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Professional ethics
Professional Ethics and Applied Ethics
Judith Suissa, London Institute of Education
Professional ethics is often regarded as an aspect of applied ethics. This tends to involve the assumption that there is a distinct field called “ethics” or “morality” that consists of a system of general rules, from which we can derive specific rules applicable in particular social and professional contexts.
However, several philosophers (see for example Baier, 1983, Hampshire, 1983 and MacIntyre, 1981) have challenged the meta-ethical assumptions of this view, arguing instead for a recovery of the Aristotelian tradition of “practical ethics”. MacIntyre famously argued in “Does Applied Ethics Rest on a Mistake” (1981) that the idea that there can exist abstract, timeless rules of morality independent of social relationships and practices is incoherent. So, for example, we cannot first apprehend a general rule about lying (such as “do not lie”) and then go on to enquire about its application in, for example, parent-child relationships or doctor-patient relationships. According to MacIntyre, “no rule exists apart from its applications”. In other words, it is always in the context of social relationships and practices that we learn moral rules; thus, their meaning and content cannot be context-independent. The central focus of morality, on this view, becomes not meta-ethical deliberation or analysis, but moral reflection. The emphasis thus shifts from questions about moral actions and their status, to questions about the moral subject. The process of moral reasoning, accordingly, is conceived not as an appeal to rules and a deductive process of applying them, but a form of practical reasoning that requires moving back and forth between a rule to a range of possible examples, and back. To understand a rule, on this view, means to be capable of extrapolating to possible future cases, involving a sensitivity to the salient features of each case and an appreciation of when this may lead to a modification of the rule itself.
Moral rules, then, although not timeless or ahistorical, can nevertheless be enduring in the sense that they have withstood the challenge of such rational, reflective scrutiny over time. An example of the way such a process can be seen to work in practice can be found in Jonsen and Toulmin's “The Abuse of Casuistry”, where Toulmin describes his experience as a member of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. According to the authors, although there was considerable and radical disagreement amongst the Commission members on meta-ethical positions and moral principles, they were able to reach a great degree of consensus on concrete issues in bioethics. Toulmin argues that the kind of moral reasoning at work was an analogous process of case-to-case reasoning rather than a process of top-down reasoning on the basis of an appeal to principles. The book traces this notion of moral reasoning to the historical tradition of casuistry.
Further Reading :
Baier, A. (1986) “Extending the Limits of Moral Theory”, Journal of Philosophy , 83:10, pp. 538-545
Hampshire, S. (1983) “Fallacies in Moral Philosophy”, in Hauerwas, S. and MacIntyre, A. (eds.) Revisions: Changing Perspectives in Moral Philosophy , Indiana , University of Notre Dame Press
Jonsen, A. and Toulmin, S. (1988) The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning , Berkeley , University of California Press
MacIntyre, A. (1984) “Does Applied Ethics Rest on a Mistake?” The Monist , 67:4 , pp. 499-512
Williams, B. (1985) Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy , New York , Cambridge University Press
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