RELIGION VERSUS SCIENCE: THE CONFLICT IN REFERENCE TO TRUTH VALUE,NOT CASH VALUE

Abstract. The rift between science and religion needs to be assessed not merely on pragmatic grounds, on the basis of the effect of scientific versus religious beliefs on people's behavior, as John Caiazza's essay does, but also and above all in regard to the cogency of the respective beliefs in reference to what we can reasonably assume is the true face of reality. About such truth value, the conflict is not irremediable; there are elements of belief regarding the nature of reality that are strikingly similar regardless of whether one arrived at them on the basis of faith in revealed knowledge or on the basis of knowledge acquired by reasoning from or in reference to experience. Two such items are selected here by way of example: belief that in certain states of mind and consciousness individuals can experience union with something larger or deeper than themselves, and belief that the universe we inhabit is the result of an original creative act.     

LIBERAL INDOCTRINATION AND THE PROBLEM OF COMMUNITY

Responding to claims to the contrary, this essay shows how liberal education, the education of critical exposure, indoctrinates students into a style of belief and belief formation. It argues that a common liberal view about what constitutes freedom from indoctrination is precisely the form of indoctrination feared by many conservative communitarians. While I support the style and procedures of liberal education, I argue that we cannot excise all indoctrinating components from it by semantic, logical or epistemic analyses of what indoctrination or education means.     

VALUE ORIENTATIONS IN HETEROSEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS

It is often suggested that men and women have divergent orientations toward love relationships. A questionnaire study of 130 university students demonstrated that their values about romantic relationships comprise two distinct, orthogonal dimensions reflecting concerns with intimacy and with independence. However, results challenge the stereotype that whereas women are more concerned with close-knit attachments, men are more eager to maintain personal autonomy. In actuality, no sex differences were found in attachment values, and women gave significantly more importance than did men to equal sharing and maintaining their personal autonomy. Also examined were individual and dyadic correlates of these value dimensions. Results suggest that dimensions of attachment and egalitarian autonomy provide a useful way to conceptualize individual differences in orientations toward love relationships.     

THE UNIVERSAL VERSUS THE PARTICULAR IN ECOFEMINIST ETHICS

While not a monolithic movement, ecofeminists are united in their conviction that there are important connections between the exploitation of both women and nature. They are internally divided, however, on the propriety of applying their theoretical claims and activist strategies across social contexts. This paper explores three debates within ecofeminism that largely turn on this universalist versus particularist tension: whether ecofeminist theorizing can adequately account for cultural variation; whether its common usage of essentialist rhetoric is productive or troubling; and whether resources for social activism could legitimately be culled from an assembly of heterogeneous and foreign sources. I conclude that the universalism of the women–nature connection can indeed be justified if perceived in multivalent ways, that “earthcare” or “ecomaternalist” discourse can be helpful in some contexts but harmful in others, and that selective retrieval of other cultures for the purposes of advocacy should not be ruled out as necessarily imperialistic or otherwise inappropriate.     

RATIONAL VERSUS PLAUSIBLE ACCOUNTING EQUIVALENCES IN PREFERENCE JUDGMENTS

Subjective expected utility (SEU) embodies four distinct principles of rational behavior. Although all have been called into some question empirically, the least plausible and least studied is the property that formally equivalent gambles are treated as indifferent in preference. The paper describes some results that arise when this property is sharply weakened and to some degree replaced by alternative rational and not-so-rational-assumptions. The resulting utility representations, like SEU, are weighted averages of the utilities of consequences, but with the weights dependent on more than the underlying chance event. In rank-dependent cases, which arise from a restricted assumption about formally equivalent gambles, the weights depend on the rank position of the corresponding consequence. In ank-and sign-dependent models, they depend both on the rank position of the consequence associated to the event and on whether it is a gain or a loss. The theory giving rise to the latter involves an additional primitive, namely, joint receipt of gambles, in terms of which new rational and irrational assumptions are invoked. The result generalizes prospect theory to gambles with more than a single gain and a single loss.     

INTERNAL VERSUS EXTERNAL CONTROL IN INDIA AND CANADA1

Male Indian and Canadian University students and workers were administered Rotters' I-E scale. The Indians were more internal than the Canadians on the full scale but when subdvided according to Personal Control, Control Ideology and Systems Control components, it was found that the Canadian students were more internal than the Indians students in terms of Personal Control and both Canadian students and Canadian workers were more external than their Indian counterparts in terms of Control Ideology and Systems Control. Background factors and implications for future research are noted.     

当代教育中的人文科学

意大利学者和政治家路易吉·贝林圭尔在其近作《再创造,所有人的素质教育学校》中提出了"教育和培训必须属于每一个人"的理念。他在接受《第欧根尼》法文英文版主编斯卡兰蒂诺采访时就人文科学与文化在当代教育中的作用做了深度解读。在他看来,文化与人文科学一直是同义词,文化是通过人文科学来体现的。人文科学作为一种高层次知识固有地缺乏功用性,是由精英独霸的。为了使人文科学成为属于每一个人的人文知识,我们必须想象一种教授人文知识的新方法。这个是通识教育问题,是怎样做人的问题,也是大学教育的生存问题,因为大学教育仍然过于经常地受限于各种不同学科的界限。文化绝不可以依旧为知识精英所专有,因为后者不过是对一个社会的历史发展有所贡献的行动者。文化要成为一种社会和历史力量,就必须注入到所有人群。同时,地方文化和语言必须整合进一种全球化的教育进路,人文学科要打破认同体壁垒,欧洲人必须走出去到欧洲以外的大学学习。     

北京大学学生价值观倾向的初步定量研究

本研究应用价值观研究量表中文修订本施测690名北京大学学生,结果表明,大学生中价值倾向相对强弱的顺序是:政治、审美、理论、经济、社会、宗教,并表现出性别差异。因素分析发现,存在四种价值倾向组合型式。除宗教外,其余五种价值倾向测量均有足够的效度和信度。