Sandin, Per
- Department of Crop Production Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Research article2015Peer reviewed
Evaluating ethical tools
Moula, Payam; Sandin, Per
Abstract
This article reviews suggestions for how ethical tools are to be evaluated and argues that the concept of ethical soundness as presented by Kaiser etal. (2007) is unhelpful. Instead, it suggests that the quality of an ethical tool is determined by how well it achieves its assigned purpose(s). Those are different for different tools, and the article suggests a categorization of such tools into three groups. For all ethical tools, it identifies comprehensiveness and user-friendliness as crucial. For tools that have reaching a decision in a democratic context as a main purpose, it identifies transparency, guiding users toward a decision and justification of the decision-supporting mechanism. For tools that aim to engage the public, it identifies procedural fairness as essential. It also notes that the scope of use for ethical tools is limited to the same moral community, and that this feature is frequently overlooked.
Keywords
applied ethics; consensus conference; ethical matrix; ethical soundness; ethical tools
Published in
Metaphilosophy
2015, volume: 46, number: 2, pages: 263-279
Publisher: WILEY-BLACKWELL
SLU Authors
Associated SLU-program
Mistra Biotech
Global goals (SDG)
SDG16 Peace, justice and strong institutions
UKÄ Subject classification
Philosophy
Ethics
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/meta.12130
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/67489