On ethics in personal construct theory

Abstract

In personal construct theory, people interpret the world in unique ways. Constructions are subjective representations rather than objective truths. This means that our ethical constructions are (a) potentially wrong, if there is an external moral reality we cannot access, or (b) no more inherently defensible than others’ ethical constructions, if all notions of “right” and “wrong” are personally constructed. Constructions promoting violence, hatred, and intolerance are as viable as those promoting peace, love, and acceptance. To overcome this ethical quandary individuals must create meaningful ethical constructions and have faith in them. This is difficult because, as constructivists, we see each person's constructions as legitimate and our own world views as merely constructions, themselves. Implications for moral righteousness are discussed.     

Body as Site of Ethic

Traditional ethical discourses give little significance to the role of body, and highlight has been largely on human mind and consciousness. The idea of good and bad, right and wrong, desirable and undesirable—as binaries—is seen as articulated through the latter. Philosophical theories that articulate the significance of body and movement are very few—phenomenology as one among these few. Body, as site for ethic, calls for some significant philosophical considerations. The paper attempts to join phenomenological theorizing on lived-body and engages with the issues of moral desirability. It also argues that moral discourse as structurally built on the idea of reciprocity is inadvertently about first-person lived-bodies interacting with one another.

     

Religiosity and Secular and Ascetic Deviance

According to the antiascetic hypothesis, religiosity should be strongly related to behaviors that violate ascetic standards (getting drunk and using marijuana), but only weakly related to behaviors that violate social standards (violence and stealing). Using the second wave of the National Study of Youth and Religion, I tested the antiascetic hypothesis using a question about the most important basis for deciding what is morally right or wrong. Contrary to the antiascetic hypothesis, individuals who believe that God's law is the most important for deciding what is morally right or wrong, compared to those who believe that society is the most important, are not less likely to get drunk or use marijuana. Furthermore, for getting drunk and marijuana use, differences in behavior are not the result of different ethical standards (ascetic or social), but rather differences in the willingness to uphold those standards (is it OK to break moral rules).     

The Structure of Max Weber's Ethic of Responsibility

Max Weber's distinction in "Politics as a Vocation" between the ethic of conviction and the ethic of responsibility is best understood as a distinction between mutually exclusive ethical worldviews. Interpretations that correlate the two ethics with Weber's distinction between value-rational social action and instrumental-rational social action are misleading since Weber assumes that both types of rational social action are present in both ethics. The ethic of conviction recognizes a given hierarchy of values as the context for moral endeavor. The ethic of responsibility acknowledges value obligations, but assumes the absence of any given hierarchy of values and the inevitability of value conflict as the context for moral endeavor. When interpreted in the context of his multilayered understanding of value conflict, Weber's ethic of responsibility emerges as a coherent ethical perspective.     

Instrumentalist Interpretations of Hindu Environmental Ethics

Many environmental ethicists believe that any adequate environmental ethic should attribute ‘direct moral standing’ (often glossed in terms of intrinsic value) to plants, animals, and the rest of nature. But certain interpretations of Hindu environmental ethics apparently attribute only instrumental value to nature. This places them in direct conflict with the purported adequacy condition on an environmental ethic. So, is such a Hindu ethical view really inadequate? In his recent book Hinduism and Environmental Ethics, Christopher Framarin claims that it is because Hindu instrumentalism about nature is either viciously circular or unacceptably arbitrary. I argue, however, that Framarin’s claim founders in virtue of his misconstruing the logical structure of instrumental value.     

论艺术伦理的超道德性

如何认识艺术实践的伦理之维,事关对艺术意义的准确理解和对其审美功能的深度认识。伦理关系体现着人类的最终理想,而具体的道德规范只是人类实现其最终愿望的必要手段,仅仅遵循道德规范并不能实现人类的希望。艺术的伦理价值往往落实于对既成社会规范的挑战,而并非对时代道德习俗的循规蹈矩地遵守;艺术的伦理意义常常拥有一种超道德性。     

A New Conventionalist Theory of Promising

Conventionalists about promising believe that it is wrong to break a promise because the promisor takes advantage of a useful social convention only to fail to do his part in maintaining it. Anti-conventionalists claim that the wrong of breaking a promise has nothing essentially to do with a social convention. Anti-conventionalists are right that the social convention is not necessary to explain the wrong of breaking most promises. But conventionalists are right that the convention plays an essential role in any satisfactory account of promising. A new conventionalism can explain this by appealing to special features of social conventions. Two of these special features have important implications for any moral requirements they mediate, such as the requirement to keep one's promises and the moral requirements attached to social or occupational roles. First, these requirements will not depend on features of a situation that are inaccessible to typical participants in the convention. Second, these requirements often cannot be tailored to fit the overly unusual circumstances of participants.     

道德推脱对员工道德决策的影响：德行领导的调节作用

运用问卷调查的方法,以819名员工为研究被试,探讨了德行领导在道德推脱影响道德决策过程中的调节作用。采用层次回归分析的方法研究发现：德行领导对道德推脱与道德识别、道德判断之间的关系具有调节作用;但德行领导不会对道德推脱与道德意图之间的关系产生调节作用,而会对道德意图产生显著的直接影响。     

Ethics Beyond Moral Theory

I develop an anti‐theory view of ethics. Moral theory (Kantian, utilitarian, virtue ethical, etc.) is the dominant approach to ethics among academic philosophers. But moral theory's hunt for a single Master Factor (utility, universalisability, virtue . . .) is implausibly systematising and reductionist. Perhaps scientism drives the approach? But good science always insists on respect for the data, even messy data: I criticise Singer's remarks on infanticide as a clear instance of moral theory failing to respect the data of moral perceptions and moral intuitions. Moral theory also fails to provide a coherent basis for real‐world motivation, justification, explanation, and prediction of good and bad, right and wrong. Consider for instance the marginal place of love in moral theory, compared with its central place in people's actual ethical outlooks and decision making. Hence, moral theory typically fails to ground any adequate ethical outlook. I propose that it is the notion of an ethical outlook that philosophical ethicists should pursue, not the unfruitful and distorting notion of a moral theory.     

Nuclear Power is Neither Right Nor Wrong: The Case for a Tertium Datur in the Ethics of Technology

The debate over the civilian use of nuclear power is highly polarised. We argue that a reasonable response to this deep disagreement is to maintain that advocates of both camps should modify their positions. According to the analysis we propose, nuclear power is neither entirely right nor entirely wrong, but rather right and wrong to some degree. We are aware that this non-binary analysis of nuclear power is controversial from a theoretical point of view. Utilitarians, Kantians, and other moral theorists make sharp, binary distinctions between right and wrong acts. However, an important argument speaking in favour of our non-binary analysis is that it better reflects our considered intuitions about the ethical trade-offs we face in discussions of nuclear power. The aim of this article is to make this argument sharp by explaining how it can be rendered compatible with, and supported by, the Capability Approach, which is quickly becoming one of the most influential frameworks for thinking about human development.     

Confucian Dynamism,the Role of Money and Consumer Ethical Beliefs: An Exploratory Study in Taiwan

Consumer ethics is the moral principles and standards that guide consumers to determine the certain consumption behaviors are ethically right or wrong. Whereas cultural and personal dimensions are crucial constructs affecting individual ethical attitudes and behaviors, few studies consider Confucian dynamism and the role of money in consumer ethics. Confucian dynamism, a cultural dimension based on Confucianism, has played a central role in guiding moral obligations and ethics in human relations in several East Asian countries. Thus, this study tested its hypotheses using a sample of 521 respondents obtained via a systematic random sampling technique. The authors find that individuals with a higher tendency to Confucian dynamism are less tolerant of unethical practices. These findings also show that the role of money partially influences consumer ethical beliefs. Finally, we examine the impact of demographic variables and find age and education affect consideration of ethical values.     

Ethical Theory,Completeness &; Consistency

This paper argues that many leading ethical theories are incomplete, in that they fail to account for both right and wrong. It also argues that some leading ethical theories are inconsistent, in that they allow that an act can be both right and wrong. The paper also considers responses on behalf of the target theories.     

Characteristics of Environmental Ethics: Environmental Activits' Accounts

This article describes a qualitative investigation of environmental ethics as construed by environmental activists. Twenty-nine participants responded in writing to open-ended questions on their definitions of an environmental ethic, how they expressed and experienced this moral orientation in their lives, and what sustained it. Four major themes emerged. First, ethical consideration of the natural environment pervaded morality, values, and private and public life. Second, emotional or spiritual experiences, or personal fulfillment, were important for many. Third, there was disagreement on the relationships among environmental principles, intentions, and behaviors, as well as the necessity of prescribing specific behaviors. Finally, there were diverse views on the role of humanitarian concerns in an environmental ethic. These themes are discussed in terms of parallels to religious experience, motivations for an environmental ethic, and implications for nonenvironmental realms of ethics and justice.     

Revisiting the Right to Do Wrong

Rights to do wrong are not necessary even within the framework of interest-based rights aimed at preserving autonomy (contra Waldron, Enoch, and Herstein). Agents can make morally significant choices and develop their moral character without a right to do wrong, so long as we allow that there can be moral variation within the set of actions that an agent is permitted to perform. Agents can also engage in non-trivial self-constitution in choosing between morally indifferent options, so long as there is adequate non-moral variation among the alternatives. The stubborn intuition that individuals have a right to do wrong in some cases can be explained as stemming from a cautionary principle motivated by the asymmetry between the risk of wrongly interfering and that of refraining from interfering.     

The ethics of funding embryonic stem cell research: a Catholic viewpoint

Stem cell research that requires the destruction of human embryos is incompatible with Catholic moral principles, and with any ethic that gives serious weight to the moral status of the human embryo. Moreover, because there are promising and morally acceptable alternative approaches to the repair and regeneration of human tissues, and because treatments that rely on destruction of human embryos would be morally offensive to many patients, embryonic stem cell research may play a far less significant role in medical progress than proponents believe.     

Responsibility beyond rationality: the case for rhizomatic consequentialism

A key challenge for education is to encourage children to act responsibly. If ‘spiritual literacy’ does not involve an autonomous, rational soul capable of ‘reading and writing the world as God intended’, it must refer to ethical (and perhaps religious) capacity in relation to contingent actions in a context free of moral absolutes. In relation to the former, Kant's Categorical Imperative supposed that actions are either right or wrong according to an absolute reason derived from the most basic templates of human sense making. According to Kant, therefore, right is rational irrespective of the apparent consequences of specific actions. In contrast, in an age lacking Kant's beliefs in both God and absolute reason, it is tempting to see an unethical pragmatism as the only alternative to the Categorical Imperative. However, it is possible to instil responsibility through a consequentialism based on a broader conception of relatedness, inspired by Deleuze and Guattari's notion of the ‘rhizome’. ‘Rhizomatic consequentialism’, as here defined, provides a ‘third way’ for moral education between instilling an understanding of absolute right and wrong and encouraging the belief that ‘right is what you can get away with’.     

A moral justification for killing in self-defence

In the first part of this paper I will argue that for a case to be one of killing in self-defence at least the following three important conditions need to be met: (i) the defender's death must seem to him/her to be imminent; (ii) there must be a choice forced upon the defender between being killed or killing his/her attacker; (iii) the responsibility for (i) and (ii) must be the attacker's. I go on to point out that a lethal use of force which meets conditions (i)—(iii) is thought by most people to be morally permissible. However we believe also that everyone has the right to life and this cannot be taken away under any circumstances. But if this is so, how can we justify one person intentionally killing another? Or to put the point differently: what, in our moral assessment of such cases, are we to claim an attacker has done that is so morally wrong we are prepared to argue that if one of them has to be killed, it is the attacker? I hope to answer this question in the second part of my paper by developing a strand of ethical thought, associated with Kant.     

Counseling in a Complex World: Advancing Relational Well-Being

In a globalized world, people's attempts at living a good life interfere with one another in complex ways. In particular, tension and conflict are inevitable. This confronts counselors/therapists with the ethical question of how to take into account (global) interdependence and relational complexity. In this article, I explore what moral visions—assumptions of what a person is and should be—help counselors shift their focus from individual to relational well-being. First, I examine the moral vision of narrative therapy, as an alternative to more traditional, individualistic moral visions. Then, I construct a moral vision of relational being, based on the relational being perspective of Kenneth Gergen. This vision represents an ethical stance that may, using work by philosopher Judith Butler, be understood as an ethic of recognition and nonviolence. Finally, implications of the moral vision of relational being for counseling/therapeutic practice are explored.     

Discouraging unethicality versus encouraging ethicality: Unraveling the differential effects of prevention‐ and promotion‐focused ethical leadership

Theory on the impact of ethical leadership has traditionally been based on a deontological approach to morality. Underlying this perspective is the assumption that all leader behaviors that encourage “normatively appropriate conduct” will influence followers in a similar fashion. Put differently, the current consensus seems to suggest that actions that focus on preventing unethical behavior—attending to “the wrong”—will have the same impact as actions that focus on promoting ethical behavior—attending to “the right.” Taking a within‐person approach, we draw upon social exchange theory to challenge this consensus and build theory that suggests a follower's felt trust from their leader will be differentially impacted by prevention‐ versus promotion‐focused ethical leadership. We also explore how these different types of ethical leadership may indirectly, through felt trust, impact citizenship behavior and counterproductive work behavior. Finally, we consider how the role of the “moral manager” may interact with the “moral person” by identifying leader moral hypocrisy as an important between‐person moderator of these effects. Given the importance of ethical decision‐making in organizations and the calls for increased ethical leadership, our findings have important implications for both theory and practice.     

中国传统经济伦理思想的近代演变初论

中国传统经济伦理核心内容是对营利和私有产权的价值合理性的否定,中国传统经济伦理思想的近代(演变)可界定为鸦片战争前后至五四新文化运动时期资本主义性质的反传统衍变;其现代(演变)则是“五四”之后,资本主义和社会主义经济伦理思想相互交锋、消长、排斥与“融合”的历史进程。传统经济伦理思想近代演变的实质是为资本活动方式或资本的利益寻求工具价值和伦理合理性的过程,中国传统经济伦理的近代演变最终否定了资本主义经济制度的伦理价值合理性、确立了社会主义经济制度的伦理价值合理性。