We spend a great deal of time learning our vocations and avocations as we work at jobs, participate in home life, and take part in civic activities and politics. In doing so, we engage in practices that consist of complex bodies of norms. These practices themselves are bodies of knowledge-often acquired from others-about what we take to be good ways or right ways to do certain things. As we learn how to solve problems and act on this knowledge, the practice itself changes.

In Norms and Practices, James D. Wallace shows that norms of all kinds, including ethical norms, are intensely social constructs learned through constant interaction with others. Wallace suggests that ethical norms have long been misunderstood as practice-independent prescriptions for behavior; he regards them instead as items of practical knowledge that are constituents of practices. We are given the luxury of learning from others' mistakes and successes, often in a very informal way. Such lessons from collective or individual experience often carry more weight than do pronouncements from an external source. Wallace shows that practices and norms, including ethical norms within such spheres as biomedical research, family life, and politics, continually change as practitioners face novel problems.

About the Author

James D. Wallace is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Ethical Norms, Particular Cases; Moral Relevance and Moral Conflict; and Virtues and Vices, all from Cornell.

Reviews
"I have always been an admirer of James D. Wallace's work. His clear accessible prose style is a pleasure to read. And he has long argued forcefully and well that moral philosophers still have much to learn from the pragmatist tradition, in particular from the moral philosophy of John Dewey. In Norms and Practices he shows where and how leading ideas of Deweyan pragmatism interrelate with contemporary debates about the structure and function of ordinary practical reasoning, the role of rules and generalization in moral evaluation, and their relation to virtues and vices of moral character and conduct."-Jennifer Welchman, University of Alberta
"James D. Wallace's view is well outside the mainstream. There are at least two other things that strongly recommend it: (a) his presentation and defense of it are clear, concise and convincing and (b) it explains how, rather than being imposed from above or outside, ethics is in fact woven in the fabric of our lives."-Daniel E. Wueste, Director, Robert J. Rutland Institute for Ethics, and President, Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum, Clemson University



Book Information
ISBN 9780801447198
Author James D. Wallace
Format Hardback
Page Count 152
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 19mm