Rolston, Lonergan, and the Intrinsic Value of Nature

In recent metaethical debate over ways to justify the notion of intrinsic natural value, some neopragmatists have challenged realist conceptions of scientific and moral truth. Holmes Rolston defends a critical-realist epistemology as the basis for a metaphysics of projective nature and a cosmological narrative—both of which set up a historical ontology of objective natural value. Pure ecological science informs the wilderness experience of Rolston's ideal epistemic subject, the sensitive naturalist. The author argues that Rolston's account of the relation between knowing and valuing can be clarified and strengthened by appropriating Bernard Lonergan's transcendental method. Conversely, Lonergan's view of moral self-transcendence can be developed further in light of Rolston's virtue epistemology, which is embodied in the figure of the sensitive naturalist.     

Science, Human Nature, and a New Paradigm for Ethics Education

For centuries, religion and philosophy have been the primary basis for efforts to guide humans to be more ethical. However, training in ethics and religion and imparting positive values and morality tests such as those emanating from the categorical imperative and the Golden Rule have not been enough to protect humankind from its bad behaviors. To improve ethics education educators must better understand aspects of human nature such as those that lead to ??self-deception?? and ??personal bias.?? Through rationalizations, faulty reasoning and hidden bias, individuals trick themselves into believing there is little wrong with their own unethical behavior. The application of science to human nature offers the possibility of improving ethics education through better self-knowledge. The author recommends a new paradigm for ethics education in contemporary modern society. This includes the creation of a new field called ??applied evolutionary neuro-ethics?? which integrates science and social sciences to improve ethics education. The paradigm can merge traditional thinking about ethics from religious and philosophical perspectives with new ideas from applied evolutionary neuro-ethics.     

自然内在价值的哲学论证

自然内在价值的问题 ,是生态伦理学理论的基本问题 ,又是它的理论论证中疑惑最多、论证最困难的问题。我们需要把目的论、存在论和价值论统一起来 ,从“主 -客关系”统一的角度 ,进行它的哲学论证。     

伦理精神的本质及其价值

伦理精神是文化精神之一,是民族精神的一个方面。学术界在对文化精神或民族精神的研究中,通常从两个角度去把握。一个角度是直接指向文化精神和民族精神中的基本内容。例如张岱年、方克立主编的《中国文化概论》就指出,中国文化基本精神的主     

略论道教的人生价值观

一、得道成仙--道教实现人生价值的理想目标 道教继承发展了道家的人生价值观,以逍遥快乐、长生不死的神仙作为人生的理想目标,描绘了一幅充满诗情画意的人生构图,这幅图画,古往今来吸引了不少人为之倾倒.神仙形像可以说正是道教人牛观的一种折射,神仙们过的日子说到底是一种归真返朴的生活样态,道教在神仙世界中找到了自己的人生价值之所在,寄托了自我人生的理想目标.神仙自由自在,天真如婴儿,棋琴书面,潇洒似行云,或玄珠无心,或坐忘返朴,或林下论道,或海阔天空,往来无拘束,谈笑有高朋,适性忘情,圆满自足.这种神仙过的日子,也正是道十们所向往的人生境界.     

科学不端行为是科学的一种本质特性

科学不端行为在实验科学的早期就已经出现.近几十年各种科学不端行为的发生率明显增高.科学开始显示出它的“病理学”的一面.回顾历史和现实中一些科学欺诈的案例,并对其进行了社会学分析.大量事实证明:科学不端行为是科学的一种本质特性,代表了科学的“黑暗面”.对科学不端行为从科学史学、科学哲学、科学社会学以及心理学、行为科学等多学科的角度综合研究,才能达到对科学本质的全面认识.     

Einstein,Ethics and Science

In celebration of Einstein's remarkable achievements in 1905, this essay examines some of his views on the role of “intellectuals” in developing and advocating socio-economic and political positions and policies, the historical roots of his ethical views and certain aspects of his philosophy of science. As an outstanding academic and public citizen, his life and ideas continue to provide good examples of a life well-used and worth remembering.*An earlier version of this paper was presented at a regional meeting of the Royal Society of Canada, held at the University of Guelph, Ontario, May 2, 2005. I would like to thank O.P. Dwivedi for inviting me to write the paper and Deborah C. Poff for helping me clarify some ideas in it.     

Animal Mind: Science,Philosophy, and Ethics

Although 20^th-century empiricists were agnostic about animal mind and consciousness, this was not the case for their historical ancestors – John Locke, David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and, of course, Charles Darwin and George John Romanes. Given the dominance of the Darwinian paradigm of evolutionary continuity, one would not expect belief in animal mind to disappear. That it did demonstrates that standard accounts of how scientific hypotheses are overturned – i.e., by empirical disconfirmation or by exposure of logical flaws – is inadequate. In fact, it can be demonstrated that belief in animal mind disappeared as a result of a change of values, a mechanism also apparent in the Scientific Revolution. The “valuational revolution” responsible for denying animal mind is examined in terms of the rise of Behaviorism and its flawed account of the historical inevitability of denying animal mentation. The effects of the denial of animal consciousness included profound moral implications for the major uses of animals in agriculture and scientific research. The latter is particularly notable for the denial of felt pain in animals. The rise of societal moral concern for animals, however, has driven the “reappropriation of common sense” about animal thought and feeling.     

Intrinsic Value

Philosophical Studies -     

Intrinsic Value,Alternative Possibilities,and Reason

I address three issues in this paper: first, just as many have thought that there is a requirement of alternative possibilities for the truth of judgments of moral responsibility, is there reason to think that the truth of judgments of intrinsic value also presupposes our having alternatives? Second, if there is this sort of requirement for the truth of judgments of intrinsic value, is there an analogous requirement for the truth of judgments of moral obligation on the supposition that obligation supervenes on goodness? Third, if the truth of judgments of intrinsic value and those of moral obligation do presuppose our having access to alternatives, what should be said about whether determinism imperils the truth of such judgments? I defend an affirmative answer to the first question, a more guarded answer to the second, and a yet more restrained answer to the third.     

Science and Ethics: Demarcation, Holism and Logical Consequences

Abstract: I argue that attempts to demarcation ethics from science are not jeopardized by the fact that conjunctions of moral claims may have empirically verifiable logical consequences     

Naturalizing the Human or Humanizing Nature: Science, Nature and the Supernatural

The present paper challenges the narrow scientistic conception of Nature that underlies current projects of naturalization involving, say, evaluative or intentional discourse. It is more plausible to hold that science provides only a partial characterization of the natural world. I consider McDowell's articulation of a more liberal naturalism, one which recognizes autonomous normative facts about reasons, meanings and values, as genuine constituents of Nature on a more liberal conception of it. Several critics have claimed that this account is vitiated by the threat of supernaturalism. Responsiveness to normative facts is, I argue, a phenomenological datum that we have good reason to take at face value. I trace the source of the supernaturalist objection to a misreading of McDowell's perceptual analogy with respect to value and a related failing to clearly distinguish physical and logical notions of an object.     

复杂性的交互作用——科学、技术、社会与伦理

本文立足于复杂性思想,将科学、技术、社会中的复杂性进行了深入的分析.文章引用了各个领域的生动例子,解析其中不同的复杂性含义,最终将研究立足于复杂性伦理,文章进而从本体论、认识论角度对复杂性赖以生成的场景进行了分析.     

Rethinking Intrinsic Value

According to the dominant philosophical tradition, intrinsic value must depend solely upon intrinsic properties. By appealing to various examples, however, I argue that we should at least leave open the possibility that in some cases intrinsic value may be based in part on relational properties. Indeed, I argue that we should even be open to the possibility that an object's intrinsic value may sometimes depend (in part) on its instrumental value. If this is right, of course, then the traditional contrast between intrinsic value and instrumental value is mistaken.     

Normand Laurendeau: Spirituality and Science at the Apex of His Life's Vision

Abstract

This article discusses the noteworthy approach of a twentieth-century Muslim scholar, Bediüzzaman Said Nursi (1877–1960), to the issue of Qur'an and science. Nursi points out the “problem of authoritarianism” in both religious and secularist discourses, arguing that many of the clashes between faith and reason result from a misunderstanding of spheres of expertise. Nursi also argues that even at the height of scientific and technological development, the Qur'an remains indispensable in humankind interpreting the world around them. Nursi's case illustrates that the task of relating the modern science and the Qur'an requires attention to their interpretive dimensions.     

The Qualitative Revolution and Psychology: Science,Politics, and Ethics

Growing interest in qualitative research methods and methodological pluralism in psychology since the 1990s is placed in the historical contexts of long-standing philosophical and scientific rationales and the more recent “qualitative revolution” in other social sciences that began in the 1970s. An examination of areas in which qualitative methods have become most strongly established—applied, feminist, and multicultural psychologies—suggests practical and social motivations as primary and as energizing renewed expression of previously ignored ontological, epistemological, and scientific reasoning in the turn to qualitative methods. Methodological diversification in the arenas of human suffering, women's issues, and cultural politics is traced to psychologists' deeply rooted ethical obligations. The existential philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas articulates an implicit ethics at the heart psychology's increasing acceptance of qualitative methods and provides an understanding of how the emerging methodological diversity can contribute to social justice and human liberation as well as to an enhancement of rigorous scientific knowledge.