Showing papers on "Social cognitive theory of morality published in 1970"

Conscience, personality, and socialization techniques.

Abstract: Two groups of 7th-grade children with internal moral orientations were selected on the basis of moral judgment responses: one whose judgments showed concern for human consequences of behavior and cons

Student activism, moral development, and morality.

Abstract: Book reviewed in this article: A review of recent studies of the development of moral reasoning leads to a paradoxical conclusion about today's worldwide student protest movement. The research suggests optimism about the high level of moral development of many or most student activists, yet what is true for most is not true for all. And even the highest levels of moral reasoning do not alone guarantee truly virtuous behavior.

The Contribution of Schools to Moral Development: A Working Paper in the Theory of Action.

Abstract: In what is essentially a working paper, an ideal typical and analytical concept of moral action is derived from the general theory of action. The concept is described in terms of the pattern-variable scheme, with moral action seen as involving the choices of affective neutrality, quality, universalism, and diffuseness.

Reflections on Moral Education.

Abstract: \"For the Record\" in December, touched on the question of moral education. We are pleased to have Professor Carbone carry the discussion further. Not only does he speak here of the need to confront moral issues in the classroom; he talks of the specific problems entailed by the need to socialize young children into the moral institution, and the need to engage older children with critical ethical inquiry. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the South Atlantic Philosophy of Education Society in October 1968.

Ethics and Counseling Decisions

Abstract: Although some behavioral scientists and practitioners contend that man has no genuine moral choices to make, common sense and philosophical reflection ineluctably affirm the moral nature of man. When young people are faced with moral decisions, they often seek the assistance of a counselor. Although such counselors are routinely expected to aid clients in making decisions about their education and their careers, there is considerably less agreement about their responsibility for helping students to make moral choices. The central thesis of this article is that a knowledge of ethical theories, the practical principles which flow from them, and the method of decision-making which they indicate will enable the counselor to assist his clients with their moral problems.

The Internet as a Moral Mediator. The Quest for Democracy

Abstract: Recently the impressive growth of the Web, and the Internet in general, has been considered as a promise that may both challenge and boost our representation of democratic institutions. It is well known that modern democracies are based on the possibility to control and even replace who rules by the force of the best arguments. More generally, the control of the government, and the effectiveness of democracy, is possible, if the citizens can access information. Hence, the promise of the Internet mainly relies on the fact that people may more freely access information, because it seems it cannot be controlled or manipulated by the political power. In the first part of this outline we will depict a cognitive framework to deal with the relationships between Internet and democracy. We shall show that Internet, as an information technology, can be considered as a cognitive and moral mediator; it can provide stories, texts, images, combined with sounds, so that the information fosters not only a cognitive, but also an emotional and moral understanding. In this sense, the Internet represents a kind of redistribution of the moral effort through managing objects and information to overcome the poverty and the unsatisfactory character of the options available. In the last part we will illustrate that Internet, as a moral mediator, may enhance democracy in two respects. First, it affords civic engagement and participation; second, it allows people to face different sources of information so that almost everyone can verify and test the information delivered by traditional media.

Artificial Intelligence and Moral intelligence

Abstract: We discuss the thesis that the implementation of a moral code in the behaviour of artificial intelligent systems needs a specific form of human and artificial intelligence, not just an abstract intelligence. We present intelligence as a system with an internal structure and the structural levels of the moral system, as well as certain characteristics of artificial intelligent agents which can/must be treated as 1- individual entities (with a complex, specialized, autonomous or selfdetermined, even unpredictable conduct), 2- entities endowed with diverse or even multiple intelligence forms, like moral intelligence, 3- open and, even, free-conduct performing systems (with specific, flexible and heuristic mechanisms and procedures of decision), 4 – systems which are open to education, not just to instruction, 5- entities with “lifegraphy”, not just “stategraphy”, 6- equipped not just with automatisms but with beliefs (cognitive and affective complexes), 7- capable even of reflection (“moral life” is a form of spiritual, not just of conscious activity), 8 – elements/members of some real (corporal or virtual) community, 9 – cultural beings: free conduct gives cultural value to the action of a ”natural” or artificial being. Implementation of such characteristics does not necessarily suppose efforts to design, construct and educate machines like human beings. The human moral code is irremediably imperfect: it is a morality of preference, of accountability (not of responsibility) and a morality of non-liberty, which cannot be remedied by the invention of ethical systems, by the circulation of ideal values and by ethical (even computing) education. But such an imperfect morality needs perfect instruments for its implementation: applications of special logic fields; efficient psychological (theoretical and technical) attainments to endow the machine not just with intelligence, but with conscience and even spirit; comprehensive technical means for supplementing the objective decision with a subjective one. Machine ethics can/will be of the highest quality because it will be derived from the sciences, modelled by techniques and accomplished by technologies. If our theoretical hypothesis about a specific moral intelligence, necessary for the implementation of an artificial moral conduct, is correct, then some theoretical and technical issues appear, but the following working hypotheses are possible: structural, functional and behavioural. The future of human and/or artificial morality is to be anticipated.

Curriculum as an Instrument of Change with Particular Reference to the Social Sciences.

Abstract: The social science curriculum of the future must prepare students to face rapidly changing circumstances in their world. The home and church seem to be unable to deal with those changes that are leading to a deterioration in human relationships and moral standards. The school seems to have the greatest potential for meeting the challenge and it is argued here that the most suitable setting in the school is the classroom with a wide range of ability and racial groups in it. The methodological principles stemming from the Taba Curriculum in Social Studies, supplemented and refined by those of Piaget and Kohlberg, offer possibilities for effecting positive social changes to meet the moral crisis at present facing Western society.

Fundamental and changing moral concepts

Abstract: In the enterprise of clinical research, human experimentation is the ultimate attempt, by sophisticated and safeguarded trial-and-error methods, to assay the benefits and deficits of a new or improved drug or surgical procedure in a human patient. When such procedures relate primarily to an individual patient as an attempt, not without hypothesis, to alleviate or cure that patient’s present illness, they more properly come under the rubric of a “tentative therapeutic regimen,” rather than “human experimentation,” and relate to clinical research only secondarily, insofar as the observed results add to the total fund of medical knowledge. Primary clinical research, on the other hand, is mainly oriented toward the good of humanity in general by the advance of medical knowledge: and while not being unmindful of a sound therapeutic regimen for individual patients involved in the research program, this latter aspect is, in some sense, secondary to the broader goals-at least in the general orientation of the project. In a society supposedly as acutely conscious of human rights and individual freedoms as ours, any moral problems inherent in clinical research would seem to be solved in the preamble to the American Declaration of Independence, as far as the patient is concerned, and in the Hippocratic Oath, as far as the research clinician is concerned. These two documents contains the fundamental moral and ethical principles that are detailed in the context of clinical research by our classical codes on human experimentation such as the Nuremberg Code and the Declaration of Helsinki. And yet both the popular press and the scientific journals too frequently reflect an uneasiness about the ethical atmosphere of our research programs. Perhaps this is so because our national conscience, to an alarming degree, has regressed into an infantilistic ethic of the taboo type, which is no authentic morality at all, and we are now undergoing an amoral reaction to this regression. Essentially emotional as this ethic is, it has not and will not guide us effectively along the reasoned lines of fundamental moral principles-no more than a rational explanation will do much to alleviate a deep emotional problem, the solution and the problem being on quite different levels. This type of taboo-morality not only is out of contact with basic moral principles, but is likewise ineffective in controlling the human pull and gravitation toward financial gain and prestige that have always tended to modify adversely man’s love and respect for his fellow men. The popularity of Jean Paul Sartre and the Situationists has saturated our American moral mentality with a freedom from any moral absolutes regarding