The effect of leader moral development on ethical climate and employee attitudes

This study examines the effect of leader moral development on the organization’s ethical climate and employee attitudes. Results indicate that the relationship between leader moral development and ethical climate is moderated by two factors: the extent to which the leader utilizes his or her cognitive moral development (i.e., capacity for ethical reasoning), and the age of the organization. Specifically, the influence of the leader’s moral development was stronger for high utilizing leaders, those whose moral actions were consistent with their moral reasoning. Additionally, the influence of the leader’s moral development was stronger in younger organizations. Finally, as predicted, congruence between the leader’s moral development and the employee’s moral development was positively associated with job satisfaction and organizational commitment and negatively associated with turnover intentions.     

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.     

On The Virtue of Judging Others

An other‐directed moral judgement is contrasted with a moral evaluation of one's own behaviour; it is argued that having a capacity to make self‐directed moral judgements is at the core of being within morality, while a lack of disposition on the part of a mature individual to judge others is indicative of the corresponding lack with regard to the self‐directed evaluations. Our readiness to evaluate the behaviour of others measures the level of our commitment to a system of morality. Consistent nonjudgementalism subverts the interpersonal nature of moral values and points to a deeper issue – an unwillingness of a nonjudgementalist to apply moral categories to her own choices.     

Moral Responsibility: The Difference of Strawson,and the Difference it Should Make

P.F. Strawson’s work on moral responsibility is well-known. However, an important implication of the landmark “Freedom and Resentment” has gone unnoticed. Specifically, a natural development of Strawson’s position is that we should understand being morally responsible as having externalistically construed pragmatic criteria, not individualistically construed psychological ones. This runs counter to the contemporary ways of studying moral responsibility. I show the deficiencies of such contemporary work in relation to Strawson by critically examining the positions of John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, R. Jay Wallace, and Philip Pettit for problems due to individualistic assumptions.Thanks to an audience at Carleton University for helpful discussion.     

Morality and behavioural regulation in groups: A social identity approach

In recent years social psychologists have displayed a growing interest in examining morality—what people consider right and wrong. The majority of work in this area has addressed this either in terms of individual-level processes (relating to moral decision making or interpersonal impression formation) or as a way to explain intergroup relations (perceived fairness of status differences, responses to group-level moral transgressions). We complement this work by examining how moral standards and moral judgements play a role in the regulation of individual behaviour within groups and social systems. In doing this we take into account processes of social identification and self-categorisation, as these help us to understand how adherence to moral standards may be functional as a way to improve group-level conceptions of self. We review a recent research programme in which we have investigated the importance of morality for group-based identities and intra-group behavioural regulation. This reveals convergent evidence of the centrality of moral judgements for people’s conceptions of the groups they belong to, and demonstrates the importance of group-specific moral norms in identifying behaviours that contribute to their identity as group members.     

The Autonomy of Morality from Religion. The End of Religion and of Relativism. Howard Mounce on Peter Winch

My aim is to defend Winch's view that morality must be autonomous from religion. I defend him from Mounce's criticism, who claims that unless morality is supported by divine law, moral relativism cannot be avoided. Winch considers the Samaritan's behaviour and says (i) that the background of divine law is irrelevant to the parable; (ii) that we do not need divine law to understand the Samaritan's impossibility to ignore the victim; (iii) and that the absolute moral ought requires no external support provided by religion. Winch adds that God cannot make any moral demand on humans, and thus He cannot reward them with salvation or punish them, without turning Himself into a means of moral corruption. All this spells the end of religion at least as far as the relation between God and man's moral and spiritual life is concerned; while relativism is shown to be morally corrupt and internally inconsistent.     

Moral judgment: Theory and research on differences between males and females

That men and women differ in their moral orientations is a commonly held stereotype. The view that men are morally superior can be found in the writings of philosophers and psychologists (most notably Freud). Recently, Carol Gilligan (Harvard Educational Review, 1977, 47, 431–517) has entered this discussion bringing to it what she calls a “different [woman's] voice.” In this paper, the theory of an ethic of care is described and contrasted with Kohlberg's morality of justice. The empirical support for Gilligan's claim that men and women differ in their moral orientations is examined and a discussion of Gilligan's contribution to an integrated theory of morality is offered.     

The Compatibility of Hegelian Recognition and Morality with the Ethics of Care

I draw connections between Hegel’s concepts of recognition and morality and demonstrate how they are compatible with an ethic of care. I explore Hegel’s Sittlichkeit and demonstrate the role that intersubjective recognition plays in the development and sustainment of ethical communities. I demonstrate how his emphasis on the community and interpersonal relationships play an important role in his moral theory. I then contrast Hegelian and Kantian views of morality and argue that Hegel’s account places greater emphasis on attending to the needs of others and showing genuine concern for their well-being. By highlighting the intersubjective nature of recognition between self-consciousnesses, and the interconnectedness of agents in an ethical community, I maintain Hegel’s morality is compatible with an ethic of care because it emerges out of intersubjective mutual recognition and its foundation is built upon responding to the needs of particular others and protecting the bonds of the community.     

Social interactional behaviors and symbolic play competence as predictors of language development and their associations with maternal attention-directing strategies

Children’s early social interactional behaviors and symbolic play competence were studied at 14 months in a sample of 111 mother-infant pairs. The categories of social interactional behaviors, joint visual attention, socially coordinated and object oriented interactions were assessed via observations of mother-infant joint play. An index of symbolic play was derived from the child’s solitary play, which was assessed independently. We examined both the interrelations of these two types of early language predictors, and their relation to children’s language skills and maternal attention-directing strategies. Measures of children’s language comprehension and production were obtained using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories at 14 months, and Reynell Developmental Language Scales at 18 and 30 months. We found that at 14 months, social interactional behaviors and symbolic play competence were not statistically significantly related to each other. In line with our hypotheses, social interactional skills were associated more strongly with language production, and symbolic play competence more strongly with language comprehension. Maternal attention-directing strategies were strongly related to both children’s social interactional behaviors and symbolic play competence. Our findings indicated that maternal strategies that expanded the infant’s level of functioning were more effective in stimulating the children’s language development than were the other types of strategies.     

道德推理与道德行为关系的元分析

目前道德心理学中存在对道德推理作用的质疑, 这一质疑源自哲学领域的著名争论。从经典道德心理学理论来说, 道德推理应该是道德行为的重要决定因素, 但新近的观点则否定这一重要作用。本研究采用元分析技术探讨道德推理与道德行为的关系。通过文献搜索与检查, 获得了50项研究和83个独立效应量, 共包含16738名被试。检验表明发表偏差不会影响元分析的结果, 选择随机效应模型是准确的。通过随机效应模型的元分析表明, 道德推理与道德的行为有显著的正相关, 与不道德的行为有显著的负相关。调节效应分析表明, 道德推理测量工具的类型会影响道德推理与道德行为的关系, 被试年龄阶段会影响道德推理与不道德行为的关系。这些结果肯定了道德推理的作用, 也强调了研究过程中要关注测量工具的类型, 指出了需要开发更全面的道德推理测量工具。     

Moral Instincts and the Problem with Reductionism: A Critical Look at the Work of Marc Hauser

In his most recent book Moral Minds, Marc Hauser argues that many foundational moral instincts have clear biological explanations. To make this argument, Hauser focuses on the similarities between the acquisition of morality and the acquisition of language. Similar to language, one learns a particular moral framework from one's environment, but the biological components necessary for moral development are universal. While I agree with Hauser's overall conclusion regarding moral instincts, I reject the notion that a purely biological analysis of morality can provide an adequate framework for justification. The problem, as I see it, is Hauser acknowledges the bottom-up influences taking place between biology and moral formation, but he refuses to account for the top-down influences that occur between metaphysical assumptions, moral beliefs, and biological conclusions. Thus, the current critique will focus on the connection between Hauser's failure to account for top-down influence and the subsequent shortcoming related to moral justification.     

The myth of a secular state: A study of religious politics with historical illustrations

Religion has continued to assert itself as a significant moral force in Nigeria's post‐independence politics; however, some recent studies of the country's political life tend to dismiss religion as a kind of mystical irrationality or an act of deluded trust. After conducting an audit of what I take to be the assets and the liabilities of the intellectual traditions underpinning this secularist preference, I propose a theory of political morality in which themes of legitimacy, identity and social justice are explained against the background of religious expectations. I argue that the rationale for political behaviour in Nigeria is not fully accounted for by the categories of class and ethnicity, but must be sought in a more inclusive and transcendent moral basis. I conclude that the recent high‐profile involvements of religious persons in politics should not be seen as flashes of political insanity; rather, they constitute genuine attempts to reformulate the modern language of public morality.     

The Prodigal and his Brother: Impartiality and the Equal Consideration of Interests

At the heart of Peter Singer’s utilitarianism is the impartial weighing of the interests of those affected by our actions. Singer calls this the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests. This paper argues that Singer’s Principle does not accord with our moral intuitions and the logic of our moral thinking. It discusses the Principle in the context of the parable of the Prodigal Son and his Brother – a parable that raises the issue of impartiality in a particularly challenging way. What the parable shows is, first, that our moral thinking often turns on judgements of fairness that are prior to any impartial weighing of interests; and, second, that impartial fairness itself is sometimes transcended by compassionate love. Both of these points have important implications for bioethics.     

Mencius's Vertical Faculties and Moral Nativism

This paper compares and contrasts Mencius's moral philosophy with recent development in cognitive science regarding mental capacity to understand moral rules and principles. Several cognitive scientists argue that the human mind has innate cognitive and emotive foundations of morality. In this paper, Mencius's moral theory is interpreted from the perspective of faculty psychology and cognitive modularity, a theoretical hypothesis in cognitive science in which the mind is understood as a system of specialized mental components. Specifically, Mencius's Four Beginnings (the basic human emotions that serve as the foundations of morality) are interpreted as vertical faculties, comparable to Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid's moral faculties.     

Evolutionary Ethics and the Status of Non-Human Animals

ABSTRACT If we accept that the behaviour of humans and other animals is very substantially channelled by evolutionary constraints, it might appear that there can be no place for animals within the protection of a human system of morality.
However, the nature of plausible evolutionary constraints on the cognition of social animals, including humans, suggests that this is not so. It is likely that the most important element in our morality is the capacity to imagine the feelings of other individuals, and this capacity is so important for our ability to understand and predict their behaviour that it would be likely to be preserved by evolution even if moral behaviour had no survival value in its own right. We also use this kind of imaginative sympathy to understand and predict the behaviour of other animals, and it is this which provides the main reason for the inclusion of such animals within a human moral system. The primitive elements of morality have a survival value that is probably common to many other social species of animals. Since one of our reasons for putting a special value on human life is the human capacity for moral behaviour, we ought also to view members of these species as being of special significance.     

Linking Religious Upbringing to Young Adult Moral Formation

Recent scholarship has conceptualized morality in terms of multidimensional, intuitive traits that influence what people regard as right or wrong. Ample literature shows that religious factors are closely related to moral traits. However, little research has explored links between religious upbringing and adult moral outcomes. This study uses longitudinal data from the National Study of Youth and Religion to examine how diverse forms of religious socialization in adolescence are related to two well-validated social-scientific conceptions of morality in young adulthood: Haidt's moral foundations and Schwartz’ values typology. Using regression analyses and Lindeman, Merenda, and Gold (LMG) decomposition methods, I show that different aspects of religious upbringing are linked to the development of both moral foundations and values. Religious factors play a stronger role than either sociodemographics or parent political ideology in predicting young adult moral characteristics. Results highlight the centrality of religious upbringing to the state and trajectory of the population-level moral structure.     

The Thousand Goals and the One Goal: Morality and Will to Power in Nietzsche's Zarathustra

Nietzsche's critical stance toward morality appears to support some version of moral relativism. Yet he praises some actions and attributes while condemning others. Are these evaluations expressions of his moral prejudices, or is there a basis for them in his thought? Through a close reading of key passages from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I attempt to demonstrate that morality for Nietzsche is the historically situated working‐out of will to power and therefore subject to critique on that basis.     

Morality and the philosophy of life in Guyau and Bergson

In this essay I examine the contribution a philosophy of life is able to make to our understanding of morality, including our appreciation of its evolution or development and its future. I focus on two contributions, namely, those of Jean-Marie Guyau and Henri Bergson. In the case of Guyau I show that he pioneers the naturalistic study of morality through a conception of life; for him the moral progress of humanity is bound up with an increasing sociability, involving both the intensification of life and its expansion. In the case of Bergson I show that he also pioneers a novel naturalistic appreciation of morality, one that is keen to demonstrate morality’s two sources and so as to give us a firm grasp of the chances of a moral progress on the part of humanity. I suggest that of the two appreciations of morality Bergson’s is the richer since it contains a set of critical reflections on humanity’s condition that is lacking in Guyau. I conclude by suggesting that Bergson’s idea that modern humanity is confronted with the decision whether it wishes to continue living or not has lost none of its relevance today.