Abstract
My work in ethics has focused on theoretical material from Aristotle on the good life, Mill on utilitarianism, Hume’s emotivism and subjectivism, Kant’s rationalism (including his account of the moral worth of an act and his categorical imperative about right acts), and W.D. Ross’ intuitionism on what makes right acts right. I found all these very different views fascinating and wondered if one of the theories might truly be the correct one. In my studies of mathematics, I had been trained to find the correct answers, and from that perspective it was natural to have a similar expectation in my newer field of interest, ethics, which I characterize as an inquiry into and about ways of life and rules of conduct. I argue in this paper that often no one theory is correct, but ethical theory as a collective is essential for practical decision-making.
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References
Aristotle. (1941). The politics. In R. McKeon (Ed.), The basic works of Aristotle (B. Jowett, trans.). New York: Random House.
Shapiro, I., & DeCew, J. W. (1995). Nomos XXXVII: Theory and Practice. New York: New York University Press.
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© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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DeCew, J.W. (2016). Ethics and Public Policy. In: Searing, E., Searing, D. (eds) Practicing Professional Ethics in Economics and Public Policy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7306-5_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7306-5_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-017-7305-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-7306-5
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