Articulate forgiveness and normative constraints

Philosophers writing on forgiveness typically defend the Resentment Theory of Forgiveness, the view that forgiveness is (or crucially implicates) the overcoming of resentment. Rarely is much more said about the nature of resentment or how it is overcome when one forgives. Pamela Hieronymi, however, has advanced detailed accounts both of the nature of resentment and how one overcomes resentment when one forgives. In this paper, I argue that Hieronymi’s account of the nature of forgiveness is committed to two implausible claims about the norms bearing on forgiveness. Her account is highly instructive, however, for it brings into relief how certain intuitive views about the norms of forgiveness should be used to constrain our theories about its nature. I conclude by defending this methodological proposal.     

论安宁疗护患者知情同意权

安宁疗护试点所强调的患者“充分知情、自愿选择”是患者知情同意权的体现。患者与家属权利冲突持续存在,知情同意权行使还有医疗伦理及技术上的困难。患者知情同意具有明显人格属性,保护的是患者身体利益,属身体权。安宁疗护应遵循“告知后同意”规则。医务人员告知应以患者知情为优先,采具体病患标准说,并以“预期生存期6个月以内”为进入安宁疗护标准。当患者决定权与社会公共利益相冲突时,应以公益性为原则;法定情形下让位于近亲属决定权;患者通过预先医疗指示行使决定权的,被委任的家属依据委托规则行使代理决定权。

     

医师不得拒绝诊疗的法律与伦理问题研究

医患纠纷频繁发生和医患关系不和谐已成为社会热点问题。首先对我国现行医师不得拒绝诊疗的相关法律规定进行概述,并分析了明确医师不得拒绝诊疗义务的法律与伦理上的原因,指出了医师不得拒绝诊疗相关法律规定的不足之处,最后对完善相关法律规定及现实操作进行思考。以达到改善医患关系,减少医疗纠纷的目的。     

他评：一种有效的人格评价手段

他评法是一种有效的人格评价手段, 甚至在一些情境下比自评法更为有效。在现实准确性模型(the Realistic Accuracy Model, RAM)以及权重平均模型(the Weighted-average Model, WAM)的基础上, 对于影响他评准确性的因素进行了梳理, 涉及熟悉性、关系质量、特质可见度以及假设相似性等。针对目前研究中存在的问题, 提出要在中国文化背景下, 进一步拓展研究对象的取样范围, 在更多不同的情境下提高研究的生态效度, 同时采用更多的人格评价手段。     

Beyond Language: Using Logic to Introduce New Philosophical Distinctions

Philosophy has to be communicable in language, and therefore, whatever it has to say must be expressible in (some) language. But in order to make progress, philosophy has to gradually extend and improve its terminological apparatus. It is argued that logical formalization is a highly useful tool for discovering and confirming distinctions that are not present in ordinary language or in pre-existing philosophical terminology. In particular, it is proposed that if two usages of a word require different logical formalizations, then that is a strong reason to distinguish between them also in informal philosophy. The distinction between two types of normative conditionals, conditional veritable norms and conditional normative rules, is used as an example to corroborate this proposal.     

The Realistic Actualization of the Moist Passion for Salvation and Its Historical Destination

The passion for salvation, as the spiritual motive of Moism, can be investigated concerning its actualization and historical evolution. Because of his lower class status, a passion for salvation arose in Mozi was at first emphasized in “universal love,” “identification with the superior,” and “will of heaven,” and then was later realized in the spirit of Shi Mo 仕墨, or Moist officials, who were impartial and incorruptible in the execution of their duties. When the officials became frustrated by the despotic powers, their passion then evolved into a spirit of Xia Mo 侠墨, or Moist knights, who never hesitated in helping people and upholding justice. And when Moist knights were finally rooted out by despotic powers, the only choice for Moists was to become Bian Mo 辩墨, or Moist sophists, specialists in “Major Illustration” (“Daqu” 大取) and “Minor Illustration” (“Xiaoqu” 小取). This development, however, ran contrary to its primary ideal. Still, both the impartial and incorruptible Moist officials and the righteous and courageous Moist knights represented an expectation deep inside people’s minds. Therefore, whenever social injustice worsened to a certain degree, the populist spirit of Moism was picked up as a weapon of critique. Thus, the actualization and evolution of this passion for salvation offers a constant mirror for populist thinking.     

Agential obligation as non-agential personal obligation plus agency

I explore various ways of integrating the framework for predeterminism, agency, and ability in [P. McNamara, Nordic J. Philos. Logic 5 (2) (2000) 135] with a framework for obligations. However, the agential obligation operator explored here is defined in terms of a non-agential yet personal obligation operator and a non-deontic (and non-normal) agency operator. This is contrary to the main current trend, which assumes statements of personal obligation always take agential complements. Instead, I take the basic form to be an agent's being obligated to be such that p. I sketch some logics for agential obligation based on personal obligation and agency, first in a fairly familiar context that rules out conflicting personal obligations (and derivatively, conflicting agential obligations), and then in contexts that do allow for conflicts (of both sorts). Finally, a solution to van Fraassen's puzzle is sketched, and an important theorem is proved.     

Transzendentalpragmatik und Diskursethik. Elemente und Perspektiven der Apelschen Diskursphilosophie

Transcendental Pragmatics and Discourse Ethics. Elements and Perspectives of Apel's Discourse-Philosophy. The author follows Apel's intellectual biography and shows the conception of a critique of meaning qua ‘reflection upon the discourse within the discourse’ to be the centre of Apel's language-pragmatic ‘Transformation of Philosophy’ (Frankfurt a.M. 1973). Beginning with an explication of the situation of a speaker/thinker, especially of the situation of a philosophising speaker/thinker, Apel reconstructs a two fold apriori of communication: Every thought is situated within the context of a particular, historically evolved, community of language and interaction. At the same time, however, the validity-claims of thoughts transcend the context of their origin towards an unlimited community of argumentation. On the basis of the first apriori Apel criticises the methodical solipsism as well as the objectivism of modern philosophy and theory of science. Drawing upon the second apriori he develops a universalist critique of meaning of relativism and contextualism. In the sixties and seventies Apel worked out a differentiated theory of the – more or less – communicatively cognizing humanities and set it apart from the theory of the causal-explanatory natural sciences, thus challenging the objectivism of a Theory of Unified Science. Building upon this work Transcendental Pragmatics, as developed by Apel and others, sets philosophy primarily two tasks: firstly, a (fallible) internal reconstruction of argumentative discourse as the (logical) situation of speech and thought which seeks to elucidate the conditions of the meaningfulness, i. e. the presuppositions, of discourse. These presuppositions comprise, thus Apel with Habermas, the four validity-claims to intelligibility, sincerety/credibility, truth and normative rightness/legitimacy. Their moral content consists, thus Apel, not only in the recognition of the equality of all beings capable of discursive reasoning but also in their recognition of a co-responsibility for the realizability of discourses and of responsibility. The author argues that the existence of a co-responsibility of this kind is indisputable because the discursive claims to validity are intertwined with a set of ‘primordial promises of dialogue’. Only with the elucidation and explication of these promises can the reconstruction of the internal conditions of discourse be completed.The second task of a pragmatics of argumentation isthe strict resp. actual reflection of the thinker upon the presuppositions of the discourse in which he currently engages. This reflection has a Socratic character and can only be done in the form of discussion and debate (‘Auseinandersetzungen’, Apel, Frankfurt a.M. 1998) with critics of the reconstruction. In this context, the author proposes a method of Socratic reflection upon the presuppositions of dialogue which suspends the usual, theoretically oriented, attitude of the scientist and the philosopher in favour of an actual reflective attitude. Within a dialogue with a sceptic who doubts one of the results of the internal reconstruction of dialogical presuppositions, say X, it is tested whether his doubt as to the unrestricted validity of X can be understood as a sincere contribution to the current dialogue or whether this particular sceptical thesis does not make sense, because it is incompatible with the role of a sincere participant of argumentation which, after all, the sceptic cannot refuse to claim for himself.Finally the author explains Apel's characterization of the tension between “Discourse and Responsibility” (Frankfurt a.M. 1988). In the course of discussions with Max Weber, Lawrence Kohlberg, Hans Jonas et al., Apel formulates and justifies an ethics of responsibility and gives an affirmative answer to the crucial question of whether the fulfilment of the moral obligations connected with the recognition of co-responsibility can be demanded within the non-dialogical circumstances of social reality. Apel's answer employs the idea of counter-strategies which are morally legitimate in virtue of their being worthy of argumentative consensus. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Threat Perception and Perspective Taking as Mediators Between Competitive Victimhood and Evaluations of Collective Action: The Gezi Park Protests

The 2013 Gezi Park protests in Turkey, which are one of the major social movements in the last decade, have sharpened the sociopolitical polarization in the country. The present study employed a moderated mediation model in which symbolic threat, realistic threat, and perspective taking were examined as mediators between competitive victimhood and opposing groups’ differential evaluations of the protests. Further, the pro‐Gezi versus the anti‐Gezi group membership was hypothesized to moderate the mediation effects. Proponents (N = 337) and opponents (N = 138) of the protests were asked to respond to the measures corresponding to the variables in the model. Results revealed that for protest supporters, competitive victimhood predicted evaluations of the protests through realistic threat, but not through symbolic threat; in contrast, for opponents, it predicted evaluations of the protests through symbolic but not realistic threat. Further, perspective taking turned out to be a weak mediator. The results are discussed in terms of the differential power relationships between the groups in the cultural and political domains.