The Cyborg as an Interpretation of Culture-Nature

The idea of "nature" performs an important cultural work. The cyborg-nature is an attempt to free ourselves from the features of the culturally authorized concepts of nature. The cyborg offers new metaphors to both academic and popular theorizing for comprehending the different ways that sciences and technologies affect our lives, subjectivities, and concepts. The cyborg is a lived reality and a metaphor. Paul Tillich deemed it necessary to have a mythos of technology to explain our technologies and ourselves. He offered "The Technical City" as a symbol for his age. Donna Haraway's cy-borg-figure could function as a symbol to interpret our time and technologies and ourselves.     

The Selfish Gender,or the Reproduction of Gender Asymmetry in Gender Studies

Gender discrimination can be overt anddeliberate. It can be covert and indeliberate.In the latter case it is called `asymmetry'.The gender studies community aims to reveal andeliminate any forms of gender asymmetry.However, insufficient methodological andtheoretical reflection implies the reproductionof gender asymmetry throughout genderstudies.     

性别刻板印象之性别效应研究

1 引言 性别刻板印象(gender stereotype)是社会生活中为人们广泛接受的对男性和女性的固定看法。而人们对于典型的男性或女性是什么样子的看法,会影响我们的觉知,并在评价他人的行为时造成偏差。     

Jeanine Thweatt-Bates. Cyborg Selves: A Theological Anthropology of the Posthuman

Abstract

Of all the research programs investigating radical life extension, cybernetic immortality is, by definition, the most ambitious. Several models fall within this category. While some include the possibility of “re-corporealizing” either as machine, biological entity, or hybrid, all models have several essentials in common. They require the ability to construct a non-biological (e.g., electronic) substrate that can model the functioning human brain, including the ability for consciousness (self-awareness) and a means for uploading into this artificial mind the contents of one's mortal life experiences. The individuals who have speculated most comprehensively on this include Ted Chu, Raymond Kurzweil, and Martine Rothblatt.¹1 Relevant books include: Ted Chu, Human Purpose and Transhuman Potential: A Cosmic Vision for Our Future Evolution (San Rafael, CA: Origin Press, 2014); Michio Kaku, The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind (New York: Doubleday, 2014); Ray Kurzweil, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed (London: Penguin, 2013); Martine Rothblatt, Virtually Human: The Promise and the Peril of Digital Immortality (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2014).     

Cyborg identities and contemporary techno-utopias: adaptations and transformations of the body in the age of nanotechnology

The possibility of improving the human body through a closer relationship with technology in order to overcome the human species toward new stages of evolution is a constant element of techno-utopian visions, among other transhumanism. This projection to a radical transformation of the body - and mind - as a result of technological action is based on the concepts of adaptation, or non adaptation, of a human being to a world constantly changed by technoscience. The belief is that not only the body has to change, but that identity is not a stable concept. This mobility in the relationship between body and identity is typical of the post human thought, which inherits from the informational model the conviction that the biological embodiment of human is to be regarded as an accident of history rather than as an essential condition of life. Hybridization is therefore valued by the post human thought as a condition which has "made" the human as he is today, and it appears as a fundamental topic in any discourse on nanotechnology, biotechnology and development of human-machine interfaces.     

The Development of Gender Identity,Gender Roles,and Gender Relations in Gifted Students

This article describes the interaction of giftedness with gender identity, gender role, and gender relations. The authors explored ways in which many gifted educational practices are gendered, a model for the development of talent in the context of gender and gender relations, and ways of reducing gender inequities in the realization of potential for both male and female students. Issues that are unique to gifted individuals are aligned with suggestions for counseling interventions.     

Cyborg pantocrator: international relations theory from decisionism to rational choice

International relations theory took shape in the 1950s in reaction to the behavioral social science movement, emphasizing the limits of rationality in a context of high uncertainty, weak rules, and the possibility of lethal conflict. Yet the same discipline rapidly developed "rational choice" models applied to foreign policy decision making or nuclear strategy. This paper argues that this transformation took place almost seamlessly around the concept of "decision." Initially associated with an antirationalist or "decisionist" approach to politics, the sovereign decision became the epitome of political rationality when it was redescribed as "rational choice," thus easing the cultural acceptance of political realism in the postwar years.     

性伦理关系的规范调节和精神升华--《性伦理学新论》评介

人类男女两性关系是人类社会绵延不绝的必经途径,也影响着良好的婚姻、家庭、社会伦理秩序的形成.从构词法上看,"性"本身就是"心"和"生"的会意,"心"是指道德能力,而"生"是指自然本能,这就在人的自然情欲和道德意志的张力之间形成了人之为人的内在冲突.从更为广泛的意义上来说,两性关系涉及双方的意志自由和权益责任,需要用道德、法律等社会规范加以调节.因此,人类两性关系已经超越了单纯的自然关系,成为具有伦理意义的社会关系.对人类性伦理关系如何从原始社会的简约严酷,经过封建社会的神秘愚昧、资本主义社会的自由不羁而发展到社会主义社会的健康美好的研究,是社会主义性伦理学的历史使命.     

Cyborg Politics and Economic Realities: Reflections on Elaine Graham's Representations of the Post/Human

Abstract

This article seeks to examine the political and economic context of cyborg culture and technology in Elaine Graham's Representations of the Post/Human. It begins by drawing out the relationship between Graham's study and Foucault's genealogical method and seeks to establish the ‘silent machine’ operating in Graham's analysis. By following three critical strands —knowledge as technology, economic determinism and imaginative agency and the economics of transcendence—the article highlights and extends a critique of capitalism and technology in the text. It argues that economics is now shaped by the machine and concludes by opening up a ‘politics of refusal’. Graham's work is acknowledged for bringing to light uncomfortable questions surrounding the politics of the machine.     

Gender Hierarchy in the Space: The Role of Gender Status in Shaping the Spatial Agency Bias

According to the Spatial Agency Bias (SAB), more agentic groups (men) are envisioned to the left of less agentic groups (women). This research investigated the role of social status in shaping the spatial representation of gender couples. Participants were presented pairs consisting of one male and one female target who confirmed gender stereotypes. The status of the targets in each pair was systematically varied (high-status vs. low-status job). Participants chose the target order (female/male vs. male/female) they preferred. In line with gender-status expectations (male: high-status, female: low-status), a male in a high-status job led to a spatial arrangement that favored the male/female order, regardless of the status of the female target. The female/male order was favored only when the female had a high-status job and the male a low-status job. No SAB occurred for pairs in which both targets displayed low-status jobs. The implications of status for the SAB are discussed.     

Cyborg Identities and the Relational Web: Recasting 'Narrative Identity' in Moral and Political Theory

Current debates surrounding liberalism and communitarianism, modernity and postmodernity, ethical theory and narrative ethics fail to account for shifting foundations of personal identity in an increasingly computer-mediated era of human communication. This paper aims to examine some of the conceptual assumptions about identity and community which are being radically undermined by rapidly evolving information networks and are therefore in need of redefinition. Additionally, I argue for an expansion of the literary imagination to include virtual, coauthored fiction sites where exploration of personal identity will bear upon future ethical and political decision-making.     

The Translation Issues in the Gender Inclusive Controversy

Abstract

The recently published Today's New International Versionhas received some criticism, especially from The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which argues that the TNIVhas gone beyond translation to interpretation in order to further feminist causes. The present author argues that the differences between the TNIVand NIVare standard translation issues, highlighting three key points with illustrations, establishing a case for the superiority of “gender inclusive” translations such as the TNIV. A bibliography for study on both sides is included.     

The Accuracy of Academic Gender Stereotypes

This research assessed the accuracy of academicgender stereotypes. Approximately 9% of participantswere nonwhite (mostly African American and Hispanic).Participants' estimates of the percentage of female and male students and their GPAs were comparedto the actual percentage of female and male students andtheir actual GPAs in 12 majors. Participantssignificantly underestimated the percentage of female students regardless of the gendertype of themajor. Females and males made more accurate percentageestimates for gender-congruent majors. Participantsoverestimated the GPAs of male students significantly more than the GPAs of female students. This wasespecially pronounced for masculine majors. Althoughfemale participants estimated the GPAs of their in-groupmore accurately than the GPAs of the out-group, the reverse was true for male participants. Theimplications of this evidence for inaccurate genderstereotypes regarding academic competence arediscussed.