No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
On Messick and Naturalism: A Rejoinder to Fort
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2015
Abstract
Professor Fort (1999) imagines a dispute over the moral importance of certain facts, with David Messick and himself on one side and Donna Wood and me on the other. He has identified an important issue—ethical naturalism—but that issue is not a point of disagreement between Messick and me.
Fort has some interesting ideas about how Messick’s views might help in creating organizations that are moral communities. Beyond noting that those ideas constitute the most important part of his essay and merit consideration, I shall not comment on them.
Moral philosophers who are naturalists—I am one—hold that there is no bright line between ought-statements and is-statements and that empirical facts have implications for moral facts. So, for example, that a certain practice helps a community survive is a strong sort of reason for claiming that it is a morally good practice, other things being equal. But most naturalists do not claim that any practice that has arisen by virtue of evolution is ipso facto a morally good practice even if it does serve some purpose. Nor does ethical naturalism have a characteristic view of the extent to which our evolutionary history, as opposed to our rational deliberation, determines what we do.
- Type
- Response Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2000
References
Aristotle, . 1985. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. Terence, Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Brink, David O. 1989. Moral realism and the foundations of ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Darley, J. M., and Batson, C. D. 1973. From Jerusalem to Jericho: A study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 27.Google Scholar
Fort, Timothy. 1999. On social psychology, business ethics, and corporate governance. Business Ethics Quarterly, this number.Google Scholar
Harman, Gilbert. 1998. Moral philosophy meets social psychology: Virtue ethics and the fundamental attribution error. <www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~ghh/VirtueEthics.html>Google Scholar
Hartman, Edwin M. 1988. Conceptual foundations of organization theory. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Hartman, Edwin M. 1996. Organizational ethics and the good life. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hartman, Edwin M. 1998. Altruism, ingroups, and fairness: Comments on Messick. Business Ethics Quarterly Ruffin Series 1: 179–185.Google Scholar
Hirschman, Albert O. 1970. Exit, voice, and loyalty: Responses to decline in firms, organizations, and states. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 1959. Foundations of the metaphysics of morals. Trans. Lewis, White Beck.New York: The Liberal Arts Press.Google Scholar
Messick, David M. 1998. Social categories and business ethics. Business Ethics Quarterly Ruffin Series 1: 149–172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, L. 1977. The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings. In Advances in experimental social psychology, vol. 10, ed. Berkowitz, L.New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Ross, L., and Nisbet, R. 1991. The person and the situation: Perspectives of social psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Solomon, Robert C. 1992. Ethics and excellence: Cooperation and integrity in business. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Donna J. 1998. Ingroups and outgroups: What psychology doesn’t say. Business Ethics Quarterly Ruffin Series 1: 173–178.Google Scholar