Choice, Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities

Is choice necessary for moral responsibility? And does choice imply alternative possibilities of some significant sort? This paper will relate these questions to the argument initiated by Harry Frankfurt that alternative possibilities are not required for moral responsibility, and to John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza's extension of that argument in terms of guidance control in a causally determined world. I argue that attending to Frankfurt's core conceptual distinction between the circumstances that make an action unavoidable and those that bring it about that the action is performed – a distinction emphasised in his recent restatement – provides a new route into an analysis of Frankfurt's argument by showing how it depends on a person's ‘decision to act’ involving the exercise of choice. The implicit reliance of Frankfurt's argument on this notion of choice, however, undermines his claim that the example of the counterfactual intervener strengthens the compatibilist case by providing a counter-example to the principle of alternative possibilities. I also argue that Frankfurt's reliance on the exercise of choice for moral responsibility is also evident in the Fischer/Ravizza argument, and that a close analysis of both arguments shows that such exercise of choice is not available if causal determinism is true.     

全球公民社会:理论模式与研究框架

全球公民社会作为一种兴起于上世纪末的新话语,在新世纪初已备受关注。西方学术界围绕着全球公民社会的概念、全球公民社会的产生与发展以及全球公民社会对现实政治的影响及其发展趋势等问题展开了广泛讨论,并且形成了不同的理论分析框架和研究阵营。虽然西方的全球公民社会研究取得了一系列的成果,但是仍表现出规范性研究不足、研究主要囿于自由民主框架中等不足之处。我国学者已分别从国际关系、政治学和政治哲学的角度关注全球公民社会,但从总体上看,这一领域的研究力量还比较薄弱,成果不足,进一步的研究有待作出。     

微创医疗的决策思考与实践——兼论微创手术最佳适应证的选择

微创医学是一个新的医学理论体系。在具体临床医疗决策过程中如何运用微创医学理论是一个必须解决的理论和实践问题。微创医学人文观、科学观、技术观和社会观是医疗微创化决策思想的主要内容,在实践中具有重要的指导意义,尤其是对于微创手术最佳适应证的选择。     

早期前列腺癌治疗的临床决策

早期前列腺癌治疗方法多种多样,临床医生根据患者不同的病理分期、分级及身体条件,做出符合患者个体的临床治疗决策,以期在目前条件下达到最佳治疗效果,降低医疗费用及提高生活质量。     

浅谈医生基本功对临床决策的影响

针对医生基本功在医学科学飞速发展的今天有何作用的困惑,阐述了详尽的病史采集、全面而准确的体格检查、合理而科学地选择实验室及辅助检查对临床决策的重要意义。医生只有将基本理论、基本技能、基础知识、道德修养、分析问题、解决问题的能力和水平作为立足之本,才能不断提高临床决策水平。     

试论营养支持在中晚期癌症患者治疗中的理性选择

几乎所有中晚期癌症患者治疗中都会或多或少应用到临床营养支持治疗,适时、正确地应用对部分中晚期患者极具积极意义,而选择性地对一部分晚期患者有限应用甚至放弃,可能是更为理性的选择。从癌的本质出发,科学地应用营养不良筛选及评定方法,使临床营养支持治疗成为中晚期癌症患者的真正需要。     

消费心理对用户购买决策的影响及营销对策

在现阶段消费心理对消费行为有着重要的影响。在以消费者为中心的市场营销活动中,企业要在激烈的市场竞争中占有更多的市场份额,兢只有在掌握和了解消费者心理的基础上,有针对性地制定适应消费者心理需求的营销策略,才能在竞争中占据有利地位,获取更多的市场机会与商业利润。     

The physician values in practice scale: Construction and initial validation

Measures of values typically appraise the construct globally, across life domains or relative to a broad life domain such as work. We conducted two studies to construct and initially validate an occupation- and context-specific values measure. Study 1, based on a sample of 192 medical students, describes the initial construction and item analysis of the physician values in practice scale (PVIPS), which produced a 15-factor model. Study 2 reports on a further analysis and refinement of the instrument with a national sample of 644 medical students. Results supported the basic psychometric properties of the PVIPS items. Exploratory factor analysis in Study 2 extracted six factors consistent with a theoretical model of values (Dawis, 1991) and accounting for 61% of the variance: Prestige, Service, Autonomy, Lifestyle, Management, and Scholarly Pursuits. The PVIPS shows promise as a values measure for medical students and physicians encountering career specialty and medical practice style decisions. Interested researchers may construct similar scales for other occupations to promote contextualized appraisals of values.     

Has the World Changed? My Neighbor Might Know: Effects of Social Context on Routine Deviation

Routines help individuals save decision effort and protect them from overreacting to volatile environments. Yet routines become dysfunctional if the environment changes fundamentally. Whether the environment has truly changed is often not easy to tell. We experimentally study adaptation to a change in a previously stable environment. Participants have to choose between one of the four decks of cards. Each deck represents a lottery, with a distribution of gains and losses initially unknown to participants. In the learning phase of the experiment, participants acquire the routine to choose the most attractive deck. Unbeknownst to participants, after an interruption, the lotteries represented by the competing decks are changed. We study how participants react to this change. We manipulate whether participants have access to choices by a confederate who most of the time makes the normative choice. In baseline condition, they never do. In the treatments, access is provided either during the learning phase, during the test phase, or during both phases. Participants are most likely to realize that the world has changed if they had access to the confederate's choices in both phases. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Self‐regulation Perspective on Hidden‐profile Problems: If–Then Planning to Review Information Improves Group Decisions

In hidden‐profile (HP) problems, groups squander their potential to make superior decisions because members fail to capitalize on each other's unique knowledge (unshared information). A new self‐regulation perspective suggests that hindrances in goal striving (e.g., failing to seize action opportunities) contribute to this problem. Implementation intentions (if–then plans) are known to help deal with hindrances in goal striving; therefore, supporting decision goals with if–then plans should improve the impact of unshared information on group decisions. Indeed, in line with past research, control participants in two experiments rarely identified the best alternative despite monetary incentives and setting decision goals. In contrast, simply adding if–then plans to review advantages of the non‐preferred alternatives before making the final decision significantly increased solution rates. Process manipulations (Experiment 1) and measures (Experiment 2) indicate that conceptualizing HP problems as a self‐regulation challenge provides explanatory power beyond existing accounts. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.