The Complex Relationship Between Ethics and Economics
In the 1980s, American author Kenneth Lux published a book with a title as intriguing as it is misleading: “Adam Smith’s Mistake: How A Moral Philosopher Invented Economics and Ended Morality.” Lux’s mistake was twofold; Adam Smith neither invented Economics as an autonomous science from Philosophy, nor did he end morality: what he suggested was […]
Once again, virtue
This short text seeks to bring to our attention an aspect defined by the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre in his ethics: as moral agents, we, human beings, are rational and dependent animals. In the book Dependent Rational Animals, published in 1999, MacIntyre seeks to support his point of view that virtues are essential for human […]
Moral Judgments
One of the most important tasks for ethics is the moral judgment of individual acts. Moral judgment would be simple if there were objective and easily understandable standards that could be used. In their absence, some aspects need to be considered to help a person morally judge both their own actions and those of others. […]
Emotivism and morals: what is right and wrong?
The Jesuit priest and philosopher Harry Gensler (1945 – 2022), a scholar of logic and ethics, defined emotivism as a current of thought that holds that moral propositions cannot be analyzed as true or false, since they only express positive or negative feelings about something. In this way, a person who claims that “lying is […]
Remembering Rawls
In the early 1970s, the American philosopher John Rawls (1921 – 2002), a Harvard professor, published the book “A Theory of Justice,” which presented a plausible theory for promoting justice in a democratic society. Rawls’ proposal was based on a “social contract” to be concluded by the “founding fathers” of society and materialized into principles […]
THE THREE – OR FOUR – LAWS OF ROBOTICS
Isaac Asimov (1920 – 1992) is considered one of the greatest science fiction writers of the 20th century. Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Asimov wrote more than 400 books, including short stories, novels, fiction novels, and works of popular science on themes of Astronomy, Physics, and History, among others. Especially influential is his fiction about robotics, which […]
What defines a moral act?
Although there is no universal consensus regarding what is moral and what is not, one that is valid for all cultures at all times, there seems to be a common interpretation of what it is to act morally. This reflection on what this act is was motivated by a brief conversation at halftime of a […]
Nobody’s fault but mine?
This brief reflection deals with the theme of guilt, a feeling that assaults us when we know we have done something wrong – or even when we suspect that we have made that mistake. In Ethics, guilt appears relatively little in the works of moral philosophers (for those interested, Chappell’s chapter in Cokelet and Maley’s […]
Prima Facie Duties: A deontology in context?
Sir William David Ross (1877–1941), better known as W. D. Ross, was a Scottish philosopher from Oxford University, where he taught Moral Philosophy for several years, having excelled in this area for the publication of a book, The Right And The Good (1930), as well as for having translated and organized an edition of Aristotle’s […]
Virtues and utilitarianism: an impossible dialogue?
At first sight, utilitarianism and virtue ethics are absolutely incompatible currents of thought: utilitarianism calls for a principle of maximization, to an instrumental calculation of consequences as a criterion for the classification of moral acts, while virtue ethics requires careful analysis of the situation and the context in which the agent finds himself to determine […]