生殖系基因治疗技术的伦理论争及其核心问题

目前关于生殖系基因治疗技术的伦理争论仍然十分激烈.这些争论的核心环节在于"父母生育一个健康血缘后代的需要"如何获得道德合理性论证,而目前很多研究在某种程度上忽视了这一问题,因而既不能解释这些伦理争论产生的原因,也不能为解决这一问题提供有效的指导.     

重视干细胞研究中的伦理问题

黄禹锡的"卵子风波"反映了干细胞研究领域中伦理规范的缺位.分析了针对干细胞研究的种种伦理争论,并且指出,由于与人类的尊严和幸福密切相关,生物医学领域的研究不能回避伦理问题,相关的伦理研究必须与科学研究同步进行.     

人权:工程伦理学的价值基准

目前,随着当代工程对人类生活及其环境造成的广泛而深刻的影响,工程伦理领域中的功利、道义、责任、权利等各层面的矛盾冲突日益尖锐。工程伦理学内部对这些问题的相关争论亦随之愈演愈烈,极难达成伦理共识。归纳起来,学者们主要围绕如下两个密切相关的问题展开争论:工程伦理学应     

论中国特点的经济伦理研究

经济全球化正在推动“全球经济伦理”研究的兴起。在普遍重视“全球经济伦理”之时 ,我们应注意中国特点的经济伦理研究。因为 :( 1 )中国市场经济还处在初级阶段 ,经济全球化并不能改变这一现实。 ( 2 )目前在“全球经济伦理”中占主导地位的西方经济伦理成果是在西方环境中产生的 ,中国经济伦理问题具有不同的特点 ,因而不可能照搬西方对这些问题的规范成果。 ( 3)某些被当代西方经济伦理学否定的价值取向恰正是现在促进中国经济增长的动因 ,我们不能简单地加以否定 ,而有一个如何恰当地肯定和规范的问题。所以 ,弄清中国经济伦理问题的特…     

利用CRISPR/Cas9介导基因编辑人类三核受精卵伦理问题探讨

以广州中山大学黄军就博士2015年发表在ProteinCell杂志上一篇引起广泛关注和伦理争议的论文为背景,分析了使用CRISPR/Cas9介导基因编辑人类三核受精卵存在的伦理问题,探讨了相关研究最终可能导致优生和定制胎儿的后果,评价了此项研究引发的国际国内伦理争论,分析了"先干起来,干了再说"的非理性观点。认为现阶段应对相关研究加以规范,在技术尚不成熟的情况下,不能随意开展人类生殖细胞和人类胚胎基因编辑基础研究,更不能推广到临床研究。     

应用伦理学难点问题反思

目前国内的应用伦理学研究可谓一派繁荣,研究队伍不断扩大,研究成果不断涌现.学术界对科技伦理、医学伦理、环境伦理等不同领域中的问题的研究日趋深入,制定出了种种不同形式的道德原则和规范.然而,深入一步加以考察就会发现,这些原则和规范有的只限于纸上谈兵,难以落实于生活实践;有的过于具体,只能被看作是某一职能部门的"纪律"要求,不能达到构成人们道德自律的伦理原理.因此,在应用伦理学表面繁荣的景象背后,已经显示出它的难点问题,只有通过更深入的理论研究,有效地解决这些理论难点,应用伦理学才能得到健康发展,而不至于成为昙花一现的过眼云烟.     

反思科技伦理悖论

科学是什么?技术是什么?科技与伦理(道德)的关系如何?这是学术界长期争论的问题.自从事实与价值的关系问题即休谟问题提出以后,西方科学哲学沿着实证分析的传统演进,结果"是"与"应当"的"裂隙"越来越大,形成了根深蒂固的二分信念.社会实践,特别是飞速发展的科技实践,不断展现"是"与"应当"之间的对立统一关系.受道德悖论[1]的启发,本文选择科技伦理悖论这一特定的视角,根据"是"与"应当"相统一的原则,以审视科技伦理的变革及后果.     

重视干细胞研究中的伦理问题

黄禹锡的“卵子风波”反映了干细胞研究领域中伦理规范的缺位。分析了针对干细胞研究的种种伦理争论,并且指出,由于与人类的尊严和幸福密切相关,生物医学领域的研究不能回避伦理问题,相关的伦理研究必须与科学研究同步进行。     

临床均势原则辨析——对临床科研方法的伦理思考

随机对照试验作为一种评价新疗法的可靠设计方法,开始逐渐被世界范围内的临床医生所广泛接受和采用,成为目前最重要的试验方法之一。RCT的运用应该遵循一定的伦理准则,即临床均势原则。围绕临床均势原则这一主题,对随机对照试验的方法论进行较为深入的伦理学思考。并对临床均势的内涵、伦理意义,以及这一伦理要求在实践中所引发的各种伦理争论加以探讨。     

马里坦谈法哲学和自然法

法哲学的难题,就象道德哲学和政治哲学的难题一样,在当今文化状况中具有头等重要性。有关自然法、道德价值和伦理虚无主义的争论,显露出各种文化的最终前提,而哲学的主导倾向则揭示出我们的文明所处的危机的阶段。在着手讨论法哲学的某些问题时,我们不可忘记这样一种背景,即目前法律界在承认伦理价值问题上处于困难的危机。这种状况之种种加剧了的形式导致了伦理虚无主义,按照这种伦理虚无主义,一切伦理抉择都是同等的。如果我们认不清这一     

Testing doses? Environmental health stakes associated with nanotechnologies

In this contribution, we analyse how nanoscience and nanotechnology have given birth to an important environmental health controversy regarding the potential sanitary dangers of engineered nanomaterials. We show how this controversy is part of a larger picture, made of a series of social and scientific disputes about the effects of man made chemicals on the human body. We show how these disputes have contributed throughout the 20th century to the emergence and the transformation of toxicology as a scientific field, and to test the robustness of the dose paradigm that constitues the cornerstone of this discipline. We suggest that the contemporary emergence of a new scientific field known as "nanotoxicolgy" must be interpreted as a successful adaptation of this paradigm to the specific toxicological questions raised by engineered nanomaterials.     

Towards a Consensus About the Role of Empathy in Interpersonal Understanding

In recent years, there has been a great deal of controversy in the philosophy of mind, developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience both about how to conceptualize empathy and about the connections between empathy and interpersonal understanding. Ideally, we would first establish a consensus about how to conceptualize empathy, and then analyze the potential contribution of empathy to interpersonal understanding. However, it is not at all clear that such a consensus will soon be forthcoming, given that different people have fundamentally conflicting intuitions about the concept of empathy. Thus, instead of trying to resolve this controversy, I will try to show that a fair amount of consensus is within reach about how empathy can be a source of interpersonal understanding even in the absence of a consensus about how to conceptualize empathy. As we shall see, the main controversy concerns a few phenomena that some researchers view as necessary conditions of empathy, but which others view either as merely characteristic features or as consequences of empathy. My strategy will be to try to show how empathy can generate interpersonal understanding by virtue of these phenomena—regardless of whether one chooses to conceptualize them as necessary conditions of empathy.     

From Classroom to Controversy: Conflict in the Teaching of Religion

What happens when a class assignment becomes a source of controversy? How do we respond? What do we learn? By describing the controversy surrounding an assignment on religion and representation, this article examines conflict's productive role in teaching about New Religious Movements (NRMs) and religion. It suggests that we consider how our personal and institutional dispositions toward conflict influence our pedagogies. Moreover, it urges us to consider how teaching conflicts within and/or between disciplines can enhance our learning objectives and stimulate students' ability to think critically.     

The Contested Publics of the UK GM Controversy: A Tale of Entanglement and Purification

Ten years ago the UK held one of the largest, most complex and politically charged exercises in the turn towards public engagement in the governance of the biosciences. Called ‘GM Nation’ this experiment arose as an attempt to mediate public concerns in the run-up to a government decision on whether to allow some varieties of GM crops to be commercially cultivated in the UK. Formed to mediate a controversy, ‘GM Nation’ itself became a focus of controversy, with claims that many of its public participants were already engaged in the GM issue and were thus not representative of a general public. In this way, the category of the public became a contested category, with at least two different versions of the public featuring in the GM controversy. Particularly important was the contrast between engaged or issue publics that emerged entangled in and increasingly familiar with the objects and issues of the controversy, and a general public, identified through its distance and disengagement from the GM issue. These different forms of public were articulated through different modes of engagement ranging from engaged publics found in hybrid forums such as local village meetings, to versions of the general public brought into being in some of the closed parts of ‘GM Nation’. Throughout all this, a wider public institutional architecture, improvised to govern the controversy, became the site of complex boundary work that attempted to separate science from politics, a feature that conditioned how these different versions of public would be articulated and received.     

Darwinians at war Bateson's place in histories of Darwinism

The controversy between Biometricians and Mendelians has been called an “inexplicable embarrassment” since it revolved around the mistaken identification of Mendelian genetics with non-Darwinian saltationism, a mistake traced back to the non-Darwinian William Bateson, who introduced Mendelian analysis to British science. The following paper beings to unravel this standard account of the controversy by raising a simple question: Given that Bateson embraced evolution by natural selection and that he studied the causes of variation within a broadly Darwinian framework of problems and questions, how are we to understand the claim that he was a non-Darwinian? A brief survey of possible responses to this question is followed by an alternative proposal: the controversy will be considered as a struggle among Darwinians about the future course of Darwinism. On this account, Darwin's own work led to the juncture at which Mendelians and Biometricians parted company, indeed, the Origin itself prepared the divergent methodological stances subsequently adopted by Bateson and his antagonists. The inexplicable embarrassment is dissolved through the parsimonious reconstruction of the profound substantive conflict between Biometricians and Mendelians as a chapter in the articulation and differentiation of the Darwinian research programme.     

Rethinking Bivalence

Classical logic rests on the assumption that there are two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive truth values. This assumption has always been surrounded by philosophical controversy. Doubts have been raised about its legitimacy, and hence about the legitimacy of classical logic. Usually, the assumption is stated in the form of a general principle, namely the principle that every proposition is either true or false. Then, the philosophical controversy is often framed in terms of the question whether every proposition is either true or false. The main purpose of the paper is to show that there is something wrong in this way of putting things. The point is that the common way of understanding the controversial assumption is misconceived, as it rests on a wrong picture of propositions. In the first part of the paper I outline this picture and I argue against it. In the second part I sketch a different picture of propositions and I suggest how this leads to conceive the issue of classical logic in different terms.     

Imputation as Attribution: Union with Christ, Reification and Justification as Declarative Word

Calvin's integration of the christological features of the eucharistic controversy with soteriological questions in his refutation of Andreas Osiander marks a critical development in Reformed theology. In this article, that development is extended further in reconsideration of the nature of imputation as a linguistic action. It is argued that imputation is a soteriological corollary of the christological idea of attribution. Imputation thus conceived clarifies not only how it is located within the doctrine of union with Christ, but how that union and imputation provide clarity in ongoing discussions about reification of sin and righteousness as well as the nature of justification as a declarative word.     

The (sexual) politics of evolution: popular controversy in the late 20th-century United Kingdom

This article outlines the major threads of controversy around the emerging subject of evolutionary psychology in the U.K. mass media during the 1990s. Much of this controversy centered on the role of evolution in shaping human gender roles and sexualities, contributing to the subject's mass appeal. This case is used to illustrate the argument that in theorizing about evolution and humans, "human nature" and "human origins" both provide a flexible resource for making arguments about how people do and should relate to one another and that such theorizing is therefore reflective of how power is held (and contested) in society. In the case of popular evolutionary psychology, shifts in the U.K. political landscape during the 1990s combined with changes in gender and sexual politics to create a situation where evolutionary theorizing about humans became more acceptable than it had been in the past. This was particularly true in left-liberal media, where a newfound compatibility between certain aspects of Darwinism and feminism created a very different space for debating gender, sexuality, and the role of human nature in today's society.     

Politics on the move: The democratic control of the design of sustainable technologies

This article examines how “design rationality” could help remediate the controversy over environmental degradation. Drawing on the case of designing sustainable forms of traffic management, it argues that this will only be effective to a limited degree. “Policy conversation” does indeed take place but within a coalition of actions that pushes a particular set of solutions. This facilitates due procedure but erodes political legitimacy, thus potentially reproducing an intractable controversy. The article suggests a five-phase model of democratic control as an alternative. He primarily works in the field of sociology of technology and environment. He is presently involved in a research project on the social redefinition of mobility, analyzing the translation of sustainable development into new institutional arrangements.     

Multiple levels of inquiry in cognitive science

Summary Gibsonian ecological psychology, symbolic information processing, and connectionist information processing are frequently construed as three competing paradigms or research traditions, each seeking dominance in experimental psychology and in cognitive science generally. There is an important element of truth in this perspective, and any adequate account of the development of experimental psychology over the past 30 years would have to examine seriously how the various conceptual frameworks, experimental endeavors, and social institutions have figured in this conflict. But the goal of this paper is not to characterize the historical dynamics within experimental psychology and cognitive science; rather, it is to consider what sorts of rapprochement is possible. Rapprochement, however, is not sought simply for its own sake or out of an a priori conviction that scientific enterprises should be unified. Spirited controversy between competing traditions is often an important component of progess (Laudan, 1977). Rapprochement has a purpose when alternative theoretical traditions have reached a point when each confronts serious shortcomings that can best be overcome by incorporating alternative perspectives. In this paper I try to show that this is the situation that exists in experimental psychology and cognitve science generally with respect to the three traditions enumerated above. I first explore how cognitive inquiry directed at internal procedures for processing information could benefit from a detailed study of the context of cognition, including insights provided by the Gibsonian tradition. Second, I examine the current controversy between symbolic and connectionist approaches and address the question of what contributions each offers to the other. Finally, I offer a framework in which multiple levels of inquiry in cognitve science can be related.