Normative Ethics after Pragmatic Naturalism

Philip Kitcher presents an ambitious account of pragmatic naturalism that incorporates an explanatory story of the emergence and development of ethics, a metaethical perspective on progress, and a normative stance for moral theorizing. This article contends that Kitcher's normative stance is incompatible with the explanatory and metaethical components of his project. Instead, pragmatic naturalists should endorse a normative ethics that is experimental, grounded in practice, and acutely aware of cognitive and informational limitations. In particular, the ethical project would benefit from endorsing empirical work on participatory democracy for the identification of mechanisms to guide us on deep moral conflicts.     

Interview With Dr. Judith Miranti: A Servant Leader and Advocate for the Association for Spiritual,Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling

Dr. Judith Miranti has contributed over 40 years of service to the Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling (ASERVIC). The purpose of this article is to highlight and recognize a pioneer and influential leader of ASERVIC. The interview discusses Dr. Miranti's (a) historical knowledge and memories of the development of ASERVIC, (b) involvement in ASERVIC in various leadership roles and with others who influenced her, and (c) hope for the future of ASERVIC.     

Legal and Ethical Implications of Using Religious Beliefs as the Basis for Refusing to Counsel Certain Clients

This article addresses potential legal and ethical implications of lawsuits that have been brought when counselors and counseling students have used their religious beliefs as the basis for refusing to counsel lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transexual clients. Four lawsuits are reviewed, issues relevant to the cases are identified, and implications for counselor educators and counseling students are discussed.     

A SYSTEMS MODEL OF SPIRITUALITY

Within the scientific study of spirituality there are substantial ambiguities and uncertainties about relevant concepts, terms, evidences, methods, and relationships. Different disciplinary approaches reveal or emphasize different aspects of spirituality, such as outcomes, behaviors, skills, ambitions, and beliefs. I argue that these aspects interdepend in a way that constitutes a “systems model of spirituality.” This model enables a more holistic understanding of the nature of spirituality, and suggests a new definition that disambiguates spirituality from related concepts such as religion, cultural sophistication, and prosocial behavior in animals. It also exposes important open questions about the nature of spirituality. To support the emerging scientific approach to the study of spirituality, I propose the development of a “philosophy of spirituality” that can clarify the conceptual terrain, identify important research directions, and facilitate a comprehensive and interdisciplinary investigation into the nature, validity, and implications of spirituality's conceptual and practical entailments.     

Manager–salesperson congruence in customer orientation and job outcomes: The bright and dark sides of leadership in aligning values

To create customer-oriented organizations, managers are often asked to promote a values-based vision. Yet, many managers struggle with transferring their values to employees making strategic value changes difficult. Despite this challenge, research has yet to demonstrate how managers effectively align values within the sales force, or the impact alignment has on job outcomes. Therefore, we develop and empirically test a conceptual framework to examine the role of transformational leadership in aligning salesperson customer orientation (CO) values. We find that transformational leadership is a strong mechanism in creating perceived value congruence, yet may have a surprising dark side. Results suggest that transformational managers achieve congruence by raising or, contrary to conventional wisdom, lowering salesperson CO values to meet the perceived values of the manager. Response surface modelling results support the importance of perceived manager values. Customer-oriented salespeople have higher job satisfaction and sales performance when they perceive their manager to also have high CO. When values are misaligned, job satisfaction increases more for low CO salespeople as perceptions of manager CO increase. Exploratory findings show that performance was higher under situations of perfect alignment but also under severe misalignment suggesting that values generate performance under complementary or supplementary conditions.     

应用分子靶向治疗的时机选择

分子靶向药物的出现显示出肿瘤治疗传统模式的重要进展。与传统放疗、化疗相比,分子靶向治疗因其特异性高、不良反应轻微,在恶性肿瘤个体化治疗中扮演重要角色。十五年来,分子靶向药物的出现,给肿瘤的治疗模式带来重大改变,也给临床医生带来新的挑战。准确把握分子靶向药物应用时机,获得最大临床效果,已成为肿瘤治疗领域关注热点。本文就非小细胞肺癌、消化系统肿瘤、乳腺癌、肾癌治疗中分子靶向药物如何选择应用时机进行阐述。     

价值取向与社会距离影响经济决策的合作与冲突行为：Chicken Game的证据

采用Chicken Game博弈任务,考察了不同社会价值取向个体（亲社会者与亲自我者）在面对不同社会距离的博弈对手（朋友和陌生人）时表现出的合作与冲突行为。研究结果发现：（1）社会价值取向与社会距离交互影响个体的合作与冲突行为;（2）社会价值取向影响选择策略的反应时,亲社会者选择合作的反应时长于选择冲突的反应时,亲自我者选择合作与选择冲突的反应时没有显著差异;（3）无论对亲社会者还是亲自我者,反馈类型都显著影响个体的合作与冲突行为的选择率以及随后决策的反应时。上述结果表明,个体的合作或冲突行为,并非单一地受到社会价值取向的影响,更可能是受到个人因素（社会价值取向）与其他社会因素（比如,社会距离）的共同调节,并且在这一过程中个体会根据决策后反馈信息不断的调整自己的行为策略。     

A brief thought on the future of global ethics: military robots and new food technologies

To deal with an uncertain future, global ethics as an academic endeavour might consider a common value we all share, such as sustainability, which acts as an all-encompassing term to indicate our future direction. Technologies of the near future that are currently in development hold problems and promise, and are clear subjects for the ethics of sustainability at a global level. Autonomous military combat robots, insects as food (entomophagy) and in vitro synthetically grown meat are significant cases. Such robots might in fact serve injustice and work against sustainability, and such novel food technologies may hold hope for promoting sustainability and global justice.     

Multiple-choice testing as a desirable difficulty in the classroom

We examined whether the power of tests as learning events, frequently demonstrated in the laboratory, would also occur in a large undergraduate course. Our goals were to determine: if learning of information tested on multiple-choice quizzes administered across the course would be enhanced compared to non-tested control information; and what the effects of quizzing would be for the learning of information conceptually related to the tested information but not itself tested on the quizzes. Given that retrieval practice can have positive (testing effect) and negative consequences (retrieval-induced forgetting), our concern was that the learning and later retention of non-tested conceptually related information might be impaired by the multiple-choice quizzes. Importantly, learning benefits were found for both types of information on the final exam, indicating that quizzing within a course can enhance not only the learning of specifically tested information, but the learning of non-tested conceptually related information as well.