Contact: Mary Daniel

(KINGSVILLE, April 4, 1996) -- Timo Airasinen, professor and chair of ethics at the University of Helsinki in Finland, will inaugurate the first annual Philosophy and Professional Ethics Conference to be hosted at Texas A&M University- Kingsville on Thursday, April 11, when he gives the principal address at 1:30 p.m. in the Biology Earth Sciences Auditorium. The Finnish professor will lecture about how professions have their own sets of ethics and will lead a discussion that explores the three basic philosophies in which these ethics are generally grounded.

The Helsinki ethics professor will discuss the significant basic philosophies which guide different professions and summarize the three philosophies as follows:

- Virtue ethics: as espoused by the ancient Greeks Plato and Aristotle, this is an ethic of character and consists of " how I should be and live; and, am I doing the right thing."

- Duty ethics: as put forth by philosopher Kant during the enlightenment era in Europe from 1660s to 1790s, this is an ethic of conduct and consists of behavior according to absolute universal laws.

- Utility ethics: as advanced by Englishman Jerry Bentham, this is an ethic of conduct and the dominant ethical theory of the United States which says "do the greatest good for the greatest amount of people." Its formula for happiness is to avoid pain and to seek pleasure. Airaksinen has 190 published works and just published the second edition (1995) of his well-known book, "The Philosophy of the Marquis de Sade". Other works of his include "Service and Science in Professional Life," "Moral Failures and Legal Relativism," and "Five Types of Knowledge."

Airaksinen is a member of the Learned Society of Praxiology in Warsaw, Poland and has conducted research at Trinity College, Dublin; University of Pittsburgh; University of Warsaw; University College, Oxford; University of Western Ontario; University of Moscow; University of Hamburg; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Clare Hall, Cambridge.

The international professor's lecture is sponsored by the A&M-Kingsville Manning Center for Professional Ethics and is open to faculty, students and the general public at no charge. For more information call the College of Business Administration, (512) 593-3801.

-TAMUK-

-Mary Daniel