Critical Reflection,Self-Knowledge,and the Emotions

Abstract

Drawing on recent cognitive theories of the emotions, this article develops an account of critical reflection as requiring emotional flexibility and involving the ability to envisage alternative reasons for action. The focus on the role of emotions in critical reflection, and in agents' resistance to reflection, suggests the need to move beyond an introspective to a more social and relational conception of the process of reflection. It also casts new light on the intractable problem of explaining how oppressive socialisation impairs the capacity for autonomy.     

How Emotions Shape Moral Behavior: Some Answers (and Questions) for the Field of Moral Psychology

Within the past decade, the field of moral psychology has begun to disentangle the mechanics behind moral judgments, revealing the vital role that emotions play in driving these processes. However, given the well‐documented dissociation between attitudes and behaviors, we propose that an equally important issue is how emotions inform actual moral behavior – a question that has been relatively ignored up until recently. By providing a review of recent studies that have begun to explore how emotions drive actual moral behavior, we propose that emotions are instrumental in fueling real‐life moral actions. Because research examining the role of emotional processes on moral behavior is currently limited, we push for the use of behavioral measures in the field in the hopes of building a more complete theory of real‐life moral behavior.     

Liking, Arousal Potential, and the Emotions Expressed by Music

Previous research indicates that the specific emotions expressed by stimuli may be closely associated with their pleasing and arousing qualities, and this parallels psychomusicological research on the relationship between these two stimulus qualities. In light of this, the present research contends that the emotions expressed by musical stimuli are associated with their pleasing and arousing qualities. Sixty subjects rated 32 musical excerpts on 11-point scales representing the expression of eight specific emotions. Statistical analyses showed that these emotion ratings were predictable on the basis of 60 additional subjects' ratings of each excerpt in terms of 'liking' and 'arousal potential'. This indicates that ratings of liking and arousal potential are essentially similar to ratings of the specific emotions expressed by musical stimuli. These results are discussed in terms of the relationship between liking and arousal potential, and the implications that this may have for research on affective processes.     

Classical,Critical and Constructive: Paul Hinlicky's Beloved Community

This engagement with Paul Hinlicky's systematic theology, Beloved Community, provides both analysis of his text and constructive enhancement of the wider discussion of the Trinity. The term ‘Beloved Community’ is what Hinlicky calls the Trinity, an open Trinity that invites believers into the divine life. This book, like a springboard, encourages diving into the new trinitarianism inaugurated by the two Karls, Karl Barth and Karl Rahner. I place Hinlicky into this stream of thought and then raise the critical question: is this new trinitarianism conflictual or compatible with the classical theism we find in both Christianity and Islam?     

Picturing the Soul: Moral Psychology and the Recovery of the Emotions

This paper draws from the resources of Iris Murdoch's moral philosophy to analyze the ethical status of the emotions at two related levels of reflection. Methodologically, it argues that a recovery of the emotions requires a revised notion of moral theory which affirms the basic orientation of consciousness to some notion of value or the good. Such a theory challenges many of the rationalist premises which in the past have led moral theory to reject the role of emotions in ethics. In particular, it acknowledges the centrality of moral psychology to ethics and reclaims the notion of consciousness rather than the will as the primary mode of human moral being. At a second, more substantive level, the paper explores the relation between the emotions and consciousness. Specifically, it defends a cognitivist and reflexive theory of the emotions which affirms a strong relation between the emotions and our evaluative beliefs. On this view, the emotions reflexively mediate our relation to objective value. In order to earn their cognitive status, however, the emotions must be tested in relation to a critical principle in order to guard against the egoistic tendencies of consciousness to build up images of reality to serve its own purposes. Therefore, a theory of the Good must be part of the critical content of a reflexive theory of the emotions.     

Moral Emotions Toward Others at Work and Implications for Employee Behavior: a Qualitative Analysis Using Critical Incidents

We propose a theoretical framework for and, via critical incidents, inductively investigate (a) the situations that trigger moral emotions toward others at work and (b) worker responses to these situations. Critical incidents were collected from a heterogeneous sample of 423 workers. Participants described an incident that caused each of four moral emotions (gratitude, anger, admiration, and contempt) and their response. Incidents and responses were coded, and frequencies, differences across the moral emotions, and associations between incidents and responses were analyzed. Several morally relevant situations at work were found to trigger the moral emotions. Participants responded in ways that had implications for their performance and their own well-being. The incidents largely align with moral foundations theory (Haidt and Graham in Social Justice Research, 20, 98–116, 2007). Responses also show evidence for social exchange, social learning, and rational expectancy-based processes and behavior. The incidents specify several practices for managers and organizations to encourage and avoid. This was the first qualitative study of moral emotions at work and one of the few workplace studies to examine these emotions empirically. Several understudied factors and behavioral responses emerged.     

Children's Moral Emotions,Narratives, and Aggression: Relations With Maternal Discipline and Support

ABSTRACT. Children who attribute more positive emotions to hypothetical moral victimizers are typically more aggressive and have more behavior problems. Little is known, however, about when individual differences in these moral emotion attributions first emerge or about maternal correlates of these differences. In this study, 63 4–6-year-olds judged how they would feel after victimizing peers for gain and enacted event conclusions using narrative methods adapted from the MacArthur Story Stem Battery. In addition, children's mothers completed assessments of their disciplinary styles and social support, and children's aggressive tendencies were assessed based on ratings from mothers and a second familiar adult. Results revealed that most preschoolers expected to feel happy after their victimizing acts, but variations in happy victimization were unrelated to children's aggression. Several of children's narrative themes, including making amends (e.g., apologizing, reparations), aggressive acts, and mentions of death/killing, however, were related to children's aggression. Moreover, two maternal disciplinary dimensions, higher warmth and reasoning, as well as greater social support were also related to lower child aggression. Children's emotion attributions and moral narratives, however, were unrelated to maternal disciplinary practices or social support.     

Thomas Luckmann on the Relation Between Phenomenology and Sociology: A Constructive Critical Assessment

Human Studies - In the present paper, I intend to systematically revisit Thomas Luckmann’s account of the relation between phenomenology and sociology and to assess its strengths and...     

《社会道德与个体道德》评介

社会道德与个体道德是依据社会和个体的关系作出的一种道德分类。社会道德也称群体道德 ,指社会实际的道德状况。个体道德也称个人道德 ,指个人实际所具有的道德或品行。社会道德与个体道德既相互区别 ,又相互联系 ;既相互对立 ,又相互统一 ;同时还相互渗透和相互转化。社会道德是由每个人的个体道德有机结合的统一体 ,没有不包含个人、与个人道德不相关联的社会道德。个体道德是社会道德有机体中的一分子 ,没有脱离社会、与社会道德毫不相关的个体道德。现实生活中 ,社会道德与个体道德的许多问题 ,既有历史留给我们需要进一步解读的问题 ,…     

Moral Particularism and Epistemic Contextualism: Comments on Lance and Little

Do we need defeasible generalizations in epistemology, generalizations that are genuinely explanatory yet ineliminably exception-laden? Do we need them to endow our epistemology with a substantial explanatory structure? Mark Lance and Margaret Little argue for the claim that we do. I will argue that we can just as well do without them – at least in epistemology. So in the paper, I am trying to very briefly sketch an alternative contextualist picture. More specifically, the claim will be that although an epistemic contextualist should commit himself to epistemic holism he can nevertheless appeal to epistemic principles other than defeasible generalizations in order to provide his epistemology with a structure.