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Hot Topics in Ethics?

Brian Leiter

A follow-up to the successful thread on epistemology awhile back:  what are the hot topics in ethics these days?   Moral psychology, both empirical and from the armchair, seems especially lively.  The nature of reasons too.  What else?  The more detail the better, and feel free to post links to on-line resources (papers, blog discussions, etc.).  Signed comments strongly preferred, and, as always, post only once, comments may take awhile to appear.

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12 responses to “Hot Topics in Ethics?”

  1. Eric Rovie

    There's a lot of lively discussion about various forms of moral realism going on in metaethics, with all of the cognate defenses of moral anti-realism spinning off from it. Russ Shafer-Landau's book Moral Realism: A Defense seems to fill a nice gap for the non-naturalist moral realists out there.

    In normative ethics, there's still some interesting new work being done trying to determine if virtue ethics is a worthwhile endeavor as a normative theory. Dating back to 1999, you've got Hursthouse, Foot, Slote, Swanton and Robert Adams (among others) offering book-length defenses of virtue ethics. On the critical side, you've got the situationist critics (Harman, Doris) bringing moral psychology to bear in the argument, and trying to show that a virtue theory based on stable character traits is a project doomed to fail. Rachana Kamtekar and Maria Merritt both have nice papers responding to sitationist critics, and there's a nice discussion by Sabini and Silver in a recent article in Ethics.

    On the fence between normative and applied ethics, there's some really finely wrought discussion about troubling moral cases being done by FM Kamm (whose book Intricate Ethics is truly intricate!) and Jeff McMahan. In the spirit of Judith Thomson and Derek Parfit, where nuanced differences in cases are used to illuminate moral differences, Kamm and McMahan go heavy on the details in their thought experiments to make their points. McMahan's book, The Ethics of Killing, really delves deep into vexed bioethical cases, while Kamm's book explores the impact of Trolley cases and examines commonly defended views like the Doctrine of Double Effect.

    McMahan is also doing really great work on the ethics of war and violence, as are folks like CAJ Coady, Larry May, and David Luban.

    I know less about what work is really fresh in the history of moral philosophy, but I think a lot more people are paying attention to figures who generally don't make the 'first cut' for moral philosophy but ought to: Adam Smith, Francis Hutcheson, the Stoics, Grotius, and Shaftesbury are all getting more attention. And Kant's theory of virtue is getting more play as well.

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  2. Mark van Roojen

    In metaethics there has been a lot of good stuff coming out on Frege-Geach (very roughly the problem for non-cognitivism of providing an account of the meanings normative terms in embedded contexts that is adequate to the ways in which such uses fit logically with other claims), much of it in response to a couple of nice papers by Unwin several years back raising a specific version — the "negation problem" for expressivism. Several nice papers by Jamie Dreier, Mark Schroeder (including an impressive forthcoming book), Horgan and Timmons, and probably others I am forgetting, all contribute. Gibbard's latest book, Thinking How To Live, is obviously an important piece of this literature as well as on related issues. There has also been new work on hybrid-views (that is views with elements of cognitivism and noncognitivism) by Stephen Barker, Mike Ridge and Dan Boisvert that try different approaches to the problem. I don't know if the issue counts as hot or not, but there is a lot of nice work here.

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  3. Gary Chartier

    It strikes me that, in addition to this helpful list, one might think about the kind moral particularism Jonathan Dancy is defending as a position that straddles meta-ethics and normative ethics. Related to Dancy is the seemingly renewed interest in Rossian versions of 'intuitionism' (in the sense of a pluraistic system with irreducible principles and no algorithms for resolving conflicts). It seems to me that the Platonic-cum-Wittgnsteinian views of folks like John McDowell and David McNaughton certainly attract interest (and Shafer Landau isn't necessarily too far from these folks). Bernard Williams's qualified skepticism–both about normative ethics (under some circumstances) and about utilitarianism as a kind of normative ethics–certainly deserve ongoing attention (as does much of everything else Williams said.) And, meanwhile, sentimentalist accounts of ethics have grown in sophistication–witness the work of Simon Blackburn, Allan Gibbard, and Mark Timmons. And there's the resurgence of naturalist realism in morality, as represented by the "Cornell School" of Sturgeon et al.Finally, you might think about ongoing attempts to develop classical positions–Kantianism (Herman, Baron), quasi-Kantianism (the late Alan Gewirth), consequentialism (Singer, at least in applied ethics), Thomist-Aristotelian natural law (Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Robert George, Chris Tollefsen), a mixed, Artistotelian/Platonic, principle-free account of virtue (Stephen R. L. Clark), etc. etc. The point, I think, is that an enormous array of interesting positions are on offer.

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  4. Thom Brooks

    I will only add to Eric's comments to note that there is the increasing interest in experimental philosophy and ethics.

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  5. Colin Farrelly

    The topic of human enhancement (e.g. cognitive enhancement, retarding aging, etc.) has received a lot of attention in applied ethics lately. A number of journals have dedicated special volumes to the topic (e.g. March 2005 issue of Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal and the first issue of the new journal Studies in Ethics, Law, and Technology). And new and forthcoming books on the topic include John Harris’s Enhancing Evolution and Allen Buchanan’s Uehiro Lectures. And there is also the President’s Council of Bioethics report on Beyond Therapy.

    So the aspiration to liberate humans from the constraints placed on us by our evolutionary history is a rapidly growing area of interest. And a further appeal of this kind of applied topic is that it really fosters interdisciplinary dialogue and debate. A perfect example of this is the latest issue of Nature which has two letters to the editor by moral philosophers (Bostrom and Harris) on the ethics of cognitive enhancement.

    Cheers,
    Colin

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  6. Bill Edmundson

    Thom's mention of experimental work and Colin's of cognitive enhancement are important additions to the list. Where these two areas overlap is terra incognita. One of the questions residing there pertains to empirical case for the modularity of our ethical equipment. If, for example, there is a "purity/impurity" module that drives reactions of disgust, one might expect its effect to dwindle to the extent that competing modules –primarily the "harmful/harmless" module– are directly or indirectly enhanced. What to make of the possibility of "creeping vulcanization" is a looming question in normative ethics, but one for experimental ethics too. Virtue ethics also ought to have something to say about this –especially if experimental ethics confirms that our complement of virtues is but an "ill-assorted bricolage" of traits cast up by the contingencies of evolution (as Bernard Willams described it).

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  7. Eric Rovie

    One other interesting debate I forgot to mention: the debate bwtween the particularists (there are no defensible moral principles) and the generalists (general principles can be defended in ethics). In the former camp, Dancy and Little/Lance have done a lot of nice work. In the latter camp, McKeever and Ridge's book is quite good. There's a nice edited collection on the topic by Hooker and Little, as well.

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  8. David Ekstrand

    On the history side, I could add that the sophists have been getting increased press the last years – I guess that ties in with Eric's comments about the increased interest in traditionally overlooked philosophical figures. Connected to the interest in evolutionary and experimental ethics, evolutionary game theory is still relatively hot. People like Skyrms and Binmore (and Ostrom and Hardin on the politics side) have put out interesting things over the last years (and before that Sugden and of course Axelrod, the man himself), and it is possible, perhaps even probable, that there will be interesting new developments in other disciplines (economics, biology, computational sociology) that will drive the development onwards.

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  9. Daniel Star

    As someone working in ethics and just out of grad school, I like to think I have my finger on the pulse. That being said, I only wish to comment about a bunch of hot topics that particularly interest me. I certainly don't mean to deny that there are other hot topics worth discussing.

    Virtue. Eric and Bill both mention virtue ethics, and Eric singles out Robert Adams as one person offering "a book-long defense of virtue ethics". There are a couple of things to be said here. Firstly, while I agree that the attack on virtue coming from the situationists remains important, perhaps the hottest issue here is the way that this has moved on from a question of us all needing to simply pay attention to the attack to a more sober analysis of the details of the arguments and evidence on both sides. In his book, Robert Adams does a fantastic job of criticising the situationist position. He doesn’t bury his head in the sand (a more traditional response, perhaps); rather he writes from a position of having examined the empirical evidence carefully. The other thing that needs to be said about this book is that it isn't best described as a "book-long defense of virtue ethics". Rather, it is a book that attempts to provide a rich and interesting account of virtue that neither downplays the importance of virtue in favour of principles concerning right action, nor supposes that by providing an account of virtue one is thereby putting oneself in a position where it will be a relatively easy matter to provide an account of right action (i.e. a normative ethical theory). I take *this* to be an important new way of thinking about virtue. It is one I also explore in an as yet unpublished paper, "After Virtue Ethics"(in a way that I know Robert Adams doesn't wholeheartedly endorse, although I am very grateful to him). Incidentally, Christine Swanton’s account of virtue is also rich an interesting, and she is correctly described as a virtue ethicist (she is a fine example of how virtue ethicists are becoming more sophisticated).

    Particularism. I agree with Eric that the particularism debate is still important, but, again, let’s try to be a bit more specific. My copy of Hooker and Little is starting to look a little ragged (great collection of papers that it is). Dancy has weakened his position (in Ethics Without Principles), so-called “moderate” particularists have fleshed out their positions (e.g. Little and Lance), and, most importantly (to my mind), McKeever and Ridge have published an excellent book that picks apart a range of different claims that have been identified with particularism, then submits these claims to careful criticism (apart from the holist thesis about reasons which they endorse and argue is actually compatible with generalism about principles). You might like to go to http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=9203 for a full review. Pekka Väyrynen also deserves a mention here for his papers on particularism and holism.

    The nature of reasons. I agree with Brian that this is a hot topic. One of the things that makes this a hot topic is a connection with the particularism debate. Should we be holists or atomists about reasons? Perhaps we should distinguish between ultimate and derivative reasons, and hope that this will provide us with a way of criticising particularism (this is the strategy I favour – grant the holist the appearances on the level of derivative reasons, then be an atomist on the level of ultimate reasons). Another thing that makes the nature of reasons a hot topic is the fact that John Broome has a book coming out which, amongst other things, includes an interesting account of reasons as parts of explanations of what you ought to do (he has also published a paper on this account). For an overview and critique of Broome’s theory that proposes instead that reasons are evidence you might like to check out a coauthored paper I have posted over at Ethics Etc: http://ethics-etc.com/2008/01/29/reasons-explanations-or-evidence-or-neither/ (comments are welcome there). Incidentally, the view that reasons are evidence provides a way of making sense of the idea that there are two levels of reasons (all reasons are evidence, but only the ultimate reasons are context-independent). I mention a third thing that makes the nature of reasons a hot topic below, under “Normativity in general, reasons in general, and value in general”. Of course, many other people are working on reasons. Mark Schroeder is a particularly fine example of a young philosopher producing cutting edge material on this topic – he defends a Humean account of reasons in an interesting and novel way.

    The relationship between reasons, rationality and normativity. Nico Kolodny, John Broome, and Andrew Reisner all spring to mind. What makes this a hot topic is that important distinctions between reasons, the requirements of rationality, and normativity have only recently be established, where stuff was previously all mushed together, and the implications of making these distinctions have only just begun to be explored. John Broome, for instance, argues that we shouldn’t confuse reasons with rational requirements, and that it is an open and interesting question whether rational requirements are genuinely normative.

    Normativity in general, reasons in general, and value in general. One of the most exciting features of ethics as it is now being pursued is that the field has become more open to viewing certain important questions and topics as not merely the province of ethics. For instance, it seems likely that more progress will be made on pinning down what it is that normativity is all about now that we (in ethics, if not in philosophy generally) have stopped thinking it is only moral (or possibly moral and prudential) normativity that we should be focusing on. I think the best concrete example that illustrates this trend is the publication of Ralph Wedgwood’s very hot book, “The Nature of Normativity” (of course, he also published a number of relevant papers before the book). Reasons in general: Stephen Kearns and I think that if it is possible to give an informative analysis of normative reasons, then this analysis had better extend across both theoretical and practical reasons (otherwise, why use the same word, “reason”?), and we take this to be a virtue of our own account of reasons (see the Ethics Etc link above).

    Moral Knowledge. Finally, I’d like to go out on a limb and make a prediction. I think that one of the topics that will become hot is moral epistemology that is practiced in a way that pays more attention to what is going on in recent work in mainstream epistemology. I think it has been a dangerous feature of quite a bit of moral epistemology that it has been pursued in a vacuum (with the excuse that, well, morality is special). Anyway, I try to push this case a little in relation to epistemic externalism in a forthcoming paper in Ratio (Russ Shafer-Landau also takes epistemic externalism more seriously than it has been previously in ethics in his “Moral Realism” but he mixes it together with old-style intuitionism – this makes for a not so tasty dish, I think [although, like many other people, I think this is one of the best publications in metaethics in recent years]).

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  10. Fritz Allhoff

    I'm surprised how few of the comments have mentioned empirical work in ethics which, judging from journal issues, conferences, and so on, is extremely popular these days. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong's 3 volumes on moral psychology (OUP) are fantastic, and will undoubtedly catalyze much attention and research. Even a book like Marc Hauser's–who is, of course, not a philosopher–has drawn a lot of interest by ethicists. As briefly alluded to, experimental results are also really hot right now. Kwame Appiah's new book is one example, though work by people like John Doris, Joshua Knobe, Eduoard Machery, and others is also excting (and, again, generating journal issues, conferences, etc.).

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  11. Kathryn Norlock

    I notice I'm not the only one grabbed by end-of-Bush social ethics right now; Margaret Urban Walker's recent book on _Moral Repair_ seems to have (unintentionally, since Walker never mentions the president) sparked some related work on getting over senses of division, bitterness and pessimism. Even as I'm reviewing submitted articles arguing for moral repair of social and political relationships, I notice the related energy around recognition, especially with recent work on Axel Honneth being reviewed and discussed. Recent theories of evil which focus much more on the consequential suffering of victims than on evildoers' internal motives (especially Laurence Thomas, and Claudia Card's most recent work on torture) make this an exciting time to be a part of ethics in response to evils, but here I have to agree with Daniel Star that moral knowledge is just begging to be discussed even more excellently; the combination of the above three hot topics has resulted in attention to narrative as a source of moral epistemology which is endlessly, fascinatingly problematic. (And I say that as an advocate of narrative as a source of moral knowledge!) Fritz Allhof for the win: empirical work in ethics is going great guns.

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  12. J. Edward Hackett

    Arguably, there is much to level and clear the base assumptions of doing any work in normative theory. One must really see what is there when we do normative ethics, and one way to get clear is the application of Husserlian phenomenology to clarify our understanding of moral experience with the rest of what is done in ethics.

    Timmons and Horgan do some work in this area reviving Moore and discuss Maurice Mandelbaum. Some people construe phenomenology to be the study of only raw first-person feelings without paying attention to the wider definition of intentionality provided by Husserl. One advocate for a moral phenomenology borrowing from Husserlian themes is John Drummond at Fordham. His work has been especially influential on me in this regard.

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