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INVESTIGATIVE_ETHICS

                                             August 6, 2012

    The current NYRB carries a review of
    a book by a philosopher at Harvard,                Michael J. Sandal,
    but I might read it anyway, because                "What Money Can't Buy:
    it takes an interesting approach                   The Moral Limits of
    toward ethics, exploring various                   Markets"
    cases where markets are used in
    unconventional realms, and looking at              Reviewed by Jeremy
    the way this sometimes strikes us as               Waldron, NYRB
    evil, and other times not.                         Aug 16, 2012

        That's a cool approach to take in a
        lot of ways-- it doesn't preclude
        presenting your own opinion, but by
        keeping an eye on the perceptions of
        actual groups of people, you have a
        chance of dodging the usual elitist
        finger-waggling at the masses.

        Rather than the traditional style of
        attempting to derive everything from some
        one incontrovertable central principle--
        which no one really has-- this gives you a
        chance of doing something almost like a
        "scientific" form of ethics.

        It raises an interesting possibility
        of a new take on moral philosophy,
        rooted in psychology or anthropology--
        you might think of it as inductive
        philosophy, trying to infer what our
        principles actually are, rather than
        trying to derive what they should be.

            Possibly: the first stage of formation
            of a legal framework... but also
            potentially useful just as an ethical
            code.

               If you want to do as the Romans
               you need to know how they roam.


                     It also has problems: how do
                     moral philosophies evolve?
                     Don't they change?  If you're
                     not happy with a conventional
                     moral response, is there
                     anything you can say about it?


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