Moral Insight Research Articles

Models of Valuing Used by Christian Religious Education Teachers to Enable Secondary School Learners Acquire Social, Spiritual and Moral Insights Secondary Schools in Kenya

This investigation was motivated by the extant evidence which indicates that social, economic and political vices are on the rise in Kenya. For example the Kenya police report indicates that nationally crime among the youths stood at 22% between the years 2004 and 2006 from 08% in the period 1998 to 2003. Kisumu East was among the most hit areas with the crime index at 38% in 2006. In addition to this school dropout stood at 31% whereas HIV and AIDS prevalence stood at 12.5% in the same period. This scenario created a need to examine the mechanisms put in place by the Kenyan society to enhance moral growth of the learner more so in Kisumu East district. The study sought to determine the valuing methods used by the Christian Religious Education (C.R.E) teachers in secondary schools with the view of establishing whether or not, the methods equipped the learners with the ability to use valuing models in societal context. The design of the study was descriptive survey and it was conducted in Kisumu East District of Nyanza Province in the Republic of Kenya. The study population consisted of forty seven schools, forty eight teachers and three thousand two hundred and twenty five form two students. Using stratified sampling technique, fifteen mixed secondary schools, five from each of the three administrative units in the district were randomly selected for the study. A population of three hundred and forty three students determined by use of the Fischer formula and then simple randomly sampled formed the sample. Added to the above sixteen C.R.E teachers within the study schools were sampled purposively for the study. Data was collected as follows: the teachers were observed using a rating scale as they taught C.R.E. Secondly, the learners were given a test to ascertain their affective achievements with regards to value identification in societal context and an in-depth interview was conducted with the teachers. Data was also generated through documents analysis in which the teacher's schemes of work, the syllabus and curriculum guides were scrutinized to determine their adequacy in addressing the learners' value needs. To ensure the usefulness of the instruments in collecting data, they were piloted to ascertain their reliability. They were also critiqued and corrected by the experts from the faculty of Education to determine their face validity. Quantitative data was analyzed by use of descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, means and percentages then presented in form of tables. Information from the interviews and documents was analyzed qualitatively by transcription and organization into categories as per the emergent themes then reported and presented in narrative form. The research revealed that the teachers were not acquainted with the valuing models that are supposed to be used in teaching morals to enable learners to acquire social and spiritual insights in societal context. The research concluded that moral decadence experienced in Kisumu East district is due to teachers' inability to use the right valuing models of teaching values using C.R.E. Due to this, there is an urgent need to review the C.R.E. teaching curriculum guide to emphasize on valuing skills. The findings of this study are useful to the designers of curriculum at Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development, the Quality Assurance and Standards Officers in the Ministry of Education as well as the C.R.E teachers in a secondary school classroom since it contributes to the theory and practice of value education.

AI Has More Moral Insight: The Potential of Using Large Language Models to Resolve Moral Dilemmas

AI Has More Moral Insight: The Potential of Using Large Language Models to Resolve Moral Dilemmas

Discrete Emotions and Moral Insight

Discrete Emotions and Moral Insight

Democracy’s Values and Ideals: A Duboisian Defence

Abstract This essay offers a Duboisian defense of democracy’s expressive and experimental values. It argues that the expressive value of democracy supports an ideal of inclusion, whereas the experimental value of democracy supports that of innovation. One appeals to the ideal of inclusion to extend to excluded groups codified constitutional protections and to condemn white hypocrisy. The ideal of innovation, in contrast, helps one reimagine what constitutional protections should be in the first place. Drawing on Du Bois’s writings, this essay argues that the civic activities of black American counter-publics exhibited both experimental and expressive democratic values. In particular, it highlights the innovations of black women civic leaders who reimagined care work under a public conception of the common good. It concludes that counter-publics shape the asymmetric moral insight of its participants, namely, the oppressed.

Konsep Moral dalam Suluk Linglung Perspektif Lawrence Kohlberg

This article investigates the moral principles embedded within Suluk Linglung and its correlation with the theories posited by Lawrence Kohlberg, a prominent Western psychologist renowned for his work on moral development. Employing a descriptive qualitative approach, this research relies on library research methodology for data gathering, particularly utilizing the document study method. Data analysis is conducted through descriptive analysis techniques. The research reveals that Suluk Linglung, authored by Iman Anom, a figure closely associated with Sunan Kalijaga, encapsulates the spiritual journey of Sunan Kalijaga towards attaining intellectual perfection. Within Islamic teachings, moral concepts are referred to as akhlaq, a topic extensively addressed by Sunan Kalijaga in his teachings, emphasizing the significance of moral education. The text underscores the importance of moral conduct in various aspects of human life, including relationships with the Divine, interactions with fellow beings, and self-reflection. Through juxtaposing the moral insights from Suluk Linglung with Kohlberg’s theoretical framework, this study contributes to a comprehensive understanding of moral development across different cultural and philosophical contexts.

P.C. Chang and Charles Malik: The Two Philosophers of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

ABSTRACT: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was the result of almost two years of work from several participants and organizations before its adoption in the United Nations on December 10, 1948. The Declaration is one of the world's most famous and translated documents even though its principles and moral insights are far from realized around the world today. Although it was a collaborative work with many authors involved, some writers played significant roles in a special way. This article aims to present and analyze the contributions of two of the main drafters, namely the philosopher and diplomat Charles Malik (1906-1987) from Lebanon and the philosopher and diplomat P.C. Chang (1892-1957) from the Republic of China. Malik and Chang were the only philosophers in the drafting team, and they were all-rounded intellectuals and educators. In contrast to Chang and Malik, several of the other writers of the UDHR were lawyers or politicians. Chang and Malik came from different philosophical traditions. Chang had the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey as his tutor at Columbia in the beginning of the 1920s. Malik studied for the philosophers Alfred North Whitehead at Harvard and Martin Heidegger in Freiburg during the 1930s. The philosophical differences between Chang and Malik created fruitful dialogues between the two drafters. This article explores how the educational backgrounds and the previous professions of Chang and Malik influenced the character of the UDHR.

ELIOT’S PARSONS AND THEIR ROOTS IN SCOTT’S ABBOT OF UNREASON

Critical studies have analyzed George Eliot’s unconventional religious stance, Feuerbach’s influence and her atheism/religion of humanity. An early biography reveals, however, an interesting fact: “On the same grounds it is likely that the presentation of social virtues, apart from evangelical motives, would impress her; and I have authority for stating that to the inquiry of a friend in after-years, as to what influence she attributed the first unsettlement of her orthodox views, she quickly made answer: ‘Oh, Walter Scott’s…’” (Cross 1878: 395). Taking into account the quote above regarding probably the first source of her “unorthodox views”, the question naturally arises: are her fictional pastors and religious men fashioned according to her religious views and under the influence of Feuerbach’s doctrine? Can we assume a subtler influence at work coming from Walter Scott? It is my claim that we can identify important elements in Eliot’s fictional parsons which point in the direction of Scott’s model of a hero: the ability to promote an ironic discourse; the ability to promote the flow of sympathetic exchange in dialogue with other people. Eliot’s parsons may have been outlined according to a literary, rather than religious pattern. How to account for Farebrother’s unconventional way of earning money or parson Jack’s turning the other cheek by throwing nuts at the audience that had bombarded him with rotten eggs? Unawares, Eliot’s clever moral system may have been influenced by her early readings. Small scale carnivalesque skills, unconventional behaviour and the ability to preserve dialogue with marginal characters point rather in the direction of Scott’s fictional hero. While the research so far has focused on the model of historical novels in George Eliot’s work, little attention has been given to Scott’s influence on Eliot’s moral and psychological insights and the way in which she constructed important characters such as Rev. Farebrother, Rev. Rufus Lyon, parson Jack and other clergymen and religious non-conformists in her novels.

Substantive Social Metaphysics

Social metaphysics is a source of important philosophical and moral insight. Furthermore, much social metaphysics appears to be substantive. However, some have recently argued that standard views of metaphysics cannot accommodate substantive social metaphysics. In this paper I offer a new diagnosis of this problem and defend a new solution, showing that this problem is an illuminating lens through which to examine the nature and boundaries of metaphysics. This case instantiates a broad, common pattern generated by attempts to align distinctions between realism and anti-realism, mind-independence and mind-dependence, and legitimate and non-legitimate inquiry. I show that the best response is to abandon the association between substantive metaphysics and mind-independence, and I sketch a new definition of substantivity, given in terms of explanatory power, that makes room for substantive social metaphysics while also offering an attractive basis for general metaphysics.

Shakespeare, Marston, and Getting to Moral Clarity through Comedy

ABSTRACT ‘Uneasy comedy’ can be a surprising source of moral insight. Comedies like John Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan and Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well provoke uneasy laughter, laughter mixed with anxiety and moral concern – concern especially at how characters manipulate and deceive others to achieve certain outcomes. But the characters claim this deception is justified. They argue that their situation calls for a particular moral framework – one based on the achievement of desirable ends, rather than one based on autonomy and consent – and that their actions count as moral within that framework. The issue is that their arguments partially but don’t completely succeed. A key moral piece seems to be missing – but what is it? Is the problem with the characters’ actions or with the framework? To answer that question, we must determine how one would act morally within that framework and when it would be the right one to use. We must ask, essentially, how the story would have to change before we could laugh more freely. Uneasy comedies bring moral clarity through their suggestions about the different moral frameworks called for by different life contexts and what it takes to act worthily within those frameworks.

Relation of Pancasila Morality on Law Enforcement Officials in Guarding Criminal Law Reform in Indonesia

This study aims to determine the form of the moral relation of Pancasila as Indonesia's legal ideology and law enforcers in guarding the reform of Indonesian criminal law. The conceptual approach was used as a basis for thinking to help answer the problem, and a qualitative analysis was carried out. The study results show that the reflection of Pancasila morality on criminal law enforcement officials in Indonesia is inspired to guide the use of their functions and powers as the primary basis of its morality. Criminal law enforcement officials with Pancasila moral insight can guard criminal law reform because of moral relations reflected in the integrity of criminal law enforcement officials. This study implies that it is necessary to optimize the realization of the integrity of law enforcement officials with Pancasila morality to realize the ideals of justice in enforcing Indonesian law. Pancasila morality can form the integrity of law enforcement officials in using their functions and authority to face the determination of other elements outside the law.

Emotions and Moral Insight

Emotions and Moral Insight

Adolescents’ moral self-cultivation through emulation: Implications for modelling in moral education

ABSTRACT This paper aims to offer a new perspective on role modelling by examining adolescents’ own efforts to lead a morally virtuous life. While traditional approaches to moral education emphasize the importance of teachers as role models, this study proposes a shift in focus towards adolescents’ own role models. Drawing on the philosophical concept of moral self-cultivation and psychological insights on identity development and social cognitive learning, it is argued that adolescents have the ability to cultivate their moral character by emulating others. However, empirical evidence suggests that adolescents often do not perceive teachers as their role models. Consequently, moral educational theories are advised to demand less of teachers as role models. Teachers could invest more time in understanding students’ personal role models and encourage them to compare these role models with their own behavior. By acknowledging and addressing students’ role models, teachers can facilitate the moral self-cultivation of adolescents.

Ethical Dilemmas for Dental Students in Greece.

Professional dental ethics for students are based on promoting oral health for dental patients and reinforcing an anthropocentric approach to communication and dental services. A total of 133 dental students (males 33.8% N1 = 46, females 66.2% N2 = 87) completed the study questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were applied, and non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis tests were used (p < 0.05). Students refuse services to patients that misbehave (37.6%), have irrational demands (18%), and when clinical cases exceed their capabilities (36.8%). Of the participants, 50.4% want to waive confidentiality when abuse is declared. Ethical role models are educators (33.8%), other qualified dentists (25.6%), and their parents (21.8%). Female gender positively affects integrity (p = 0.046), altruism (p = 0.032), and difficulty in conversations among colleagues (p = 0.036). Students outside the capital are less interested in esthetic issues (p = 0.007), in giving more than one treatment plan (p = 0.006), and in being confronted with inadequate treatments from other colleagues (p = 0.005). Family income positively affects clinical skills (p = 0.003), trust issues (p = 0.008), and moral insight and intuition (p = 0.02). Presentation with clinical scenarios is the preferred educational method (49.6%). Dental students show compassion for poor patients, respect patients' autonomy, and guide patients to choose the best treatment plan before receiving dental ethics seminars. There is a positive relationship between the ethical footprints of students and gender, origin, family income, postgraduate studies, and future professional plans. Factors and ways to incorporate ethics in the dental curriculum could be considered when planning relevant courses.

Moral Injury - A Window into Damaging and Injurious Contexts

Moral Injury is a concept developing in psychology literature to review the impact of war on veterans and has especially focused on individual symptoms and finding clear diagnosis tools. This paper explores the connection between moral injury and the context in which they occur, a relationship that provides valuable understanding about the experience, but also the systemic factors that increase the vulnerability. The article begins by setting the groundwork for the discussion and introducing moral injury and its associate concepts. Part two explores the institutional dimension of moral injury and how an individual's professions can contribute to the injury. Part three proposes how moral injury insights can be implemented as guiding principles within peace and security, and particularly in peacekeeping missions. The final conclusion points to the context and the institutional system as the frame where personal reaction, values and systemic influences combine to produce moral injury. Therefore, looking for solutions to prevent and treat moral injury must acknowledge the true roots causes of distress that is not part of individualistic pathologizing mental health diagnosis.

Le concept de discernement moral et la doctrine kantienne du Fait de la raison

In his 1960 paper &#8220;The concept of moral insight and the Kantian doctrine of the Fact of Reason&#8221; (introduced and translated in french by Laura Tavernier), Dieter Henrich argues that Kant&#8217;s doctrine of the Fact of Reason&#8212;according to which pure reason can not theoretically anticipate or ground the possibility of its practical use&#8212;does not betray a lack of systematicity, as post-Kantians reproached it to Kant. After the repeated failures of his own attempts to deduce moral insight from theoretical reason in the &#8220;silent decade&#8221;, Kant eventually acknowledges that the moral law and our awareness of it cannot be logically derived from a higher principle. The Kantian doctrine of the Fact of Reason thus remains faithful to the phenomenon of moral insight, the paradoxical knowledge of the good, and offers a methodologically adequate answer to the problem that D.&#160;Henrich considers to be at the foundation of metaphysics: Kant thinks of a unity of the theoretical and the practical reason that does not imply any derivation of one from the other, nor any subsumption of the two under a unifying principle.

BATIK NASKAH KUNO: TRANSFORMASI ILUMINASI DARI NASKAH KUNO KE DALAM MOTIF BATIK

Ancient manuscripts are artifacts that indicate high intellectual abilities in old civilizations. The content is very valuable as well as a means of communicating and expressing ideas that can provide information about civilization and past life. Javanese society is one of the communities who inherited ancient manuscripts. The manuscript is decorated with beautiful illuminations that signify the aesthetics of the creators. The illumination has a n implied value and becomes a trace of the cultural identity of the society. The values implied in the manuscript will be much more useful if it is disseminated to provide high moral understanding and insight. In addition, ancient manuscripts can be a source of inspiration for creation that can support efforts to perpetuate cultural heritage in the archipelago. This paper discusses the results of research originating from the transformation process of ancient manuscript illumination into batik. The research method used is descriptive qualitative by making batik motifs based on visual manuscript illumination supported by the results of interviews with ancient manuscript experts and batik experts. The results of this study are expected to support batik motifs in Indonesia. Keywords: ancient manuscripts; batik; illumination; motiftransformation

“And there the pagans reigned”: Epideictic, Shared Appreciation, Social History

John W. O’Malley, S.J. highlighted the “pagan” origins of the texts recovered from classical antiquity by Renaissance humanists. Although these ancient writers had no relationship to either the Jewish or Christian religions of the Book, their writings were nevertheless valued for offering wisdom and moral insights. Thanks to the epideictic rhetorical genre, shared appreciation across boundaries was emphasized. However, O’Malley also avoided rigidity or literalism in applying principles of the past to contemporary circumstances. Ancient documents are one kind of source; the “social history” in actual practice and application of those documents is another kind of source. This essay surveys some moments in the social history of Jesuit higher education in the post-1814 (post-Restoration) context: an ongoing process of adapting to (or accommodating) challenges posed by the 19th- and 20th-c. USA contexts. A concluding glance at unusual sources used in two recent encyclicals of the Jesuit Pope Francis, suggests broader horizons for future shared appreciations.

Of trolleys and self-driving cars: What machine ethicists can and cannot learn from trolleyology

AbstractCrashes involving self-driving cars at least superficially resemble trolley dilemmas. This article discusses what lessons machine ethicists working on the ethics of self-driving cars can learn from trolleyology. The article proceeds by providing an account of the trolley problem as a paradox and by distinguishing two types of solutions to the trolley problem. According to an optimistic solution, our case intuitions about trolley dilemmas are responding to morally relevant differences. The pessimistic solution denies that this is the case. An optimistic solution would yield first-order moral insights for the ethics of self-driving cars, but such a solution is difficult to come by. More plausible is the pessimistic solution, and it teaches us a methodological lesson. The lesson is that machine ethicists should discount case intuitions and instead rely on intuitions and judgments at a higher level of generality.

Why do good soldiers in good organizations behave wrongly? The vicarious licensing effect of perceived corporate social responsibility

PurposeWhile most corporate social responsibility (CSR) research has focused on its positive effects, the potential “dark side” of CSR has received scant attention. Grounded in vicarious moral licensing theory and insights from related literature, the current study examines how employees' perceptions of external CSR could result in unintentional negative consequences like unethical pro-organizational behavior via psychological entitlement. The study also investigates the direct and conditional effects of private self-awareness.Design/methodology/approachA two-wave survey of 609 full-time employees from various occupations was conducted to empirically test the hypotheses. Several techniques and remedies were applied to control the quality of the sample data and mitigate the effects of potential common method bias.FindingsThe results demonstrate that unethical pro-organizational behavior can be an unintentional negative outcome of perceived external CSR, and psychological entitlement mediates the relationship.Research limitations/implicationsThis work contributes to the moral licensing literature by examining vicarious moral licensing in the work domain. It offers several new and significant implications for research on CSR, psychological entitlement, and unethical pro-organizational behavior. The results suggest that managers should be mindful of unethical pro-organizational behavior as a potential negative consequence of external CSR engagement.Originality/valueThis study is among the first attempts to examine vicarious moral licensing in the work domain and investigates a largely neglected research area – the negative aspect of external CSR.

Robert Burton’s Rhetoric: An Anatomy of Early Modern Knowledge by Susan Wells

Reviewed by: Robert Burton’s Rhetoric: An Anatomy of Early Modern Knowledge by Susan Wells Timothy Barr Susan Wells. Robert Burton’s Rhetoric: An Anatomy of Early Modern Knowledge. RSA Series in Transdisciplinary Rhetoric. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019. 211 pp. ISBN-978-0-271-08467-1. Pauline Reid. Reading by Design: The Visual Interfaces of the English Renaissance Book. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019. 283 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4875-0069-6. David Wiles. The Players’ Advice to Hamlet: The Rhetorical Acting Method from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 370 pp. ISBN: 978-1-108-49887-6. The works reviewed here celebrate the openness and indefiniteness of rhetoric’s domain by arguing against its assimilation of a disciplinary mode of scholarship. They work from three distinct positions while drawing from the early modem and (mostly) English archive. Susan Wells’s argument for a “transdisciplinary rhetoric” (it is part of the RSA Series in Transdisciplinary Rhetoric) is sustained throughout each chapter of her reading of Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, refiguring what Nancy Struever has called rhetoric’s “theoretical insouciance” as its value for playing tavern-keeper at a crossroads of other disciplines’ inquiries. Pauline Reid’s work explicitly targets the boundaries between new media and bibliographic studies by showing how early modem print involved visual modalities beyond the oft-rehearsed oral-print divide. David Wiles offers a fresh perspective by taking counsel for the discipline from a position without one: the professional actor of the early modern English and French stage. Each has a distinct refrain: transdisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and a kind of “undisciplining”—unlearning the trained incapacity of academic theorization. Wells opens her book with an autobiographical note. She first read The Anatomy of Melancholy for her comprehensive exams in the mid-1970s. Although her scholarship did not initially take her into uncovering the allusive world of Burton’s massive work, she describes being impressed by the voice of his prose. It was one “utterly at ease with its learning ... thin, rhythmic, quizzical, the voice of an eccentric and intimate friend” (1). Although such notes are often left in the prefatory material, here it is germane to the work. Reading Wells is to hear her performance of just such a voice witty, opinionated, with an erudition that feels like an inviting gesture at a cherished library rather than the intimidating cage of fingers pressed against the don’s lips in office hours. Wells’s style is part of her argument: like Burton, she is a scholar writing for other scholars, but—also like Burton—she refuses any idée fixe, a symptom of melancholy and today of too academic a discipline. Her second chapter, published in an earlier form in Philosophy & Rhetoric, is a contribution to genre studies. Is a genre like a genus, a category [End Page 325] for an assembling of species? Or, as she argues, is it a kind of space for exchange rather than classification? The Anatomy is a sui generis work. Rather than merely dismissing all the previous scholarship devoted to locating it in a taxonomy—an admittedly “old-fashioned project” (40)—Wells reflects on the underlying metaphors of the field. Even the idea of a “hybrid genre” relies upon the species metaphor (49). Burton identifies his work variously as “satire, as a treatise, as a cento, as a consolatio, or as a drama, satire, and comedy, but not as a satiricocento or a dramatic treatise” (40). His use of genre is often skew, bent to his peculiar and often-changing purposes. He delves into the medical genre of observationes less for clinical knowledge and more for the narrative color and moral insight that these cases might provide. Sometimes he interpolates speech into these stories for dramatic effect, as when in a case of love-melancholy he has the stricken Lady Elizabeth say, “O that I were worthy of that comely Prince ...” (66). Elsewhere he neglects the more florid detail of the original observation in order to make a point. One case tells of “two Germans who drank a lot of wine and within a month became melancholy.” Their symptoms were diverse: one “sang hymns...