Reflections on Ethics in Journal Publications

This paper addresses a number of ethical issues that arise in the context of journal publishing. These include both issues for the researcher and issues for the editors and editorial board members of journals.     

放弃治疗的法律和伦理学思考

调查放弃治疗后死亡病案629例,主要病因为恶性肿瘤和脑血管病.目前在临床工作中,对疾病晚期和临终期的患者,放弃治疗已成为家属和患者本人重要的选择之一.医患双方应该尊重医学科学,理性对待放弃治疗,履行双方应尽的义务,维护双方合法权力,维护法律的尊严.医院应该加强管理,正确处理放弃治疗的相关问题,更好地服务于患者和社会.     

生态伦理背景中的健康道德凝思

健康道德是关于人类健康的一种道德观念.在生态伦理视域中健康道德观念被拓展、更新.它把人的健康、社会的健康和自然界的健康共同作为研究对象.它提出生态伦理视域下的健康道德具有公益性、代继性和共生性的基本特点,提出人人参加,事事参与;健康生活,健康行为;抵制陋习,抵制败俗;爱护环境,履行责任的道德要求.     

Game Theory and Decentralisation

Whereas many environmentalists have traditionally argued in favour of small-scale, decentralised communities as a solution to the environmental crises which we appear to face, some environmental political theorists have recently argued against decentralisation. In this article I first show that game theory seems, at first glance, to support the insistence by statists that decentralisation is highly impracticable. But, second, I then attempt to demonstrate that, on closer inspection, game theory actually provides considerable support for the decentralist case.     

Reflections on My Experience in Human Research Ethics

This paper was delivered at the 2009 annual conference of the National Council on Ethics in Human Research. It is a reflective piece based on many years of experience with human research ethics and the role of Research Ethics Boards in human participant research.     

Teaching Engineering Ethics using BLOCKS Game

The aim of this study was to investigate the use of a newly developed design game called BLOCKS to stimulate awareness of ethical responsibilities amongst engineering students. The design game was played by seventeen teams of chemical engineering students, with each team having to arrange pieces of colored paper to produce two letters each. Before the end of the game, additional constraints were introduced to the teams such that they faced similar ambiguity in the technical facts that the engineers involved in the Challenger disaster had faced prior to the space shuttle launch. At this stage, the teams had to decide whether to continue with their original design or to develop alternative solutions. After the teams had made their decisions, a video of the Challenger explosion was shown followed by a post-game discussion. The students’ opinion on five Statements on ethics was tracked via a Five-Item Likert survey which was administered three times, before and after the ethical scenario was introduced, and after the video and post-game discussion. The results from this study indicated that the combination of the game and the real-life incident from the video had generally strengthened the students’ opinions of the Statements.     

Game Theory and Rational Decision

In its classical conception, game theory aspires to be a determinate decision theory for games, understood as elements of a structurally specified domain. Its aim is to determine for each game in the domain a complete solution to each player's decision problem, a solution valid for all real-world instantiations, regardless of context. “Permissiveness” would constrain the theory to designate as admissible for a player any conjecture consistent with the function's designation of admissible strategies for the other players. Given permissiveness and other appropriate constraints, solution sets must contain only Nash equilibria and at least one pure-strategy equilibrium, and there is no solution to games in which no symmetry invariant set of pure-strategy equilibria forms a Cartesian product. These results imply that the classical program is unrealizable. Moreover, the program is implicitly committed to permissiveness, through its common-knowledge assumptions and its commitment to equilibrium. The resulting incoherence deeply undermines the classical conception in a way that consolidates a long series of contextualist criticisms. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Game Theory in Philosophy

Game theory is the mathematical study of strategy and conflict. It has wide applications in economics, political science, sociology, and, to some extent, in philosophy. Where rational choice theory or decision theory is concerned with individual agents facing games against nature, game theory deals with games in which all players have preference orderings over the possible outcomes of the game. This paper gives an informal introduction to the theory and a survey of applications in diverse branches of philosophy. No criticism is reviewed. Game theory is shown at work in discussions about epistemological dependence (prisoner’s dilemma), liberalism and efficiency (Nash equilibrium), Hume’s concept of convention (correlated equilibrium), morality and rationality (bargaining games), and distributive justice and egalitarianism (evolutionary game theory). A guide to the literature provides hints at applications in collective intentionality, epistemology, ethics, history of philosophy, logic, philosophy of language, and political philosophy.     

The Nazi Engineers: Reflections on Technological Ethics in Hell

Engineers, architects, and other technological professionals designed the genocidal death machines of the Third Reich. The death camp operations were highly efficient, so these technological professionals knew what they were doing: they were, so to speak, good engineers. As an educator at a technological university, I need to explain to my students—future engineers and architects—the motivations and ethical reasoning of the technological professionals of the Third Reich. I need to educate my students in the ethical practices of this hellish regime so that they can avoid the kind of ethical justifications used by the Nazi engineers. In their own professional lives, my former students should not only be good engineers in a technical sense, but good engineers in a moral sense. In this essay, I examine several arguments about the ethical judgments of professionals in Nazi Germany, and attempt a synthesis that can provide a lesson for contemporary engineers and other technological professionals. How does an engineer avoid the error of the Nazi engineers in their embrace of an evil ideology underlying their technological creations? How does an engineer know that the values he embodies through his technological products are good values that will lead to a better world? This last question, I believe, is the fundamental issue for the understanding of engineering ethics.     

Translating Neuroethics: Reflections from Muslim Ethics

Muslim ethics is cautiously engaging developments in neuroscience. In their encounters with developments in neuroscience such as brain death and functional magnetic resonance imaging procedures, Muslim ethicists might be on the cusp of spirited debates. Science and religion perform different kinds of work and ought not to be conflated. Cultural translation is central to negotiating the complex life worlds of religious communities, Muslims included. Cultural translation involves lived encounters with modernity and its byproduct, modern science. Serious ethical debate requires more than just a mere instrumental encounter with science. A robust Muslim approach to neuroethics might require an emulsion of religion and neuroscience, thought and body, and body and soul. Yet one must anticipate that Muslim debates in neuroethics will be inflected with Muslim values, symbols and the discrete faith perspectives of this tradition with meanings that are specific to people who share this worldview and their concerns.     

诺丁斯的关怀伦理学与关怀教育思想

诺丁斯是关怀伦理学和关怀教育理论的代表人物。关怀伦理学是关怀教育思想的基础。它主张学校要以关心学生为首要任务 ,以培养学生成为关怀的人为目标 ,围绕不同的关怀中心组织了一套课程 ,并提出了实际工作中的重点。因此关怀教育思想可以视为关怀伦理学在学校教育中的应用。     

道德的博弈:一种伦理学的诠释

当人们借用博弈模型来分析人类活动时,所隐喻的是博弈境遇中凸现出来的人类行为及其合作秩序出现的伦理问题.从霍布斯的傻子到休谟的农夫困境,无不体现伦理语境中对博弈问题的关注,而以协定道德来诠释合作秩序的实现,却又存在着理论上的症结.面对诚实不足和伪装难题,道德的博弈何以可能?诚实不只是作为一种合作性实践的最优策略,更是一种人们意愿践行正义的美德.     

正义的战争与战争的正义——关于战争伦理的反思

战争可以定义为两个或两个以上的国家间的有组织的政治暴力。根据战争的目的、过程和结果,战争伦理大致包括“战争权利伦理”、“战争行为伦理”和“战争责任伦理”三个方面。在战争伦理中最重要的是所谓“正义”问题。“正义”与“非正义”这对概念并非规定战争的客观性质,而是一种煽动人们拥战或反战热情的主观态度和伦理立场的表达。