Is ethics consultation dangerous?

Abstract

Scofield's article is an extremely important paper that is well-written, carefully and articulately argued, but fundamentally wrong, i.e., philosophically wrong. His position ultimately leads to pure subjectivism of values or a radical relativism of values where anyone's judgment about values is just as good as anyone else's judgment. He holds that in matters of ethical decision making there is no moral expertise. That is, when it comes to value judgments you cannot get them right and you cannot get them wrong. This position undermines the very possibility of ethics -- at least normative ethics, which is what Scofield objects to ethics consultants doing. But common sense tells us that some value judgments are better than others.