Originally posted on January 30, 2020 @ 3:49 PM

One of the reasons Safety does so poorly in understanding Ethics is because by nature, Ethics is a philosophical discipline. Philosophy is a discipline one benefits in learning through a Transdisciplinary approach to critical thinking  https://safetyrisk.net/transdisciplinary-safety/  ).

Transdisciplinarity is a disposition that seeks to know and think ‘across’ the disciplines rather than assuming that one’s own knowledge culture (eg. safety) is all one needs to know. These days if I see safety as an adjective of something eg. ‘safety’ ethics, its fairly reliable that the discussion that follows is narrow, closed and ill-informed.The discipline of Philosophy is a discipline of seeking wisdom, this is the meaning of the word – ‘philo’ love of ‘Sophia’ – wisdom.  Wisdom is not discussed in the Safety industry and has no mention in the AIHS BoK on Ethics. It is however central to the development of critical thinking, particularly in Ethics. Wisdom is not about finding ‘fixes’ but much more about not finding ‘fixes’. Safety also doesn’t want to know much about Wicked Problems (https://safetyrisk.net/risk-and-safety-as-a-wicked-problem/)
but Ethics is one of those Wicked Problem can-of-worms. Stenberg’s book on
Wisdom is certainly a good starting point.

One of the skills of Philosophy is that of defining terms and understanding assumptions. This is often undertaken by applying critical questions to a text using hermeneutical skills and focusing on how power, anthropology, personhood, methodology and culture are defined. Head-in-sand thinking or parrot–training are not learning and if one wants to understand Ethics one doesn’t get much from any safety text. Even confusing and not defining the language of morality and ethics, ethos and ethic demonstrate a poor understanding of Ethics. No wonder Safety thinks Zero is a good ideology!Most of the time we have a disagreement with someone, it is often about worldviews. Worldviews are often not declared and people in safety are rarely trained in how to discern worldviews. In this way people in safety often put forward various ideas and have little idea of the worldview (ideology) hidden in such discourse (The Bradley Curve is a classic example).

My map of safety
schools of thought (https://safetyrisk.net/a-great-comparison-of-risk-and-safety-schools-of-thought/)
was an attempt to show how worldviews are implicated for an understanding of risk. So in order to help understand Ethics I developed a similar map to help illustrate the various schools of Ethics (Figure 1. Schools of Ethics) and their implications for decision making.If you wish to understand an Ethic of Risk you are more than welcome to join us next week in Canberra in the two day workshop, An Ethic of Risk: https://spor.com.au/home/one-week-intensive-2-modules-february-2020/

Figure 1. Schools of Ethics.

Download a pdf copy here: Schools of Ethics 2