How individual was conscience in the early-modern period? Observations on the development of Catholic moral theology

This article investigates how the notion of individual conscience has to be understood within the early-modern development of Catholic moral theology. It highlights that 16th-century Catholic theologians continued to understand conscience mainly in Thomist terms as a rational judgment. Yet they also came to investigate more deeply questions of intention and individual circumstances that might interfere with the perfect execution of moral reasoning. Particular emphasis is given to the question of probabilism and whether this new method of analyzing moral agency provided a stepping stone towards a more individualized conception of conscience, as some intellectual historians have contended. The article argues that whilst probabilism sharpened the awareness for problems of conscience, this development cannot be disconnected from the culture of counsel of conscience, inscribed into the fundamentally Thomist definition of it.     

Affect in Ethical Decision Making: Mood Matters

Ethical decision-making research has centered on Rest’s (1986) framework that represents a rational, nonaffective model for ethical decision making. However, research in human cognition suggesting a “dual-processing” framework, composed of both rational and affective components, has been relatively ignored in the ethical decision-making literature. Examining dual-processing literature, it seems affect might be an important factor in decision making when a person’s mood is congruent with the task or situational context frame. Given that ethical decisions are serious and complex tasks, it is proposed here that inducing a negative affective state might produce mood congruence, reinforce the salience of emotion for ethical decision makers, and lead to differences in decision processing. Evidence is presented documenting differences in the decisions made by ethical decision makers in a negative affective state as compared to those in either a positive or neutral affective state.     

What is the Problem with Fundamental Moral Error?

Quasi-realists argue that meta-ethical expressivism is fully compatible with the central assumptions underlying ordinary moral practice. In a recent paper, Andy Egan has developed a vexing challenge for this project, arguing that expressivism is incompatible with central assumptions about error in moral judgments. In response, Simon Blackburn has argued that Egan's challenge fails, because Egan reads the expressivist as giving an account of moral error, rather than an account of judgments about moral error. In this paper I argue that the challenge can be reinstated, even if we focus only on the expressivist's account of judgments about moral error.     

重大传染病感染患者的道德创伤隐患研究

重大传染病疫情背景下,病原体的不断变异、疫苗保护效力的不确定性以及诸多后遗症会导致疫情难以控制,并且造成一个数量极其庞大的特殊弱势群体—感染患者。在感染患者从疑似患病到康复的期间,影响他人工作生活、恶化疫情防控形势、感染他人、亲友的抛弃、传染病污名化、医疗资源分配不均以及社会的歧视与排挤等潜在的道德创伤源会对其内心原本的道德体系产生巨大的冲击,甚至改变其原有的道德认知并击溃其积极的道德情感,从而产生道德创伤。在此基础上,感染患者会因此产生一系列社会问题、信任问题、精神问题、生存问题以及诸多消极观念。

     

论西方主流伦理理论的前提错误——兼论道德无力症与冷漠症对医疗的影响

从“畏死的恐惧”出发重塑扎根生命的道德基础,即道德行为和“生-生”式的道德关系是人的本真需要,道德权威性的根据是人类生命共同体这一“内在永恒大我”和人的本真存在方式的需要。这拯救了道德相对主义,也使个体作为潜在的人类生命共同体而能以“与永恒相关的生命意义”推开恐惧。进而,道德行为是出于内在自由而达于实在的自由的。道德主体应具备的道德实践能力包括独立能力、通达能力和勇气。生存性境况中的原子式个体不具备道德实践能力,生命境况中的“超个体的个体”才有此能力。由此,人类道德无力症和道德冷漠症的根源是西方主流伦理理论的前提错误,即以原子式个体充任道德主体。它是医疗纠纷和暴力频发的原因。     

ICU护士伦理气氛认知与道德困境的相关性研究

采用量性研究方法对ICU护士进行调查分析,了解ICU护士道德困境和伦理气氛认知的现状,并探讨两者之间的相关性。结果显示,ICU护士道德困境总分为43.00分(24.00, 67.00),伦理气氛认知得分为(3.44±0.38)分。相关性分析结果显示：道德困境总分与关怀型伦理气氛呈负相关(r=-0.131,P＜0.05),与功利型伦理气氛呈正相关(r=0.297,P＜0.01)。护理管理者在临床工作中可采取积极有效的措施塑造关怀型伦理气氛,避免或削弱功利型伦理气氛的形成, 从而降低道德困境的发生。

     

Merit,fit, and basic desert

Basic desert is central to the dispute between compatibilists and incompatibilists over the four-case manipulation argument. I argue that there are two distinct ways of understanding the desert salient to moral responsibility; moral desert can be understood as a claim about fitting responses to an agent or as a claim about the merit of the agent. Failing to recognize this distinction has contributed to a stalemate between both sides. I suggest that recognizing these distinct approaches to moral desert will help clarify a central source of disagreement between compatibilists and incompatibilists and assist both sides in resolving the current stalemate.     

Do emotions play an essential role in moral judgments?

The past few decades of moral psychology research have yielded empirical anomalies for rationalist theories of moral judgments. An increasing number of psychologists and philosophers argue that these anomalies are explained well by sentimentalism, the thesis that the presence of an emotion is necessary for the formation of a sincere moral judgment. The present review reveals that while emotions and moral judgments indeed often co-occur, there is scant evidence that emotions directly cause or constitute moral judgments. Research on disgust, anger, sympathy, and guilt indicates that people only reliably experience emotions when judging conduct that is relevant to the welfare of the self and valued others. Moreover, many recent studies have either failed to replicate or exposed crucial confounds in the most cited evidence in support of sentimentalism. Moral psychologists should jettison sentimentalism, and focus instead on how considerations of harm and welfare—the core concepts of rationalist theories— interact with empirical beliefs to shape moral judgments.     

道德情绪：道德行为的中介调节

道德情绪是心理学的一个重要研究主题。道德情绪是个体根据一定的道德标准评价自己或他人的行为和思想时所产生的一种情绪体验。它是一种复合情绪, 主要包括厌恶、移情、内疚, 羞耻等。道德情绪影响下人类会产生某些典型行为, 这主要包括道德洁净行为和道德补偿行为。心理学研究道德情绪的实验范式很多, 主要有行为回忆范式、实物或图片刺激范式、情境设置范式等。有关道德情绪的未来研究主要应注重于探讨正性道德情绪在道德发展中的作用, 探讨道德情绪对群体行为的影响, 以及探讨道德情绪在不同文化背景下的价值意义。     

A tale of two processes: On Joseph Henrich’s the secret of our success: How culture is driving human evolution,domesticating our species,and making us smarter

We situate Henrich’s book in the larger research tradition of which it is a part and show how he presents a wide array of recent psychological, physiological, and neurological data as supporting the view that two related but distinct processes have shaped human nature and made us unique: cumulative cultural evolution and culture-driven genetic evolution. We briefly sketch out several ways philosophers might fruitfully engage with this view and note some implications it may have for current philosophic debates in moral and political theory and over the nature of extended cognition. We end by noting how Henrich’s view of the source of cultural design and innovation, and the prominence of place he gives to the extended process of cultural evolution, cuts against a cluster of broad but common views about human minds, recasting putative bugs as features and indicating that many of the distinctive features of our individual minds evolved to allow them to be effective cogs in the larger, more productive cultural machine.