The Ethical Sense of “World” in the Era of Global Communication

The eThical SenSe of "World" 4 in The era of Global communicaTion brian lueck Southern Illinois University -Edwardsville for much of the history of Western ethical thought, "world" has named an ordered whole that orients human conduct by fixing the ethical sense of particular acts and of the contexts in which they occur.examples of this range from immanuel Kant's intelligible world, postulated by pure practical reason and valid for all rational beings, to the more particular, concrete worlds of the university, medicine, baseball, etc. making use of the philosophy of language advanced by the french philosopher maurice merleau-Ponty, i will argue in this paper that we can understand these worlds and their normatively orienting forces as products of communication.but i would also like to argue that in our contemporary era of globalized communication, worlds lose much of their normatively orienting function.i will conclude, then, by looking to merleau-Ponty's philosophy of language for resources to help us rethink the relation between world and ethical obligation. Communication and the Intersubjective Worldi would like to begin by explaining the idea that worlds fix the ethical sense of particular acts.There is no clearer example of this idea in the history of philosophy, i believe, than immanuel Kant's categorical imperative, according to which one must "act as if the maxim of [one's] action were to become through [one's] will a universal law of nature" (Kant 1785: 4:421).That is to say, we are to imagine a moral world, analogous to the natural world, that is thoroughly determined by universal laws. in this imagined intelligible world, persons would act in accordance with moral laws as a matter of course, in just the same way that natural objects act in accordance with natural laws.for each act that we propose to undertake, we formulate the universal law under which it would fall.finally, we determine whether a moral world with such a universal law is a possible world at all.if the moral world with that universal law would be an impossible world-that is, if it would entail a contradiction-then the act that falls under that law is morally impossible, i.e., contrary to duty.So, to borrow one of Kant's own examples, i might find myself in financial difficulty and contemplate borrowing

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