Moral stuttering: bioethics for teachers, anyone?

Introduction The recent EPAT issue on Peirce and education (2005, 37/2) has explored Charles Sanders Peirce’s pragmatism mainly with regard to the problematics of learning and acquiring knowledge. This paper will shift the focus toward the moral dimension inherent in pragmatic philosophy. I will introduce a neologism, “moral stuttering”, as pertaining to real life problem solving and ethical decision-making that the educators are confronted with on a continuous basis. Contrary to negative connotations carried by such notions in the discourse on bioethics as moral silence, moral blindness, moral unpreparedness, moral indifference, or moral complacency, “stuttering” will be posited as a concept indispensable in dealing with ethical problems. Moral education, which is traditionally centred on educating values, character education, or inculcating virtues, will be reconceptualized within a model that should incorporate “moral stuttering”. Peircean triadic relational dynamics, as grounded in experience, enables practical (albeit uncertain or “stuttering”) knowing-how rather than relying on fixed goals, abstract principles, or universal rules for action. For pragmatists, logic is the ethics of thinking and ethics is the logic of doing. A tentative conclusion of the paper is that moral subject – as constituted in relations that will have incorporated “stuttering” – is compatible with Sankey’s (2004) “synaptic self” because of the libidinal economy of the unconscious. The paper will have demonstrated that it is “stuttering”, which – by defying the dichotomy between “is” and “ought”, facts and values, knowledge and action – necessarily contributes to construction of moral Self situated amidst contingencies of conflicting experiences.