A psycho-ethical approach to personality disorders: The role of volitionality

The rupture between psychology and ethics has led to an oversimplification of the study of personality disorders (PD). We claim that an integrated view could enrich and widen the study of PD. This article is an attempt to reconceptualize PD from a psycho-ethical perspective, which includes the dimension of volitionality, to clarify how moral decisions can undermine psychological capacities and contribute, to a greater or lesser degree, to a progressive depersonalization. It is proposed that behaviors with a strong similarity with types of classical vicious character can be categorized into different typical PDs. Using the contributions of theorists who have described types of cognitive biases, in light of virtue epistemology and the underling motivation, we present an understanding of how vicious cognition develops, which is a step in the crystallization of vicious character. This approach, also, offers a distinction between disharmonic and fragmented personality that allows establishing different levels of severity from the psychological and ethical perspective.     

肿瘤科医护人员对晚期肿瘤患者实施预先指示的质性研究

探讨肿瘤科医护人员对晚期肿瘤患者实施预先指示（advance directives,AD）的态度。使用目的抽样法对8位肿瘤科医护人员进行半结构式访谈。结果显示,肿瘤科医护人员对实施AD的态度可归纳为：（1）认可并有需求;（2）具体实施仍有一定困难;（3）可尝试应用但需一定对策。因此,肿瘤科医护人员总体非常支持AD的实施,但具体应用还需一定时期的本土化过程。     

Mistaking randomness for free will

Belief in free will is widespread. The present research considered one reason why people may believe that actions are freely chosen rather than determined: they attribute randomness in behavior to free will. Experiment 1 found that participants who were prompted to perform a random sequence of actions experienced their behavior as more freely chosen than those who were prompted to perform a deterministic sequence. Likewise, Experiment 2 found that, all else equal, the behavior of animated agents was perceived to be more freely chosen if it consisted of a random sequence of actions than if it consisted of a deterministic sequence; this was true even when the degree of randomness in agents’ behavior was largely a product of their environments. Together, these findings suggest that randomness in behavior—one’s own or another’s—can be mistaken for free will.     

Free Will and Therapeutic Change

Much of psychology has minimized, or disregarded, the notion of free will. However, it remains a critical construct in most theories of behavioral and religious change. This paper briefly examines the free will/determinism debate and the construct of free will from the perspective of postmodern/narrative psychology, as well as integrating recent developments in the field of cognitive neuroscience. Finally, the implications of this analysis on personal responsibility in pastoral psychology are discussed.     

进化,从自然主义到自由主义

生物进化体现了生物世界从简单到复杂,从低级到高级的普遍现象,整个进化史可以人类社会出现的界划发为自然状态的进化和人类智慧,意志指导下逐渐展开的人工进化或自由进化,人类的进步必须要和自然环境和谐发展科学必将吸取系统论,理性论和人文精神而成为人类迈向自由地的有力武器。     

Self-Constitution in the Ethics of Plato and Kant

Plato and Kant advance a constitutional model of the soul, in which reason and appetite or passion have different structural and functional roles in the generation of motivation, as opposed to the familiar Combat Model in which they are portrayed as independent sources of motivation struggling for control. In terms of the constitutional model we may explain what makes an action different from an event. What makes an action attributable to a person, and therefore what makes it an action, is that it issues from the person's constitution, and therefore from the person as a whole, rather than from some force working on or in the person. This in turn implies an account of what makes an action good: what makes an action good is that it is deliberated upon and chosen in a way that unifies the person into a constitutional system. Through deliberative action we constitute ourselves as unified agents. Platonic justice and Kant's categorical imperative are shown to be normative standards for action because they are principles of self-constitution.     

Impulse and Self-Reflection: Frankfurtian Responsibility versus Free Will

Harry Frankfurt's early work makes an important distinction between moral responsibility and free will. Frankfurt begins by focusing on the notion of responsibility, as supplying counterexamples to the principle of alternative possibilities; he then turns to an apparently independent account of free will, in terms of his well-known hierarchy of desires. But the two notions seem to reestablish contact in Frankfurt's later discussion of issues and cases. The present article sets up a putative Frankfurtian account of moral responsibility that involves the potential for free will, as suggested by some of Frankfurt's later remarks about taking responsibility. While correcting what seem to be some common misinterpretations of Frankfurt's view, the article attempts to extract some reasons for dissatisfaction with it from consideration of cases of unfreedom, particularly cases involving addiction.     

Overstepping the boundaries of free choice: Folk beliefs on free will and determinism in real world contexts

We know little about the commonality of folk beliefs around applications of psychological research on the unconscious control of behaviours. To address this, in Experiment 1 (N = 399) participants volunteered examples of where research on the unconscious has been applied to influence their behaviours. A subset of these were presented in Experiment 2 (N = 198) and Experiment 3 (N = 100). Participants rated the extent to which the behaviour being influenced in these contexts was: (1) via the unconscious, (2) free, (3) the result of prior conscious intentions, (4) under conscious control. Relative to judgements about the extent to which behaviour was influenced via the unconscious, the remaining judgements regarding conscious control of behaviours were either higher (e.g., political contexts) or lower (e.g., therapy). This study is the first to show, using ecologically valid examples, the folk beliefs people share on psychological constructs concerning free will and determinism.     

Igniting the Flicker of Freedom: Revisiting the Frankfurt Scenario

This paper aims to challenge the view that the sign present in many Frankfurt-style scenarios is insufficiently robust to constitute evidence for the possibility of an alternate decision, and therefore inadequate as a means of determining moral responsibility. I have amended Frankfurt’s original scenario, so as to allow Jones, as well as Black, the opportunity to monitor his (Jones’s) own inclination towards a particular decision (the sign). Different outcome possibilities are presented, to the effect that Jones’s awareness of his own inclinations leads to the conclusion that the sign must be either (a) a prior determinate of the decision about to be made, (b) prior and indeterminate (therefore allowing for a contra-inclination decision to be made), or (c) constitutive of a decision that Jones has made but is not yet aware of. In effect, this means that, prior to the intervention of Black, Jones must have decided to do otherwise or could have so decided. Either way, although Frankfurt’s conclusion, that Jones could not have done other than he did, is upheld, the idea that he could not have decided otherwise must be rejected, and with it the view that the sign is nothing more than a flicker of freedom insufficient for assigning morally responsibility.