How should we distinguish between ethical and unethical ways of pursuing profit in a market? The market failures approach (MFA) to business ethics purports to provide an answer to this question. I argue that it fails to do so. The source of this failure is the MFA’s reliance on Pareto efficiency as a core ethical principle. Many ethically “preferred” tactics for seeking profit cannot be justified by appeal to Pareto efficiency. One important reason for this is that Pareto efficiency, as (...) understood by the theory of welfare economics upon which the MFA relies, assumes a static conception of efficiency. This is a problem because many ethically “preferred” tactics can only be justified by appeal to dynamic efficiency considerations. I argue that, instead of Pareto efficiency, we should look to the value of wealth creation to understand the ethical constraints on how market actors may pursue profit. (shrink)

Interpreters are less univocal than one might think in assessing Søren Kierkegaard's attitude toward eudaimonism. Through an analysis of several key texts from across Kierkegaard's authorship, I argue that existing interpretations do not convincingly address the relationship between Kierkegaard's critique of eudaimonism and his mid-nineteenth-century context, which was dominated by post-Kantian idealists. While I am sympathetic to aspects of deontological and aretaic interpretations, a contextual reading shows that his critique centers on what he diagnoses as the enclosure of the modern (...) self. This puts his critique of eudaimonism in the purview of his moral psychology and in continuity with his critique of romanticism. (shrink)

Thomas Carson offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date investigation of moral and conceptual questions about lying and deception. Part I addresses conceptual questions and offers definitions of lying, deception, and related concepts such as withholding information, "keeping someone in the dark," and "half truths." Part II deals with questions in ethical theory. Carson argues that standard debates about lying and deception between act-utilitarians and their critics are inconclusive because they rest on appeals to disputed moral intuitions. He defends (...) a version of the golden rule and a theory of moral reasoning. His theory implies that there is a moral presumption against lying and deception that causes harm — a presumption at least as strong as that endorsed by act-utilitarianism. He uses this theory to justify his claims about the issues he addresses in Part III: deception and withholding information in sales, deception in advertising, bluffing in negotiations, the duties of professionals to inform clients, lying and deception by leaders as a pretext for fighting wars, and lying and deception about history, and cases of distorting the historical record by telling half-truths. The book concludes with a qualified defence of the view that honesty is a virtue.Readership: Scholars and advanced students of philosophy, as well as historians and students of history. (shrink)

Many business ethicists assume that if a type of conduct is illegal, then it is also unethical. This article scrutinizes that assumption, using the rideshare company Uber’s illegal operation in the city of Philadelphia as a case study. I argue that Uber’s unlawful conduct was permissible. I also argue that this position is not an extreme one: it is consistent with a variety of theoretical commitments in the analytic philosophical tradition regarding political obligation. I conclude by showing why business ethicists (...) would have a better rejoinder to the “dominant view” of business ethics associated with Milton Friedman if they dispensed with the assumption that illegal implies unethical. (shrink)

Buying local is a prominent form of ethical consumption. We commonly assume that products that are local are in some respect ethically superior to ones that are not. This article contributes to research on local food by scrutinizing this assumption in light of some central values of the locavore movement. It identifies four central ethical causes from prior literature on locavorism: protecting the environment, promoting community, promoting small business, and contributing to the prosperity of one’s local economy. It then analyzes (...) whether the contribution of buying local to these causes can justify the general perception that buying local is a good way to be an ethical consumer. Its main finding is that these justifications fail to provide a strong positive ethical reason for consumers in general to adopt the practice of buying local. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Jahrgang: 19 Heft: 1 Seiten: 231-252.

This paper examines the use of case studies in ethics education. While not dismissing their value for specific purposes, the paper shows the limits of their use. While agreeing that case studies are narratives, although rather thin stories, the paper argues that the claim that case studies could represent reality is difficult to sustain. Instead, the paper suggests a way of using stories in ethics teaching that could be more real for students, while also giving them a way of thinking (...) about their own professional practices. The paper shows how the method can be used to develop a more critical and reflective practice for students in the health care professions. Some immediate problems with the method are discussed. (shrink)

Scott Carson - Aristotle's Philosophy of Biology: Studies in the Origins of Life Science - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.3 391-392 Book Review Aristotle's Philosophy of Biology: Studies in the Origins of Life Science James G. Lennox. Aristotle's Philosophy of Biology: Studies in the Origins of Life Science. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xxiii + 321. Cloth, $64.95. This excellent book is a collection of Lennox's papers, published in (...) the last twenty years, on the structure and methodology of Aristotle's philosophy of biology. In spite of the fact that the papers have had little, if any, re-editing for inclusion in the present volume, the book presents a remarkably seamless and impressively argued interpretation not only of Aristotle's philosophy.. (shrink)

Abraham Singer defends the Market Failures Approach to business ethics from the objection that the MFA cannot account for the moral value of disruptive innovation. Singer argues that critics who attack the MFA on these grounds face a dilemma: either accept the MFA, along with its general prohibition on disruptive innovation, or reject the very idea that business and market competition should be understood as rule-governed activities at all. This commentary argues that the dilemma Singer poses to MFA critics is (...) a false one. (shrink)

Casuistic methods of reasoning in medical ethics have been criticized by a number of authors. At least five main objections to casuistry have been put forward: (1) it requires a uniformity of views that is not present in contemporary pluralistic society; (2) it cannot achieve consensus on controversial issues; (3) it is unable to examine critically intuitions about cases; (4) it yields different conclusions about cases when alternative paradigms are chosen; and (5) it cannot articulate the grounds of its conclusions. (...) Two main versions of casuistry have been put forward, and the responses to these objections depend in part on which version one is defending. Jonsen has advocated a version modeled on the approach to casuistry used by moral theologians in the 15th and 16th century, involving comparison of the case at hand with a single paradigm and a lineup of cases. The present author has advocated another version, drawn from experience with cases in clinical ethics, which involves comparing the case at hand with two or more paradigms. Four of the five objections are unsuccessful when directed against Jonsen'sapproach, and all of them are unsuccessful when directed against the approach involving comparison with two or more paradigms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.4 (2004) 489-490 [Access article in PDF] Ian M. Crystal. Self-Intellection and its Epistemological Origins in Ancient Greek Thought. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2002. Pp. x + 220. Cloth, $79.95. In this excellent re-working of his King's College Ph.D. thesis, Ian Crystal presents an account of the problem of self-intellection in Greek philosophy from Parmenides through Plotinus. The problem, at least as it (...) appears in ancient Greek philosophy, is connected to the way in which a faculty of soul relates to its proper object. For example, the proper object of the visual faculty is light, that of the auditory faculty sound, and it is the difference in kind between these proper objects that requires different faculties of soul in any account of how it is that we come to grasp the two different kinds of sensory data. Reason is itself a faculty of soul that is supposed to correspond to objects of cognition, but since it is possible to grasp, cognitively, the structure of this faculty the question arises: May this faculty function as its own object? The question is famously answered in the affirmative in Aristotle's treatise De anima at 430a2-5 on the grounds that any immaterial object of cognition is identical to thought itself (epi men gar tôn aneu hulês to auto esti to nooun kai to nooumenon).While this may seem like a peculiarly Aristotelian analysis of cognition (relying, as it does, on Aristotle's distinction between matter and form and his rather cryptic claim that the faculties of soul are actually what their proper objects are potentially), Crystal traces the idea both backwards and forwards in time, rooting the problem in Parmenides' general account of faculties of soul and tracing it through Plotinus's sophisticated account of noetic intellect, with visits along the way not only with Aristotle but Plato and the Stoics as well.The book is divided into three parts. In the first ("The Epistemological Origins") Crystal examines the evolution of the philosophical analysis of cognition from Parmenides through Plato. Parmenides, on this account, was the first to offer anything like a philosophical treatment of intellect (Greek nous). In particular, Parmenides distinguishes between a faculty of intellection and an object of that faculty. Plato, consciously working in the Parmenidean tradition, further analyses mind into its faculties and their proper objects but also gives a more detailed analysis of the epistemological subject. Specifically, Plato's treatment of the faculty in the Theaetetus provides an account of the structure of our cognitive faculty and how that structure relates to the metaphysics of the external world. It is here that Crystal recognizes the emergence of a linguistic component in the epistemic subject's cognitive activity (101; cf. Theaetetus189e6-190a6).Part II ("The Emergence of Self-Intellection") consists of a single chapter in which Crystal reads Aristotle's treatment of self-intellection in the De anima as "Aristotle's epistemological response to Plato." Since self-intellection per se really only emerges for the first time in the De anima, this chapter is in some sense the meatiest part of the book. We are given first a careful treatment of Aristotle's account of perception in DA3.2, affection in DA2.5 and De generatione et corruptione1.7, and the central problem of self-consciousness in DA3.2. The argument moves quickly here but Crystal's analysis is precise and clear. Next comes the analysis of the cognitive structure of intellect itself in DA3.4 and Crystal's account of how Aristotle's two aporiai (How can intellect be both a passive affection and something simple and impassive; and Is intellect itself an intelligible object) are responses to Plato's account of cognition at Theaetetus197c1-200d4 (the Aviary passage) on the one hand and to the general lack of an account of intelligible objects in the Theaetetus on the [End Page 489] other. On Crystal's account, Aristotle improves on Plato in the sense... (shrink)

Psychiatric practice is often faced with complex situations that seem to pose serious moral dilemmas for practitioners. Methods for solving these dilemmas have included the development of more objective rules to guide the practitioner such as utilitarianism and deontology. A more modern variant on this objective model has been 'Principlism' where 4 mid level rules are used to help solve these complex problems. In opposition to this, there has recently been a focus on more subjective criteria for resolving complex moral (...) dilemmas. In particular, virtue ethics has been posited as a more sensitive method for helping doctors to reason their way through difficult ethical issues. Here the focus is on the character traits of the practitioner. Bloch and Green advocated another way whereby more objective methods such as Principlism and virtue ethics are combined to produce what they considered sound moral reasoning in psychiatrists. This paper points out some difficulties with this approach and instead suggests that a better model of ethical judgment could be developed through the use of narratives or stories. This idea puts equal prima facie value on the patient's and the psychiatrist's version of the dilemma they are faced with. It has the potential to lead to a more genuine empathy and reflective decision-making. (shrink)

Principlism has been advocated as an approach to resolving concrete cases and issues in bioethics, but critics have pointed out that a main problem for principlism is its lack of a method for assigning priorities to conflicting ethical principles. A version of principlism referred to as 'specified principlism' has been put forward in an attempt to overcome this problem. However, none of the advocates of specified principlism have attempted to demonstrate that the method actually works in resolving detailed clinical cases. (...) This paper shows that when one tries to use it, specified principlism fails to provide practical assistance in deciding how to resolve concrete cases. Proponents of specified principlism have attempted to defend it by arguing that it is superior to casuistry, but it can be shown that their arguments are faulty. Because of these reasons, specified principlism should not be considered a leading contender in the search for methods of making justifiable decisions in clinical cases. (shrink)

Various theories have been put forward in an attempt to explain what makes moral judgments justifiable. One of the main theories currently advocated in bioethics is a form of coherentism known as wide reflective equilibrium. In this paper, I argue that wide reflective equilibrium is not a satisfactory approach for justifying moral beliefs and propositions. A long-standing theoretical problem for reflective equilibrium has not been adequately resolved, and, as a result, the main arguments for wide reflective equilibrium are unsuccessful. Moreover, (...) practical problems that arise in using the method of wide reflective equilibrium undermine the idea that it is a viable approach for justifying moral judgments about cases and policies. Given that wide reflective equilibrium is the most prominent version of coherentism, these considerations call into question the coherentist approach to justification in bioethics. (shrink)

From the perspective of investigators conducting research involving pregnant women and fetuses, a woman's decision about whether to have an abortion can sometimes be relevant to the suitability of the woman and fetus as research subjects. However, prominent ethicists disagree over whether it is permissible for a woman's decision about abortion to be an inclusion or exclusion criterion for participation in research. A widely held view is that fetuses to be aborted and fetuses to be carried to term should be (...) treated equally as research subjects. Some hold that this principle implies that a woman's decision about whether to have an abortion should not be an inclusion or exclusion criterion. This paper identifies types of research in which investigators might want to have inclusion or exclusion criteria based on decisions about abortion. It examines the arguments for and against having the woman's decision about abortion included in such criteria. It is argued that there are types of research in which such criteria are ethically permissible. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In previous articles I discussed the ethics of human reproductive cloning, focusing on a possible future scenario in which reproductive cloning can be accomplished without an elevated risk of anomalies to the children who are created. I argued that in such a scenario it would be ethically permissible for infertile couples to use cloning as a way to have genetically related children and that such use should not be prohibited. In ‘Reproductive Cloning and a (Kind of) Genetic Fallacy’, Neil (...) Levy and Mianna Lotz raise objections to my conclusions. They disagree with the view, for which I argued, that some couples can have defensible reasons for desiring genetically related children. They also offer several new arguments against reproductive cloning, including an argument that it would diminish the number of adoptions, thereby adversely affecting the welfare of children who need to be adopted. In this paper I point out that Levy and Lotz's criticisms misconstrue my arguments and that there are serious problems with their arguments for prohibiting infertile couples from using cloning, including their argument from adoption. (shrink)

: Continuing the dialogue begun in the March 2006 issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, I suggest that Bernard Gert's response to my paper does not adequately address the criticisms I make of his theory's application to bioethics cases.

Some defenders of the view that there is a common morality have conceived such morality as being universal, in the sense of extending across all cultures and times. Those who deny the existence of such a common morality often argue that the universality claim is implausible. Defense of common morality must take account of the distinction between descriptive and normative claims that there is a common morality. This essay considers these claims separately and identifies the nature of the arguments for (...) each claim. It argues that the claim that there is a universal common morality in the descriptive sense has not been successfully defended to date. It maintains that the claim that there is a common morality in the normative sense need not be understood as universalist. This paper advocates the concept of group specific common morality, including country-specific versions. It suggests that both the descriptive and the normative claims that there are country-specific common moralities are plausible, and that a country-specific normative common morality could provide the basis for a country's bioethics. (shrink)