Pragmatic ethics

Pragmatic ethics is a theory of normative philosophical ethics. Ethical pragmatists such as John Dewey believe that some societies have progressed morally in much the way they have attained progress in science. Scientists can pursue inquiry into the truth of a hypothesis and accept the hypothesis, in the sense that they act as though the hypothesis were true; nonetheless, they think that future generations can advance science, and thus future generations can refine or replace (at least some of) their accepted hypotheses. Similarly, ethical pragmatists think that norms, principles, and moral criteria are likely to be improved as a result of inquiry.

Pragmatic ethics was discussed by John Dewey (pictured)

Contrast with other normative theories

Much as it is appropriate for scientists to act as though a hypothesis were true despite expecting future inquiry to supplant it, ethical pragmatists acknowledge that it can be appropriate to practice a variety of other normative approaches (e.g. consequentialism, deontological ethics, and virtue ethics), yet acknowledge the need for mechanisms which allow society to advance beyond such approaches, a freedom for discourse which does not take any such theory as assumed.[1] Thus, aimed at social innovation, the practice of pragmatic ethics supplements the practice of other normative approaches with what John Stuart Mill called "experiments of living".[2][3]

Pragmatic ethics also differs from other normative approaches theoretically, according to Lafollette (2000):[3]

  1. It focuses on society, rather than on lone individuals, as the entity which achieves morality.[3] In Dewey's words, "all conduct is ... social."[4]
  2. It does not hold any known moral criteria as beyond potential for revision.[3] Pragmatic ethics may be misunderstood as relativist, as failing to be objective, but pragmatists object to this critique on grounds that the same could be said of science, yet inductive science is our epistemological standard. Ethical pragmatists can maintain that their endeavor is objective on the grounds that it converges towards something objective (a thesis called Peircean realism named after C. S. Peirce).[5]
  3. It allows that a moral judgment may be appropriate in one age of a given society, even though it will cease to be appropriate after that society progresses (or may already be inappropriate in another society).[3] For example, the writings of Thomas Jefferson on slavery framed slavery as ultimately immoral, yet temporarily moral until America was ready for abolition.[6]

Lafollette (2000) bases his account of pragmatic ethics in the writings of John Dewey, but finds aspects of pragmatic ethics in the texts of Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, and Martha Nussbaum.[3]

Criticisms

Pragmatic ethics has been criticized as conflating descriptive ethics with normative ethics, as describing the way people do make moral judgments rather than the way they should make them. While some ethical pragmatists may have avoided the distinction between normative and descriptive truth, the theory of pragmatic ethics itself does not conflate them any more than science conflates truth about its subject matter with current opinion about it; in pragmatic ethics as in science, "truth emerges from the self-correction of error through a sufficiently long process of inquiry".[1]

Moral ecology

Moral ecology is a variation of pragmatic ethics which additionally supposes that morality evolves like an ecosystem, and ethical practice should therefore include strategies analogous to those of ecosystem management (e.g. protecting a degree of moral diversity). The term "moral ecology" has been used since at least 1985 to imply a symbiosis whereby the viability of any existing moral approach would be diminished by the destruction of all alternative approaches.[7][8] According to Tim Dean, current scientific evidence confirms that humans do take diverse approaches to morality, and such polymorphism gives humanity resilience against a wider range of situations and environments (which makes moral diversity a natural consequence of frequency-dependent selection).[9][10]

gollark: Although the `mmap` call doesn't appear to magically fix everything.
gollark: See, it catches it, the handler handles it handlefully.
gollark: See?
gollark: ```c#include <stdio.h>#include <signal.h>#include <string.h>#include <stdlib.h>#include <sys/mman.h>static void handler(int sig, siginfo_t *info, void *literally_bee) { printf("oh bee oh apio segfault %08x\n", info->si_addr); mmap(info->si_addr, 0x10000, PROT_NONE, MAP_ANONYMOUS|MAP_FIXED, -1, 0); exit(1);}int main() { struct sigaction sa; sigemptyset(&sa.sa_mask); sa.sa_flags = SA_NODEFER; sa.sa_sigaction = handler; sigaction(SIGSEGV, &sa, NULL); *(int*)NULL = -3; printf("thing done\n"); return 0;}```
gollark: I checked and I can, in fact, catch SIGSEGVs.

See also

Notes
  1. Liszka, James. "What Is Pragmatic Ethics?". american-philosophy.org. Retrieved 2011-07-01.
  2. Mill (1863)
  3. Lafollette (2000)
  4. Dewey (1922)
  5. Almeder, R. (1983). "Scientific Progress and Peircean Utopian Realism". Erkenntnis (20): 253–280. doi:10.1007/BF00166389. JSTOR 20010883.
  6. Bateman, Newton; Paul Selby; Frances M. Shonkwiler; Henry L Fowkes (1908). Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois. Chicago, IL: Munsell Publishing Company. p. 259.
  7. Bellah (1985)
  8. Hertzke (1998)
  9. Dean, Tim (2014). "Evolution & Moral Ecology".
  10. Dean, T. (2012). "Evolution and Moral Diversity" (PDF). The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication. 7. doi:10.4148/biyclc.v7i0.1775.

References

Further reading
  • Bernstein, R. (1983) Beyond Objectivism and Relativism. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
  • Dewey, John (1988) [1922]. Human Nature and Conduct. Southern Illinois University Press.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Dewey, John (1985) [1932]. Ethics. Southern Illinois University Press.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Dewey, John (1970) [1920]. Reconstruction in Philosophy. Henry Holt.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Gibbard, Allan (2009). "7 A pragmatic justification of morality". In Voorhoeve, Alex (ed.). Conversations on ethics. Oxford University Press. pp. 157–178. ISBN 978-0-19-921537-9.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Lekan, T. (2003) Making Morality: Pragmatist Reconstruction in Ethical Theory (The Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy) Vanderbilt University Press. ISBN 978-0-8265-1421-9
  • Margolis, J. (1986) Pragmatism without Foundations: Reconciling Realism and Relativism. Oxford, OX, UK ; New York: Blackwell Publishers.
  • Margolis, J. (1996) Life without Principles. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
  • Weston, Anthony (2018) A 21st Century Ethical Toolbox. 4th edition. New York: Oxford University Press.
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