His third criterion was what he called moral predisposition, which is this idea of man treating himself and others according to principles of freedom and justice.
Far from being an illness, failure to respond results from social influence, the understanding of which can be used to help individuals act in closer accord with their moral predisposition.
I think that is where a lot of fear comes with the Digital Age — we begin to worry that perhaps we're losing the moral predisposition or that it's mutating or that it's becoming outsourced to things outside of ourselves.
Another disagreement between Mencius and Xunzi has to do with Mencius' claim that human nature contains moral predispositions.
"[O]ur moral judgments and evaluations…are only images and fantasies based on a physiological process unknown to us" (D 119), so that "it is always necessary to draw forth…the physiological phenomenon behind the moral predispositions and prejudices" (D 542).
Here, Changeux discusses the origin of ethics, the natural, neurobiologically based human predisposition to moral judgment, and how cultural evolution has shaped and changed social and cultural norms during human history (p. 72).
By contrast, Xunzi seems to rule out the existence of natural predispositions with moral content when he claims that the sage kings generated ritual principles and precepts of moral duty.
Besides self-efficacy, VBN theory also indicates the significance of personal moral norms on an individual's predisposition to PEB.
It was also open to discover new sources of moral authority and sacred experience, a predisposition that led to increasing experimentation with drugs but also intimate religious engagements with popular cultures associated with music, film, and television, initially.
As indicated earlier, such Mencian predispositions appear to contain moral intuitions (e.g., about what is shameful and right or wrong).
This innate moral sense is akin to the innate predisposition for smell or language and suggests human beings are born with the prototypes of a sense that fosters anxiety when they witness others in distress and, similarly, promotes positive feelings when that distress is alleviated.
