A Separability Principle, Contrast Cases, and Contributory Dispositions

The aim of this paper is to clarify the use of contrast cases—which are pairs of cases in which the feature under examination is varied and all else is held fixed—in ethical methodology. In another paper, I argue that we must reject a separability principle which is thought to allow one to use contrast cases to infer truths about intrinsic value (Kopeikin, 2019). Here I offer a different criticism that has a positive upshot about what we are licensed to infer from contrast cases. This provides clarification about the epistemic use of contrast cases in value theory and insight into what we can glean from contrast cases.

Endogenous Ethics in Evolutionary Learning Model Contra Utilitarianism

The matter that surfaces in the relationship between trust, society and wellbeing impinges on its stability and sustainability resulting in a two-way recursive causality: Society benefits from the moral trust of its citizens. Citizens earn the trust of society in its provision of desired goods, services, and trustworthy relations. An example of such trust as cohesive relationship between society, businesses small and large, and customers, is of a phenomenological nature invoking moral consciousness. The individual, business, and the social collective now come together through an evolutionary learning process of social interaction, integration and endogenously regenerated evolutionary equilibriums. An endogenous theory of ethics is thereby formulated out of the phenomenology of moral consciousness. This paper formalizes a methodological theory of endogenous ethics based on the premise of unity of knowledge as the phenomenological episteme. It shows how such an ethical methodology can be applied in society at large with customer and business relations as an example.

ETHICAL METHODOLOGY IN METZ’S THEORY OF UBUNTU

In this article I apply Thaddeus Metz’s ethical methodology to the ancient Greek ideal of σωφροσύνη in order to show that it generates a distorted account of ubuntu. If ubuntu is a virtue concept, then Metz’s analytical method will not reconstruct it — because it fails to determine whether ubuntu refers to one of a plurality of fundamental virtues, the fundamental virtue, or virtue itself.