Written in an easily accessible, non-threatening presentation,Ethics for the Multicultural Worldoffers clear explanation of how philosophical ethics has historically evolved as a response to muddle and banal moral decisions based on confusion caused by the plurality of ethical and moral beliefs. The book explains why codes of ethics are important, and why the codes themselves have to be grounded in a broader philosophical context to be useful in multicultural societies.This accessible introduction provides an overview of applied ethics and social pluralism, moral agents, and situational control and professionalism, as well as an introduction to muddle, drift, banality, and subjectivisms verses morality, empirical and analytic studies, moral foundations and concepts, six normative theories and application strategy.For individuals interested in professional ethics.

This book is designed to serve those who find themselves in an intermediate position between the professional ethicist and the student studying for a career in a profession. It is an unfortunate fact of modern academic life that the books with the best ethical theories are couched in an academic jargon that makes them almost inaccessible to the average member of society. This is not necessarily an oversight, because the moral philosophers at the leading edge of our discipline are writing for people with Ph.D.''s in moral philosophy. But, a moral theory that cannot function in the lives of ordinary citizens is a moral theory that is not quite doing its job on the practical level. Thus, this text tries to make the concepts and moral theories of philosophers such as Kant, Mill, Rawls, Habermas, and their postmodern and feminist critics, accessible to those who are not professional philosophers. The book has an interdisciplinary flavor, since I rely on my research in social science, child development, and clinical psychology to support some of my points. Over all, it is a philosophy teacher''s response to the phenomenon of the "banality of evil" and other forms of administrative evil that occur when citizens with good motives make "professional" decisions that are ill conceived from the moral point of view. Wayward professionals are often bewildered about how they could have fallen so far off the moral track. When asked to speculate on this kind of issue, students sometimes claim that there is no moral track. Others say they are confused by the plurality of ethical and moral beliefs that now occupy the public sphere. Some adopt a postmodern skepticism about the possibility that there could ever be a justifiable universal consensus about moral fundamentals. Others seek comfort by focusing narrowly on a select code of ethics without worrying about whether or not the code is compatible with a broader philosophical vision for a just society. I believe these options contribute to moral drift and banal choices in situations of cross-cultural conflict, where a more sophisticated moral outlook is needed. Contemporary life requires professionals as well as ordinary citizens to solve conflicts that cross religious, cultural, and technological boundaries within their own society as well as at the global level. Globalization is a complex phenomenon that is a source of hope for some and terror for others (Pensky, 2001, pp. vii-viii). On the one hand, it promises an increased growth of cross-cultural interrelationships that will help people transcend xenophobic ethnocentrism; on the other hand, it offers the threat of global markets devastating the political infrastructure of nation-states, leading to social and ecological crises and increased disparities in wealth. On the one hand, it promises that media contacts will cross hostile boundaries and shine a light on oppressive practices; on the other hand, it threatens to homogenize cultures and eradicate the source of unique individual cultural identities. On the one hand, it promises a growth in global political democratization that will move mankind away from totalitarianisms; on the other hand, it threatens the end of democracy because the rise of market-driven expert bureaucracies will dispense with direct citizen participation. All of this is very confusing. What these developments mean for codes of ethics and the practice of professionals is not yet clear. Twenty-first-century citizens will need to develop a moral point of view that can adequately respond to these pressures. Given that professionals have a proven ability to master the esoteric knowledge of their field, the increasing need to develop sophisticated cross-cultural ways of relating will require them to take a leadership role in adjusting to the increased complexity of modern life. Because they will have to apply their intellectual skills to moral problems at both global and local levels, they are going to have to figure out how to locate professional codes of ethics in the broader milieu of an increasingly multicultural world. If they can master this task, their example will help the rest of us see how to approach conflicts from a point of view that has cross-cultural moral integrity. The main argument in this book is that there is a philosophically justified (i.e., rational) moral point of view that can serve to regulate (a) the evolution of codes of ethics for professions and (b) the adaptations that twenty-first-century citizens will have to make to their worldview in order to accommodate the growing complexity in our postmetaphysical, multicultural, and transnational world. Over the years, I have used all the standard approaches to teaching ethics. Many of them simply increase the confusion students feel in the face of a smorgasbord of moral options. In particular, it is a mistake to present students with a bewildering array of alternative philosophical theories and/or cases that imply morality is about irresolvable moral dilemmas. Students need to be shown that pluralism does not have to remain a cause for bewilderment. A rational adjustment to pluralism can lead to what Habermas calls transcendence from within, leading to the moral point of view favored by most philosophers. I argue that "the moral point of view" is an ongoing developing perspective that is not only rationally justifiable, but is also a necessary practical accommodation to the forces evolving in the twenty-first century. Adopting this point of view with its practical implications for professional practice can diminish the possibility that we will drift into practices that promote what Hannah Arndt referred to as the "banality of evil." Since Habermas is one of the leading moral philosophers of the age, I have worked his insights into every chapter of the book. I also feature Habermas''s discourse ethics as one of the best contemporary responses to the postmodern angst over false universalization. The book discusses the friendly dispute between Rawls and Habermas, and argues that a proper interpretation of Rawls''s veil of ignorance supports the virtue of rational moral empathy and democratic procedural rationality, both of which guide Habermas''s discourse ethics at the application level. Since this material is difficult to comprehend, students need to be eased into the complexity, rather than be bombarded with it all at once. To facilitate the transition, the text starts by introducing some fundamental distinctions that will be needed for later complex analysis. Accordingly, Chapter One is the longest chapter because it moves slowly from concrete to abstract issues, and introduces vocabulary and concepts that will be needed throughout the book to understand how the moral point of view ought to guide practical decisions. Some of the discussion about the relationship between rules, principles, and theory may seem too elementary, but I choose to err on the side of simplicity in the initial chapters. A secondary goal of the book is to introduce a vocabulary that can help people think philosophically, so there is technical vocabulary in each chapter. However, the first time a technical term is used, it is cited in bold italics,and accompanied by its definition, also in italics.Because students have complained that they sometimes forget the meaning of a word and then are confused when they see it later in the book, I have added an alphabetical listing of key terms with their definitions in a glossary. Readers can quickly check the meaning of a term when they encounter it later in the book. To make the book seem less intimidating, I have integrated illustrative anecdotes throughout the chapters. For example, in Chapter Three I use my graduate ''school encounter with a logical positivist logic teacher to show how moral muddle can lead even a man with a Ph.D. into adopting a naive metaethical theory like em