Meaningful and Successful Ethical Enactments: A Proposal from Deliberative Wisdom Theory

Area of Science:

• Ethics
• Philosophy
• Applied Ethics

Background:

• Ethics aims to guide human life and activities, but evaluating the meaningfulness of ethical outcomes and processes is challenging.
• Well-intentioned ethical actions can sometimes undermine intended values or lead to unforeseen negative results.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify and discuss four procedural guideposts for evaluating ethical inquiry processes.
• To ensure ethical processes are oriented toward human flourishing and achieve meaningful outcomes.

Main Methods:

• Building on a pragmatist account of ethics as a pursuit of deliberative wisdom.
• Identifying and discussing four procedural guideposts for ethical evaluation.

Main Results:

• Situational awareness and continuity: maintaining focus on the situation to ensure alignment with human flourishing.
• Distributed participation: fostering autonomy and positive relationships through inclusive engagement.
• Promotion of praiseworthy practices: aiming beyond avoiding wrongs to actively pursuing a compelling vision.
• Conduciveness to personal growth and mutual learning: ensuring the ethical process supports individual and collective development.

Conclusions:

• These four procedural guideposts offer a framework for assessing the ethical quality of inquiry processes.
• Implementing these guideposts can help ensure ethical actions lead to genuine human flourishing and positive outcomes.