Question Do you think there is too little applied ethics being studied and researched in academia? I think analytic philosophy still has not recovered from the ideas of logical positivism. If ethics is still a worthwhile field of study, why then shouldn't it connect as much as possible to the public by advising every facet of human behavior?

Accepted:
April 25, 2013

Comments

Applied ethics is in fact in rude health! Over the last thirty or so years there has been (firstly) a revival of applied ethics as a distinct discipline in its own right and (secondly) a diversification of new areas of applied ethical theorising, such as environmental ethics, business ethics, agricultural ethics, engineering ethics, and so on - so happily applied ethics is now firmly back on the philosophical agenda and well-served by a range of established conferences, journals, and so on.

Moreover there is an increasing sense of the need to connect applied ethical debate with (firstly) developments in economics, the cognitive sciences, medical research and so on and (secondly) with a variety of professional bodies and public policy-makers - for instance when philosophers of archaeology engage with archaeological professional bodies, cultural resource managers, aboriginal peoples groups, museum curators, and so on.