Douglas Thomas
Balliol College, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BJ UK ; Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Neuroethics. 2014;7(1):75-91. doi: 10.1007/s12152-013-9183-y. Epub 2013 Apr 12.
It is plausible that we have moral reasons to become better at conforming to our moral reasons. However, it is not always clear what means to greater moral conformity we should adopt. John Harris has recently argued that we have reason to adopt traditional, deliberative means in preference to means that alter our affective or conative states directly-that is, without engaging our deliberative faculties. One of Harris' concerns about direct means is that they would produce only a superficial kind of moral improvement. Though they might increase our moral conformity, there is some deeper kind of moral improvement that they would fail to produce, or would produce to a lesser degree than more traditional means. I consider whether this concern might be justified by appeal to the concept of moral worth. I assess three attempts to show that, even where they were equally effective at increasing one's moral conformity, direct interventions would be less conducive to moral worth than typical deliberative alternatives. Each of these attempts is inspired by Kant's views on moral worth. Each, I argue, fails.
我们有道德理由去更善于遵守我们的道德理由，这似乎是合理的。然而，我们应该采用何种方式来更好地遵守道德，这并不总是清晰明了的。约翰·哈里斯最近认为，我们有理由优先采用传统的、深思熟虑的方式，而不是直接改变我们的情感或意动状态的方式——也就是说，不通过运用我们的深思熟虑能力的方式。哈里斯对直接方式的一个担忧是，它们只会带来一种表面的道德提升。尽管它们可能会增加我们对道德的遵守，但存在某种更深层次的道德提升是它们无法带来的，或者与更传统的方式相比，带来的程度较小。我思考这种担忧是否可以通过诉诸道德价值的概念来得到辩护。我评估了三种试图表明的尝试，即即使直接干预在增加一个人的道德遵守方面同样有效，它们对道德价值的促进作用也不如典型的深思熟虑的替代方式。这些尝试中的每一种都受到康德关于道德价值观点的启发。我认为，每一种尝试都失败了。
