Non-Naturalist Moral Realism and the Limits of Rational Reflection

This essay develops the epistemic challenge to non-naturalist moral realism. While evolutionary considerations do not support the strongest claims made by ‘debunkers’, they do provide the basis for an inductive argument that our moral dispositions and starting beliefs are at best partially reliable. So, we need some method for separating truth from falsity. Many non-naturalists think that rational reflection can play this role. But rational reflection cannot be expected to bring us to truth even from reasonably accurate starting points. Reflection selects views that are coherent and conflict-free, yet there is no reason to think that the non-natural moral truth must be like this. Inasmuch as we seek coherent, conflict-free, ethical viewpoints, that suggests that our goal is not non-natural truth at all.     

Moral injury and the priesthood of all believers1

This article proceeds from the conviction that moral injury suffered by many combat veterans is a deeply spiritual matter requiring spiritual resources for healing. The tradition of the care of souls commends itself. It takes into account that the “soul” is an expression of the whole person in all its physical, spiritual, and social realities. Moral injury affects all those dimensions of personhood or soul. Since the Reformation the care of souls has been a vocation for the ministry of the whole people of God under the theology of the priesthood of all believers. A caring community is essential to healing for many dealing with moral injury. Indeed, the veterans themselves, in sharing their stories and their pain, become part of that ministry of the priesthood of all believers and may well find healing in the meaningfulness of their mutual ministry.     

道德推脱的概念、测量及相关变量

道德推脱是指个体产生的一些特定的认知倾向, 这些认知倾向包括重新定义自己的行为使其伤害性显得更小、最大程度地减少自己在行为后果中的责任和降低对受伤目标痛苦的认同。对道德推脱的概念、测量进行了介绍, 并对其影响因素、影响后果的实证研究进行了系统性的总结。最后, 指出未来研究应该重视完善测量工具、构建道德推脱影响因素模型、强化纵向研究范式和加强道德推脱的干预研究。     

Why cannot reasons change your moral decisions? Because they are not persuasive enough: A comment on Stanley et al. (2018)

Stanley et al. (2018) found that the consideration of reasons rarely induced people to change their moral decisions. We challenged this article by assuming what caused such a null or weak effect was that the persuasiveness of reasons provided to oppose the initial decisions was not strong enough. To verify our assumption, this study used Stanley et al.’s (2018) experimental paradigm and manipulated the levels of persuasiveness of reasons. The results revealed (1) that not only strong opposing reasons but also weak affirming reasons could induce changes in moral decision-making and increase decision confidence after altering the decisions; (2) that people with a weak decision confidence tended to change their initial decisions after evaluation of reasons; and (3) that people who maintained their decisions after considering weak opposing reasons enhanced rather than reduced their decision confidence. Overall, these findings demonstrated that moral decision change was a composite outcome of the interaction among reason type, reason persuasiveness and initial decision confidence and that low-quality argumentation had a boomerang effect on moral persuasion. This study re-lifted the role of rational reasoning in moral decision-making and revising, thus posing important amendments to Stanley et al.’s (2018) findings.     

Contractualism and Global Economic Justice

This article examines Rawls's and Scanlon's surprisingly undemanding contractualist accounts of global moral principles. Scanlon's Principle of Rescue requires too little of the world's rich unless the causal links between them and the poor are unreliable. Rawls's principle of legitimacy leads him to theorize in terms of a law of peoples instead of persons, and his conception of a people leads him to spurn global distributive equality. Rawls's approach has advantages over the cosmopolitan egalitarianism of Beitz and Pogge. But it cannot generate principles to regulate the entire global economic order. The article proposes a new cosmopolitan economic original position argument to make up for this lack in Rawls's Law of Peoples.     

The Limits of Toleration in John Locke's Liberal Thought

In the following paper I attempt to show how in Locke's liberalthought the individual is subject to a complex operation involvingliberation and subjugation. In A Letter on Toleration (1685),Locke argues that the individual's inward beliefs should be freed fromthe coercion of Church and State. To ensure liberty of conscience, theindividual's soul should be constituted in practice – notstructured by violence but negotiated by rational persuasion. However,as I suggest, the authority of reason is not established without anelement of violence. In his writings on education, Locke maintains thatthe right to care for one's soul should be enjoyed only after rigorousmoral training. Thus, the individual's conscience is to be freed fromoutward violence of ecclesiastic and civil powers only after first, inyouth, being subject to the moral discipline of esteem, disgrace, andshame, the inward violence of which discloses limits in Locke'sdiscourse on toleration.     

Genetics and the Interpersonal Elaboration of Ethics

Confidentiality in genetic testing posesimportant ethical challenges to the currentprimacy of respect for autonomy and patientchoice in health care. It also presents achallenge to approaches to decision-makingemphasising the ethical importance of theconsequences of health care decisions. In thispaper a case is described in which respect forconfidentiality calls both for disclosure andnon-disclosure, and in which respect forpatient autonomy and the demand to avoidcausing harm each appear to call both fortesting without consent, and testing only withconsent. This creates problems not only forclinicians, families and patients, but also forthose who propose clinical bioethics as a toolfor the resolution of such dilemmas.In this paper I propose some practical waysin which ethical issues in clinical geneticsand elsewhere, might be addressed. Inparticular I call for a closer relationshipbetween ethics and communication in health caredecision-making and describe an approach to theethics consultation that places particularemphasis on the value of interpersonaldeliberation in the search for moralunderstanding. I reach these conclusionsthrough an analysis of the concept of `moraldevelopment' in which I argue that theachievement of moral understanding is anecessarily intersubjective project elaboratedby moral persons.     

网络经济的伦理意蕴——网络经济特征的视角

与传统工业经济相比,网络经济具有信息网络所赋予的新的特点,同时又蕴藏着特定的道德内涵。从网络经济的特征的视角来看,我们可以发现网络经济中所蕴藏的“以人为本”、“服务顾客”的道德取向;合作双赢、利益共享的伦理理念;公正平等、和谐共处的价值导向;开放自由、共同发展的伦理方向。     

蔡元培道德教育思想初探

蔡元培的道德教育思想及其实践在中国近现代伦理思想史上具有独特地位。他关于道德教育培养国民健全人格,以公民道德教育为“中坚”,重视公德、私德教育以及道德教育途径与方法等等,对于今天中国特色社会主义思想道德建设仍具有借鉴意义。     

交往理性与德育理念的重建

哲学意义上的交往理论,尤其是哈贝马斯的交往理性可以解决当前目的理性泛滥带来的的德育危机。交往德育是在超越灌输德育的基础上,对主体存在、人的存在目标和生存意义提出本质追问并提供某种可能性诠释的德育理论。它是一种扬弃与超越灌输德育而又与灌输德育截然不同的德育理念,是德育发展的必经阶段。