Abstract
The paper replies to Professor Alex Michalos' keynote address, "Ethics Counsellors as a New Priesthood". Michalos argues that an intractable diversity of opinion about fundamental issues in ethical theory precludes substantive, well-founded ethical counselling. However, Michalos has inappropriately modelled his understanding of an acceptable structure and application for ethical theory on natural scientific theory. For we may countenance a less severe understanding of theory for ethical theory than in the hard sciences. In particular, instructive moral reasoning may tolerate a degree of disagreement across human beings in their conception of moral good. On condition that such variance is not so considerable as to undermine a necessary commonality of language on ethical matters, there will be an adequate basis for warranted theory-construction in ethics and effective moral counselling underwritten by such theory. And, on the available historical evidence, such a condition can be met.
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References
Aristotle: 1980, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. by David Ross, rev. by J. L. Ackrill and J. O. Urmson (Oxford University Press, Oxford).
Lewis, C. I.: 1929, Mind and the World Order (Dover Publications, New York).
Michalos, A. C.: October 1999, “Ethics Counsellors as a New Priesthood”, Sixth International Conference Promoting Business Ethics, Niagara University.
Mill, J. S.: 1979, Utilitarianism (1861), ed. by George Sher (Hackett, Indianapolis, IN)
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Hodgson, B.J. Michalos and the Theory of Ethical Theory. Journal of Business Ethics 29, 19–23 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006486707840
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006486707840