Abstract
William C. Frederick proposes a naturalistic business ethics. Many commentators focus on the issues of naturalistic fallacy, deprivation of freedom of the will, and possibility of important and universal moral values in business ethics. I argue that an ethics being naturalistic is not a worry. The issue of deprivation of free will is irrelevant. Yet there are urgent questions regarding the possibility of important and universal moral values, which may prevent Frederick’s view from getting off the ground.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful for the comments from the participants in that occasion. I am also indebted to William C. Frederick who generously offered a lot of helpful and critical comments in the review process.
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This paper belongs to the “Philosophical foundations” section of review.
This paper is revised from an earlier paper presented in World Business Ethics Forum 2006 at Hong Kong Baptist University.
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Cheung, K.T. On a Recent Naturalism Debate in Business Ethics – from a Philosophy Point of View. J Bus Ethics 82, 889–898 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-007-9599-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-007-9599-6