论人性与道德——一种道德学的分析

揭示人性有哲学、心理学、生理学、伦理学等多重维度,但从道德上考究人性即关于人性善恶问题的讨论是主流;道德与人性的关系集中表现为人性决定道德还是道德决定人性的问题,决定道德的利益不过是人性的体现,而人性的善恶又以利益的取舍为标准,如果我们认同由伦理入道德的分析进路,那么人性就构成道德的"第二土壤";但人性又是欲望与情感的总和,利益只不过是人的欲望的现实化,就此而言,人性又构成道德的"第一土壤";因此,基于真实人性的道德学应该破除人性要素的二元对立思维,从人性的完整性、客观性出发,为正当与善提供坚实的人性基础,为"完整的人"和"自由的人"的实现提供道义支撑,真正使道德成为人的道德,而不是道德异化。     

弗洛姆人的生存方式理论及其启示意义

在弗洛伊德的精神分析学说、马克思的思想以及禅宗思想的基础上,弗洛姆建构了充满浓厚人本主义色彩的人的生存方式理论。借助这一理论,弗洛姆展开了对西方工业社会“重占有”生存方式的批判,提出了向“重存在”生存方式转变的路径,展现了一个学者对人类生存困境的敏锐洞察力和深切关怀。随着改革开放的逐步深入,我国也出现了一些“重占有”生存方式的苗头性倾向。如何抑制住这些苗头性倾向,找出问题存在的原因,以更加有利于社会主义精神文明建设,弗洛姆人的生存方式理论具有重要的启示意义。     

麦金太尔早期理解人性的双重维度

人性问题始终是麦金太尔学术研究的关切点。麦金太尔早期基于马克思主义的立场,从道德哲学的角度弥补马克思主义发展中的"道德缺场",将对人性的解读与重释历史唯物主义结合起来,以解决人之"异化"状态。通过剖析人性中需要与道德的分离情境,麦金太尔提出若要真正回归人之本身,就必须重视人的需求,将其与道德统一,以实现"人性复归"的目的。在此基础上,共产主义提供了最佳的实践路径。概而观之,马克思主义与亚里士多德主义不仅是麦金太尔理解人性的基本立足点,更是其整个理论建构的致思逻辑。     

弗洛姆的人道主义伦理学

美国心理学家联合会提出了这样一项任务:把整体的人作为心理学家科学研究的对象,即研究人及人的先决条件、能力、目的、任务和生活的意义。道德问题是这种人道主义心理学的主要对象。因此,我们就可以来谈论人道主义伦理学了。E.弗洛姆就是人道主义伦理学的主要代表人物之一。弗洛姆认为,他研究的出发点是这样一个问题:我们世纪的人甚感不安全和心神不宁的     

人格塑造的道德合理性——弗洛姆生产性人格评述

弗洛姆将人格作为伦理学研究的主题,他认为人格是诱导人的潜能实现的方式,是道德行为的动力基础.尤其是生产性人格能够激发并引导人性中理性和爱的潜能的充分实现,推动个体行为向善并且成为善良的人.生产性人格是一种理想的人格取向,现实生活中的人格往往是不同人格取向的综合,那么,人格塑造就是发育生产性人格在整个人格体系中的地位和作用.弗洛姆以生产性人格为核心规范建立了规范人本主义伦理学,对现代性问题的解答具有重要意义.但是作为规范的生产性人格或多或少触及了美德理论,这一矛盾也使弗洛姆的人格及人格塑造论面临着挑战.     

论以人为中心视界的人本管理结构

人本管理是一系列以人为中心的管理理论与实践活动的总称。综观管理科学的发展历程 ,古典管理理论只着重强调管理科学性、合理性 ,而未给管理中的“人”的因素与作用以足够的重视。在管理学的整个发展过程中 ,“人”始终是一个基本的概念。任何一种管理理论 ,都是依据对人的一定看法而提出来的 ,各种管理论的区别 ,归根到底是对人的理解的不同。在管理丛林盘根交错的各条枝蔓中 ,凸现的人性假设 ,表现了人始终是管理的主要对象 ,以及对人的认识的不断深化。这种认识每前进一步 ,人在管理中的地位也就提高一步。但是 ,所有人本管理思想之前的…     

人性与道德

中西方伦理思想史上关于人性争论的关键,在于没有弄清人性的内涵及其与人的本质之间的关系,从而在从人性到道德的逻辑过渡上出现了问题.本文通过对历史上人性论的批判分析,将人性划分为"实然"与"应然"两个层次,并指出:人性的两个层次都是道德的基础,二者分别从不同的层面为道德的产生准备了条件.     

试论尼布尔关于人性的阐释

本文主要是探讨莱茵霍尔德·尼布尔(Reinhold Niebuhr)关于人性的阐释,尼布尔是以伦理思考为出发点来阐释人性这个问题的。他认为人同时具有自我超越性和有限的被造者两方面的属性。尼布尔对人性的看法主要表现在:1.上帝的形像和人的自我超越;2.人是被造的和有限的;3.罪的不可避免性。此外,尼布尔也提出人性"焦虑"的根源和道德意义范畴中的罪等问题。     

物欲与人性——康拉德“丛林”中殖民者的人性状态探析

康拉德的"丛林小说"的一个显著特点,是他并没有把"丛林"中的原居民当作主要描写对象,而是将"丛林"中的西方人放置在了作品的中心,成为了主人公。"丛林中的西方人"也成了他作品中的一个重要人物系列。在《诺斯托罗莫》中,康拉德向读者展示了另一种物欲与人性纠葛在一起的悲剧。诺斯托罗莫的悲剧所包含的,不仅有对物欲巨大破坏力的揭示,也有对人性复杂性的认识。在"丛林"的背景下,物欲对人的诱惑和人性受到的考验都显示出与西方社会背景下不同的状态,借助这种"异质"条件所产生的放大作用,人们可以对物欲与人性之间错综复杂的关系有更深入的认识。     

论当代天主教新自然法学派的行为观

行为观是当代天主教新自然法学派道德理论的一个重要基础。该学派特别强调自由选择在决定自我中的作用,强调人类行为是一种受理性控制的活动,认为行为的对象、行为的目的和行为的环境是判断人类行为道德性的三大因素,但同时又指出人的内在意愿在判断行为的道德属性时居于核心的地位。     

Moral cognition and moral action: A theoretical perspective

Considerable theoretical work has been done in the area of moral reasoning. However, little conceptual thinking has been done about the relations between moral cognition and moral action. As a result, empirical research in this area has been unsystematic and difficult to interpret. A theoretical model, the Self Model, is proposed here, starting from the assumption that moral reasons are functionally related to action. First, a concept of cognitive motivation is presented as necessary for any cognitive account of morality. Two cognitive approaches to moral conduct, Piaget's and Haan's, are then discussed in their positive contributions and in their limitations. The Self Model is finally described through a set of empirically testable propositions. Its major theoretical characteristics are: it is cognitive, recognizing as the central function of human cognition the appraisal of truth; it acknowledges a basic duality of motivation, but stresses the normative pull of cognitive motivation; it is developmental; it uses the self as the central explanatory concept, establishing both the sense of personal responsibility and the dynamism of self-consistency.     

Hierarchies, similarity, and interactivity in object recognition: "category-specific" neuropsychological deficits.

Category-specific impairments of object recognition and naming are among the most intriguing disorders in neuropsychology, affecting the retrieval of knowledge about either living or nonliving things. They can give us insight into the nature of our representations of objects: Have we evolved different neural systems for recognizing different categories of object? What kinds of knowledge are important for recognizing particular objects? How does visual similarity within a category influence object recognition and representation? What is the nature of our semantic knowledge about different objects? We review the evidence on category-specific impairments, arguing that deficits even for one class of object (e.g., living things) cannot be accounted for in terms of a single information processing disorder across all patients; problems arise at contrasting loci in different patients. The same apparent pattern of impairment can be produced by damage to different loci. According to a new processing framework for object recognition and naming, the hierarchical interactive theory (HIT), we have a hierarchy of highly interactive stored representations. HIT explains the variety of patients in terms of (1) lesions at different levels of processing and (2) different forms of stored knowledge used both for particular tasks and for particular categories of object.     

On How to Build a Moral Machine

Herein we make a plea to machine ethicists for the inclusion of constraints on their theories consistent with empirical data on human moral cognition. As philosophers, we clearly lack widely accepted solutions to issues regarding the existence of free will, the nature of persons and firm conditions on moral agency/patienthood; all of which are indispensable concepts to be deployed by any machine able to make moral judgments. No agreement seems forthcoming on these matters, and we don’t hold out hope for machines that can both always do the right thing (on some general ethic) and produce explanations for its behavior that would be understandable to a human confederate. Our tentative solution involves understanding the folk concepts associated with our moral intuitions regarding these matters, and how they might be dependent upon the nature of human cognitive architecture. It is in this spirit that we begin to explore the complexities inherent in human moral judgment via computational theories of the human cognitive architecture, rather than under the extreme constraints imposed by rational-actor models assumed throughout much of the literature on philosophical ethics. After discussing the various advantages and challenges of taking this particular perspective on the development of artificial moral agents, we computationally explore a case study of human intuitions about the self and causal responsibility. We hypothesize that a significant portion of the variance in reported intuitions for this case might be explained by appeal to an interplay between the human ability to mindread and to the way that knowledge is organized conceptually in the cognitive system. In the present paper, we build on a pre-existing computational model of mindreading (Bello et al. 2007) by adding constraints related to psychological distance (Trope and Liberman 2010), a well-established psychological theory of conceptual organization. Our initial results suggest that studies of folk concepts involved in moral intuitions lead us to an enriched understanding of cognitive architecture and a more systematic method for interpreting the data generated by such studies.     

Extended mind and cognitive enhancement: moral aspects of cognitive artifacts

This article connects philosophical debates about cognitive enhancement and situated cognition. It does so by focusing on moral aspects of enhancing our cognitive abilities with the aid of external artifacts. Such artifacts have important moral dimensions that are addressed neither by the cognitive enhancement debate nor situated cognition theory. In order to fill this gap in the literature, three moral aspects of cognitive artifacts are singled out: their consequences for brains, cognition, and culture; their moral status; and their relation to personal identity.     

Cognition in moral space: A minimal model

We describe moral cognition as a process occurring in a distinctive cognitive space, wherein moral relationships are defined along several morally relevant dimensions. After identifying candidate dimensions, we show how moral judgments can emerge in this space directly from object perception, without any appeal to moral rules or abstract values. Our reductive “minimal model” (Batterman & Rice, 2014) elaborates Beal’s (2020) claim that moral cognition is determined, at the most basic level, by “ontological frames” defining subjects, objects, and the proper relation between them. We expand this claim into a set of formal hypotheses that predict moral judgments based on how objects are “framed” in the relevant dimensions of “moral space.”     

Ethical Embodiment and Moral Reasoning: A Challenge to Peter Singer

This paper addresses Peter Singer's claim that cognitive ability can function as a universal criterion for measuring moral worth. I argue that Singer fails to adequately represent cognitive capacity as the object of moral knowledge at stake in his theory. He thus fails to put forth credible knowledge claims, which undermines both the trustworthiness of his moral theories and the morality of the actions called for by these theories. I situate Singer's methods within feminist critiques of moral reasoning and moral epistemology, and argue that Singer's methods are problematic for moral reasoning because they abstract from their object valuable contextual features. I further develop this claim by showing the importance of embodiment for the construal of objects of moral knowledge. Finally, I develop the moral and scholarly implications of this critique. By showing that the abstract, universal methods of reasoning Singer employs cannot credibly construe the objects of ethical inquiry, I call into question the validity of these methods as a means to moral knowledge in general. Furthermore, since moral reasoning takes place within an embodied moral landscape, it is itself a moral enterprise. Singer's moral reasoning, and ours, must be held accountable for its knowledge claims as well as its concrete effects in the world.     

What Does God Know? Supernatural Agents’ Access to Socially Strategic and Non‐Strategic Information

Current evolutionary and cognitive theories of religion posit that supernatural agent concepts emerge from cognitive systems such as theory of mind and social cognition. Some argue that these concepts evolved to maintain social order by minimizing antisocial behavior. If these theories are correct, then people should process information about supernatural agents' socially strategic knowledge more quickly than non-strategic knowledge. Furthermore, agents' knowledge of immoral and uncooperative social behaviors should be especially accessible to people. To examine these hypotheses, we measured response-times to questions about the knowledge attributed to four different agents--God, Santa Claus, a fictional surveillance government, and omniscient but non-interfering aliens--that vary in their omniscience, moral concern, ability to punish, and how supernatural they are. As anticipated, participants respond more quickly to questions about agents' socially strategic knowledge than non-strategic knowledge, but only when agents are able to punish.     

攻击行为社会信息加工模型与道德领域理论的整合

儿童攻击行为研究中Dodge等人提出的社会信息加工模型,强调社会交互作用情境下个体的信息加工过程与后来的社会行为之间的联系,对于信息加工所依据的数据库则缺乏系统的阐述。领域理论源于对道德认知的思考,将个体的社会知识分为道德、常规和个人三个领域,强调个体在领域认同标准和领域混合事件推理上的差异。Arsenio和Lemerise在情绪与社会信息加工模型整合的基础上,提出借鉴领域理论来说明数据库的内部结构以及其中的社会知识对于信息加工的影响。这些整合体现了认知和情绪在社会行为加工和决策过程中的交互作用,有利于说明存储在长时记忆中的社会知识之间的联系及作用,引发了对各种形式的内部心理成分的理论思考和多个实证研究方向,也为心理研究其他方面的整合工作提供了值得借鉴的研究思路     

God, Genes, and Cognizing Agents

Much ink has been spilled on the claim that morality and religion have evolutionary roots. While some attempt to reduce morality and religion to biological considerations, others reject any link whatsoever. Any full account, however, must acknowledge the biological roots of human behavior while at the same time recognizing that our relatively unique capacity as cognitive agents requires orienting concepts of cosmic and human nature. While other organisms display quasi-moral and proto-moral behavior that is indeed relevant, fully moral behavior is only possible for organisms that attain a higher level of cognitive ability. This, in turn, implies a significant role for religion, which has traditionally provided an orientation within which moral conduct is understood.     

A social cognitive explanation of situational and individual effects on moral sensitivity

Models of moral decision making describe the process as beginning with the recognition of moral content in the decision environment. This recognition ability, or moral sensitivity, represents a key input to moral decision making. Adopting a social cognitive perspective, this paper studies the degree to which moral sensitivity is explained in terms of moral schema activation. In a single experiment, two situational factors (moral content priming and issue moral intensity) and two individual characteristics (moral identity and need for cognition) are tested for their effects on moral sensitivity. Results support the social cognitive explanation of moral sensitivity. The moral schema's propensity for activation, development, and accessibility significantly influence the ability to recognize moral issues in the decision environment.