Radically Hopeful Thinking for a Wicked Covid-19 Pandemic Problem

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 751-768
Author(s):  
Benjamin Hole
Keyword(s):  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Ethical Challenge ◽  
Wicked Problem ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Living Well ◽  
Creative Solutions ◽  
Recent Climate ◽  
Uncertain Future ◽  
Proper Balance

This paper explores the prospects of radical hope for addressing the devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic. Hope is useful for conceptualizing the proper balance between too much fear and too little about our uncertain future. First, I describe the ethical challenge of the pandemic as a wicked problem. Because accepted ethical theories fail to motivate solutions, wicked problems pressure us to develop our value systems, exercise moral imaginations, and discover creative solutions. Second, I develop an Aristotelian account of radical hope, drawing from ancient philosophy, virtue ethics, and recent climate ethics. Radical hope is a novel form of courage, which balances the goal of external success, that something good will emerge from the tragedy, against the goal of living well for its own sake through practical wisdom. I conclude by applying some lessons to our present situation.

Using Creativity, Diversity, and Iterative Ways of Working to Send the Virus to Lockdown

2021 ◽  
pp. 229-244
Author(s):  
Justine Walter ◽  
Alexander Hofmann
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Disease Control ◽  
Metropolitan Areas ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Wicked Problem ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Future Developments ◽  
Creative Solutions ◽  
Wild Cards ◽  
Uncertain Future

The novel Covid-19 causing virus has caused major disruptions to individuals, societies, and economies worldwide. No single country has been left unaffected, and many societies have taken severe measures, including complete lockdowns of huge metropolitan areas, to limit the further spread of the virus. As a result, international trade and traveling have virtually come to a halt, enterprises struggle to survive, and both individuals and entire societies face an uncertain future. The Covid-19 pandemic thus represents a wild-card event that disrupts predictions of future developments and confronts researchers, policymakers, and decision-makers in organisations with a wicked problem. This chapter proposes that lateral collaboration, shorter iteration loops, and diversity will enable organisations to cope with future wild cards more effectively. Applying the same principles to research bears the potential to generate creative solutions to the wicked problem of pandemic disease control faster.

scholarly journals Design Is How We Change the World! Can We Do It in Socially, Environmentally and Economically Acceptable Ways? Synthesizing Design Tools for This Utopian Concept

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kumaraswamy Ponnambalam ◽  
Abbas Seifi ◽  
Jamshid Mousavi
Keyword(s):  
Value Systems ◽  
Social Constraints ◽  
Hard Constraints ◽  
Design For Sustainability ◽  
Creative Solutions ◽  
Global Impacts ◽  
Societal Level ◽  
Social Environmental ◽  
Circular Design

Since the beginning, humans advanced their civilization by making better tools to improve their lives. Tools and products for better living were designed considering engineering (manufacturing) issues and cost (time and money as predominant criteria). It has become clear that not considering environment and society, both at local/global levels, has now become a major impediment affecting living conditions of large parts of earth and society. Design methodologies should lead to creative solutions considering engineering and economics for practicality but also environmental and social constraints for longevity. We propose a comprehensive design methodology based on multidisciplinary design for including the knowledge of humanities, and science and engineering and allowing for experts from these areas to provide various necessary inputs. For example, experts in humanities are expected to interact with stakeholders to evaluate their value systems to provide guidance for the design. The methodology that we synthesize is new and combines (i) Societal level impacts at all scales, (ii) Environmental impacts and (iii) Engineering design with economic impacts, including the consideration of uncertainties. The proposed Social-Environmental-Economical-Engineering-based-design Framework (SEEEF) can utilize tools such as circular design, donut economics, design based on environmental life cycle analysis, among others. SEEEF is quantity based and provide steps for evaluating any project or product in an objective manner and will help train engineers in design for sustainability and provide non-engineers a significant role in design and to increase their understanding of the hard constraints of engineering. Ultimately, SEEEF allows society to take an informed decision considering short/long term and local/global impacts much of which are affected by uncertainty.

scholarly journals A Value Sensitive Scenario Planning Method for Adaptation to Uncertain Future Sea Level Rise

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Wedin ◽  
Per Wikman–Svahn
Keyword(s):  
Sea Level Rise ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
Scenario Planning ◽  
Value Sensitive Design ◽  
Adaptation Measures ◽  
A Value ◽  
Creative Solutions ◽  
Uncertain Future

AbstractValue sensitive design (VSD) aims at creating better technology based on social and ethical values. However, VSD has not been applied to long-term and uncertain future developments, such as societal planning for climate change. This paper describes a new method that combines elements from VSD with scenario planning. The method was developed for and applied to a case study of adaptation to sea level rise (SLR) in southern Sweden in a series of workshops. The participants of the workshops found that the method provided a framework for discussing long-term planning, enabled identification of essential values, challenged established planning practices, helped find creative solutions, and served as a reminder that we do not know what will happen in the future. Finally, we reflect on the limitations of the method and suggest further research on how it can be improved for value sensitive design of adaptation measures to manage uncertain future sea level rise.

scholarly journals Particularism for Generalists: A Rossian Business Ethic

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
J. Drake
Keyword(s):  
Business Ethics ◽  
Business Ethic ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
Standard Approach ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Standard Framework ◽  
Do So

A standard framework for business ethics views the inquiry as an application of major ethical theories to specific issues in business. As these theories are largely presented as being principled, the exercise therefore becomes one of applying general principles to business situations. Many adopting this standard approach have thus resisted the implementation of the most prominent development in ethical theory in recent history: that of particularism. In this article, I argue that particularist thinking has much to offer to business ethics and that standard resistance to particularist business ethics is based largely on misunderstandings. I do so by illustrating how the harbinger of particularism, W. D. Ross, countenances the practical wisdom of particularist ethics while being 1) invulnerable to standard objections to particularist business ethics and 2) compatible with the generalism of the standard approach. The Rossian business ethic is therefore one that the standard approach should be eager to include.

Backward Looks and Forward Glimpses from a Quincentennial Vantage Point

1992 ◽  
Vol 24 (S1) ◽  
pp. 219-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tulio Halperín Donghi
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
World Order ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Lost Decade ◽  
Uncertain Future ◽  
The Times

As the quincentennial of what we do not dare to call the discovery of the New World approaches, Spanish America remains impervious to the festive mood reigning in Spain. The reasons are painfully obvious: a region facing an at best uncertain future, while trying to close the wounds opened by a quarter-century of acute sociopolitical confrontation, and still reeling under the blows inflicted to its economy during the unlamented ‘lost decade’ just closed, has good reason to wonder whether it has anything to celebrate.Justified as it may be, the despondency caused by recent misfortunes does not offer the best inspiration to achieve a fair and balanced view of a five-centuries long historical experience. It is enough to compare the assessments inspired by the current centennial milestone with those of one century ago to discover how dangerous it is to pass judgement on such an experience by projecting onto it the dominant features of the immediate present.Yet in 1892 the times were not much more brilliant than today; several among the largest neo-hispanic countries were suffering the devastating impact of the worst economic crisis in their history: these circumstances did not, however, seriously undermine the optimism with which they looked at their future, an optimism that encouraged the founding fathers of their national historiographies to take in their stride the sombre aspects of the national past. If today a very different approach seems in order, it is not only because the atrocious history of our century has all but killed the faith nineteenth-century historians deposited in all kinds of manifest destinies, but perhaps also because of the justified suspicion that what Latin America faces today is different in kind from the streaks of bad luck all too frequent in its short history, that the world-wide transformations that reached spectacular culmination in the breakdown of the ‘really existing socialism’ are full of menace for the region, and the practical wisdom distilled from the experience of the past five centuries cannot offer any valid guidance for the challenges of the ‘new world order’ that is currently striving to be born.

Eudaimonism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark LeBar
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Living Well ◽  
Moral Perfection ◽  
Essential Questions ◽  
Good For

The concept of eudaimonia plays a crucial role in understanding virtue on some quite influential virtue ethical theories. It can be understood as happiness, as a property of lives. It is on many influential accounts the focus of virtue and the standard for excellence in living and acting. This chapter grapples with some essential questions in fleshing out this relation: What, beyond merely not dying, does living consist in? What counts as living well? How does eudaimonia give point or focus to virtue? Who is living a good life good for? Can eudaimonism get us beyond an unacceptable egoism? Among the major concerns addressed is that eudaimonia really points more to moral perfection than to happiness. The chapter concludes by taking up a number of objections to allowing the role for eudaimonia that it has traditionally played in virtue ethical theories.

scholarly journals Phronetic Science for Wicked Times

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-15
Author(s):  
Ajay Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
Wicked Problems ◽  
Wicked Problem ◽  
Science Educators

COVID-19 is a global assemblage that presents a wicked problem for scientists and policymakers alike. Wicked problems that defy easy characterization and solutions are expected to proliferate in the Capitalocene. In this essay, I argue that traditional science cannot be expected to help us understand and resolve wicked problems like COVID-19. Rather, we need phronetic science that is transdisciplinary, ethically aware and oriented towards inculcating practical wisdom in its practitioners. Further, if we wish to see phronetic science being used in tackling wicked problems, science educators can contribute by teaching phronetic science in our schools.

Communication Sciences and Disorders PhD Graduates' Perceptions of Their PhD Program

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 463-478
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Crais ◽  
Melody Harrison Savage
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Career Expectations ◽  
Doctoral Preparation ◽  
Creative Solutions ◽  
Phd Education ◽  
Doctor Of Philosophy ◽  
First Time ◽  
Students Success ◽  
Phd Program

Purpose The shortage of doctor of philosophy (PhD)–level applicants to fill academic and research positions in communication sciences and disorders (CSD) programs calls for a detailed examination of current CSD PhD educational practices and the generation of creative solutions. The intended purposes of the article are to encourage CSD faculty to examine their own PhD program practices and consider the perspectives of recent CSD PhD graduates in determining the need for possible modifications. Method The article describes the results of a survey of 240 CSD PhD graduates and their perceptions of the challenges and facilitators to completing a PhD degree; the quality of their preparation in research, teaching, and job readiness; and ways to improve PhD education. Results Two primary themes emerged from the data highlighting the need for “matchmaking.” The first time point of needed matchmaking is prior to entry among students, mentors, and expectations as well as between aspects of the program that can lead to students' success and graduation. The second important matchmaking need is between the actual PhD preparation and the realities of the graduates' career expectations, and those placed on graduates by their employers. Conclusions Within both themes, graduate's perspectives and suggestions to help guide future doctoral preparation are highlighted. The graduates' recommendations could be used by CSD PhD program faculty to enhance the quality of their program and the likelihood of student success and completion. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.11991480

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