Ross and the particularism/generalism divide

W. D. Ross is commonly considered to be a generalist about prima facie duty but a particularist about absolute duty. That is, many philosophers hold that Ross accepts that there are true moral principles involving prima facie duty but denies that there are any true moral principles involving absolute duty. I agree with the former claim: Ross surely accepts prima facie moral principles. However, in this paper, I challenge the latter claim. Ross, I argue, is no more a particularist about absolute duty than a utilitarian or a Kantian is. While this conclusion is interesting in its own right, it is also important, I argue, because it prevents us from overlooking Ross's criterion of moral obligation and because it may have implications on the broader debate between particularists and generalists.     

Through Solidarity to “Fluidarity”: Understanding Difference and Developing Change Agency Through Narrative Reflection

This paper examines the development of the concept of solidarity as expressing a sense of shared humanity, while detailing critiques of its current use, especially when it implies a privileged center setting the agenda for the sake of marginalized others. My research demonstrates how solidarity can be modified when encountering difference, and how it might be better conceptualized as “fluidarity,” an attitude and practice that embraces the complexity of engaging the other in pluralized and ever‐changing struggles. This engagement with otherness, an explicit part of an undergraduate theological ethics course with an embedded service‐learning component, is pedagogically facilitated by a threefold reflection process required of students: critical reflection on their own narratives, reflection on the narratives encountered in their service‐learning, and reflection on the lives of spiritually grounded agents of social change. Case studies of four undergraduate students demonstrate the ways in which this pedagogical strategy contributes to the development of solidarity and moves students' understanding towards fluidarity. In the end, the students gained a sense of spiritually grounded change agency, combining spiritual development with growth in critical consciousness.     

Moral and Group‐based Criteria in Children's Evaluation of Peers after Transgressions

The present study investigated how group membership criteria and moral understanding can affect children's evaluations of peers after different types of transgressions. In all, the study included 47 participants attending a junior school in Cornwall. All participants were allocated to an in‐group and responded to a number of questions which tested intergroup bias and the differential evaluation of norm‐violating peers from the in‐group and the out‐group. Overall, moral transgressions (physical and relational aggression) were evaluated more negatively than a social‐conventional transgression. However, those who violated group norms by expressing positive attitudes towards the out‐group were viewed differently depending on both moral and group‐based criteria. These different criteria for evaluating peers were uncorrelated. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ecclesiological Research and Natural and Human Sciences: Some Observations of an Unconventional Phenomenon

This article is motivated by the absence of published material dealing with the rapprochement between ecclesiology and the sciences. It presupposes that there is a need to broaden the scope of ecclesiological research in order to integrate into it theories and methods from the social and natural sciences. Ecclesiological research in this wider sense has as its object, church, as a broad concept. The article suggests a threefold aspect for ecclesiology, conceiving it as the ecclesiology of the researcher, and the ecclesiology of both the object and of the result of the research. Furthermore, its purpose is to identify transparent ecclesiological theories which are able to engage with and integrate scientific theories and methods. An inventory of examples of modes of collaboration used between ecclesiology and different sciences is then offered as an illustration of the context in which ecclesiology may integrate or relate to science in different ways. Finally, the article concludes that there is a need for further clarificatory research into the possibilities which exist for ecclesiology to be made more fully the science of being Christian in community or church.     

Methods for Connectedness

SUMMARY

There are prerequisites that must be achieved developmen-tally before individuals are capable of co-creating healthy intimacy in adult relationships. Thus, therapists often have to work to help client systems overcome failures of maturation. In these kinds of therapeutic encounters the therapist acts as a developmental partner. By designing compensatory experiences, the therapist can help partners fill gaps in early development and education that operate to sabotage loving relationships. This paper offers examples of how levels of moral development and social-perspective taking can be utilized within a transpersonal approach to help couples achieve more satisfying intimate connections.     

Responses of School Psychologists and Special Education Teachers to Administrative Pressures to Practice Unethically

Abstract

Responses of school psychologists (N = 141) and special educators (N = 130) to ethical dilemmas involving conflicts between administrative directives and ethical obligations were examined. Respondents completed a survey asking them to predict their own and others' responses to four ethical dilemmas. The majority of respondents predicted that they, immediate colleagues, and professional peers would make the choices judged as ethical in all situations. Predictions of ethical response were highest for self prediction and varied across the four dilemmas. Respondents who viewed their immediate colleagues as supportive of autonomous decision making were more likely to predict ethical choices than those who viewed their colleagues as supporting deference to administrative authority. No differences in predictions related to gender, degree level, job security, preservice training in or knowledge of professional ethics or special education law were found.     

Spiritual Maturity and Wholeness in the Later Years

SUMMARY

Nuturing spiritual wellness is a prominent goal of most religious groups and is central to wholistic health. Although spirituality is very important to most older people and spiritual well-being and maturity are relevant to gerontological theories, consensus on criteria for evaluating them is not yet complete, and mainstream gerontology tends to ignore the subject. Two paradigmatic orientations are dominant; one extrinsically seeks self-gratification; the other is intrinsic, self-denying, and self-centered. It is important to face the divergent values about this and related topics like death and dying, the afterlife, the “new ageism” in services with and for the aging, the value-denying compromises of alleged neutrality, the danger of reification, and the tendency to ignore spirituality by meeting only empirically observable human needs.     

College Student Cheating: The Role of Motivation,Perceived Norms,Attitudes, and Knowledge of Institutional Policy

This study provides a comparative analysis of students' self-reported beliefs and behaviors related to six analogous pairs of conventional and digital forms of academic cheating. Results from an online survey of undergraduates at two universities (N = 1,305) suggest that students use conventional means more often than digital means to copy homework, collaborate when it is not permitted, and copy from others during an exam. However, engagement in digital plagiarism (cutting and pasting from the Internet) has surpassed conventional plagiarism. Students also reported using digital “cheat sheets” (i.e., notes stored in a digital device) to cheat on tests more often than conventional “cheat sheets.” Overall, 32% of students reported no cheating of any kind, 18.2% reported using only conventional methods, 4.2% reported using only digital methods, and 45.6% reported using both conventional and digital methods to cheat. “Digital only” cheaters were less likely than “conventional only” cheaters to report assignment cheating, but the former was more likely than the latter to report engagement in plagiarism. Students who cheated both conventionally and digitally were significantly different from the other three groups in terms of their self-reported engagement in all three types of cheating behavior. Students in this “both” group also had the lowest sense of moral responsibility to refrain from cheating and the greatest tendency to neutralize that responsibility. The scientific and educational implications of these findings are discussed in this study.     

Environmental Factors Contributing to Wrongdoing in Medicine: A Criterion-Based Review of Studies and Cases

In this article we describe our approach to understanding wrongdoing in medical research and practice, which involves the statistical analysis of coded data from a large set of published cases. We focus on understanding the environmental factors that predict the kind and the severity of wrongdoing in medicine. Through review of empirical and theoretical literature, consultation with experts, the application of criminological theory, and ongoing analysis of our first 60 cases, we hypothesize that 10 contextual features of the medical environment (including financial rewards, oversight failures, and patients belonging to vulnerable groups) may contribute to professional wrongdoing. We define each variable, examine data supporting our hypothesis, and present a brief case synopsis from our study that illustrates the potential influence of the variable. Finally, we discuss limitations of the resulting framework and directions for future research.     

The Roles of Religiosity and Spirituality in Moral Reasoning

To better understand the influence of religiosity and spirituality on moral reasoning, 1,037 college students completed a survey including demographic questions, a religiosity measure, a spirituality measure, and Forsyth's Ethical Position Questionnaire. Religiosity and spirituality positively correlated with moral idealism, whereas spirituality negatively correlated with moral relativism. However, religiosity and spirituality accounted for a very little variability in moral reasoning, suggesting that they do not directly influence moral reasoning. In addition, female participants reported higher spirituality, but there were no gender differences on a spirituality measure. Future research is needed to examine other factors that may influence moral reasoning.