Re-Reasoning Ethics

Hoffmaster and Hooker argue that ethics gains depth when reasoning is understood more broadly than formal logic allows. Their approach treats rational deliberation as intelligent problem-solving, and ethical deliberation as the design of solutions aimed at human flourishing. Moral theories and their logical applications, as used in medical ethics and bioethics, offer simplified pictures of human situations. The authors contend that a broader view of reason can capture the complexity, context, and change that real moral judgment requires.

The book builds its case in two stages, first showing how this wider rationality works in science and then applying it to ethics. It extends rational inquiry beyond the natural world to the lived circumstances of people's lives. Many real cases are examined, including one involving women who face a risk of bearing children with genetic conditions. Rather than calculating expected utility as genetic counselors may suggest, these women picture what life with an affected child could be like and consider whether they could accept the worst of those possibilities.

The authors also explore how moral compromise, along with a liberated, extended, and enriched form of reflective equilibrium, can enlarge and strengthen ethical deliberation. They show how such deliberation can inform the design of ethical practices, institutions, and policies.