Role Ethics

Roles are socially pervasive and normatively demanding. They have an enormous and complex impact on our practical decision making. When judging whether she should illegally hack an apparently corrupt POLITICIAN’s bank account, for example, an INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST cannot ignore the specific duties and purposes of both her own and the politician’s social roles.

High-profile discussions of particular roles can be found across the spectrum of applied ethics (e.g. COMBATANT in war ethics; PRACTITIONER in medical ethics; PARENT in family ethics; WOMAN in feminist theory; WORKER in economic policy), but work on role ethics as a topic in its own right is surprisingly rare. There are signs that this is changing and that roles per se are beginning to attain the profile they deserve within ethical and political theory. The ROLE ETHICS workshop is designed to foster this process.

Proposals in the form of an anonymous abstract are invited on the themes below. Deadline: 31 May 2013

One goal of the workshop is to achieve a greater understanding of both the unity and the diversity of roles. All roles seem to share a core set of features. They:

• Have specifiable entry and exit conditions
• Generate obligations for their occupiers (qua occupiers)
• Entitle their occupiers (qua occupiers) to certain powers and privileges
• Have a social function.

Yet roles can also be distinguished along a great many morally salient parameters, such as:

Voluntary (ADOPTIVE PARENT) vs involuntary (CONSCRIPT); highly codified (COMMANDING OFFICER) vs loosely specified (FRIEND); wWidely socially recognized (TEACHER) vs contested (SLAVE); biologically defined (GESTATIONAL MOTHER) vs socially constructed (‘MUMMY’); easily left (ASSISTANT CHEF) vs inalienable (BIRTH CHILD); short-term (JUROR) vs long-term (DALAI LAMA); professional (DENTIST) vs ad hoc (WITNESS TO A MURDER); broad in brief (PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL) vs narrow in brief (EXPERT WITNESS); open to all (CONSUMER) vs invitation only (GODPARENT); decision making (EUTHANASIA PATIENT) vs decision facilitating (EUTHANASIA DOCTOR)

Workshop contributors can use specific roles as case studies but should address general questions, including but not limited to:

• What is a role? Is a unitary definition desirable?
• Are there generic ethical principles governing when and how someone may assume or abandon a role? Or when and how a role’s occupier may ignore or override its prescriptions?
• What makes a set of role obligations obligatory for its occupier? Is it always a matter of actual or hypothetical consent? Likewise, what entitles an occupier to the powers attaching to the role?
• How do we determine what action is appropriate when a role’s obligations and entitlements are not clearly specified (e.g. the parental role)? And even when role-obligations are strongly codified (e.g. in a code of professional ethics), by what criteria may we evaluate the obligations and codes themselves?
• Is role ethics sui generis or is it the product of more general considerations that apply impartially to all persons, or of responsibilities arising from special (non-impartial) relationships between persons?
• What does and what should govern the range and availability of roles within a given society?
• Do role obligations conflict with ‘ordinary’ morality? Or does proper recognition of roles lead to a form of moral pluralism, as apparently envisaged by Machiavelli for the case of high public office?

For details on submitting, see: