|
Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy Volume 1: Ethics Introduction Klaus Brinkmann By conventional standards, the papers collected in this first volume of invited contributions to the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy fall roughly into the two broad categories of moral theory and applied ethics. However, a closer look will reveal that there is nothing conventional about them. Not only do some of the applied ethics papers challenge some widely acknowledged positions in bioethics (Jorge L. A. Garcia, Felicia Ackerman, Gunnar Skirbekk) or suggest a new framework for the reconciliation of nature and culture in environmental ethics (Holmes Rolston, III), the papers in moral theory broadly conceived show a remarkable preparedness to rethink traditional boundaries, positions, and methodological approaches altogether. Thus the traditional boundaries between normative ethics and metaethics come under pressure once it is realized that, for instance, normative disagreements concerning different conceptions of the good life presuppose an agreement to the effect that the good life is indeed something we ought to strive for. Based on observations like these, it is possible to develop a powerful argument for the reintegration of normative ethics with metaethics (Stephen Darwall). Again, the divisions within moral theory become less important, not to say irrelevant, when the established normative positions seem to lose their universalistic standing in a confrontation with culturally based ethical pluralism. One may then even go so far as to speak of the "demise of moral theory" due to its inability to defend an unambiguous notion of morality (Stuart Rosenbaum). These moves suggest that a new distinction may be opening up between moral theory on the one hand and moral philosophy on the other, where moral philosophy designates the attempt to formulate a new paradigm for what moral theory is about. To take a conspicuous example for this kind of reorientation, it is being claimed that the various efforts in feminist ethics have led to the emergence of a fundamentally new approach to moral theorizing which not only opposes the paradigm of an 'ethics of justice' with an 'ethics of caring', but also argues that the former needs to be overcome in favor of the latter (Virginia Held). Others are drawing the consequences from the perceived failure of the established normative positions, such as utilitarianism or deontological ethics, to either demonstrate convincingly the existence of moral universals or show their successful application in concrete circumstances by making a case for ethical particularism (Jonathan Dancy) or moral objectivism (Margarita M. Valdés). Meanwhile, attempts are being undertaken in moral epistemology to formulate an empirical procedure for identifying moral universals analogous to the already existing method of establishing the existence of linguistic universals (Gilbert Harman). Not only, then, is there an effort underway to rethink the boundaries, goals, and fundamental orientations in ethics, as the following brief summaries will show more clearly, there is also a simultaneous effort to reconstitute the established positions in moral theorizing and to put them on a more secure or more promising basis. One of the most pressing issues in contemporary ethics is the need for developing a convincing response to moral relativism. The increased awareness of the fact that different cultures live by different value systems has put the universalistic positions in normative ethics on the spot, so to speak. Indeed, both the emergence of non-universalistic positions such as particularism and the call for a moral philosophy beyond traditional normative ethics can be viewed as a reaction to this challenge. One strategy for salvaging universalistic claims has been to limit the unconditionally normative values or moral principles to a minimum. However, in this approach cultural diversity is lost, not preserved. In "Moral Pluralism without Moral Relativism" Alasdair MacIntyre sketches a novel response to the dilemma between moral universalism and moral relativism. The danger of relativism, he points out, is precisely that it encourages us to ignore, rather than begin to appreciate and learn from, the different value systems which form part of the identity of other cultures. If we do not want to lose the possibility for enriching our own understanding of human existence, we must acknowledge that diverse value systems give expression to a particular conception of human nature and the role morality ought to play in our lives. These diverse conceptions of human nature are inherently normative and universalistic, MacIntyre argues. They therefore contain within themselves a commitment to truth which transcends any particular morality. It is this commitment to truth as a universal good which can underwrite what MacIntyre calls an "ethics of inquiry" on the basis of which a fruitful exchange between different moral orientations may take place, an exchange which may even lead to a critical questioning of our own moral culture and thus prevent us from remaining "imprisoned within our own standpoint." One may want to compare this proposal with Hyung-Yul So's suggestion, in his "Pluralism and the Moral Mind," that the moral systems of different cultures should be viewed as expressions of different types of rationality which nonetheless together constitute the unity of human reason. So in fact undertakes a detailed hermeneutical study of how different styles of rationality (deductive, inductive, abductive, dialectical, analogical, and pragmatic) inform the moral outlook and the fundamental moral attitudes of some of the major world cultures. As an aside, it is interesting to note that So's approach bypasses the appeal to religion in order to explain the ethical diversity of different cultures. Stephen Darwall's "Plea for a Philosophical Ethics"-this the subtitle of his paper entitled "Why Ethics is Part of Philosophy"-questions the by now historical dissociation between normative and metaethics. Taking core concepts of some of the traditional positions in normative ethics such as normativity, value, obligation, pleasure, or virtue, he argues that no serious work within deontological, utilitarian, or virtue ethics, to name only these, can be done without achieving at least some metaethical consensus about which particular norms constitute values or which character traits should be regarded as virtues. It would therefore be pointless or even fundamentally erroneous to want to "seal off" a normative position from its metaethical presuppositions. Metaethics might thus very well become the Grundlegung for normative ethics. Stuart Rosenbaum's statement referred to above concerning the "demise of moral theory" in his contribution "Moral Theory and the Reflective Life" naturally prompts the question: What comes after moral theory? Rosenbaum's reply is: a moral philosophy which focuses on concrete forms of life-paradigms of the good life, one might say-which can function as models of an ideal life form. Rosenbaum sees his proposal as another response to "a growing tendency to reject the idea of a commensurability of all values" and as a way of coming to terms with the pluralism of ethical orientations. His paradigm of an ideal life form is Dewey's concept of the reflective life and its emphasis on "reflective autonomy," but he sees similar intentions at work elsewhere, for instance in Annette Baier's discussion of the pluralism of values in Hume or in Martha Nussbaum's interpretation of Aristotle's ethical vision. Perhaps the most radical rethinking of normative ethics comes from a feminist ethics which opposes traditional positions such as Kantian or utilitarian ethics with a new ethical paradigm. As Virginia Held argues in "Feminist Ethical Theory," while non-feminist ethics is guided by values such as autonomy, self-determination, rights, independence, and abstract universality, feminist ethics favors values such as interdependence, mutual trust, empathy, emotional ties, and community. This new ethical paradigm should not be reduced to an ethics of care (but one might perhaps call it an ethics of caring for others). It does, however, deliberately "challenge the rationalistic and individualistic assumptions" guiding the dominant moral theories as well as the idea of an "impartial morality" in which moral judgments ought to resemble those of a neutral judge in a court of law. A "feminist moral theory" built on the principle of caring should eventually incorporate and subsume the established "ethics of justice," or so it seems. Since both virtue ethics and the ethics of care are focused on moral practices rather than abstract principles, and since both give a role to the emotions no less than to rational deliberation, the two positions might be good candidates, Held seems to imply, with which to begin the task of integrating the existing normative orientations into the new caring-based model of moral philosophy. How newly evolving positions in normative ethics may affect our assessment of historical positions and give rise to new combinations can also be seen in Michael Slote's "Moral Theories and Virtue Ethics." Slote takes Hutchinson's "hybrid sentimentalist ethics" as an example and shows how it may be transformed into either a non-hybrid utilitarianism without a consequentialist commitment or a non-hybrid virtue ethics. He then goes on to explain how virtue ethics might complement a "feminine" ethic of caring in such a way as to inject a broader humanitarian concern into it. A more broadly humanitarian ethics of caring might have a chance of becoming "a complete approach to morality." Due to the centrality of the principle of caring as an inner motivational state it could also be described as, or indeed be part of, a virtue ethics. That the universalistic approach in normative ethics is indeed under pressure, if not on the defensive, is also apparent from Jonathan Dancy's contribution entitled "Can a Particularist Learn the Difference Between Right and Wrong?" Once one has come to the conclusion that there are no moral universals such that particular reasons or actions could be justified by having recourse to them, ethical particularism offers itself as an alternative. However, for particularism to work it needs to counter the objection that there are no descriptive features of actions which uniquely identify one action as right and another as wrong-with the undesirable consequence that distinguishing right from wrong would then become a matter of Moorean intuition. The charge from the anti-particularist camp then is that there exists no "pattern to the way in which descriptive information determines moral conclusions." Dancy's paper is intended to rebut this criticism by pointing out that a rigid correlation between the concept of a right action on one hand and one or more specific "right-making" descriptive features of that action on the other is unnecessary. Depending on the circumstances one or another feature may be advanced as being the reason, rather than merely the identifying feature, of a right action. All that particularism denies, therefore, is the existence of "a descriptive specification" of the right-making properties, not the existence of such properties. Because evaluative or normative features can thus be linked to descriptive features of actions, the particularist is indeed capable of knowing-and defending-the difference between right and wrong. According to Dancy, therefore, the semantic argument against particularism fails. Dancy then turns to a presentation of two models of particularist rationality, neither of which, he argues, is vulnerable to the semantic criticism. In "Practical Ethics and Moral Objectivism," Margarita M. Valdés comments on another perceived demise, in this case that of a cornerstone of metaethics, viz., the fact-value distinction. With its collapse, she argues, moral subjectivism has lost its footing and moral objectivism, which claims that morality has an objective basis in moral facts and that moral judgments can be true or false, has been able to gain ground. Relying on Simon Blackburn's criticism of John Mackie's critique of moral objectivism she examines ways of avoiding Mackie's conclusions. Both Ricardo Maliandi ("Principios de Equidad Discursiva") and Gunnar Skirbekk ("Discourse-Ethical Gradualism: Beyond Anthro-pocentrism and Biocentrism?") develop their arguments from a discourse-ethical position which, however, they also see in need of emendation. Maliandi suggests that the so-called Alexy-Habermas principles of discursive equality lack a provision for maintaining discursive fairness under circumstances of real and ineliminable non-discursive asymmetry among discourse participants and proceeds to propose such balancing principles drawing on Rawls's principles of justice. Skirbekk believes that a version of discourse ethics can help us avoid the dilemma we face in trying to evaluate 'borderline' cases between humans and nonhumans in bioethics. Skirbekk shows that the usual paradigmatic approach does not allow us to accord nonhumans any right to our moral concern while the assumption of a fundamental continuity between non-humans and humans-which he calls "ontological gradualism"-is in danger of losing morally relevant distinctions. The solution offered consists in a revised version of discourse ethics which accords moral responsibility to moral agents only but extends the moral universe to all sentient beings, including nonhumans, as moral subjects on the grounds that discourse ethics must recognize a biological foundation (such as embodiment and vulnerability) as part of the competence requirements for being a moral discussant. Gilbert Harman's "Moral Philosophy and Linguistics" opens a group of three papers dealing with metaethical questions. Harman proposes a new method for discovering moral universals. On the assumption that there exists a parallel between the acquisition of linguistic competence on one hand and moral knowledge on the other, one might try to uncover something like "a universal grammar of morality." The actual method described by Harman in the sequel of the paper must meet the challenge that just like linguistic universals their moral counterparts represent universal constraints on moral reasoning that must not have been learned through explicit instruction, but instead must have been picked up "ahead of time." Harman quite ingeniously gets around this difficulty by assuming the existence of "moral idiolects" whose default rules would indicate the existence of underlying moral universals, if indeed these turned out to be universally valid. In a response to Harman's The Nature of Morality and the discussion about moral explanations ensuing in its wake, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong presents an argument for a "limited version of moral skepticism" ("Explanation and Justification in Moral Epistemology"). Assuming that there are no moral facts, moral explanations of observations concerning behavior that can be morally adjudicated must be relative to contrast classes. However, if the contrast class is unlimited-and thus includes moral nihilism-no moral explanation can meet the necessary independence requirement. It follows that "moral explanations work for some limited contrast classes but not for an unlimited contrast class." Ethicists often assume that in order to hold agents morally responsible it must be possible to attribute regulative control over their actions to them. To have regulative control over one's actions means that one could have done otherwise or that one could have prevented something from happening, even if one actually failed to do so. As John Fischer tries to demonstrate in "The Value of Moral Responsibility," the "freedom-relevant" (as opposed to the epistemic) component of moral responsibility is satisfied by a less comprehensive kind of control which he calls guidance control. This is control of how one reacts to or bears events or how one influences or shapes actions for which no alternative seems available or accessible. As Fischer shows, moral responsibility requires guidance control, but not regulative control. However, what at first might seem to be merely a technical point, turns out to be quite an important consideration for the moral evaluation of a human life as a whole. Clearly we do not have absolute regulative control over how our lives play out, whether they go, say, from rags to riches or from riches to rags. How a moral and prudential evaluation of such biographical 'narratives' is nonetheless possible on the guidance control model is worked out persuasively in the second half of Fischer's paper. John Passmore's "Philosophy and Ecology" takes the reader from moral theory in the traditional sense to environmental ethics. Passmore reviews a number of difficulties which this branch of philosophy-he calls it environmental philosophy, not ethics-has had to face since its inception, starting with the question as to its scope and position with regard to other philosophical disciplines and continuing with the as yet unresolved normative issues concerning, among other things, a possible justification of our obligations, if any, towards nature (on this last point, however, one might again want to consult Gunnar Skirbekk's contribution referred to above). Obviously, a mandate to preserve the environment cannot be based on something like rights on the part of nature. Is such preservation then a matter of purely pragmatic prudence on our part? Passmore tentatively suggests that it might be a plausible strategy to invest nature, including rocks and plants, with noneconomic value, but he is quick to point out that such value would still be in conflict with other kinds of value, be they economic, cultural, or aesthetic. There does not seem to be an independent basis for adjudicating between the relative importance of these values. A similar problematic is at issue in Holmes Rolston III's "Nature and Culture in Environmental Ethics." However, Rolston broadens its scope by viewing the relationship between humans and nature as one of nature and culture. Moreover, he understands this relationship as an irreversible mutual interdependence, a global symbiosis that is here to stay (unless, of course, we inflict lethal damage on our life-sustaining biosphere). Consequently, he rejects the idea of 'assimilating' culture to nature-culture is, after all, not an "emanation of Nature." The two form the foci of an ellipse which should not be collapsed into a circle. The relationship is dialectical and complementary. A restitution of nature to its pristine state is impossible, nor can culture remain opposed or indifferent to nature. Environmental ethics will have to view nature as a managed environment in which human culture may continue to feel at home. However, whether the managerial approach to nature is indeed the right approach has itself been a matter of some debate. In "Depth, Trusteeship, and Redistribution" Robin Attfield develops a defense of the trusteeship model against its recent critics. Among other things, this model has the advantage of not being anthropocentric. But the suggestion that man should be the steward of nature naturally prompts the question as to who in particular should be a trustee. Humanity as such does not function as an agent. Responsibility as a trustee must therefore fall to individual societies. Ultimately, however, the burden of stewardship must be born by those societies which are economically healthy and in a position of political leadership, Attfield argues. It will be their task to empower the less developed societies and thus to broaden the basis of trusteeship by minimizing inequalities of power and resources. It is at this point that environmental ethics begins to reach the level of practical consequences and to show its potential for affecting environmental policy decisions. While the scientific debate about how much of the change in the environment is anthropogenic continues, biotechnology is a case where such change is being deliberately engineered. In "Biotechnology and the Environment: From Moral Objections to Ethical Analyses" Matti Häyry and Tuija Takala comment critically on the fact that in their view philosophical ethics has so far failed to be very helpful in giving concrete answers to the question of how to respond to the potential dangers of releasing genetically altered organisms into the environment. Even consequentialism, they argue, is ill equipped to address such issues, since the consequences in this case are typically unpredictable. How then are we to overcome the stage of moral objections based primarily on emotional responses? The authors suggest a risk based assessment of the possible negative consequences which would differentiate between controllable and uncontrollable risks and take into account irresponsible or accidental release of altered material. Whether or not risks are acceptable should be determined by those who would potentially be affected by the consequences. Jorge L.A. Garcia's "Beyond Biophobic Medical Ethics: What's the Mercy in Mercy-Killing?" opens a group of four contributions to bio- and medical ethics. As the title of his paper indicates, Garcia doubts that we can make sense of the concept of mercy-killing. Indeed, the idea, he maintains, represents an ethical perversion instead of a principle of beneficence as which defenders of assisted suicide and euthanasia usually regard it. The article points out the self-contradictory nature of some of the arguments offered in support of mercy-killing. The deeper roots for what Garcia calls a "degraded intellectual culture" which would allow such perversions are in his eyes the lack of a genuine bioethics, i.e., one "fiercely devoted to human life," and the tendency to see life in purely instrumental terms. The issue of assisted suicide is further discussed in Felicia Ackerman's "Death, Dying, and Dignity." Ackerman subjects the idea that assisted suicide may be a means to maintaining a person's dignity to critical scrutiny. It would be crucial to determine what does and does not affect or impair human dignity. What, if anything, about a sick or even a terminally ill person's life is it that degrades his or her existence? Is it the person's dependence on others, the suffering of pain, a lowering of self-esteem? While these are some of the answers that have been given, Ackerman is not convinced that they are appropriate answers at all. The question we ought to ask ourselves first would rather be: What does it show about our culture that old age, illness and disability are perceived as reducing a person's dignity? As we saw earlier, a number of contributions question the effectiveness or even the capacity of moral theory to provide solutions to concrete moral issues, partly because of a perceived lack of universal moral standards, partly due to the abstractness of those theories. This situation prompted the emergence of new types of ethical theories such as particularism, moral objectivism, or the call for a new type of moral philosophy altogether. In his contribution "Morality and Health Care Policy," Bernard Gert challenges what he refers to as the "standard moral theories" (i.e., Kantian-type duty ethics, consequentialism, and Rawlsian contractarianism) from yet another angle by drawing attention to the difference between ethical theory on one hand and our actual moral practices on the other. If we look at moral decision making in an everyday context, say decisions about the allocation of scarce resources in health care, we will see that those decisions are made within the context of what Gert calls "common morality," an informal public system of moral evaluation(informal because there is no authority to proclaim binding decisions about what is morally right or wrong). In this system, the unique-right-answer assumption of the moral theorist and his idea of the fully informed, impartial and uniquely rational agent (what one might call the 'ideal agent' assumption) are not applicable. Gert suggests that not only are these idealizing assumptions mistaken when it comes to actual moral decision making, they are even dangerous, because they obscure the reality of irresolvable moral disagreements and tend to discourage negotiation and compromise. Consequently, the role of moral theory in 'real life' should be much more modest than the moral philosopher might think, that is, it should be limited to the negative role of ruling out morally unacceptable policies rather than prescribing solutions. As Gert notes in his paper, one of the difficulties in reaching fair and just decisions in a distributive system such as health care is the problem of how to quantify personal harm with a view to minimizing inequality in the distribution of benefits. Dan W. Brock ("Ethical Issues in the Construction of Population Health Measures for the Prioritizing and Rationing of Health Care") addresses just this problem. The need to factor quality of life assessments into the calculation of cost effective procedures or policies and the necessity to compare the respective quality of life of disabled versus non-disabled persons make considerations of equity not only complicated but also precarious. Other problems arise from basing equity considerations on either a social or an individual approach. Moreover, if life expectancy is a factor in providing a health care measure, it would matter at what stage of life the measure is being provided (a point reminiscent of John Fischer's argument referred to above). Brock discusses these and other matters in detail, including the question of how to evaluate the benefits of vaccination programs and of minimizing sick days, examining the mathematical models used in calculations of cost effectiveness and highlighting the unresolved moral issues at every turn. His article is a reminder that measures concerning distributive justice and equity are by no means merely technical or economic, but involve serious moral decisions and value choices, down to the question of how to construct mathematical models for calculating quality adjusted life years (QALYs) and disability adjusted life years (DALYs). The volume concludes with a paper addressing the ethical responsibility of the scientist. In "Ethics in Big Science," Russell Hardin tries to find a new answer to the question of how scientists might be held accountable for upholding the ethical standards of their profession. Existing models such as self-policing may work better in some scientific communities than in others. To a certain extent, one may rely on the scientists self-interest: career prospects usually hinge on "getting it right," i.e., remaining committed to a scientific idea of truth and professional verifiability. But how are we to treat the case of scientists with a conflict of interest, either perceived or real? Does working for some industry invalidate certain findings? A strict rule against conflicts of interest might have the unwelcome consequence of a loss of outside funding for the academic researcher. Scientists have mostly failed to create working models for professional self-regulation, Hardin concludes, and now they may have waited too long to preempt direct public (political) intervention. Perhaps a self-regulatory model within science can be developed such that a formal regulatory system outside a scientists' own research arena would act as monitoring body.
|
