Recognizing A Fuller Range of Moral Distinctions (part 1 of 2)

In the course of discussions bearing on -- or even just straying into -- moral matters, you'll often hear people involved in them invoking and using a rather limited range of moral terms and concepts.  It can be ordinary everyday conversations between friends, family or co-workers.  At the other end of the scale, it might be talking heads corralled into boxes to debate each other with sound-bites on the television screen.  It can even be an Ethics class, or some other class straying into that territory

The most commonly used terms and concepts are the permissible, the obligatory, or the prohibited.  There's a host of synonyms available for these.  You can even describe them through terms like: what's allowed, what's required, and what's not allowed.  These are indeed important for moral life, decision-making, and development -- but where, I'd like to argue, a lot of people go wrong in in thinking that these three classifications provide an adequate range for the moral distinctions we need to make.

Does Virtue Help Make Us Aware of Our Vices?

Some time back -- while I was grading some student essays from the Spring 2014 semester -- I posted an insight one of my students had expressed, but not entirely developed, on my Facebook page.  It then spurred a short but very pregnant discussion with one interlocutor, one which I decided I ought to keep, file away, and then return to think out more later on.

It's now later on -- time to revisit this interesting original remark, "virtue works in ways that makes non-virtuous people aware of their viciousness," as well as the comments and questions by my interlocutor, and my own off the cuff remarks.  But first, let's take a look -- and give a read to -- the conversation under discussion:

Honor and Ethics: Some Initial Reflections

A friend and colleague of mine, Bruce Weinstein, raised a provocative question, tapping the expertise and sounding the sentiments of his many Facebook friends:   

"What do you think of "Live Honorably" as my proposed slogan? I'd use it as a way to let people know how they would benefit from my talks, training, books, and consultations."
It sparked a conversation revealing -- and reflective of -- quite a few different viewpoints on the relationship between honor and ethics.  He also proposed that I weigh in on the matter, so that's precisely what I intend to do here.

Does MacIntyre get Emotivism Right?

Last month, I discussed a criticism of contemporary culture made by a thinker with whom I like to begin my Ethics courses -- Alasdair MacIntyre, who in After Virtue (as well as certain of his other works), maintains that we now inhabit a culture in which, like it or not, true as a moral theory or not, Emotivism has become the predominant framework within which moral discussion, and particularly disagreement, occur -- and this is bad, overall, for a number of reasons.

But it's worth asking -- particularly given the importance he accords to a moral theory attempting to get rival theories correct -- is MacIntyre himself right about Emotivism as a moral theory?  Is he representing it -- particularly in its self-conscious, explicitly philosophical form -- accurately, for instance when he claims that while "Emotivism has been presented by its most sophisticated proponents . . . as a theory about the meaning of sentences which are used to make moral judgements," if we look at it more closely, what its proponents failed to see is that it is "a cogent theory of use" of moral language, "rather than a false theory of meaning"?  In order to answer this, we have to compare MacIntyre's views on Emotivism in After Virtue against a few of Emotivism's "sophisticated proponents."

Is "Ethical Hacker" An Oxymoron? (part 1 of 2)

According to a recent Forbes piece, Exploding The Myth of The "Ethical Hacker", there have long been ongoing discussions and debates bearing upon the question whether that term or concept really makes sense.  Perhaps, like Martin Heidegger quipped about "Christian philosophy" (a stance, incidentally, whose flaws many pointed out) being as coherent as the notion of "wooden iron," there's something to the almost logical repugnance that many seem to feel arise when "ethical" and "hacker" are conjoined.

The article, contributed by Conrad Constantine and Dominique Karg -- the latter of whom bears the title "Chief Hacking Officer" -- makes some decent, well-articulated arguments against the propriety or prudence of speaking of some hackers as "ethical hackers."  They're raising, or spilling over into, some very interesting moral issues of wider scope, which are worth noting, even exploring a bit here.  The deeper question about connections between terminology, good or bad actions, personality and dispositions, and moral evaluation is one with a long history in moral theory -- addressed, explored, examined by philosophers ranging from Plato and Aristotle, to Confucius, Thomas Aquinas, and Jeremy Bentham.