Pragmatist Ethics: A Dynamical Theory Based on Active Responsibility

Abstract

The main focus of moral theories has long been the ethics of rules and principles. However, another very different ethics complements and competes with it in American society. This chapter provides a theoretical framework for that ethics, locating it within the American pragmatist philosophical tradition and supporting its claims with data from the cognitive and behavioral sciences. That framework is a complex dynamical systems approach to a moral situation. A systems approach locates a moral action in an agent’s attunement to the complex of relationships among particular persons at a particular time when a choice takes place. A skillful moral judgment aims through its action to conserve such community-building values as trust, respect, kindness, forgiveness, compassion, and generosity.