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I am the coordinator of the STA Centering Prayer Group.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Merton the Blogger

I recently came across a book that sounds fascinating as I was preparing to register for the annual meeting of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics. It's called Professional Morality and Guilty Bystanding: Merton's Conjectures and the Value of Work, written by Barry Padgett. The title pretty much says it all, and in preparation for reading it, I'm looking at Merton's Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. I'm hoping to use the book when I start teaching a course on personal and professional ethics.

At this point what strikes me most is that if Merton were alive today, his Conjectures would be a blog!

In any case, I'm greatly enjoying the opportunity to live in Merton's world for a bit and to catch a glimpse of what was going on in the great man's mind. I especially look forward to using Merton in a class on professional ethics!

Monday, December 21, 2009

In April, David Brooks wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times called “The End of Philosophy” about the origins of moral values and actions. In his essay he questions the appropriateness of using reason (philosophy) as the foundation for moral values when in actuality our values have their source in our immediate feelings and emotions.

Brooks starts by pinpointing what he views as a problem: using reason and deliberation as the age-old means of working through a moral problem. One clue that what lies ahead is going to be problematic is the way he caricatures the ethical task of deliberating on moral values: “Find a just principle. Apply it.” Any ethicist worth her or his salt knows that reasoning through a moral problem is far more complex than this.

His point and his concern is of course broader than this and worth considering: that understanding how to think through an ethical problem does not seem to result in more ethical behavior. Indeed, Brooks makes several good points: that our moral intuitions are shaped by our social environment; that we do not cooly apply principles of individual rights but rather feel deeply about loyalty, trust, respect, tradition, and religion.

Still, I'm troubled by his glib dismissal of reason. In fact, it’s difficult to discern which purveyors of reason he is dispensing with. It’s clear from the first paragraph that he has no time for Socrates (although Socrates’ conversations went a good bit further than “find a just principle; apply it”). Brooks draws heavily on science (neuroscience and Darwinism) to uphold his holistic perspective – although he is careful to interpret Darwinism as cooperative rather than competitive. Furthermore, I find it ironic that he accuses a philosopher as richly human as Socrates of “cool” (and presumably, inhuman) reason and lauds science for revealing the warm, fuzzy side of moral values and moral action.

But what’s most important here is that we don’t throw out the baby out with the bath water. Brooks’ point that human feelings and sentiment are the source of our values and need to be consulted in moral deliberation is a good one and has been made before. But there must be deliberation. Good moral judgments are not always instinctive. Our intuitions serve as a starting point but important questions need to be raised. What is the situation that has elicited these feelings? Are my feelings appropriate? Is my immediate intuition/feeling the most appropriate response to the situation? If so, what action should I take? If not, how do I change how I feel and then how do I act?

The essential problem here may simply be a category error. Brooks is confusing the distinction between morality and ethics. Morality is how we act based upon what we value. Often these values originate in our socialization and upbringing, and we experience them on an emotional level as gut responses and strong emotions. Ethics is the discipline of reflecting upon our moral values – yes, with “cool” reason and hopefully integrating our feelings and gut responses into our reasoning – something every person should do at some point in his or her life. Ethics is also an essential discipline when history, technology, or society change in a way that bring our moral values into question. Reason is an essential tool in doing ethics and plays a valuable role in shedding light on our feelings and intuitions and how they inform our values. Let’s make this a “both/and” rather than an “either/or.”

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Welcome to the website for the Center for Organizational Ethics at Marian University and the director’s blog. I have been at Marian University since October 2008 and I am privileged to oversee the development of the center. I look forward to many conversations through this blog.
During my first six months at Marian University, I spent most of my time learning about the university – mostly by talking to faculty and staff. I still have a lot to learn and a lot more people to talk to – on campus and off.

My first full semester (Spring 2009) on campus has been busy and fruitful. I was blessed to teach my first course (Human Nature and Person) and found Marian students to be delightful and engaged. This semester I am teaching Human Nature and Person again and also Business Ethics.

The center hosted two small events spring semester: a video-streamed conference on healthcare ethics in the Franciscan tradition from Saint Francis University in Loretto, PA; and a faculty panel discussion on the financial crisis. This panel discussion was co-hosted with the School of Business and the Department of Political Science. Jim Polito, PhD, presented the fundamentals of the crisis, I provided an ethical analysis, and Robert Geroux, PhD, offered a global perspective of events leading up to the crisis. In light of the success of this discussion, I hope to start a series of faculty discussions in the 2009-2010 academic year. If you have ideas for this series or want to present an ethics topic for the faculty to discuss, please let me know.

Other plans for the coming year and beyond include a kickoff event introducing a professional ethics lecture series and a workshop on development of moral character. The center will also host the Central States Regional Ethics Bowl on Saturday, November 14, 2009. If you would be interested in serving as a judge or a moderator for that event, please let me know. After informal talks with nursing faculty, I hope to offer a healthcare ethics conference in the not-too-distant future.

I am excited about the prospects for the center and for the opportunity to promote ethics on the Marian University campus and in the Indianapolis business community. I am always interested in hearing other people’s ideas about programming and interest in the center. If you have a particular topic you’d like to see addressed or a program you’d like to see put into place, please let me know. Your comments and perspectives are always welcome!