Abstract
The many elements of professional ethics programs can be oriented by the goal of identity development situated within a teleological virtue ethics structure. This structure supports the integration of an individual’s values, acts, and goals and the framework (including ethical codes, laws, common practices, and the social good) of their profession. Professional ethics understood in this way extends beyond the normal focus on propositional and practical knowledge to include other important aspects of professional activity. The kinds of activities that are of particular interest in this analysis are those that fit under Alasdair MacIntyre’s concept of practice that take place within distinct moral spaces. By combining the idea of practice and distinct moral spaces, professional ethics can be expanded to draw awareness to characteristic virtues dominant in different ethical fields, offering critical distance and promoting agent self-awareness. One’s identity arises through answering what Charles Taylor called “qualitative questions,” used to define one’s self, which depends on what one has already done and what one aims to do, guided by what one holds to be significant. Thoughtful answers require mental deliberation and discourse; their articulation and the development of a coherent moral identity that combines personal and professional intentions, actions, and goals are closely correlated with exemplary professional behavior, according to research done by social psychologists. According to this argument, one’s unique identity is expressed in the imaginative composition of words, virtues developed, and practices to which they are applied, over the course of one’s life.
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Notes
- 1.
I touch on action outside of established norms in the last section of the paper. For now, it suffices to say that professional ethics courses should lead the agent to have a better considered explanation of why they acted in such a way than if they had not taken the course, and that these situations are not common.
- 2.
My brief summary of behavioural psychology is based on Thoma and Bebeau (2013).
- 3.
In this paper, I understand a being’s “definition” as something that the individual can construct, i.e., that it, like one’s physique, can be determined to an extent, though not entirely. A similar line of reasoning works for those who adopt an anthropology with a more extensive definition of human essence, such as Thomas Aquinas.
- 4.
As Mitcham points out, clarity of ends does not necessarily lead to their attainment.
- 5.
Even if Aristotle’s claim is taken literally, youthful development should be thought of as setting the floor and ceiling of one’s development, or else the role of virtuous friends (Book VIII of Nicomachean Ethics) would make no sense.
- 6.
“But the complete sort of friendship is that between people who are good and are alike in virtue, since they wish for good things for one another in the same way insofar as they are good, and they are good in themselves.” (Aristotle 2002, 1156b7–10).
- 7.
Harris identifies sensitivity to risk, awareness of the social context, attunement to nature, and commitment to the public good as dispositions important for engineers.
- 8.
For more on objectives of the modern university, fashioned and defended by Wilhelm von Humboldt, which unites teaching and research for citizens’ development and equality, see Fuller (2009).
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Miller, G. (2018). Aiming Professional Ethics Courses Toward Identity Development. In: Englehardt, E.E., Pritchard, M.S. (eds) Ethics Across the Curriculum—Pedagogical Perspectives. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78939-2_6
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