Abstract
We should take seriously Gert and Stevenson’s claim that philosophers in blind pursuit of their theories and principles are at risk of becoming ineffectual. For example, many ethics articles are too theoretically academic rather than practical. Generally, the author chooses a controversial moral topic, and then applies one or more principles to which she is particularly drawn. As a result, the issue is evaluated in light of the moral codes that academics, for the most part, have adopted, rather than those the people more directly involved in the situation would use. Although the articles tend to be well written, they carry little weight where people are making real world decisions about what to do.
An earlier version of the practical moral code based on USDA survey results appeared in Gary Goreham, George Youngs and my ”Practical Moral Codes in the Transgenic Organism Debate.” It has been extensively updated since that time.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
How would future generations, who will be impacted by the technology, be consulted?
- 2.
Gary Goreham’s “Ethical Perspectives on the Transgenic Organism Debate” unpublished PowerPoint presentation of research data at North Dakota State University, 2002: 1–10.
- 3.
Utility is defined as the result of subtracting the value of all of the evil consequences produced by an action from the value of all of the good consequences produced by the action.
- 4.
Audrey Richards’ work on primitive human societies supports the idea that there are basic universal characteristics to ethical systems (Richards 1969, pp. 23–32).
- 5.
United States Department of Agriculture, http://warp.nal.usda.gov/awic/legislat/nasa.htm and United States Food and Drug Administration, http://www.fda.gov/oc/ohrt/irbs/belmont.html
- 6.
See Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals and Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. My interpretation of what it means to respect persons as ends in themselves will be sketched out in the second chapter.
- 7.
See Shamoo and Resnik’s Responsible Conduct of Research, p. 16.
- 8.
The participants who pursued an organic lifestyle would likely agree with Schmitz’s contention that biotechnology is too concerned with generating products “whose sole purpose is to benefit and sustain industrial agriculture” (Schmitz 2005, p. 60).
- 9.
I have divided the participants into three groups: Anti-Transgenic, Neutral, and Pro-Transgenic. Those who are in the Anti-Transgenic group are generally opposed to the technology. Those in the Pro-Transgenic group are generally in favor of the technology. Finally, those in the Neutral group have no strong feeling either way.
- 10.
For some of the classical formulations of Natural Law Theory, which seems to have some connection to environmental ethics, see Aquinas’ “Creatures Have Their Own Activity” in On the Power of God, q. 3, a. 7, and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Physics.
- 11.
There are other ways of interpreting what “natural” means when the respondents use the word. One standard, but vague, definition is to equate natural actions and products to activities and products that are harmonious with or beneficial or neutral to the flourishing of nature. If an action is out of harmony or prevents flourishing, then it is morally wrong. Morally bad products are unharmonious or detrimental to nature. Christine Pierce, in Immovable Laws, Irresistible Rights: Natural Law, Moral Rights, and Feminist Ethics, analyzes various ways of defining the principle. Chapter 3 will address this issue in depth.
- 12.
See the 13th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America.
- 13.
See Rita C. Manning’s contention that the earth is a living body (Manning 1992, pp. 127–9, and 132).
- 14.
The patenting or ownership of information, processes, cell lines, or living organisms other than human beings is one ethical issue, while moral access to the patented or owned material is another. Although it might be morally permissible to patent or own these sorts of things, it might be impermissible to deny access to some people if certain conditions obtain.
- 15.
This argument will be fleshed out more in Chapter 4.
- 16.
I have argued briefly in "The CIOMS's Distributive Justice Principle: A Reply to Dr. Benatar" that an adequate distributive justice principle would merely be the combination of a form of utilitarianism and a version of Kant’s second Categorical Imperative (Cooley 2002a, pp. 11–13). The Practical Moral Code will develop just such a set of principles.
- 17.
No one disagrees that it is necessary to respect other agents, pain is to be avoided, social justice should be pursued, and so on. The disagreement begins when individuals discuss how to perform those tasks. For example, a Libertarian would have a very different approach from a Socialist, although both would agree to the basic idea that justice is something people ought to pursue (Miller 2003).
- 18.
See Deep Ecology (Peregrine Smith: Layton, UT, 1985).
- 19.
See either The Metaphysics of Morals or the Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals for the various formulations of the Categorical Imperative.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cooley, D.R. (2010). Applied Groundwork for a Practical Moral Code. In: Technology, Transgenics and a Practical Moral Code. The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3021-4_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3021-4_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-3020-7
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-3021-4
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)