegaard is no more an irrationalist in ethics than is Aristotle, though he continues to be charged with irrationalism. The compatibility of an Aristotelian reading of Kierkegaard with the "suspension of the ethical" and general problems with aretaic ethical theories are treated briefly. The author argues that it is possible to preserve a realist ethics in the face of the "tradition relativism" which threatens the version of virtue ethics here attributed to Kierkegaard. [source]

Epistemic Presuppositions and their Consequences

METAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 1-2 2003
Juli Eflin
Traditional epistemology has, in the main, presupposed that the primary task is to give a complete account of the concept knowledge and to state under what conditions it is possible to have it. In so doing, most accounts have been hierarchical, and all assume an idealized knower. The assumption of an idealized knower is essential for the traditional goal of generating an unassailable account of knowledge acquisition. Yet we, as individuals, fail to reach the ideal. Perhaps more important, we have epistemic goals not addressed in the traditional approach , among them, the ability to reach understanding in areas we deem important for our lives. Understanding is an epistemic concept. But how we obtain it has not traditionally been a focus. Developing an epistemic account that starts from a set of assumptions that differ from the traditional starting points will allow a different sort of epistemic theory, one on which generating understanding is a central goal and the idealized knower is replaced with an inquirer who is not merely fallible but working from a particular context with particular goals. Insight into how an epistemic account can include the particular concerns of an embedded inquirer can be found by examining the parallels between ethics and epistemology and, in particular, by examining the structure and starting points of virtue accounts. Here I develop several interrelated issues that contrast the goals and evaluative concepts that form the structure of both standard, traditional epistemological and ethical theories and virtue,centered theories. In the end, I sketch a virtue,centered epistemology that accords with who we are and how we gain understanding. [source]

Rorty, Caputo and business ethics without metaphysics: ethical theories as normative narratives

BUSINESS ETHICS: A EUROPEAN REVIEW, Issue 2 2010
Andrew Gustafson
Using the works of Richard Rorty and John Caputo, I want to suggest that we might be better off treating the traditional ethical theories of Kant, Mill, Aristotle and Hobbes as normative narratives rather than as justificatory schemes for moral decision making to be set up against one another. In a spirit akin to Husserl's ,bracketing' of metaphysics, when discussing ethical theories in business ethics, we can easily avoid metaphysics and use an approach that sees ethical theory as socially convincing normative narratives , narratives that unify us with others insofar as they describe our phenomenological experiences in a way with which many of us mutually resonate. I will do this by attempting to show how John Caputo's thinking in Against Ethics and Rorty's postmodern pragmatism might be appropriated to some extent by us in business ethics. [source]

Integrating Leadership Styles and Ethical Perspectives

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES, Issue 4 2001
Edward Aronson
This paper reviews two major ethical theories and the manner in which the values they espouse are associated with the directive, transactional, and transformational leadership styles. A model of ethical leadership is proposed which relates the dimensions of these styles to the level of the leader's moral development. Transformational leadership appears to be most closely connected to deontology, while transactional leadership would seem to be related more to teleological ethics, and directive leadership to ethical egoism, a category of teleology. The paper concludes with some suggestions for future research. Résumé Cette étude passe en revue deux théories principales d'éthiques et la façon dont les valeurs qu'elles compren-nent sont liées aux styles de leadership directif, transac-tionnel, et transformationnel. L'auteur présente un mo-dèle de leadership éthique dans lequel les dimensions de ces styles sont associées au niveau de développement moral du leader. Le leadership transformationnel semble être lié plus étroitement à la déontologie tandis que le leadership transactionnel serait associé plutôt à l'éthique téléologique et le leadership directif à l'égo-ïsnie éthique, une catégorie de la téléologie. L'étude se termine par quelques suggestions de recherches ultérieures. [source]

DOES ETHICAL THEORY HAVE A PLACE IN POST-KOHLBERGIAN MORAL PSYCHOLOGY?

Particularism, Generalism and the Counting Argument

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, Issue 1 2003
Simon Kirchin
In a recent collection of papers ,Moral Particularism (hereafter MP)1, some writers argue against a particularist explanation of thick ethical features, particularist in the sense developed by Jonathan Dancy. In this piece I argue that particularists can tackle what I regard as the most interesting argument put forward by these writers, an argument I call the Counting Argument. My aim is twofold. First, I wish to make clear exactly what the debate between particularists and their opponents about the thick rests on. Secondly, I do not wish to provide a ,knock-down' argument to show particularism as true, but merely to push the onus back onto particularism's opponents and show that far more needs to be said. One last introductory comment. After some necessary scene-setting in the first section, where I explain how the philosophical ground is carved up and introduce some terminology, I indicate why this debate is fundamental in ethical theory although I don't pursue the idea here. [source]

Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics, the Master/Slave Dialectic, and Eichmann as a Sub-Man

HYPATIA, Issue 2 2009
ANNE MORGAN
Simone de Beauvoir incorporates a significantly altered form of the Hegelian master/slave dialectic into The Ethics of Ambiguity. Her ethical theory explains and denounces extreme wrongdoing, such as the mass murder of millions of Jews at the hands of the Nazis. This essay demonstrates that, in the Beauvoirean dialectic, the Nazi value system (and Hitler) was the master, Adolf Eichmann was a slave, and Jews were denied human status. The analysis counters Robin May Schott's claims that "Beauvoir portrays the attitudes of the oppressor as defined fundamentally in relation to the oppressed" and that her use of the dialectic is "inadequate to account for how human beings create extreme situations of evil, such as that of genocide." [source]

The Basic Goods Theory and Revisionism: A Methodological Comparison on the Use of Reason and Experience as Sources of Moral Knowledge

THE HEYTHROP JOURNAL, Issue 4 2001
Todd A. Salzman
In Roman Catholic moral theology there is an ongoing debate between the proportionalist or revisionist school and the traditionalist school that has developed what is referred to as the ,New Natural Law Theory' or ,Basic Goods Theory' (BGT). The stakes in this debate have been raised with Pope John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis Splendor (1993) on fundamental moral theology that condemned ,proportionalism' or ,teleologism' as an ethical theory while utilizing many of the ideas, concepts, and terminology of the BGT, thereby implicitly endorsing that ethical theory. While absolute norms and intrinsically evil acts have frequently been the focus of debate between these two schools, what is it that divides them fundamentally, on the level of ethical method? It is the role and function of reason and experience as two sources of moral knowledge, in part, that distinguish these two versions of natural law on the most basic level. While the BGT has a strict hierarchy of the sources of moral knowledge that posits the hierarchical magisterium as the definitive interpreter of reason and experience, revisionists posit a more dialogical relationship between reason, experience, and the magisterium. On certain ethical issues (e.g., artificial birth control), the experience of the faithful as well as the rational arguments developed by revisionist Catholic moral theologians challenge some of the normative claims of the magisterium. This paper investigates the methodological use of reason and experience in each theory's interpretation of natural law and how and why these two sources of moral knowledge lead to fundamentally divergent normative claims on particular ethical issues. [source]