Ethics, Speculation, and Values

Some writers claim that ethicists involved in assessing future technologies like nanotechnology and human enhancement devote too much time to debating issues that may or may not arise, at the expense of addressing more urgent, current issues. This practice has been claimed to squander the scarce and valuable resource of ethical concern. I assess this view, and consider some alternatives to ‘speculative ethics’ that have been put forward. I argue that attempting to restrict ethical debate so as to avoid considering unacceptably speculative scenarios would not only leave scientific progress devoid of ethical guidance, but would also rule out some of our most important ethical projects. I conclude that the issue of speculation is a red herring: what is most important is not that ethicists concentrate on current issues or those that are most likely to arise; but that ethicists, scientists, and others focus on maximising what is most valuable.

规则伦理的宗教痕迹与美德伦理学

在美德伦理学讨论中,规则伦理学被批评为一种具有律法主义色彩的宗教残留物.在美德伦理看来,规则伦理学残缺地继承了基督教的伦理思维框架,不恰当地理解"规则"的性质却又没有在现代社会中提供充分的依据.因此美德伦理学主张,必须改变规则伦理学的思路,不把"规则"视为某种普遍绝对的律法式条文,而应当看作人们用于处理复杂而不确定的实践问题的资源之一.     

Moral Cosmology, Religion, and Adult Values for Children

We hypothesize that the religiously orthodox, who are theologically communitarian/authoritarian in seeing individuals as subsumed by a larger community of believers and as subject to timeless divine law, are more likely to value obedience in children over autonomy than are theological modernists, who are theologically individualistic in seeing individuals, not a deity, as the ultimate arbiters of right and wrong. We hypothesize further that differences in moral cosmology (orthodoxy vs. modernism) within faith traditions are more important for the values adults seek to instile in children than are differences between traditions. Through analyses of national data from the 1998 General Social Survey, we find strong confirmation of both hypotheses. Moral cosmology is the single-most important factor in valuations of obedience and autonomy in children. While evangelical Protestants differ from Catholics, mainline Protestants, and those with no religion in their values for children, moral cosmology is associated with differences in values for children within each of the faith traditions, including evangelical Protestants. We conclude that intra-faith differences in moral cosmology are key in explaining values for children, but have not completely supplanted interfaith differences .     

Development,Ethics, and the Ethics of Development

This article investigates three things: (1) what development might be, (2) how development and ethics might be related, and (3) what an ethics of development might look like. First, I show how if we move away from an essentialist metaphysics of being to a possibilist-functionalist metaphysics of becoming in our understanding of development, we can reconceptualize ethics as self-directed ontogeny. Thus, ethics turns out to be a part of development. Secondly, I sketch out the possibility of an ethics of development, showing how it should be based on three desiderata: (1) sustainability, promoting the long-term existence of the maximum human and non-human biodiversity, (2) democracy, promoting human-human relationships that are bidirectional and, to the extent possible, non-imposing, and (3) non-ethnocentrism, promoting true modernity; a modernity not predicated on a non-existent abstract universality but on concrete syncretism. The ultimate aim of this ethics of development is the optimization of individual and collective subjectivity and agency across time.     

Judging the Professional Woman: Changing Research, Changing Values

This article offers a framework for understanding contradictory findings in the field of the personality of working and professional women. Modern theory and research display two patterns: the early pattern of the 1960s, which viewed professional women as violating sex stereotypes, lacking femininity, and having personality disturbances; and the contemporary view, which emerged during the 1970s and suggests the possibility of combining career with family without psychological conflicts and personality disturbances. A critical appraisal of the literature in four areas (psychological role conflict, fear of success, comparison between housewives and career women, and comparisons between women in traditional and pioneer occupations) concludes that little evidence supports the view that professional women have personality disturbances because of their career. Possible explanations for shifting viewpoints and contradictory findings are presented. The article also analyzes the issues and problems professional women currently face and assesses the accessibility of those issues to empirical study.     

Race,Religion, and Ethics in the Modern/Colonial World

The concept of religion as an anthropological category and the idea of race as an organizing principle of human identification and social organization played a major role in the formation of modern/colonial systems of symbolic representation that acquired global significance with the expansion of Western modernity. The modern concepts of religion and race were mutually constituted and together became two of the most central categories in drawing maps of subjectivity, alterity, and sub‐alterity in the modern world. This makes the critical theory of religion highly relevant for the theory of race, and both of them crucial for ethics. It follows from this, not only that religion and race have been profoundly intertwined in modernity, but also that any ethics that seeks to take seriously the challenges created by modernity/coloniality has to be, at least to some extent, decolonial.     

Religion in the Context of Culture, Theology, and Global Ethics

The theme of this symposium is distinctive and challenging, because it incorporates the dimensions of interreligious reflection, theology, science, and ethics. This article presents a palette of issues that are both challenge and resource for approaching the theme. Three sets of issues are considered: (1) the role of religion in culture, (2) theological interpretation of nature, disease, and evil, and (3) the fashioning of a global ethic.     

Ethics,Changing Populations,and the Dental Profession

This review emphasizes the worldwide and U.S. evolving population demographics and the need for the dental profession to exercise its professional and ethical duty to expand its traditional patient base to provide needed services.     

Values and Ethics in Family Therapy

This article is an introduction to this special issue on values and ethical issues in family therapy. The author discusses the historical context for the rising interest in these issues in family therapy, describes the rationale for this special issue, and presents a framework for analyzing the core values of the prominent models of family therapy. The ethical debate over use of paradoxical techniques in family therapy is used as an illustration of a values clash between different models of family therapy.     

A Public Religion and Biomedical Ethics

This article describes the exclusion of public expressions of religion from the history of bioethics during recent decades. It offers a proposal to include public religion for the purpose of gaining donations of vital organs for transplantation, more appreciation for the gift of aging, and more concern for universal access to health care. I also include a brief discussion of theological support and practical suggestions for such a program.     

Religion,Politics and Ethics: Towards a Global Theory of Social Transformation

In this paper I set out a phenomenology of social transformation, based on an analysis of the distinctively religious form of communication which underlies the trans-generational and trans-cultural transmission of world traditions, taking Confucianism and Christianity as their representatives. A phenomenological analysis of their communicative structure allows the possibility of a better understanding of what can be learnt from them in the context of contemporary debates in both China and the West on the relations between religion, ethics and politics. This analysis suggests that the ethical consistency of belief and act, which is the necessary condition for the engendering of long-term solidarity in religious community, has significant implications for ethics in politics, and especially for the legitimacy of representational leadership as a focal point for change in society. The paper concludes that the historical experience of world religions can offer new insights into the nature of political leadership and representation in today’s globalised world and that the appropriate locus for this inquiry is the present negotiation and re-negotiation of relations between China and the West.     

Religion,Poverty, and Development

This article serves two purposes. First, it introduces the forum that follows in this issue on religion and development. Second, it serves as a review of the small but quickly growing literature on how religion interacts with efforts by (often religious) people and organizations to ameliorate poverty worldwide. We address the need to define both “religion” and “development” with clarity and precision. We also call for further research in this area by sociologists, particularly at a time when the landscape of development practice is shifting, from changes in funding sources and priorities to competition between religious and secular organizations.     

The Religion of Genetics in Epistemology and Ethics

In the dialog between genetics and religion, the genetics of religion has received thoughtful attention from the possibility of free will to the evolution of human religious behavior. In this article, the author focuses on the reverse, the religion of genetics – specifically, two aspects of how religion shapes our understanding and use of genetics. If religion is (as often argued) whatever our ultimate concern or worldview is, it gives context and direction for the study and application of genetics. Some of the implications are traced through two examples of interaction with one religion, the varied Christian tradition.     

Winch and Anscombe on Ethics and Religion

The aim of this paper is to consider in detail a paper in which Peter Winch discusses the absolute nature of the moral ought. Anscombe had argued that the notion of an absolute ought presupposes the idea of divine law. Winch's aim is to show her mistaken. On his view, it is the idea of divine that depends on the notion of an absolute ought. It is argued that Winch is not successful in his criticism. Indeed, were we to accept his assumptions, we should be forced to conclude that the moral ought is not absolute at all, but relative.