制造疾病：工具理性的泛滥

工具理性的泛滥导致医疗的商品化和技术主体化,产生“制造疾病”的现象层出不穷。究其原因概括为：其一,求“效率”过程无意中“制造疾病”;其二,为追求利益最大化有意“制造疾病”,将科学简单地等同于数据,认为科学可以解释一切疾病,无视患者自愈的能力,将“正常”的生命现象视为疾病;其三,视人为物,为社会管理“制造疾病”。医者应将自己的工具理性,约束在为患者谋利的价值理性之下,弘扬医学人文去遏制制造疾病的恶行。

     

“基因编辑婴儿”事件的工具理性批判

工具理性在利用技术手段达到技术目的的过程中创造了支撑现代社会的技术和物质。但工具理性也因过度重视技术和“去情感化”、“对象化”等特征忽视人的价值意义。在众多被工具理性主义渗透、强力冲击的领域中,使用基因编辑技术对人类胚胎细胞按照既定目标进行编辑就是被工具理性控制的例子。将人类胚胎视为研究对象,崇拜唯技术论、机械思维主导、道德情感缺场,展现社会责任虚化,导致社会信任危机。把作为主体的人客体化为试验对象进行基因人为修改试验,违背法律规定,挑战伦理界限,是未能有效引导工具理性导致的技术事故。     

Instrumental rationality in psychopathy: implications from learning tasks

Whether psychopathic offenders are practically rational has attracted philosophical attention. The problem is relevant in theoretical discussions in moral psychology and in discussions concerning the appropriate social response to the crimes of these individuals. We argue that classical and current experiments concerning the instrumental learning in psychopaths cannot directly support the conclusion that they have impaired instrumental rationality, construed as the ability to transfer motivation by means-ends reasoning. We claim that these experiments appear to show that psychopaths in certain circumstances are not aware of the relevant means for their ends. Moreover, we suggest how further empirical research could help to settle the issue.     

Epistemic Rationality

Many epistemologists and philosophers of science, especially those with “naturalist” inclinations, argue that if there is to be any such thing as normativity or rationality in these domains, it must be instrumental—roughly, a matter of goal satisfaction—rather than something involving normative “oughts” that are independent of the satisfaction of our epistemic, cognitive, or other ends. This paper argues that while such an instrumental conception of epistemic rationality is perfectly respectable, even insofar as it concerns specifically epistemic ends, it cannot be the whole story about such normativity. Rather, it must be accompanied by a “categorical,” goal‐independent sort of normativity that cannot be reduced to instrumental rationality, both because instrumental rationality itself depends on a noninstrumental relationship between a belief/claim/theory and the evidence that renders it rational, and because the epistemic rationality of many beliefs is independent of the goals of their believers.     

Instrumentalism about practical reason: not by default

Instrumentalism is the view that all requirements of practical reason can be derived from the instrumental principle, that is, from the claim that one ought to take the suitable means to one's ends. Rationalists, by contrast, hold that there are requirements of practical reason that concern the normative acceptability of ends. To the extent that rationalists put forward these requirements in addition to the instrumental principle, rationalism might seem to go beyond instrumentalism in its normative commitments. This is why it is sometimes thought that rationalism is stronger than instrumentalism in a way that entails that instrumentalism is the default view, while rationalists carry the burden of proof. In this paper, I explore and discuss different ways of spelling out this idea. I argue that rationalism is not stronger than instrumentalism in a way that has implications for matters of justification and differences in prima facie defensibility of the two sorts of views.     

What the Liar Taught Achilles

Zeno's paradoxes of motion and the semantic paradoxes of the Liar have long been thought to have metaphorical affinities. There are, in fact, isomorphisms between variations of Zeno's paradoxes and variations of the Liar paradox in infinite-valued logic. Representing these paradoxes in dynamical systems theory reveals fractal images and provides other geometric ways of visualizing and conceptualizing the paradoxes.     

Resilience and Rationality

In this article, I consider the relationship between rationality and resilience. First, I outline six responses to life’s adversities: (a) a true disturbed response; (b) a feigned disturbed response; (c) a feigned indifferent response; (d) a true healthy response; (e) a feigned healthy response; and (f) a mixed response. These responses underpin two rational resilience credos, which will be then outlined: an ideal rational resilience credo and a realistic rational resilience credo. The implications of these credos for coaching will be explored.     

Rationality and Judgment

Abstract: Philosophical/epistemic theories of rationality differ over the role of judgment in rational argumentation. According to the “classical model” of rationality, rational justification is a matter of conformity with explicit rules or principles. Critics of the classical model, such as Harold Brown and Trudy Govier, argue that the model is subject to insuperable difficulties. They propose, instead, that rationality be understood, ultimately, in terms of judgment rather than rules. In this article I respond to Brown's and Govier's criticisms of the classical model, and to the “judgment model” they propose in its place. I argue that that model is unable both to distinguish between rational and irrational judgment and to avoid recourse to rules, and is therefore inadequate as an account of rationality, critical thinking, or argument appraisal. More positively, I argue that an adequate account of rationality must include a place for both rules and judgment.     

Lewis Carroll and psychoanalysis: why nothing adds up in wonderland

Each generation of psychoanalyst has found different things to value and sometimes to censure in Lewis Carroll’s remarkable fiction and flights of fancy. But what does Carroll’s almost ‘surrealist’ perspective in the Alice stories tell us about the rituals and symbols that govern life beyond Wonderland and Looking‐Glass World? Arguing that Carroll’s strong interest in meaning and nonsense in these and later works helps make the world strange to readers, the better to show it off‐kilter, this essay focuses on Jacques Lacan’s Carroll – the writer–logician who stressed, as Lacan did, the difficulty and price of adapting to the symbolic order. By reconsidering Lacan’s 1966 homage to the eccentric Victorian, I argue that Carroll’s insight into meaning and interpretation remains of key interest to psychoanalysts intent on hearing all that he had to say about psychic life.     

Infinite Epistemic Regresses and Internalism

This article seeks to state, first, what traditionally has been assumed must be the case in order for an infinite epistemic regress to arise. It identifies three assumptions. Next it discusses Jeanne Peijnenburg's and David Atkinson's setting up of their argument for the claim that some infinite epistemic regresses can actually be completed and hence that, in addition to foundationalism, coherentism, and infinitism, there is yet another solution (if only a partial one) to the traditional epistemic regress problem. The article argues that Peijnenburg and Atkinson fail to address the traditional regress problem, as they don't adopt all of the three assumptions that underlie the traditional regress problem. It also points to a problem in the notion of making probable that Peijnenburg and Atkinson use in their account of justification.     

Rationality, Reason and the History of Thought

Philosophers over the course of the last century, including Edmund Husserl, Chaim Perelman, and Jacques Derrida, have attempted to unravel the tangled relationship between the rational and the reasonable in order to understand how the history of thought progresses. Critical political theorists, including Michel Foucault and Ernesto Laclau have also investigated this issue from a range of perspectives, especially as it relates to the relationship between ideational limits and their transgression and the universal and the particular. This essay compares these perspectives to locate the rational dimensions of the reasonable, and to relate that “meta-reason” to the irrational and unreasonable aspects of identity formation and the unfolding of world history.     

Happiness,Rationality, Autonomy and the Good Life

The paper starts with a general discussion of the concepts of happiness and the good life. I argue that there is a conceptual core of happiness which has to do with one’s life as a whole. I discuss affective and attitude or life satisfaction views of happiness and indicate problems faced by those views. I introduce my own view, the life plan view, which sees happiness as the ongoing realizing of global desires of the person. I argue that on such a view one’s life could be happy without a high level of rationality or a high level of autonomy; such rationality and autonomy are not built into the concept of happiness. So while happiness is a final value, and good for the person, it is not the only final value. Rationality and autonomy are also final values and, where they exist, are good as ends for the person, part of the good life.     

Gauthier and the Capacity for Morality

In Morals by Agreement, David Gauthier tries to provide a justification of morality from morally neutral premises within the constraints of an instrumental conception of reason. But his reliance on this narrow conception of reason creates problems, for it suggests that moral motivation is self-interested. However, Gauthier holds that to act morally is to act for the sake of morality and others, not oneself. An individual who so acts has what he calls an affective capacity for morality. He attempts to reconcile the tension between the self-interested account of moral behaviour and the affective capacity for morality by showing that the latter could develop from the former without violating the constraints of instrumental rationality. I argue, first, that his account is incomplete and assumes what it has to demonstrate; and, second, that this cannot be remedied with any plausibility. Finally, I argue that Gauthier covertly relies on a substantive claim about human good that is inconsistent with the instrumental conception of reason. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

经济人信念:自利与理性的特点及其不同作用

在新冠肺炎疫情期间,调查分析了1074名普通民众的经济人信念特点,及其对三类心理行为(自利取向的变量:物质主义;社会取向的变量:财富价值观、财经伦理观、关系投资、捐赠行为、一般信任;中性变量:自由市场理念、主观幸福感)的影响.结果发现:(1)经济人信念的自利与理性两个维度相对独立;(2)男性在自利与理性维度上的得分均高...     

横向交往还是纵向交往?——工具性交往对社会资本的影响

本文提出了组织内员工社会资本的构建过程,探究了员工工具性交往的风格,并检验了横向交往和纵向交往两种工具性交往对员工社会资本的影响。研究1通过对20位管理者和员工的访谈分析,阐述了横向交往和纵向交往两种工具性交往风格,初步构建了社会资本构建过程的理论框架,研究2基于对12个部门整体网络数据的回归分析,进一步验证了两种工具性交往对网络中心性的影响。回归分析显示,横向交往对员工的网络中心性具有正向的作用;横向交往调节了纵向交往对网络中心性的倒U型影响。即,当员工表现出横向交往以及适度的纵向交往时,员工的网络中心性最高。本研究有助于深入理解企业中的员工社会资本形成机制,并对如何构建和谐有效的员工关系具有较强的实践启示。     

Morality, Self-Interest, and Two Kinds of Prudential Practical Rationality

In this article it is assumed that human goodness is to be judged with respect to how well one does at practical reasoning. It is acknowledged that (1) there is a difference between moral practical reasoning (MPR) and prudential practical reasoning (PPR) and (2) what these would recommend sometimes conflict. A distinction is then made between absolute PPR and relative PPR and it is argued that doing well at absolute PPR is always consistent with MPR. It is also argued that since it is more reasonable to assess prudential practical rationality in terms of the absolute standard than the relative standard, there is no conflict between the demands of MPR (morality) and PPR (self-interest).

Rationality and bounded information in repeated games, with application to the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma

Actions in a repeated game can in principle depend on all previous outcomes. Given this vast policy space, human players may often be forced to use heuristics that base actions on incomplete information, such as the outcomes of only the most recent trials. Here it is proven that such bounded rationality is often fully rational, in that the optimal policy based on some limited information about the game's history will be universally optimal (i.e., within the full policy space), provided that one's opponents are restricted to using this same information. It is then shown how this result allows explicit calculation of subgame-perfect equilibria (SPEs) for any repeated or stochastic game. The technique is applied to the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma for the case of 1-back memory. Two classes of SPEs are derived, which exhibit varying degrees of (individually rational) cooperation as a result of repeated interaction.     

Rhetoric and the Reception Theory of Rationality in the Work of Two Buddhist Philosophers

Although rhetoric is not a category of ancient Indian philosophy, this paper argues that Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla, 2 eighth-century Indian Buddhist philosophers, can nonetheless be seen to embrace a rhetorical conception of rationality. That is, while these thinkers are strong proponents of rational analysis and philosophical argumentation as tools for attaining certainty, they also uphold the contingent nature of all such processes. Drawing on the categories of the New Rhetoric, this paper argues that these Buddhist thinkers understand philosophical argumentation to be directed at a universal audience of rational beings, where this universal audience is not an actual audience but a rhetorical one constructed through the author’s particular and historically contingent conception of what counts as rational. A reception theory of rationality is one that holds that the rationality of an argument depends upon its acceptance by a rational audience. When philosophers recognize the historically contingent nature of what counts as rational, they can embrace a reception theory of rationality that neither reduces the rational to mere opinion nor restricts it to a single, absolute, and timeless standard.