We are What We Decide: A Stephen Toulmin-Based Moral Decision-Making Model
Keywords:
ethics, morality, virtue ethics, deontology, Toulmin decision-making model, modality, improvisational ethics, justificatory ethics, moral absolutesAbstract
The ethical life, well lived, presents a bewildering array of challenges. At stake are issues of love and hate, justice and injustice, reward and renunciation, fairness and favoritism, prudence and negligence, kinship and community, kindness and cruelty, self-interest and empathy, virtue and immorality, belief and doubt, hope and despair, courage and cowardice, righteousness and roguishness—and so much more. Simply put, our moral lives are complex affairs, with multiple conditions influencing every move we make.
Making optimal moral decisions in such dauntingly complex, supremely sensitive conditions presents one of the great trials in human life. Withthis complexity and sensitivity in mind that I will propose in this paper a moral decision making model with the aim of providing clarity in our moral lives. Thismodel is based on Stephen Toulmin’s argumentation model, elucidated in his The Uses of Argument (1958). Toulmin’s model is elegant, robust, imminently pragmatic, and incorporates virtually all of the constituents necessary for rational and constructive debate. The linguistic concepts of modality and important deontological concepts will be incorporated within this model, and additional explanations, definitions, analyses and personal reflections with the aim of fleshing out and sharpening several key conceptions will be provided.
Â
References
• Appiah, Kwame Anthony. “Morality,†in Thinking it Through: An Introduction to Contemporary Philoso-phy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. 177-219.
• Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. Translated and with an introduction by David Ross; revised by J.L. Ack-rill and J.O. Urmson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.
• Bellah, Robert N. et al. Habits of the Heart. New York, Cambridge, Philadelphia, San Francisco, London, Mexico City, São Paulo, Singapore, Sydney: Perennial Library, Harper & Row Publishers, 1985.
• Chalmers, David. “Facing up to the problem of consciousness.†Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2(3):200-19, 1995. Accessed at David Chalmers’ Papers on the WWW May 2006 at <http://consc.net/papers.html>.
• Clark, Andy. “Connectionism, Moral Cognition, and Collaborative Problem Solving,†in Mind and Morals: Essays on Cognitive Science and Ethics. Cambridge, Mass., London: MIT P, 1996.
• Cunningham, Anthony. The Heart of What Matters: The Role for Literature in Moral Philosophy. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: U of California P, 2001.
• Doris, John M., Stephen P. Stich. “As a Matter of Fact: Empirical Perspectives on Ethics.†Chapter 5, The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Analytic Philosophy, F. Jackson and M. Smith (eds.). Oxford UP, forth-coming.
• Flannagan, Owen. “Ethics Naturalized: Ethics as Human Ecology,†in Mind and Morals: Essays on Cogni-tive Science and Ethics. Cambridge, Mass., London: MIT P, 1996.
• Pojman, Louis. The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature, Second Edition. New York, Oxford: Oxford UP. 2004.
• Toulmin, Stephen Edelston. The Uses of Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1958.
• Toulmin, Stephen. Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 1990.
• Wainryb, Cecilia; Elliot Turiel. “Conceptual and Informational Features in Moral Decision Making.†Educa-tional Psychologist 28.3 (1993): 205-218.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
- Papers must be submitted on the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, or thesis) and are not currently under consideration by another journal published by any other publisher.
- It is also the authors responsibility to ensure that the articles emanating from a particular source are submitted with the necessary approval.
- The authors warrant that the paper is original and that he/she is the author of the paper, except for material that is clearly identified as to its original source, with permission notices from the copyright owners where required.
- The authors ensure that all the references carefully and they are accurate in the text as well as in the list of references (and vice versa).
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
- The journal/publisher is not responsible for subsequent uses of the work. It is the author's responsibility to bring an infringement action if so desired by the author.
