moral value and human diversity feb 2007

[...]... Multiple Dimensions of Value Moral Value The Organic Character of Value Fact and Value part ii human diversity and the ethical challenges of contemporary life 3 Moral Pluralism and Cultural Relativity 1 2 3 4 The Diversity of Value Human Sociality The Plurality of Integrated Lives The Challenge of Cultural Differences and Clashing World Views 59 59 62 65 78 xiv Contents 4 Human Diversity and Democratic Institutions... Yarnell, and, especially, Christian Miller and Peter Wicks, who both made extensive comments and suggestions on an earlier draft I am also grateful to Peter Ohlin and others at Oxford University Press— especially Linda Donnelly and Lara Zoble—for advice and help in the process of design and production and to Norma McLemore for copyediting CONTENTS part i major ethical views and the dimensions of value. .. dimensions of morality as there are moral virtues, and with rule theorists in holding that morality 12 Major Ethical Views and the Dimensions of Value demands that we have and act on principles This may lead to the kind of common-sense ethical theory set out by the twentieth-century English moral philosopher W D Ross His approach—a kind of multiple-rule view—is to categorize our basic duties (moral obligations)... and this principle is to be internalized—roughly, automatically presupposed and normally also strongly motivating—in a way that yields moral virtue Each value becomes, then, a guiding standard, and mature moral agents will develop a sense of how to act (or at least how to reach a decision to act) when the values pull in different directions.17 No specific, single standard, however, can be our sole moral. .. oldest and most widely accepted is the divine command view It says, in part, that what we morally ought to do is follow the rules laid down by God.5 The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20: 1–17) and Jesus’ love commandments ( Matthew 22: 37–39) and Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) are the most famous representations of divinely ordained moral principles The former set, at least, contains a sort of elementary moral. .. Ethical Theory and the Moral Fragmentation of Modern Life 1 2 3 4 5 Some Major Types of Ethical View Toward Ethical Integration Ethics and Science: Beyond the Stereotypes Relativism and Objectivity Ten Challenges for Contemporary Ethics 3 5 16 21 24 28 2 The Experience of Value: What Do We Value, and Why Should We Care? 35 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 36 38 39 41 47 49 52 Value Versus Valuation The Good and the True... reliable routes to knowledge of human nature and our world, it is easy to be skeptical about values Values cannot be seen We can see a good painting, but its goodness is not like its colors and shapes and may evade many viewers Similarly, we may see someone do a morally good deed, but its moral goodness is not a visible property of the bodily movements that meet the eye Nor is value quantitatively measurable,... the whole of reality and that scientific method is the only reliable route to general knowledge of reality This naturalism seems to leave no place for value: for what is intrinsically good or 3 4 Major Ethical Views and the Dimensions of Value intrinsically bad Science is in fact supposed to be value free,”1 to make no judgments of value beyond those warranted by its own internal standards of evidence... scientific descriptions and explanations.2 How, then, can we reasonably affirm standards of the right and the good as any more than projections of our own preferences? How is it even possible to find ideals for human life that we can all respect despite our many individual and cultural differences and in the absence of a scientific case for their soundness? In the light of these and other ethical challenges... are moral virtues? Second, the conduct question: What ought we to do, especially in distributing benefits and burdens among us—say, health care and military responsibilities and in regulating our conduct? Third, the value question: What things in life are good as ends, worth seeking for their own sake and not just as means to something else? Our view of these goods will largely determine the kind and .