Pragmatic ethics

Pragmatic ethics was discussed by John Dewey (pictured at the University of Chicago in 1902, before his major works on pragmatic ethics were published).

Pragmatic ethics is a theory of normative philosophical ethics and meta-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.

Martin Benjamin used Neurath's boat as an analogy for pragmatic ethics, likening the gradual change of ethical norms to the reconstruction of a ship at sea by its sailors.

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 that allow people to advance beyond such approaches, a freedom for discourse which does not take any such theory as assumed. Thus, aimed at social innovation, the practice of pragmatic ethics supplements the practice of other normative approaches with what John Stuart Mill called "experiments in living".

Pragmatic ethics also differs from other normative approaches theoretically, according to Hugh LaFollette:

1. It focuses on society, rather than on lone individuals, as the entity that achieves morality. In Dewey's words, "all conduct is ... social".
2. It does not hold any known moral criteria as beyond potential for revision. 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 and hypothetico-deductive science is our epistemological standard. Ethical pragmatists can maintain that their endeavor, like inquiry in science, is objective on the grounds that it converges towards something objective (a thesis called Peircean realism named after C. S. Peirce).
3. It allows that a moral judgment may be accepted in one age of a given society, even though it will cease to be accepted after that society morally progresses (or may already be rejected in another society). The change in moral judgments about slavery that led to the abolition of slavery is an example of the improvement of moral judgments through moral inquiry and advocacy.

LaFollette based his account of pragmatic ethics in the writings of John Dewey, but he also found aspects of pragmatic ethics in the texts of Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, and Martha Nussbaum.

Barry Kroll, commenting on the pragmatic ethics of Anthony Weston, noted that pragmatic ethics emphasizes the complexity of problems and the many different values that may be involved in an ethical issue or situation, without suppressing the conflicts between such values.

Criticisms

Pragmatic ethics has been criticized for conflating descriptive ethics with normative ethics, as describing the way people do make moral judgments rather than the way they should make them, or in other words for lacking normative standards. 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". A normative criterion that many pragmatists emphasize is the degree to which the process of social learning is deliberatively democratic: "while deontologists focus on moral duties and obligations and utilitarians on the greatest happiness of the greatest number, pragmatists concentrate on coexistence and cooperation".

Moral ecology

See also: Evolutionary ethics

In Tim Dean's account, moral ecology is a variation of pragmatic ethics that additionally supposes that morality evolves like an ecosystem, and ethical practice should therefore include strategies analogous to those of ecosystem management, such as 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. Dean theorized that humans 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.

See also

• Applied ethics
• Good reasons approach
• Moral constructivism

References

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• Anderson, Elizabeth S. (November 2015). "Moral bias and corrective practices: a pragmatist perspective". Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association. 89: 21–47. JSTOR 43661501.
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• Benjamin, Martin (2005). "Moral reasoning, moral pluralism, and the classroom" (PDF). Philosophy of Education Archive. 61: 23–36. doi:10.47925/2005.023. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-07-16.
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• Keulartz, Jozef; Korthals, Michiel; Schermer, Maartje; Swierstra, Tsjalling (2002). "Pragmatism in action: themes, tasks and tools". In Keulartz, Jozef; Korthals, Michiel; Schermer, Maartje; Swierstra, Tsjalling (eds.). Pragmatist ethics for a technological culture. The library of environmental, agricultural, and food ethics. Vol. 3. Dordrecht; Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 247–264. doi:10.1007/978-94-010-0301-8_20. ISBN 1402009879. OCLC 50803266.
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Further reading

• Anderson, Elizabeth S. (2019) [2005]. "Dewey's moral philosophy". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford, CA: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
• Bernstein, Richard J. (1983). Beyond objectivism and relativism: science, hermeneutics, and praxis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0812279069. OCLC 9684514.
• Dewey, John (1982) [1920]. Reconstruction in philosophy. The middle works of John Dewey, 1899–1924. Vol. 12. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 9780809310043. OCLC 40166885.
• Dewey, John (1988) [1922]. Human nature and conduct. The middle works of John Dewey, 1899–1924. Vol. 14. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 9780809310845. OCLC 21962471.
• Dewey, John (1985) [1932]. Ethics. The later works of John Dewey, 1925–1953. Vol. 7. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 9780809312009. OCLC 769152067.
• Fesmire, Steven (2003). John Dewey and moral imagination: pragmatism in ethics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253342333. OCLC 51342459.
• Gibbard, Allan (2009). "A pragmatic justification of morality". In Voorhoeve, Alex (ed.). Conversations on ethics. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 157–178. ISBN 9780199215379. OCLC 294886662.
• Heney, Diana B. (2016). Toward a pragmatist metaethics. Routledge studies in American philosophy. Vol. 6. London; New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315641553. ISBN 9781138189492. OCLC 934677272.
• Johnson, Craig E. (2020). "Pragmatism: ethics as inquiry". Meeting the ethical challenges of leadership: casting light or shadow (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. pp. 153–156. ISBN 9781544351643. OCLC 1123184465.
• Keith, Heather E. (2014). "Beyond fixed ends and limited moral community: Aristotle, Dewey, and contemporary applications in ethics". In Kirby, Christopher C. (ed.). Dewey and the ancients: essays on Hellenic and Hellenistic themes in the philosophy of John Dewey. Bloomsbury studies in American philosophy. London; New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 151–166. doi:10.5040/9781472594228.ch-008. ISBN 9781472510556. OCLC 879032785.
• LaFollette, Hugh (2007). The practice of ethics. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9780631219446. OCLC 64594298.
• Lekan, Todd (2003). Making morality: pragmatist reconstruction in ethical theory. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press. ISBN 0826514200. OCLC 50643701.
• Liszka, James Jakób (2021). Pragmatist ethics: a problem-based approach to what matters. SUNY series in American philosophy and cultural thought. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 9781438485874. OCLC 1240773915.
• Margolis, Joseph (1996). Life without principles: reconciling theory and practice. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0631195025. OCLC 32968697.
• Margolis, Joseph (2007) [1986]. Pragmatism without foundations: reconciling realism and relativism (2nd ed.). London: Continuum Books. ISBN 9780826491374. OCLC 144612699.
• Martin, Mike W. (2007). "Pragmatism". Everyday morality: an introduction to applied ethics (4th ed.). Australia; Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth. p. 30. ISBN 978-0495007081. OCLC 70200202.
• Misak, Cheryl (2000). Truth, politics, morality: pragmatism and deliberation. London; New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203162286. ISBN 0415140358. OCLC 41548164.
• Massecar, Aaron (2016). Ethical habits: a Peircean perspective. American philosophy. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. ISBN 9781498508544. OCLC 933590267.
• Pappas, Gregory Fernando (2008). John Dewey's ethics: democracy as experience. American philosophy series. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253351401. OCLC 177008090.
• Pappas, Gregory Fernando (2017). "Empirical approaches to problems of injustice: Elizabeth Anderson and the pragmatists". In Dieleman, Susan; Rondel, David; Voparil, Christopher J. (eds.). Pragmatism and justice. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 81–96. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190459239.003.0005. ISBN 9780190459246. OCLC 960762185.
• Pearce, Trevor (2017). "American pragmatism, evolution, and ethics" (PDF). In Ruse, Michael; Richards, Robert J. (eds.). The Cambridge handbook of evolutionary ethics. Cambridge handbooks in philosophy. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 43–57. doi:10.1017/9781316459409.004. ISBN 9781107132955. OCLC 986237281.
• Preti, Alan A. (2018). "Developing habits of moral reflection: Dewey, moral inquiry, and practical ethics". In Englehardt, Elaine E.; Pritchard, Michael S. (eds.). Ethics across the curriculum—pedagogical perspectives. Cham: Springer-Verlag. pp. 147–163. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-78939-2_10. ISBN 9783319789385. OCLC 1028210172.
• Rogers, Melvin L. (2009). The undiscovered Dewey: religion, morality, and the ethos of democracy. New York: Columbia University Press. doi:10.7312/roge14486. ISBN 9780231144865. JSTOR 10.7312/roge14486. OCLC 226360283.
• Schwartz, Robert (2020). "Pragmatic constructivism: values, norms, and obligations". Pragmatic perspectives: constructivism beyond truth and realism. Routledge studies in American philosophy. Vol. 20. New York: Routledge. pp. 126–143. doi:10.4324/9780429199233-12. ISBN 9781138049116. OCLC 1099272725.
• Schweigert, Francis J. (2016). Business ethics education and the pragmatic pursuit of the good. Advances in business ethics research. Vol. 6. New York: Springer-Verlag. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-33402-8. ISBN 9783319334004. OCLC 945949279.
• Wallace, James D. (1996). Ethical norms, particular cases. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. doi:10.7591/9781501717352. ISBN 0801432138. JSTOR 10.7591/j.ctv1nhprk. OCLC 34283678.
• Wallace, James D. (2009). Norms and practices. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0801447198. JSTOR 10.7591/j.ctt7v7hf. OCLC 228372045.
• Wallace, James D. (2013). "Pragmatic ethics". In LaFollette, Hugh (ed.). The international encyclopedia of ethics. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 4009–4020. doi:10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee256. ISBN 9781405186414. OCLC 712926703.
• Welchman, Jennifer (2005). "Virtue ethics and human development: a pragmatic approach". In Gardiner, Stephen Mark (ed.). Virtue ethics, old and new. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. pp. 142–156. doi:10.7591/9781501724275-009. ISBN 0801443458. OCLC 57392881.
• Welchman, Jennifer (2010). "Dewey's moral philosophy". In Cochran, Molly (ed.). The Cambridge companion to Dewey. Cambridge companions to philosophy. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 166–186. doi:10.1017/CCOL9780521874564.009. ISBN 9780521874564. OCLC 495996820.
• Weston, Anthony (1992). Toward better problems: new perspectives on abortion, animal rights, the environment, and justice. Ethics and action. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ISBN 0877229473. OCLC 24872093.
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• White, Morton (2002). "Holistic pragmatism, ethics, and Rawls's theory of justice". A philosophy of culture: the case for holistic pragmatism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. pp. 153–177. doi:10.1515/9781400825356.153. ISBN 0691096562. JSTOR j.ctt7sttr. OCLC 123154931.