Australian Ethics

Perpetrator of crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide. Documented serial violator of international law and the most fundamental human rights. Complicit in territorial aggression.

As ethical issues go, it doesn’t get much simpler than paedophilia. Individuals that specifically target the weakest and most vulnerable, purely for sexual gratification, hardly elicit empathy, after all.

A major ethical challenge for our times. There can be little doubt that surveillance is a major ethical challenge for our times, especially with the onset of the internet. Much of the current concern focuses on the potential of governments to peruse the contents of emails from individuals, most often under the guise of protecting national security. Email communication is certainly convenient for individuals, and has now all but replaced traditional postal communication, but the ease by which it is possible to intercept emails raises important questions of privacy and democratic rights.

In her research PhD thesis, Issa (2009) highlighted the strength of the relationship between ethical mindsets, spirituality, and aesthetics in the Australian Services Sector. Issa’s findings, further explored and triangulated by the data gathered through focus groups interviews, provide an exploration and identification of eight major components of these mindsets (i.e. aesthetic spirituality, religious spirituality, optimism, harmony and balance, personal truth, contentment, making a difference, and interconnectedness). These eight components recording high alphas, those ranged between 0.931 and 0.720, with their thirty-four dimensions recording high factor loading (high of 0.913 and low of 0.445).

Selected papers from the 20th annual AAPAE Conference have just been published in Volume 12 of Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations (REIO). Topics covered include athletes as role models, sports ethics and sports governance, the separation of powers as an integrity mechanism, and virtues in just war theory. Access to REIO is through Emerald Insight.

Ethics are increasingly a part of the school curriculum, and practical introductory classes in applied ethics are part of the training that nurses, scientists and soldiers undergo.

One of the most refreshing things about the AAPAE, in my view, is the way it brings together moral philosophers and reflective practitioners, allowing the work of each to enrich the other’s understanding. The pages of Australian Ethics in recent years explore this intriguing relationship between philosophical ethics and real-world morals, for example in the exchanges between Peter Bowden and myself in the December 2012 Issue.

Liberal minded thinkers are unbelievably enthusiastic about John Rawls. His acid test for deciding what is just and fair, the concept of the veil of ignorance, is a superb analytical device. Those about to enter the world, not knowing where they will end up, choose the type of society in which they will want to live.

Modern professional ethics has a history. It arose in the 1970s. It superseded traditional professional ethics, the various sets of ethical values and attitudes that each profession cultivated amongst its members. In the 1970s this unsystematic approach to ethics was seen as outdated, uncritical and too easily abused. A search went out for a more rigorous and intellectually coherent way of proceeding. The call was answered by a number of moral philosophers, most of them academics working in American universities. Within a very short time the new approach to professional ethics had been born.

The Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) and the International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI) both held their annual meetings in Jacksonville Florida on the first weekend in March.

Accountability is the core of democracy. The commitment that power resides in the people, granted to government for use in the interests of those people, is what sets democracy ahead of all other political systems. But unless citizens can hold governments and MPs responsible for the use of the power invested in them, democracy degrades to a choice of who will rule us termbyterm.

In order to further research the association between politics and accountability, I conducted a comprehensive review of accountability mechanisms within the State Parliament of Victoria. This research investigated formal accountability mechanisms built into the structure of parliament and informal mechanisms designed to hold MPs accountable separate from formal channels. Distinction was also made between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ accountability; mechanisms that encourage good behaviour versus those that police and address failures.

The results of this review were disturbing on a number of levels.

Research hit a hurdle early on when it turned out that a comprehensive ethical theory of accountability did not yet exist. Since such a theory was necessary to judge the success or failure of each accountability mechanism, I drew on relevant literature and examples to write one. A copy of this theory is available for review and comment by anyone interested.

Drawing on this theory, a comprehensive review of the Victorian Parliament identified 19 formal and 6 major informal accountability mechanisms. None of these, either singularly or in combination, were sufficient in satisfying an acceptable level of accountability between the Victorian Parliament and the citizens who grant them their power.

The Victorian Parliament’s formal accountability mechanisms revolve around three core systems:

1. Elections – the opportunity for citizens to vote out (fire) MPs they feel do not act in their interests.

2. The Ministerial Code of Conduct and Register of Interests – requiring individual MPs to uphold certain standards and preventing them from voting in matters where they have a conflict of interest.

3. The new Independent Broadbased Anticorruption Commission (IBAC) – empowered to investigate and prosecute corruption in the Victorian public service, including MPs.

While these mechanisms are well intentioned and do hold Parliament to certain rigorous standards, issues of scale and significant loopholes mean they are rarely effective in practice and can easily be bypassed by unscrupulous MPs.

While elections certainly hold MPs and political parties to account with significant consequences, the prevalence of political parties (which are neither acknowledged nor accounted for in parliamentary mechanisms) means that while citizens may punish those they feel don’t represent their interests, they have no way of ensuring their replacement is any better. The nature of elections also fails to provide any way for misuses of power to be corrected during an MP’s term or regarding specific issues, forcing citizens to lump all their concerns into one single decision every four years.

The Ministerial Code of Conduct is an excellent idea that suffers from being both extremely vague and extremely brief.

The Code is only two pages long; by way of contrast, the Code of Conduct for the Victorian public service is over fifty pages long. Moreover, the Code fails to define fundamental concepts such as “private interest”, “public duty”, “discredit upon parliament”, when a conflict could “appear to exist” between public and private interests, or what qualifies as a “wilful contravention” of the Code. As such, it is almost impossible to use the Code to hold MPs to account. The only service it currently provides is a very loose positive example to MPs of what they should aspire to, but those same deficiencies make it less than effective even at that.

The Register of Interests is perhaps the most potentially effective positive accountability mechanism, as it actively prevents MPs from voting on issues in which they have a conflict of interest. However, the effectiveness of this mechanism is entirely compromised by its failure to recognise the influence of political parties on MPs and the fact that those political parties themselves regularly come under influence. As such, anyone seeking to influence individual MPs need only approach their political party instead. Disclosure of Political Donations legislation seeks to prevent this influence on parties, but with a minimum disclosure value of $10,000, detection is easily avoided.

While the IBAC certainly holds considerable powers of investigation and prosecution for corruption by MPs, it’s definition of corruption is plagued by loopholes. The IBAC demands the public service honestly perform their roles, avoid misuses and “knowingly or recklessly breaching public trust”, yet since there is no position description for a Member of Parliament, nor any definition of “the public trust”, nor any requirement anywhere in Parliament literature that MPs actually represent the will of their constituents, the IBAC has no capacity to ensure MP accountability unless they are literally caught with a suitcase of cash.

Other mechanisms suffer from similar problems; the Clerks of Parliament, AuditorGeneral and the Ombudsman lack jurisdiction to regulate anything other than administrative issues. Parliamentary committees, Question Time and the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities are useful in providing guidance, but can be ignored at the government’s whim, as can the limited induction and training provided to new MPs. Government Advertising Guidelines are not enforced and were found to be regularly abused by a Parliamentary inquiry, and the Election Advertising Guidelines were neutered by a High Court ruling to only apply to interference in the physical act of casting a ballot.

This situation means that where citizens are dissatisfied with the use of their invested power by government or an individual MP, there is nothing they can do to correct the issue except vote against them in the next election. And where a group or individual is wronged by Parliamentary decision, they have no guaranteed way to rectify this wrong unless the government transgressed the laws they themselves write.

This constitutes nothing less than a catastrophic failure of accountability, not only breaching the duty of trust between Victorian citizens and their Parliament, but undermining the core principle of democracy itself. Unless this situation is rectified, Victoria cannot legitimately describe it’s government as a democracy. Substantial reform is required.

A number of reforms can be implemented to substantially improve the accountability of the Victorian Parliament. By requiring MPs to at least consult with their constituents prior to voting on issues before parliament, MPs will be aware of what the public wants, even if they choose not to heed it. Requiring government to procure and publish objective evidence for and against proposed legislation before the Parliament, including recommended alternatives should be required, as well as a comprehensive response by government to these recommendations – citizens should further be able to launch legal action where this advice is ignored without justification.

Loopholes must be closed in all accountability mechanisms, including proper definition of terms, lowering of donation disclosure thresholds to at least $1000, a clear position description for MPs including terms for dismissal, and Government and Election Advertising Guidelines properly revised to make any and all misleading advertising a prosecutable offence. And in recognition that political parties develop and set voting lines for the majority of legislation before Parliament, they must participate in a second Register of Interests, precluding their members from voting on any issue affected by goods or services received.

There is no doubt that living and working in our contemporary society, that is characterised by the techno-economic ongoing and fragmentary development, we as individuals see ourselves struggle with such emerging issues identified by Arisian: lack of security, uncertainty, risk, stress, individualism, nihilism, relativism, and subjectivism. We might add to these: ambiguity and suffering as contended by Mansueto & Mansueto. Surely, the influence of uncertainty on individuals and business is huge (Lane and Klenke, 2004). Individuals might be feeling alienated in such a society.

Indeed, we are in the midst of a crisis of confidence in the leadership spearheading several of our domestic and global institutions. Parameshwar states that this is manifested in the spate of corporate frauds, corruption , the sense of betrayal engendered by downsizing, reengineering, new technologies , economic recession with growing unemployment. Add to these the expanding threat and counter threat of war by nations together with domestic and international terrorism. Add to all these issues what is identified by Andreaus et al., the presence of unethical actions and the lack of consideration of the social and ethical impact of economic and financial choices taken by business organizations and individual businessmen.

Such developments in this post-ideological period and post-modern society seem to threaten the very fabric of the society, by allowing individuals to stand alone, and to introduce change to or even reject the values that have hitherto defined the character of Western society. Figure (1) highlights some but not all the problems that we are facing – not only in the Western world, but rather these seem to be a hallmark of the global society as a whole.

This is summed up by Andreaus et al., who through a literature review had emphasized the possibility that a lack of values lies at the core of the crisis and the amorality of business which needs to be confronted. Certainly, this trend, if left unchecked, might lead to grievous consequences for the society as a whole.

The question that poses itself here is: Have those leaders (such as CEOs or CIOs or CFOs of some of the companies such as Citibank, AIG, General Motors, Storm, Northern Rock, Goldman Sachs amongst others that made the headlines with the meltdown in 2008/2009) obtained their higher education degrees? And the answer would most probably be a resounding ‘YES’ , with some graduating from some of the highranking higher education institutions. WHAT WENT WRONG? What was the gap between what those individuals learned at the higher education institutions and their actions when they became responsible in the contemporary business world?

To allow proper answers to such questions, let us recall earlier seminal literature that might assist us; where Bruch and Ghoshal posit ‘The real gap was between knowledge and action.’ – Yes, unfortunately, the majority of our higher education institutions would graduate students who MIGHT have the knowledge, but feel lost when in the real world – unable to act! The real problem was that even though they knew what to do, they simply did not do those things. Bruch and Ghoshal provide a phrase to describe the situation as the pervasive ‘knowing-doing gap’ in companies. By the same token, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton of Stanford posed the question: ‘Did you ever wonder why so much education and training, management consultation, organisational research, and so many books and articles produce so few changes in actual management practice?… Why knowledge of what needs to be done frequently fails to result in action or behaviour consistent with that knowledge.’.

Well, in an attempt to respond, I take refuge in Ghoshal (2005), who posits that bad management theories are destroying good management practices. Further, Ghoshal 2005 argues that Business Schools do not need to do a great deal more to help prevent future Enrons; they need only to stop doing a lot they currently do. They do not need to create new courses; they need to simply stop teaching some old ones. But, before doing any of this, we—as business school faculty—need to own up to our own role in creating Enrons. Ghoshal goes on to argue that our theories and ideas have done much to strengthen the management practices that we are all now so loudly condemning.

I add my voice to other scholars, stating that organizations, including higher education institutions, need to discover their inner power to balance energies and transform themselves into more humane systems; that management should be recognised as the art of doing and getting done; that researchers in management should share the blame for the failure of businesses; to cease solving the ‘negative problem’ of containing the costs of human imperfections, which led to pessimism in management research; that management researchers recognize their social and moral responsibility towards business and management; that the existence of internal controls that ensure management in higher education provide assurance regarding reliability of their reporting in accordance with the generally accepted principles that include policies and procedures; that research into the role of executives’ perceptions of ethical issues needs to be implemented within the curriculum. We should be looking beyond the meltdown and downfall of the economy and morality, ceasing the blame game, and instead assisting in the shaping of tomorrow’s business leaders through the principles and practices of business ethics programs at the universities. Most importantly, employing individual’s self-control .

But how?

There is a way, and deriving from Issa, one approach would be to develop that which Weick and Sutcliffe describe as faculties to cope with errors and anticipate events before they occur, to develop capabilities for mindfulness, swift learning, flexible role structures, and most importantly, adapting a mindset of prevention to preempt the need for a cure. While Weick and Sutcliffe contend that human fallibility is like gravity, just another foreseeable hazard, well-developed skills to detect and contain failings in their early stages might be what is missing – skills which otherwise would allow a better understanding of how the different parties in the business world act together for the benefit of all.

Here lies our responsibility; we in higher education, we need first to cease treating our students as customers; they are a product, they come to us as ‘raw material’ and leave us as a ‘finished product’ where we add value to these individuals to their way of thinking, and most importantly to their character. Certainly, we in higher education need to develop such skills in our students. We need a mindset revolution in those students. We should cease to concentrate our teaching and learning on issues merely in relation to marketing, finance, human resources, production, or other theoretical subjects that will always direct our students to think of how to increase the bottom line. Instead, and in addition to the basic theoretical topics, we need to start to concentrate on sustainability, as in sustainable environment, sustainable economy, and sustainable society. As institutions of higher learning involved in the education of current and future managers and deriving from Crompton et al., we need to ensure that our students are transparent and participatory, and demand the same standard for others; they need to always ensure that communications embody the values that they seek to promote. I hope as academics we would be able to get above our individual achievements and goals, looking for and taking care of the most important stakeholder in our careers that is our students.

It is widely assumed by philosophers that the main task of moral philosophy is to provide a general theory of morality. Moral philosophy will provide us with the correct distinction between right and wrong action, or between good and bad behavior, or between virtuous and vicious character. Right, wrong, good, bad, virtuous and vicious are the central concepts in morality. The job of philosophy is to sort out their meaning and relations. The central concepts are thus a very small set of so-called “thin” concepts.

Some virtues theorists object that this is an unduly narrow approach to the subject. They wish to introduce a richer repertoire, the repertoire of the virtue and vice concepts. For them the task of moral philosophy is to make sense of good and bad character and action in terms of the recognized range of virtues and vices, such as kindness, courage, fairness, honesty and justice. This is indeed an enriched approach – but is it rich enough?

We might go much further. Suppose we were to collect a whole lexicon or thesaurus of moral terminology. How rich would it be? Oddly enough, no-one seems to have done this. I have seen suggestions that it would be quite small. My own amateur attempts suggest otherwise. I have a list of 100 terms for morally wrong actions, including relative rarities such as buck-passing, whitewashing, stalking and racketeering, but not forgetting core concepts such as murder, theft, rape, fraud and assault. Admittedly, we seem to have fewer terms for good actions. But Edmund Pin-coffs (in Quandaries and Virtues) showed that we have a rich repertoire of good and bad character concepts.

This approach might be deemed the “thick” method of doing moral philosophy. It rests on the indisputable idea that we already have a considerable stock of moral distinctions. But what work does it leave for moral philosophy to do? Does it reduce the philosopher to mere stamp collecting? In fact there is much to do, given this idea of moral philosophy. The central task is that of making sense of our moral lexicon. It requires that we interpret the meanings and relations that hold within and between these concepts. It also requires that we set these concepts in the wider context of our other concepts and of the social institutions and practices that employ these concepts.

In fact this “thick” approach is a widely practiced approach to moral philosophy, but one that lacks the status of the general theories and theorists. And few philosophers have attempted to put together a general account of moral concepts, as distinct from a general theory of morality. One exception is the Hungarianborn Australian philosopher, Julius Kovesi. In his 1967 book Moral Notions, Kovesi set out to explore how moral concepts are constructed, how they are used, and how they relate to our other concepts. His main general point is that they are in no way special except in that their content is moral content.

Kovesi’s central idea was what he called the “formal element” of concepts. This idea is somewhat similar to what Wittgenstein meant by the “rule-following” aspect of how we use concepts in practical life. Similar, but not quite the same. A better translation of what Kovesi meant is “the reason why we have the concept”. Concepts are formed because we need to make distinctions. We have a reason to make them. For example, the concept of manslaughter arises from our need to distinguish some kinds of wrongful killing from other kinds. Concepts thus structure what counts as a reason in our shared lives. Concepts are not just forms of rule-following. They have rational force.

Kovesi distinguished the formal element of a concept from its “material elements”. The material elements are the various ways in which the concept can be instantiated. There are innumerable ways in which murders can be committed. Likewise, there are innumerable kinds and examples of tables or games or plants or whatever. At present there may be only 118 known chemical elements, but it is important that the set is not closed – new elements may still be discovered. This openness is a general feature of concepts, Kovesi thought. And this implies that we cannot grasp the meaning of a term simply by listing instances or kinds of the term, even if the list is correct as far as it goes. We need to grasp not just what the list’s members have in common but what would make some additional example a genuine or false example. And to grasp this we need to go back to the formal element, to the reason why we have the concept. A digital book has little in common with a paper-based book but it is still a book, because the formal element is the same.

Kovesi’s argument was intended to break down the distinction between fact and value that has so dominated moral philosophy. Values enter into the formation of our concepts, while “facts” so-called play only a secondary role. There is no defined set of facts that accounts for the meaning of any given concepts. What gives our concepts meaning is the shared values that inform them. Values and reasons go together in structuring the concepts that shape our lives.

Kovesi’s moral philosophy shows why we need a rich repertoire of concepts. Each concept has a role to play. Take one away and our capacity for moral functioning is to that degree weakened. Moral philosophy has to be “thick”. What then of our “thin” concepts? Kovesi had an answer to that question. Some of our thin concepts, good and bad, serve as very high level discriminators. “Good” is the most general term of approbation. Other thin concepts play a role in moral reasoning. “Right” and “wrong” play a part when we are debating about an action that does not fall directly under any of our existing repertoire of concepts. In general the thin concepts play a supplementary role in moral thought, and not a central role, as many moral philosophers assume.

Moral Notions had a strong influence on a few philosophers, and no influence at all on many. To those for whom his work mattered it seems to still matter.

Amongst them are some well-known names: Bernard Harrison, Peter French, Bob Ewin, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Dennis Patterson. A collection of papers by these authors and others designed to re-introduce Kovesi’s distinctive contribution to moral philosophy has recently been compiled by Brian Mooney and Alan Tapper, under the title Meaning and Morality: Essays on the Philosophy of Julius Kovesi (Brill, 2012). Alasdair MacIntyre once described Moral Notions as “a minor classic of moral philosophy”.

In the last issue of Australian Ethics, Peter Bowden challenged the relevance of ethical philosophy to applied and professional ethics, pointing out that many of the valuable practices that predominate the pages of the recent AAPAE book Applied Ethics: Strengthening Ethical Practices have little to do with ethical theorizing. Indeed, he goes so far as to argue that moral philosophy might be pernicious. Ignoring well-accepted empirical findings and encouraging endless disputations, it is nothing short of an ‘intellectual handicap’ for ethical decision-making in the 21st Century.

Here I take up the mantle of defending (albeit in a qualified form) moral philosophy’s relevance to applied ethics – in particular with an eye to the practice of having philosophers involved in the teaching of ethics to professionals and budding professionals.

What I am not arguing, however, is that moral philosophers should have the sole role in teaching and developing applied ethics. Bowden is doubtless correct when he lists the many vital ways professions themselves can develop codes, roles and integrity systems, and how we can learn empirically about which measures, legislation, and practices work and which do not. While philosophers have engaged with some of these issues, many of them are completely ignored – whistle-blowing is perhaps Bowden’s most important example here.

For these reasons, I accept that if philosophers alone are left to theorize, develop and teach professional and applied ethics, they can be expected to do a very limited job. Often, they will be unaware of some of the key modes of strengthening ethical behaviour, and ignorant of the empirical research on these. They may also be unfamiliar with the ethical issues that actually confront professionals, and of the difficult circumstances within which professionals negotiate solutions to them. Worse, they may know little enough of the actually existing social and institutional practices in a given practice that are working at promoting integrity – and which the philosopher’s topdown policies might weaken.

That much admitted, is there anything left that ethicists can offer? I think there is.

First of all, philosophy can excel at describing clearly the sorts of features of actions and situations that call for moral concern. Local practices, spontaneous arrangements and shared identities are crucial in creating ethical behaviour – but they equally can be threats to it. Institutions can display group-think mentalities and they can promote their narrow self-interest, or even just the self-interest of the institution’s leaders. For this reason, moral philosophy can be important precisely because of the external perspective it brings – forcing practitioners to face up not only to the views of their peers, but also to universal principles of proper conduct.

Second, moral philosophy is important because it can clear away some popular but potentially problematic philosophical viewpoints that some practitioners and students may already hold. Here I name (controversially!) three viewpoints that I tend to encounter:

1. cultural relativism: the view that morality is just whatever the local culture says it is,

2. psychological egoism: the idea that people only do whatever they think will make them happy, and;

3. religious necessity: the view that the only reason people can genuinely be moral is if they believe in God.

I acknowledge there is much that may be said in favour of versions of each of these theses. But in my experience these views can be held in a naïve and unreflective form where they create problems for those trying to teach and develop applied ethics. Teachers, in particular, need to be able to provide the basic arguments that may be given to a student who challenges course material by saying, ‘It’s all relative really, so why should we care what you say?’ or ‘This is naïve. People only ever do what makes them happy anyway.’ There are powerful philosophical arguments against the simplistic versions of these views – but they are views that often arise as soon as people start thinking and talking about ethics.

Third, learning moral philosophy can help motivate – or at least energize interest in – moral behaviour. This is not to say that the first principles arguments of Aristotle, Kant or Mill are better fillips to moral action than institutional structures or entrenched cultural practices. But such theories can play an important supplementary role – consider, for example, the many people who become committed vegetarians after reading Peter Singer’s books.

As a more general matter, though, I have found students can be quite excited when they are first exposed to a moral theory that seems to make sense of their previously unexamined moral intuitions. They find that a theory such as utilitarianism explains something about them, and who they are, and this plays a role in forming and concretising a moral identity for them. Thenceforth, they see themselves as utilitarians.

Fourth, Bowden draws an unwarranted distinction between argument and empirical evidence. Empirical evidence plays a role in argument (that is pretty much what it means to call something evidence). To be sure, Plato at the dawn of western thought instilled a proud tradition of armchair philosophy, working top-down from abstract, other-worldly principles to applied ethical conclusions with little engagement with history or anthropology. But it did not take long for his student Aristotle to develop the alternative tradition, where serious ethical thought is infused with evidence about cultures, practices and institutions, and about what works and what does not. If we think that empirical evidence is a vital way of ensuring our ethics is in touch with lived reality, then this does not mean we should avoid philosophy. Rather, it means we should engage with the sort of moral philosophy that is informed by genuine understanding of actual human institutions and how they operate. Far from being contrasted with the workings of actual social institutions, philosophy can itself study and improve our knowledge of these. AAPAE Members doubtless will be able to think of many instances of this – Professor Daniel Wueste’s paper at our recent 2012 conference, discussing the construction of professional roles and responsibilities according to the purpose the institution in question serves, and the significance of factors such as trust and knowledge in this process, is an excellent example.

For these four reasons, I submit, moral philosophy has much to offer the teaching and development of professional and applied ethics.

Before concluding, though, I must respond to the important point Bowden makes about philosophical disputations. Philosophy might spark division because it raises the questions of ‘Why be moral?’ and ‘What are the fundamental principles of morality?’ And it is altogether possible that people who might be able to agree on the proper response to a moral problem might hold sharp disagreements on these deeper questions. If we needed agreement on first principles before we could start creating practices and institutions that treat people decently, we would all have died out long ago.

Another way philosophy focuses attention on disputations occurs because in teaching and thinking about different ethical theories philosophers need to differentiate those theories from one another, and an important mode of accomplishing this task is by considering cases where the theories give rise to different moral prescriptions. So, for instance, we are invited to speculate on fantastic cases that allegedly show stark differences between utilitarianism and deontology. And in general we philosophers spend much more time pondering the ‘hard cases’ about which there can be much fascinating and revealing disagreement, rather than emphasizing how much agreement there is on the overwhelming amount of ordinary issues people confront every day.

These are important points, but awareness of them can generate sensitive responses. These contentious matters rightly receive emphasis in philosophical theory for the plain reason that philosophers do not need to debate matters where there is little serious disagreement. But this narrow emphasis becomes less helpful when we turn to helping teach and promote ethical practices. There the focus should centre on the enormous amount of issues upon which there is wide consensus, and direct attention to the project of motivating and empowering individuals and institutions to do the right thing.

Finally, it is worth remembering that argument does not necessarily mean endless, confrontational disputation. Argument can also mean rational discussion aimed at persuading another person of the merits of your view, and being open to the merits of theirs. There are other ways of responding to moral differences, after all, that are not as civilised. Far from being a pernicious handicap, a world where consensus is rare, the ability to solve problems by giving and listening to another person’s reasons is a precious one.

I accept all Hugh’s four arguments. With possibly the exception of his fourth. Of course moral philosophy has added to our knowledge and comprehension of ethical behaviour. There will not be a teacher of ethics in any of the disciplines and professions across a university or college who has not read Plato or Aristotle, nor the many books on ethics put out by today’s moral philosophers. He or she will have engaged in a struggle, often desperate, to come to grips with what is to act ethically, what is wrongdoing, how do they stop it, and finally can they – and if so how – teach these concerns in a course? The consultant or newly appointed ethics officer in the workforce will of necessity have examined the same sources, read many of the same books. And just as desperately wonder how to implement these principles in his or her organisation.

It will have been a time of much learning. Teachers of engineering, medicine, pharmacy, business, social work, etc., newly volunteering to teach the ethics course in their disciplines, or ethics officers in the workforce, will have much to learn. It will be a time of great fulfilment. Even enjoyment. They will nevertheless face problems. Taking the four benefits of philosophy that Hugh raises:

To obtain the first benefit, they will necessarily have read the moral theories. They may not come to the conclusion that Hugh puts forward: that “moral philosophy can be important (by) …forcing practitioners to face up …to universal principles of proper conduct”. The newly appointed ethics lecturer or consultant will learn that there are no universally agreed principles of moral conduct. The arguments that he referred to, started by Plato and Aristotle, are still on-going. Two thousand three hundred years later we still not have agreed on the difference between right and wrong. We are still arguing. Richard Joyce, a well published philosopher, is one among many who portrays a negative picture: The theories are plentiful, the convolutions byzantine, the infighting bitter, the spilt ink copious, and the progress astoundingly unimpressive” (Philosophy Today , 2011).

Our ethics specialist then has a massive problem in deciding what they say in class or in the workplace. They have a choice from multiple ethical theories (fifteen according to one of Peter Singer’s books). In essence, however, there are three major theories – deontology, utilitarianism and virtue. Each has multiple versions, and each is being still argued. The arguments, according to an article in the same Singer book, are described as “internecine warfare”.

His second benefit is clearly a benefit. Let us assume that you, the reader, are the newly appointed lecturer or ethics officer. You will come to a conclusion on each of Hugh’s points:

1. cultural relativism: the view that morality is just whatever the local culture says it is,

2. psychological egoism: the idea that people only do whatever they think will make them happy, and;

3. religious necessity: the view that the only reason people can genuinely be moral is if they believe in God.

You may reach a position on all three of Hugh’s assertions. You might become, as I have become, an absolutist, the opposite of a relativist. I believe there is a right and a wrong in every human situation, no matter how ethically complex. But if you do reach a conclusion, you will realise that your conclusions will still be subject to dispute. Hugh states: “I acknowledge there is much that may be said in favour of versions of each of them”. His statement is true. There are many current arguments against my absolutist position. If you read Plato’s Euthyphro, you will realise that some of these issues have been argued for a very long time, and are still argued today. “Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?”

Hugh’s third position is that moral philosophy, and in particular ethical argument, can change behaviour. I have no disagreement. My position is that moral philosophers do not go far enough – they stop short, even exclude, many activities that can strengthen ethical behaviour. For example, each of the seven areas set out in my original article, if adopted, will strengthen ethical behaviour. Yet none of these practices, with a few exceptions, is taught in the schools of moral philosophy around the world, or set out in the major publications on ethics written by philosophers.

We come to Hugh’s fourth point, the “unwarranted distinction between argument and empirical evidence”. To this writer, the fourth is the same issue as the fifth point: “about philosophical disputations”.

The first statement to make is that five of the concerns I have listed in the original article are based on empirical evidence. There is research that tells us these practices work. If promoted in ethics courses in our colleges and by ethical programs in our places of employment, they would bring about strengthened ethical behaviour. Irregular – but still improvement. Yet they are not endorsed by the vast majority of moral philosophers. Why not? I can only give a speculative answer– that philosophers have been educated with a preference for argument, and these findings are the result of applied research, that for the most part, comes from other disciplines.

Several philosophers (e.g. LeBlanc 1998; Vaughn 2008) assert that the philosophical position is to use argument as a basis for thinking critically. However:

1. Philosophical argument ignores a number of practices in other disciplines that can generate creative, forward looking thinking – the type of thinking that answers the question of what should we do? Principal among these is quantitative evaluation techniques, including rigorous methods such as statistical analysis. Philosophical argument also ignores approaches used to generate creativity in thinking, as well as techniques such as decision trees and influence diagrams used to assess the impact of adopting different courses of action.

2. Argument generates criticism. Almost by definition it requires a ‘for’ and an ‘against’ if an argument is to occur. As a method of thinking, it does not generate building on what has gone before. Arguments occur to destroy, or at least contradict, what has been developed so far. These pages, for instance, are an argument.

3. Argument based critical thinking relies on inductive and deductive reasoning. In the long run, both types of thinking come down to observation – to empiricism. Strong empirical capabilities will generate strong arguments, but, I assert, empirical research is not a philosophical virtue. This may be the reason why philosophers have been arguing with each other for over 2000 years.

Ultimately, moral philosophy is a discipline which, although it assures us that it is the mother of ethical theory and practice, does not teach a full set of approaches to strengthening ethical behaviour, nor undertake the research necessary to assess and improve developments already underway.

On reflection, I now believe that it is the student of ethics in our schools of moral philosophy who is the bigger loser. Teachers and practitioners in ethics can search out these new developments themselves (although with some difficulty). Students, however, take ethics courses. Many, one suspects, hope to work at extending ethical practices as widely as possible throughout our communities. Instead, they have been given an incomplete knowledge of developments and capabilities in ethics work in government or the private sector. They have been turned out – for only a few – with the capacity to on-teach what they have learned so far. And that learning is circumscribed. It is also of limited value in the work day world.

Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations was founded by two very close friends: Moses Pava of Yeshiva University in New York, and Father Patrick Primeaux who was Chair of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at St. John’s University in New York. Together they edited the series for some years until Patrick’s unfortunate demise. Their statement of purpose was that, “the purpose of the series is to explore the central and unique role of organizational ethics in creating and sustaining a flourishing, pluralistic, free enterprise economy. The primary goal of the research studies published here is to examine how profit-seeking and not-for-profit organizations can be conceived and designed to satisfy legitimate human needs in an ethical and meaningful way”.

In pursuing that statement of purpose they devoted one volume to the, “crisis and opportunity in the professions” and as we know there is much interest in professional ethics. Another volume was “a symposium on health care ethics” which amongst other excellent papers contained one by Alice Gaudine and Linda Thorne titled “Ethical conflict in professionals: Nurses’ accounts of ethical conflict with organizations”. That paper has relevance to the recent Victorian nurses’ strike. Patrick and Moses established an editorial board with some of the most prominent international applied ethicists on it. They also attracted contributions to their publication from leading applied ethicists with outstanding academic reputations. The AAPAE has entered a partnership agreement with its publisher, Emerald, regarding the publication of Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations whereby it is published in association with the AAPAE. In doing so the AAPAE is indebted to both Moses Pava and Patrick Primeaux.

The agreement the AAPAE has allows the logo of the AAPAE to appear on the cover of Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations along with the designation “Published in Association with the AAPAE”. Furthermore, Emerald agrees to promote events run by the AAPAE on the publication homepage. In turn the AAPAE may include details of Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations on its website including a link to the Publication homepage

Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations provides a recognised publication outlet for selected AAPAE conference papers. Significantly, there is no obligation upon the AAPAE to purchase copies of Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations although members do receive a 30% discount to the list price if they choose to purchase it. Furthermore, members whose work is published in it receive a complimentary copy. Our agreement with Emerald regarding Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations presents a significant opportunity to the AAPAE and we are most fortunate to have it. It augments the AAPAE at no cost to the AAPAE.

This paper is a rework of a talk presented in May this year to Sydney’s philosophy café (www.philoagora.com ) under the title The failure of moral philosophy. It updates the original talk with lessons that emerged during the ensuing café discussion. It sets out seven practices, not normally encompassed under the topic of moral philosophy, which will, it is argued, strengthen ethical behaviour.

The concepts outlined in the following paragraphs are primarily institutionally based. Although some of the subsequent discussions raised the belief that moral transgressions are individual actions, an issue also raised in a later paragraph, most unethical action takes place in a group or institutional setting, and is best forestalled in such a setting.

The practices are, in many cases, drawn from an examination of ethical behaviours across fourteen different disciplines, in an about-to-be-published AAPAE book, Applied Ethics. Some are full chapters in the book; others however, are only support to the main arguments. The final section, the implications of the findings, however, is a separate issue – an attempt to examine what are the implications of these practices.

There are seven practices in all:

1. Strengthening our ability to recognise when we ourselves have been unethical;
2. Steps to encourage us to speak out against wrongdoing;
3. Developments in codes of ethics that make them effective;
4. Policies adopted by private sector organisations to institutionalise ethical behaviour;
5. New programs for ensuring greater honesty in government;
6. Building action on empirical findings, not argument.(vii) Teaching these practices

Several moral philosophers actively decry these developments, despite their benefits, a concern further discussed below. But let us first describe the practices. The first is an analysis of why we adopt practices that result in us not seeing wrongdoing, or in ignoring it when we do see it.

I. Why we fail to do what is right

Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel (Blind Spots, 2011) are professors of business ethics whose research tells us we often do not recognise that our decisions have ethical implications. If we do, we need to sort our way through many competing ethical theories. Even if we reach that decision, however, we do not necessarily implement it. There are many reasons why we do not act - a willingness to conform to accepted thinking (group think); our tendency to reduce dissonance when rejecting a suspected unethicality, our tendency to think short term and focus on the immediate outcome, and finally a nearcomplete failure to recognise many decisions as having unethical implications. They term their analyses “behavioural ethics”, claiming that it has grown “exponentially” in recent years. Their examples include the Challenger disaster and the Ford Pinto case, arguing that the decision-makers in these cases did not recognise the ethical overtones of the choices that they made.

This writer believes that adoption of the institutional practices suggested in this paper will help ensure that an ethical issue is recognised; and that the ethically desirable action is implemented.

II. Speaking out against wrongdoing

People in close contact with an organisation will be the first to identify a wrongdoing. Several major research studies, world-wide, have confirmed that blowing the whistle on illegal or unethical action is the most effective way to stop it (Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, 2006, 2010; Durant, A, 2004, Dyck, Morse, and Zingales,. 2007; Brown, 2008, Transparency International, 2009).

But to speak out is a dangerous practice. Whistleblowers are crucified (Alford, 2001). Legislation that encourages and protects those that speak out has now been introduced in most countries. Stock exchange listings have been expanded to require a whistleblowing facility. Even national standards now encourage it. These practices and their multiple problems should be taught to students of moral philosophy. Examine, however, the course outline for any degree in moral philosophy anywhere in the world. Blowing the whistle on wrongdoing will not be included.

III. Adopting codes of ethics that are effective

There is a wide cynicism about codes of ethics – that they are public relations documents written by senior management to give the impression that the organisation is honest. Alternatively they are designed to stop employees misappropriating the organisation’s funds or equipment. Research in recent years, however, documented by AAPAE, has determined that codes aimed at countering the actual ethical issues faced by staff, identified and managed by those who confront these issues, are likely to be effective. Making sure that codes are effective, however, is not a topic of interest to moral philosophers, including those writing on ethics. Our particular target is the claimed Ethics Toolkit (Baggini and Fosl, 2007), which has nothing on codes (or any other ethics tools). Codes can in fact be effective - the underlying evidence for this comes from the behavioural sciences and development economics.

IV. Policies adopted by private organisations to strengthen ethical practices

Probably bought on by the multitude of unethical business practices that have surfaced in recent years, including the GFC, these practices include:

Growth in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Michael Porter, perhaps the foremost academic in business strategy, notes the link between corporate strategy and corporate social responsibility: “CSR has emerged as an inescapable priority for business leaders in every country,” he tells us.

An ethics role for professional societies. These institutions are codifying ethical practices for the disciplines they cover. The majority are merely exhortations to be good, and as such, are somewhat useless. A few, however, tackle actual ethical issues facing that discipline.

Trade Practices and antitrust. Moves to reach agreements with members of cartels to provide evidence in return for easier treatment have become near universal in recent years.

Legislation governing business dealings. Typical are the Sarbanes Oxley and the Dodd Frank Acts in the US, the strengthened Corporations Act in Australia and the Bribery Act in the UK. Some of this legislation is aimed at combating one of the ethical blinkers noted by Bazerman and Tenbrunsel – motivated blindness – an inability to recognise an unethical act when it is to your advantage. They note that Enron was Arthur Andersen’s second largest client – whose consulting fees were greater than auditing fees.

Securities exchanges principles. Again there has been increased emphasis on ethical behaviour exercised through the share markets. The growth in ethical investments, listings requiring ethical corporate governance, and the development of codes of ethics for exchange staff, are the most prominent.

V. Ensuring honest government

Another growth field, described by some as “exponential”, is Integrity Agencies. This term is specifically Australian, although it does include anti-corruption agencies (as they are termed elsewhere). All are aimed at strengthening ethical behaviour in the public sector. They cover illegal along with un-ethical activity. The list of wrongs that one anti-corruption agency prohibits, for instance, are actions that “could adversely affect, either directly or indirectly, the honest or impartial exercise of official functions”. Other prohibited actions involve a breach of public trust, or the misuse of information or material. These actions are not necessarily illegal.

Integrity agencies range from Crime Commissions to Ombudsman Offices. The latter have expanded from their traditional role of hearing complaints about public administrators to agencies responsible for public sector ethics. Some Ombudsman Offices manage whistleblower issues. Integrity and anti-corruption agencies work in a variety of ways towards strengthening ethical practices - by education, providing ethics consulting services, advice and training, by accepting complaints on misbehaviour, and by encouraging and protecting whistleblowers.

VI. Adoption of empirical findings

The learning processes in philosophy are based on argument. John Lachs condemns this approach. I quote from Philosophy Now, in an article that questions whether philosophy can still produce public intellectuals (September/October, 2009).

“Young philosophers (in the US) are taught that argument is king …that knowledge of facts is superfluous”

Another example is Louis Pojman and Vauhn Lewis in a widely-used text, Philosophy. The Quest for Truth:

“The major task (of philosophy) is to analyse and construct arguments”; and again:

“The hallmark of philosophy is centered in the argument”

Pojman makes the statement in the 6th edition: “I have striven to present opposing views on virtually every topic. “ It is a strange statement to make in a book questing for truth, for it is indeed rare that truth has two sides. Argument will be taught to you as the critical analytical tool in an undergraduate philosophy degree. If you have an ethics class in your children’s school, they will be taught to argue – not to investigate, gather facts and analyse.

Argument is an enjoyable process when we are simply speculating. It is totally inadequate for critical analytical thinking. The inadequacy of argument is reflected in the criticism of anti-corruption and integrity agencies as instruments for bringing about greater ethical behaviour in the public sector. Some moral philosophers decry these developments. Jeff Malpas, for instance, at a recent AAPAE conference, argued that the language of ethics:

“seems increasingly to have been appropriated by bureaucratised systems of political and managerial control based around notions of risk management, audit, accountability and assurance.” He complained that it presages “the demise in ethics.”

His contention pits argument against the techniques of empirical research – surveys, fact finding, and evaluation methodology. I can personally quote other examples. Two professors of philosophy argued with me that blowing the whistle on wrongdoing did not work. They were employing theoretical argument against the clear findings of empirical research.

VII. Teaching a capability to implement these findings

It has long been argued that people cannot be taught to be ethical. However, in my recent chapter on teaching ethics, with Vanya Smythe, we argue that “we can provide those who wish to work within an ethical environment with the knowledge and capabilities to bring about that environment.” We build this statement on research that has found: (i) the human race has evolved with at least cooperative instincts, and possibly ethical instincts; and, (ii) that people do desire to work in an ethical environment. An ethics course, built on the assertions of this paper, would to a large extent satisfy those desires.

Implications

I turn finally to the ethical significance of these paragraphs. The immediate losers, of course, are those young people who want to work in applied ethics and who take a philosophy degree to do so. Most of them want their work to matter, to have an impact. But they have an inadequate education in ethics with which to make this impact. They are given neither the knowledge of these current practices nor the skills with which to further develop the practices. I could even claim that their teaching gives them an intellectual handicap with which to face the world. For they are given analytical approaches that are completely inadequate for decision-making in the 21st century.

The bigger loser however, is society at large. Research into ways that society can strengthen ethical practices is left to other disciplines. And ethics is not a main-stream component of those other disciplines. The dominant discipline for ethics is philosophy. The research, the developments and strengthening of ethical behaviour should come from that discipline. Currently it does not. And until the discipline changes, it will not.

There are other losers, however - those moral philosophers who enjoy arguing. Or who wish to advance themselves in departments of philosophy. They will also lose the joy of arguing through the philosophical thoughts of history. Those that wish to make a difference in applied ethics will also not have much fun, for they will need to learn a much wider range of analytical skills and practices - sampling techniques, evaluation research, and statistical analysis for a start.

They might in the process, however, make the world a more ethical place in which to live. So the issue raised a question for our philosophy café. And other cafes philo around the world. What path should we follow?

John Neil, a PhD candidate from the University of New South Wales, is conducting a study exploring the emotional dimensions of people’s experiences of ethically challenging situations in organisations. John is particularly keen to discuss these issues with people who are dealing with such a dilemma at the moment to establish how they deal with the situation as it unfolds or develops over time. John would like to interview you to explore the ethical challenge you are facing, the emotional dimensions of your experience and how the organisation you work in responds to the issue.

The research has been approved by the UNSW human research ethics committee (approval notification 11-134) and any information you provide will remain confidential and will be deidentified in any reports or journal articles written from the research.

If you are interested in participating, please go to the study website or Facebook page (see links below) to find out more about this research and how you can contact him.

This is a great opportunity to have your experiences heard as well as to contribute to a better understanding of ethically challenging workplaces.

Summary aim: This study will contribute to a better understanding of lived experience of ethical challenges in organisations. Through an examination of the experience of individuals involved in ethical challenges, the study will explore the affective/emotional dimensions of ethical dilemmas and the ways in which ethics is directly experienced and enacted in organisational life. The study will explore the affective-emotional contexts in which individuals navigate ethical challenges in their professional lives, and the contexts in which ethics and ethical challenges are understood and managed. These contexts include the formal processes of reporting, compliance, formal ethics codes, along with the influence of organisational culture, leadership and the ‘feeling rules’ that circulate in organisations. The study aims to better understand how affect-emotion impinges upon, influences and colours the contexts in which ethical situations are experienced including decisions leading to ethical action/inaction.

Threats facing the global society in which Australia is a part are threatening the survival and sustainability of organizations. Bansal (2012) argues that while regulations may coerce firms to respond to an issue, it is difficult to ensure that they are applied equitably. Despite the increased attention being paid to ethics and ethical standards in organizations, accompanied by what can be seen as increased ethics curricula in business schools, businesses generally fail to show meaningful reduction in their unethical behaviour.

Harned (2008) notes that business has suffered greatly in the area of ethics, and expresses deep concern about the deterioration in ethical behaviour in the workplace. Skidelsky and Skidelsky (2010) paint a bleak picture of society, claiming that in some circles, leisure has merged with work entirely, where parties are an opportunity to network, or to holiday. Venron (2010) contends that self-interest and calculation have derailed individuals’ values. To get back on track, individuals must remember the effective bonds that link them to one another, concluding that their current moral discourse lacks a compelling vision of what it is to be human.

Chakraborty (2010) maintains that economic fundamentalism has crowded out alternative ways of thinking, leaving scant room for social considerations, whereas shareholder value is shorthand for doing whatever it takes to pump up the stock price. Milbank (2010) asserts that the financial meltdown has pitched democracy itself into crisis, whereas it is vital that efforts be exerted to overthrow the assumptions that undermine trust, gift-giving and meaning, concluding that what human beings most desire is not material wealth, but social recognition. Hutton (2008b, 2008a, 2010) has been critical of the lack of leadership, hinting to the rise and fall of capitalism. He argues that capitalism has been undermined by an abuse of the very principle that is its cornerstone: fairness. It is essential that the idea of just rewards be reclaimed, contending that profit is ethical to the extent it is proportionate to effort and not due to good luck or brute power. Recently, Bansal (2012) posits that one of the largest barriers to sustainable development is its failure to be institutionalized in the minds of key stakeholders. This is a very complex situation, and it would be difficult to solve, however, a step in the right direction is to examine, evaluate and understand ethical mindsets in the Australian context and how the existence of ethical mindsets would affect the ethical climate in Australia, leading to more sustainable organizations.

Building on Issa’s (2009) findings on the existence of and components of ethical mindsets, this project intends to examine the impact of ethical mindsets on ethical climates in an attempt to safeguard Australia from corporate fraud and contribute to the sustainable development of Australian organizations, and the region. The findings of this project will have several theoretical, practical and methodological implications. This project has the potential to contribute to the corporate world by offering a better understanding of ethical mindsets, their components and the impact on ethical climate providing a framework or a model that would assist in the selection and recruitment of employees who would enhance the ethical climate of organizations within Australia and the region leading to more sustainable organizations.

This project will: (1) examine and evaluate the ethical mindsets, (2) assess the intrinsic and extrinsic variables of individuals (e.g. CEOs, managers, and other employees) and organizations, and, (3) evaluate ethical climate within organizations, leading to an identification of what is required to transform an organization into a ‘sustainable organization’ (Figure 1).

This project will utilise a refined version of the research tool developed by Issa (2009) to first collect data from individuals (e.g. CEO, managers and other employees). A statement will be added to this measuring tool enquiring as to whether the respondent would be interested in participating in follow-up interviews or focus groups interviews to verify the quantitative results. Implementing appropriate research techniques, tools, samples and the application of the interpretive mixed-methods approach will assist in achieving the outcomes and the outputs of this research. This approach is chosen due to the sensitive nature of the concepts that make up this research.

Issa’s (2009) findings identified eight components of ethical mindsets: (1) aesthetic spirituality, (2) religious spirituality, (3) optimism, (4) harmony and balance, (5) truth seeking, (6) pursuit of joy, peace and beauty, (7) making a difference, and, (8) professionalism. Following focus groups interviews, these eight components were reduced to six, with slight changes to the names reflecting the overall dimensions of each of these components of (1) aesthetic spirituality, (2) religious spirituality, (3) optimism, (4) contentment, (5) making a difference, and, (6) interconnectedness. This project adds to this important and unique finding on ethical mindsets. This will be the first time that an attempt has been made to link ethical mindsets to the ethical climate within organizations and to subsequently transform these organizations into sustainable organizations.

In the spirit of Issa’s (2009) earlier work, this project goes past and well beyond the obvious, in an attempt to understand the ethical mindsets of individuals within Australian organizations and their impact on the ethical climates within those organizations, which might then lead to greater understanding of how to develop more sustainable organizations.

Using a mixed method design, both quantitative and qualitative data will be collected through an online survey. The online survey is composed of 40 items (including demographic questions) with the provision of space for respondents to provide their comments on any of the sections in this survey. Thereafter, and following the analysis of this quantitative and qualitative data, interviews and focus groups interviews will be held aimed at triangulation, amplification and modification of the results generated. Indeed, this project, with its mixed method design, will contribute theoretically and practically towards providing a good understanding of ethical mindsets and their impact on the ethical climate within Australian organizations (public and private sector). The framework might then be used by practitioners and policy makers in their ongoing crusade to tackle the problems of unethical behaviour in Australian businesses.

This project will advance knowledge in the field of business ethics and sustainable organizations, contributing to ongoing academic research, and influencing the content of higher education programmes.

Would you expect a graphic designer to have an understanding of what professional ethics requires of them? What about a photographer? A naturopath? A massage therapist?

The deeper and more general question behind these specific ones is whether university-educated practitioners within such ‘new‘ professions should be expected both to understand and to practise the relevant professional ethics.

Let‘s take a few steps back. The historical development of professions has been characterised by the development of more formal technical training for practitioners, resulting in the introduction of a range of new disciplines into universities. As part of the same process, we have frequently seen more formal articulation of professional ethics coming from within newly professionalised areas of practice. A question therefore arises about whether the technical excellence that university curriculums aim to develop is properly matched by an adequate grounding for practitioners-to-be (i.e. students) to meet the ethical aspirations of their profession.

As befits an institution which strives for excellence in education for the professions, Charles Sturt University has been asking such questions about its professional courses. Thus, I am currently involved in the development of two new undergraduate subjects: Legal and Ethical Issues in Complementary Medicine and Ethics and Law for Creative Industries.

Legal and Ethical Issues in Complementary Medicine was offered in distance mode for the first time in Semester 2 2011, and was very well received by students in the Bachelor of Health Sciences (Complementary Medicine). These students already hold a qualification in their specific modality (naturopathy, massage therapy, acupuncture, and so on), have usually practised for some time, and are seeking continuing professional development. They found the subject ‘thought provoking and at times, challenging‘, ‘timely and topically relevant‘, ‘very beneficial to [my] understanding of ethics in practice‘, and best of all, ‘enjoyable‘ and even ‘fun‘. The ethics section of the syllabus incorporated a week on each of the four principles of health ethics, with readings and questions designed to encourage students to share and reflect upon their experiences. The question has been raised in the complementary medicine ethics literature whether such principles are equally relevant to complementary medicine as they are to conventional medicine (Stone, 2005, pp.95-96). My own view, bolstered by my experience with the students, is that they certainly are. A further week contrasted the advantages and disadvantages of three major ethical theories (deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics) and students reflected on the influence of each theory in their own ethical decision-making processes. Finally, during the week linking the ethics to the law part of the subject, students wrestled with the broader question of ethical policy-making: how should complementary medicine be regulated, and why? (AHMAC, 2011)

Ethics and Law for Creative Industries is currently under development, for offer in both internal and distance mode for the first time in semester 2 of 2012. It will be taken by undergraduate students in acting, animation and visual effects, design for theatre and television, television production, media communication, photography, graphic design, jewellery, and fashion design and technology. Many of these students have limited industry experience, so much will turn on the quality and practice-relevance of the scenarios and case studies we are able to provide them. I will report on the results of these endeavours here in due course!

My explorations to date suggest that there are still many gaps in the ethics literature in both of these professional/disciplinary areas (complementary medicine and creative industries), so I‘d be delighted to hear from anyone else working in these areas who might be interested in future research collaboration.

Dr Emma Rush

Lecturer in Philosophy and Ethics

Charles Sturt University

[email protected]

Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council (AHMAC), 2011 (February). Consultation paper: Options for regulation of unregistered health practitioners. Available from: http://www.ahmac.gov.au/site/home.aspx (accessed 2 December, 2011).

Stone, J. 2005. Ethics in complementary and alternative medicine, pp.83-110 in Heller, T. (ed.) Perspectives on complementary and alternative medicine. Routledge: United Kingdom.

From the mid 1990s through to 2002 I was a regular attendee and member of the European Business Ethics Network and its annual conferences - including a very subdued 2001 event held in Valencia across the tragic events of 9/11.

EBEN is the premier association for applied and professional ethics across the expanding European Union and its conferences bring together a diverse range of academics and practitioners that almost give it a multi-disciplinary feel. Importantly the network includes consultants and practitioners who mix with ethicists and philosophers addressing the challenges of academia, research and of applied ethics within the education, business and public sector communities.

After a ten year absence I was able to attend the 24th Annual EBEN conference held in the University of Antwerp in Belgium from 15-17th September with its theme of ―Dare to Care - Building a caring organsiation‖ organized by Luc Van Liedekerke from the centre for Ethics, University of Antwerp.

The Conference had five main themes of Business Ethics Education, Whistle Blowing, Virtue in Business and Management, Continental Philosophy and business Ethics and a debate workshop on the difficult interaction between caring and HR.

Over two and a half days over 100 papers were delivered across parallel and plenary sessions. Whilst it was impossible to attend all sessions, it became clear that our European colleagues face many of the same issues that we do in the Australasian context. These include the difficulties of integrating ethics into and across the business and professional curricula in addition to challenges of applying ethics to the business and public sectors. These are perhaps even more pertinent in the European Union amidst the financial crisis gripping the region. This was, as expected, a common point of discussion amongst many the delegates.

The social events were also fitting with Antwerp‘s historical context with an organ recital in the city‘s magnificent gothic Roman Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady, which also houses several major art works including Peter Paul Ruben‘s, ―The Raising of the Cross.― The conference dinner was held at the recently restored ―Borla‖ Theatre and provided an opportunity for delegates to mingle in somewhat less formal surrounds over a buffet dinner.

EBEN is arguably one of world‘s most prominent ethics associations and its conference is amongst the top two or three such events on the ethics calendar. The attendees at EBEN events commonly include some of the leading ethicists and philosophers from across the globe and one of the advantages of the EBEN event is its relatively informal nature that allows frank discourse between participants, and this year‘s event was no exception.

As with most academic conferences the importance of research output was also evident with several journals and publishers, including the Journal of Business Ethics having a strong presence in addition to numerous notices and calls for other conferences and special editions.

The 25th Annual Conference will be held in Barcelona, Spain from the 19-22nd September, 2012. EBEN also organizes a somewhat more focused research conference each year typically in June hosted by one of the EBEN chapters, (EU member country networks) and the 2012 conference will take place in Newcastle (UK), June 7-9.

Whilst traveling from Australia to Europe for a two day event has its challenges, the opportunities to network with some of the world‘s leading scholars and practitioners proves more than a worthwhile experience. I would enthusiastically recommend EBEN events to AAPAE colleagues and I certainly hope that it will not be another ten years between EBEN events.

Michael Segon,

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Preparations for the 18th annual conference are well on the way at the School of Philosophy of the University of Tasmania, and the draft program has just been published on the conference website.

The staff of the School of Philosophy is well represented at the conference. Professor Jeff Malpas, an internationally renowned scholar of the philosophy of place and space, hermeneutics and the philosophy of language and the history of philosophy will deliver a keynote address titled ‗The Demise of Ethics‘ on the opening day. The current head of the School, Lucy Tatman, will continue this questioning of our ethical assumptions in her paper ‗Applied What?‘

One of the afternoon sessions is dedicated to the investigation of alternative ethical perspectives by Kristi Giselsson, one of the lecturers at the School of Philosophy and by Cynthia Townley from Macquarie University. I have had the fortune of being one of her undergraduate and postgraduate colleagues at the University of Tasmania. Cynthia‘s paper develops the idea that crossspecies collectives, for instance a household of human beings and their pets can form a moral and legal entity similar to corporations as legal persons. The third speaker of this session is David Wallace, one of Cynthia‘s postgraduate students from Macquarie University. He discusses the application of Aristotelian virtue ethics to child protection work.

Tasmania got its new Integrity Commission in June 2010. Its CEO Barbara Etter, a former West Australian Police Commissioner who holds a Pharmacy degree, an Honours law degree, an MBA and a Master of Laws, will deliver the keynote address on the morning of the second day of the conference. She will speak on ‗Leadership and Its Critical Role in Strengthening Public Sector Ethics‘. Barbara will explore the role of integrity agencies further with two of her staff members, Louise Clery and Clare Mason.

An international dimension to the conference and to ethical thinking is provided by Kiros Hiruy. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Institute for Regional Development at the University of Tasmania, he is also an Honorary Research Associate at the School of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Tasmania. He is a graduate of Tasmanian Leaders Program (TLP) 2007 and he holds BSc in Agricul-ture from Ethiopia, Diploma in Dairy Husbandry and Milk Proc-essing from the Netherlands, Masters in Environmental Man-agement from the University of Tasmania and Diploma in Project Management from Tasmanian Skills Institute. In this year de-clared by the United Nations Gen-eral Assembly as the Interna-tional Year of People of African Descent Kiros will speak on ‗People of African Descent – the Moral Reality‘ on the second day of the conference after lunch.

The AAPAE members at various mainland universities, particularly those at RMIT and the University of South Australia have under-taken scholarly research and sub-mitted papers to be presented at the conference. May I take this opportunity to thank Michael Schwartz and Michael John Se-gon at RMIT and Howard Harris at the University of South Austra-lia for supporting me with the organisation of this conference. They have been available at all times with good advice and most helpful suggestions; I could not have done without their kindness and generosity.

We are fortunate in having our colleagues from Waikato Univer-sity in Hamilton, New Zealand, travelling to Hobart to deliver papers a the conference. Richard Varey will discuss ethical market-ing practices; Andrea Bather‘s topic is Corporate Social Respon-sibility and the Law. The univer-sity is further represented by Deborah Stevens and Catherine Syms who are conducting a prac-tical workshop ‗Strengthening Ethics Education‘ for teachers on the afternoon of Thursday June 9. The workshop is free for any delegate attending the main con-ference.

I look forward to seeing you in Hobart in June,

Leila Toiviainen,

School of Philosophy, University of Tasmania.

The Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics 18th Annual conference will be hosted by The School of Philosophy at The University of Tasmania from the 7th to the 9th of June, 2011. The Conference Convenor is Dr Leila Toiviainen. Leila‘s convening of an 18th annual conference might not be that insignificant; especially when one remembers how often Leila has returned to work in India on behalf of those in need. After all, some have suggested that the number 18 might have significance in Hindu Mythology what with The Bhagavad Gita consisting of 18 chapters and being in The Mahabharata which consists of 18 books. Of course that might be a mere coincidence. But regardless of that we are most fortunate to have Leila convening our 18th conference and highly appreciative of all she is doing to make it the success it will be.

What is not coincidental is that our conference will be in Tasmania. That we arranged some time ago. Tasmania is a beautiful state. Yet, discounting the aesthetic aspects, Tasmania seems to embody many of the ethical issues which currently concern us. Applied ethicists often debate the costs of economic growth upon the natural environment, and alternatively the harm to the unemployed in the absence of such growth. In Tasmania, Gunns‘ $2.3 Billion plan to build a pulp mill in the Tamar Valley utilising solely plantation timber sees those arguing that such an investment will create needed employment, and add substantial value to a product which is shipped abroad and pulped in far less environmentally friendly plants than the proposed Tamar Valley plant, pitted against those concerned with the potential threats to a pristine environment. Such conflicts between those concerned with our environment and those concerned with employment have often surfaced at AAPAE conferences. As have conflicts between those arguing that financial markets are efficient against those arguing that they are not, and that they do not discount all the probable costs: especially to those less vocal stakeholders such as the environment. It is of course interesting that in 2004 when the proposed pulp mill was announced Gunns‘ share price was at $4.50. Seven years later it is close to one seventh of that. One can but speculate whether indeed financial markets are efficient and have it quite right, or whether they in the case of Gunns are not discounting all the significant costs, or have discounted numerous fictional ones.

Tasmania, furthermore, is a place where in 1803 some – what we term today boat people – arrived with every intention of staying. On arrival the local inhabitants numbered in excess of 5,000 people. Few survived the encounter. Presumably the outcomes of such encounters affected the Australian psyche. Currently, an Australian population of close to 22 million people views the arrival of proportionally far fewer boat people with extreme trepidation. Although, perhaps that is being both unfair: and inaccurate too. Nonetheless issues of dispersion and statehood plague the contemporary world and cause much ethical debate.

Admittedly such issues always existed. After all, way before 1803, in fact in 1066, a fellow named William together with others left France in some boats and headed for England with every intention of staying forever. And they did. Boats though were not always necessary.

Five years after that in 1071 the Turks, after breaking the Byzantine line of defence in Eastern Anatolia, invaded what in 1923, after the exodus earlier that year of the remaining 1.5 million Greeks, became known as Turkey. Persian rug aficionados insist that the flight of those Greeks explains why Turkey no longer manufactures those oriental rugs which were produced there prior to 1923. And indeed one aspect of globalisation has been the increasing migration of various populations seeking employment opportunities. The reception of such populations, and the conflicting rights of those seeking refuge against those wishing to exclude both them and what they represent, occupies much of the current ethical debate. As do debates as to the ethics of nationalism and whether a nation is an illusionary community. All of that is germane to Tasmania and what happened there in 1803.

For those reasons and many others the AAPAE is fortunate to be holding its 18th annual conference in Tasmania where we will debate various issues relating to applied ethics and, hopefully, through such debates leave Tasmania able to contribute to a better world. Whether we are indeed able to or whether we are not, we will leave indebted to Leila and her colleagues in the School of Philosophy at the University of Tasmania.

Michael Schwartz,

RMIT, Melbourne.

In what will be phase one of a two part research project, a pilot survey has been recently sent out to a small sample group of registered nurses across New Zealand whose practices represent a range of nursing roles in a variety of settings. The research is supervised by Dr Martin Woods, who has long been involved in nursing ethics research and education, and assisted by coresearchers Vivien Rodgers and Prof Steve LaGrow. All are members of the School of Health & Social Services at Massey University at the Palmerston North campus. Briefly, the research involves the use of a refined version of a survey tool, namely the MDSR© questionnaire, that has been used by other nurse researchers in the USA and other countries.

Moral distress has been identified as a major concern within the nursing profession in several countries including New Zealand in recent years, not least because of the growing pressure on nurses to adapt to changing practices and working conditions within health care services. It is thought to occur when nurses knows the right thing to do in an ethical sense, but are inhibited from doing so by ‘internal or external‘ constraints. Such constraints usually include both personal and institutional factors, e.g. unpreparedness for the complexities of a given ethical dilemma, lack of peer and/or managerial support, difficult working conditions, and many more.

In phase two, the research will involve hundreds of registered nurses nationwide who will receive a modified (i.e. a ‘New Zealand‘) version of the MDSR survey on moral distress. This survey will probe areas of contemporary ethical interest within the New Zealand health care arena, and includes items specifically designed to elicit significant ethically related responses. It is hoped that when these responses are all finally collated, the findings will provide both nurses and health care agencies a reliable measure of nursing concerns relating to ethical practices

If anyone is interested in finding out more about this research, or wishes to discuss the research with me, then please contact Dr Martin Woods via email at [email protected].

Martin Woods,

Senior Lecturer, School of Health and Social Services, Massey University, NZ.

I‘ve always worked for ethical businesses. Each has attracted me via a charismatic figurehead‘s sales pitch (let‘s call this character CF). My last attraction had the largest CF I‘ve ever met. When this man speaks, people listen. People look to him for answers, and for entertainment while he‘s giving them. He presents himself as the everyday man whose work is humble. He speaks with angry determination against injustice and with passion for his visions of a better place.

He runs what is called a ‘Community Supported Agriculture‘ (CSA) enterprise. This particular CSA brings together local farmers producing food in a sustainable way (or intending to), and provides them with a growing demand for their produce through a consumer box system. In return, consumers get a much closer relationship with their food source, one they can trust, support, and learn more about.

The CF asked me to help set up a storefront business for this CSA, but as time went on, my role in the enterprise evolved. I‘m a trained chef, a writer, and a food ethicist. I completed my PhD in Philosophy on the subject of urban people‘s relationship to food production. How come it‘s so easy to avoid responsibility toward the places where our food is produced? That was my question. Avoidance was the enemy and I thought I‘d found my friends, finally, in this CSA.

There was plenty to do. I started a catering business, using produce sourced directly from the CSA farmers. I produced preserves from the seconds the farmers couldn‘t otherwise sell. I started marketing the farmers‘ value-added products to our customers, increasing the sales of cheeses, juices and dairy products significantly. And, along with 5 other staff members, I was voted into an organisational position within the business. We were tasked with helping the CSA to become financial sustainable, and to work effectively for the farmers, the customers and the CSA employees. I was happy and ready for the task, loopy almost, with the sense that I‘d finally found a business that measured up to my ethical standards.

One of the first tasks I took on was organising our farmer information. Up to this point, information about our farmers was contained on scraps of paper and in the head of our produce manager (let‘s call him PM). He had direct relationships with the farmers, the exact terms of which were never written down. CF and PM had worked together from the very beginning, building up the enterprise from the involvement of just a few farmers to many dozens. It was unclear to all of us, except CF and PM, how many farmers we actually had on our books, and more importantly, how many were growing their produce organically.

The issue of chemical farming was of intense interest to our customers, many of whom were willing to support farmers to improve their practice from minimal chemical use to organic farming. But still, most were becoming members of this CSA because we were providing them with affordable, local, mostly organic produce. We often told our customers that 80% of our farmers were farming organically, and I wanted to check this figure out, and put a process in place to help the other farmers, the ones that weren‘t farming organically, to better their practice.

So I started talking to the farmers, one by one. This was difficult in itself, as the PM would leave farmers off the lists he would dictate to me, or give me wrong contact details. I put this down to his own scattered process, which worked well enough while the business was small, but had grown unwieldy now we had so many farmers to deal with. So I turned detective, doing my own digging through the businesses invoices and receipts. I called every farmer, around 80 of them, and I asked them what they supplied to us, and what sort of farming practices they used.

I found out there were far fewer organic suppliers than we thought, but there were a lot of farmers describing themselves as ‘low spray‘. There were also some farmers that described themselves as entirely conventional. This seemed a surprise to all of us.

I decided we needed a more detailed method of collecting the farmers‘ data, particularly on the ‘low spray‘ and conventional farmers, so we could see exactly what sort of chemicals they were using, why, how much, and whether there were alternatives to explore. I constructed a detailed questionnaire that I sent to all the farmers. As the surveys started coming back, it became clear that the farmers who described themselves as ‘low spray‘ were really anything but that. It must be hard to admit conventional practice to an organization that‘s priding itself on its largely organic sourcing.

Maybe it‘s my naivety, but I saw this as just another step in the challenge, not a cover up. I figured that PM and CF‘s systems must have gotten away from themselves, and that this was the perfect time to bring transparency and accountability back into play.

PM and CF thought otherwise. Through a series of underhand plays and deceptions, too complex to get into here, I was bad mouthed behind my back to people who mattered and pushed out of my decision-making role. I decided to expose these plays and deceptions, and the reason for them, to the staff of the CSA. As a result, 3 other key members of the business quit in a flurry of anger and disappointment. But the CF never responded directly to my concerns.

Instead, he directed his charismatic voice to the public, describing the steps ‘we‘ were taking to improve the farmers‘ practices. It was a flurry of promises and rating systems, but I knew enough about the state of the situation to see that these promises were impossible to achieve without systemic changes no one was willing, or able, to oversee. The people who were had already quit.

All the people that cared about this issue left the business. The staff that stayed maintained a fierce loyalty to the CF and were eager to distance themselves from the racket we made. I often considered going public with the information I had, but never did. Maybe I‘m a coward? But I‘d experienced the damage a little badmouthing can do, and I was frightened of feeling the full wrath of a man exposed in his hypocrisy.

What I did realize, is that I would never again work for charismatic figurehead. CFs attract people with their words. That‘s one of their gifts. But I am yet to find one who is as passionate about following through on their vision as they are in promulgating it. Perhaps there is also a lesson here, about listening more carefully to the quieter voices, doing their business without the showcasing.

The experience has taught me a lesson that I‘ve been taught many times before but to lesser degrees, and I‘m finally embodying the knowledge. If I want to work for an ethical business, I‘m going to have to build that business myself. So that‘s what I‘m doing now. Slowly, but with a strength and confidence that‘s building. I run a catering business that pays careful attention to the provenance of its supplies, and I write about food, ethics and sourcing at www.thegoodsoup.com. These are the small beginnings, but I do have quiet, hopeful visions for the future.

####References####

Hirst, Angela, ‘Levinas separates the (hu)man from the non(hu)man, using hunger, enjoyment and anxiety to illuminate their relationship‘, Cosmos and History (Vol.3, No.1, 2007).

Hirst, Angela, ‘Avoiding ethics in an inner city suburb‘, New Talents 21C 2006 (Australian Public Intellectual Network, 2007).

The name of my business, The Good Soup, comes from an Emmanuel Levinas quote ‘We live from ‘good soup‘…‘

Levinas, Emmanuel, Totality and Infinity, an Essay on Exteriority. Translated by A. Lingis. (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1961), p.110.

Seeking a solution to the recent deterioration in ethical standards that are witnessed in organizations around the world, Alzola (2011) urged the establishment of a reconciliation of normative and descriptive approaches to investigate and research the relationship between business and ethics. Our research in ethical mindsets, which extended recently into ethical climates, comes in response to such calls and other diverse calls by several scholars from different disciplines such as Lane & Klenke (2004), Ashar and Lane-Maher (2004), and Ghoshal (2005).

This increased chorus of calls, specially with the market meltdown and its global ramifications, have been appealing for a re-examination of ethics guiding individuals. These individuals continue to struggle with emerging issues such as: uncertainty, risk, ambiguity and suffering and, in severe cases, these individuals might feel alienated in this society (as argued by Arisian, 1993). Such developments in this postideological period and post-modern society seem to threaten the very fabric of the society, by allowing individuals to stand alone, and to introduce change to or even reject the values that have hitherto defined the character of Western society.

This trend, if left unchecked, might lead to grievous consequences for the society as a whole. Our research has been designed with special attention to Ghoshal (2005), who argues for a recasting of management theory away from the currently dominant ‘scientific model‘ that has tended to reduce the role of ethical and moral dimensions in theories and therefore in ideas about management practice. This is similar to Weick‘s (1999) recommendation that we abandon the heavy tool of paradigms and monologues and focus instead on achieving a deeper awareness of organizations by theorizing through intuition, feeling, stories, experience, awe, vocabulary and empathy, and most importantly the ability to listen attentively to create theories that have practical as well academic value. With this in mind, the aim of our research is to examine the mindsets of individuals, expanding into ethical climates. It is argued that research in ethics, and specifically business ethics, is gaining momentum. Our interest in researching mindsets comes despite the call by Alzola (2008) that questions whether ethicists need to abandon the very enterprise of building a characterbased moral theory in business ethics and organizational behaviour.

This research on ethical mindsets and ethical climates draws mainly on two separate but allied business ethics literatures relating to spirituality and aesthetics, two issues that were and continue to be probed using the theoretical lens of mindsets. In order to achieve the aims and objectives of this research, an interpretive mixed-methods approach was considered the most appropriate. This research contributes to the contemporary debate on business ethics, moving behind the progressively more modernized investigative languages that prevail and beyond the traditional. Indeed, this research goes past and well beyond the obvious. With the exception of the work being undertaken by the authors (e.g. Issa and Pick, 2010), there is relatively little research that integrates spirituality, aesthetics and ethical mindsets. Spirituality draws attention to individuals‘ conscientiousness in inventing ethical workplaces, whilst aesthetics focuses the conversation and discernment on ethical behaviour in business. Mindsets provide a key perspective that combines spirituality and aesthetics into a single analytical framework, thus allowing the investigation of both the individual and the organization (i.e. the ethical mindset and the ethical climate). Ethical Mindset has been defined as ‘an appreciation of and reflection on any situation through the filter of personal beliefs and values such as honesty, integrity, harmony, balance, optimism, pursuit of joy, peace and beauty, truth seeking, making a difference, and being professional, deriving from the strength rooted in individual‘s inner-self‘ (Issa, 2009, p. 163).

The project puts into practice a research tool generated from Issa‘s (2009) PhD thesis that identified eight components of ethical mindsets (i.e. aesthetic spirituality, religious spirituality, optimism, harmony and balance, personal truth, contentment, making a difference and interconnectedness). The results to date are limited to Australia and indicate that people might be ‘spiritual‘ but this is not necessarily religious; instead, evidence is gathering to suggest that it might be derived from aesthetics. The research to date clearly demonstrates the context dependency of mindsets. Furthermore, a number of issues and questions were raised that are worthy of further examination, particularly in relation to the influence and importance of ethical mindsets and to varying and sometimes conflicting understandings and definitions of the term ‘spirituality‘. Whilst there is a place of religious belief in workplaces, with the emergence of ‘religious spirituality‘ as one of the components of ethical mindsets, nevertheless, to make it the sole focus would be a mistake given the evidence from this research of a strong and vibrant secular spirituality. However, this religious spirituality should not be diverted from its religious meaning and connotations; whereas if individuals are keen to think of spirituality components with secular mindsets, this should be referred to as aesthetic spirituality. This will reduce the confusion, and emphasize the necessity to consider this important concept and its positive influence on individuals and in turn their organizations, society and community.

As for ethical climates, our research results so far suggest that public servants rate highly such values as integrity, honesty, support and compassion that act as a positive force for making the workplace more tolerable, flexible, and most importantly, in support of an ethical climate that is accountable. However, some respondents expressed concerns that management do not necessarily maintain or display such values. This is reflected in the doubt cast by respondents that an individual with a self-serving (selfish) ethical mindset can be changed for the better. This suggests, just as with ethical mindsets, that there are a number of different possible ethical climates. Furthermore, the analysis suggests that respondents display a high level of respect for belief systems different to their own. While there are those who stated that they do not ‘wear their beliefs on their sleeves‘, those belief systems come out in the way they treat others and the way they view the world. To improve the ethical climate of public service organizations, the data suggests that it is important to combat feelings amongst staff that favouritism is being practiced. Interestingly, respondents concede that this too is in the hands of management, saying that they say ‘set the ethical scene‘.

The next phase is to focus on achieving a wider understanding of ethical mindsets and ethical climates by undertaking international comparative research beginning with Australia, South Africa, India, and Canada.

Dr Theodora Issa and Associate Professor David Pick,

Curtin Business School, Curtin University, WA.

####References####

ALZOLA, M. 2008. Character and Environment: The Status of Virtues in Organizations. Journal of Business Ethics, 78, 343-357.

ARISIAN, K. 1993. Will Humanism Survive the Postmodern era? A preface [Online]. [Online]. Available: humanismtoday.org. Available: http://www.humanismtoday.org/vol8/ [2005, July 29th] [Accessed].

ASHAR, H. & LANEMAHER, M. 2004. Success and Spirituality in the New Business Paradigm. Journal of Management Inquiry, 13, 249-260.

GHOSHAL, S. 2005. Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 4, 75-91.

ISSA, T. 2009. Ethical mindsets, aesthetics and spirituality: A mixed-methods approach analysis of the Australian services sector. Doctoral research thesis, Curtin University of Technology.

ISSA, T. & PICK, D. 2010. Ethical Mindsets: An Australian Study. Journal of Business Ethics, 96, 613-629.

LANE, M. S. & KLENKE, K. 2004. The Ambiguity Tolerance Interface: A Modified Social Cognitive Model for Leading under uncertainty. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 10, 69-81.

WEICK, K. E. 1999. Theory Construction as disciplined reflexivity: Tradeoffs in the 90s. The Academy of Management Review, 24, 797-806.

All disciplines have ethical obligations that are particular to that occupation. We can argue, for instance, that engineers have the obligation to check their designs, so that their bridges do not fall down, as did the West Gate bridge in Melbourne (Royal Commission, 1971). Engineers build the roads, cars, power plants, etc., that cause much environmental concern. Lawyers also face specific ethical concerns. Those who know their client is at fault but who plead not guilty, rather than enter a no plea, or in other ways defend that client, can justifiably be accused of unethical conduct. Doctors, and others in the health professions, have ethical obligations of a higher order than most. The nature of their work has generated books, running into the hundreds of pages, totally devoted to their ethical obligations (Beauchamp and Childress, 2008, Kerridge et al. 2009). Even tow truck drivers have obligations not to arrive at the scene of an accident in their multiples, nor to harass some distraught driver overcome by the mess in which they have landed themselves.

We could extend this list. Journalists, some would say, have the highest ethical obligations of all. They have a huge influence; are even the overriding decider for many, on significant aspects of our lives – how we vote, what are our attitudes to global warming, to foreign aid, and the like.

So what of politicians? What ethical obligations do they have? Obligations put on them by the nature of their calling? It is not an easy question to answer. To keep your election promises is an obvious response. But to keep your promise is an obligation put on us all; it is not therefore particular to politicians. In any case, the moral argument that we can break promises to meet a higher ethical obligation is not too far different from a classification by a former Australian Prime Minister of core and non-core promises.

We could point out that the massive swing against the recent NSW Labor government was in no small part due the dubious morality of that government. Nine ministers in two years must be a world record. But once we examine the nature of that morality, we do not find that it is in any way connected with their political tasks – paedophilia, unfortunately, is universal. Sacking whistleblowers is likewise universal, as are gaining personal benefits through ignoring conflicts of interest. Nor is employing or otherwise benefiting people who support you. Even wandering hands at social gatherings is not unique to NSW Labor. In any case the wrongs of this party seem likely to be matched by the incoming Liberal government. The big black hole in state finances announced by the new Premier within his first few days was subsequently shown to be non-existent. Or the newly elected member for Rockdale, John Flowers, on a pension, unable to work since 1996, but now able to energetically represent his constituency. The Liberal government had to force through a change in parliamentary rules to allow it. But again, using the welfare system to your benefit is not uncommon. John Flowers is not unique. But it all adds to a widespread conviction that our politicians are unethical in the carrying out of their political roles. It is perhaps because we expect so much more of them that they appear particularly wrong, despite the fact that they are committing the same ethical transgressions as many others in the community.

If we were to search a list of wrongs for the public service – thirty eight of which are listed in a massive study of whistleblowing in the Australian Public Service, we find that none are particularly political in nature (A J Brown, 2008).

Internationally, of course, it is relative simple to pin down the political wrongs. There are many examples of governments ignoring the treaties they signed. A number of countries are erupting at the moment as their political leaders are overriding the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Others are refusing to sign treaties that they should agree to – notably the US on the International Criminal Court. In 2002 the United States together with only Israel and Sudan, formally withdrew its intent to ratify its membership of the court. There are, in fact, many countries whose politicians could be accused of human rights violations, but Australia is not one of them. Those who seek more support for refugees would perhaps disagree. The deplorable health and social statistics of its indigenous peoples have also attracted much criticism, but violation of their rights is not one of the causes.

Australia has signed all major international treaties. It is still debating the issue of its own Bill of Rights, but that is a domestic issue, not an international one. If we confine the question to domestic ethical issues, we are still faced with the problem of identifying those that lie within the province of politicians alone. Australians are very critical of their politicians, broadly regarding them as a collection of self serving individuals, exhibiting somewhat dubious ethical convictions. This belief must have some substance behind it.

Perhaps it is the definition of what is ethical? As we all know, many guidelines have been proposed for deciding if an action is right and wrong – whether it is ethical or unethical. Is it universalisable, does it militate against personal autonomy, are the consequences good for us or bad, is the actor or action virtuous? These are some of the questions we use. None of them appear to identify unethical actions that are clearly associated with being a politician. One set of guidelines that seems to worth exploring, however, is contractarianism, a concept of a social contract between the governing and the governed that arose with Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, but which has reached its current day fulfillment in the work of John Rawls. These writers propose a society in which a role for government is to redress the difficulties suffered by the members of that society.

It is certainly true that we expect governments to correct the problems society faces. Unemployment relief, sickness benefits, universal health care programs are evidence of these concerns. Yet there are people who claim that we go too far with these benefits. Calls to get the “dole bludgers” back to work are not uncommon. More liberal countries look with amazement on the conservative cry in the US against a national health system. For the more significant demands on a government would appear to be liberal vs. conservative issues. We have a political structure based on a government and an opposition. For reasons unknown to most of us, populations, at least in the western world, do divide broadly into these two camps. A conservative government will tend to reject demands for more assistance to those in need; a left leaning liberal government will embrace them. Any government has to decide, but whatever it decides will be rejected by those that have the opposite view.

Jonathon Haidt and Jesse Graham (2007) argue that the liberal /conservative split is anthropological in nature, even of evolutionary origin, and that it has generated five foundations to morality: harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. They assert that “political liberals have moral intuitions base on the first two foundations”. They are misunderstood therefore by “political conservatives who generally rely on all five foundations.”

Haidt and Graham may well be right. Their conclusion is certainly borne out by general observation. Politicians, at least under this analysis, can never win ethical plaudits across the entire population. And if a government tries to determine where the majority might lie, it will be accused of being poll-driven. So we regard members of a government as unethical, but only when they do not agree with our particular political view point. Otherwise they exhibit ethical and unethical behaviours no different to the rest of us.

Whether in greater frequency than the rest of us is another question.

Peter Bowden,

Department of Philosophy, University of Sydney.

####References####

Brown, AJ. (2008). Whistleblowing in the Australian Public Sector ANU ePress p.64.

Kerridge, I., Lowe, M., Stewart, C. (2009). Ethics and law for the health professions, 3rd ed. Sydney: Federation Press.

Beauchamp, Tom L. and Childress, James F. (2008). Principles of Biomedical Ethics 6th. ed. Oxford University Press, New York.

Haidt, Jonathon and Graham, Jesse. (2007). ‘When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that Liberals may not recognize.‘ Social Justice Research. 20, 1, 98-116.

Royal Commission on the Failure of the West Gate Bridge, 1971.

The RMIT University will be one of the first Australian Universities to ensure that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Ethics are part of its MBA programs.

As of 2011 The University’s MBA and the MBA Executive will feature compulsory subjects in CSR, Governance and Law.

The MBA programs are offered through the University’s Graduate School of Business and Law, which was one of several business schools that participated in the Australian Research Institute for Environment and Sustainability’s (ARIES) research program designed to increase the presence of CSR and Sustainability in MBA programs. The lead researcher and long time AAPAE member Dr Michael Segon developed key research and educational engagement strategies with MBA students and other faculty members. As part of this research an extensive review was conducted into how to best teach business ethics and CSR both from a subject matter and educational design perspective.

“The research into how ethics and CSR should be taught suggested that most business schools adopt an embedded approach or offer the subjects as electives. We found that this actually resulted in very little ethics content as discipline expert faculty – i.e. accounting and marketing professors etc – were uncomfortable with teaching outside their expertise and typically reduced the amount of ethics or dealt with it superficially. From a pedagogical point of view, we found no support for treating ethics different by advocating embedding it versus a standalone course.” Dr Michael John Segon.

The Graduate School’s inaugural Head of School, Professor John Toohey instigated a review of the University’s MBA programs in 2009.

“We had to challenge the position of what we taught in our MBAs and ask ourselves…… Do we actually teach greed?

We concluded that a more proactive approach was required and that we needed to challenge our MBA students – the leaders of the future, around ethics and corporate responsibility issues… to seek a balance between the financial objectives of the firm and the interests of society.”

The Graduate School of Business and Law’s new Head of School Professor Margaret Jackson continued the program reviews and supported the recommendations to include courses in CSR, Governance and Law as compulsory subjects in the MBA programs.

The changes take effect as of semester 1, 2011.

The Australian Association of Professional and Applied Ethics 17th Annual Conference was hosted by the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Sydney from the 15th to the 17th of June, 2010. The conference convener was Dr Betty Chaar. Betty organized a truly wonderful conference and we are all in her debt for the obvious hard work and dedication which made such a conference possible. The conference included innovations such as the Authors‘ Sessions which were most beneficial. We were most fortunate to have as keynote speakers Stacey Carter, Ian Kerridge, Simon Long staff, Ron McCallum, Gael McDonald, Geoff Moore, Alan Saunders, Peter Singer and Colin Thomson. I am sure that everyone who was present would agree that Professor McCallum‘s explanation of his escape from a future of basket weaving, because he thought life must offer something more, was inspirational. Peter Singer‘s address as to our obligations with regard to global poverty was also excellent as were the others. The AAPAE was privileged to have such keynote speakers.

Furthermore, Betty‘s addition to the conference with the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science & Research of a workshop exploring the ethical challenges of new technologies and the risk and responsibility in Nanotechnology, Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology took us into a future which as ethicists we cannot ignore. Although personally I have always been more comfortable contemplating the past. For that reason I was most appreciative of the welcome cocktail Betty organized in The University of Sydney‘s 150 year old Nicholson Museum. I have visited The University of Sydney before but I never realized that the University had a museum housing the largest collection of ancient artefacts on the Australian continent. These artefacts are from Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Egypt, and the Near East and Middle East. Many of the speakers I heard at the conference were inspirational but with no disrespect to them some of these ancient and very silent artefacts were even more inspirational. Not that I am suggesting that we could ever substitute one for a keynote speaker! Betty, along with her diligent team, also had two additional allies at that conference. One was the weather which was perfect. The other was their campus. Undoubtedly envy is a sin, but for most of that conference I was a sinner. The University of Sydney is beautiful.

To be on such a campus is wonderful. Betty, to you and your colleagues our heartfelt appreciation laced of course with envy. Thank you, Betty.

We had during our last teleconference some discussion of how the AAPAE might further its links with similar organizations. I was fortunate enough after our AAPAE conference to attend another. The people who organized this conference would well be worthwhile fostering further links with. They are truly excellent people. This conference was at the beginning of July. It was the 3rd Bergamo Wharton Joint Conference and its theme was Stakeholder Theory(ies): Ethical Bases, Managerial Applications, Conceptual Limits. This conference was held in the Italian city of Bergamo. Bergamo is a fascinating city. Although to all intents and purposes it is two cities. There is the old city of Bergamo at the top of a hill which is a medieval walled city. It is a most beautiful place with stunning views of the surrounding countryside which includes the foothills of the Alps. The city is also filled with magnificent towers and ancient squares. Below it is the modern city of Bergamo. I gave a paper on stakeholders and was somewhat unnerved to discover that the session I was presenting at was being chaired by Ed Freeman who virtually created stakeholder theory. I had never met Ed Freeman previously. Fortunately he is a kind and good man! This conference was the first time I visited Europe. It was also the very first time my wife ever accompanied me to a conference. That had its advantages which includes the fact that she speaks Italian. The conference was organized by Silvana Signori, Gianfranco Rusconi and Alan Strudler and they also organized a wonderful and inspiring conference which was a pleasure to attend. Not that in going to Bergamo I had left Sydney very far behind. Amongst the attendees at that conference was a colleague who lectures business ethics at The University of Sydney.

Bergamo boasts a disproportionately large representation amongst the I Mille, those 1,000 volunteers who fought alongside Guiseppe Garibaldi for Italian unification. Initially I did not understand why this was so. However the reason is simple. Bergamo then was the centre of the Italian silk manufacturing industry. And many in it sided with the Risorgimento, the forces for Italian unification. They did so for a simple reason: they wanted to get rid of tariffs and establish a common market in which to sell their products. Such a motivation is certainly not unrelated to applied ethics. Amongst such motivations there must be enough material for at least one applied ethics conference. Yet, whilst undoubtedly the motivation of many in Bergamo was to support the Risorgimento and to be actively involved in the temporary government of 1848 there is something more. Bergamo‘s silk industry was devastated by a silkworm disease in the early 1850s. That provides something else: at least enough material for one good conference on moral luck.

The countless books that have come out in recent years on the impact of our evolutionary history on our moral habits have almost outdone Harry Potter. They have all claimed, to a greater or less degree, that our moral habits and beliefs can be attributed to human evolution, and in particular to the selection process that enabled us to rise above other animals competing in the same environment. They appear to be written, in roughly equal numbers, by moral philosophers or evolutionary biologists. Some books, with Why are we Moral? or similar titles, attribute a near complete moral sense to the evolutionary process. Others, more conservative, only argue that higher degrees of cooperation are the result of evolution.

Darwin himself first made the claim. In a much discussed passage, he wrote, in The Descent of Man:

It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight advantage or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe . . . [t]here can be no doubt that a tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection.

The method by which the selection process works is not without some controversy. Darwin‘s passage indicated a belief in group selection, although a more widely held belief would appear to be in individual or genetic selection. Several writers however, have noted the vigorous advocacy of philosopher Elliott Sober and evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, among others, for group selection. Maynard Smith and ESS (evolutionary stable strategies) illustrated with hawks and doves, the prisoners‘ dilemma, and the impact of genetic mutations, any of which give a reproductive advantage, are all parts of the discussion.

The process has not resulted entirely in a one-way path to cooperation and everlasting justice. Richard Dawkins‘ The Selfish Gene, has put the argument that the self-centered nature of mankind is also an evolutionary product. Peter Singer has presented a similar argument. Many authors, and even our own observations, would confirm this dual nature of mankind. What is far from clear, or agreed, however, is under what conditions these dual positive or negative natures come to the fore.

It appears to this writer that our own human history gives us an answer – that provided self interest or self-centeredness do not dominate, the great bulk of human beings are instinctively cooperative. Cooperation on an on-going basis, however, requires that we continually attempt to help others in the group and avoid harming them. Natural selection also dictates that we strive for the greater individual and collective benefit. I believe that we do this both individually and in groups. Darwin‘s arguments are, in effect, sound – that as genetic mutations produce both self-interest and cooperation, they also produce an ever increasing cognitive ability. The brain realizes the benefits of cooperation, the benefits of undisputed leadership, and of institutions that strengthen one group in the endless conflicts with other groups.

The result is the development of social practices and institutions that make for cooperation within societies, and the gradual development of a more just society. And that justice and fairness is the underpinning, not only for a more effective, more competitive society, but for ethical behaviour within that society. It would take a long, and perhaps tedious argument to support the contention that our history illustrates that evolutionary development has resulted in more ethical societies. A simple example, however, might convince. Why have we gradually, over the ages, introduced laws that seek to eradicate wrongdoing; and punish wrongdoers? It is evidence that those who seek this more just, more ethical society have, albeit with many back-sliding periods of crisis, held an advantage of over those who seek to serve their own interests. Another simple example is the change in government that Australia experienced recently. It was undertaken through a process that many regarded as unethical. But that change in government was bloodless. It will also be bloodless in most civilized countries around the world. It has not been that many years however, since the succession to power, in the long history of these same countries, has not been without bloody conflict between rival contenders.

Perhaps another example to use in the argument that institutional change has resulted in a more ethical stance is the fact that the Western European powers have not experienced an internal, internecine war since World War II. Those sixty-five years have been the longest period without war since the Roman Empire. It is near inconceivable that these powers should now have a war between any of them.

So that is the conclusion – one result of the evolutionary process is that in most societies, those seeking a just society, for whatever reasons they seek it, have held a numerical advantage, with an associated power advantage, over those seeking to further their own interests. We can now put that conclusion to work in both the teaching of ethics and in the employment of those concepts in practice. In short, we can attempt to answer the question as to what extent, n our many organizations and institutions, do we take into account that a greater number of the people involved are instinctively striving for a more ethical institution?

This writer sees six areas where that conclusion will affect ethics in practice, and the teaching of that practice:

One: There will be a number of people in any group who will wish to pursue their own self-interests. This self-interest will encourage unethical behaviour. It is behaviour that is often exhibited by those with greater influence or power within the organization or group. The teaching and practice of ethics must therefore provide the remainder (those who wish to take an ethical stance) with the knowledge, the skills and the confidence to put their ethical objectives into effect.

Two: Codes of ethics, if developed by the people in an organization who are affected, will reflect their actual experiences and ethical concerns. Greater participation by those affected will also create greater commitment to seeing that the codes are observed. Such participation will be more effective han if the codes were superimposed by those in authority.

Three: There will also be a number willing to speak out against wrongdoing. As speaking out usually ends in some retaliation by those whose wrongdoing is exposed, self-interest demands that all who observe the wrongdoing stay quiet (except perhaps the most courageous). The need for social and legal responses to prevent this retaliation, that encourage speaking out, plus training in ways to minimize the retaliation, are imperative.

Four: Laws, principles, and policies reflecting institutional change at a national and international level intended to encourage ethical behaviour, will continue to grow. This change is already at an ―exponential‖ rate, as a director of one of these ethical institutions (a newly established police integrity commission), has described them. Knowledge of these changes by prospective and current employees is also an imperative.

Five: Of these institutional interventions current even now, answers need to be found on which policies, which legislation, what theories and other interventions have been, or could be effective, in minimizing unethical behaviour. A major input into the classroom, and in the workplace, therefore, will be skills in evaluation research, as well as knowledge on what conclusions current evaluations have already reached.

Six: The endless debates on which philosopher provides the optimum moral theory will eventually be deemed irrelevant. The selection process, the struggle for survival, will kick in when the realization comes that resources could be more effectively used. Replacing the debates will be empirical research into combinations of several theorists - on which approaches provide effective responses to the ever increasing complexity of today‘s ethical issues.

The EBEN conference was held in the northern Italian city of Trento. It ran from Thursday morning 9th September to lunchtime Sunday 11th Sep.

There was a welcome reception on Wednesday evening put on by the local tourist office with wine cheese and meats. It ran for an hour and mostly attracted international (non-continental) participants

Trento was the city where, early in the Reformation, the Council of Trent was held. Initially to be a meeting of the protestants from Germany and the Catholics from Rome and beyond, debate over the location lasted 6 years. And then the Germans did not come and the Council saw the planning of the Counter Reformation in the 1550s.

There were 100 papers and 5-6 streams in each of the paper sessions. There was a plenary at 10:30 each morning with two speakers, lasting one-and-a-half hours all up.

Friday was a long day, starting at 8:30, with sessions running to 6pm and the bus for dinner departing at 7. The return bus left the dinner venue at mid-night.

Some participants and papers duplicated from the SBE Society for Business Ethics conference in Montreal the previous month (or from AAPAE in June).

On Saturday morning was a concluding plenary with non-cademic speakers, chaired by Alejo Sison the chair of EBEN. Participants were the CEO of a bank, President of the major multinational food company Barilla, research director from the relevant EC program, former CEO now president of a Foundation to promote catholic social teaching, and one other. Each spoke for 15 minutes, and then there were questions from the floor. It was very effective, if long.

The conference perhaps had a greater economics flavour than at AAPAE, and was less philosophical than either SBE or the other American applied ethics conference APPE. There were many references by the Italian keynote speakers to the moral elements in classical economic works, such as Keynes and Marshall.

There were two Australians beside myself, Lorraine Carey from U Canberra, and Sabina Leitmann from Social work at Curtin.

Three recognizable Americans were present — Pat Werhane, Laura Harman from DePaul and Michael Hoffman from Bentley. There were around ten from the UK, including Geoff Moore who delivered a keynote address.

Registration was €250 for members: including two lunches, four morning/afternoon teas and the six-course dinner.

EBEN is a network with 12 national chapters, averaging 25-30 members each, apart from a 700-strong German chapter. EBEN holds both an ‘annual conference‘ (this one) and a research conference each year. The 2011 annual conference will be in Antwerp.

Although the stocks may have leveled, and many of the jobs regained, the spectre of the global financial crisis still lingers in the minds of most Australians, and people worldwide. Why did it happen? Could it happen again? What is the solution? In the words of Wall Street‘s Gordon Gecko, is greed, for lack of a better word, good?

These questions and more were posed to an expert panel at an event titled: God and Mammon: Need or Greed in the Big End of Town? Hosted by one of The University of Notre Dame, Australia‘s research centres: The Centre for Faith, Ethics & Society, the event included a lunch followed by a discussion panel, chaired by columnist Miranda Devine. The members of the panel included Telstra Chief Executive Officer David Thodey, Catholic Archbishop Cardinal George Pell, marketing expert John Moore and business consultant and former Wallabies captain John Eales, who discussed how business and ethics could interact in today‘s economy.

Major talking points included the salaries of corporate executives, a topic which, if it had the potential to make David Thodey feel uncomfortable, did not appear to do so. Cardinal Pell stated clearly his view that the exorbitant salaries of some executives should raise the eyebrow of anybody with an interest in ethical business practice. Also unethical, Pell argued, were the offering of low document loans to those who have no chance of repaying. Businesses, Pell argued, existed to serve the common good, not simply to make profit, and these loans represented profit at the expense of the common good. However, profit and common good are not enemies for business, Thodey suggested. “You can make profit for the common good, but it‘s when you make excessive profits that it comes unstuck.”

On the subject of bank loans, Thodey took a sympathetic approach toward the corporate world. In light of the government‘s criticism of the Commonwealth Bank‘s rate rises, he suggested that often decisions were examples of “letting the market decide one way or another”. He explained his view that many decisions were less ethical than they were made out to be, and that the market was a more determinate factor than many might think. To this he added that he didn‘t think business depended on pleasantries or on one‘s reputation as a person for success: “[it‘s] not about being a nice guy or not you have to have the strength to make the right decision.” But what that right decision might be, Thodey suggests, was most often up to the market.

Another view was offered by John Moore, whose comments suggested that the distinction between the public and private sphere between private ethics and “corporate citizenship”, as Thodey called it was hazier than what might have been suggested. One‘s personal view of morality can, and should, affect the way one interprets and responds to market influences. Moore‘s view is that the market is a causal force like any other, but how people respond to that causal force is an entirely moral question. Just because the market opens up chances for massive profits, doesn‘t mean businesses ought to follow it there. It‘s Moore‘s view that ethical responses in the public realm must be informed by thoughtful personal reflection.

However, this was not taken to imply that profit taking is inherently ethically questionable. As Cardinal Pell argued, citing Margaret Thatcher, No-one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well!” The emphasis was on profit as being necessary, given that it is accumulated wealth that can fund philanthropic activity.

John Eales echoed Moore‘s opinion that ethical and unethical behaviour is a choice of businesspeople, not an inevitable effect of the operation of market forces. He expressed his belief that in business, as in sport, the participants knew what the rules were, but some players chose to cheat. Both businesspeople and sportspeople needed to draw a line regarding what they would and wouldn‘t do, based on their own principles. Everyone draws a line somewhere: the difference between the ethical and unethical person is where they draw that line. He playfully cited AFL legend Leigh Matthews who, when asked what he wouldn‘t do to win a game, responded (hopefully tongue-in–cheek) “I probably wouldn‘t kill anybody.”

The Centre‘s Director, Associate Professor Sandra Lynch, said the event generated vibrant and well-focused discussion on a variety of issues. “Such issues as the balance between achieving profitability and contributing to the common good ought to be debated in a civilised society. We hope that ongoing debate of this kind will raise the level of ethical awareness in our communities and influence the decision making which occurs in business and the political sphere of life.”

“The Centre for Faith, Ethics and Society intends to follow-up this lunch and discussion panel with other events in 2011 which will continue this important conversation,” said A/Professor Lynch.

The Centre for Faith, Ethics and Society is an initiative of the University of Notre Dame, Australia. For more information, visit www.nd.edu.au/cfes or email nd.edu.au/cfes.

At last year‘s AAPAE conference I presented a paper on the Professional Ethics of Aerosol Art. At the last minute, I altered my reading, drawing partially from the text I had prepared, but improvising some additional points as a response to my audience. This was due in part to the general professional composition of the audience itself. The AAPAE conference last year was hosted by the Department of Policing Studies at Charles Sturt University, and while I was aware of this, I was not aware that near to half of the attendants were themselves academic staff of the Policing Department. What this meant was that much of the staff present had been police officers prior to their post as teachers in the department. Once, by lunchtime I had become aware of this, I reassessed my situation. Reflecting on the content of my presentation and paper, I decided details left out ought to have been included for such an audience.

The content of my paper was originally focused on professional ethics assuming a professional aerosol artists‘ context or at least a general understanding of the existence of these professional artists practicing and flourishing in their work. I felt this was not the case. Originally, I intended to talk on concrete aesthetic aspects, which inform the professional artists‘ practice in light of other areas in the professional fine and commercial art world. However, and while this area is valid and in need of consideration, I decided to improvise my talk and provide an account of what may appeal more greatly to the audience at hand. Therefore, I talked on the socio-political and economic qualities of professional aerosol art. This means I took on a specifically cultural vantage, and focused on the social work and criminological side of the professional aerosol artists calling. I would like to take this chance to inform folks of some of the other details I had hoped to analyze.

Aerosol art is a practice aligned with graffiti, and graffiti is of course a “practice” aligned with a controversial relation between crime and art. Personally, I only practice “graffiti” as a professional artist who uses aerosol as a medium (alongside acrylic and brush), but I do not judge harshly, and while I wanted to speak on calligraphic overtures and public art, I ended up talking on crime prevention, “breaking the cycle” of criminal culture, and on the history of graffiti as a general topic of interest. However, what I think ought to be understood in light of the general debate surrounding so-called “graffiti” are the requirements of a series of primary heuristics in order to be able to constructively approach the “graffiti” situation. These heuristics are the concrete differences between vandalism, graffiti-vandalism, graffiti itself (etymologically “writing”), graffiti-art, aerosol art (which is the general term for legal, commissioned or volunteer community work based public or art education works), street art, and urban art. Many do not make these distinctions, indeed, it seems as though one may require an “insiders edge” in order to recognize them so vividly. However there are so many problems that are caused and claimed as “non-problems” when the heuristics are abandoned. “Non-problems” in this case are hasty judgements and condemnations, confusion, and claims of malevolence on behalf of “graffitists”. To overcome these, and to summarize the actual situation, graffiti simply is not always vandalism, as vandalism can be broken bus-stop glass. Graffiti can be vandalism when it is made illegally, but only when it is illegal writing on property. Indeed, the concept of property is central to considerations of graffiti-vandalism, and so is the notion of beauty as it is expounded in general aesthetic theory. Street art is the contemporary grey shade in this area. Because some illegal-art (not always writing) has been recognized to be fine art quality work, there has formed a culture of crime and art, which is endorsed by many large corporations, and which finds artists who practice illegal art-making, selling similar renditions of their work and exhibiting in major national galleries. Some graffiti-vandalism is included in the general strata of street art. Graffiti-writers who do not practice illegally are referred to as aerosol artists, but their work is also a legalized form of graffiti-art, without the street art label tacked on (due to its overt legal nature). So graffiti traverses art and crime, although it is classified as vandalism, it is different to straight vandalism (not many drunken louts who smash bus stop glass sell their ―work‖ or exhibit in national galleries). Street artists are in the same boat, and urban art is the umbrella term to embody all the aforementioned. Aerosol artists stick to legal art making, sell works, and exhibit at the same level as street artists as urban artists, and all of the above work in and around public art. However, aerosol artists are also often also found conducting workshops in cultural and community centres commissioned by government initiatives.

What is interesting about this general paradigm is the intersection of acute contexts within an already very misunderstood context itself. While I wanted to address these issues now summarized, the modifications to my paper at the AAPAE conference instead explained the socio-political and economic history of “graffiti art”, seeing as it is this area that is most generally misunderstood. To peer more deeply into it, one must look to the civil rights movement in the United States, one must consider the Declaration of Independence, the media, social movement theory and cultural change, as well as broader paradigms for investigation, such as identity, ethno-nationalism, class, gender, marginality, deviance and blame, to mention but a few of the dynamics which compose the general y gen and z gen perspective on a post-media and normative multicultural world-view. Clearly I could not fit all of this into a twenty minute paper, but I can say in good conscience. I tried my very best.

Court cases in China, such as those involving Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu, have drawn Australian attention to the various actors in the Chinese court system, including procurators. Chinese authorities have worked to improve the ethical quality of all the courts, and one way is through the development of professional Codes of Ethics. This note introduces the Code for procurators.

####1. The office of Procurator in China####

Procurators have become part of the legal system of communist China from the civil law system, via the model of the former USSR. Their duties are wider than those of prosecutors in common law countries such as Australia, and include:

(1) supervising the enforcement of laws according to law;

(2) making public prosecution on behalf of the State; and (3) investigating criminal cases directly accepted by the People‘s Procuratorates as provided by law.

The People‘s Procuratorate enjoys constitutional standing equivalent to the courts, and the Supreme Procurator ranks constitutionally with the Chief Justice.

####2. The profession of Procurator####

In recent years, there have been attempts to improve the academic and professional quality of procurators. Training programmes have been instituted, and minimum qualifications for entry level procurators have been established. Now entry to the Procuratorate is via the Unified Judicial Examination, which covers the four professions of judge, procurator, lawyer, and notary. The most recent figures available are now some years old, but suggest that there are about 200,000 judges, 140,000 procurators, 150,000 lawyers, and 20,000 notaries. All procurators are salaried state officials: there are no private procurators.

####3. The ethics of Procurators####

There have been notable breaches of ethics across the four legal professions. Procurators are not exempt. Problems include corruption, for which hundreds of procuratorial staff are disciplined each year. Another problem is the use of false evidence, especially evidence gained through torture. In June 2009, Deputy Procurators General Hu Kehui and Wang Zhenchuan were dismissed from office, without explanation. In the practice of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, such removal usually suggests corruption problems. Interestingly, Wang Zhenchuan was a member of the Standing Committee of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

####4. The Procurators‘ Code of Ethics####

One of the Chinese government‘s responses to corruption has been to provide detailed Codes of Ethics for use by legal professionals. Lengthy codes are in place for judges (2001, 50 clauses), for notaries (2002, 31 clauses) and for lawyers (2002, 49 clauses; then 2004, 190 clauses).

Until recently, procurators had a very short code, with just a few slogans, to govern their ethical conduct. In September 2009, the Supreme People‘s Procuratorate issued a comparatively lengthy (48 articles) Procurators Professional Ethical Basic Standards (Provisional). These professional ethics apply not only during procuratorial activities, but also to the procurators‘ private lives. (The current Procurators Disciplinary Regulations (Provisional) have been in place since 2004. These do not directly cover ethical lapses, though some of the topics for discipline were also ethical issues.)

The short older code had four headings: loyal, just, honest, and cultured. These headings are retained in the new code, but each is spelt out with eight to ten clauses. There are no provisions for enforcement of the code, and for its application to lapses by procurators. Perhaps it is intended that breaches should be dealt with under the disciplinary regulations, though they do not mention ethics and are really concerned with other topics. The interpretation of the code belongs to the Supreme People‘s Procuratorate, and not to the Chinese Association of Public Prosecutors.

Laureate Professor Peter Singer

World Poverty: What are our obligations?

An international figure in moral philosophy since the publication of his Animal Liberation in 1975, Professor Singer has taught at Oxford, Melbourne and Monash Universities, and is currently Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. His books include Practical Ethics, The Expanding Circle, How are we to live?, The Ethics of What We Eat, and The Life You Can Save.

Professor Simon Chapman

Ethical issues arising from extending smoke-free policies out-doors.

Simon Chapman is Professor in Public Health at the University of Sydney and a staff elected Fellow of Senate. The author of countless journal articles, he has published sixteen books and major reports, including his 2007 Public Health Advocacy and Tobacco Control: Making Smoking History.

Associate Professor Ian Kerridge

Ian Kerridge is Director and Associate Professor in Bioethics at the Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine at the University of Sydney and Staff Haematologist/Bone Marrow Transplant physician at Westmead Hospital, Sydney. He has published widely in ethics and medicine and is the author of over one hundred papers in peer reviewed journals and five textbooks of ethics, most recently Ethics and Law for the Health Professions.

Dr Simon Longstaff

The Nanny State

Dr Simon Longstaff is a philosopher whose focus is in the field of applied ethics encompassing the wider community beyond academe. He has been Executive Director of St James Ethics Centre since 1991. Established in 1989, the Centre is an independent not-for-profit organisation which provides a non-judgemental forum for the promotion and exploration of ethics.

Professor Ron McCallum AO

Ethics of Disabilities in the Workplace

Professor Ron McCallum AO is Professor of Labour Law and former Dean of Law, University of Sydney. Professor McCallum has lectured and written widely on most aspects of labour and employment law. He was the inaugural President of the Australian Labour Law Association and is currently Chair of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Professor Gael McDonald

‘Trust me I am an MBA’

Professor Gael McDonald joined Deakin in January 2009 as Dean of Faculty of Business and Law. Gael has published widely in the areas of business ethics, sport management and marketing, and recently coauthored Postgraduate Business Research: Surviving and Thriving.

Professor Geoff Moore

Geoff Moore is Professor of Business Ethics in the Durham University business school. He researches in corporate social responsibility and business ethics with contributions in the areas of corporate philanthropy, corporate social disclosure, stakeholder theory, corporate moral agency, modern virtue ethics, corporate social versus financial performance and Fair Trade.

Dr Alan Saunders

Towards a Philosophy of Information

Alan Saunders received his PhD from ANU History of Ideas Unit, and now works for the Science Unit of ABC Radio National. He currently the presenter of ‗The Philosopher’s Zone‘, looking at some of today’s fundamental and perplexing issues, and ‗By Design‘ a weekly review of architecture and design, gardens and food.

Professor Colin Thomson

Colin Thomson is Professor of Law at the University of Wollongong and is Academic Leader for Health Law and Ethics in the Graduate School of Medicine. He has published and spoken widely, nationally and internationally, on issues in health law and ethics. He is a joint author of Cambridge‘s 2010 Good Medical Practice: professionalism, ethics and law.

The AAPAE is extremely fortunate in having eight outstanding keynote speakers at our forthcoming annual conference at the University of Sydney. These speakers are Professor Simon Chapman, Associate Professor Ian Kerridge, Dr Simon Longstaff, Professor Ron McCallum, Professor Gael McDonald, Professor Geoff Moore, Dr Alan Saunders and Professor Peter Singer. Individually, each one of them is a major figure in his, or her, own right; and collectively they must represent the most outstanding intellectual pool available in Sydney from the 15th to the 17th of June. We cannot help but be grateful for their generosity in giving up their most valuable time and agreeing to join us at our conference.

Reflecting upon that, I remember catching a flight a few years ago from Buffalo to Chicago. The aircraft was a medium size one with two seats on each side of the centre aisle. Seated next to me, in the window seat, was an earnest young man who pointed to an elderly but distinguished looking gentleman, wearing a crumpled, Columbo-style, fawn-coloured raincoat, seated across the aisle from me. ―That‘s Gary Becker,” he told me reverently. ―The Gary Becker”.

Becker, I knew, had won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1992. But soon this young man was pointing out others on the flight who had won the Nobel Prize for economics, and runners up too. He explained to me that they were all on this flight as they had been attending a prestigious economics conference at a university in Buffalo. He then stared ahead, obviously deep in thought, while the plane was rocked violently by powerful headwinds. After some deliberation, he turned to me and asked plaintively, can you imagine the loss of intellectual capital if this plane crashes?”

I knew that Becker was known for his interest in human capital but I did not think that this question related in any way to that. Although, it did occur to me, that if the plane crashed the loss of intellectual capital was perhaps not going to be my primary concern even if, arguably, it should have been. However, at our conference in Sydney we too will have around some very precious intellectual capital, although most fortunately on terra firma.

Albeit, while we will be very firmly on the fine and solid soil of New South Wales there is one other difference too. In that aircraft we were travelling from one geographic point to another. At the University of Sydney we, as an association, are returning to the very geographic point where we originally set out from. Yet, perhaps the actual geography is irrelevant. Perhaps all that is relevant is the history. Let me explain.

One of our keynote speakers, Professor Geoff Moore from the University of Durham in the United Kingdom, is a recognised authority on Alasdair MacIntyre‘s philosophy. Part of MacIntyre‘s philosophy is that the history influences the philosophy. And sometimes it might in rather unusual and very curious ways.

One of our other keynote speakers is Professor Peter Singer. Singer is without a doubt Australia‘s most renowned philosopher. Indeed Singer, the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University‘s Centre for Human Values, is one of the most renowned philosophers in the world. Paradoxically however, Singer once wrote how to some his career had taken a surprising turn” taking a path that some relatives could not have predicted”; although Singer writes how he later learnt that his grandfather, David Oppenheim, also wrote about fundamental values” and wondered if his life was echoing that of a grandparent”. Curiously enough, while it well might have echoed a grandparent it was also historically influenced by an even earlier ancestor.

Singer identifies as an ancestor Rabbi David Oppenheim (1664-1736) who was the Chief Rabbi of Prague. Rabbi David Oppenheim is remembered as both a most prolific writer and also as a bibliophile obsessed with augmenting his collection. Years after his death his collection, which consisted of cabalistic, theological, Talmudic, philosophical, mathematical and medical books, was acquired by Oxford University‘s Bodleian Library. That acquisition helps explain why the Bodleian library claims to hold the best collection of Hebrew and Yiddish manuscripts in the world. Furthermore, that collection and others like it are one of the reasons why Oxford is the great university which it is. And it must have been because of being the great university that it is that Peter Singer studied philosophy at Oxford. So perhaps one cannot escape one‘s history when pursuing philosophy.

Likewise we at the AAPAE perhaps also cannot escape our history. Our association started nearly eighteen years ago as a colloquium concerned with the teaching of applied ethics. And it did so here at the University of Sydney‘s Women‘s College. One of the speakers at that colloquium was Dr Simon Longstaff who soon became the first president of the AAPAE and will be one of our keynote speakers at our forthcoming annual conference. Others who will be attending our conference were also at that colloquium. And so we are coming back after a number of years to the University of Sydney; but while we are coming back to the University of Sydney we have to create something for the future if we are to have a future.

There are different ways in which we could create something for our future. One way though would be to emulate Peter Singer‘s illustrious ancestor, Rabbi David Oppenheim, and to create something Oxford would desire. That is by no means beyond our reach. After all, if we contribute outstanding research wouldn‘t Oxford University want it? And others too?

A new book, Business as a Profession? (Lambert Academic 2010), by David Ardagh, argues that the case for the practice of business being a profession, made by N. Bowie, the late R. Solomon, and others, is not successful. It is worth serious consideration however, and in many ways business already comes close. As Solomon argued, “professionalism” is the rule rather than the exception in business, and what he called “business scum” are parasites on the main body.

Business is now conducted within what Shaw and Barry in Moral Issues in Business call a “State Welfare Capitalist” (SWC) system which is increasingly global. Although acceptable, SWC is not without drawbacks, including some general difficulties for, and pressures on, professionals embedded within SWC organisations. These stem from the arguably unfair global trade rules, noted by Oxfam, and more recently by Pogge; from other business practices and institutions, such as use of tax havens, noted by Comisar; from the prevalence of caveat emptor presuppositions in much business dealing; and from the fact that a professional may be trained in one country of origin but thereafter work in others, for businesses with radically different needs and rules.

The underlying ethical approach presupposed is Neo Aristotelian Virtue Ethics, of the M. Nussbaum type. By this is meant: Ethics seen as based on a “folk” Philosophical Anthropology – starting from molar human capacities end/objects, and their needs for perfecting virtues, ordered to wellbeing. Politics is seen as suspended from Ethics. A legitimate state enables its citizens to attain their well-being through attaining threshold levels of capacity perfection, in different ways and degrees, depending on the need being physical, social or personal; or basal, eudaimonic, or subjective (A. Walsh (1997)). All SWC organisations, practices, and institutions should be suspended from ethics, /politics, and social policy. The business corporation is in part the recipient of a social concession to exist and operate within the law in return for perpetuity, limited liability, and other prerogatives, as J. Dine has argued in The Governance of Corporate Groups.

A quasi-personal model of organisational moral agency is introduced to guide the comparison of business practices, institutions and corporations with their professional counterparts. In the model, it is possible to locate six features of organisational activity of quasi-persons which carry over from natural persons‘ actions to artificial quasi-persons: there is a directing entity with a joint goal; the director entity uses subordinate capacities/ role incumbents to do the work with the enabling help of other entities/ groups; a joint ethical decision procedure is used; there is a resultant action; there are other persons or quasi-persons whose wellbeing is impacted; and the action takes place in a political/legal state context. The attributes of professionals/professions and business people/businesses can be loosely compared using this template.

The application suggests twenty attributes relevant to whether a practice and its peak institution meet the more specific, normatively nuanced, sense of profession. The main missing features in business are lack of : required, tested, uniform, theoretic and practical competences; a uniform enforced code of ethical conduct targeted on meeting client need, with gazetted expulsion and fine for malpractice; and a special quasi-monopolistic grant of authority or licence to practice issued by society to practice in certain arenas. Overall, the resultant comparison suggests that the goals of both overlap but businesses are targeted on permissible wants, not just normatively warranted special needs. The latter‘s satisfaction has to be via specialisation and informational asymmetry, and fiduciary relationships governed by ethical codes. The role structures are different as to their directing goal. Monetary profit from transactions is more central as a directing, operating and enabling goal of businesses than professions. The decision methods and results need not be qualitatively different, but the relation to other players is different with respect to the prohibition of monopoly (prohibited for business; encouraged or permitted for professions). The reach of state law is theoretically comparable, but in practice business – especially large international business – gets away with ethical misconduct through many forms of unjust resource extraction and tax evasion to the tune of trillions. This in turn causes extreme harm to states, robbed of necessary funds for the creation of public infrastructure meeting basal needs.

With robust changes in global governance, corporate law, and redesign of Anglo American corporate forms, with an eye on business entities like Mondragon CC (see S. Turnbull), and the recognition of the potential of Employee Stock Option Plans (see K. Woldring), business could be democratised, brought into line at global institutional level with ethical/justice expectations, and be ethically more accountable to society. But ironically this democratising development would block further assimilation to professions, in that until professions can share their specialised expertise more widely, (e.g. with preventative health via the internet), and ―putting themselves out of business,‖ the informational asymmetry problem will remain.

There have been an increasing number of research studies that have informed us that whistleblowing is the most effective way to identify wrongdoing in our organisations.

The most impressive is a recent study of whistleblowing in the Australian public sector. This research comprised eight surveys across the public service, the largest of which sent out 23,177 questionnaires to public servants in 118 agencies. 7663 public servants responded. The research was organised by fourteen state and the federal government ombudsman and anti-corruption agencies, along with five universities. The evidence that whistle-blowing is the most effective approach to identifying wrongdoing came from the surveys sent to managers and ethics case handlers. Some 765 respondents rated reporting of wrongdoing by employees as more effective than any other method for identifying wrongdoing, including routine internal controls, audits, or even management observation.

Surveys on fraud in the private sector conducted by the big accounting companies confirm that whistleblowing is the most effective way to stop wrongdoing. For instance, Price Waterhouse Cooper’s 2007 survey on economic crime, based on interviews in over 5,400 companies located in 40 countries found that whistleblowers reported 43% of fraud identified in companies. Professional auditors were able to detect only 19%. A 2006 survey by KPMG found that 46% of fraud is reported by employees rather than by internal controls and audits.

Researchers at the Chicago Graduate School of Business and the Universities of Toronto and Michigan have drawn up a “top ten” of the most active fraud detectors.

The study analysed 230 cases of alleged corporate fraud in U.S companies between 1996 and 2004. Topping the list of fraud detectors were employees, followed by the media, then non-financial market regulators, analysts, auditors, strategic players, the Securities and Exchange Commission (in the U.S), shareholders, professional service firms and, lastly, short sellers.

The willingness of people to report fraud does not necessarily tell us that wrongdoing by the organisation itself, if reported, will be acted on, But it does tell us that there are people in organisations willing to speak out. Such a conclusion is readily acceptable, not only from the above empirical evidence but also from research that has found that most of us value working for ethical organisations. Delany and Sockell found in a 1992 survey of over 1000 respondents that people whose employers provide formal ethical training have positive perceptions of their company’s ethical position, as well as higher job satisfaction. Valentine and Fleischman’s 2004 survey of over 300 business professionals obtained similar results. Such a preference would encourage people to speak out. Many reasons can explain why people do reveal wrongdoing. No doubt one of them is that they believe that they will be fairly treated by an organisation with a reputation for ethical management. Another however, could be the assertion, which has some basis in empirical research, that we are naturally ethical.

research that has found that most of us value working for ethical organisations. Delany and Sockell found in a 1992 survey of over 1000 respondents that people whose employers provide formal ethical training have positive perceptions of their company’s ethical position, as well as higher job satisfaction. Valentine and Fleischman’s 2004 survey of over 300 business professionals obtained similar results. Such a preference would encourage people to speak out. Many reasons can explain why people do reveal wrongdoing. No doubt one of them is that they believe that they will be fairly treated by an organisation with a reputation for ethical management. Another however, could be the assertion, which has some basis in empirical research, that we are naturally ethical.

The proposition that that we are intrinsically cooperative, and to some extent altruistic receives extensive support in recent evolutionary psychology literature. Even Darwin argued that our evolutionary history will have built into us a series of ethical values that we are social animals, developing feelings of sympathy, obedience to a leader, faithfulness to the group, defending and aiding other members. All of which he argues would support the group in its competition for food and even survival.

To translate these findings into teaching content would be worthwhile, but still insufficient. For whistleblowers do suffer. “They pay a terrible price” says Alford (2001). He tells us:

“The average length of time between blowing the whistle and being fired was about two years. Little of this time was taken up with appeals. Rather, most… was spent waiting for time to pass until management could adequately disconnect the act of whistleblowing from the act of retaliation.”

There are many studies which confirm the widely held opinion that whistle-blowers experience a strong retaliation from their employing organisation. And from fellow employees. If we are to teach strengthening of ethical practices then we must inform students how to avoid the retaliation. And that requires us at minimum, to know and teach the legislation that is supposed to protect whistle-blowers.

It is legislation with erratic coverage, however, and even where it exists, only partially effective in both the private and public sectors. That also has been proven. One major piece of evidence is that Australia is the only industrialised country with no legislative protection for its national civil servants. There is whistleblowing legislation in every state in Australia.

None of it is rated as very effective, being for the most part legislation designed to give the political appearance that action is being taken, but lacking the administrative machinery to ensure that action takes place. Politicians do not like whistleblowers, for they expose issues on which the public expect a political response. NSW, which possibly has a greater need than any other state, is currently entertaining a Parliamentary proposal to scale back its existing (ineffective) legislation.

If we are to encourage undergraduates in our colleges and universities, or employees in the work place, to blow the whistle, then it is incumbent on us to teach them how to protect themselves.

One obvious consequence of the failure to assign administrative responsibility is that reporting a wrong by a whistleblower does not necessarily ensure that it is corrected. And this turns out to be a further complication of the whistleblowing course. It also becomes a decision on the part of the teacher or trainer in ethics on whether the defects in the legislation are pointed out to students as one way to build a consensus aimed at strengthening the legislation. In a recent article Laurie Oaks noted that not only are whistleblowers treated as savagely as they ever were but that the general public do not appear to care. It could be well argued that if whistleblowing is the most effective way of identifying wrongs, and has the potential to reduce the extent of unethical behaviour, then the need for reform of the legislation is a near obligatory component of an ethics course.

In any case, regardless of the validity or otherwise of these underlying questions the statement that whistle-blowing is the most effective way to identify wrong-doing is sufficiently well proven to suggest that the practice would rate a high order of priority in the teaching of any ethics course.

The Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics Sixteenth Annual Conference was hosted by the School of Policing Studies, Charles Sturt University in Goulburn from 9th — 11th June 2009 with the conference theme Professions in the Community. The AAPAE is indebted to Anna Corbo Crehan who convened the conference. Anna did a wonderful job and provided our association with an excellent conference.

Anna organized an impressive range of keynote speakers. These included Lyn Allison: a past leader of the Australian Democrats, John Pritchard: the Police Integrity Commissioner, Professor Colin Thomson: the Chair of the Australian Health Ethics Committee, Professor Gillian Cowlishaw, whose work examined the relationships between Indigenous and settler Australians, Dr Brian Steels, who is a Research Fellow at the Restorative Justice Research Unit at the Centre for Social and Community Research, Murdoch University, and Stephen Keim, who was the barrister for Dr. Mohamed Haneef. These keynote speakers along with the accompanying Plenary Sessions and other Conference Delegates’ Papers made for an excellent conference. However it is not my aim to offer a conference report. What I would like to do is to consider our conference alongside another applied ethics conference, and in doing so to attempt to say something about the AAPAE.

At just about the same time that my paper was accepted by our conference I had another paper accepted by the European Business Ethics Network Annual Research Conference which was hosted by the School of Management, Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel from 15th – 17th June 2009. I had never been to Beer-Sheva before but I did have some perceptions as to what it might be like. I had never been to Goulburn either. I had a whole lot of perceptions as to it mainly informed by the ongoing marketing of produce from the Goulburn valley. Yet, whilst I had perceptions galore, time seemed a problem: a few days after the end of our conference I would have to be at another on the other side of the planet; and shortly after that I was scheduled to lecture on our Singapore program. I contacted David our travel manager.

David is an unusual individual. He is extremely well read. Unlike many academic staff & students he regularly uses our University library. I should therefore not have been surprised at his rejoinder when I explained my travel plans to him. He informed me with some relish that the last Australians to seek transportation from Goulburn to Beer-Sheva were the Australian Light Horse along with their mounts in 1917. . . and proceeded to help make the travel arrangements.

It is of some interest to compare that EBEN conference with our conference. Both had logistic similarities. To get to Goulburn you flew to Canberra or Sydney and proceeded from there. To get to Beer-Sheva you flew to Tel Aviv and took the train to Beer-Sheva which is further south in the Negev desert, and not difficult to find, as that is where the train line ends.

At our conference Mr Alfie Walker of the Pejar Land Council performed the welcome to country, thanked the original owners, and spoke of some of them. At the EBEN conference, where the conference language was English, the theme was ‘Conflicts in The World of Business Ethics’. Yotam Lurie, in opening the conference, referred to the book of Genesis and the earlier residents of the city of Beer-Sheva, Abraham and Abimelech, and how they resolved their conflict over the available water. I was surprised to discover that Beer-Sheva is a far older city than Jerusalem. I was also intrigued to hear the Australian author David Malouf, in an interview on ABC radio on the 25th of September 2009, claim that cities created civilization as they forced strangers – such as Abraham and Abimelech initially were – to exist together as neighbours.

Most of the participants at our AAPAE conference were Australians. The EBEN conference was dominated by the Europeans. I have never visited Europe and had never encountered them en masse before. I spent a lot of time enviously admiring the most elegant attire of the men, particularly those from Italy, Spain and Portugal. Back in Goulburn I had felt comfortable: alongside them I felt shabby.

The EBEN conference was a larger conference than our conference, but not much larger. It did though allow EBEN to offer three simultaneous sessions where we only offered two. Nearly all of the papers at our AAPAE conference were secular. At the EBEN conference papers on topics such as Islamic banking, Jewish law and whistle-blowing, and corporate perspectives from Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae were not uncommon.

Goulburn is a small town by Australian standards. Beer-Sheva is one of Israel’s biggest cities. But with Israel being such a very small place Beer-Sheva’s population is not much larger than the suburb I live in. And in both Goulburn and Beer-Sheva welcoming functions were arranged by the respective mayors. Indeed, what struck me about these conferences was not the differences which were superficial but the similarities. When I was sitting in a conference session listening to a paper being delivered, or between sessions drinking coffee with other conference delegates, I could have been at either conference. The similarities overwhelmed any differences: at both places people interested in applied ethics had gathered together to address this topic. And at both places the discussions were of a very similar standard. As Australians we tend to knock ourselves. We highlight what could have been done better. But in benchmarking our conference against that EBEN conference we have little reason to be critical of ourselves. The EBEN organizers believed they had organized an excellent conference. They had. And so had we.

It would be remiss of me not to mention one other thing. I attended both conferences to further my understanding of applied ethics which I did. But at both conferences part of that understanding was provided not by what happened at the conference itself, but by what happened in going to the actual conferences. To get to Goulburn I had to drive past Lake George. Lake George is 25 kilometres long and 10 kilometres wide. It is also bonedry. It has been for years now. It is very hard to stare at it, to think of everything that must have been associated with the lake when it was a lake, and not to start thinking about environmental ethics. To get to Ben Gurion University of the Negev you walk through Beer-Sheva. It is an interesting city, but it is not a pretty place. It is dominated by drab, concrete apartment blocks built as public housing projects in the early 1950s to house refugees from North Africa. It is a desert town. There is a lot of space and the streets are very wide. There is little vegetation. It is very hard to walk along those streets while staring at those ugly concrete buildings and not to think of the aesthetic dimensions in creating communities. Both of these areas fall within the preserve of applied ethics, and in both there is much work to be done.

Michael Schwartz, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Introduction:

Undoubtedly there are advantages to continuity. If not there seems no reason for us to meet annually as an association. One such advantage would be being informed by our past. Regarding that past I would like to return to the Presidential Address made by Chris Provis in 2005 to the AAPAE at the University of South Australia. In his Presidential Address Provis stated that “we have seen some tension between liberal, western policy and some Islamic communities and countries about values and lifestyle” (Provis, 2005, p. 1), with such tension “especially salient at present” (Provis, 2005, p. 1). In this context, Provis noted, “we see traditional ethical problems about toleration” (2005, p. 1). Provis (2005) argued for the necessity of dialogue that focused, not solely on interest, but more fundamentally on positions. Such positions inform those “values and ethical commitments” (Provis, 2005, p. 1) from which both actions and decisions emerged. My intention today is to further contemplate the realities of such positions, bound up as they are with “beliefs about what an outcome ought to be” (Provis, 2005, p. 2), and their implications for tolerance. Provis referred with no distinction to “Islamic communities and countries” (2005, p. 1). I do though believe that there is an important distinction to be made between communities and countries and that it has implications for a position. I will return to that.

Provis (2005) refers to both interests and positions with reference to a book by Fisher and Ury (1983). They explained that whilst “your ego becomes identified with your position” (Fisher and Ury, 1983, p. 5) that position “provides an anchor in an uncertain and pressured situation” (Fisher and Ury, 1983, p. 4). But that anchor can easily convert to a trap exacerbating tensions such as those between western policy and Islamic communities and countries which Provis (2005) mentioned.

Provis in his 2006 Presidential Address to the AAPAE used “some historical examples” (2006, p. 1). In this address I too will utilise some historical examples. I will argue that the history of the last century readily created specific positions. Whilst dialogue will always be necessary, what seems more essential is the recognition that much of the tension exists due to the creation of positions which are artificial. Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995) described a singular Other who is fundamentally different from oneself. Individually that might be so. Communally it seems debatable. In communal terms the Other might be fundamentally the same but entrapped in an historical position which creates the illusion of difference. Let me present you with an historical scenario which illustrates that.

A Scenario:

There is a country seemingly inhabited by strangers. A country which did not exist until the 1947 Partition created it. A country whose name was only coined shortly before the Partition that created it. Prior to Partition most of its inhabitants could not conceive of such a country existing. Many fled when it was created. And the land which that country occupies continues to be bitterly disputed by conflicting faiths with ancient claims.

That country is located astride the crossroads of historic trade routes. It has been conquered many times by different conquerors. In the first millennium before the Christian era it was conquered by the Persians and later the Greeks. In more modern times it was conquered by the Turks and the British. Today both its military and its religious fundamentalists play a major role in its internal affairs. Several former army generals have at different times ruled this country.

That country has a star on its flag and has had a female prime minister. It is a democratic republic with a state religion, where the religious political parties wield growing influence. It has competed in the Olympic Games, and its top industries are the telecom industry and the software industry. Close to half a million of its citizens are expatriates living in the United States of America.

That country is situated on a dry land with little rainfall. In the south there is the desert: in the north steep icy peaks. In that country is one of the world’s earliest known cities, and many major archaeological sites. These sites, and the ancient civilization they represent, attract many tourists to that country.

That country has much poverty, but has also enjoyed rapid economic growth. Throughout its history it has been engaged in numerous military disputes with its vastly more populous neighbour state. Despite the needs of many of its inhabitants for so many basic commodities, it has used its scarce resources to create a nuclear arsenal. And it is home to a thriving arms industry.

That country has since the early 1950s enjoyed a strategic relationship with the United States of America, and is considered despite some tensions to be a strategic ally. It is the recipient of billions of dollars of American military aid, a fact which some investigative journalists have bemoaned. It is perceived to be a key United States ally in its global war on terror. It shares intelligence with United States agencies. It provides logistical support, and has helped identify and detain citizens.

That country has in some of the areas which it governs a strong separatist movement. There a separate ethnic entity seeks to create its own homeland. Such aspirations have been suppressed by the military of that country. That country has also created wildlife sanctuaries and game reserves to protect threatened species.

That country you might think is the Jewish state of Israel. It well might be, but it is not. It is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, although one might be forgiven for the confusion. Each of the examples I supplied above – and there are many more such examples – apply equally to Pakistan and Israel, bar one: Israel has far less of its citizens living in the United States. But then Israel itself has a very small population which explains that singular difference.

The reality though is that both Pakistan and Israel came into existence at about the same time in the remarkably similar circumstance of minorities contemplating a majority; and they continue to exist in similar circumstances. Not the least of these circumstances is that the creation of Pakistan led to the flight of 8,500,000 Sikh and Hindu refugees from Pakistan to India and 6,500,000 Muslim refugees from India to Pakistan (Peters, 2002). In turn the creation of Israel led to the flight of over 600,000 Muslim refugees from Israel to the Arab states and the flight of over 800,000 Jewish refugees from the Arab states to Israel (Shulewitz, 2000). In both India and Palestine within a nine month period the problems of governance after the British departed “was ‘resolved’ by the partition of the land on the basis of ethnicity” (Greenberg, 2005, p. 89). Those partitions created an Other. They also created positions from which to contemplate that Other, but not to accommodate the Other.

If the nineteenth century was a story about migration, the twentieth century was a story about refugees. One year before those partitions of India and Palestine Europe witnessed the German refugee crisis with “between twelve and fifteen million ethnic Germans” (Frank, 2006, p. 231) fleeing Poland and Czechoslovakia. Numerous other examples exist (Morawska, 2000). I will though restrict my historical examples to the partitions of India and Palestine and those refugees. The plight of nearly all these refugees is largely a direct cost of the creation of new states. In this paper I consider some ethical implications of such creations which entrap communities in positions which have specific “beliefs about what an outcome ought to be” (Provis, 2005, p. 2).

The Nation & the Imaginary Community:

The ethnic Germans lost their homelands in Poland and Czechoslovakia for the same reason that, amongst numerous other ancient communities, Karachi’s Hindus, Baghdad’s Jews, and Beersheba’s Muslims – all three a dominant group in each of those cities – lost their homelands. They did so because of European intellectuals who in the formative years of the 20th century, ignoring economic reality and ongoing traditions, but stressing “linguistic and cultural differences between peoples . . . subscribed to the proposition that the right to national self-determination was a fundamental moral principle” (Johnson, 1983, p. 37). This was despite some, such as Karl Popper, arguing “that self-determination was a self-defeating principle” (Johnson, 1983, p. 37) as it inevitably created additional minorities. Historically it is worth noting that Benjamin Disraeli, Britain’s most cosmopolitan prime minister, was hostile to nationalism which he saw as a threat “to the future of European civilization” (Bogdanor, 1975, p. xv). Nonetheless, supposedly as self-determination was a fundamental moral principle we witnessed early in the last century the acceptance of nationhood, and simultaneously with that the emergence of the modern nation state.

One of the strongest arguments for the ethics of nationalism was made by David Miller (1988). Miller argues that “nationality is essentially a subjective phenomenon, constituted by the shared beliefs of a set of people” (1988, p. 648). In doing so Miller highlights a significant and often raised problem. He explains that whilst the existence of a nation depends on its members having shared beliefs it is not required that those beliefs should be true as myths will do. This “makes the question about the ethical significance of nationality a particularly pointed one. If national allegiance can be based on false beliefs, how is it possible for a purportedly rational institution such as morality to accommodate them?” (Miller, 1988, p. 648).

Miller attempts to resolve this conundrum by differentiating between ethical universalism and ethical particularism. The former he argues, akin to that of the subject “in Rawl’s notion of the original position” (Miller, 1988, p. 649), has a moral subject “not fundamentally committed to any particular persons, groups, practices, institutions” (Miller, 1988, p. 649). In contrast to this, ethical particularism has a moral subject “deeply embedded in social relationships. . . . (where) . . . the rationality in question cannot be that of abstract principles” (Miller, 1988, p. 650).

Miller, while not disputing that universalism must be more impersonal than particularism, does not believe that presents any disadvantage to his use of ethical particularism when considering nationality. This is because universalism’s moral subject “as an abstract individual” (Miller, 1988, p. 649) cannot, given that status, claim a commitment to any specific community. Indeed, such an individual can see himself as “disengaged” (Miller, 1988, p. 649) from any such commitments “in arriving at his most basic principles” (Miller, 1988, p. 649).

But where a moral subject is “embedded in social relationships” (Miller, 1988, p. 650) that subject will partly be “defined by its relationships” (Miller, 1988, p. 650) and the accompanying obligations and rights. As such those commitments “form a basic element of personality. To divest oneself of such commitments would be . . . to change one’s identity” (Miller, 1988, p. 649). Thus, under ethical universalism the moral agent can arrive at his or her moral principles as an autonomous individual. But under ethical particularism whilst “the agent can still aspire to rationality” (Miller, 1988, p. 650) any such a rationality “cannot be that of an abstract principle. Rather it consists in the capacity to reflect on existing commitments” (Miller, 1988, p. 650). Because of that Miller asserts “that if nationality is going to have an ethical significance, it must be from a particularist perspective” (Miller, 1988, p. 651) where as an ethical subject the abstract individual has been replaced “with the embedded individual” (Miller, 1988, p. 653).

One could protest that this individual is embedded in a community with no nationalistic aspirations. Miller’s appeal to “social relationships” (1988, p. 650) cannot easily posit national relationships; such relationships within a community are not though difficult to conjecture. Examples of such communities are obvious in social organisations, the workplace, and elsewhere. And individuals do differentiate between their community and their country. Hence, my misgivings: Provis does not distinguish between “Islamic communities and countries” (2005, p. 1). But can one construe, as Miller does, that ones social relations signify nationality? They well might suggest many things while failing to suggest any nationalistic imperative.

One could also protest that this might not resolve the problem as that embedded individual could still, conceivably, be defined by mythical relationships, and as one moves from ones own community to the larger society such relationships are bound to become increasingly mythical. Miller attempts to circumvent this criticism by arguing that if an embedded individual is embedded in a nation then what is essential is that the stories the nation tells about its past are “generally believed” (Miller, 1988, p. 656). That of course does little to answer how national allegiance can be accommodated by morality. Stories abound. Some relate to communities, and some relate to a nation. And none of this means that any individual is embedded in a nation as opposed to his or her community.

However, Miller further circumvents this by acknowledging that while stories are “to a large extent mythical” (Miller, 1988, p. 656) those stories provide the “national character” (Miller, 1988, p. 656). And Miller requires a national character as without it there are no national boundaries but only “de facto boundaries between states” (Miller, 1988, p. 656) because there are no nations on either side of the boundary. But there are all sorts of stories which create all sorts of boundaries. Different neighbourhoods often have their stories, as they do their boundaries.

Miller does acknowledge that often “nationalities are heterogeneous populations, masquerading as ethnic groups” (Miller, 1988, p. 656) where the largest ethnic group takes precedence over smaller ethnic groups in dictating that masquerade. Such ethnicity in some cases, is “as ‘fictitious’ as national identity” (Miller, 1988, p. 658) where an ethnic group’s beliefs regarding its past are not believable. All of that assumes an individual embedded in some group. None of that, though, suggests the predominance of a nation over a community for an individual.

But perhaps I am being unfair to Miller. Individuals abroad do perceive themselves foremost in national terms. Such perspectives regarding nationalism, according to Archard, comprise “a normative claim” (1996, p. 217) which presumably was promoted by those European intellectuals discussed by Johnson (1983). Here, firstly, “political communities ought to be nationally homogenous” (Archard, 1996, p. 217). And, secondly, those “national communities are entitled to independent, sovereign selfgovernment” (Archard, 1996, p. 217). This seemingly presents a circular argument equating a self-governing political community with a national community but providing no valid reasons as to why this is called for; nor what this might benefit. On the other hand it does commit national communities to different positions along with the accompanying position’s viewpoint. As such it must present problems casting conflicting national communities as an Other, and in doing so furthering those tensions which Provis (2005) highlighted.

Miller, however, pursues such a normative claim where his attempted justification of nationalism is simultaneously an attempted justification of ethical particularism. He argues that by beginning with “universalist criteria, we shall not end up with nationality” (Miller, 1988, p. 662). However “if we start out with selves already heavily laden with particularist commitments, including national loyalties, we may be able to rationalise those commitments from a universalist perspective” (Miller, 1988, p. 662). My problem is that such commitments need not include national loyalties. But, if they did, ethical particularism must inevitably lead to a particular nationalism as such commitments highlight what divides a nation rather than what unifies it. Furthermore, I suspect that those shared beliefs which are untrue are far more ethically problematic than Miller allows particularly as they are liable to be manipulated to the detriment of certain groups.

Nationalist Theories:

Nonetheless Miller does claim that for nationality “to have an ethical significance, it must be from a particularist perspective” (1988, p. 651). From such a perspective, Archard argues that in contrast to that of Rawlsian liberalism, communitarians might well recognise “the nation as a community” (Archard, 1996, p. 216) although it is equally open to them “to recommend something other than nationality as the proper principle of political community” (Archard, 1996, p. 216) as ways exist whereby the traditions and cultures of different groups can be protected “without endorsing the nationalist doctrine of the nationstate as a required conjunction” (Archard, 1996, p. 217). If, as I have argued, and as seems perfectly valid, an embedded individual is primarily embedded in the community then achieving such an outcome without creating nation-states is crucial. Archard does not explore the reality of such ways although given the tensions Provis (2005) notes they are of significance.

In considering their significance it is important to consider the possible relationship between nationalism and territory given Miller’s claims regarding the ethical significance of national boundaries. Boundaries divide land. They create partitions. And there seemingly is widespread acceptance of Meisels claim that “nationalism . . . involves land” (2003, p. 31).

Meisels argues that nationalism can be defended “on liberal premises” (2003, p. 34) by “asserting that individuals have an interest in culture because it is a prerequisite for their freedom” (2003, p. 34). Here, contrary to Miller’s assertions, the individuals are not embedded in any culture but require such a national culture, along with its accompaniments such as language and lifestyle, if they are to attain individual freedom. The individual thus require an historical past to emerge as an individual in the contemporary world.

This historical aspect is important to Meisels who, citing theorists researching Australian aboriginal rights, writes “that for the aboriginal people of Australia, history is morally relevant” (2003(a), p. 66). Australian aboriginals would require recognition of their past to emerge as individuals within the wider Australian community. But that does not require, although Meisels might argue that it does, the existence now of a specific nationstate. It presumably would though require some larger recognition than is currently given to Australian aboriginal culture. At the start of a conference such as ours we, to my mind at least, somewhat blithely acknowledge the aboriginals as the traditional owners of this land. There seems something disingenuous about such an acknowledgement which I suspect is not unrelated to our unwillingness to define the full implications of traditional ownership for future ownership. A current example of this might be if Chinalco, owned by the Chinese government, were to gain full control of Rio Tinto which currently has agreements with traditional owners such as the Martu people in Western Australia. Another example might be the current Queensland claims upon Aboriginal land for environmental purposes regardless of traditional ownership.

Meisels thus presents a very different perspective to Miller but comes to a remarkably similar conclusion with the necessity of the individual embedded in the community. There is a difference though. For Miller if the individual ceases to be embedded in that community the individual ceases to be that individual: for Meisels the individual cannot become an individual until the individual is embedded in the community.

What is crucial in differentiating these two aspects is their perspective. Miller has a forward looking perspective. Miller’s particularism has an individual defined by his or her social relationships which requires a nation. Meisels’ perspective however is backward looking. Meisels’ individual required a culture; Meisels’ individual required a past; Meisels’ individual required a nation: but they do not require a nation now as they have a past and a culture. Although they, with that past and that culture, might exist in a nation, that need not be one where nationalism dominates political associations. Where it does conflicts between nations “admit of no political solution which does not violate the integrity and character” (Goldin, 2005, p. 290) of those nations. For Goldin, much like Popper, such problems are only “reproduced, not solved, by future partitions” (Goldin, 2005, p. 292) as those partitions continue to allow nationalism to dominate political associations. The question then is what Archard (1996) alluded to: what alternatives exist in organising a political community? In answering that question it seems worth noting that “MacIntyre’s political thought is best understood in terms of its opposition to, and as an attempt to describe an alternative to . . . the state” (Murphy, 2003, p. 152). Any such an attempt is therefore not a solitary enterprise.

Some alternatives:

Michael Walzer embraces a particularism which changes the dynamics of this situation. Walzer introduces us to the very scenario which pre-occupied Goldin (2005): minorities subject to the majority, and denied access to civil society. Such groups he terms the tribes who he sees sustained by a MacIntyrean narrative which while disguised as a lullaby preaches hatred. Walzer explains why these tribes cannot be contained “within established multi-national states” (2006, p. 64) and why selfdetermination is a valid outcome for such tribes. And yet he, in keeping with Goldin and others, asks where this ends with “smaller and smaller groups claiming the right of selfdetermination; and the politics that results will be noisy, incoherent, unstable, and deadly” (Walzer, 2006, p. 70). Although for Walzer options exist to expose the tribes to modernity as “confronted with modernity, all the human tribes are endangered species” (2006, p. 72) as is the case with Australian aboriginals. Such an endangerment undoubtedly presents as many risks as it presents opportunities.

Regarding these options Walzer contemplates why historically the tribes survived as tribes antagonistic to other tribes and sees the reason as fear. He relates how Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan argued that the religious wars of Hobbes time were motivated by fear. Hobbes thought “an absolute sovereign” (Walzer, 2006, p. 77) could remove that fear; although, what eventually removed this threat “was not so much political absolutism as religious toleration” (Walzer, 2006, p. 77). Walzer argues that we need to emulate that: we need to be tolerant of what he terms the tribes. Admittedly, he did express concern at the validity of ongoing partitions but sees no alternative to abandoning “coercion and allow(ing) the tribes first to separate and then to negotiate their own voluntary . . . incorporation” (Walzer, 2006, p. 78). Walzer insists that historically this has always been the case with Sweden, for example, having to allow Norway its independence as a prelude to the eventual Scandinavian cooperation.

Walzer argues that it is impossible for any regime to destroy tribalism. Regimes, he writes, are replaced: tribalism though is an ongoing commitment of individuals to their own past with “the parochialism … that it breeds …. permanent” (Walzer, 2006, p. 81); and if that “parochialism is threatened” (Walzer, 2006, p. 81) it becomes more entrenched. Nevertheless, Walzer claims that this parochialism is an artificial construct within contemporary society where the self “is capable of division and even thrives on it” (2006, p. 82) due to those opportunities for both social and cultural differentiation. But this can only occur “under conditions of security” (Walzer, 2006, p. 82) where an individual has the ability to construct a multifaceted social identity. For Walzer “when identities are multiplied, passions are divided” (2006, p. 82) with the understandable outcome of a more secure world.

Amartya Sen reflecting on his childhood memories “linked with the politics of partition” (2006, p. 2) corroborates Walzer’s (2006) sentiments. Sen describes the sudden violence which erupted on hitherto harmonious communities, and how that violence was instigated by converting “peaceable” (2006, p. 172) Hindus and Muslims “into dedicated thugs” (2006, p. 172) by making them regard “themselves only as Hindus or only as Muslims … not Indians” (2006, p. 172). Similarly Naim Kattan reflects that his childhood friends in Baghdad before the expulsion of the Jews “were neither Jew nor Muslim. We were Iraqis” (Kattan, 2007, p. 15). Sen discusses the various aspects of a heritage but expresses no surprise at the “unique prioritization of religion” (2006, p. 15) by religious fundamentalists as it achieves their objective of “incarcerating people within the enclosure of a singular identity” (2006, p. 15).

Regarding the attainment of a more secure world Walzer considers the “political structures” (2006, p. 82) which best accommodate this outcome. While Walzer concedes these vary he does stipulate certain desired criteria. These “are their capacity to promote peace, distributive justice, cultural pluralism, and individual freedom” (Walzer, 2005, p. 171). Walzer identifies two polar extremes: the one extreme is the “unified global state … like Immanuel Kant’s ‘world republic’” (2005, p. 171); the other extreme is a “radically decentred” (2005, p. 172) world. Walzer argues that we are not at this latter extreme but close to it which explains many of our current global ills, such as “insecurity and fear” (2005, p. 173); and given Walzer’s perceptions as to the consequences of fear this is an extreme he would like the world to avoid.

However, for Walzer, the other extreme is not tenable. He argues that such an extreme would require both loyal citizens and the ability to be able to create a political culture “if it were to sustain itself over time” (Walzer, 2005, p. 176). Although, that would seem currently impossible given “the range of cultural and religious differences” (Walzer, 2005, p. 176). Walzer thus argues for something between these extremes and that “toleration” (Walzer, 1997, p. 2) is required for such an option to both emerge and survive.

Regarding toleration Walzer compares consociations such as Switzerland with nationstates such as Germany, and writes how some in the “Zionist movement in the 1930s and 1940s argued for an Arab-Jewish consociation” (Walzer, 1997, p. 41) rather than a Jewish nation-state. Consociations Walzer describes as “a morally closer . . . heir to the multinational empire” (1997, p. 22) which “is a heroic program” (1997, p. 22) as it seeks imperial status without imperial rulers. Groups here are not tolerated by some emperor: rather, “they have to tolerate one another” (Walzer, 1997, p. 22) which given the limits of goodwill depends on agreed “institutional arrangements” (Walzer, 1997, p. 24). Nationstates, however, have a dominant group who sought statehood as “an engine for national reproduction” (Walzer, 1997, p. 25). Walzer writes that such nation-states can “tolerate minorities” (1997, p. 25) but that this tolerance unlike the ancient multinationals does not extend to any “regional autonomy” (1997, p. 25); especially as what is tolerated in a nation-state is not primarily the group, but the individual. Indeed, such a focus in a nation-state can pose a threat to the viability of some groups. In doing so it presumably forces those most committed to such groups to oppose any such tolerance which bears out what Sen (2006) asserted regarding the motivation of fundamentalists.

Nation-state or consociations

Returning then to Archard’s (1996) question as to the alternatives which exist in organising a political community, Walzer presents two viable alternatives: the nation-state or a consociation. In Palestine in the 1940s, as Walzer (1997) recounts, some Zionist leaders argued against a nation-state and sought a consociation with Palestine’s Arabs. In this they failed. In India in the 1940s Muslim leaders such as Mohammed Ali Jinnah demanded a separate Muslim nation-state called Pakistan, although not all agreed. Jinnah’s demands were vigorously resisted by India’s Hindus. Nehru thought the very idea of Pakistan “absurd” (Weekes, 1964, p. 85). Gandhi insisted that “even if the whole of India burns, we shall not concede Pakistan, no, not if the Muslims demand it at the point of the sword” (Gandhi as quoted by Stephens, 1964, p. 206). In resisting this Nehru and Gandhi failed.

It is worth recalling that the Muslims arrived in India as western conquerors, and from the twelfth century until the eighteenth century, when the British came as even more recent western conquerors, ruled over much of India from Delhi. That is why it has been pointed out that in a predominantly Hindu nation the palaces have Muslim names. The concept of a Pakistan only arose with the realization that the British had not arrived to stay. Much of the same could be said regarding Palestine. Nevertheless, whilst “imperial rule is historically the most successful way of incorporating difference” (Walzer, 1997, p. 15) the British Empire no longer exists. Walzer insists that “established local minorities” (1997, p. 19) such as, presumably, Palestine’s Jews and India’s Muslims were “the great beneficiaries of the imperial regime” (1997, p. 19). However true that is, the departure of the British Empire led them to establish their own sovereign nation-states.

India was partitioned in 1947 by the British into a Muslim state and a Hindu state. Palestine was partitioned in 1922 by the British into Palestine and into the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan; with the former partitioned again in 1947 by the United Nations General Assembly into a Jewish state and an Arab state. It is debatable whether these partitions solved anything. They created the Palestinian refugee problem along with the destruction of ancient Jewish communities throughout the Middle East. Historians also claim that if Indians had accepted Dominion status rather than demanding independence the horrors of Partition would have been avoided (Rudolph and Rudolph, 2006); and the newly independent states of India and Pakistan would not have to have immediately created Ministries for Refugees to help those millions in their refugee camps (Khan, 2007).

And yet, despite such tragedies, there might be something much more fundamental. Provis in his 2006 AAPAE Presidential Address contemplated “cases of group conflict which involve differences of belief” (2006, p. 7). Indian historians reflecting on Partition write that “it took place in 1947 because it seemed the only way of alleviating the rivalry of Hindu and Muslim. But . . . far from laying discord to rest, it merely institutionalized that discord at an international level” (Page, Singh, Moon and Khosla, 2002, p. 1). Exactly the same could be said regarding the partition of Palestine. In effect both partitions committed the antagonists to specific conflicting group positions.

As I stated at the outset Provis in his 2005 Presidential Address argued for the necessity of dialogue that focused on positions. The Partitions created positions. Provis then concluded his 2006 Presidential Address asking “how we can combine the need for dialogue in times of group conflict, with personal commitment and intellectual integrity?” (2006, p. 7). Walzer, I believe, provides a reply. He identifies consociations where we are talking of coalitions, of alliances, of associations; of alternatives to those nation-states which often foster group conflict. And he urges the necessity for tolerance underwriting such consociations. But he augments this with a detailed study of Martin Buber, both a leading Zionist and an exponent of dialogue. Buber’s ongoing commitment to binationalism in Palestine both before and, in terms of Provis’ question more importantly, after partition, presents an individual who successfully answered Provis’ question. Walzer writes that binationalism in that place at that time might to some, although not to Buber, have seemed like “the triumph of moral principle over moral reality” (1988, p. 71). Although Buber, while intent on addressing the moral reality did not claim to have authority to sacrifice group interests to the moral demand. All Buber sought according to Walzer was to sustain “the critical argument” (1988, p. 79). As ethicists can we hope to do more?

References:

Archard, D. (1996). “Should Nationalists be Communitarians?”, Journal of Applied Philosophy 13:2, pp. 215-220.

Bogdanor, V. (1975). Introduction to Disraeli, B.: Lothair. Oxford University Press: London.

Fisher, R. and Ury, W. (1983). Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. Hutchinson: London.

Frank, M. (2006). “The New Morality – Victor Gollancz, ‘Save Europe Now’ and the German Refugee Crisis, 1945-46”, Twentieth Century British History 17:2, pp. 230-256.

Goldin, O. (2005). “Tamir, Rawls and the Temple Mount”, Journal of Applied Philosophy 22:3, pp. 289-298.

Greenberg, J. D. (2005). “Generations of Memory: Remembering Partition in India/Pakistan and Israel/Palestine”, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25:1, pp. 89-110.

Johnson, P. (1983). A History of The Modern World. Jonathan Ball Paperbacks: Johannesburg.

Kattan, N. (2007). Farewell, Babylon: Coming of Age in Jewish Baghdad. Souvenir Press: London.

Khan, Y. (2007). The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan. Yale University Press: New Haven.

Kymlicka, W. (1988). “Rawls on Teleology and Deontology”, Philosophy and Public Affairs 17:3, pp. 173-190.

Meisels, T. (2003). “Liberal Nationalism and Territorial Rights”, Journal of Applied Philosophy 20:1, pp. 31-43.

Meisels, T. (2003(a)). “Can Corrective Justice Ground Claims to Territory?”, The Journal of Political Philosophy 11:1, pp. 65-88.

Miller, D. (1988). “The Ethical Significance of Nationality”, Ethics 98:4, pp. 647-662.

Morawska, E. (2000). “Intended and Unintended Consequences of Forced Migrations: A Neglected Aspect of East Europe’s Twentieth Century History”, International Migration Review 34:4, pp. 1049-1087.

Page, D., Singh, A. I., Moon, P., and Khosla, G. D. (2002). The Partition Omnibus. Oxford University Press: New Delhi.

Murphy, M. C. (2003). “MacIntyre’s Political Philosophy” in Murphy, M. C. (ed.) Alasdair MacIntyre, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, pp. 152-175.

Peters, J. (2002). From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine. JKAP Publications: Chicago.

Provis, C. (2005). “Ethics and dialogue in religion and public policy” in Provis, C. and Harris, H. (eds.) Papers 12th Annual Conference, Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics, 28- 30 September 2005, UNISA, Adelaide http://business.unisa.edu.au/research/grewc/aapae

Provis, C. (2006). “Ethics, Groups and Belief” Presidential Address to the 13th Annual Conference, Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics, 12- 14th June 2006, UNSW, Sydney. http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/aapae/publications/pres_address2006.htm

Rudolph, L. I. and Rudolph, S. H. (2006). Post-modern Gandhi and Other Essays: Gandhi in the World and at Home. University of Chicago Press: Chicago.

Sen, A. (2006). Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. W. W. Norton & Co.: New York.

Shulewitz, M. H. (2000). The Forgotten Millions. Continuum: London.

Stephens, I. (1964). Pakistan: Old Country/New Nation. Penguin Books: London.

Stephens, I. (1968). The Pakistanis. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Walzer, M. (1988). The Company of Critics: Social Criticism and Political Commitment in the Twentieth Century. Basic Books: New York.

Walzer, M. (1997). On Toleration. Yale University Press: New Haven.

Walzer, M. (2005). Arguing about War. Yale University Press: New Haven.

Walzer, M. (2006). Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad. University of Notre Dame Press: Notre Dame.

Weekes, R. V. (1964). Pakistan: Birth and Growth of a Muslim Nation. D. van Nostrand Co.: Princeton, New Jersey.

Group conflict continues to be a salient issue. Problems that rational choice theory has in other areas are brought to prominence in group conflict, because the conflict often revolves around differences in people’s positions and beliefs, not just around their interests. The fact that people’s beliefs are closely associated with their group allegiances is the basis of some tactics of influence and manipulation. These tactics raise a variety of ethical concerns, ranging from concerns about hypocrisy to concerns about the harm they can do to individuals. The ethical issues cannot be resolved by rational choice theory, but will require us to address the ethical problems of reconciling belief commitments with commitments to peace and harmony.

In last year’s Presidential Address I tried to tie together some thoughts about ethics and dialogue in religion and public policy. I suggested that in the contemporary world it is important to consider ethical issues about group conflicts, and that some of the approaches to ethical issues which are shown in much recent public policy development fail to get to grips with some key ethical issues about conflict between groups.

In particular, I suggested that much public policy development focusses on issues to do with the interests of individuals and groups. One problem with that focus is that it does not deal effectively with group differences that are embodied in different ways of seeing the world, ways of seeing which may not correspond to factual differences but which are cognitive differences nonetheless. These differences are not easy to conceptualise as differences in interests, if interests are cashed out in terms of preferences, to be contrasted with cognitive differences.1 I suggested that we need to give some thought to the ethics of dialogue about different ways of seeing things. This year, I want to consider some different but related points still about ethical issues to do with group conflict.

First, however, it is worth noting that the issues are just as salient now as they were last September. In Iraq, we see continuing violence which is at least to a significant extent associated with sectarian religious commitments. In many other parts of the world we have seen riots or repression tied to religious or ethnic commitments. Even here, in Sydney, the Coogee riots of last December were notable enough to make front-page news in much of the world. One result was an announcement from the Federal government that nearly half-a-million dollars would be spent promoting respect and understanding amongst ethnic groups.

In what follows, I deal with such issues in abstract terms and with reference to some historical examples. The historical examples help to make the general points, I think, but limitations of space and time mean that I cannot also relate those general points to concrete examples from the contemporary world. I hope that it will not be hard for anyone to see how that can be done.

Groups, Decisions and Roles

When I noted last year that differences of religious belief may be an example of differences that sustain group conflict but which cannot easily be analysed in terms of interests, I used this as an example of the way that group “positions” may be important as a focus of conflict. Although it can often be good advice for a negotiator to focus on “interests” rather than “positions”, there are some conflicts where “positions” are very important. I noted the concerns people have and the decisions they make and the actions they carry out which emerge from values and ethical commitments, and that there is evidence that these are bound up with people’s positions and social identities.

It is not only differences of religious belief that may be associated with different group positions. The idea of “group identity” is well known, and so are such related ideas as “in-group” and “out-group”. They involve some significant cognitive effects, such as perception of oneself and one’s own group as different from another group, and failures to notice variations within the other group.3 These and related processes of “social categorisation” and “social identification” include forms of misperception that can sustain group conflict.4

The fact that such identity can play a significant role in group conflict can be seen as an instance of a more general claim that an individual’s social identity can play a significant role in their action and decision, and this is at odds with the view of rational choice theory that behaviour is to be explained primarily in terms of self-interest, or utility maximisation. A useful discussion about the difference is given by James Montgomery. He notes that rational choice theorists tend to model mutual cooperation and trust in terms of a repeated Prisoners’ Dilemma, where self-interested actors sustain cooperation through “calculative trust”: “I trust you because I calculate that your short-run benefit from an opportunistic defection is outweighed by your long-run benefit from continued cooperation.” However, he notes, “experimental evidence raises doubts whether cooperation in PDs is based upon calculative trust.” 5 He notes that the outcomes of Prisoners’ Dilemma trials are significantly affected by the instructions given to participants, even when the payoff matrix is not affected. If behaviour is primarily to be explained in terms of participants calculating how their interests are best served, it is difficult to see how factors other than the payoff matrix can have such a substantial effect.

What is especially notable is that the sorts of effects in question are produced by changes to instructions which seem relatively minor. For example, there are significant effects from labelling one course of action “cooperation”, rather than just identifying it by a number or a letter. In one notable experiment, some pairs of subjects were told that they were playing the “Wall Street Game”, and others that they were playing the “Community Game”, with no other differences between the situation they were presented with:

Given the usual game-theoretic presumption that labels are irrelevant, the experimental results are striking. While only one-third of the subjects in the Wall Street condition cooperated in the first period, more than two-thirds of the subjects in the Community condition did so.6

In some respects, this reminds us of work about the psychological phenomenon of “priming”, where “recently and frequently activated ideas come to mind more easily than ideas that have not been activated”.7 Some research has found that self-interest can be “primed”: when people were exposed to stimuli like conversations that highlighted considerations of self-interest for those present, they were more likely later to cite self-interest as a reason for a particular political position.8 However, Montgomery’s discussion may also remind us of the original work that was done on group identity. It came as something of a surprise to researchers to learn that inter-group rivalry and hostility did not arise only from competition for scarce resources or from incompatible goals. In “minimal group” studies, they found clear tendencies for people to favour members of their own groups in matters of resource allocation, even when the “group” in question was essentially a fictional construct, identified only some minor difference in description.

In both minimal group experiments, and in the Prisoners’ Dilemma simulations referred to by Montgomery, we see significant effects on people’s behaviour produced by apparently small variations in the way the situation is described. Montgomery suggests that the difficulties that rational choice theory has in explaining such phenomena might lead us to consider sociological “role theory” as a better alternative for conceptualising them. On this view, individuals view themselves as embodying socially constructed roles, partly because of the recurring need we have to understand our place in the world. We might then expect small cues to prompt us toward understanding ourselves and our position in the world in one way rather than another, and have a disproportionately large effect on our behaviour.

The idea that role theory can give a better theoretical account of some behaviour than rational choice theory does, is tied to reasons why rational choice theory may not give a good explanation of group conflict. In particular, it is tied to the fact that beliefs and positions can have effects which are difficult to explain by reference to calculation of interests. Small variations to instructions significantly affect people’s behaviour in simulations of group behaviour, just as they do in Prisoners’ Dilemma simulations. They seem to do so because they affect the extent to which people accept an identity which is tied to their membership of the group. But the result is that variations in belief which to outsiders seem quite small differences can be tied to significant differences in group membership. Such differences do not seem to be clearly related to utility-based calculation, but to do with differences in self-understanding and social identity. These differences are often reflected in differences of belief.

Group beliefs and politics

Because differences in description and belief are associated with differences in group membership, differences in belief can be of major significance in group politics. We know that there are substantial influences on members of groups to conform to norms and expectations about behaviour by group members.10 If there are pressures on individuals who are group members to conform to group norms, and if group membership is tied to certain kinds of belief commitments, then it is not surprising that group conflict provides fertile ground for persuasion and manipulation that are ethically problematic.

Ruth Grant argues that hypocrisy is inevitable in politics. Part of her argument effectively revolves around the fact that public politics involves group allegiance, together with espousal of the norms and standards that go with identity as a group member.11 Rather than showing genuine normative commitment, espousals of norms and values are likely just to signal group membership and acceptance of what it entails. The same can be true for beliefs: espousal of a belief can function primarily to show group membership, rather than genuine commitment to the content of the belief. Bar-Tal suggests that “group beliefs serve as a foundation for group existence”12, and that “group beliefs provide the psychological framework that allows group members to structure their social reality about the group”.13 The fact that members of a group share a belief not widely held by others may help them to see themselves as members of the same distinctive group.

Sometimes, as a result, a position on an issue is like a flag, or rallying-point, for group members, something for them to gather around, and defend. Such a symbolic rallying-point can be important because it is thought important, however separable it may really be from the life of the group. In that situation, it can be hard to discern whether affirmation of a belief shows sincere commitment to it. There is an old saying that “If the Archbishop of Canterbury says he believes in God, then that’s by way of business, but if he says that he doesn’t believe in God, then you can believe him.” The basis for the aphorism is that people do on occasion affirm beliefs for the sake of acknowledging group membership, and that when they do so it can be hard to evaluate their sincere commitment to the belief. On the other hand, if they affirm a belief contrary to what is expected of their group, the only plausible explanation is genuine commitment to the belief.

Group beliefs have multiple functions, from rationalisation of action to reinforcing group solidarity, and affirming a belief can equally play multiple roles, from reassuring others about reasons for action to giving information about group strength.14 We know from many sources that affirmations of belief can play multiple roles even for individuals, and that contextual factors can play an important role in how such affirmations are to be interpreted.15 A number of authors have analysed political implications.16 The relationship between affirmation and alignment can figure in a variety of political tactics. One such tactic is to put others in situations where they will be forced to make an affirmation that will align them with one party or another. Perhaps the most famous and clearest example is the Gospel story of Jesus:

And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians, to entrap him in his talk. And they came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are true, and care for no man; for you do not regard the position of men, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?”17

Jesus has three options. One, refusing to answer, seems to renounce claims to wisdom and authority. The others, to answer either “yes” or “no”, each threatens to compromise him by aligning him with one party or another. For the “positions of men” referred to by his interlocutors are well-established political positions:

if he advised payment of the tax he would discredit himself in the eyes of all the nationalist groups (here perhaps symbolized by the Herodians, v. 13); for such advice would be regarded as a betrayal of the national cause, and no one who gave it could expect much support or acceptance of his messianic claims from the crowds. If he pronounced against payment he would offend those (represented in v. 13 by the Pharisees) who were prepared to tolerate the status quo, and he might even be reported to the Romans for inciting to rebellion.

In fact, of course, Jesus exits neatly between the horns of the dilemma. By getting them to show him a coin and drawing their attention to the image on it, he moves the onus of proof back to them: if they carry coins that bear Caesar’s portrait, the onus is on them to show why they do not thereby acknowledge their duty to pay taxes, and to admit the role they had themselves played in bringing about Roman rule.19

Some similar kinds of cases have been analysed by Riker. One is a similar tactic to that used by the Herodians and Pharisees, but used this time by Abraham Lincoln against his political opponent Stephen Douglas.20 In this and other cases, Riker shows how political tactics often aim to compromise opponents by forcing them into positions that will alienate some or other of their allies (a modern term for this is “wedge politics”).

Beliefs, Positions and Commitment

The link between a position on a specific issue and group beliefs in general, may be quite clear-cut, or less so. There is no difficulty about seeing the relevance of an Archbishop’s position regarding the existence of God, to the beliefs of the Church he leads. The legality of paying taxes to Caesar needs more explanation for us to understand its relationship to group allegiances. These may have been quite clear to people at the time, but the relationship nevertheless depends on their array of background beliefs and knowledge. There are a range of cases where such relationships are more subtle still, down to cases where a proposal is put only for the sake of inviting people to come down on one side or another, explicitly to test their allegiance and perhaps to offer a forum for debate and manoeuvre.

In calling attention to beliefs and commitments that are associated with group membership, influence tactics can make group membership more salient and bring forth a whole array of influence mechanisms that revolve around group membership, such as conformity effects and shared conceptions of what is legitimate. It also generates expectations in others as well as group members. In particular, it affects others’ evaluation of beliefs affirmed by group members.

Because of the role people’s affirmations play in group politics and influence tactics, we may be inclined to set aside the content of the affirmations when we take them merely to exhibit group membership and solidarity with other group members. Then, of course, there is the question which comes first, the belief or the group? Is it that people come first to different beliefs, and then form groupings around those beliefs, or is it that people first align themselves, and then embrace beliefs that distinguish them from others?

If we think about politics and group alignments in general, then the answer is, of course, that both occur, in various ways. There is no reason to believe that every case is the same. In some, the content of the positions may be most important, and in others it may be personal or group allegiances. We should note, therefore, that people’s espoused commitments are not necessarily insincere, just because they are associated with group alignments. Sometimes, group membership may emerge from prior, sincere commitments, rather than the other way round. In that case, commitments associated with group membership can be genuine commitments.

In such situations, the demands on us as observers are complex partly because of the interplay of different sources of allegiance and obligation, but they are also complex because of the difficulty of evaluating people’s affirmations and positions. Thus, to revert to our earlier example, when the Archbishop of Canterbury affirms that he believes in God, we may need to know more about him to decide whether he is truly committed to that belief. Without doubt, there have been many Archbishops of Canterbury who have been devout and sincere in their professions of faith, but it is not hard to find some historical examples of clergy and ostensibly committed lay people in various religions whose interests seem more to have been in the temporal than the spiritual benefits of faith, and whose affirmations of belief mainly signalled a political position.

How we should evaluate others’ affirmations of belief will vary from case to case, because the relationship between affirmation and group membership will vary from case to case. Religious beliefs provide vivid illustrations of complex interplay between belief and group alignment. Consider the negotiations between Catholics and Protestants at Regensburg in 1541.22 The aim of the Regensburg meeting was to attempt a reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants. Central to that had to be agreement on some contested matters of doctrine, but intermingled with it also were issues to do with the political alignments of the day: “by the time of the Diet of Regensburg in 1541 doctrinal and socio-political questions were inextricably bound up with one another”.23 The authority of Scripture is one prominent example.24

Participants in the Regensburg discussions considered such major issues of doctrine that separated Catholics and Protestants, and in doing so they focussed in great detail on the substance of the issues. But, at the same time, their deliberations were surrounded by implications of one position or another on party structures and alliances. The Emperor Charles V needed resolution of the religious schism to restore his political authority in Germany, the Papacy was concerned both about doctrine and about restoration of church lands, while German princes were concerned both about the religious principles that united their people and the preservation of a measure of independence. The religious and political issues were completely entwined. There is no need to assume that debate over doctrinal issues was simply a cloak for political bargaining, or that the debate would reach theological conclusions in an ivory tower remote from political considerations.

Commitment and Hypocrisy

We can find similar interplay between religious doctrine and political positions throughout history, from the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire down through the role of the Catholic church in communist Poland during the days of the Solidarity movement, to present-day tensions in the Middle East. Bar-Tal notes that “group beliefs, which characterize the group, demarcate its boundaries with the out-groups”25, and the corollary is that by professing such a belief one marks oneself as a member of the in-group.

Problems then can arise about interpreting others’ affirmations, because of all the different motives people may have for their affirmations, and the different functions that such affirmations can have. The extent to which utterances can display group allegiance is often a crucial function, but a function which can be masked. Awareness of groupings, and their associated beliefs, can be important in all sorts of social and political life. Inviting an affirmation can be an invitation to disclose group membership, testing the person to whom the invitation is given. “Knowing their hypocrisy”, Jesus said to those who approached him, “Why put me to the test?” Partly, the test was to know that it was a test. Because people’s affirmations of belief sometimes have more to do with signalling membership of a particular party than with reflective commitment to the content of the belief, asking a question may ostensibly express interest in a particular issue, but also aim to lure the other party into some compromising response.

These are all instances of utterances or actions which have an ostensible purpose and one or more ulterior purposes. They all raise some similar ethical issues, potentially departing from the requirement that we treat one another as autonomous subjects and allow one another to make responsible decisions based on the best information available.

In some such cases, where a question or utterance has amongst its functions that of putting people off their guard, any ethical problem about attempted dissimulation may be treated as similar to ethical problems with deception. But there is a further issue in many cases, shown by the Gospel case. The charge of “hypocrisy” made against the Herodians and Pharisees focuses on the aspect of their question which consists in their purporting to have a genuine interest in Jesus’ answer to their question. Not only do they seek to lure him into a vexed position, at the same time they seek to display themselves in a favourable light, as earnest and humble seekers after truth.

In general, hypocrisy seems to consist in claiming moral purity or uprightness that one does not really have. In claiming rectitude we do not possess, we are like people who give counterfeit money in payment of a debt: not only have we failed to meet our obligations, what we do adds the further evil of undermining people’s faith in the currency. As hypocrites, we not only fall short of virtue, we undermine people’s belief in virtue as a goal. Further still, in some cases, we betray individuals who accept our expressions at face value. For these reasons at least, a charge of hypocrisy is a serious one.

However, that is not all that is at issue here. Consider the Gospel case once more. The hypocrisy of Jesus’ questioners lay in them purporting to have a genuine interest in the answer to their question, because if they did have such a genuine interest, that would show them to have worthy interests and concerns and aspirations towards good policy and right action. In fact, of course, their actual motivation was not a genuine interest in the answer to their question. They had their own views about that issue, and firm commitments, which Jesus’ answer would not affect. Their actual motivation was to force Jesus into a difficult position. Their question, therefore, had several different functions. One was the surface function, of seeking information or opinion on the issue, for their guidance. A second was the ulterior function, of structuring a situation where any choice by Jesus would be problematic for him. A third was to put Jesus off his guard, perhaps to take less care with his answer than he might when he knew their intentions. Insofar as it is an attempt to put Jesus off his guard in a dangerous position, and lead him to expose himself to attack, the reasons to question it may not only be to do with hypocrisy and deception, but may be like reasons we have to question uses of force and violence.

Conclusion

There are multiple ethical issues which arise from the way that belief figures in group dynamics and related tactics of persuasion and influence. In conclusion, I wish to focus just on one of them, to take us back to the point at which we began.

I suggested that rational choice theory may have difficulty in accounting for the dynamics of group membership by reference to calculation of utility, just as it has such difficulty in accounting for some observed dynamics of Prisoners’ Dilemma simulations. But rational choice theory has two aspects. It is to some extent an approach to explaining people’s behaviour, and so figures in substantial parts of some modern economic theory. In addition, however, it often has a prescriptive element, suggesting that we can not only explain people’s behaviour by hypothetical calculation of utility, but also that we can work out what people ought to do by calculating what would maximise utility. The role of belief in group dynamics raises a question about the prescriptive element of rational choice theory as well as about the explanatory element.

It is plausible to believe that there are many cases where utility would be maximised by letting one’s beliefs be guided by group affiliations, rather than by the evidence.26 It would often be more comfortable for individuals to persuade themselves that what most people believe is what they ought to accept, rather than to stand out against the crowd. It would often avert costly and disruptive conflict if minorities would simply give up their idiosyncratic beliefs.

However, to expect people to adopt or renounce beliefs just to accord with others’ seems enormously problematic. What is more, it seems ethically problematic. It seems clear that there is sometimes an ethical problem with espousing beliefs for reasons to do with group membership rather than reasons to do with the beliefs’ intrinsic merits. To arrive at beliefs for the reasons we can see for them, rather than because of the social pressures on us, is part of what it is for us to be responsible, autonomous agents. To expect people to do otherwise is to expect them to forsake part of what makes them autonomous agents.

In cases of group conflict which involve differences of belief, it does not seem as though we can reasonably plot a course of action by referring just to calculation of interests. In that case, however, the question remains for us, what ethics does require. What is the role in ethical decision-making of the need to come to beliefs in a conscientious, autonomous way, as opposed to the need to avert the suffering that so often arises from group conflict? Perhaps we do not want to be fanatical ideologues, but neither do we want to be guided in our beliefs and affirmations only by group affiliations. How we can combine the need for dialogue in times of group conflict, with personal commitment and intellectual integrity? These are issues which we as ethicists need to grapple with. They are not easy issues. Rational choice theory does not deal with them effectively. It is up to us to do better.

####Notes####

1 In addition to references given last year, and especially by way of connecting this point with what follows below, see Montgomery, J.D. “Contemplations on the Economic Approach to Religious Behavior,” The American Economic Review, 86:2 (1996), 443–447.

2 “Cultural program to ease Sydney tensions”, ABC News Online, http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1533272.htm, accessed 21 May 2006.

3 Fiske, S.T. & S.E. Taylor, Social Cognition, 2nd ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991, p. 123.

4 On this and what follows, see Baron, R.S., N.L. Kerr & N. Miller, Group Process, Group Decision, Group Action, Buckingham: Open University Press, 1992, pp. 135–44 and Brown, R.J., Group Processes: Dynamics Within and Between Groups, Oxford: Blackwell, 1988, ch. 8.

5 Montgomery, J.D. “Toward a Role-Theoretic Conception of Embeddedness” American Journal of Sociology, 104:1 (1998), 92–125, p. 93, citing Dawes, R.M. & R.H. Thaler, “Anomalies: Cooperation.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2 (1988), 187–197; Sally, D. “Conversation and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas: A Meta-Analysis of Experiments from 1958 to 1992” Rationality and Society, 7 (1995), 58–92; and Rabin, M. “Psychology and Economics” Journal of Economic Literature, 36:1 (1998), 11–46.

6 Montgomery, “Toward a Role-Theoretic Conception of Embeddedness,” citing Samuels, S.M. & L. Ross Reputations versus Labels: The Power of Situational Effects in the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game, unpublished manuscript, Stanford University, 1993; Ross, L. & A. Ward “Naive Realism in Everyday Life: Implications for Social Conflict and Misunderstanding”, in T. Brown et al (eds), Values and Knowledge, Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1995, pp. 103–135; and Ross, L. & A. Ward “Psychological Barriers to Conflict Resolution”, in M.P. Zanna (ed.) Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol 27, San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press, 1995, pp. 255–304.

7 Fiske & Taylor, op. cit., p. 257.

8 Young, J., C.J. Thomsen, E. Borgida, J.L. Sullivan & J.H. Aldrich “When Self-Interest Makes a Difference: The Role of Construct Accessibility in Political Reasoning” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 27:3 (1991), 271–296.

9 See e.g. Brown, op. cit., pp. 223–4.

10 See e.g. ibid., pp. 91–106 and Baron, Kerr & Miller, op. cit., pp. 63–69. In what follows I draw to a significant extent on Chap. 11 of my Ethics and Organisational Politics, Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar, 2004.

11 See Grant, R.W. Hypocrisy and Integrity, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997, pp. 48–50, although her statement accepts that only calculation of interests is rational, and that these mechanisms are not, which discussion in the present paper contests.

12 Bar-Tal, D. Group Beliefs, New York: Springer-Verlag, 1990, p. 105.

13 Ibid., p. 106.

14 Ibid., p. 107.

15 See e.g. Austin, J.L. How to Do Things with Words, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, and Grice, H.P. Studies in the Way of Words, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989.

16 E.g. Bell, D.V.J. Power, Influence and Authority, New York: Oxford University Press, 1975, and Riker, W.H. The Art of Political Manipulation, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.

17 Mark 12:13–15 RSV; cf. Matthew 22:15–17, Luke 20:20–22.

18 Nineham, D.E. The Gospel of St Mark, 2nd ed., Harmondsworth: Penguin., 1969, p. 315.

19 Ibid., p. 315; see also Cox, G.E.P. The Gospel According to St Matthew, London: SCM Press, 1952, pp. 135–6.

20 Riker, op. cit, pp. 1–9. The question Lincoln put to Douglas was “Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a state constitution?” In this case as in the Gospel case and many others, we need a detailed understanding of the political situation to see the significance of the question. It is explained in this case by Riker.

21 The importance of a position on an issue as a symbolic rallying-point is one reason why in negotiation it may sometimes not be a good idea to focus exclusively on “interests”, rather than positions, as Fisher and Ury recommend in Getting to YES (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981): where a group is party to negotiations, its position on an issue can be important for its members’ solidarity and commitment. See Provis, C. “Interests vs Positions: A Critique of the Distinction” Negotiation Journal, 12:4 (1996), 305–323.

22 Matheson, P. Cardinal Contarini at Regensburg, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. For further discussion, considering how the episode shows the difficulty there can be distinguishing “negotiation” from “argument”, see Provis, C. “Negotiation, Persuasion and Argument” Argumentation, 18:1 (2004), 95–112.

23 Matheson, op. cit., p. 5.

24 Ibid., p. 117.

25 Bar-Tal, op. cit, p. 106.

26 Although Stocker suggests that “intellectual activities done for the goals and according to the criteria inherent in them are among the greatest human goods” (“Intellectual Desire, Emotion, and Action”, in A.O. Rorty (ed.) Explaining Emotions, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980, pp. 323–338, p. 337), and if we accept that forming beliefs is an “intellectual” activity there may be a way to pursue an idea that it is in people’s interests to form beliefs on the basis of evidence. While I think that line of argument fails, I cannot pursue the point here. On what follows see also Stocker’s “Responsibility Especially for Beliefs” Mind, 91 (1982), 398–417.

Is there any reason for bringing these ideas together, other than an effort to bridge some of the central ideas in the two days of our conference?

I think there is very good reason just at present. I started to think about the theme for this address around July 7, the time of the bombings on the London transport system. In the context of those terrible events, we heard comments about the extent to which those responsible were ‘beyond the pale’, and the need to reinforce the ‘war on evil’. We also saw discussions about the extent to which the terrorists’ Islamic religious commitments played a role in motivating them.

It was widely denied that there is any necessary link between Islamic commitment and terrorist activity. Nevertheless, we have seen some tension between liberal, western policy and some Islamic communities and countries about values and lifestyle. This tension may have become especially salient since the invasion of Iraq by western-led forces, but it was noted by one sociologist well before that, soon after the attacks of 11 September 2001. He argued that ‘it would be an error for sociologists and political analysts to concentrate on revisions of economic and political theory while not paying equal attention to the moral tensions between Islamic and Western cultures’, and suggested a need for ‘bilateral studies of Western and Islamic conceptions of morality and standards of right and wrong’.1 Recently we have seen the beginnings of some effort at dialogue amongst Muslim and other community leaders. In this address I explore some issues about our need for dialogue.

####Conflict, interests and positions####

There is no reason to suggest that Islam has any more association with violence than any other religion. The literature on group processes suggests that any group commitment can lead to attacks on members of other groups. In the case of group religious commitments, the effects can be especially pronounced because of the depth and resilience of the commitments, and the fact that they are often associated with explicit value commitments. It is the case of tension between Islamic communities and others which is especially salient at present, and which raises some questions for public policy, including policy on freedom of speech as one notable example. In the context of such tensions and policy issues, we see traditional ethical problems about toleration. How far do we tolerate others’ values or activities when we see them posing a threat to our own values or welfare? There are new forces at work to highlight the problems, and new practical implications, but still we see some of the same issues as always.

If these issues have a new salience, it is partly because the approaches to public policy that have become dominant in the West have some special problems dealing with the issues. In Australia and a number of other major western countries we have seen a trend toward policy formation informed by public choice theory, neoclassical economic theory and increased use of markets to allocate resources.

This family of approaches to policy formation and implementation have both a descriptive and a normative dimension. Their descriptive or explanatory dimension revolves around assumptions that individuals’ self-interest is the mainspring of human behaviour, and as a corollary these approaches have a normative aspect oriented toward individual preference satisfaction as a criterion for success and correctness. Such views have major difficulties, which are well known, but have not been enough to overcome the forces in their favour.2

The difficulties include the clear fact that some preferences are vicious or imprudent, as well as problems of interpersonal comparison. From an ethical point of view, they also seem to be enmeshed in versions of utilitarian thought that have difficulty with what many of us consider clear ethical imperatives: duties of good faith, honesty and the like.

In the present context, however, they have another sort of difficulty, the difficulty of dealing with commitments and differences that revolve around religion and doctrine rather than around matters of individual preference satisfaction.

This is not to deny that economic and political factors are a major part of the explanation for events in the Middle East. There are plausible arguments that events of the past few years have been fuelled by western policies and support for oppressive, undemocratic regimes in a number of Islamic countries – including previous regimes in Iraq – and that these policies have to a significant extent been prompted by economic considerations, including the need for reliable access to oil supplies.3

Nevertheless, it also seems plausible to suggest that the values and ethical conceptions of participants in the conflicts of recent years have played a significant part in the events. It is possible to analyse and explain how individuals come to be suicide bombers,4 but it is difficult to imagine explanations which allude only to considerations of self-interest, and which fail to consider the values and commitments of those individuals.

One place where this difficulty has emerged is the advice given some years ago by Fisher and Ury, well-respected and insightful writers about negotiation, the advice to concentrate on ‘interests’ rather than on ‘positions’.5 We can construe ‘interests’ here in terms of preference satisfaction: peoples’ interests are satisfied just to the extent that their preference satisfaction is maximised in the long run. On the other hand, ‘positions’ have to do with such nebulous and difficult ideas as beliefs about what an outcome ought to be, or what a party deserves, or what commitments they have.

The injunction for negotiators to concentrate on interests rather than on positions can often be wise advice. If I approach a wage negotiation with a fixed view about a required pay increase, I may be hindered from seeing the greater benefits of improved leave or conditions. ‘Positions’ may reflect preconceived and ill-informed ideas about what will really be of benefit, and impair our ability to think of other ways to do things.

In some cases, however, the injunction to focus on interests rather than on positions may just distract attention from the real basis of conflict.6 In particular, where conflict is grounded in differences of religion or values, it may be misleading and counterproductive to construe it in terms of interests and to try to settle it by considering what will lead to the best outcome in terms of preference satisfaction: not because preference satisfaction is unimportant, but because the idea of preference satisfaction does not capture everything that is important.

####The importance of dialogue in public policy####

One way that economists or public choice theorists may try to take account of the fact that not only individual preference satisfaction is important, is by using the idea of side constraints. Certain rules are agreed as ones that have to be observed whatever the effect on preference satisfaction may be. Thus, for example, it might be agreed that contracts have to be enforced, or that slavery is unacceptable, or that certain human rights have to be maintained, whatever the effect may be on the preference satisfaction of most individuals. More generally, it might be agreed that certain means are not permissible for achievement of preference satisfaction for any individual or group. For example, it might be agreed that terrorism is beyond what is acceptable, even if terrorism might markedly improve the preference satisfaction of some user group.

This accords with many reported comments from politicians and others in the aftermath of terrorist attacks. Thus, for example, the BBC News ‘Have Your Say’ website7 records such comments in response to tube bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan’s video statement setting out his motives for the July 7 attacks in London:

There is never an excuse or justification for terrorism, no matter how just your cause or how many magic men in the sky you believe in. (Phil, Newcastle, UK)

This person is a confused and evil man. These are the words of someone who has lost their reason and human compassion. (David Burton, London)

Nothing can ever justify the sickening atrocity that this man perpetrated. (Jim, London)

We may be inclined to agree that terrorism ought to be ruled out as a means to any end, and it is not hard to envisage other means that might be ruled out for the achievement of any ends, however good. Unfortunately, however, we do not have a widespread consensus on what can be ruled entirely out of court. We might have thought that deliberate torture would be generally agreed to be unacceptable, but political defences of interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay have shown us that even here the waters can be muddied by contention over what does and does not constitute ‘torture’, and there has also been subsequent academic discussion of the extent to which torture may on occasion be justified.8 Even some of the BBC website responses are equivocal. One says ‘Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.’ This seems like a descent into extreme relativism, which simply accepts that all preferences are equally legitimate, and equally merit satisfaction in the universal marketplace.

For most of us, though, that descent into relativism seems like a reductio ad absurdum of the family of views that revolve around preference satisfaction through market mechanisms as the touchstone for policy formulation. For most of us, the problem is how to decide on mechanisms that will regulate preference satisfaction in ways that are reasonable and effective. The approach which simply rules some preferences out of court and leaves all others equal, suffers from a lack of consensus regarding which are to be ruled out. It will also suffer from problems about accepting as equal all those preferences which are not ruled out entirely. Mill recognised the need to distinguish pleasures in their quality as well as their quantity,9 but that sort of distinction is hard for market-oriented public choice theorists to incorporate into policy formulation and implementation, because it carries the threat of elitism and the capture of policy processes by bureaucrats whose preferences and values are at odds with those of the wider community (à la Sir Humphrey Appleby, of Yes, Minister fame10). Instead, we are confronted with populist politics that emphasise ever-greater tax cuts to enable individual preference satisfaction at the expense of public goods and care for the poor and marginalised of the community.11

One reason for the popularity of market-based mechanisms in public policy processes is the fact that they take responsibility for decisions away from individuals and place it in an impersonal, mechanistic, market structure. In doing so, they hold out the prospect of greater efficiency and achievement, as well as overcoming populist suspicions of elite bureaucratic values. In so doing, they identify many problems as ‘technical’ rather than ‘political’ or ‘ethical’ problems, and can try to segregate public servant functions into policy formulation and advice, on the one hand, and policy implementation or service delivery, on the other.12

However, there are major difficulties for these efforts. The last-mentioned distinction, between policy formulation and policy implementation, is susceptible to criticisms that attack the distinction between what is done and how it is done. We are very familiar with how these intermingle at the level of face-to-face, interpersonal interaction, and good managers are also aware that the outcomes of decisions are often dependent on how they are implemented. But even at a conceptual level, the distinction is hard to maintain. Perhaps the decision to invade Iraq is policy formulation. Does that mean that all the decisions about how to invade Iraq are policy implementation, rather than policy formulation? Clearly not. Perhaps the decision to restore South Australia’s credit rating is policy formulation. Does that mean that all the decisions about how to do so are policy implementation, rather than policy formulation? Clearly not. How to do things is just as much a matter of policy formulation as what things to do. The relevant distinctions have to do with levels of policy formulation, how wide and important the effects of decisions are, who is affected and to what extent.

The implication is that it is not viable to categorise some problems as technical problems only, to be solved by managers with technical managerial expertise only, and other problems as policy problems, to be solved by policy advisors with expertise in policy formulation rather than policy implementation.

The further implication is that it is not viable to draw a line between one sort of process, the process of policy formulation, and another sort of process, the process of policy implementation, and try to deal with them in different ways. In particular, for example, it is not viable to suggest that processes of policy formulation should involve the sorts of dialogue and discussion that are suitable for addressing ethical and political problems, while on the other hand processes of policy implementation should involve mechanistic routine, whether it be the routine application of handbooks of administrative procedure, or the mechanistic transactions of an idealised marketplace. Both formulation and implementation of decisions is likely to involve some technical issues, but also some issues that need to be addressed by encounter and dialogue with community members who are affected.

In summary so far, then, I am contending that public policy formulation and implementation at all levels is likely to require dialogue with community members, because the approaches to public policy which revolve around market mechanisms and individual preference satisfaction simply cannot account for such facts as that some preferences are more worthy than others and that it is not possible effectively to segregate policy formulation from policy implementation and service delivery. Acceptable service delivery no less than sound policy formulation will require dialogue with community members. It will require ‘voice’ and not only ‘exit’ behaviour, in Hirschman’s terms.13 In Elster’s terms, it will require the processes of the forum as well as the processes of the market.14

Dialogue, public policy and religion

Dialogue is important in a variety of public policy contexts, from local community policy implementation to international efforts at dealing with terrorism. The need for dialogue and problems with dialogue emerge in some of the other responses shown on the BBC website after Mohammad Khan’s video statement. While one respondent says ‘Your beliefs and ways are just something I will never understand’, and another ‘It makes me so furious watching that sickeningly evil person try to justify his carnage with a completely flawed argument’, yet another says ‘It’s depressing that no one seems to want to talk about problems but rather just kill each other’.

Some prominent theorists have recognised the importance of dialogue in social and political processes, and I shall not try to discuss all the important work that has been done.15 All I shall attempt is to identify some of the things we can say, without trying to explore them in full.

But what more can be said about the nature and use of dialogue? Is not the call for dialogue a well-worn cry? A proponent of market processes may say the position I have stated is nothing more than the well-worn advocacy of paying attention to customers’ wishes. There is no point in contending that more dialogue is required unless there is more to be said than that. If there is more point to the suggestion than that, it is to identify the fact that the sort of dialogue required involves more than just paying closer attention to others’ preferences and encouraging them to articulate those preferences more fully. It involves exploration of value commitments and other commitments, as well as of preferences and inclinations. Worthwhile dialogue is inhibited by policies that constantly increase the role of market mechanisms and by populist politics which emphasises the satisfaction of individual preferences without regard to the nature or worth of those preferences. Undoubtedly, the devices and processes of the forum have their own pitfalls, just as those of the market do16, but the implication ought to be that we devote time and attention to improve processes of voice and dialogue, not that we reject them in favour of market processes.

The sort of dialogue that is required must go far beyond the mere exploration of one another’s preferences and inclinations. It cannot even content itself with exploring ‘interests’, but has to get to grips with others’ ‘positions’, as well as their interests. Indeed, in many of the sorts of conflicts and policy processes we are concerned with, we might enjoin participants to ‘focus on positions, not interests’: quite the opposite of the approach that Fisher and Ury showed to be appropriate and successful in commercial negotiations. Why focus on positions? Because in many of the sorts of conflicts and policy processes we are concerned with, what are important are the concerns people have and the decisions they make and the actions they carry out which emerge from values and ethical commitments, and there is evidence that these are bound up with people’s positions and social identities.17

What more can we say about the sort of dialogue that is needed? One thing is that it cannot stand on extreme relativism, because it has to aim at some agreement. There are areas of life where we can agree to go our separate ways, but in the sorts of conflict and policy process we are thinking about, some joint action is required, whether it be agreement about government processes, royalty payments for oil production, sources of energy, gay marriage or industrial relations institutions.

On the other hand, however, it also seems unlikely that the sort of dialogue required can assume that there is a single correct solution to be unearthed by processes of technical or scientific enquiry. To accept this, we do not have to believe that there is a supernatural realm accessible only through processes of faith or mystical revelation. We know quite uncontroversially that there are ‘ways of seeing’ that reflect cognitive differences amongst individuals which nonetheless are not distinguished by the fact that some are true and others false. Wittgenstein drew our attention to the ‘duckrabbit’ picture that can be seen either as a duck or as a rabbit.18 In his discussion of ‘seeing-as’ and ‘seeing aspects’, he notes that ‘there are here hugely many interrelated phenomena and possible concepts’, and it would be a mistake to over-simplify discussion. Nevertheless, we can note that the idea has subsequently been the subject of extensive and detailed investigation by cognitive psychologists, and that some of this investigation has used the concept of ‘framing’ for a related family of ideas.19 For our purposes an important feature of framing was clearly identified in empirical study by Kahneman and Tversky, where they showed that different cognitive ‘decision frames’ can significantly effect people’s behaviour, even though the differences between the different frames—or ‘ways of seeing’—cannot be distinguished on the basis that one is true and the other false. One well-known experiment showed that people’s attitude to risk was significantly affected by whether they were led to frame a decision as letting some people die or as saving the remainder.

The idea of ‘seeing as’ does not seem to have been taken up so widely as one might have expected in the philosophy of religion.21 The possibility of exploring it in detail must also be put aside here. However, it is enough to make sense of the idea that dialogue amongst people of different religious commitments may be dialogue amongst people who share real differences in how they see the world, but differences where there is no fact of the matter which could even in principle be used as a basis for investigation and enquiry to aim for ultimate agreement. If I see a glass as half full, and you see it as half empty, our different ways of seeing it may be real and may significantly affect our behaviour, even though there is no way to say that one of us has a true belief and the other a false belief.

My suggestion here is that differences in religious commitments and other commitments may be like those differences in seeing things one way rather than another: genuine cognitive differences but not differences that reflect true or false beliefs. The point is important in the context of establishing dialogue amongst people with different religious or value commitments. When we are considering dialogue that involves exchanges amongst different people about the ways they see things, or frame things, we do not at present have methods of ethical assessment that allow us to evaluate people’s behaviour.22 If we are considering dialogue in the form of argument, we have some established criteria which rule out some processes as unacceptable. To some extent, we justify these criteria by reference to the fact that they affect the likelihood of the dialogue resulting in people accepting true positions or beliefs and rejecting false positions or beliefs.23 We are potentially in difficulty if we need to consider dialogue as exchanging points of view with differences that do not hinge especially on their truth or falsity. Take the example of a barrister setting out to convince a jury. We can accept without demur that it is wrong to lie or to conceal information. We can even accept that ‘distortion’ is wrong, if that includes revelation of some facts but withholding others. But is it ‘distortion’ to refer to something as ‘making a mistake’ rather than as ‘committing a crime’, when each description is a true one?24

In dialogue that partly involves people engaging with one another’s ways of seeing, we may have to evaluate dialogue processes in essentially ethical terms: not just by reference to their effects on attaining true or false beliefs. It may be that the criteria for evaluating participation in dialogue are not only outcome-oriented but also process-oriented: it may be that they do not revolve just around truth or falsity, but around efforts to genuinely apprehend and engage with others’ ways of seeing things.25

Conclusion

If this sketchy account has any merit, then one implication is that we need to examine more fully the nature of dialogue, the criteria we may use to evaluate it, and standards we may use to guide our own participation in it. I think that at present we are not clear about how to approach dialogue that to some extent involves interaction amongst people’s different ‘ways of seeing’ or ‘framing’. We are familiar with dialogue that revolves around people’s different preferences. We have well-established principles and standards to govern processes of bargaining and exchange, and quite well-developed ideas about fairness, even if we often fail to implement those principles and standards in contexts where different parties have varying advantages and power. We also have quite well-established methods for dialogue and discussion where differences hinge on truth and falsity. Principles of scientific enquiry and academic encounter can often be given their justification by reference to what processes are most likely to turn up true rather than false propositions. Even rules of courtroom procedure can often be given some justification in similar terms. However, we have less well-established approaches to forms of dialogue that are neither about preferences, to be dealt with in market processes, nor about distinguishing true from false propositions, but which are about commitments people have which involve different ways of seeing the world.

1 Davetian, B (2001) ‘Moral tensions between western and Islamic cultures: the need for additional sociological studies of dissonance in the wake of September 11’, Sociological Research Online, 6:3, U45–U53.

2 For discussion which is still pointed and relevant, despite being published over ten years ago, see Self, P, Government by the market? The politics of public choice, London: Macmillan, 1993.

3 For some forthright statements of such views see eg Ghannoushi, S (2005) ‘Whose side is th e US on?’, A l j az e era we b s it e , accessed 3 Sep temb er 2005, http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/45CDB208-0432-426A-A7D5-B415DAB01173.htm

4 See eg Bond, M (2004) ‘The making of a suicide bomber’, New Scientist, no 2442, 15 May.

5 Fisher, R and WL Ury, Getting to YES: negotiating agreement without giving in, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

6 For some discussion see Provis, C (1996) ‘Interests vs positions: a critique of the distinction’, Negotiation Journal, 12:4, 305–323.

7 BBC News (2005) ‘Have Your Say – Tube bomber video: your reaction’, accessed 3 September 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/talking_point/4206896.stm

8 Mirko Bagaric and Julie Clarke, ‘Not enough (official) torture in the world? The circumstances in which torture is morally justifiable’ (2005) 39 University of San Francisco Law Review 1–39; summarised in Mirko Bagaric ‘A Case for Torture’, The Age, Melbourne, 17 May 2005.

9 Mill, JS Utilitarianism, liberty, representative government, London: Dent, 1968, pp 7–8. Originally published 1859–1863.

10 For discussion of the extent to which themes in Yes, Minister were explicitly intended to reflect the ideology of public choice theory, see Borins, SF (1988) ‘Public choice: “Yes Minister” made it popular, but does winning the Nobel Prize make it true?’ Canadian Public Administration, 31:1, 12–26.

11 For some relevant recent discussion of populism in modern Australian politics, see Uhr, J, Terms of trust, Sydney: University of NSW Press, 2005.

12 See eg Hughes, OE, Public management and administration: an introduction (3rd ed), London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, p 155. For some comments on the distinction between ‘technical’ and ‘political’ problems, see Nachi, M (2004) ‘The morality in/of compromise: some theoretical reflections’, Social Science Information, 43:2, 291–305.

13 Hirschman, AO, Exit, voice and loyalty: response to decline in firms, organizations and states, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1970.

14 Elster, J (1986) ‘The market and the forum: three varieties of political theory’ in J Elster and A Hylland (eds), Foundations of social choice theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 103–132.

15 A good deal of the relevant literature is commented on in Thompson, J, Discourse and knowledge: defence of a collectivist ethics, London: Routledge, 1998.

16 Very recently, Mark Latham’s diaries bear on pitfalls of such political processes: The Latham Diaries, Melbourne, Melbourne University Publishing, 2005.

17 See eg Monroe, K (2003) ‘How identity and perspective constrain moral choice’, International Political Science Review, 24:4, 405–425, and Harré, R and L van Langenhove (eds) (1999) Positioning theory, Oxford: Blackwell. The latter say ‘In this technical sense a position is a complex cluster of generic personal attributes, structured in various ways, which impinges on the possibilities of interpersonal, intergroup and even intrapersonal action through some assignment of such rights, duties and obligations to an individual as are sustained by the cluster’ (p 1).

18 Wittgenstein, L, Philosophical investigations (2nd ed) (trans GEM Anscombe), Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958, II, xi, pp 193–214.

19 See eg Neisser, U, Cognition and reality, San Francisco: WH Freeman and Co, 1976, pp 57–9.

20 Tversky, A and D Kahneman (1981) ‘The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice’, Science, 211, 453–458. For an exposition see eg Solso, RL, Cognitive psychology (4th ed), Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1995, pp 428–9.

21 The notable exception seems to be John Hick: for some references and critical discussion, see Scott, M (1998) ‘Seeing aspects’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 44:2, 93–108.

22 As an example of the ramifications of the point, we may note that John Rawls comments on conditions of his well-known hypothetical original position which are required if the putative reasoning people engage in there is to yield appropriate rules, saying in part that ‘such things as threats of force and coercion, deception and fraud must be excluded’ (Political liberalism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), but it is hard to say what constitutes deception and fraud when we are considering differences in ways of seeing.

23 In particular, for example, we may emphasise that fallacies like ad hominem or ad baculum tend not to lead to true conclusions, even though there are other grounds for criticising them in the ways they hurt others or fail to respect them: see eg Browne, MN and S Keeley, Asking the right questions: a guide to critical thinking (6th ed), Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2001, p 97; Cederblom, J and DW Paulsen, Critical reasoning: understanding and criticizing arguments and theories (5th ed), Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth, 2001, pp 174–5 and Engel, SM, With good reason: an introduction to informal fallacies (2nd ed), New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982, pp 166–9.

24 I have discussed these issues at greater length in Provis, C, Ethics and organisational politics, Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar, 2004, chs 8 and 9.

25 The point here is essentially similar to a point that can be made about the criteria for ethical evaluation of negotiation: see Provis, C (2004) ‘Negotiation, persuasion and argument’, Argumentation, 18:1, 95–112.

Readers in Australia will be aware that the use of military force is frequently discussed in moral as well as legal terms. Much of the discussion uses the categories developed over centuries in the “just war” theory. The theory is of interest not only in Australia, but also in Asia. Even Singapore’s chief commando Colonel Noel Cheah has recently written on “The Application of the Just War Tradition in Contemporary Wars between States”.

Traditionally the use of military force has been for the protection and furthering of the interests of a community in war. However, since the Second World War we have seen the increasing use of military force as an integral part of peacekeeping missions. Australia, in particular, has been a significant contributor to peacekeeping missions, and within the last ten years has sent substantial contingents of soldiers to Namibia, Cambodia, Somalia, and Rwanda.