How developing a more expansive, non-formal conception of reason produces richer ethical understandings of human situations, explored and illustrated with many real examples. In
Re-Reasoning Ethics, Barry Hoffmaster and Cliff Hooker enhance and empower ethics by adopting a non-formal paradigm of rational deliberation as intelligent problem-solving and a complementary non-formal paradigm of ethical deliberation as problem-solving design to promote human flourishing. The non-formal conception of reason produces broader and richer ethical understandings of human situations, not the simple, constrained depictions provided by moral theories and their logical applications in medical ethics and bioethics. Instead, it delivers and vindicates the moral judgment that complex, contextual, and dynamic situations require.
Hoffmaster and Hooker demonstrate how this more expansive rationality operates with examples, first in science and then in ethics. Non-formal reason brings rationality not just to the empirical world of science but also to the empirical realities of human lives. Among the many real cases they present is that of how women at risk of having children with genetic conditions decide whether to try to become pregnant. These women do not apply the formal principle of maximizing expected utility (as advised by genetic counselors) and instead imagine scenarios of what their lives could be like with an affected child and assess whether they could accept the worst of these scenarios.
Hoffmaster and Hooker explain how moral compromise and a liberated, extended, and enriched reflective equilibrium expand and augment rational ethical deliberation and how that deliberation can rationally design ethical practices, institutions, and policies.
如何發展一種更廣泛的非形式理性觀念，能夠產生更豐富的倫理理解人類情境，並透過許多真實案例進行探討和說明。
在《Re-Reasoning Ethics》中，Barry Hoffmaster 和 Cliff Hooker 透過採用非形式的理性思考範式，將理性審議視為智慧問題解決，並將倫理審議視為問題解決的設計，以促進人類的繁榮，來增強和賦能倫理學。非形式的理性觀念能夠產生更廣泛和更豐富的倫理理解，這些理解超越了道德理論及其在醫學倫理和生物倫理中的邏輯應用所提供的簡單、受限的描述。相反，它提供並證明了複雜、具情境性和動態的情況所需的道德判斷。
Hoffmaster 和 Hooker 展示了這種更廣泛的理性如何運作，首先在科學領域，然後在倫理領域。非形式理性不僅將理性帶入科學的經驗世界，也將其帶入人類生活的經驗現實中。他們提出的許多真實案例中，包括了面臨生育遺傳疾病風險的女性如何決定是否嘗試懷孕的情況。這些女性並未應用最大化預期效用的正式原則（如遺傳諮詢師所建議），而是想像如果有一個受影響的孩子，她們的生活可能會是什麼樣子，並評估她們是否能接受這些情境中最糟糕的情況。
Hoffmaster 和 Hooker 解釋了道德妥協以及解放、擴展和豐富的反思平衡如何擴展和增強理性的倫理審議，以及這種審議如何能夠理性地設計倫理實踐、機構和政策。
Barry Hoffmaster, a bioethicist, is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario.
Cliff Hooker, a philosopher of science, is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Newcastle, Australia.
