Role Ethics or Ethics of Role-Play? A Comparative Critical Analysis of the Ethics of Confucianism and the Bhagavad Gītā

Both Confucianism and the Bhagavad Gītā emphasize the moral authority of social roles. But how deep does the likeness between these ethical philosophies run? In this essay I focus upon two significant points of comparison between the role-based ethics of Confucianism and the Gītā: (1) the interrelation between formalized social roles and family feeling, and (2) the religious dimension of moral action. How is it that Confucians ground their social roles in family feeling, while the Gītā emphasizes rupture between role and sentiment? Furthermore, are we to understand Confucianism as presenting a social philosophy that eschews religious concerns, whereas the Gītā denies the moral significance of family feeling in lieu of obtaining soteriological freedom? Examining the aesthetic and religious dimensions of the ethics of Confucianism and the Gītā clarifies a key distinction that both views implicitly make, albeit for divergent reasons: the difference between living one’s roles and playing one’s roles.     

A Third Method of Ethics?

In recent decades, the idea has become common that so‐called virtue ethics constitutes a third option in ethics in addition to consequentialism and deontology. This paper argues that, if we understand ethical theories as accounts of right and wrong action, this is not so. Virtue ethics turns out to be a form of deontology (that is, non‐consequentialism). The paper then moves to consider the Aristotelian distinction between right or virtuous action on the one hand, and acting rightly or virtuously on the other. It is claimed that virtue might play an important role in an explanation of acting virtuously (as it does in Aristotle’s ethics), but that such explanations can be charged with ‘double‐counting’ the moral value of the virtues. The paper concludes that, if we focus on the question of the value of virtue, rather than on the notion of right action, there is room for a self‐standing and important view which could be described as virtue ethics.     

Yong HUANG,Why Be Moral? Learning from the Neo-Confucian Cheng Brothers

The Song dynasty brothers Cheng Yi and Cheng Hao have been relatively poorly represented in English-language scholarship.Until now,the only book-length study devoted to them in English was A.C.Graham's Two Chinese Philosophers,first published in 1958.In Fung Yu-lan's history of Chinese philosophy,and Wing Tsit-chan's anthology of Chinese philosophy,the Chengs appear as pivotal figures,responsible for dividing Confucianism into two new and rival schools.     

The Ethics of Neuroscience and the Neuroscience of Ethics: A Phenomenological–Existential Approach

Advances in the neurosciences have many implications for a collective understanding of what it means to be human, in particular, notions of the self, the concept of volition or agency, questions of individual responsibility, and the phenomenology of consciousness. As the ability to peer directly into the brain is scientifically honed, and conscious states can be correlated with patterns of neural processing, an easy??but premature??leap is to postulate a one-way, brain-based determinism. That leap is problematic, however, and emerging findings in neuroscience can even be seen as compatible with some of the basic tenets of existentialism. Given the compelling authority of modern ??science,?? it is especially important to question how the findings of neuroscience are framed, and how the articulation of research results challenge or change individuals?? perceptions of themselves. Context plays an essential role in the emergence of human identity and in the sculpting of the human brain; for example, even a lack of stimuli (??nothing??) can lead to substantial consequences for brain, behavior, and experience. Conversely, advances in understanding the brain might contribute to more precise definitions of what it means to be human, including definitions of appropriate social and moral behavior. Put another way, the issue is not simply the ethics involved in framing neurotechnology, but also the incorporation of neuroscientific findings into a richer understanding of human ethical (and existential) functioning.     

Are Ethics Training Programs Improving? A Meta-Analytic Review of Past and Present Ethics Instruction in the Sciences

Given the growing public concern and attention placed on cases of research misconduct, government agencies and research institutions have increased their efforts to develop and improve ethics education programs for scientists. The present study sought to assess the impact of these increased efforts by sampling empirical studies published since the year 2000. Studies published prior to 2000 examined in other meta-analytic work were also included to provide a baseline for assessing gains in ethics training effectiveness over time. In total, this quantitative review consisted of 66 empirical studies, 106 ethics courses, 150 effect sizes, and 10,069 training participants. Overall, the findings indicated that ethics instruction resulted in sizable benefits to participants and has improved considerably within the last decade. A number of specific findings also emerged regarding moderators of instructional effectiveness. Recommendations are discussed for improving the development, delivery, and evaluation of ethics instruction in the sciences.     

What is a Minor Philosophy? A Conversation on Thinking from the Periphery in a Global World

This is the text of a conversation that follows up on Roberto Farneti??s article ??A Minor Philosophy: The State of the Art of Philosophical Scholarship in Italy?? published in Philosophia 38 (1) 2009: 1?C28. After a brief introductory note that details the reception of the article in Italy, Ferrara and Farneti engage in a conversation on the notion of ??minor philosophy?? and on the meaning and future of philosophizing ??from the periphery?? in a globalized world. The text is followed by a short Appendix, a reply to Annalisa Coliva??s commentary on Farneti??s article.     

Ethics in the Pulpit?

Abstract: What is the place of ethics and politics in the pulpit—especially in the post September 11th United States? This article argues that preachers must learn to bring the deepest wisdom of the biblical texts to bear on the most intractable issues of the present. Scripture gives preachers insight into the “ethics of God” and empowers them to step beyond a hermeneutics of narcissism. Silence and Attention prepare the preacher to hear the Word of God, and prayerful listening is crucial to seeing and hearing where God may be working in the present moment. In this way preachers help facilitate the conversation between the congregation and God and this conversation continues after the sermon. Politics should not take over the pulpit or be entirely absent from it. Discernment is the key. Regardless of political standing, all preachers have the obligation to bring the Word of God to bear on the problems of the world.     

How Shall We Read the History of Ethics?

This response suggests that in writing the history of ethics, it is important to take seriously what the principals wrote and believed, distinguishing it carefully from our own responses to their writings, or from subsequent uses to which their writings may have been put. For example, when reading Thomas Aquinas and Francisco de Vitoria on just war against non‐Christian peoples, forcible conversion and conquest are clearly condemned. Whatever the attitudes of their contemporaries, not to mention later thinkers up to the present, there is no foundation in Aquinas and Vitoria for holy war or “exceptionalism,” American or otherwise.     

Do Confucians Really Care? A Defense of the Distinctiveness of Care Ethics: A Reply to Chenyang Li

Chenyang Li argues, in an article originally published in Hypatia, that the ethics of care and Confucian ethics constitute similar approaches to ethics. The present paper takes issue with this claim. It is more accurate to view Confucian ethics as a kind of virtue ethics, rather than as a kind of care ethics. In the process of criticizing Li's claim, the distinctiveness of care ethics is defended, against attempts to assimilate it to virtue ethics.     

Evolutionary Ethics: What Can We Learn From from the Past?

In this paper I look at the question of the derivation of ethics from evolutionary biology, and I do so by considering both historical attempts to make such a derivation and contemporary work.     

Technology of the Dead: Objects of Loving Remembrance or Replaceable Resources?

Abstract

This paper addresses ethical questions surrounding death given imagined but not unlikely technological advancements in the near future. For example, how will highly detailed interactive simulations of deceased personalities affect the way we deal with dying and interact with the dead? Most cultures have at least a vague sense of duties to the dead, and many of these duties are related to the memorial preservation of decedents. I worry that our advances might be paralleled by a deteriorating grasp of what proper preservation is all about. With the phenomenological assistance of the 19th and 20th century philosophers Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre, we can get a sense of some potential problems for what we ordinarily call ‘progress’.     

Beyond Good and Evil? A Buddhist critique of Nietzsche

In what ways was Nietzsche right, from a Buddhist perspective, and where did he go wrong? Nietzsche understood how the distinction we make between this world and a higher spiritual realm serves our need for security, and he saw the bad faith in religious values motivated by this need. He did not perceive how his alternative, more aristocratic values, also reflects the same anxiety. Nietzsche realised how the search for truth is motivated by a sublimated desire for symbolic security; philosophy's attempt to create the world reflects the tyrannical will‐to‐power, becoming the most ‘spiritualised’ version of the need to impose our will. Insofar as truth is our intellectual effort to grasp being symbolically, however, Nietzsche overlooks a different reversal of perspective which could convert the ‘bad infinite’ of heroic will into the good infinite of disseminating play. What he considered the crown of his system—eternal recurrence—is actually its denouement. Having seen through the delusion of Being, Nietzsche still sought a Being within Becoming. Nietzsche is able to affirm the value of this moment only by making it recur eternally. Rather than the way to vanquish nihilism, will‐to‐power turns out to be pure nihilism, for nihilism is not the debacle of all meaning but our dread of that debacle and what we do to avoid it.     

Self-Talk: Conversation With Oneself? On the Types of Internal Interlocutors

The two studies presented in the article aimed to empirically verify the tentative typology of internal interlocutors in self-talk proposed in a previous research project. The typology comprised four emotional types: Faithful Friend, Ambivalent Parent, Proud Rival, and Helpless Child. Study 1 involved 98 participants (49 women) and Study 2 involved 114 (55 women), mostly students. In both studies, the names of internal interlocutors were generated by participants as qualitative data, quantified by reference to the standard set of affect terms, and, as affective patterns, subjected to clustering. Study 2 fully confirmed the recent results, whereas Study 1 revealed a new interlocutor type instead of Helpless Child – Calm Optimist. The conducted studies confirm the existence of four main types of inner interlocutors and provide a reason to verify the existence of Calm Optimist.     

Are there True Contradictions? A Critical Discussion of Graham Priest's, Beyond the limits of thought

The present article critically examines three aspects of Graham Priest's dialetheic analysis of very important kinds of limitations (the limit of what can be expressed, described, conceived, known, or the limit of some operation or other). First, it is shown that Priest's considerations focusing on Hegel's account of the infinite cannot be sustained, mainly because Priest seems to rely on a too restrictive notion of object. Second, we discuss Priest's treatment of the paradoxes in Cantorian set-theory. It is shown that Priest does not address the issue in full generality; rather, he relies on a reading of Cantor which implicitly attributes a very strong principle concerning quantification over arbitrary domains to Cantor. Third, the main piece of Priest's work, the so-called “inclosure schema”, is investigated. This schema is supposed to formalize the core of many well-known paradoxes. We claim, however, that formally the schema is not sound. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Ethics of field research: Do journals set the standard?

To determine whether ethical issues concerned with field research are addressed in the peer-review process, instructions to authors and reviewers of 141 (mainly natural science) journals were examined to ascertain how often ethical issues were mentioned. Only one-third (n=41) of responding journals addressed ethical issues in their instructions to authors or reviewers. When ethical issues were considered, most of the journals limited their concerns to ethical issues associated with animal and general human experimentation. No journal mentioned ethical practices in working with indigenous peoples or on traditional lands. Only two journals addressed the ethics of research in sensitive areas in their instructions to authors, only one in its instructions to reviewers. We suggest that peer-reviewed journals respond to an emerging issue in ecological research by formally incorporating research ethics into their instructions to authors and reviewers. Furthermore, these instructions should address the ethical issues associated with field research and in working with indigenous peoples and on traditional lands.     

Ethics and Science: Is Plausibility in the Eye of the Beholder?

This paper argues that morality is objective in a specific sense that accords with a broadly expressivist stance in metaethics. The paper also explains that although there is a kind of subjectivity in moral inquiry, the same holds for other kinds of normative inquiry, including epistemic and even scientific inquiry, and moreover that this kind of subjectivity is no threat to morality’s objectivity. The argument for the objectivity of morality draws strong parallels between ethics, epistemology, and science, but does not depend on equally strong parallels between ethics and mathematics. I argue that there is more to learn from a comparison between ethics and mathematics than I used to think, but the difference between the issues that come up in thinking about objectivity in ethics and those that come up in thinking about objectivity in mathematics is substantial, and we cannot carry over results from the philosophy of mathematics to the case of morality.