A thoughtful addition to the growing debate over public and private morality. Looks at lying and deception in law, family, medicine, government.

Shows how the ethical issues raised by secrets and secrecy in our careers or private lives take us to the heart of the critical questions of private and public morality.

Can we reconcile the idea that we are free and responsible agents with the idea that what we do is determined according to natural laws? For centuries, philosophers have tried in different ways to show that we can. Hilary Bok takes a fresh approach here, as she seeks to show that the two ideas are compatible by drawing on the distinction between practical and theoretical reasoning.Bok argues that when we engage in practical reasoning--the kind that involves asking "what should I (...) do?" and sifting through alternatives to find the most justifiable course of action--we have reason to hold ourselves responsible for what we do. But when we engage in theoretical reasoning--searching for causal explanations of events--we have no reason to apply concepts like freedom and responsibility. Bok contends that libertarians' arguments against "compatibilist" justifications of moral responsibility fail because they describe human actions only from the standpoint of theoretical reasoning. To establish this claim, she examines which conceptions of freedom of the will and moral responsibility are relevant to practical reasoning and shows that these conceptions are not vulnerable to many objections that libertarians have directed against compatibilists. Bok concludes that the truth or falsity of the claim that we are free and responsible agents in the sense those conceptions spell out is ultimately independent of deterministic accounts of the causes of human actions.Clearly written and powerfully argued, Freedom and Responsibility is a major addition to current debate about some of philosophy's oldest and deepest questions. (shrink)

In Common Values, Sissela Bok asks what moral values, if any, might be capable of being shared across national, ethnic, religious, and other boundaries, under what circumstances, and with what qualifications.

Can we reconcile the idea that we are free and responsible agents with the idea that what we do is determined according to natural laws? For centuries, philosophers have tried in different ways to show that we can. This text seeks to show that the two ideas are compatible by drawing on the distinction between practical and theoretical reasoning.

In Common Values, now with a new preface, Bok writes eloquently and clearly while combining moral theory with practical ethics, demonstrating how moral values apply to all facets of life—personal, professional, domestic, and international. Drawing on a great deal of historical material, Bok also includes in her examination consideration of the 1993 United Nations World Conference on Human Rights; the World Parliament of Religions; the publication of Veritatis Splendor, Pope John Paul II's proclamation on morality; and the International Commission of (...) Global Governance. Bok's defense of shared morality addresses a crucial topic for our time. (shrink)

"Derek Bok's "Our Underachieving Colleges" is readable, balanced, often wry, and wise. This book should be required reading for every curriculum committee and academic dean.

Individuals who would blow the whistle by making public disclosure of impropriety in their own organizations face choices of public v private good. These dilemmas, along with institutional and professional standards that might ease the way of whistleblowers, are explored.

In this smart and timely book, the distinguished moral philosopher Sissela Bok ponders the nature of happiness and its place in philosophical thinking and writing throughout the ages. With nuance and elegance, Bok explores notions of happiness—from Greek philosophers to Desmond Tutu, Charles Darwin, Iris Murdoch, and the Dalai Lama—as well as the latest theories advanced by psychologists, economists, geneticists, and neuroscientists. Eschewing abstract theorizing, Bok weaves in a wealth of firsthand observations about happiness from ordinary people as well as (...) renowned figures. This may well be the most complete picture of happiness yet. This book is also a clarion call to think clearly and sensitively about happiness. Bringing together very different disciplines provides Bok with a unique opportunity to consider the role of happiness in wider questions of how we should lead our lives and treat one another—concerns that don’t often figure in today’s happiness equation. How should we pursue, weigh, value, or limit our own happiness, or that of others, now and in the future? Compelling and perceptive, _Exploring Happiness_ shines a welcome new light on the heart of the human condition. (shrink)

I want to argue for two propositions. First, I suggest that what some researchers may take to be a simple trade-off between minor violations of the truth for the sake of access to far greater truths represents a profound miscalculation with far-reaching and cumulative reverberations. Second, I submit that today's research environment, as demanding, competitive, and sometimes bewildering as it is, offers genuine scope for what Murdoch calls truth-seeking, for imagining and questioning, and for relating to facts through both truth (...) and truthfulness; but that, in so doing, it presents hard choices with respect to methods, and, in turn, to personal integrity—not only in particular research projects but also with respect to that fragile research environment in its own right. (shrink)

Given dramatic increases in recent decades in the pace of scientific discovery and understanding of the functional organization of the brain, it is increasingly clear that engagement with the neuroscientific literature and research is central to making progress on philosophical questions regarding the nature and scope of human freedom and responsibility. While patterns of brain activity cannot provide the whole story, developing a deeper and more precise understanding of how brain activity is related to human choice and conduct is crucial (...) to the development of realistic, just, and intellectually rigorous models of human agency and moral responsibility. In this special issue, we acknowledge that “free will” and “moral responsibility” are not concepts with which neuroscience can directly engage, and instead focus on self-governance, and the capacities that contribute to self-governance, which are more tractable for scientific investigation and are prerequisites for the presence of moral responsibility. (shrink)

In this smart and timely book, the distinguished moral philosopher Sissela Bok ponders the nature of happiness and its place in philosophical thinking and writing throughout the ages. With nuance and elegance, Bok explores notions of happiness—from Greek philosophers to Desmond Tutu, Charles Darwin, Iris Murdoch, and the Dalai Lama—as well as the latest theories advanced by psychologists, economists, geneticists, and neuroscientists. Eschewing abstract theorizing, Bok weaves in a wealth of firsthand observations about happiness from ordinary people as well as (...) renowned figures. This may well be the most complete picture of happiness yet. This book is also a clarion call to think clearly and sensitively about happiness. Bringing together very different disciplines provides Bok with a unique opportunity to consider the role of happiness in wider questions of how we should lead our lives and treat one another—concerns that don’t often figure in today’s happiness equation. How should we pursue, weigh, value, or limit our own happiness, or that of others, now and in the future? Compelling and perceptive, _Exploring Happiness_ shines a welcome new light on the heart of the human condition. (shrink)

How practical can ethics be? To what extent is it possible to put ethics, in the words of Samuel Johnson? In Practical Ethics, Henry Sidgwick offers the distillation of a lifetime of reflection on how to relate moral theory and practice. This book provides both a model and a cautionary example. Its lucid, urbane, and broad-gauged approach to practical moral issues is exemplary; but its very lucidity also exposes the moral risks in Sidgwick's attempt to isolate deliberation about these issues (...) from fundamental moral premises, including the interlocking intuitionist, utilitarian, and paternalist premises buttressing his conclusions about legitimate practices of violence and deceit. (shrink)

What should patients know about the degree to which their physicians may be impaired—unable, in the words of the American Medical Association, “to practice medicine with reasonable skill and safety to patients by reason of physical or mental illness, including alcoholism and drug dependence”? What patients do in fact find out about such matters as alcohol or other drug abuse by, say, the surgeon or the anesthesiologist in charge of their care is another matter altogether; most patients learn about such (...) impairment the hard way. But what should they know beforehand, if at all possible? (shrink)

I will argue that this intuitive description is in fact accurate: that we can and do perform actions we know to be wrong simply because we fail to decide what to do. I will then try to show that once we recognize this fact, we can identify a character trait which any plausible moral theory which is not strictly self-defeating must require that we develop. Finally, I will sketch some implications of this argument for the role of virtue in moral (...) theory, and for the nature of moral objectivity. (shrink)

This article takes up the challenge that the motto “Do What is Right Though the World Should Perish” invites for an answer to Kant's arguments in defense of the motto. His argumentation is discussed, as well as the underlying assumptions concerning the role of Providence, the rejection of moral conflict, and the prudential risks associated with abandoning moral absolutism. The first two are rejected, the third seen as only partially tenable. Finally, the question is taken up what to do about (...) moral prohibitions in a world in which they can quite literally prevent or bring about universal perishing. (shrink)

How fully can Isaiah Berlin's views in the two passages above be reconciled? Many would argue that one has to opt either for one or the other, but cannot hold both. Berlin would disagree—rightly as I hope to show in this paper. I shall set forth different claims about the foundations for morality that give rise to such disagreement; and explore, in so doing, alternative responses to the uncontestable tension exhibited by the two passages and found throughout Berlin's work: between, (...) on the one hand, thorough skepticism regarding the existence of permanent, objective, and universal moral values and, on the other, a conviction that at least some actions and practices must still be judged as just or unjust, humane or inhumane, wherever they occur. (shrink)

R. Jay Wallace’s Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments is an interesting and provocative book. In the brief space available to me I will not discuss the points on which I agree with Wallace, nor will I consider the point libertarians are most likely to disagree with—namely, his claim that moral responsibility for some act does not require the specific ability to do something else. Instead, I want to consider Wallace’s arguments for his ‘normative approach’ to questions of moral responsibility.