An Historical Overview of Basic Approaches and Issues in Ethical and Moral Philosophy and Principles

Summary

This article provides a condensed history of ethics development for the purpose of exposing psychologists and other mental health professionals to ethical and moral bases upon which modern psychological ethics are founded. In addition, it focuses on contemporary theories, with an emphasis on professional ethics.     

The Virtues of Metaphysics: A Review of Iris Murdoch's Philosophical Writings

Iris Murdoch's moral philosophy has long influenced contemporary ethics, yet it has not, in general, received the kind of sustained critical attention that it deserves. Existentialists and Mystics and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals provide new access to most of Murdoch's philosophical writings and make possible a deeper appreciation of her contribution to current thought. After assessing the recent critical reception of Murdoch's thought, this review places her moral philosophy in the context of contemporary trends in ethics by tracing her influence on the work of Charles Taylor, highlights the distinctive features of her moral philosophy (especially her analysis of consciousness), and suggests future directions for Murdochian ethics.     

The Virtues of Metaphysics: A Review of Iris Murdoch's Philosophical Writings

Iris Murdoch's moral philosophy has long influenced contemporary ethics, yet it has not, in general, received the kind of sustained critical attention that it deserves. Existentialists and Mystics and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals provide new access to most of Murdoch's philosophical writings and make possible a deeper appreciation of her contribution to current thought. After assessing the recent critical reception of Murdoch's thought, this review places her moral philosophy in the context of contemporary trends in ethics by tracing her influence on the work of Charles Taylor, highlights the distinctive features of her moral philosophy (especially her analysis of consciousness), and suggests future directions for Murdochian ethics.     

Reasonable Partiality from a Biological Point of View

Speculation about the evolutionary origins of morality has yet to show how a biologically based capacity for morality might be connected to moral reasoning. Applying an evolutionary approach to three kinds of cases where partiality may or may not be morally reasonable, this paper explores a possible connection between a psychological capacity for morality and processes of wide reflective moral equilibrium. The central hypothesis is that while we might expect a capacity for morality to include aspects of partiality, we might also expect these same aspects of the capacity to produce systemic forms of performance-based error. Understanding these errors helps point the way toward a theory of moral competence that includes aspects of both partiality and impartiality.     

Recontextualising moral injury among military veterans: An integrative theoretical review

Moral injury was originally conceived as a socially-inflicted wound of betrayal experienced by military veterans (Shay, 1994). However, moral injury has since been redefined by psychological researchers as an individualised, predominantly perpetration-driven, and psychopathological phenomenon (e.g., Currier et al., 2015; Jinkerson, 2016). However, social scientific researchers (e.g., Hodgson & Carey, 2017; Molendijk, 2019; Wiinikka-Lydon, 2017) have contested mainstream psychology's medicalisation and decontextualisation of moral injury. This theoretical review integrates insights from across these discourses, and brings them into dialogue with ideas from moral psychology, evolutionary science, and community psychology. The aim of this cross-disciplinary review is to promote a more holistic understanding of moral injury that does justice to its individual and social dimensions. Drawing on these different theoretical strands, this paper proposes that moral injury can be best understood as a psychological wound to basic human needs for social belonging and cohesion. The implications of this integrative understanding of moral injury for applied psychologists and other societal actors are explored. While the relevance of moral injury to civilian populations such as health and social care professionals is clear (e.g., Dombo et al., 2013; French et al., 2021), this paper focuses on military veterans, whose experiences originally prompted the coinage of the term. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.     

A philosophical reflection on the epistemology and methodology of indigenous psychologies

In order to answer the three crucial questions (why, what and how) about the development of indigenous psychology, three levels of breakthrough need to be made, namely, philosophical reflection, theoretical construction and empirical research. The controversial issues that have occurred in the earlier development of indigenous psychology are analyzed in terms of the switch in Western philosophy of science from positivism to post-positivism. Based on this analysis, it is argued that indigenous psychologists should construct formal theories illustrating the functioning of the human mind that may be applicable to various cultures, and then use these theories to study the particular mentalities of people in a given culture with the scientific methods of empirical research.     

Evil and moral detachment: further reflections on The Mirror Thesis

A commonly accepted claim by philosophers investigating the nature of evil is that the evil person is, in some way, the mirror image of the moral saint. In this paper I will defend a new version of this thesis. I will argue that both the moral saint and the morally evil person are characterized by a lack of conflict between moral and non-moral concerns. However, while the saint achieves this unity through a reconciliation of the two, the evil person does so by eliminating moral concerns from her character.     

Replacing the Moral Foundations: An Evolutionary‐Coalitional Theory of Liberal‐Conservative Differences

Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) explains liberal‐conservative differences as arising from different moral intuitions, with liberals endorsing “individualizing” foundations (Harm and Fairness) and conservatives also endorsing “binding” foundations (Authority, Respect, and Purity). We argue these labels misconstrue ideological differences and propose Evolutionary‐Coalitional Theory (ECT) as an alternative, explaining how competitive dynamics in the ancestral social environment could produce the observed ideological differences. We test ECT against MFT across three studies. Study 1 shows the so‐called “binding” orientation entails the threat‐sensitivity and outgroup antagonism predicted by ECT; that is, an authoritarian motive. Similarly, Study 2 shows the so‐called “individualizing” orientation is better described as a universalizing motive, one reflecting a broader set of moral commitments (e.g., to nature) and a broader sociality than the egocentrism implied by MFT. Study 3 provides a factor analysis reducing “binding” to authoritarianism and “individualizing” to universalism, with the latter loading against social dominance orientation (SDO). A hierarchical regression then provides additional evidence for ECT, showing this dominating motive (SDO) accounts for variance in conservatism that MFT leaves unexplained. Collectively, these three studies suggest that ECT offers a more accurate and precise explanation of the key psychological differences between liberals and conservatives.     

幼儿分类能力发展研究综述

该文从3个方面回顾幼儿分类能力的发展研究的不同成果,即分类标准的稳定性、分类标准的性质和类别的等级特性,分析了众多结论之间差异的产生原因,认为研究方法及对同一问题的研究维度的差异是造成很多同类研究的结论不同的重要原因。     

Adorno’s View of Life

The aim of this article is to reflect on the dialectic of the individual’s life and death in terms of Adorno’s moral philosophy, specifically through a thorough reading of his Negative Dialectics and other key works on the subject. I hold that there are two aspects of the dialectic of life within the context of Adorno’s “nonidentity”: one involves exploring the false identification, due to the reification of modern society, of the individual’s life experience with her or his death experience, while the other involves preserving the dialectical and irreducible tension between the theoretical contemplation of life and of historical conditions, as well as specific social systems. Heidegger’s ontological philosophy concerning Dasein and Kant’s categorical imperative will also be discussed in order to fully understand Adorno’s moral philosophy and his idea of nonidentity. From my point of view, Adorno’s moral philosophy is the prime motivator of his unique concept of nonidentity, and has influenced contemporary political philosophical concepts such as biopolitics (cf. G. Agamben).     

An Understanding of Character from Holistic Thinking: What Asian Psychology Teaches Us about the Debate on Situationism

The situationist challenge to virtue has convinced many philosophers to adopt an empirically grounded methodology. I argue that this methodology requires us to reconsider conceptualizations of and evidence on character from experiments involving Asian subjects because it is precisely in these experiments that we see a remedy for the problems exposed by situationism. Since both situationists and defenders of virtue fall short of abiding by the part of their methodological commitment associated with remediation, evidence from the experiments is relevant for most participants in the debate. I show that the evidence indicates something important about remediation: the point is not to avoid the concept of virtue or character, but to deploy a holistic thinking style that has been observed among some populations in Asia. Holistic thinking involves (a) a tendency to explain behavior in terms of the interaction between person and situation variables and (b) an incremental understanding of character. The paper ends with a brief sketch of an account of character from holistic thinking that also highlights the role of social support in managing situations.     

Diversity-Based Reasoning in Children

One of the hallmarks of inductive reasoning by adults is the diversity effect, namely that people draw stronger inferences from a diverse set of evidence than from a more homogenous set of evidence. However, past developmental work has not found consistent diversity effects with children age 9 and younger. We report robust sensitivity to diversity in children as young as 5, using everyday stimuli such as pictures of objects with people. Experiment 1 showed the basic diversity effect in 5- to 9-year-olds. Experiment 2 showed that, like adults, children restrict their use of diversity information when making inferences about remote categories. Experiment 3 used other stimulus sets to overcome an alternate explanation in terms of sample size rather than diversity effects. Finally, Experiment 4 showed that children more readily draw on diversity when reasoning about objects and their relations with people than when reasoning about objects' internal, hidden properties, thus partially explaining the negative findings of previous work. Relations to cross-cultural work and models of induction are discussed.     

Belief Reasoning and Emotion Understanding in Balanced Bilingual and Language-Dominant Mexican American Young Children

Belief reasoning and emotion understanding were measured among 102 Mexican American bilingual children ranging from 4 to 7 years old. All children were tested in English and Spanish after ensuring minimum comprehension in each language. Belief reasoning was assessed using 2 false and 1 true belief tasks. Emotion understanding was measured using subtests from the Test for Emotion Comprehension. The influence of family background variables of yearly income, parental education level, and number of siblings on combined Spanish and English vocabulary, belief reasoning, and emotion understanding was assessed by regression analyses. Age and emotion understanding predicted belief reasoning. Vocabulary and belief reasoning predicted emotion understanding. When the sample was divided into language-dominant and balanced bilingual groups on the basis of language proficiency difference scores, there were no significant differences on belief reasoning or emotion understanding. Language groups were demographically similar with regard to child age, parental educational level, and family income. Results suggest Mexican American language-dominant and balanced bilinguals develop belief reasoning and emotion understanding similarly.     

道德虚伪：一种机会主义的适应策略

道德虚伪在个体层面是指人们言行不一, 在人际层面是指人们持有双重标准。心理学家通常从道德动机、认知失调以及精神分析的角度考察道德虚伪。诱发道德虚伪通常会促使个体做出跟他们公开承诺相一致的行为。作为一种机会主义的适应策略, 道德虚伪可能起源于群体适应情境下的自我谋利需要, 带有欺骗他人和自欺的特点。除了情绪、权力等因素之外, 未来研究需要考察自恋、羞耻、社会操纵能力、情商、文化因素对道德虚伪的影响。     

Care and Justice in Real-Life Moral Reasoning

Moral reasoning of 57 (Time 1) and 59 (Time 2) nursing, social-work and law-enforcement students was investigated in terms of care and justice reasoning about hypothetical and real-life dilemmas. The analysis methods were the Ethic of Care Interview, the Moral Judgment Interview, Lyons' Moral Orientation Scheme and Wark and Krebs' classification of real-life dilemmas. The type of dilemma predicted moral orientation usage. Prosocial dilemmas pulled for care and antisocial dilemmas for justice orientation. Level of justice reasoning varied according to the type of dilemma. Real-life care reasoning was consistent with participants' competence, with the exception of transgression-type dilemmas at Time 2. Levels of care and justice reasoning were highly correlated with each other. These results underscore the importance of the dilemma type and suggest that care reasoning is a significant part of real life morality. The study recommends the ECI as a new model to account for real-life care reasoning.     

The Moral-Psychology of the Common Agent – A Reply to Ido Geiger

Ido Geiger's paper ‘What it is the Use of the Universal Law Formula of the Categorical Imperative?’ is part of a growing trend in Kant scholarship, which stresses the significance of the rational competence of ordinary human beings. I argue that this approach needs to take into account that the common agent is an active reasoner who has the means to find out what she ought to do. The purpose of my paper is to show how universality already figures in the active reasoning of pre-theoretical agents in the form of a common universalization test. I present textual evidence for this test, and argue that this conception does not present pre-theoretical moral cognition in an overly intellectualistic or mechanistic way. Finally, I discuss how, on the pre-theoretical level, universalization relates to humanity or a rational agent's special status. Universalization is present to common agents in the form of procedures or questions that we ask ourselves, humanity as an awareness of certain particularly blatant violations of duty. These two different modes of cognition of duty are reflected in two different formulae of the Categorical Imperative.     

The idea of a moral psychology: The impact of psychoanalysis on philosophy in Britain1

In this paper the author addresses the question of the significance of psychoanalysis for moral psychology via a more specific question: the impact of psychoanalysis on British philosophy in the twentieth century. He argues that there has been no influence of any real significance, and offers intellectual reasons why not. However, he also argues that there has recently emerged the possibility for a future engagement between psychoanalysis and philosophy, and he offers a history of the emergence of this possibility. In particular, the author discusses how the emerging interest within philosophy to work out a satisfying approach to naturalist moral psychology leads it to a concern with internal mental structure and, most importantly, to transformations of intrapsychic structures. He believes that this will lead philosophy to take a greater interest in psychoanalysis.     

Grounding Rights in Social Practices: A Defence

This paper defends a social practiceconception of moral rights possession againstwhat many of its critics take to be a decisiveobjection, namely that such a conceptionprevents us from using moral rights forcritical purposes.     

不同推理水平儿童在图形推理任务中的眼动研究

以矩阵填充任务为材料,以眼动仪为研究工具,以3~6年级学生为被试,探讨图形推理中儿童推理过程的特征和策略使用的差异,以及推理能力高低组儿童完成图形推理任务的眼动模式差异.在本实验条件下,得出以下结论:(1)8岁以上儿童已经具备解决矩阵填充任务的逻辑思维能力,但高低水平组儿童在解决任务的能力水平上存在差异,高水平儿童的反应时较快、正确率较高;(2)在儿童推理的过程中,不同维度对推理过程的影响存在一定的层次:对形状、颜色维度的识别最容易,对大小维度的识别次之,对方向维度的识别最难;(3)高低水平组儿童获得策略的时间进程不同,差异主要产生在推理开始后的5~11秒这个阶段,在这一阶段中,高水平组儿童对方向这一较难维度的识别和正确答案的识别都快于低水平组儿童,体现了高水平组儿童更强的信息加工能力.