Utilitarianism and the Ethics of Professional Psychologists

Evidence exists that behavioral and social science researchers have been frustrated with regulations and institutional review boards (IRBs) from the 1970s through today. Making matters worse, many human participants protection instruction programs—now mandated by IRBs—offer inadequate reasons why researchers should comply with regulations and IRBs. Promoting compliance either for its own sake or to avoid penalties is contrary to the developmental aims of moral education and may be ineffective in fostering the responsible conduct of research. This article explores the concept of professional virtue and argues that compliance is capable of becoming a professional virtue like scientific honesty. This requires, however, that regulatory and IRB demands contribute to human well-being and to the aims of research as a profession and that researchers, therefore, internalize the norms that underlie regulatory and IRB demands. This, in turn, requires a series of changes in the way society develops, promulgates, and enforces regulatory and IRB rules. The challenge is, simply put, to embed compliance into the world of living morality.     

经济伦理与科学发展观

要落实科学发展观,必须加强经济伦理学的研究,在实现经济的合理性与伦理的正当性的统一过程中,推进中国特色社会主义事业.经济伦理为贯彻和落实"以人为本"的科学发展现提供了道德基础;经济伦理为全面协调可持续发展提供道德支持;经济伦理推动统筹兼顾,实现社会公平正义.     

Rethinking Professional Ethics in the Cost-Sharing Era

Changes in healthcare financing increasingly rely upon patient cost-sharing to control escalating healthcare expenditures. These changes raise new challenges for physicians that are different from those that arose either under managed care or traditional indemnity insurance. Historically, there have been two distinct bases for arguing that physicians should not consider costs in their clinical decisions—an “aspirational ethic” that exhorts physicians to treat all patients the same regardless of their ability to pay, and an “agency ethic” that calls on physicians to be trustworthy advisors to their patients. In the setting of greater patient cost-sharing, physicians' aspiration and agency roles increasingly conflict. Satisfactorily navigating the new terrain of consumer-driven healthcare requires physicians to consider these two roles and how they can best be reconciled so as to maximize quality of care while respecting the heterogeneity of patients' financial resources and willingness to pay.     

论作为经济伦理的竞争范畴

竞争是资本内在本性的外在表现,是一种经济主体的利益分配机制.竞争作为经济伦理范畴从道德上规范和制约市场经济活动,使之符合市场的内在规律的,其根本原则是优胜劣汰.竞争的一般伦理原则也适用于社会主义市场经济,它不同于资本主义制度相结合的市场经济之处,在于以共同富裕作为竞争的根本的伦理制约.     

Confidentiality in Professional Medical Ethics

Detection of deception and confirmation of truth telling with conventional polygraphy raised a host of technical and ethical issues. Recently, newer methods of recording electromagnetic signals from the brain show promise in permitting the detection of deception or truth telling. Some are even being promoted as more accurate than conventional polygraphy. While the new technologies raise issues of personal privacy, acceptable forensic application, and other social issues, the focus of this paper is the technical limitations of the developing technology. Those limitations include the measurement validity of the new technologies, which remains largely unknown. Another set of questions pertains to the psychological paradigms used to model or constrain the target behavior. Finally, there is little standardization in the field, and the vulnerability of the techniques to countermeasures is unknown. Premature application of these technologies outside of research settings should be resisted, and the social conversation about the appropriate parameters of its civil, forensic, and security use should begin.     

The Health Professional Ethics Rubric: Practical Assessment in Ethics Education for Health Professional Schools

A barrier to the development and refinement of ethics education in and across health professional schools is that there is not an agreed upon instrument or method for assessment in ethics education. The most widely used ethics education assessment instrument is the Defining Issues Test (DIT) I & II. This instrument is not specific to the health professions. But it has been modified for use in, and influenced the development of other instruments in, the health professions. The DIT contains certain philosophical assumptions (??Kohlbergian?? or ??neo-Kohlbergian??) that have been criticized in recent years. It is also expensive for large institutions to use. The purpose of this article is to offer a rubric??which the authors have named the Health Professional Ethics Rubric??for the assessment of several learning outcomes related to ethics education in health science centers. This rubric is not open to the same philosophical critiques as the DIT and other such instruments. This rubric is also practical to use. This article includes the rubric being advocated, which was developed by faculty and administrators at a large academic health science center as a part of a campus-wide ethics education initiative. The process of developing the rubric is described, as well as certain limitations and plans for revision.     

Statistics is Essential for Professional Ethics

All professional ethics are dependent on the epistemology of the profession. The possibility of following a code of ethics, whether the official one or an alternative code, is dependent on being able to obtain knowledge and understand the world. Professional knowledge has to be based on inferences from limited information. Statistics provides the optimal methods for making such inferences, and thus ethical professional conduct requires individual or collective understanding of some statistical thcory and practice. This is demonstrated using the medical profession as an example. Statistical methods are essential in all areas of medicine, in routine medical practice, in screening for disease and in research. Evidence from medical journals, textbooks and research bodies shows that the statistical basis for ethical conduct is lacking. However, there are attempts to improve the situation.     

Professional Virtue and Professional Self-Awareness: A Case Study in Engineering Ethics

This paper articulates an Aristotelian theory of professional virtue and provides an application of that theory to the subject of engineering ethics. The leading idea is that Aristotle’s analysis of the definitive function of human beings, and of the virtues humans require to fulfill that function, can serve as a model for an analysis of the definitive function or social role of a profession and thus of the virtues professionals must exhibit to fulfill that role. Special attention is given to a virtue of professional self-awareness, an analogue to Aristotle’s phronesis or practical wisdom. In the course of laying out my account I argue that the virtuous professional is the successful professional, just as the virtuous life is the happy life for Aristotle. I close by suggesting that a virtue ethics approach toward professional ethics can enrich the pedagogy of professional ethics courses and help foster a sense of pride and responsibility in young professionals.     

Nudge: Concept,Effectiveness, and Ethics

Nudges are psychologically informed tools designed to promote behavioral change in order to improve health and well-being. In this review, we focus on three areas of concern: theory, evidence base, ethics. We begin by discussing the problems arising from the theoretical framework that nudges are based on and propose an alternative framework that helps to classify nudges into two types (Type 1 and Type 2). We then evaluate the evidence for nudges in the health domain, drawing attention to critical empirical issues (internal and external reliability) that explain the limited evidence base for their effectiveness. The review ends with an examination of the implications of the theoretical and empirical issues we discussed with respect to current debates regarding the ethics of nudge.     

论韦伯的经济伦理概念及其对中国经济伦理研究的影响

本文通过辨析韦伯经济伦理概念的含义、韦伯对经济伦理的研究方法、"韦伯命题"等,说明中国经济伦理学界对韦伯经济伦理概念的理解是有欠缺的,其原因主要有二:其一,对相关文本的理解思路不恰当;其二,我们自身问题意识的错位与类比的错位.这些理解上的欠缺,对中国经济伦理研究产生了不良影响:由于对经济伦理概念的理解不当,导致研究方式的偏颇,从而未能抓住当代经济伦理研究的重心.     

Connecting to the Heart: Teaching Value-Based Professional Ethics

Science and Engineering Ethics - Engineering programs in the United States have been experimenting with diverse pedagogical approaches to educate future professional engineers. However, a crucial...     

关于中国社会工作职业道德建设的几点思考

伴随着中国社会工作职业化过程的启动,职业道德建设成为摆在中国社会工作界面前的一项紧迫任务.中国社会工作职业道德建设应当以对社会工作职业自身的特点及中国社会工作职业的特殊性的考察为基础,并围绕着有中国特色的社会工作专业价值观建构和职业伦理守则制订两方面的问题展开.     

《道德经》中的"德"概念与中国形而上学伦理学

《道德经》(非竹简本)中的“德”概念从生成论方面来看,是一个相对于道的特殊性概念,相对于万物的普遍性概念,因而是一个共相的具体和具体的共相相统一的概念,它位于超越的实在和感性事物之间;《道德经》中的“德”概念从认识论方面来看,是“谷神”实现的原理,是一个精神生活的形而上原理;《道德经》中的“德”概念在道德实践上主要是“得”和“舍”相平衡的原理。《道德经》通过“德”概念使得个体价值指向一个形而上的、具有无限利益的生存领域,从而具有提升现实的人格的意义。     

"果报观"与中国传统医学伦理道德

选取因果报应观念促进中国古代医者道德行为做为考察对象,细致展示其在医学领域中所进行地一系列文本建构.透过这些历史文献的解读,观察"果报观"如何嵌入到中国传统医学伦理道德体系之中.结合古代社会情境,透析其思想来源,探究其在古代医学伦理道德体系中得以凸显的原因,从而汲取出有益于中国医学伦理道德提升的历史经验.     

Acclimating International Graduate Students to Professional Engineering Ethics

This article describes the education portion of an ongoing grant-sponsored education and research project designed to help graduate students in all engineering disciplines learn about the basic ethical principles, rules, and obligations associated with engineering practice in the United States. While the curriculum developed for this project is used for both domestic and international students, the educational materials were designed to be sensitive to the specific needs of international graduate students. In recent years, engineering programs in the United States have sought to develop a larger role for professional ethics education in the curriculum. Accreditation requirements, as well as pressures from the private sector, have helped facilitate this shift in focus. Almost half of all engineering graduate students in the U.S. are international students. Further, research indicates that the majority of these students will remain in the U.S. to work post-graduation. It is therefore in the interest of the profession that these students, coming from diverse backgrounds, receive some formal exposure to the professional and ethical expectations and norms of the engineering profession in the United States to help ensure that they have the knowledge and skills—non-technical as well as technical—required in today’s engineering profession. In becoming acculturated to professional norms in a host country, international students face challenges that domestic students do not encounter; such as cultural competency, language proficiency, and acculturation stress. Mitigating these challenges must be a consideration in the development of any effective education materials. The present article discusses the project rationale and describes the development of on-line instructional materials aimed at helping international engineering graduate students acclimate to professional engineering ethics standards in the United States. Finally, a brief data summary of students’ perceptions of the usefulness of the content and instructional interface is provided to demonstrate the initial effectiveness of the materials and to present a case for project sustainability.     

Professional Ethics of Software Engineers: An Ethical Framework

The purpose of this article is to propose an ethical framework for software engineers that connects software developers’ ethical responsibilities directly to their professional standards. The implementation of such an ethical framework can overcome the traditional dichotomy between professional skills and ethical skills, which plagues the engineering professions, by proposing an approach to the fundamental tasks of the practitioner, i.e., software development, in which the professional standards are intrinsically connected to the ethical responsibilities. In so doing, the ethical framework improves the practitioner’s professionalism and ethics. We call this approach Ethical-Driven Software Development (EDSD), as an approach to software development. EDSD manifests the advantages of an ethical framework as an alternative to the all too familiar approach in professional ethics that advocates “stand-alone codes of ethics”. We believe that one outcome of this synergy between professional and ethical skills is simply better engineers. Moreover, since there are often different software solutions, which the engineer can provide to an issue at stake, the ethical framework provides a guiding principle, within the process of software development, that helps the engineer evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of different software solutions. It does not and cannot affect the end-product in and of-itself. However, it can and should, make the software engineer more conscious and aware of the ethical ramifications of certain engineering decisions within the process.     

The Confucian Concept of Jen and the Feminist Ethics of Care: A Comparative Study

This article compares Confucian ethics of Jen and feminist ethics of care. It attempts to show that they share philosophically significant common grounds. Its findings affirm the view that care-orientation in ethics is not a characteristic peculiar to one sex. It also shows that care-orientation is not peculiar to subordinated social groups. Arguing that the oppression of women is not an essential element of Confucian ethics, the author indicates the Confucianism and feminism are compatible.     

Ethics of Care and Concept of Jen: A Reply to Chenyang Li

This comparative study of the ethics of care and the Confucian concept of jen argue against two assumptions made by Chenyang Li in his own study of these two traditions. Against him, I argue that a “feminine” morality is not adequate to address human equality, and that care‐orientated theories like jen and care seem incompatible with the feminist commitment to oppose the subjection of women.     

AIDS Education: Professional Ethics,Social Advocacy,and Religious Values

The author encourages AIDS education efforts to attend to religious pluralism in society and to illustrate the self-monitoring that is identified with professional activity.