Responsibility for believing

Many assume that we can be responsible only what is voluntary. This leads to puzzlement about our responsibility for our beliefs, since beliefs seem not to be voluntary. I argue against the initial assumption, presenting an account of responsibility and of voluntariness according to which, not only is voluntariness not required for responsibility, but the feature which renders an attitude a fundamental object of responsibility (that the attitude embodies one’s take on the world and one’s place in it) also guarantees that it could not be voluntary. It turns out, then, that, for failing to be voluntary, beliefs are a central example of the sort of thing for which we are most fundamentally responsible.     

The virtues of belief: toward a non-evidentialist ethics of belief-formation

William Kingdon Clifford famously argued that “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” His ethics of belief can be construed as involving two distinct theses—a moral claim (that it is wrong to hold beliefs to which one is not entitled) and an epistemological claim (that entitlement is always a function of evidential support). Although I reject the (universality of the) epistemological claim, I argue that something deserving of the name ethics of belief can nevertheless be preserved. However, in the second half of the paper I argue that Clifford’s response to the problem of unethical belief is insufficiently attentive to the role played by self-deception in the formation of unethical beliefs. By contrasting the first-person perspective of a doxastic agent with the third-person perspective of an outside observer, I argue that unethical belief is a symptom of deficiencies of character: fix these, and belief will fix itself. I suggest that the moral intuitions implicit in our response to examples of unethical belief (like Clifford’s famous example of the ship owner) can better be accounted for in terms of a non-evidentialist virtue ethics of belief-formation, and that such an account can survive the rejection of strong versions of doxastic voluntarism.

Joseph Butler, “Upon Self-Deceit” (1726)

     

The ethics of belief: doxastic self-control and intellectual virtue

Most of the literature on doxastic voluntarism has concentrated on the question of the voluntariness of belief and the issue of how our actual or possible control of our beliefs bears on our justification for holding them and on how, in the light of this control, our intellectual character should be assessed. This paper largely concerns a related question on which less philosophical work has been done: the voluntariness of the grounding of belief and the bearing of various views about this matter on justification, knowledge, and intellectual virtue. In part, my concern is the nature and extent of our voluntary control over our responses to reasons for believing—or over what we take to be such reasons. This paper provides a partial account of such control and, on the basis of the account, will clarify the criteria for appraising intellectual virtue.     

美德复兴的历程与医学美德的复苏

美德伦理的复兴是20世纪伦理学研究的重要转向和理论图景,国外美德伦理研究以麦金太尔为代表,迈克尔•斯洛特的情感主义美德伦理学最具代表性,国内在译介国外研究的基础上提出美德与规范的互补。在医学领域也开始复兴美德伦理,内因在于美德伴随医学的产生,比规范伦理有更悠久的历史,外因在于扭转社会的去道德化倾向,美德伦理与规范伦理同样重要,甚至某些情况下更重要。但在美德伦理的复兴过程中,也面临着内在与外在的阻力,美德伦理复兴任重而道远。

     

德性与善

从根本上说,德性不仅是完成人们的内在利益所必需的品格,同时也是有益于整体生活的善的品格。德性作为一种品格,它在成就人的至善行为中能稳定和促进人的向善能力。     

论德性与独立的实践推理者

德性对于人的兴盛是必不可少的。没有道德德性,我们就不能实现从动物性理智到实践推理的转变,其次不能继续有推理的实践;如果不发展某种程度的德性,我们就不能适当地关怀和教育他人。所以,德性必须首先获得,然后才能维持在推理的实践之中。最后,我们在成为实践推理之后,我们仍然需要他人的维护,这种需要同时也是一种对德性的需要。     

Mercy as a Public Virtue

James F. Keenan defines mercy as “the willingness to enter the chaos of another.” Mercy thus defined, he argues, is the distinctive characteristic of Christian morality. This essay asserts that mercy is, in fact, a public virtue, one that can be affirmed across a broad range of religious and moral traditions. As a public virtue, mercy ought to shape both affective and effective responses to the Syrian refugee crisis in the United States.     

亚当·斯密美德思想对医务人员德性培养的启示

市场经济下人们对私利的追逐必须要有道德约束,如何帮助医学界走出道德困境是必须直面的理论和现实问题。基于亚当•斯密的美德思想,探讨德性伦理在医务人员德性培养中的重要性。通过审慎、正义、仁慈和克己这四种个人具备的美德,将其与医务人员品行培养实际联系起来,得出在市场经济背景下美德思想对医务人员德性培养的启示,即用审慎之美德提升自身业务能力、用正义之美德维护患者健康利益、用仁慈之美德增进患者幸福感以及用克己之美德学会自我管理等,旨在为医务人员的德性培养提供智识支持以促进医患关系和谐发展。

     

Virtue and Salience

This paper explores two ways in which evaluations of an agent's character as virtuous or vicious are properly influenced by what the agent finds salient or attention-grabbing. First, we argue that ignoring salient needs reveals a greater deficit of benevolent motivation in the agent, and hence renders the agent more blameworthy. We use this fact to help explain our ordinary intuition that failing to give to famine relief (for example) is in some sense less bad than failing to help a child who is drowning right before your eyes, in a way that's compatible with the contention that there's no principled reason to see the one life-saving act as any more or less choiceworthy than the other. Second, we argue that alleged ‘virtues of ignorance’ (modesty, believing better of friends than the evidence supports, etc.) are better understood as ‘virtues of salience’. Rather than placing demands on what we believe, these virtues place demands on what we find salient.     

论德性

德性是人优秀品质中的一种,是由理智或智慧在正确道德观念的前提下根据有利于具有者和他活动于其中的共同体及其成员更好生存的根本要求培育的,通常以心理定势对人的活动发生作用并使人的活动及其主体成为善(好)的道德意义上的善(好)品质,即道德的品质.它具有指向性、意向性、多维性、统一性、稳定性和普适性等主要特征.德性从直觉的层次看是社会道德要求的内化,但从批判的层次上看则根源于人更好生存的需要.德性一般都体现为德目或德性要求,因而具有规范性,但德性规范是构成性规则,与作为规范性规则的道德规范有所不同.     

Common-Sense Virtue Ethics and Moral Luck

Moral luck poses a problem for out conception of responsibility because it highlights a tension between morality and lack of control. Michael Slote’s common-sense virtue ethics claims to avoid this problem. However there are a number of objections to this claim. Firstly, it is not clear that Slote fully appreciates the problem posed by moral luck. Secondly, Slote’s move from the moral to the ethical is problematic. Thirdly it is not clear why we should want to abandon judgements of moral blame in favour of judgements of ethical deplorability. Finally this paper defends an alternative solution to the problem of moral luck, which focuses on judgements of probability, but which has been rejected by Slote.     

The Invention of Modern Moral Philosophy A Review of The Invention of Autonomy by J. B. Schneewind

This review essay assesses the significance of J. B. Schneewind's The Invention of Autonomy for the history of moral thought in general and for religious ethics in particular. The essay offers an overview of Schneewind's complex argument before critically discussing his four central themes: the primacy of Immanuel Kant, the fundamentality of conflict, the insufficiency of virtue, and community with God. Whereas Schneewind argues that an impasse between modern natural law and perfectionist ethics revealed irresolvable tensions withing Christian ethics and thus encouraged the emergence of secular moral thought, this author suggests that these tensions were specific to a voluntarist strand of Christian moral thought form which even antivoluntarists of the modern period were unable to break free.     

生活的沉思与沉思的生活——亚里士多德善与德性概念之探析

本通过考察善与德性概念的意义变迁,揭示柏拉图的知识道德论和亚里士多德的目的论的“行动伦理学”的内在区别和联系,从而使我们更深刻地理解亚里士多德的善与德性概念的含义。     

Mind or Virtue

Abstract— Traditional research on human learning has neglected people's beliefs about learning, the role of culture in shaping those beliefs, and people's consequent learning behavior. Recent research provides evidence that cultural beliefs about learning are essential in influencing individuals' beliefs and their actual learning. This article reviews research on Western learning beliefs, which emphasize the mind, and Chinese learning beliefs, which emphasize personal virtue, as well as on the differences these beliefs produce in people's actual learning. Developmental evidence is also presented to show that the cultural influences begin early. Future research directions are discussed.     

The Pursuit of Happiness: The Virtue of Consumption and the Consumption of Virtue

Abstract : In a consumer culture we seek fulfillment and happiness through the act of consumption, often conflating purchasing power with freedom. The Christian tradition, however, teaches us that our telos is nothing less than friendship with God. It is through incorporation into a community of faith that we participate in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and thereby receive a foretaste of true happiness.     

Athletic Virtue: Between East and West

Despite the rich philosophical heritage of the East, the connection between athletics and education for character or virtue is more commonly associated with the West. Classical Eastern philosophy does focus on virtue, but it seems to exclude sport as a means of cultivation since the Confucian is uninterested in victory and the Daoist seeks passivity and avoids contention. A closer look reveals, however, that Eastern conceptions of virtue have much in common with those of Ancient Greece so often linked to sport. Combining research in the history and philosophy of sport with analysis of such texts such as the Analects of Kongzi (Confucius), Laozi's Daodejing, Plato's Republic and Epictetus's Handbook, this paper argues that the enlightened practice of sport has the potential to cultivate qualities common both to de and aretē. The fact that sport was linked to virtue in Ancient Greece but not Ancient China derives from different ideas about social prestige more than different conceptions of ethical education. Indeed, the enlightened practice of modern sport may develop a more universal kind of virtue; thereby providing common ground upon which to heal the East-West split in a way characterised by mutual respect and emphasising our common humanity.     

On Virtue Ethics

If one goes beyond the Western perspective, one realizes that most philosophy outside the West has been virtue-ethical in character. But it also turns out that there are simply more historical kinds of virtue ethics than most virtue ethicists recognize. Virtue ethics is mainly of interest because of its contemporary relevance and plausibility, and it is argued here that a virtue ethics that emphasizes empathy is very plausible in contemporary terms. Such an approach can say some strong things in favor of democracy, but it can also criticize Western thought for putting too much emphasis on autonomy rights rather than people’s, and especially women’s, welfare.     

"政"、"刑"在德性养成中的作用——孔子与亚里士多德德性养成论之比较

孔子认为政与刑不能在德性养成中起积极作用。他认为,政制禁令和刑罚惩治的威慑,虽可令人不违反法律,行为合乎规范,却正好成为德性内化的障碍。亚里士多德对于德性养成的见解与之恰成对照,他认为德性的养成要依赖习惯和训练,同时也离不开法律的教化与惩罚的威胁。两种不同的见解促使人们思考政治与刑律对于德性养成的作用。     

Compatibilism and Doxastic Control

Sharon Ryan has recently argued that if one has compatibilist intuitions about free action, then one should reject the claim that agents cannot exercise direct voluntary control over coming to believe. In this paper I argue that the differences between beliefs and actions make the expectation of direct voluntary control over coming to believe unreasonable. So Ryan's theory of doxastic agency is untenable.

Virtue as the basis of engineering ethics

This paper explores the nature of virtue theory as applied to engineering practice. It links virtue to specific areas of practice such as the selection of ends, devotion to service, the formation of justified belief, the conduct of dialogue, the taking of actions, and exercises of the will. These areas are related to a culture of virtue in which an engineering society creates the conditions enabling acts of virtue and celebrates individuals and their acts which exemplify identified virtues. The result is a basis for engineering ethics which draws attention to the impetus for an ethically sound life. An earlier version of this paper was presented by the author at a mini-conference, Practicing and Teaching Ethics in Engineering and Computing, held during the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, Washington, D.C., March 8–9, 1997.