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Science and Engineering Ethics -     

十年坚持话责任

到上一期为止,《科学与无神论》杂志已经走过了十年路程。如果说十年坚持宣传无神论的历程能够说明点什么,那就是本期两篇论文的题目：“宣传科学无神论责任重于泰山”,而“《科学与无神论》的创刊势在必行”。     

考古队员古墓开启祭拜仪式令人震惊

《北京青年报》2006年12月27日报道,南京市博物馆考古队员开启了疑似秦桧墓的西边墓室。“墓室开启前,发掘现场最先映入人们眼帘的是一     

The stroop effect: It is not the robust phenomenon that you have thought it to be

Five experiments demonstrate that context has a powerful effect on the ease with which people can name (Experiments 1-3) or categorize (Experiments 4-5) a stimulus while ignoring another stimulus, irrelevant or conflicting with the target. Selectivity of attention to the target dimension was gauged through Stroop and Garner effects. When the stimulus values along the target dimension and the to-be-ignored dimension were correlated over the experimental trials, large effects of Stroop and Garner influenced performance. However, when random allocation of values created zero dimensional correlation, the Stroop effects vanished. These results imply that when the nominally irrelevant dimension is in fact correlated with the relevant dimension, participants then attend to the irrelevant dimension and thus open themselves up to Stroop interference. Another variable of context, the relative salience of the constituent dimensions, also affected performance with the more discriminable dimension disrupting selective attention to the less discriminable dimension. The results demonstrate the importance of context in engendering the failure of selective attention and challenge traditional automaticity accounts of the Stroop effect.     

相信"过年吃药不吉利"险些丧命

有一些人出于不良的目的,宣称:患病不吃药,烧香念佛好。当然,若是邪教的目的就更险恶了!曾发生过这么一件事情:辽宁省盘锦地区,在民间传出“过年吃药不吉利”的谣言,并称,吃一次药,就一年到头药离不了口,折腾一年,一年在苦海中煎熬。这种显而易见的谣言竟还有人相信,在短短的两天时间内,一家医院就先后抢救了11位心     

A note on steady states and the weber-fechner law

The steady state of a simple reaction system has been shown to have some of the properties of a psychophysical discrimination system, including the possibility of deducing a generalized Weber-Fechner Law, both in integral form and in difference form. The Weber ratio so deduced is not constant, and its dependence on stimulus intensity is exhibited. The dependence of the difference limen on the internal threshold is discussed; it is found that in general there is a finite value of this threshold for which response is impossible. This critical threshold is lower for higher values of the reference stimulus intensity. Similarly, it is shown that the difference limen and the Weber ratio, for a fixed value of the threshold, become infinite (i.e., discrimination is impossible) for a value of the stimulus intensity which in general is finite.     

元伦理学家认为不能从“是”推出“应该”吗

摩尔所谓"自然主义谬误"批判的是将"善"这种非自然的属性直接等同于快乐、进化以及实存等这些非价值属性的自然物,但他并不否认可以从这些具体的善事物或手段善中推导出善本身;斯蒂文森的温和情感主义虽然强调态度分歧对于信念分析的根本性和相对独立性,但并不否认部分态度分歧对于信念分歧的依赖性和共存性;黑尔作为元伦理学向规范伦理学复归的一个重要代表,更是有意弥合事实与价值的裂痕,强调道德语言的普遍规定性,强调作为社会事实的社会制度对价值评价的决定性和基础性作用。因此,通常所认为的元伦理学关于不能从"是"推出"应该"的结论,实际上是对元伦理学观点的误读,而这种误读也同样发生在休谟身上。     

从"心灵感应"说起

小A与小B是我的左右邻居,时年都已十八岁。暑假期间,两个小伙子结伴进深山采药赚学费钱。小A的一位远房亲戚居住在深山,他们寄居在那里。去后十多天,村里其他进山采药人回来告知,深山绝壁岩下发现了一具采药少年的尸体。小A和小B两家同时着急起来,一个电话打到寄宿那家,反馈来的信息是小A寄宿于此,小B两天前不知去向,看     

释“易，所以会天道人道者也”

《郭店楚简·语丛》"易,所以会天道、人道者也",大概是现存最早和最明确表达"天人合一"思想的命题。《易》的"所以会天道、人道",表明"天"、"人"之间的关系实为一内在关系,二者是不离相即的,而西方哲学则以"外在关系"立论。《周易》是中国最古老探讨"所以会天道、人道"的经典。     

『鬼』怕书的故事

我的童年是在没有电灯的时光里度过的.记得,当时如果是碰上连月光都没有的晚上,村里一片漆黑,孩子们除了搞一些捉迷藏、老鹰捉小鸡和砍龙纱尾的游戏以外,就只好去听大人们讲故事了.讲的又大都是"鬼古",听起来很有味,可听完了就不敢走了.为什么?因为讲的大多是本地"鬼",且越讲越近,直到讲到你屋边,有时甚至讲进你屋里,你还敢回家吗?……后来阿爸就慢慢地发现了问题,先是再也不准我们去听那些胡编乱造的"鬼古",一边就给我们讲"鬼怕书"的故事,也不知阿爸是为了鼓励我们用功读书,还是为了驱鬼镇邪,以抵消"鬼古"的负面影响.     

"伦理管理悖论"及其争论

前言 兴起于上世纪七八十年代的经济伦理学,经过近30年的发展,已经成为"凡有人的地方都被承认的全球现象"了.     

Animal Pain: What It is and Why It Matters

The basis of having a direct moral obligation to an entity is that what we do to that entity matters to it. The ability to experience pain is a sufficient condition for a being to be morally considerable. But the ability to feel pain is not a necessary condition for moral considerability. Organisms could have possibly evolved so as to be motivated to flee danger or injury or to eat or drink not by pain, but by “pangs of pleasure” that increase as one fills the relevant need or escapes the harm. In such a world, “mattering” would be positive, not negative, but would still be based in sentience and awareness. In our world, however, the “mattering” necessary to survival is negative—injuries and unfulfilled needs ramify in pain. But physical pain is by no means the only morally relevant mattering—fear, anxiety, loneliness, grief, certainly do not equate to varieties of physical pain, but are surely forms of “mattering.” An adequate morality towards animals would include a full range of possible matterings unique to each kind of animal, what I, following Aristotle, call “telos”. Sometimes not meeting other aspects of animal nature matter more to the animal than does physical pain. “Negative mattering” means all actions or events that harm animals—from frightening an animal to removing its young unnaturally early, to keeping it so it is unable to move or socialize. Physical pain is perhaps the paradigmatic case of “negative mattering”, but only constitutes a small part of what the concept covers. “Positive mattering” would of course encompass all states that are positive for the animal. An adequate ethic for animals takes cognizance of both kinds. The question arises as to how animals value death as compared with pain. Human cognition is such that it can value long-term future goals and endure short-run negative experiences for the sake of achieving them. In the case of animals, however, there is no evidence, either empirical or conceptual, that they have the capability to weigh future benefits or possibilities against current misery. We have no reason to believe that an animal can grasp the notion of extended life, let alone choose to trade current suffering for it. Pain may well be worse for animals than for humans, as they cannot rationalize its acceptance by appeal to future life without pain. How can we know that animals experience all or any of the negative or positive states we have enumerated above? The notion that we needed to be agnostic or downright atheistic about animal mentation, including pain, because we could not verify it through experience, became a mainstay of what I have called “scientific ideology”, the uncriticized dogma taught to young scientists through most of the 20th century despite its patent ignoring of Darwinian phylogenetic continuity. Together with the equally pernicious notion that science is “value-free”, and thus has no truck with ethics, this provided the complete justification for hurting animals in science without providing any pain control. This ideology could only be overthrown by federal law. Ordinary common sense throughout history, in contradistinction to scientific ideology, never denied that animals felt pain. Where, then, does the denial of pain and other forms of mattering come from if it is inimical to common sense? It came from the creation of philosophical systems hostile to common sense and salubrious to a scientific, non-commonsensical world view. Reasons for rejecting this philosophical position are detailed. In the end, then, there are no sound reasons for rejecting knowledge of animal pain and other forms of both negative and positive mattering in animals. Once that hurdle is cleared, science must work assiduously to classify, understand, and mitigate all instances of negative mattering occasioned in animals by human use, as well as to understand and maximize all modes of positive mattering.     

"It was never that bad": biased recall of grief and long-term adjustment to the death of a spouse

At 6 months following the death of their spouse, 37 participants reported their grief-related symptoms and thoughts, and then, approximately 4.5 years later, they attempted to recall how they felt at the time of the 6-month report. Although participants were far less distressed at recall than initially, they recalled their 6-month grief rather accurately. Participants did however overestimate prior grief-related intrusive ideation. Participant's current level of grief predicted what they recalled slightly better than the actual initial grief. Conversely, what they recalled predicted current levels of grief across various measures. Participants whose grief diminished relatively little over time tended to overestimate prior grief more. The retrospective reappraisal that one's past grief was not severe may indicate effective coping.     

Qualia that It Is Right to Quine*

Dennett (1988) provides a much discussed argument for the nonexistence of qualia, as conceived by philosophers like Block, Chalmers, Loar and Searle. My goal in this paper is to vindicate Dennett's argument, construed in a certain way. The argument supports the claim that qualia are constitutively representational. Against Block and Chalmers, the argument rejects the detachment of phenomenal from information‐processing consciousness; and against Loar and Searle, it defends the claim that qualia are constitu‐tively representational in an externalist understanding of this. The core of the argument is contained in section 3. In the first part, I contrast a minimal conception of qualia, relative to which their existence is not under dispute, with the sort of view to which I will object. In the second part I set the stage by presenting the facts about (minimal) qualia on which a Dennett‐like argument can be based.     

宣传无神论的必要性

《任继愈宗教论集》于近日出版,我们选取其中一段文字发表,以飨读者。该文最初发表于1988年,载于宁夏人民出版社《宗教·道德·文化》一书。全文标题为《关于宗教与无神论问题》。本文是其中第三段的一部分。