On "On what there is"

All sides in the recent debates over the Quine-Putnam Indispensability thesis presuppose Quine's criterion for determining what a discourse is ontologically committed to. I subject the criterion to scrutiny, especially in regard to the available competitor-criteria, asking what means of evaluation there are for comparing alternative criteria against each other. Finding none, the paper concludes that ontological questions, in a certain sense , are philosophically indeterminate.     

On Moralism

abstract The term ‘moralism’ is often used to pick out a set of vices in judgment, such as hypocrisy, officiousness, arrogance, presumption, and sanctimony. I relate these vices to notions of standing and office and the roles they play in proper moral judgment. Behind these notions, I suggest, lie broad moral injunctions to think generously of our fellows and sternly of ourselves. These injunctions are manifested in both serious discourse and popular opinion. Finally, I explore the possibility that the distinction I urge between moralism (the counterfeit) and morality (the genuine) can't ultimately be sustained, and conclude that the distinction stands.     

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.     

On Apologies

There is a morally questionable laxity in our practices of apologising. A genuine apology involves substantially more than regret about offence caused by one's behaviour. I argue that it is in fact possible to unpack a normative paradigm (or essence) underlying the practice of apologising. This essence involves doxastic, affective, and dispositional elements, related at the moral phenomenological level. The Consummate apologiser believes that he has transgressed because of identifiable moral saliences of his conduct, feels reproachful towards himself as a result, and as a result resolves to avoid repetition of the same conduct. The latter might require the cultivation of new dispostions or the sharpening of existing ones. It is rational to accept an apology insofar as the preceding doxastic, affective, and dispositional elements are believed to be present and rational in the apologiser. In accepting an apology, the recipient agrees to the attempt at normalisation of relations with the transgressor.