The ethics of complexity and the complexity of ethics

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the implications that a general view of complexity - i.e. the view that complex phenomena are irreducible - hold for our understanding of ethics. In this view, ethics should be conceived of as constitutive of knowledge and identity, rather than as a normative system that dictates right action. Using this understanding, we elaborate on the ethics of complexity and the complexity of ethics. Whilst the former concerns the nature and the status of our modelling choices, the latter denotes a contingent and recursive understanding of ethics. Although the complexity of ethics cannot be captured in a substantive normative model, we argue that this view of ethics nevertheless commits one to, what we term, ‘the provisional imperative’. Like Kant’s categorical imperative, the provisional imperative is sub-stantively-empty; however, unlike Kant’s imperative, our imperative cannot be used to generate universal ethical principles. As such, the provisional imperative simultaneously demands that we must be guided by it, whilst drawing attention to the exclusionary nature of all imperatives. We further argue that the provisional imperative urges us to adopt a certain attitude with regard to ethical decision-making, and that this attitude is supported and nurtured by provisionality, transgressivity, irony, and imagination.     

绝对命令伦理学和协调伦理学——四谈工程伦理学

绝对命令伦理学和协调伦理学是两种具有不同性质、不同理论假设和不同特征的伦理学立场和伦理学进路。由于决策在工程活动中占据了中心位置,决策伦理问题在工程伦理学中也占据了中心位置。在工程决策中,必须正确认识和处理工程中伦理因素和非伦理因素的关系,强化工程决策中的伦理意识,正确处理决策伦理和伦理决策的关系,特别是要妥善处理工程决策中涉及伦理要素的“内外双重协调”问题。文章最后分析了协调原则和共同体、共识和共赢的关系。     

Learning ethics the hard way: facing the ethics committee.

This article describes an approach to enhancing the value of case study material in teaching professional ethics in psychology. The mock committee approach involves a series of hearings convened by students who rotate membership on a class ethics committee. Members of the class participate randomly as psychologists accused of various ethical violations. While the class observes, formal complaint hearings occur that result in official rulings and the setting of appropriate penalties and remedial requirements. The larger class then joins in active feedback and exchange with the committee to highlight and discuss salient ethical issues. We present and discuss student evaluation data for this technique and comment on the potential advantages of this teaching approach.     

The development of computer ethics: Contributions from business ethics and medical ethics

In this essay, we demonstrate that the field of computer ethics shares many core similarities with two other areas of applied ethics, Academicians writing and teaching in the area of computer ethics, along with practitioners, must address ethical issues that are qualitatively similar in nature to those raised in medicine and business. In addition, as academic disciplines, these three fields also share some similar concerns. For example, all face the difficult challenge of maintaining a credible dialogue with diverse constituents such as academicians of various disciplines, professionals, policymakers, and the general public, Given these similarities, the fields of bioethics and business ethics can serve as useful models for the development of computer ethics. A version of this paper was presented at ETHICOMP98, the Fourth International Conference on Ethical Issues of Information Technology, March 25–27, 1998, Erasmus University, the Netherlands. Kenman Wong, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Business Ethics; Gerhard Steinke, Ph.D., is Professor of Management and Information Systems. Both authors are at Seattle Pacific University's School of Business and Economics.     

How Christian ethics became medical ethics: the case of Paul Ramsey.

Over the last century Christian ethics has moved from an attempt to Christianize the social order to a quandary over whether being Christian unduly biases how medical ethics is done. This movement can be viewed as the internal development of protestant liberalism to its logical conclusion, and Paul Ramsey can be taken as one of the last great representatives of that tradition. By reducing the Christian message to the 'ethical upshot' of neighbour love, Ramsey did not have the resources to show how Christian practice might make a difference for understanding or forming the practice of medicine. Instead, medicine became the practice that exemplified the moral commitments of Christian civilization, and the goal of the ethicist was to identify the values that were constitutive of medicine. Ramsey thus prepared the way for the Christian ethicist to become a medical ethicist with a difference, and the difference simply involved vague theological presumptions that do no serious intellectual work other than explaining, perhaps, the motivations of the ethicist.     

On the ethics of psychological research

Three philosophical positions on the nature of ethics were examined and contrasted within the context of psychological research: (a) teleology, which involves the balancing of the costs and benefits associated with an action as a means of developing general ethical rules; (b) deontology, which involves the rational adherence to rigid, universal rules that hold irrespective of the situation or consequences; and (c) skepticism, which involves denying the ability to apply universal rules and asserting the individuality of moral codes. Two experiments investigated the degree to which judgments of the ethicality of psychological research are affected by the consequences of the research and judge's ethical ideology. Subjects judged experiments that investigated obedience to an authority as generally less moral and more threatening to the participants' dignity and welfare when the proportion of total obedience was high rather than low. The proportion of participants (10 vs 40%) who were described as “psychologically upset” by the research did not affect moral judgments. These results were obtained across two different obedience situations (Milgram's study and a Watergate study) and different subject populations (high school and college students, males and females). As suggested by philosophers, a judge's ethical ideology determined how the perceived benefits and costs of the research were correlated with moral judgments. Teleologists weighed scientific benefits heavily, deontologists weighed participants' costs heavily, and skeptics weighed both heavily.     

Schopenhauer on the ethics of suicide

The concept of death is of special importance in Schopenhauer's metaphysics of appearance and Will. Death for Schopenhauer is the aim and purpose of life, that toward which life is directed, and the denial of the individual will to life. Despite his profound pessimism, Schopenhauer vehemently rejects suicide as an unworthy affirmation of the will to life by those who seek to escape rather than seek nondiscursive knowledge of Will in suffering. The only manner of self-destruction Schopenhauer finds philosophically acceptable is the ascetic saint's death by starvation. Here the individual will to life is so completely mastered as to refuse even the most basic desire for nourishment, and thereby passes into nonexistence in complete renunciation of the individual will. Schopenhauer's attitude toward suicide nevertheless embodies an inconsistency. If, as Schopenhauer believes, the aim of life is death, and death is an unreal aspect of the world as appearance, then there appears to be no justification why the philosopher should not rush headlong into it - not to affirm the will to life in an abject effort to avoid suffering, but in order to fulfill life's purpose by ending it for distinctly philosophical reasons immediately upon arriving at an understanding of the appearance-reality distinction.     

Interrogating the ethics of operational psychology

Commissioned amidst allegations of collusion between American Psychological Association officials and Central Intelligence Agency and Department of Defense officials involved in the enhanced interrogation programme, the July 2015 Hoffman Report documented a decade of collusion between American Psychological Association and Department of Defense officials in unethical national security interrogations. However, interrogation support is but one of numerous areas where psychologists are directly aiding military and intelligence operations, an area known as operational psychology. The ethical issues posed by the larger field of operational psychology have received little public discussion apart from apologia by operational psychologists themselves. To stimulate public review of operational psychology, leaders of the movement to remove psychologists from national security interrogations convened, in September 2015, a group of experts to work towards a consensus set of principles to guide future discussion. Participants included psychologists, physicians, and social scientists; military and intelligence professionals; and attorneys, ethicists, and human rights advocates. The discussion also drew upon years of dialogue between participants and military health and intelligence professionals. The workshop produced “The Brookline Principles on the Ethical Practice of Operational Psychology,” with implications for the profession of psychology and for civil society.     

Enhancement and the ethics of development

Much of the debate about the ethics of enhancement has proceeded according to two framing assumptions. The first is that although enhancement carries large social risks, the chief benefits of enhancement are to those who are enhanced (or their parents, in the case of enhancing the traits of children). The second is that, because we now understand the wrongs of state-driven eugenics, enhancements, at least in liberal societies, will be personal goods, chosen or not chosen in a market for enhancement services. This article argues that both framing assumptions must be rejected, once it is understood that some enhancements--especially those that are most likely to garner resources and become widespread--will increase human productivity. Once one appreciates the productivity-increasing potential of enhancements, one can begin to see that enhancement need not be primarily a zero sum affair, that the social costs of forgoing enhancements may be great, and that the state may well take an interest in facilitating biomedical enhancements, just as it does in facilitating education and other productivity-increasing traditional enhancements. Appreciating the productivity-increasing potential of enhancements also makes it possible to view the enhancement debate in a new light, through the lens of the ethics of development.