The study of engineering ethics tends to emphasize professional codes of ethics and, to lesser degrees, business ethics and technology studies. These are all important vantage points, but they neglect personal moral commitments, as well as personal aesthetic, religious, and other values that are not mandatory for all members of engineering. This paper illustrates how personal moral commitments motivate, guide, and give meaning to the work of engineers, contributing to both self-fulfillment and public goods. It also explores some general frameworks (...) for thinking about these commitments and calls for further exploration of them. (shrink)

Indeed, nearly one quarter of the world's population has been influenced by Confucianism in some way, especially in family structures and values. The challenge, as Tu Weiming suggests, is to ensure the continuance of tradition in modernity, thereby achieving an effective counterpoint to the destruction of both human communities and the Earth community.

ABSTRACTFor centuries, universities have supported the pursuit of knowledge through the academic disciplines while also preparing students for the professions. These two purposes are frequently in...

Contrary to Mele's suggestion, not all garden-variety self-deception reduces to bias-generated false beliefs (usually held contrary to the evidence). Many cases center around self-deceiving intentions to avoid painful topics, escape unpleasant truths, seek comfortable attitudes, and evade self-acknowledgment. These intentions do not imply paradoxical projects or contradictory belief states.

Positive psychologists aspire to study the moral virtues, as well as positive emotions, while retaining scientific objectivity. Within this framework, Martin Seligman, a founder of positive psychology, offers an empirically-based argument for an ancient and venerable theme: happiness can be increased by exercising the virtues. Seligman's project is promising, but it needs to pay greater attention to several methodological matters: greater care in defining happiness, so as to avoid smuggling in value assumptions of the sort suggested by the title of (...) his book, Authentic Happiness; more attention to the gap between happiness as overall satisfaction and specific gratifications ; the danger of sliding to subjectivism by equating self-assessments of virtue with objectively-justified values of the sort Aristotle had in mind; awareness of how “positive” emotions and attitudes presuppose value assumptions. (shrink)

Creativity in science and engineering has moral significance and deserves attention within professional ethics, in at least three areas. First, much scientific and technological creativity constitutes moral creativity because it generates moral benefits, is motivated by moral concern, and manifests virtues such as beneficence, courage, and perseverance. Second, creativity contributes to the meaning that scientists and engineers derive from their work, thereby connecting with virtues such as authenticity and also faults arising from Faustian trade-offs. Third, morally creative leadership is important (...) at all levels of science and engineering. (shrink)

This book brings together leading international learning and attention researchers to provide both a comprehensive and wide-ranging overview of the current state of knowledge of this area as well as new perspectives and directions for the future. There are coherent themes that run throughout the book, but there are also, inevitably, fundamental disagreements between contributors on the role of attention in learning. Together, the views expressed in this book paint a picture of a vibrant and exciting area of psychological research, (...) and will be essential reading for researchers of learning and attention. (shrink)

‘Marital faithfulness’ refers to faithful love for a spouse or lover to whom one is committed, rather than the narrower idea of sexual fidelity. The distinction is clearly marked in traditional wedding vows. A commitment to love faithfully is central: ‘to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part… and thereto I plight [pledge] thee my troth [faithfulness]’. (...) Sexual fidelity is promised in a subordinate clause, symbolizing its supportive role in promoting love's constancy: ‘and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her/him.’. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas famously held that (A) theft is always wrong, and also that (B) it is permissible for a starving man to take the bread he needs, openly or secretly, from another. He reconciled these two positions by claiming that (C) in cases of great need, it is not theft to take someone else’s property when she does not need it herself. On its face, (C) looks like a theoretically costly concession that Aquinas is forced into in order to reconcile (...) (A) and (B). Our first aim is to show that this is not so. We argue that (C) is in fact the only way to accommodate a set of intuitive norms of keeping and taking. Our second aim is to show that (C) has important implications for theories of property more generally: a plausible theory of property must acknowledge a foundational sense of "belong" on which things belong to those who need them. (shrink)

At their best, mottos help us cope by crystallizing attitudes, eliciting resolve, and guiding conduct. Mottos have moral significance when they allude to the virtues and reflect the character of individuals and groups. As such, they function in the moral space between abstract ethical theory and contextual moral judgment. I discuss personal mottos such as those of Isak Dinesen (“I will answer”) and group mottos such as found in social movements (“Think globally, act locally”), professions (“Above all, do no harm”), (...) philosophy (“The personal is political”), and therapeutic groups like Alcoholics Anonymous (“One day at a time”). (shrink)

From the inception of philosophical counseling an attempt was made to distinguish it from (psychological) therapy by insisting that therapy could not be more misleading. It is true that philosophical counselors should not pretend to be able to heal major mental illness; nevertheless they do contribute to positive health—health understood as something more than the absence of mental disease. This thesis is developed by critiquing Lou Marinoff’s book, Plato not Prozac!, but also by ranging more widely in the literature on (...) philosophical counseling. I also interpret philosophical counseling as a form of philosophical ethics. (shrink)

In this paper we set out to explore the enactments of risk by clinicians involved in the development of stem cell therapy for liver disease. In the process, we contribute to a performative re-thinking of how ‘risk’ can be analytically treated in relation to health. The bulk of the paper, drawing on interview data, is concerned with how clinicians’ accounts about the risks entailed in their research-oriented work performatively ‘make’ clinicians themselves, but also various other ‘constituencies’ – notably, publics and (...) regulatory actors, and also such diverse ‘entities’ as scientific rigour and ethics. We trace the ways in which they enact the complexities of taking risks in the context of public demands, regulatory constraints, and resource limitation and explore how clinicians tend to represent themselves as caught between the ‘rock of courage’ and the ‘hard place of caution’. (shrink)

Yuval Noah Harari contends that human rights are an outdated myth. He calls for replacing them with a new global ethic to meet crises as varied as environmental destruction, disruptive technologies, and extreme gaps between rich and poor. Toward that end, he outlines an ethics that exalts compassion and elides justice, an ethics that animates his trilogy: Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. I draw together the key elements in his personal ethics, tracing them to a (...) combination of scientism, postmodernism, and Buddhism. I then argue that he misunderstands human rights, inflates the role of science in moral matters, and fails to reconcile his moral passion with his moral skepticism. (shrink)

It is now commonplace to call persons sick when their wrongdoing becomes entrenched, extensive, and extreme. This mixing of moral and therapeutic categories seems incoherent if we uncritically embrace a morality-therapy dichotomy: Behavioral problems like alcoholism are either moral or therapeutic matters, but not both. This paper dissolves the dichotomy by arguing that chronically abusive drinking is simultaneously a sickness and wrongdoing. Alcoholism is at least partly a self-inflicted impairment of responsible agency that has unhealthy consequences and usually requires therapeutic (...) interventions. Morality and therapy are not inherently opposed. Morality enjoins compassionate helping and nonjudgemental therapy, and therapy is rooted in moral values of caring and respect. The polarized positions of Herbert Fingarette in Heavy Drinking and George E. Vaillant in The Natural History of Alcoholism are reconciled by paying close attention to their accounts of the condition, causes, consequences, and cure of alcoholism. (shrink)

With reference to the “Campus Wars” debates, this paper argues that within the classroom, professional responsibilities justify professors advocating for personal commitments which are pertinent to their discipline. In fact, given a professor’s commitment to pursuing truth in the classroom, this advocacy is both inevitable and desirable. The question to ask, then, is what separates appropriate from inappropriate forms of influence on students. The author draws on the American Association of University Professors’ (AAUP’s) Statement of Professional Ethics to explore ethical (...) tensions that professors face in the classroom and to motivate further discussion about these tensions as they pertain specifically to ethics teachers. After arguing that the chief tension an ethics professor must navigate is that which arises between the pursuit of truth and respect for student autonomy, the author moves to a consideration of various pedagogical strategies (drawn from the AAUP and from the author’s own experience) for negotiating this tension. Though each strategy discussed holds advantages and disadvantages, the author maintains that the question of appropriate advocacy is important and complex, and that it calls for further study. (shrink)

With reference to the “Campus Wars” debates, this paper argues that within the classroom, professional responsibilities justify professors advocating for personal commitments which are pertinent to their discipline. In fact, given a professor’s commitment to pursuing truth in the classroom, this advocacy is both inevitable and desirable. The question to ask, then, is what separates appropriate from inappropriate forms of influence on students. The author draws on the American Association of University Professors’ (AAUP’s) Statement of Professional Ethics to explore ethical (...) tensions that professors face in the classroom and to motivate further discussion about these tensions as they pertain specifically to ethics teachers. After arguing that the chief tension an ethics professor must navigate is that which arises between the pursuit of truth and respect for student autonomy, the author moves to a consideration of various pedagogical strategies (drawn from the AAUP and from the author’s own experience) for negotiating this tension. Though each strategy discussed holds advantages and disadvantages, the author maintains that the question of appropriate advocacy is important and complex, and that it calls for further study. (shrink)

Moral creativity consists in identifying, interpreting, and implementing moral values in ways that bring about new and morally valuable results, often in response to an unprecedented situation. It does not mean inventing values subjectively, as Sartre and Nietzsche suggested. Moral creativity plays a significant role in meeting role responsibilities, exercising leadership, developing social policies, and living authentically in light of moral ideals. Kenneth R. Feinberg’s service in compensating the victims of 9/11 provides a paradigm instance.

Memoir Ethics: Good Lives and the Virtues is a philosophical study of moral themes in memoirs. It explores how memoirists present and defend perspectives on good lives. Particular attention is paid to the interplay of the virtues, including their interplay with additional types of values in good lives. More generally, it explores the relevance of memoir to moral philosophy and, in turn, how moral philosophy enters into elucidating and critiquing memoirs.

In “Personality Disorders: Moral or Medical Kinds—or Both?” Peter Zachar and Nancy Nyquist Potter (2010) reject any general dichotomy between morality and mental health, and specifically between character vices and personality disorders. In doing so, they provide a nuanced and illuminating discussion that connects Aristotelian virtue ethics to a multidimensional understanding of personality disorders. I share their conviction that dissolving morality–health dichotomies is the starting point for any plausible understanding of human beings (Martin 2006), but I register some qualms about (...) their discussion of responsibility. Zachar and Potter target the morality-health dichotomy as it appears in Louis C. .. (shrink)

In suggesting that “philanthropy is almost the only virtuewhich is sufficiently appreciated by mankind,” Thoreau did not wish to denigrate charity, but he took offense when even minor Christian leaders were ranked above Newton, Shakespeare, and other creative individuals “who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind.”1 Such individuals might be motivated primarily by caring for nonmoral goods, such as scientific truth, aesthetic appreciation, or creative achievement. Yet, paradoxically, they often benefit humanity far more than they could (...) have through direct humanitarian service. This creativ- ity paradox has been given less attention than paradoxes of self-interest and altruism, but it contains an important insight about moral motivation. It also forces us to clarify the distinction between moral and nonmoral goods, and hence our conception of what morality is. (shrink)