Showing papers on "Social cognitive theory of morality published in 1968"

Duties to oneself and the concept of morality

Abstract: Why is it that most among the relatively few moral philosophers since Kant who, like J. S. Mill, have discussed the question whether there can be moral duties to oneself, have answered it negatively? One reason is that those philosophers have supposed that all moral action must be, inter alia, social; and they may have thought so because of their commitment to what is here called a ‘corporationist’ moral view. But such a conception of morality as social is objectionable because it does not square with ordinary opinion and because it introduces an artificial division between types of action which go together in real life.

The case for moral education

Abstract: This is the first of two articles on the moral situation. Dr. Hofmann provides here a survey of opinion in favor of moral education

Counseling and moral change.

Abstract: Counseling can be and often is an instrument of moral change. More precisely, we can say that as counseling approaches the point of being maximally successful, it produces significant personality change. This change is manifested in the moral sphere of life and is marked by the following characteristics: 1) the individual's moral perspective tends to become more adequate and realistic, 2) the individual's moral response tends to become more authentic, and 3) the individual's ability to be the locus of moral action and the object of divine forgiveness is increased and deepened. Each characteristic is a vital and essential contribution to morality in the deepest sense of that word, that is, to morality as authentic fulfillment of self within a community of persons.

Towards a phenomenology of morals

Abstract: For some time now moral philosophy in the English‐speaking world has been largely confined to analysis and examination of moral terminology. Hare, for example, has described Ethics as a ‘theory which determines the meanings and functions of the moral words’. The present paper questions whether there can be some set of logical and semantic tests which can be devised for distinguishing moral from non‐moral discourse. The values of a society, and hence the language in which these values are expressed, cannot be identified and examined independently of the social, political, economic and cultural relations which characterize the given society. These relations themselves are subject to historic change — and with them the moral vocabulary. The search for some semantic characteristic that moral judgments have in common not only restricts the scope of Ethics to no good purpose, but ironically enough also fails to shed much light on certain English sentences which are genuinely problematic from the point of view o...