TOWARD A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF MORAL PLURALISM

Rogene A. Buchholz and Sandra B. Rosenthal

Abstract: The current literature in business ethics is tending toward an unacknowledged moral pluralism, with all the problems this position entails. An adequate moral pluralism cannot be achieved by a synthesis of existing theoretical alternatives for moral action. Rather, what is needed is a radical reconstruction of the understanding of the moral situation that undercuts some ofthe traditional dichotomies, provides a solid philosophical grounding which is inherently pluralistic, and offers a new understanding of what it is to think morally. The philosophical position of American pragmatism, as briefly sketched in this paper, offers one such possible reconstruction.

Introduction

he usual approach to ethical theory in business ethics texts is to present either in cursory form or sometimes in greater detail the theory of utilitarianism based on the writings of Bentham and Mill as representative of a more general class of teleological ethics, and Kantian ethical theory related to the categorical imperative as representative of the deontological approach to ethical decision making. These texts then go on to present as well certain notions of justice, usually going into the egalitarianism of John Rawls and the opposing libertarianism of Robert Nozick. They also generally include a discussion of rights, and at times, some variation of virtue theory. What we are left with is kind of an ethical smorgasbord where one has various theories from which to choose that will hopefully shed some light on the ethical problems under consideration and lead to a justifiable decision. But we are never told to any extent exactly how we are to decide which theory to apply in a given situation, what guidelines we are to use in applying these different theories, what criteria determine which theory is best for a given problem, and what to do if the application of different theories results in totally different courses of action. Further, what implications does switching back and forth between theories and their corresponding principles have for the ethical enterprise as a whole? The authors of these textbooks usually recognize the problem but do not deal with it to any great extent. Tom Donaldson and Particia Werhane (1993:17), for example, after presenting the theories of consequentialism, deontology, and what they call human nature ethics which seems to be a variation of virtue ethicsstate: "Indeed, the three methods of moral reasoning are sufficiently
1996. Business Ethics Quarterly, Voiume 6, Issue 3, ISSN 1052-150X, 0263-0275.

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broad that each is applicable to the full range of problems confronting human moral experience. The question of which method, if any, is superior to the others must be left for another time. The intention of this essay is not to substitute for a thorough study of traditional ethical theoriessomething for which there is no substitutebut to introduce the reader to basic modes of ethical reasoning that will help to analyze the ethical problems in business that arise in the remainder of the book." Other authors deal with the problem in different ways, but perhaps most instructive are the words of Manuel Velasquez ( 1992: 104-106) in his well known textbook. Our morality, therefore, contains three main kinds of moral considerations, each of which emphasizes certain morally important aspects of our behavior, but no one of which captures all the factors that must be taken into account in making moral judgments. Utilitarian standards consider only the aggregate social welfare but ignore the individual and how that welfare is distributed. Moral rights consider the individual but discount both aggregate well-being and distributive considerations. Standards of justice consider distributive issues but they ignore aggregate social welfare and the individual as such. These three kinds of moral considerations do not seem to be reducible to each other yet all three seem to be necessary parts of our morality. That is, there are some moral problems for which utilitarian considerations are decisive, while for other problems the decisive considerations are either the rights of individuals or the justice of the distributions involved...We have at this time no comprehensive moral theory capable of determining precisely when utilitarian considerations become 'sufficiently large' to outweigh narrow infringements on a conflicting right or standard of justice, or when considerations of justice become 'important enough' to outweigh infringements on conflicting rights. Moral philosophers have been unable to agree on any absolute rules for making such judgments. There are, however, a number of rough criteria that can guide us in these matters , , ,But these criteria remain rough and intuitive. They lie at the edges of the light that ethics can shed on moral reasoning. These statements seem to be making a virtue out of a necessity and really beg the questions posed earlier. This litany of conflicting theories and principles, all of which were initially meant as universal approaches to ethical problems, give conflicting signals to people in positions of responsibility in business and other organizations and can at times allow them to pick principles at will to rationalize what from another perspective may be unethical activity in concrete situations. Shifting between utilitarianism and Kant's categorical imperative or theories of justice and rights involves at best an unreflective or shallow commitment to ethics and to a moral point of view. These theories cannot be applied at will as the situation may seem to dictate, for each of them involves commitment to the philosophical framework on which it is based, and which provides for its richness and rationale. And these frameworks are often in conflict. The philosophical foundations on which Kant's deontological ethics is based are radically different from the philosophical foundations on which either act or rule utilitarianism is based. To be Kantians at one time and Benthamites at

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another is to shift philosophical frameworks at will and results in what has been quite aptly called "metaphysical musical chairs." (Callicott, 1990: 115; Weston, 1991: 283-86) Attempts to avoid this type of philosophical schizophrenia have led some philosophers to claim that moral principles can be divorced from their philosophical underpinnings. (Wenz, 1993) Thus one can hold to a single moral theory which claims that there are a variety of moral principles which cannot be reduced to or derived from a single master principle. What this view seems to be saying is that to think morally and to think philosophically are no longer compatible endeavors. What we are really dealing with in all the above instances is moral pluralism, and are thus involved in all the problems this poses for the field. Moral pluralism is the view that no single moral principle or overarching theory of what is right can be appropriately applied in all ethically problematic situations. There is no one unifying, monistic principle from which lesser principles can be derived. Different moral theories are possible depending upon which values or principles are included. Moral pluralism generally advocates two different approaches to an ethical problem, (1) that each relevant principle be considered in every instance, or (2) that one principle be operative in one type of domain or sphere of interest, and another principle be operative in another type of domain or sphere of interest. An adequate moral pluralism, like any adequate moral theory, requires a solid philosophical grounding, but it requires a philosophical grounding that is itself inherently pluralistic. With such a pluralism there must conjointly be an understanding of what it is to think morally that is radically different than the application of a rule to a concrete situation. In brief, the switch from monism to pluralism cannot be accomplished by a synthesis of existing theoretical alternatives for acting in the moral situation but through a radical reconstruction of the understanding of the moral situation. In spite of the seemingly radical difference between the monistic theories of Bentham and Kant, for example, there is a striking similarity. For Kant and Bentham alike, the value of an act is to be found solely in its exempliflcation of a rule, be it the categorical imperative or the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Moral pluralism does not provide a rule for the balancing of principles, but the right act is nonetheless the one which is subsumed under the proper balance of rules or principles. However, on further reflection, it becomes evident that not only is there no mechanical way to decide the proper balance, but for neither moral pluralism nor monism is there a mechanical way to decide if a particular act falls under a rule in a given situation. When one has to deal with a radically new kind of situation, where one cannot call on old decisions, this problem is even more pronounced. Furthermore, any moral view is dependent, at least implicitly, on a particular view of the nature of the individual and of the community within which the individual functions. And the long standing view of the self as an atomic unit, as an isolatable building block of a community, dominates the ethical tradition.

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Indeed, views of justice as diverse as that of Rawls and Nozick both presuppose the individual as an atomic unit that can be considered theoretically in isolation from, and prior to, a community. Similarly, the conflict between individual and community, which manifests itself in the conflict between Kant and Bentham, presupposes the individual as the atomic building block of community.

American Pragmatism and Ethics

What we propose to do in this paper is to provide a philosophical grounding of ethics that is itself inherently pluralistic; that redirects the understanding of what it is to think morally, such that decision-making is no longer merely rule driven activity but rather involves the ongoing dynamic interplay between rule development and rule application; and that offers an alternative way to view the moral situation that undercuts the dichotomies inherent in these traditional theories, the dichotomies of individual rights vs community interests, of consequences vs actions, and relativism vs absolutism. These dichotomies are embodied in traditional approaches to ethics, and what is called for is another way of looking at ethics that does not involve these unresolvable tensions. American pragmatism has developed one such possible reconstruction of the moral situation, and it is this paradigm that will be sketched briefly in the following pages.2 Classical American pragmatism provides a conceptual framework which offers the possibility of undercutting the traditional dichotomies in ethical theory through an intertwined understanding of self, community, and values in a way which brings out the inextricably dynamic interrelation of these components. In so doing, it undercuts the various ethical approaches that involve rule application in favor of a moral creativity in decision making which focuses on contextual reconstruction of problematic situations in a process of ongoing moral growth. Given the importance of the nature of the individual for ethical theory as indicated above, it is with this facet of pragmatism that the ensuing discussion can best begin its more specific focus.

The Nature of the Self

The pragmatic view holds that all knowledge and experience are infused with interpretive aspects, funded with past experience, and stem from a perspective or point of view. In being inherently perspectival, experience and knowledge are at once experimental, for this perspectivalism involves a creative organization of experience with directs our anticipatory activity and which is tested by its workability in the ongoing course of experience. Within this context of experience as experimental, meaning emerges in the interactions among conscious organisms. In the adjustments and coordinations needed for cooperative action in the social context, individuals take the perspective of the other in the development of their conduct, and in this way there develops the common content which provides community of meaning.

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To have a self is to have a particular type of ability, the ability to be aware of one's behavior as part ofthe social process of adjustment, to be aware of oneself as a social object, as an acting agent within the context of other acting agents. Not only do selves exist only in relationship to other selves, but no absolute line can be drawn between our own selves and the selves of others, since our own selves are there for and in our experience only insofar as others exist and enter into our experience. The origin and foundation of the self, like those of mind, are social or intersubjective. There is no such thing as a self as an isolated, atomic unit of being. In incorporating the perspective ofthe other, the developing self comes to take the perspective of others as the group as a whole. In this way the self comes to incorporate the standards and authority of the group, the organization or system of attitudes and responses which is called "the generalized other;"^ there is a passive dimension to the self. Yet, in responding to the perspective of the other, it is the individual as a unique center of activity that responds; there is also a creative dimension to the self. Any self thus incorporates, by its very nature, both the conformity of the group perspective and the creativity of its unique individual perspective. Thus, Dewey (1987) holds that the tension between conservative and liberating factors lies in the very constitution of individual selves. Freedom does not lie in opposition to the restriction of norms and authority, but in a self-direction which requires the proper dynamic interaction of these two poles within the self. In this regard, Dewey (1987) notes that the "principle of authority" must not be understood as a "purely restrictive power" but as providing direction. Because of this dynamic interaction constitutive of the very nature of selfhood, the perspective ofthe novel, liberating pole always opens onto a common, "conserving" perspective. This dynamic interrelationship provides one with the ability to talk to oneself in terms of the community to which one belongs and lay upon oneself the responsibilities that belong to the community; the ability to admonish oneself as others would, and to recognize what are one's duties as well as one's rights.'* Indeed, self criticism is in large part social criticism. But, these responsibilities and standards have themselves resulted not just from the internalization of the attitudes of the generalized other but from the effect on these attitudes by the past responses on one's own creative input. Not only is one's creative individuality not enslaved or determined by the generalized other, but the generalized other has itself been formed in part from one's own past creative acts.

The Nature of Community

Because of the very nature of the self, the individual is neither an isolatable discrete element in, nor an atomic building block of, a community. Rather, the individual represents the creative pole within community. It has been seen that the unique individual both reflects and reacts to the common perspective in its

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novelty in turn enters into the common perspective which is now "there" as incorporating this novelty. This novel perspective is an emergent because of its relation to institutions, traditions, and patterns of life which conditioned its novel emergence, and it gains its significance in light of the new common perspective to which it gives rise. In this continual interplay of adjustment of attitudes, aspirations, and factual perceptions between the common perspective and the novel emergent as it conditions the common perspective, the dynamic of community is to be found. Thus the creativity of the individual can be contrasted with the conformity represented by the common perspective, but not with community.^ That which both founds and is founded upon this activity of ongoing adjustment is a community, and in its historical rootedness it develops its own particular organs for the control of the process. The ability to provide the means of mediating within the ongoing dynamics of adjustment constitutes a community of any type as a community.^ This adjustment is neither assimilation of perspectives, one to the other, nor the fusion of perspectives into an indistinguishable oneness, but can best be understood as an accommodation in which each creatively affects, and is affected by, the other through accepted means of mediation. Thus a community is constituted by, and develops in terms of, the ongoing communicative adjustment between the activity constitutive of the novel individual perspective and the common or group perspective, and each of these two interacting poles constitutive of community gains its meaning, significance and enrichment through this process of participatory accommodation or adjustment. A free society, like a free individual, requires both the influencing power of authority as embodied in institutions and traditions and the innovative power of creativity as contextually set or directed novelty. Thus, in Dewey's (1984a:330, 332) terms, "No amount of aggregated collective action of itself constitutes a community...To leam to be human is to develop through the give-and-take of communication an effective sense of being an individually distinctive member of a community; one who understands and appreciates its beliefs, desires, and methods, and who contributes to a further conversion of organic powers into human resources and values. But this transition is never finished." It can be seen that the very intelligence which transforms societies and institutions is itself influenced by these institutions. In this sense even individual intelligence is social intelligence. And, social intelligence, as the historically grounded intelligence operative within a community and embodied in its institutions, though not merely an aggregate of individual intelligence but rather a qualitatively unique and unified whole, is nonetheless not something separable from individual intelligence. There is an intimate functional reciprocity between individual and social intelligence, a reciprocity based on the continual process of adjustment.^ Novelty within society is initiated by individuals, but such initiation can occur only because individuals are continuous with others and with the historically

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situated social institutions of which they are a part. Part of the very life process is the ongoing adjustment between the old and the new, the stability of conformity and the novelty of creativity. It is the interrelation of novelty and continuity, stressed in virtually all the classical pragmatists, which provides the conceptual tools for understanding how the uniqueness of the individual and the norms and standards of community are two interrelated factors in an ongoing exchange, neither of which can exist apart from the other. Because of the inseparable interaction of these two poles, goals for "the whole" cannot be pursued by ignoring consequences for individuals affected, nor can individual goals be adequately pursued apart from the vision of the functioning of the whole. The development of the ability both to create and to respond constructively to the creation of novel perspectives, as well as to incorporate the perspective of the other, not as something totally alien, but as something sympathetically understood, is at once growth of the self. Thus to contribute to the growth of community is at once to contribute to the growth of the selves involved in the ongoing dynamics of adjustment. Any problematic situation can be viewed through the use of social intelligence in a way which enlarges and reintegrates the situation and selves involved, providing at once a greater degree of authentic self-expression and a greater degree of social participation. In this way, an organization controls its own evolution. Any authentic organization involves a shared value or goal, and the overreaching goal of an organization which is not to die of stagnation is, in Mead's (1934:251) words, precisely "this control of its own evolution." Thus, the ultimate "goal" involving the working character of universalizing ideals is growth or development, not final completion. Neither community nor the working ideal of universality can imply that differences should be eliminated or melted down, for these differences provide the necessary materials by which a society can continue to grow. As Dewey (1978) stresses, growth by its very nature involves the resolution of conflict. Authentic reconstruction in cases of incompatibility must be based on the problem situation and the history within which it has emerged. Yet, reconstruction cannot be imposed from on high by eliciting the standards of a past which does not contain the organs of resolution, but must be developed by calling on a sense of a more fundamental and creative level of activity. It has been seen that the relation of individual selves to the generalized other requires the openness of perspectives. And, the adjustment of perspectives through rational reconstruction requires not an imposition from "on high" but a deepening to a more fundamental level of human rapport. Indeed, while experience arises from specific, concrete contexts shaped by a particular tradition, this is not mere inculcation, for the deepening process offers the openness for breaking through and evaluating one's own stance. It allows us to grasp different contexts, to take the perspective of "the other," to participate in dialogue with "the other." It is within this dynamic relation between the individual and the generalized other that value emerges, reflecting the bi-polar dynamics of adjustment.

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The Value Dimension of Experience

For the pragmatist, value is not something subjective, housed either as a content of the mind or in any other sense within the organism, but neither is it something "there" in an independently ordered universe. Objects and situations, as they emerge in human experience, possess qualities which are as ontologically real in their emergence as the processes within which they emerge. These objects and situations possess qualities not just of colors, sounds, resistance, and so forth, but qualities of being alluring or repugnant, fulfilling or stultifying, appealing or unappealing and so forth. These latter types of qualities, like all qualities, are real additive features within nature and are not reducible in any way to other qualities. Value and valuings or valuing experiences are traits of nature; novel emergents in the context of organism-environment interaction. Humans have a plurality of values which emerge from their organic embeddedness in the richness of the natural world. Further, the experience of value emerges as both shared and unique, as all experience is both shared and unique. The adjustment between these two aspects of value, the shared and the unique, gives rise to the novel and creative aspects within the moral community. Finally, value situations, like all situations, are open to inquiry and require the general method of scientific experimentalism by which progressive movement from a problematic situation to a meaningfully resolved or secure situation takes place. This experimental method involves creatively organizing experience through meanings, directing one's activity in light of that creative organization, and testing for truth in terms of consequences: does the organization work in bringing about the intended result? In the case of value inquiry as the embodiment of experimental method, this involves moving from a situation filled with problematic valuings to a resolved or meaningfully organized experience of the valuable. The difference between valuings and the experience of the valuable, between valuings and evaluations, is the difference in stages of inquiry. The distinction between valuings and the valuable is the distinction between experiencings which make no future claim and those judgments with make future claims by linking present experience to other experiences in terms of interacting potentialities or causal connections. In brief, valuings are turned into the experience of the valuable by the organizing activity of the mind in the ongoing course of experience as experimental. Claims concerning the valuable emerge from the context of conflicting valuings and are dependent for their validity upon their ability to produce harmonious valuing experiences.

Moral Pluralism
Humans cannot assign priority to any one basic value, nor can their values be arranged in any rigid hierarchy, but they must live with the consequences of their actions. The philosophical grounding of the normative in the domain of the diversity of emergent valuings by its very nature demands moral pluralism. The

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very framework of pragmatic ethics demands irreducible pluralism of different contexts or situations, different kinds of goods, and so forth. This pluralism, of course, rules out absolutism in ethics. But what must be stressed is that it equally rules out subjectivism and relativism. Our moral claims are about something that requires integration: the experience of value within nature. We create and utilize norms and ideals in the moral situation, but which ones work is dependent upon the emergent but real domain of diverse valuings which need integration and harmonizing. Further, given the interdependent dynamics of the individual and the community, it can be seen that neither individuals nor whole systems are the bearers of value, but rather value emerges in the interactions of individuals, and wholes gain their value through the interactions of individuals, while the value of individuals cannot be understood in isolation from the relationships which constitute their ongoing development. When we slide over the complexities of a problem, we can easily be convinced that categorical moral issues are at stake. And, the complexities of a problem are always context dependent and occur within the inseparable dynamic interaction of the individual and the community. When habitual modes of organizing behavior do not work in resolving problematic situations involving conflicting valuings, new moral norms emerge which in turn give a different funded quality to the immediacy of valuings. Part of the development of the harmonious life of growth is to make valuings as reflective of valuations as possible. Only when one gets positive valuing experiences from that which reason sees as valuable, can one develop a truly integrated self. Such cultivation can proceed only when one is aware of the relation between the valuing experiences and the network of processes which can culminate in their occurrence. Thus taste, as Dewey notes, far from being that about which one cannot argue, is one of the most important things to argue about. (Dewey, 1984b) The cultivation of taste is the cultivation of the correct infusion of valuings with evaluations, with a sense of the valuable. Only when immediate valuings are valuings which reason sees are or can be organized into the objectively valuable can there be a life of harmony. If one can get valuing experiences only from what reflective inquiry shows not to be valuable, then one is living a life of internal conflict in which the experience of value and the claims of reason are at odds with each other. Reason thus performs its proper moral function by enriching the immediacy of value experience in a way which reflects awareness of moral meaning and validity of application in concrete situations. The functional relation between valuing experiences and normative value claims must work as an organic unity in the ongoing course of experience in increasing the value ladenness of experience through expanding contexts for growth of self and community. Such a workable relationship, to remain workable, requires not stagnation but constant openness to change through intelligent reconstruction incorporating the dynamics of experimental inquiry. Though moral diversity can flourish within a community, when such diversity becomes irreconcilable conflict, social change must lead to the development of

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new ways of dealing with conflicting demands if community is to be maintained. And, because shared demands of humans qua humans occur at the very roots of experience, the resolution of conflicting moral communities cannot be resolved by appeal to abstract principles, but through a deepening attunement to the demands of human valuings in their commonness and diversity. Such a deepening may change conflict into community diversity, or it may lead to an emerging consensus of the wrongness of one of the conflicting positions. Such a deepening, of course, does not negate the use of intelligent inquiry, but rather opens it up, frees it from the products of its past in terms of rigidities and abstractions, and focuses it on the dynamics of concrete human existence and the direct sense of value as it emerges from the very core of human existence. The vital, growing sense of moral rightness comes not from the indoctrination of abstract principles but from attunement to the way in which moral beliefs and practices must be rooted naturally in the very conditions of human existence. In this process, we are often reconstructing moral rules. Principles are not directives to action but are rather suggestive of actions. Just as hypotheses in the technical experimental sciences are modified through ongoing testing, moral principles are hypotheses which require ongoing testing and allow for qualification and reconstruction.^ Thinking morally is not merely applying rules of community interest, universalizability, and so forth, to some specific act, nor is it acting according to some ultimate value or to some set of ultimate values within which all others can be seen as subsets. Rather, it is acting to bring about growth of self and growth of community contexts within which the self functions. The ultimate ideal, if one speaks of an ultimate ideal, is growth itself, not conformity of action to a fixed end or group of several selected ends. Critics of this position have wrongly interpreted growth as mere accumulation of something. This leads to charges that increases in morally detrimental activity or unfounded beliefs could be considered instances of growth. It has been seen, however, that the pragmatic understanding of growth involves reintegration of problematic situations in ways which lead to widening horizons of self, of community, and of the relation between self and community. In this way, growth has an inherently moral and esthetic quality. And the materials of growth are diversity and indeed conflict.

Conclusion
In conclusion, what is needed for moral responsibility is more than a good will and more than mere application of abstract principles to concrete situations. What is needed is the development of the reorganizing and ordering capabilities of creative intelligence, the imaginative grasp of authentic possibilities, the vitality of motivation, and a deepened attunement to the sense of concrete human existence in its richness, diversity, and complexity. The importance of this attunement cannot be overstressed. In Dewey's words, "A problem must be felt before it can be stated. If the unique quality of the situation is had (experienced) immediately, then there is something that regulates the selection and the

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weighing of observed facts and their conceptual ordering." (Dewey, 1986: 76) In short, the development of moral responsibility requires education of the whole person. It is education of the whole person which can provide the breadth and depth needed to harmonize conceptual recognition of the valuable with the immediacy of valuing experiences and provide the creative intelligence and moral imagination needed for ongoing reconstructive growth. Thus education, properly understood, is inherently moral, and leads to development ofthe moral character that we call virtue. (Dewey, 1983: 30) It should be noted here that this view is not saying that what is good is what is done by virtuous persons, persons of moral character; rather, it is saying that virtuous persons are those who, through their actions, manifest a striving to bring about objectively good consequences, those who engage the art of experience to bring about authentic growth in the ongoing reconstruction of problematic contexts, the various ingredients of which this paper has tried to briefly sketch. This view cannot tell us what position to take on specific issues, but then no theory can supply to ordinary people unambiguous, practical prescriptions in all situations where moral choices must be made. It does, however, clarify what is at stake in moral decisions and gives a directive for making intelligent choices and for engaging in reasoned debate on the issues. What must be mediated is not a conflict among abstract moral principles; rather a plurality of conflicting interests must be integrated, and that can only be done by the morally perceptive, creative individual operating in a specific context in response to specific conflicts, and the way of creatively integrating these is a manifestation of moral character. The vital, growing sense of moral rightness comes from concrete moral attunement, and it is this attunement which gives vitality to the diverse and changing principles as working hypotheses embodied in concrete moral activity. Loyola University of New Orleans

Notes
''The differences between theories should not lead us to despair of resolving ethical issues or to conclude that one resolution is as good as another. Nor should we be discouraged, by the fact that agreement on complex ethical issues is seldom achieved. Unanimity in ethics is an unreasonable expectation. The best we can do is to analyze the issues as fully as possible, which means getting straight on the facts and achieving definitional clarity, then to develop the strongest and most complete arguments we can for what we consider to be the correct conclusions." (Boatright, 1993: 25) "Philosophy can help society find a reasoned and systematic approach to moral problems, but does not supply mechanical solutions or definitive procedures for decision making. This lack of finality, however, is no cause for skepticism. Moral philosophy can produce well-constructed arguments and criticisms to help explore and advance the issues, but practical wisdom and sound judgment are philosophy's's indispensable allies in decision-making contexts. In this respect, philosophy is neither inferior nor superior to other forms of reasoning such as those found in law, economics, and the behavioral sciences." (Beauchamp and Bowie, 1993: 43)

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^This pragmatism refers to a school of philosophic thought, and not to the "practical" attitude toward life which has been held by many to typify the American temperment. By pragmatism in this essay is intended classical American pragmatism, that movement incorporating the writings of its five major contributors: Charles Peirce, William James, John Dewey, G.H. Mead, and C.I. Lewis. That these philosophers provide a unified perspective is assumed in this essay, but this claim is defended at some length in Rosenthal (1986). ^This term is introduced by G. H. Mead (1934), but is applicable in broad strokes for the pragmatic understanding of self and other, '^While the question of rights cannot be dealt with in the present time constraints, it is worth noting that this view of the social nature of the self provides the basis for a doctrine of rights which can be natural rights, without the traditional entanglement with notions of atomic individuals or natural law. (Mead, 1934: 287; 1964: 163) ^Mead (1934) uses the example of a baseball team as an instance of a social group. To participate in a baseball game, a participant must assume the attitudes of the other players as an organized unity, and this organization controls the response of the individual participant. Each one of the participant's own acts is set by "his being everyone else on the team," in so far as the organization of the various attitudes controls his own response. Yet, each concrete situation is unique, and individual players feed into the group dynamics in terms of their own unique responses, responses which in turn shape the ongoing dynamics of the group. ^A person may be a member of more than one community, for there are diverse levels and types of communities. Any community consists of many subgroups, and though individuals may feel alienated from a particular society, they cannot really be alienated from society in general, for this very alienation will only throw them into some other society. (Mead, 1934:35354) ^As Dewey (1984a:330-33) emphasizes, "Wants, choices and purposes have their locus in single beings," but the content is not "something purely personal." The "along with" is part of the very life process. ^As Dewey (1983: 165) states, the "Choice is not between throwing away rules, previously developed and sticking obstinately by them. The intelligent alternative is to revise, adapt, expand and alter them. The problem is one of continuous, vital readaptation."

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1996. Business Ethics Quarterly, Volume 6, Issue 3. ISSN 1052-150X. 0263-0275.