Anne-Marie Soendergaard Christensen

In this chapter, we propose that contextual ethics combines two commitments. One is the minimalistic metaethical assumption that ethics arises as part of and can only be approached through an understanding of a specific context and thus is irreducibly shaped by context, and the other is a commitment to a way of doing work in moral philosophy that honours this metaethical view by acknowledging that investigating and describing a moral issue in context and understanding the normative challenges it poses are two sides of the same coin. To provide some background for these commitments, we describe the historical roots of a contextualised approach to ethics and provide an overview of some major influences. We then offer one way to spell out the two core commitments. The metaethical commitment is developed in terms of a rejection of the ideas of a moral domain and a settled fact-value dichotomy combined with a commitment to the contextuality of ethics that brings out how in moral philosophy, descriptive and normative work is connected. The methodological commitment is developed through a survey of some of the many different ways in which context can be brought into prominence in philosophical investigations. In general, we aim to provide a framework for contextual ethics that shows the importance, and indeed necessity, of increased attention to context in contemporary philosophy.

There is currently not much consensus about how to understand the relationship between normative moral philosophy and applied or practical ethics. However, if we approach this relationship through the lens of contextual ethics this brings out three central features of problems in practical ethics that these problems are in a particular sense new, that these problems therefore appear to us as practically more urgent, and that both characteristics of their appearance arise because problems in practical ethics depend on contexts outside the everyday of moral life, not familiar or even readily accessible to everyone. To develop my suggestion, I provide a brief overview of the most influential characterisations of practical ethics and present the core commitments of a Wittgensteinian approach to contextual ethics. My aim is complex. On the one hand, I argue that focus on the context of moral problems brings out these differences between problems in practical ethics and normative moral philosophy—that problems in practical ethics appear to us as new, urgent and embedded in a specialised context—while, on the other hand, I argue that there is still no fundamental or qualitative difference between problems in the two subdisciplines—normative and practical ethics really make up one discipline. Finally, I discuss whether the specialised background of problems in practical ethics raises a tension with the Wittgensteinian emphasis on the everyday in contextual ethics.

Contextual ethics is not a thing, but perhaps it should be? Or, perhaps it should be many? There is, after all, not much sense in stressing the importance of context out of context; so, the idea of there being one sense of, and one importance of, ‘context’ is, in a way, a thought that goes against the point of the essays in this book. For that reason, it may be better to introduce the term ‘contextual ethics’ negatively: contextual ethics is rooted in the recognition that a philosophy that seeks one overarching approach, that ought to be relevant for and applicable to any scene of importance for philosophy, runs the risk of distorting the object it seeks to understand. Even though it may be problematic to call contextual ethics ‘a method’, there are a number of things that unite the essays here collected. The importance of attending to context is of course the central one. But what that, more precisely, means is not very easy to make clear—for if there’s anything one can say at a general level about ‘contexts’, it is that they vary. These variations and differences are not to be neglected.

Moral philosophy has traditionally strived towards abstraction and universalization, its claims tending to leave behind the specificity of bodies, individuals’ lives, situations, culture, and history. Yet there are ways of thinking and doing moral philosophy that do not leave context behind but make it their. This makes it a point, never to lose sight of context, to place it at the centre of ethical investigations. To present and defend the richness and validity of this approach to ethics his is, at any rate, the claim and the ambition of this volume. Placed in the new field of contextual ethics, the anthology presents articles that focus on issues ranging from the theoretical and the methodological – Does taking context into account imply relativism? Can the normative and the descriptive in ethics be separated? How does moral change occur in the thick of everyday life? – to applied issues in biomedical, animal, and environmental ethics. The volume opens with a programmatic chapter on contextual ethics that traces its historical roots, its most central themes and methodological issues, and its relation to different traditions in contemporary ethics.

In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus we find Wittgenstein’s first and most substantial published investigation of ethics. I will argue that if the ethical sections of the Tractatus are seen in connection with a particular concept of showing, they then reveal a coherent and radical alternative to traditional conceptions of ethics; an alternative which sheds light on Wittgenstein’s claim that ethics cannot be expressed and the necessity of ethics. But I furthermore want to argue that the reasons leading Wittgenstein to a demand for silence in ethics falls away if one looks at the later investigations of necessity which he makes in On Certainty.

This article investigates the resolute readings account of Wittgenstein's early remarks on ethics, especially the claim that there are no ethical sentences. According to Cora Diamond a Wittgensteinian ethics therefore relies on a particular type of imaginative understanding consisting in taking nonsense for sense. I argue that that there are some problems connected to Diamonds reading of the remarks on ethics in the Tractatus and that these mainly stem.from her not seeing the importance of a particular concept of showing for Wittgenstein's work.

The amount of data available to healthcare practitioners is growing, and the rapid increase in available patient data is becoming a problem for healthcare practitioners, as they are often unable to fully survey and process the data relevant for the treatment or care of a patient. Consequently, there are currently several efforts to develop systems that can aid healthcare practitioners with reading and processing patient data and, in this way, provide them with a better foundation for decision-making about the treatment and care of patients. There are also efforts to develop algorithms that provide suggestions for such decisions. However, the development of these systems and algorithms raises several concerns related to the privacy of patients, the patient–practitioner relationship, and the autonomy of healthcare practitioners. The aim of this article is to provide a foundation for understanding the ethical challenges related to the development of a specific form of data-processing systems, namely clinical algorithms.

While there is considerable support for integrating ethics education in accounting curricula, research presents conflicting evidence on how best to incorporate it. A review of accounting ethics scholarship highlights criticisms of the literature, including limited research into actual behavior and a lack of theory. We report the results of a study that is theory based, captures behaviors rather than attitudes, and explores the effect of repeated practice to develop voice efficacy. We examine the impact of two types of ethics instructions. Across four classes in an accounting curriculum, one student cohort participated in traditional ethics instruction, while the other cohort participated in Giving Voice To Values instruction. We collected student responses to an ethical challenge and conduct a between-subject analysis. The results reveal consistent unethical behavior in the traditional cohort but not in the GVV cohort, indicating that faculty should consider the use of this pedagogy in accounting ethics education.

In this article the logistic regression results in Table 4 Logistic regression results were unfortunately misinterpreted with respect to one hypothesis. The original article states that H5 Levels of observed unethical behavior by accounting students are lower for students who self-identify as politically liberal, than for students who self-identify as politically conservative. While the variable “Self-identified Political Ideology” is statistically significant, the negative sign on the coefficient indicates the result is hypothesized in the opposite direction. Thus the correct interpretation is that accounting students who self-identify as conservative have lower levels of observed unethical behavior than accounting students who self-identify as politically liberal. We regret any inconveniences this may have caused.

This book offers a radical reappraisal of the nature and significance of Wittgenstein’s thought about ethics from a variety of different perspectives. The book includes essays on Wittgenstein’s early remarks on ethics in the _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,_ on his 1929 "Lecture on Ethics", and on various aspects of Wittgenstein’s later views on ethics in the _Philosophical Investigations_ and elsewhere. Together, the essays in this volume provide a comprehensive assessment of Wittgenstein’s moral thought throughout his work, its continuity and development between his early and later work, and its connections with other aspects of his thought. Featuring fourteen original contributions written by internationally renowned Wittgenstein scholars, _Wittgenstein’s Moral Thought _opens up a new understanding of ethics that diverges from prevailing views prominent in contemporary discussions of the subject.

Traditionally, the development of moral theories has been considered one of the main aims of moral philosophy. In contrast, Wittgenstein was very critical of the use of theories both in philosophy in general and in moral philosophy in particular, and philosophers inspired by his philosophy have become some of the most prominent critics of both particular, contemporary moral theories and the idea of moral theory as such. Nonetheless, this article aims to show how Wittgenstein’s later philosophy offers us resources for a revised understanding of the role and status of moral theories according to which theories are neither normative nor explanatory, but are rather to be understood as generalisations of particular descriptions of various forms of moral grammar.

The phenomenon of ‘innocent guilt’ regards cases where people feel guilty without being responsible for the wrongdoing or suffering at which the guilt is directed. The aim of this article is to develop a consistent account of innocent guilt and show how it may arise in the aftermath of conflicts. In order to do this, innocent guilt is contrasted with guilt and collective guilt, and the account is substantiated by drawing on the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Emmanuel Levinas, who both consider the phenomenon of innocent guilt a necessary element in the fundamental structure of the ethical subject. These thinkers, furthermore, show a connection between guilt and possible victims of wrongdoing, rather than between guilt and personal acts of wrongdoing. Innocent guilt may thus appear in the aftermath of conflicts as an ethical and emotional response to the fact of finding oneself in a post-conflict situation still marked by suffering. It thus reveals a fundamental need to contribute to the relieving of such suffering.

In this paper, my major concern is to place the ethical remarks of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus within a wider discussion in moral philosophy. In the first part of the paper, I sketch a reading of the Tractatus that brings out a particular feature of ethics, namely the fact that ethical discourse is shaped by both subjective and objective concerns. Moving on, I unfold the subjective side of ethics by drawing on Stanley Cavell's notion of the point of an utterance, while the objective side will be presented via Diamond's writing on the importance of truth in ethics. My goal is to argue for the possibility of an understanding of ethics that does not force a choice between the subjective and the objective, between realism and projectionism in moral philosophy, but allows for the possibility that both elements play a vital role in ethics.

Most commentators working on Wittgenstein’s remarks on ethics note that he rejects the very possibility of traditional normative ethics, that is, a philosophically justified normative guide for right conduct. In this article, Wittgenstein’s view of ethical reflection as presented in his notebooks from 1936 to 1938 is investigated, and the question of whether it involves ethical guidance is addressed. In Wittgenstein’s remarks, we can identify three requirements inherent in ethical reflection. The first two is revealed in the realisation that ethical reflection presupposes both a clear understanding of oneself and a normative ideal of how one ought to live and reason. The third source of normativity springs from the fact that ethical reflection involves a relationship with the other, not as judge, but as example and addressee. In this way, ethical reflection is essentially relational. In the article, we unfold how these three normative sources figure in Wittgenstein’s remarks, especially how the third requirement, the relationship with the other, shows both a point of conversion and a difference between his view of ethics and religious faith. It will also be argued that even if Wittgenstein thus presents ethical reflection as a normatively guided activity, the content of the guidance is personal, springing solely from the reflecting individual.

Most forms of virtue ethics are characterized by two attractive features. The first is that proponents of virtue ethics acknowledge the need to describe how moral agents acquire or develop the traits and abilities necessary to become morally able agents. The second attractive feature of most forms of virtue ethics is that they are forms of moral realism. The two features come together in the attempt to describe virtue as a personal ability to distinguish morally good reasons for action. It follows from the general picture of virtue ethics presented here that we cannot evaluate ethical judgment independently of the viewpoint of the ideal of a virtuous person. We will examine how this ideal unfolds in the realistic form of virtue ethics advanced by John McDowell. McDowell offers a compelling description of virtue as a natural ability grounded in human nature, while at the same time insisting that we cannot understand the judgment resulting from virtue without drawing on that very perspective. However, McDowell’s focus on the passive taking in of reasons in ethical experience and his idea of the silencing of wrong reasons lead us to three related problems. The first is that he cannot account for certain features of the phenomenology of such experience; the second is that he cannot provide any relevant epistemological criteria for correct moral judgment; and the third is that he gives a morally objectionable characterization of the ideal of being a virtuous person. All of these problems arise because McDowell does not take into account the particular nature of ethical experience. If we try to resolve this problem by dropping McDowell’s idea of silencing, we then have to offer another substantial description of our ideal of a virtuous person that includes active and interpersonal ways of evaluating concrete judgments. Proponents of virtue ethics still have to lift this task and develop a position that does not limit ethical experience to the passive intake of reasons.

In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus we find Wittgenstein’s first and most substantial published investigation of ethics. I will argue that if the ethical sections of the Tractatus are seen in connection with a particular concept of showing, they then reveal a coherent and radical alternative to traditional conceptions of ethics; an alternative which sheds light on Wittgenstein’s claim that ethics cannot be expressed and the necessity of ethics. But I furthermore want to argue that the reasons leading Wittgenstein to a demand for silence in ethics falls away if one looks at the later investigations of necessity which he makes in On Certainty.