高校学生道德困境研究:日常德性的视角

以45位本科生和硕士研究生为对象, 采用日常德性的视角, 考察高校学生在日常生活中亲历的道德困境, 重点探讨个人日常道德困境的内容, 以及他们对个人日常道德困境的解读和处理。结果表明(1)个人日常道德困境多数不同于假设性的公正取向的道德困境。人们对各类个人日常道德困境的解读和阐释存在个体差异。道德内容主要取决于人们所强调的问题。(2)人们所主张的有助于处理日常道德困境的策略与他们在生活中实际采用的策略是有差异的。在真实的道德选择和决定中, 会有更多利己和实用的考虑。此外, 人们对道德行为的判断多倚重对行为后果(特别是伤害性后果)的考虑。     

The denial of moral dilemmas as a regulative ideal

The traditional debate about moral dilemmas concerns whether there are circumstances in which an agent is subject to two obligations that cannot both be fulfilled. Realists maintain there are. Irrealists deny this. Here I defend an alternative, methodologically-oriented position wherein the denial of genuine moral dilemmas functions as a regulative ideal for moral deliberation and practice. That is, moral inquiry and deliberation operate on the implicit assumption that there are no genuine moral dilemmas. This view is superior to both realism and irrealism in accounting for moral residue and other crucial phenomenological dimensions of our experience of moral dilemmas.     

The Definition of Moral Dilemmas: A Logical Problem

This paper concerns one of the undecided disputes of modern moral philosophy: the possibility of moral dilemmas. Whereas proponents of the possibility of moral dilemmas often appeal to moral experience, many opponents refer to ethical theory and deontic logic. My aim in this paper is to clarify some of the tension between moral experience and ethical theory with respect to moral dilemmas. In Part One I try to show that a number of logical arguments against the possibility of moral dilemmas, though apparently very different, turn out to be basically the same, as they are all based on the following concept of ought: if A ought to be done, doing B is impermissible and doing A itself is permissible. In Part Two I present an overview of several definitions of moral dilemmas that have been given by proponents of moral dilemmas: definitions that define moral dilemmas in terms of oughts and definitions that define them in terms of reasons. I conclude that, while reason is to weak, ought is too strong a concept to define moral dilemmas with. In this way, the arguments from Part One create a logical problem for proponents of the possibility of moral dilemmas to define moral dilemmas.     

Harmful transgressions qua moral transgressions: A deflationary view

One important issue in moral psychology concerns the proper characterisation of the folk understanding of the relationship between harmful transgressions and moral transgressions. Psychologist Elliot Turiel and associates have claimed with a broad range of supporting evidence that harmful transgressions are understood as transgressions that are authority independent and general in scope which, according to them, characterises these transgressions as moral transgressions. Recently many researchers questioned the position advocated by the Turiel tradition with some new evidence. We entered this debate proposing an original, deflationary view in which perceptions of basic-rights violation and injustice are fundamental for the folk understanding of harmful transgressions as moral transgressions in Turiel's sense. In this article we elaborate and refine our deflationary view, while reviewing the debate, addressing various criticisms raised against our perspective, showing how our perspective explains the existent evidence, and suggesting new lines of inquiry.     

Killing and Letting Die: the Similarity Criterion

abstract   Applied ethics engages with concrete moral issues. This engagement involves the application of philosophical tools. When the philosophical tools used in applied ethics are problematic, conclusions about applied problems can become skewed. In this paper, I focus on problems with the idea that comparison cases must be exactly alike, except for the moral issue at hand. I argue that this idea has skewed the debate regarding the moral distinction between killing and letting die.
I begin with problems that can arise from attempts to produce comparison cases that are exactly alike, except for the moral issue at hand. I then argue that attempts to produce such examples are doomed to failure. Finally, I argue that abandoning concerns about similarity advances the debate regarding the moral distinction between killing and letting die.     

The Moral Dilemmas Debate, Deontic Logic, and the Impotence of Argument

In this paper I argue for modesty concerning what theoretical reason can accomplish in the moral dilemmas debate. Specifically, I contend that philosophers' conclusions for or against moral dilemmas are driven less by rational argument and more by how the moral world intuitively appears to them.I support this thesis by first considering an argument against moral dilemmas, the argument from deontic logic, and showing that its persuasive force depends on one's having already accepted its conclusion. I then make a different, and general, case that any argument in the moral dilemmas debate concerning the defeasibility of conflicting obligations can be marginalized by making not-unreasonable adjustments in the conditions for wrongdoing.These two strands of argument are related by the notion of inescapable wrongdoing. It is our standing intuitions about inescapable wrongdoing which make the relevant deontic logical principles plausible or implausible to us. And whether wrongdoing can be inescapable is central to deciding what the conditions for wrongdoing are. My conclusion is that the arguments in the moral dilemmas debate merely implement whatever standing intuition we have concerning inescapable wrongdoing, and that apart from any such intuition the arguments are unpersuasive.     

A Study of Real Dilemmas in Adulthood

The aim of this work is to study real contextualised dilemmas and relevant events of the biographies offered by a group of adult men and women, in order to analyse the contextual and personal factors that influence moral reasoning during this stage of the life cycle. To this end, we interviewed 60 adults who were asked to recount real contextualised dilemmas. The themes of the real dilemmas were later categorised in relation to the stage of moral reasoning reached and then linked to the ecological contexts in which they took place. The results show that the themes related to proximal processes and contexts (family, parenthood) are the most frequent and are related to the conventional level of moral reasoning. However, in relation to social themes and coherence, the reasoning level obtained is more mature. Finally, there are contextual differences regarding the contents of the real dilemmas related to local conflicts or socio-political concern for one??s own community.     

Everyday dilemmas: New directions on the judgment and resolution of benevolence–integrity dilemmas

Many everyday dilemmas reflect a conflict between two moral motivations: the desire to adhere to universal principles (integrity) and the desire to improve the welfare of specific individuals in need (benevolence). In this article, we bridge research on moral judgment and trust to introduce a framework that establishes three central distinctions between benevolence and integrity: (1) the degree to which they rely on impartiality, (2) the degree to which they are tied to emotion versus reason, and (3) the degree to which they can be evaluated in isolation. We use this framework to explain existing findings and generate novel predictions about the resolution and judgment of benevolence–integrity dilemmas. Though ethical dilemmas have long been a focus of moral psychology research, recent research has relied on dramatic dilemmas that involve conflicts of utilitarianism and deontology and has failed to represent the ordinary, yet psychologically taxing dilemmas that we frequently face in everyday life. The present article fills this gap, thereby deepening our understanding of moral judgment and decision making and providing practical insights on how decision makers resolve moral conflict.     

Between morality and repentance: recapturing "sin" for bioethics.

Distinguishing within "sin" the dimensions of anomia, hamartia, and asthenia makes it possible to analyze in greater detail the contrary manners in which traditional and post-traditional Christianities in this issue of Christian Bioethics endeavor to recapture what was lost when secular bioethics reconstructed the specifically spiritual-context-oriented normative commitments of Christianity in one-dimensionally moral terms. Various post-traditional attempts at securing moral orientation and resources for forgiveness, both of which secular bioethics finds increasingly difficult to provide, are critically reviewed. Their engagement of secular moral concepts and concerns, and even their adoption of an academically philosophical posture and language, is presented as responsible for their failure to adequately preserve what in traditional Christianity would count as prohibited vs. permitted, and advisable vs. non-advisable, or what would allow to resolve "tragic conflicts." The deeper reason for this failure lies in post-traditional Christianity's restricting the Christian life (with its central tension between love and the law) to what can be captured by cognitive categories. As the survey of several traditionally Christian accounts of sin in bioethics makes clear, both moral orientation (along with the resolution of "tragic" conflicts) and the sources of forgiveness are available, once that Christian life is framed in terms of persons' spirit-supported practical involvement in ascesis and liturgy, and once bioethical reflections are situated in the experiential context of such involvement.     

Moral Dilemmas,Collective Responsibility,and Moral Progress

Ruth Marcus has offered an account of moral dilemmas in which the presence of dilemmas acts as a motivating force, pushing us to try to minimize predicaments of moral conflict. In this paper, I defend a Marcus-style account of dilemmas against two objections: first, that if dilemmas are real, we are forced to blame those who have done their best, and second, that in some cases, even a stripped down version of blame seems inappropriate. My account highlights the importance of collective responsibility in understanding dilemmas, and I suggest that it sheds light on understanding moral progress.     

Expressivism, Logic, Consistency, and Moral Dilemmas

On an expressivist view, ethical claims are understood as expressions of our attitudes, desires, and feelings. A famous puzzle for this view concerns the use of logic in ethical reasoning, and two standard treatments try to solve the puzzle by explaining logical inconsistency in terms of conflicting attitudes. I argue, however, that this general strategy fails: because we can reason effectively even in the presence of conflicting moral attitudes – in cases of moral dilemmas – avoiding these conflicts cannot be a ground for correct moral reasoning. The result is a dilemma for expressivists: if they take all kinds of attitudes to be under consideration, then conflict cannot play the required role, since attitudes can fail to be compatible in cases of moral conflict. If they restrict attention to ‘all-in attitudes’ or to intentions or plans, then there is an important notion of obligation, used in standard arguments – one for which conflicts are allowed – that they fail to capture. I explain why expressivists should be especially tolerant of conflicting attitudes, and I conclude that they should pursue a different strategy for grounding logical normativity.

Ethical Dilemmas in the Use of Information Technology: An Aristotelian Perspective

As computer-based information systems start to have a great impact on people, organizations, and society as a whole, there is much debate about information technology in relation to social control and privacy, security and reliability, and ethics and professional responsibilities. However, more often than not, these debates reveal some fundamental disagreements, sometimes about first principles. In this article the authors suggest that a fruitful and interesting way to conceptualize some of these moral and ethical issues associated with the use of information technology is to apply the principles of Aristotle's ethics to this topic. They argue that framing the moral and ethical choices associated with information technology in Aristotelian terms draws attention to the fact that there are fundamental dilemmas to be addressed. These dilemmas are discussed in relation to the four areas suggested by Dejoie, Fowler, and Paradice (1991): (a) privacy, (b) information accuracy, (c) access to information, and (d) intellectual property rights. The dilemmas associated with all four areas are illustrated with references to recent legal developments in Australia and New Zealand.     

Transfer effects between moral dilemmas: A causal model theory

Evaluations of analogous situations are an important source for our moral intuitions. A puzzling recent set of findings in experiments exploring transfer effects between intuitions about moral dilemmas has demonstrated a striking asymmetry. Transfer often occurred with a specific ordering of moral dilemmas, but not when the sequence was reversed. In this article we present a new theory of transfer between moral intuitions that focuses on two components of moral dilemmas, namely their causal structure and their default evaluations. According to this theory, transfer effects are expected when the causal models underlying the considered dilemmas allow for a mapping of the highlighted aspect of the first scenario onto the causal structure of the second dilemma, and when the default evaluations of the two dilemmas substantially differ. The theory’s key predictions for the occurrence and the direction of transfer effects between two moral dilemmas are tested in five experiments with various variants of moral dilemmas from different domains. A sixth experiment tests the predictions of the theory for how the target action in the moral dilemmas is represented.     

A Paraconsistent Solution to the Problem of Moral Dilemmas

Abstract

Moral dilemmas - situations in which an agent has a moral requirement to do each of two acts but cannot do both - seem to suggest some kind of inconsistency. I argue that the inconsistency felt intuitively is actually a logical inconsistency, and then go on to show that we can neither deny the existence of moral dilemmas nor give up the deontic principles involved in the deduction of a contradiction, as both our moral judgements and the deontic principles depend on intuitions that form the basis of our morality. Rather than rejecting our intuitions and thus undermining morality, I suggest regarding moral dilemmas as situations in which a contradiction is not only false, but at the same time true. Finally, the view that moral dilemmas are an example of true contradictions - so-called dialetheias - leads to the application of paraconsistent logic to moral judgements.     

Psychotherapy as Moral Encounter: A Crisis of Modern Conscience

Psychotherapy can no longer be understood as a morally neutral or value-free practice. Many have argued that psychology is implicitly and inevitably laden with moral assumptions and has a significant impact on the moral and ethical fabric of its clients and surrounding society (Browning 1987; Doherty 1995; Dueck and Reimer 2003; Kelly and Strupp 1992; Rieff 1987, 2006). In this work, the authors highlight the profound identity crises within the field of psychology around the place of morality/ethics in its theories and practices. Chronicling some of the shifts between modern and postmodern theory will allow for a meaningful engagement with this issue. The postmodern shifts in the field have left clinicians ideologically hampered in their ability to attend to the moral dimensions of their clients’ lives. In conclusion, the authors posit a virtue ethics and consider avenues of holistically and meaningfully infusing clinical practice with moral sensibilities.     

Ethical principles of the American Psychological Association: an argument for philosophical and practical ranking

Unlike the American Psychological Association (APA), the Canadian Psychological Association has adopted a code of ethics in which principles are organized in order of importance. The validity of this hierarchical organization has received some empirical and theoretical support. We conducted a theoretical analysis that revealed conceptual justification for a ranking of the 6 principles in the APA code. Such a ranking could assist psychologists in making more informed and consistent moral choices when confronted with ethical dilemmas that involve conflicts among principles.     

道德外语效应及其调节变量：来自元分析的证据

同一个道德决策情景使用外语(相比母语)呈现时,个体会表现出更强的功利性倾向,即道德外语效应。随着研究的深入,结论并不一致。本研究运用元分析方法首次探讨了语言类型(母语vs.外语)对道德判断中功利性倾向的影响,并分析了相关的调节变量。通过文献检索及梳理,共有19篇文献46个独立样本97个效应量符合元分析标准(N=9672)。结果显示存在较小但稳定的道德外语效应(g=0.23);调节效应分析表明,道德外语效应受故事类型的影响,在个人道德两难故事中存在较小但稳定的外语效应(g=0.32),但在非个人道德两难故事(g=0.11)与日常道德评价故事中(g=0.12)不存在外语效应;非个人道德两难故事中的外语效应受记分方式的影响,多点记分在该故事类型下存在效应(g=0.27),二点记分不存在效应(g=0.05);性别和语系类型没有显著的调节效应。这些结果表明语言类型对个体面对道德困境时的选择倾向有一定程度的影响,道德故事类型和记分方式在未来的研究中需要加以考虑。     

Gender differences in moral judgment and the evaluation of gender-specified moral agents

Whether, and if so, how exactly gender differences are manifested in moral judgment has recently been at the center of much research on moral decision making. Previous research suggests that women are more deontological than men in personal, but not impersonal, moral dilemmas. However, typical personal and impersonal moral dilemmas differ along two dimensions: Personal dilemmas are more emotionally salient than impersonal ones and involve a violation of Kant’s practical imperative that humans must never be used as a mere means, but only as ends. Thus, it remains unclear whether the reported gender difference is due to emotional salience or to the violation of the practical imperative. To answer this question, we explore gender differences in three moral dilemmas: a typical personal dilemma, a typical impersonal dilemma, and an intermediate dilemma, which is not as emotionally salient as typical personal moral dilemmas, but contains an equally strong violation of Kant’s practical imperative. While we replicate the result that women tend to embrace deontological ethics more than men in personal, but not impersonal, dilemmas, we find no gender differences in the intermediate situation. This suggests that gender differences in these type of dilemmas are driven by emotional salience, and not by the violation of the practical imperative. Additionally, we also explore whether people think that women should behave differently than men in these dilemmas. Across all three dilemmas, we find no statistically significant differences about how people think men and women should behave.     

Multiple moral foundations predict responses to sacrificial dilemmas

Moral dilemmas, by definition, demand trade-offs between competing moral goods (e.g., causing one harm to prevent another). Although moral dilemmas have served as a methodological pillar for moral psychology, surprisingly little research has explored how individual differences in moral values influence responses to dilemmatic trade-offs. In a cross-sectional study (N = 307), we tested competing claims regarding the relationship between the endorsement of foundational moral values and responses to sacrificial dilemmas, in which one judges the moral acceptability of causing fatal harm to one person to save multiple others. Inconsistent with Moral Dyad Theory, our results did not support the prediction that Harm concerns would be the unequivocally most important predictor of sacrifice endorsement. Consistent with Moral Foundations Theory, however, multiple moral values are predictive of sacrifice judgments: Harm and Purity negatively predict, and Ingroup positively predicts, endorsement of harmful action in service of saving lives, with Harm and Purity explaining similar amounts of unique variance. The present study demonstrates the utility of pluralistic accounts of morality, even in moral situations in which harm is central.