When ignorance excuses

An ingenious argument – we may call it the Argument from Excuse – purports to show that the Standard View of Ignorance is false and the New View of Ignorance is true. On the former, ignorance is lack of knowledge; on the latter, ignorance is lack of true belief. I defend the Standard View by arguing that the Argument from Excuse is unsound. I also argue that an implication of my case is that Factual Ignorance Thesis (FIT) is false. According to FIT, whenever an agent A acts from factual ignorance, A is morally blameworthy (culpable) for the act only if A is morally blameworthy (culpable) for the ignorance from which A acts.     

心理控制源倾向对责备与辩解的影响:进一步的证据

本研究是对Wang和Anderson研究的继续。149名大学生被试分别对成功和失败情境下的辩解以及交互负有责任情境下的责备进行了评定。结果表明,外控者与内控者相比有着较高的辩解倾向,而丑这一结果不受辩解情境(成功或失败)以及辩解对象(自己或别人)的影响。同时,在交互负有责任的情境下,外控者与内控者相比有较高责备别人的倾向,而对自己以及环境因素的责备则没有表现出差异。文中从方法学及心理动力学角度对这一结果进行了讨论。     

Sex differences in social representations of aggression: Men justify,women excuse?

Women tend to hold an expressive social representation of aggression (as a loss of self‐control) while men tend to hold an instrumental representation (as a means of imposing control over others). Because expressive beliefs correspond to excuses and instrumental beliefs to justifications, it may be a sex difference in moral acceptability of aggression that informs social representation. Participants completed the Expagg questionnaire with reference to an episode of same‐sex or cross‐sex physical aggression and rated the moral acceptability of their behaviour. Women scored higher on Expagg (specifically lower than men on the instrumental scale) but there was no effect of target sex or participant‐by‐target interaction. Contrary to expectation, women rated their own aggression as more acceptable than did men and hence this could not explain their lower levels of instrumentality relative to men. Aggr. Behav. 29:128–133, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

意图、名声及申述方式对冒犯者所受责备的影响

本研究采用2×2×3的混合实验设计,探讨冒犯意图、冒犯者名声和申述方式对冒犯者所受责备及印象评价的影响。结果表明:(1)无意冒犯和好名声要比有意冒犯和坏名声冒犯者受到更少的责备和更积极的印象评价。(2)意图与申述方式、名声与申述方式之间都没有交互作用。(3)与否认相比,道歉和辩解都使冒犯者受到更积极的印象评价,但道歉和辩解不管是在对冒犯者的责备还是印象评价上所起的作用都没有差别。     

Justification,excuse, and proof beyond reasonable doubt

The law requires criminal guilt to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. There are two different approaches to construing this legal rule. On an epistemic approach, the rule is construed in terms of justified belief or knowledge; on a probabilistic approach, the rule is construed in terms of satisfying a probabilistic threshold. An epistemic construction of the rule has this advantage over a probabilistic construction: the former can while the latter cannot excuse the state from blame for a false conviction. This claim rests on an understanding of legal rules, legal justification for a finding of guilt and the central purpose of a criminal trial.     

Inarticulate Forgiveness

Influentially, Pamela Hieronymi has argued that any account of forgiveness must be both articulate and uncompromising. It must articulate the change in judgment that results in the forgiver's loss of resentment without excusing or justifying the misdeed, and without comprising a commitment to the transgressor's responsibility, the wrongness of the action, and the transgressed person's self‐worth. Non‐articulate accounts of forgiveness, which rely on indirect strategies for reducing resentment (for example, reflecting on the transgressor's bad childhood), are said to fail to explain forgiveness. This paper argues that the articulateness condition is not a necessary condition for forgiveness. It responds to numerous objections advanced against non‐articulate accounts, including the claim that the resentment‐mitigating practices they involve amount to excusing. Appealing to P. F. Strawson's distinction between objective and participant attitudes, it argues that forgivers can take transgressors to be detrimentally causally shaped by their past while holding them to be morally responsible.     

《易经·颐卦》考释

本文在对《颐卦》“口实”、《易传》“养”之义考释和对殷周之人对龟卜的态度进行考察的基础上,对《颐卦》卦爻辞进行解释。认为《颐卦》“口实”当取借口、依据之义,经传“养”当训为“象”、“相”,卦辞“观颐,自求口实”是“观察人的面部表情动作所传达的意见.为自己的行为寻找借口”之义,爻辞“朵颐”、“颠颐”、“拂经于丘颐”、“拂颐”、“拂经”、“虎视眈眈,其欲逐逐”等都是一些暗示人不同意见的面部表情语言、动作语言。全卦实际上反映了商周之际人们思想的转变以及在人意、龟卜结果之间取舍的矛盾复杂心态。