An Exploration of “Ethics” in a Post-modern, Complex, Global Society

Authors

  • William E. Doll, Jr. University of British Columbia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14288/tci.v10i2.184447

Keywords:

Morals, Ethics, Complexity, Relations, Post-Modern, Wisdom, Teaching

Abstract

This paper is a foray, a tentative one, into the relation between moral acts and ethical principles, particularly as that relation is played out in our post-modern, complex, global society. The position taken here is that a traditional view of ethics sees an act being determined as moral (or not) according to its fit into a set of a priori principles. The alternative, post-modern view explored here is that the concept of ethics emerges from the acts themselves. The morality of these acts derives from the everyday decisions we make, decisions made with humility and uncertainty. From such decision making, the ethics that emerges is a provisional ethics. This is the nature of our being human; our decisions are never made with certainty. We are, though, responsible for the decisions we make.

Author Biography

William E. Doll, Jr., University of British Columbia

William Doll, currently a Visiting Professor at UBC, is an Emeritus Professor of Curriculum at Louisiana State University, and Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria. His books are A Post-Modern Perspective on Curriculum, Curriculum Visions (co-edited with Noel Gough), and Chaos, Complexity, Curriculum and Culture (co-edited with Jayne Fleener, Donna Trueit, and John St.Julien). He currently is Associate editor of Complicity, an online journal publishing articles on the intersection of complexity theory and education.

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Published

2013-12-10