This book will disappoint you if you are looking for precision, academic debate, or grand theory—or solutions to difficult ethical problems.
Precision
Whether we like it or not, we live in a state of considerable ignorance about ourselves and every aspect of the world around us. We cannot therefore be dogmatic or altogether confident about anything, let alone the admittedly subjective areas of ethics. I have not even tried to be too precise or prescriptive, and have doubts as to whether it is possible.
We cannot live, however, as if we are in a state of total ignorance. We must live as if our understanding is adequate. This applies to cold facts and to theories as well as to what is best for us. It seems it is impossible to give logical proof for either of these. We accept both facts and theories when they seem to cohere. We build our view of the world as our experiences support and affirm each other. It is a bit like our granddaughter making sense of her world at 4 months. She has learnt to respond to a few words, like “Mummy” and “roll over.” There is no logic, no grand narrative. Even though we have a significantly greater experience and vocabulary, it is only relative! Progress comes from extending our experience and making it fit together better.
Further precision may be unnecessary and unhelpful. Consider, for instance, the concept of gross domestic product (GDP). Many academic papers use it with great precision, rigorously exploring mathematical relationships with other precise ideas. One of the grand narratives of our time effectively holds that the GDP is the measure of all things of value. For purposes of this book, however, I use expressions such as prosperity or the common good. They are much less precise, but perfectly adequate for the meaning I want to convey. GDP is also an arbitrary concept (that depends on the definition used by the organizations collecting the data) and the appearance that it precisely measures anything of importance is misleading.
Please therefore forgive the absence of precise definitions. You will have to find them in other books. Where I skirt deep matters in a few sentences, it is because I am trying to place them in context rather than make them plain. The Internet means that you can easily search for explanations and arguments that are more rigorous.
Academic Schools
With a few exceptions, I have intentionally avoided discussion of different academic schools of thought, especially where the theories are not embodied in a community of practice. There is just too much to debate and this book is not the place. The academic literatures on education, psychology, politics, management, and economics are fragmented, with dozens of schools each with their own assumptions and vocabulary, minimal cross-referencing within their discipline, almost no relevant cross-disciplinary discussions, and sometimes no reference to practice.
I admit too that I am seldom qualified to give an expert opinion, and often have difficulty in identifying important contributions—rather than those that are merely cited often. In such cases I have relied on those who claim expertise and whose ideas resonate with the traditions and authors I find convincing.
Alisdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue provides a more thorough justification for this type of approach, but he sets out the need to engage with alternative traditions of practice. I do therefore attempt to address, in Chapter 6, the positive economics that informs much of current practice in the financial sector.
Grand Narratives
Most thinking people are suspicious of grand narratives, whether religious or secular. Those who adopt them too enthusiastically can be dogmatic and judgmental. Nevertheless, we necessarily have a set of assumptions and explanations of what we are, and how and why we are here. MacIntyre makes the point that our thinking has to be based within some tradition of rationality and value.
The ideas in this book are compatible with a range of traditions or worldviews—religious and secular. Many religions value the cardinal virtues, while many secular worldviews also see virtues such as sustainability, democracy, and tolerance, or concepts such as human rights as being of fundamental value. My views are, however, not compatible with worldviews that elevate material progress to the greatest—and sometimes the only—value.
I should disclose my own beliefs so that you can allow for them. As to religion, I am a Christian, in the Anglican tradition, but with no strong denominational loyalty. Different religions and traditions often converge on ethical questions, and I have referred to mine because they are familiar to me. Where there is divergence, and especially from those with no religious beliefs, I need to ask for your indulgence. Please take my references to God as metaphors for the greatest good—however you conceive it. As to my politics, as with many Christians, I tend to the right on social issues including liberty, and to the left on matters of redistribution. My professional training, though, is perhaps more relevant to the subject of this book. The principles of professionalism of the International Actuarial Association set out standards of integrity and competence, and a responsibility to the public to which I aspire. In particular, this means attempting to contribute to the development of the Regulatory Capitalism discussed in Chapter 10, which means that I accept the overall logic of modern mixed economies.
Alternative Ethical Theories and Difficult Problems
One cannot write a book on ethics without some consideration of the different philosophical schools. You do not have to agree with everything they write to find that the well-known writers offer useful insights. These include Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Smith, Hume, Marx, Kant, Rawls, and Sen. To the extent that they have followed their passions and competently addressed the issues of their time and place, they can be said to have followed their vocations—and many of the differences can thus be explained. Similarly, to the extent they have allowed their interests to reduce the scope of their vision, and to develop novel insights that are irreconcilable to traditional virtues, they are to be mistrusted. MacIntyre suggests that they fail when they attempt the impossible task of justifying why we call something good by looking for universally agreed principles that do not exist. He suggests that the traditional views justify themselves in a community of practice:
When … the tradition of the virtues is regenerated, it is always in everyday life, it is always through the engagement by plain persons in a variety of practices, including those of making and sustaining families and households, schools, clinics, and local forms of political community (2007, xv).
While there is widespread recognition of the need for regeneration, there is also a tradition of the virtues in a number of communities of practice in modern mixed economies—especially within the professions. This book is an attempt to contribute to such regeneration within the professions and more broadly.
MacIntyre is clear that some theories are unlikely to help. These include deontological theories that are focused only on whether the actions themselves are right or wrong in themselves and consequentialist theories that are limited to whether the outcomes are right or wrong. The best known of the latter is utilitarianism, which is concerned with the benefits of the greatest number.
Many other books on ethics provide difficult ethical problems for discussion. By difficult, I mean cases where ethical considerations are in conflict with each other, and the right ethical response is not clear. Some theories of ethics and ethical education—notably those of Lawrence Kohlberg—hold that our personal ethical development requires that we think about difficult problems. Working through them, especially if real case studies are included, probably does help us understand the world better—and encourage us to make better ethical decisions. Recognizing the right thing to do, however, is, in many cases, not that difficult if we are committed to developing the virtues. This book is intended to help in identifying them and integrating them into our personal stories. Difficult problems often have no right solutions and leave us with tensions, some of which we will discuss.
As discussed earlier, developing rules for all cases is onerous, and not necessarily helpful. This is why casuistry, which is the science of developing ethical rules for particular cases, has mainly come to mean “the use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions.”1 We also talk of the “dead letter of the law,” which is what it feels to be over-regulated. We return to this question when considering risk management in Chapter 9.
Training in Virtue
Education in the virtues takes a different route, as explained by David Carr, philosopher of education. He—perhaps rather crustily—laments current failures in education:
… no really rational being could understand fully what a quality like courage, temperance, justice or compassion is and yet fail to want to possess it. From this point of view, since the virtues are not innate but entail both proper habit formation and the development of reason, it is clear that it is squarely within the responsibility of all concerned with the socialisation and education of children—parents, teachers and others—to ensure that such habituation and instruction takes place.
There are legions of young people, who … continue to perceive what is admirable about virtue through the fog of lies that have been woven about her, and live lives of self-respect, decency, sobriety and genuine altruism. There are far too many others who have been blinded by the rhetoric, who have come to believe that morality is a matter of reluctantly doing one’s duty where this cannot be avoided, and otherwise going to the devil (1991, 255).
This book is intended to help clarify the shape of virtue and vocations, and identify those elements of the financial sector that need changing for it to fulfill its role in a flourishing society. It hopefully makes some contribution to beginning Carr’s “habituation and instruction,” but that role is played within a community of professionals. I would thus urge everyone to join an appropriate professional group that will encourage both technical and ethical development. Apart from the accountants, actuaries, and investment managers, there are International Associations of Business Communicators, Financial Executives, and Human Resources and more. There is also great value in Mary Gentile’s book and program: Giving Voice to Values.2 In it she gives useful guidance for preparing oneself and practicing to develop the voice of reason and live up to the virtues in difficult situations.
Chapter summary: There are many different theories that relate to ethics, but developing our character and vocation may not be helped by intellectual debate. Developing the virtues takes place as we aspire to develop them in communities of practice.
1Oxford Dictionaries.
2Accessed November 24, 2014. http://www.babson.edu/Academics/teaching-research/gvv/Pages/home.aspx.