Nomological Remodelling Ethics as Duty, Care and Consequences: Learning from 1916

This paper applies nomology to the ongoing debate about the challenge of ethics and its relevance to public life and to business. Nomology uses an over-arching or top-down approach. Being ‘subjectively’ ethical... [ view full abstract ]

This paper applies nomology to the ongoing debate about the challenge of ethics and its relevance to public life and to business. Nomology uses an over-arching or top-down approach. Being ‘subjectively’ ethical ‘oneself’ is about ‘committing’ to developing the community through needs to preferences to providing value. Generally ethics should be about values. The ‘others’ focused ‘subjective’ structure is about ‘convincing’, one version of which involves self, others and the world. This paper considers a case from the 1916 Rising in Dublin about an ethical conflict between two Irish-born British officers: Captain Bowen-Colthurst who carried out several atrocities, and Sir Fletcher Vane who sought to have him held accountable for his wrong-doing. It uses the theory of nomology to evaluate their ethical conflict, and show that ethics should be redefined as being about duty, care and consequences.

Ethics, analytics, duty, care, consequences, cognitive structures, nomology [ view full abstract ]

Ethics, analytics, duty, care, consequences, cognitive structures, nomology