Po tym jak Elizabeth Anscombe postulowała „wyrzucenie za burtę” jałowych dyskusji nad tym, czy czyn jest dobry, czy zły, etyka doświadczyła renesansu etyki cnót. Ta odnowiona etyczna tradycja zaczęła być stosowana do etyk szczegółowych, w tym także do debaty na temat środowiska. To dało początek etyce cnót środowiskowych, która łączy doskonałość moralną człowieka z jego zobowiązaniami wobec świata naturalnego. Artykuł analizuje etykę cnót środowiskowych jako etykę adekwatną dla „antropocenu”, czyli ery człowieka.
Konsekwencją rozwoju kultury audytu w szkolnictwie wyższym i nauce w Polsce jest postępująca instytucjonalizacja etyki badań, obejmująca także badania społeczne. Jednocześnie niewiele wiadomo o stosunku rodzimych badaczy społecznych do komisji etycznych. Artykuł opiera się na wywiadach pogłębionych z socjologami i antropologami społeczno-kulturowymi, którzy prowadzili badania jakościowe między innymi z udziałem osób podatnych na zranienie. Tekst omawia poglądy badaczy na temat tego, jak powinny i jak nie powinny działać komisje etyczne w Polsce. Analiza koncentruje się wokół kilku kwestii: roli takich gremiów, zakresu ich władzy, sposobu oceny oraz składu. Efektem rozważań jest propozycja modelu komisji etycznych dla badań społecznych, która stanowi próbę pogodzenia różnych opinii badaczy na ten temat.
Like all religions Islam, too, has substantial ethical contents. The unique character of Islamic ethics, however, comes from the fact that it is entirely rooted in religion and so cannot be separated from it. Thus it is formed by the teaching of the Quran, to which the way of life of the Prophet Muhammad (sunnah) offers explanations. Man’s behavior in this sense is an act of either obedience or disobedience to God himself. It is also true that in the Muslim world a philosophical conception of ethics has evolved mainly due to Islam’s encounter with Greek culture. The central concept of Islamic ethics is character (khuluq), which is the state of man’s soul. It is in his character that man develops a tendency to perform either good or bad actions. Such understanding of human dispositions has much to do with Aristotle’s perception of man’s inner state that guides him to good or evil actions. These preliminary basic clarifications on Islamic ethics are then followed by brief accounts of select issues of moral life. Among those there are three main virtues (justice, kindness, charity) and vices (indecency, wickedness, oppression), marriage and the family, or the sanctity of human life (implying an ethical rejection of abortion and euthanasia).
In Christian ethical and anthropological discourse, the concept of “human nature” represented one of the main criteria from which norms for social and individual ethics derived. The age of Enlightenment brought about a serious criticism of this concept refusing its metaphysical justification. New opinions prevailed in philosophical and scientific discourse of that time. They rejected existence of common anthropological determinants and supported a thesis claiming that people are primarily formed in society and that the concept of “human nature” entails a risk of abuse of power by promoting only one view of the human being. The presented paper studies the relevance of this concept today and examines it from the perspective of Jonathan Haidt’s social psychology, which, as the author claims, contributes to better understanding of human nature. Standard metaphysical and theological definitions of human nature that prevailed mostly in Christian discourse needs to be extended by including findings from social and exact sciences and use them as a suitable medium for a dialogue in a pluralistic environment, and push the limits of our knowledge about humans.
The article presents the phenomenon of increasing sharing in-formations for free on the Internet and the contemporary development of gift economy in the form of a movement most often called cybercommunism. The article points out two basic attitudes in treating information. According to the first one, information should be treated as a commodity to which property rights can be attributed and which is subject to market play. This involves such issues as copyright, fees, licenses and other ways of protecting the interests of market players. The second attitude is to treat valuable information as a common good, often with a moral imperative to share it (to varying degrees Open Source and Open Acces, the idea of copyleft, DIY, P2P network, YouTube, The Pirate Bay domain etc.). Since every concept or movement proclaiming a community of goods is called communism (in a broader sense of the word, in a narrower sense it is a specific political system, e.g. the Soviet Union), today we are dealing with digital communism on the Internet. Some researchers (Firer-Blaess, Fuchs) point to Wikipedia as an example. The Internet encyclopedia operates on the basis of principles that go beyond the capitalist way of production and represent an informational-communist way of production: in the subjective dimension, it is a cooperative work and in the objective dimension, a shared ownership of the means of production. The text also presents the division of ethics into an abstract and concrete one, applied to the behaviour of network users. If someone within the framework of an abstract ethics preaches the principle of “You will not pirate.” (copying and distributing illegally) is a corresponding principle of specific ethics that says “You will not pirate unless O1 or O2...or he.” In practice, concrete ethics push many Internet users to treat Internet resources as a common good, from which everyone can draw according to their own needs. Digital communism can be treated, on the one hand, as a partially implemented idea and, on the other, as a postulate. From an axiological point of view, this postulate would be connected with the Internet implementation of equality (access to resources for everyone) and freedom (access to all information).
The Moral Theology
Summary
The study of the principles of the pursuance of a certain scientific discipline is related over all to the question of its identity, its specificity and that is why also of its separateness from other disciplines. This methodological reflection is very essential for maintaining the unity of the scientific discipline but also for its correct and easier pursuance. When the moral theology is concerned it is particularly essential today because contemporary discussions about postcouncil restoration of this discipline have resulted in the new research for the status of this discipline.
The concern about the identity of the moral theology should be connected with the concern about the future development of this discipline. It depends on the one hand on a better, fuller and more and more integral recognition and utilization of the specific Christian sources. On the other hand it depends also on a bolder utilization of the sources in general as well as also these non-theological which are connected over all with a development of the human sciences. It must not be forgotten that the moral theology as a separate discipline of the scientific reflection on the Gospel, guarding its status as a normative science, can 'cannot be reduced to a body of knowledge worked out purely in the context of the so-called behavioural sciences. The latter are concerned with the phenomenon of morality as a historical and social fact; moral theology, however, while needing to make use of the behavioural and natural sciences, does not rely on the results of formal empirical observation or phenomenological understanding alone' (Veritatis Splendor 111). The aspiration for the development of this scientific discipline can not take no account of the fundamental truth that it still remains the theological discipline, it means it is the science springs from the faith and it is fundamentally connected with the salutary mission of the Church.
The current model of hunting economy, focused mainly on killing innumerable number of game species and finding joy and benefit in it, does not totally fulfil criteria of sustainable, ethical and rational management. This work provides an overview of evidences that the moral evil of hunting, together with the whole hunting culture, are not rationally justifiable. I am going to validate there is no reasonable argument for maintaining hunting economy and culture in the on-going, archaic condition. I maintain that therefore an immediate system reform of our hunting economy is necessary. There is a broad list of objection to the different aspects of hunting practices, which are presented and discussed in short in the paper. A reformed hunting institution, endowed with veterinary service, should guard some animals’ interests by different strategies of assuaging some conflicts among people and animals, as catching alive, flushing, separating or biosafety and professional reprocessing of infected corpses. The main recommendation for the ossified hunting tradition is the appeal for listening to the opinion of experts in natural sciences.
The aim of this paper is to present and explain the metaethical theory proposed by Ayn Rand. In particular, Rand’s view of ethics as necessary for human life is discussed. I also analyze the concept of value which is crucial to Rand’s ethics. I seek to demonstrate that the concept of value is rooted in the concept of life, and from this it follows that the normative sphere is secondary to the existence of living beings. Further, I introduce Rand’s argument concerning human life as an ultimate point of reference in her philosophy. Finally, I explain the conditional character of morality, and end my paper with a short discussion of Rand’s unique view on objectivity of values.
The article presents possible ways of development of decision-making processes in autonomous vehicles. The highest degree of autonomy means that it is not the driver but the system, machine or artificial intelligence that makes decisions about road activities. The total autonomy of vehicles gives them predictability, limits the number of accidents they cause, but also highlights the need to develop an ethical system that artificial intelligence will be able to refer to in a critical situation. It is not possible to foresee all the situations that will occur on the roads, so it is necessary to create robot- -human rights that will be a new and binding kind of decalogue. The key issue is that robotic-human rights should be universal, transparent and really applicable to everyone, otherwise there will be chaos on the road and the expected decrease of the number of accidents due to the introduction of autonomous vehicles will not come to pass.
Business ethics – together with other branches of applied ethics – faces a challenge of the validity of its claims. These ethical claims must be convincing for participants of economic life and meet the requirement of impartiality. Of course, philosophical ethics helps in this search. Among many ethical propositions, the emphasis is on those that have sufficient epistemological grounding (often taking the form of a meta-ethical recommendations). Considering this condition, the choice of ethical tools is significantly reduced. For this reason, the search for ethical standards applicable in social practice is continued in the sphere of culture. Meanwhile, this widening of the research field must be done with caution. It is hard to find in culture an answer to the question about the criteria for ethical behavior. Culture, of course, is founded on such criteria. However, there are more of them than would be expected by an ethicist seeking – in this area – a solution to the problem of the validity of an ethical norm. The fact that complicates this search is that the changes that have been taking place in Western culture since the mid-twentieth century are very powerful. Their multi-faceted nature means that their systematization (carried out using the principle of non-contradiction) is not possible. The hypothesis regarding the complexity and heterogeneity of normative beliefs held by Western societies is confirmed (among others) by the analysis of processes initiated by the performative turn. Hence the choice of arguments offered by performance studies. They harmonize with the leading intention of this research paper. They explain why the world of cultural values – despite the multitude of practices of giving them significance – legitimately aspires to be the normative foundation of collective life, including economic life.
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