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!
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Wednesday, December 30, 2009
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.”
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.”
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