Pragmatism-Beyond Epistemology: An Ethical Approach to Systems Decision Process

Vodonick, John

doi:10.1080/14779633.2016.1148900

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 25 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It states that we should choose the action that maximizes some overall criterion of goodness or benefit, such as "the greatest happiness for the greatest number". This assumes that we can formulate some clear, unambiguous, and unchanging measure of benefit-which in mathematical models of decision-making is called a "utility function" (see also Vodonick 2016). One might somewhat generalize this requirement by considering multiple criteria at multiple levels, but even this would fail to take into account the fact that goals or criteria can become irrelevant during a course of action.…”

Section: Consequentialismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethics and Complexity: Why Standard Ethical Frameworks Cannot Cope with Socio-Technological Change

Vidal

Heylighen

2022

Humanism and Its Discontents

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Standard ethical frameworks struggle to deal with transhumanism, ecological issues and the rising technodiversity because they are focused on guiding and evaluating human behavior. Ethics needs its Copernican revolution to be able to deal with all moral agents, including not only humans, but also artificial intelligent agents, robots or organizations of all sizes. We argue that embracing the complexity worldview is the first step towards this revolution, and that standard ethical frameworks are still entrenched in the Newtonian worldview. We first spell out the foundational assumptions of the Newtonian worldview, where all change is reduced to material particles following predetermined trajectories governed by the laws of nature. However, modern physical theories such as relativity, quantum mechanics, chaos theory and thermodynamics have drawn a much more confusing and uncertain picture, and inspired indecisive, subjectivist, relativist, nihilist or postmodern worldviews. Based on cybernetics, systems theory and the new sciences of complexity, we introduce the complexity worldview that sees the world as interactions and their emergent organizations. We use this complexity worldview to show the limitations of standard ethical frameworks such as deontology, theology, consequentialism, virtue ethics, evolutionary ethics and pragmatism.

show abstract

Section: Consequentialismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethics and Complexity: Why Standard Ethical Frameworks Cannot Cope with Socio-Technological Change

Vidal

Heylighen

2022

Humanism and Its Discontents

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…According to Keller et al (2007), "two possibilities exist for ethical outcome on the basis of egoism: 1) a clean conscience does have a certain utility to the ethical person and 2) ego driven action is 'just' action because the system of economics supported by this self-service is the most 'just' system" (p. 301). Vodonick (2016) argues that pragmatism (egoism) is the most appropriate approach in decision-making when faced with the ethical question of 'what is to be done. ' Vodonick (2017) further believes that pragmatism (egoism) is the only framework where the results of a decision might either conflict or harmonize with the manager's values.…”

Section: Egoismmentioning

confidence: 99%