Applied Ethics in a Troubled World

326 Pages·1998·8.755 MB·English

by  Robin Attfield (auth.), Edgar Morscher, Otto Neumaier, Peter Simons (eds.)

APPLIED ETHICS IN A TROUBLED WORLD
PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES
VOLUME 73
Founded by Wilfrid S. Sellars and Keith Lehrer
Editor
Keith Lehrer, University ofA rizona, Tucson
Associate Editor
Stewart Cohen, Arizona State University, Tempe
Board of Consulting Editors
Lynne Rudder Baker, University ofM assachusetts at Amherst
Radu Bogdan, Tulane University, New Orleans
Allan Gibbard, University ofM ichigan
Denise Meyerson, University of Cape Town
Fran~ois Recanati, Ecole Poly technique, Paris
Stuart Silvers, Clemson University
Nicholas D. Smith, Michigan State University
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
APPLIED ETHICS
IN A TROUBLED WORLD
Edited by
EDGAR MORSCHER
Universităt Salzburg,
Salzburg, Austria
OTTO NEUMAIER
Universităt Salzburg,
Salzburg, Austria
and
PETER SIMONS
University ofL eeds,
Leeds, U.K.
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-94-010-6182-7 ISBN 978-94-011-5186-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-5186-3
Printed on acid-free paper
AII Rights Reserved
© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1998
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1998
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permis sion from the copyright owner.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE vii
INTRODUCTION: ON APPLYING ETHICS ix
PART I / ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS
INTRODUCTION AND SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 3
ROBIN ATTFIELD / The Comprehensive Ecology Movement 9
DIETER BIRNBACHER / Legal Rights for Natural Objects:
A Philosophical Critique 29
TOM REGAN / Rights Across Species 41
RICHARD SYLVAN / Mucking with Nature 57
PART II / BIOETHICS AND MEDICAL ETHICS
INTRODUCTION AND SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 87
PETER SINGER / On Comparing the Value of Human and
Nonhuman Life 93
JOHN HARRIS / Should we Attempt to Eradicate Disability? 105
RUTH F. CHADWICK / Is Nursing Ethics Distinct from Medical Ethics? 115
HELGA KUHSE / A Nursing Ethics of Care? Why Caring Is
Not Enough 127
PART III / BUSINESS ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
INTRODUCTION AND SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 145
GEORGES ENDERLE / Business Ethics as a Goal-Rights-System 151
MIKE W. MARTIN / Personal Ideals and Professional
Responsibilities 167
NORMAN E. BOWIE / Postmodemism, Business Ethics, and Solidarity 179
PART IV / SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND LEGAL ETHICS
INTRODUCTION AND SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 197
MICHAEL BAURMANN / Liberal Society and Planned Morality 203
ALAN R. GEWIRTH / The Community of Rights 225
THOMAS W. POGGE / Does Utilitarianism Favor Economic Equality? 237
vi CONTENTS
PART V / AIMS AND FOUNDATIONS OF APPLIED ETHICS
INTRODUCTION AND SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 247
RAINER HEGSELMANN / What Is Moral Philosophy and
What Is Its Function? 251
BRENDA ALMOND / Applied Ethics: a Normative View 273
STEPHEN R.L. CLARK / Objectivism and the Alternatives 285
R.M.HARE / Philosophy and Conflict 295
INDEX OF PERSONS 307
EDGAR MORSCHER/OTTO NEUMAIER/PETER SIMONS
PREFACE
The 1991 International Wittgenstein Symposium was to have been devoted
to the subject of Applied Ethics. For reasons which are well known and
which we recall in our Introduction, it had to be cancelled. So the incident
which gave rise to this book became itself an interesting "case" for scrutiny
by applied ethics. However, this case of applied ethics goes beyond the un
fortunate events which led to the cancellation of the 1991 symposium. The
picture of the case can be rounded out only with the appearance of this vol
ume ami with a description of the circumstances leading to its appearance.
When we contacted those who had been invited to give lectures at the sym
posium and told them about the cancellation and the reasons for it, we asked
them whether they would be prepared to allow the work they had been plan
ning to present at the symposium to go into a collection. All declared them
selves spontaneously in favour. This act of solidarity underlines the unusual
unanimity of judgement and feeling of all concerned in this case.
While it takes time to collect and publish contributions to a conference
which has taken place, it takes longer for a conference that never took place
at all. Some of the contributions had first to be written. Other unforeseen
obstacles postponed publication further, for which we ask consideration,
especially from the authors. The publication of this volume will, albeit be
latedly, fulfil a duty to document what happened and what was suppressed.
From the beginning we saw the volume as not merely the proceedings of
a non-existent symposium, but as a kind of reader in applied ethics. In this
way we hope to have made up for some of the time lost since the cancellati
on. To make the volume more useful as a reader we have prefaced each of
its five parts with a short introduction and bibliography.
Salzburg, Summer 1997 The Editors
vii
EDGAR MORSCHER/OTTO NEUMAIER/PETER SIMONS
INTRODUCTION: ON APPLYING ETHICS
Every book has a subject and a history, and this one is no exception. The his
tory of this book is closely connected with an historic event - or rather non
event: the 1991 International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium. The cancel
led 1991 symposium was on the subject of applied ethics, which is also the
subject of this volume. The contributions come from people who were in
vited to give lectures at the 1991 Wittgenstein Symposium.
In the first part of this Introduction we consider the topic and explain our
conception of applied ethics. In the second part we review again - from a
safer temporal distance - the events leading to the cancellation of the 1991
symposium. In presenting this story from our point of view we intend both
to contribute to the documentation of the affair and to express our credo.
I. THE SUBJECT: APPLIED ETHICS
The subject of this volume is called either 'applied ethics' or 'practical
ethics'.1 We prefer the term 'applied ethics', because this tells us something
about how it is to proceed: in the application of what is already known as
'ethics'. Under 'ethics' we shall understand the rational and critical consid
eration of moral phenomena and problems of all kinds. Whereas we under
stand 'morals' and 'morality' to cover actual morality or moral practice, which
does not necessarily entail reflection, ethics poses at least rudimentary theor
etical demands. In applied ethics one is concerned to apply theoretical con
siderations arising from philosophical reflection to particular concrete cases
and situations of moral conflict.
In what follows we shall outline a simple model for applied ethics, so
understood.2 In accordance with our understanding, we distinguish two sides
of applied ethics: that which is applied, and that to which it is applied.
A) The Two Sides of Applied Ethics
1. What is applied in applied ethics?
What is applied in Applied Ethics is ethics itself, more precisely, prescript
ive or normative ethics, in the sense of a theory or a theoretical enterprise.
There is no single prescriptive ethics: what there is instead is a plethora of dif
ferent theories or attempts at theories in prescriptive ethics. Whenever such
ix
x EDGAR MORSCHER/OTTO NEUMAIER/PETER SIMONS
an ethical theory, or part or a principle from one, is employed with regard to
a concrete case or used to solve a moral problem, one is applying ethics.
We pause here for some remarks on terminology.
(a) On the term 'prescriptive': we use the term 'prescriptive' in various
contexts (such as 'prescriptive expression', 'prescriptive sentence', 'prescript
ive theory', 'prescriptive ethics') always in the sense of 'evaluative or norma
tive'. Prescriptive ethics in this sense comprises both the ethics of value (evalu
ative ethics) and the ethics of duty or right action (normative ethics), and pre
scriptive theories include both theories of value and theories of duty.
(b) On the term 'theories': in prescriptive ethics it is common to talk of
theories. This way of speaking has a certain justification in the case of utilit
arianism, which is often described as a teleological or consequentialist the
ory. Utilitarianism, as its long history shows, arose and developed through
critical discussion like a scientific theory. In certain accounts of values too
there is something like a genuine theoretical nucleus. In the majority of de
ontological "theories" on the other hand, for example in so-called theories
of justice, there is no trace of anything like a theory in the proper sense. Talk
of theories in prescriptive ethics is therefore for the most part a merefa~on
de parler which cannot be taken at face value. Mostly what one has are the
beginnings of ,a theory or attempts to construct a system which is like a the
ory in certain respects. We therefore tend to qualify talk of theories in the
context of prescriptive ethics rather as theoretical endeavours.
If even the most modest claims to be talking about theories or theoretical
endeavours are to be at all justified, at least two conditions must be satisfied.
(i) These attempts at theory or theoretical endeavours must in every case,
whether they are firm convictions, hypothetical conjectures, or mere opinions,
be expressible linguistically in the form of sentences. Without substantial loss
of generality, we can say for simplicity's sake that what are applied in pre
scriptive ethics are written sentences. This simplification has the advantage
that written sentences are more easily intersubjectively accessible and discus
sable than the convictions, conjectures and opinions they represent or express,
and also less evanescent than spoken utterances which say the same thing.
(ii) Talk of theoretical endeavours is also only justified if these sentences
(and the convictions etc. they express) exhibit a certain universality. This "cer
tain universality" which is characteristic of and essential to theoretical en
deavours is often termed "unrestricted" or "strict" universality. It is distinct
from mere formal universality such as that which can be found in sentences of
the form 'Everything which is identical with such and such an object/is at such
and such a spatiotemporallocation/is within such and such a spatiotemporal
region is so and so' . In such cases the universality is one of superficiallinguis
tic form only: the content of such sentences is not inherently universal but sin
gular (concerning a certain individual thing, person, situation or action) or at
most particular (concerning a restricted collection of things, persons, etc.).
INTRODUCTION xi
Prescriptive sentences of ethics which exhibit the requisite unrestricted
universality are called 'moral principles'. In such moral principles persons,
things, actions, events of a certain kind etc., irrespective of which ones they
are or where and when they are located, are judged prescriptively (evaluat
ively or normatively) in a certain way. Moral principles are therefore strictly
universal, insofar as they concern any person, thing, action, event etc., and
insofar as they speak about or quantify over - usually only implicitly - all
locations or regions of space-time. They can of course restrict the kinds of
persons etc. by antecedent clauses in conditionals, as closely as one likes;
e.g. they can speak of all company directors having two or more grand
children, but this does not impugn the status of the whole conditional
sentence as strictly universal provided no essential reference is made to
particular places, times, people etc.
A moral principle of this kind thus takes the form
For every x: if x has the descriptive properties D and D2 and D3 and ...
J
and Dn, then Px
or in symbols
Here 'DJx', 'D2X', 'D3x' , ... , 'Dnx' are the restricting or antecedent con
ditions, since they occur in the antecedent of the sentence. They determine
the kind of person, thing, action etc. which is prescriptively judged in the
consequens of the conditional. We indicate this prescriptive component sche
matically as 'Px', and come back to it later.
This account does contain a simplification: a moral principle can (and
usually will) concern more than one thing, action etc., so that in general its
form will be
For every x, y, z, ... and for every spatio-temporal location or region t:
if DJ(x, y, Z, ... , t) and D2(x, y, z, ... , t) and D3(x, y, z, ... , t) and ... and
Dn (x, y, z, ... , t), then P(x, y, Z, ... , t)
or again in symbols
VxVyVz ... Vt[(DJ(x, y, z, ... , t) 1\ D2(x, y, z, ... , t) 1\ D3(x, y, z, ... , t) 1\ ...
1\ Dn(x, y, z, ... , t)) ~ P(x, y, z, ... , t)]
where the 'Di(x, y, z, ... , t)' indicate formulas whose instances are basic sen
tences and in which at most the variables 'x', 'y', 'z' , ... and 't' have free
occurrences.