Május 2007
Etűdök etikára


  Bevezető
  

  A fogadás kacsazsírja; Szinte visszhang; ...(versek)
  Kenéz Ferenc

  Szakmai kompetencia és etika
  Ungvári Zrínyi Imre

  Darwini etika a 20. században
  Szántó Veronika

  A fejlődés etikájáról
  Boda Zsolt

  Felelősség és döntés
  Zsolnai László

  Ha nem jövök; Így múlt a nyár el; Így nyúlunk mind ki (versek)
  Muszka Sándor

  A diagnózis közlésének erkölcsi vonatkozásai
  Gheorghe Popa

  Az abortusz etikája
  Mihaela Frunză

  A számítógép közvetítette kommunikáció etikája
  Mester Béla

  Termékeny közlegelők – zárt magánbirtokok
  Fekete László

  Séta nosztalgiában
  Bögözi Kádár János

  Vonatállomás; Felébredek; Alkohol; ... (Generátor – versek)
  Fülöp Orsolya


Toll
  Bretter György sírjánál
  Angi István

  Akinek régi korokból súgnak
  Csapody Miklós


História
  Parádi Ferenc felvételei a Házsongárdi temető, Baca, Dés, Körösfő és Szék síremlékeiről
  Kiss András


Világablak
  A környezettudatosság mint erkölcsi kérdés
  Balog Adalbert


Mű és világa
  A vágy rítusai
  Bíró Béla


Közelkép
  Lehet-e az etika „alkalmazott”?
  Veress Károly

  Egy illúzió múltja
  Sárkány Péter


Téka
  „Magammal viszem a végtelent is és a dallamot” (Átfogó)
  Bogdán László

  A hiány és a teste (Láthatatlan Kollégium)
  Bucur Tünde Csilla

  Hiába a nyelv… (Láthatatlan Kollégium)
  Bakk Ágnes

  Lélek-létlehetőségek
  Király V. István

  A Korunk könyvajánlata
  


Talló
  A demokratikus stabilitás kellékei
  Ferencz Enikő

  Ember az édenen innen és túl
  Veress Boglárka



  Abstracts
  

  Számunk szerzői
  

Abstracts

 

Zsolt Boda

Development Ethics

The paper argues that the notion and meaning of development is in crisis: it is less obvious than ever what should development be about. A traditional economist approach would suggest that development equals economic growth. However, Amartya Sen, the Nobel prize winning economist argued that social development indicators are not always in a positive statistical relation with the measures of economic growth. It is also problematic whether one can equal the measure of economic globalization with development. Indeed, the very objectives of development should be stated clearly in order to establish the necessary means. Accordingly, the author presents the views of Amartya Sen on development as the flourishing of human capabilities and of life’s quality; and also the arguments of Denis Goulet according to which ethical principles are essential in guiding the implementation of the development process, which should not try to follow a globally valid recipe, but instead to build on local needs and circumstances.

 

László Fekete

Public versus Private Domains: Knowledge and Information in the Global Communications Network

It goes without saying that knowledge and information are the most valuable commodities in the new economy. Though knowledge and information as private goods could provide great business opportunities for the rights holders in the global communications network, they exhibit the distinctive characteristics of public goods. Therefore, the commodification of knowledge and information requires a strict proprietary regime which restrains free access to them, and enforces effective legal protection over their production, use, and dissemination. Nevertheless, society persistently tends to believe that knowledge and information mainly belong to public goods, and resists accepting their growing private appropriation and the effective proprietary control over them. Knowledge and information are usually conceived as a common pool of symbolic resources for the cultural reproduction of society. So, people are not willing to pay for knowledge and information goods what they believe to have entitlements to know and use. Without the empowerment of the possession and exercise of these individual rights and freedoms, people merely are kept aloof from becoming the autonomous members of the political-cultural community.

 

Mihaela Frunză

The Ethics of Abortion

The article analyzes the complex problem of abortion at the crossroads of moral, religious and political discourses. Its author departs from the hypothesis that there is no straightforward position regarding abortion, but its approach is rather predetermined by the way the abortion situation is (linguistically) described and (theoretically) constructed. Taking into account all the major positions regarding abortion (the conservative, liberal and moderate standpoints), the author attempts to prove that the ethics of abortion is an applied ethics, a political ethics and an ethics in which feminist approaches are essential. The latter ones may be closer to the ethics of care or to a liberal perspective, their relationship being either of complementarity, or of nuanced opposition.

 

Béla Mester

The Ethics of Computer Mediated Communication: From a „Complicated Tool” to a „Labyrinth of Texts”

The article’s aim is to show a sketch of the history and the present status of Computer Mediated Communication’s (CMC) ethics. The author outlines the research programs and the main terms; and their definitions of the ethics of CMC in the first part of the article. The main topic of the paper discussed in the second part is a short historical analysis of the research programs of the CMC on the basis of Terrel Ward Bynum’s article. The author describes three main types of the ethics of CMC on the basis of this historical outline of the topic: (1) solutions of new ethical problems of CMC by old theories of ethics (John Ladd); (2) an endeavour to create a new conceptual framework for the ethics of CMC (James H. Moor); (3) an approach from philology focussed at the user in the world of hypertexts. By his opinion, all of these three types of the ethics of CMC have the same problem: though they regard the CMC as a new type of human activity based on a new medium, they describe ad analogiam the old media. A would-be solution of this dilemma is the present turning point of the ethics of CMC.

 

Veronika Szántó

Darwinian Ethics: The Evolution of Ethics and the Ethics of Evolution

There are two aspects in which the Darwinian notion of evolution by natural selection gained ethical relevance: the one is the evolution of ethics, the other is the ethics of evolution. Darwin himself was engaged mostly in the former.  Social Darwinists, however, pretended to justify values on a scientific basis, whilst their theories were based on the uncritical identification of their pre-existent value choices with the „ways of nature.” After the resurgence of biological inquiries into morality following World War II leading sociobiologist E. O. Wilson claimed that the biologization of ethics is unavoidable. However, his results were self-contradictory that further left the main focus of ethics untouched and were prone to fall back into Social Darwinism. Environmental ethicists also capitalize on the Darwinian notion of the evolution of ethics. While their effort to use evolution as a justification for particular moral practices is still questionable, their interpretation of living structures as adapted normative systems is far more promising. The critical examination of fact vs. value spheres in relation to moral as well as amoral living systems is crucial in a biologically sensitive moral philosophy that, besides retaining its own autonomy, wants to avoid the pitfalls of their predecessors.

 

László Zsolnai

Responsibility and Choice

In complex economic, social and political decisions ethical norms and diverse stakeholders are necessarily involved.  Responsible decision making is defined as a synthesis of deontological (norm-related), rational (goal-related) and stakeholder (others-related) considerations. Hence responsibility = norm-following + goal rationality + respect for the stakeholders. The maximin rule is proposed for making responsible decisions, which selects the „least worst” alternative in the multidimensional value space of complex choices. The responsible decision maker is able to evaluate options from multiple value perspectives and tries to find optimal balance among diverse value dimensions.