Post/Human Conditions

Abstract

Perhaps one of the most pressing issues for the twenty-first century will be the impact of new technologies on our experiences and understandings of what it means to be human. For many commentators, this signals the advent of the ‘posthuman condition’, in which digital technologies will have the capacity to reconfigure our conceptions of space and time; cybernetic devices will enhance and augment bodies and minds; and genetic modification will challenge the fixity of ‘human nature’ at the most fundamental level. This article examines some of the most influential discourses—from science, ethics and popular culture—that promise to shape the choices and values determining how such technologies will be used, and to what ends. Closer analysis reveals a multiplicity of visions of ‘posthuman conditions’, however, informed by a diversity of philosophical, ethical, political — and theological—understandings of what it means to be human in an age of technology; and this article proposes the terminology of ‘post/human’ as a critical device designed to alert us to the choices and values inherent in our engagement with our tools and technologies. The article concludes by advancing some themes by which a deeper theological critique of the post/human might be conducted: transcendence, sacramentality and creativity, divine and human.     

后基因组时代的医学发展

1990年,美国正式启动“人类基因组计划”。随着这项工程成果的不断取得,人类即将进入利用、使用“人类基因组计划”成果的“后基因组时代”。在这个时代,基因芯片和基因工程技术将被广泛地使用在医学科学中,给医学科学的发展带来一场深刻的革命。同时医学科学也将面临着前所未有的冲突和抉择。充分认识这些问题,对寻求现实医学科学的发展途径具有重要的启示意义。     

Toward Oblique Simple Structure : Maxplane

Cattell and Muerle (1960) published a definition of the Maxplane criterion for rotation to oblique simple structure. Specific methods in their approach were not quite appropriate to yield the desired solution, and the present paper describes the development of fully appropriate strategy. A complete discussion of the final Maxplane program is given. Maxplane solutions are compared with Oblimax, Biquartimin, and visually directed solutions. For three problems of quite different size and scope, Maxplane yielded a better solution than the comparison method in each case.     

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.     

Exploratory Bi-factor Analysis: The Oblique Case

Bi-factor analysis is a form of confirmatory factor analysis originally introduced by Holzinger and Swineford (Psychometrika 47:41?C54, 1937). The bi-factor model has a general factor, a number of group factors, and an explicit bi-factor structure. Jennrich and Bentler (Psychometrika 76:537?C549, 2011) introduced an exploratory form of bi-factor analysis that does not require one to provide an explicit bi-factor structure a priori. They use exploratory factor analysis and a bifactor rotation criterion designed to produce a rotated loading matrix that has an approximate bi-factor structure. Among other things this can be used as an aid in finding an explicit bi-factor structure for use in a confirmatory bi-factor analysis. They considered only orthogonal rotation. The purpose of this paper is to consider oblique rotation and to compare it to orthogonal rotation. Because there are many more oblique rotations of an initial loading matrix than orthogonal rotations, one expects the oblique results to approximate a bi-factor structure better than orthogonal rotations and this is indeed the case. A surprising result arises when oblique bi-factor rotation methods are applied to ideal data.     

Oblique factors and components with independent clusters

Relationships between the results of factor analysis and component analysis are derived when oblique factors have independent clusters with equal variances of unique factors. The factor loadings are analytically shown to be smaller than the corresponding component loadings while the factor correlations are shown to be greater than the corresponding component correlations. The condition for the inequality of the factor/component contributions is derived in the case with different variances for unique factors. Further, the asymptotic standard errors of parameter estimates are obtained for a simplified model with the assumption of multivariate normality, which shows that the component loading estimate is more stable than the corresponding factor loading estimate.     

Rotational Uniqueness Conditions Under Oblique Factor Correlation Metric

In an addendum to his seminal 1969 article Jöreskog stated two sets of conditions for rotational identification of the oblique factor solution under utilization of fixed zero elements in the factor loadings matrix (Jöreskog in Advances in factor analysis and structural equation models, pp. 40–43, 1979). These condition sets, formulated under factor correlation and factor covariance metrics, respectively, were claimed to be equivalent and to lead to global rotational uniqueness of the factor solution. It is shown here that the conditions for the oblique factor correlation structure need to be amended for global rotational uniqueness, and, hence, that the condition sets are not equivalent in terms of unicity of the solution.     

感染后与非感染后肠易激综合征的多维特点

探讨感染后(PI)与非感染后肠易激综合征(NPI-IBS)的临床,精神心理,组织学特点.取IBS患者和正常人进行问卷调查,了解其多维特点.分别检测肥大细胞的数目.结果显示:(1)PI-IBS与NPI-IBS患者临床,心理特征不同;(2)IBS两组患者肥大细胞的数目无差异,与对照组比较差异明显.因此认为PI-IBS和NPI-IBS有特征差异,对临床治疗有一定指导意义.     

Post traumatic stress disorders

A clinical overview of the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD) is presented emphasizing altered qualities of experience and behavior. A schema of human psychological responses to stressful life events is reviewed as an introduction to the extensive development of concepts of pathological stress response syndromes: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders; post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic type; delayed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. An illustrative case history is presented. The potential development of PTSD in individuals experiencing less than overwhelming stressors is conceptualized.     

Ceteris Paribus Post

Many have claimed that ceteris paribus (CP) laws are a quite legitimate feature of scientific theories, some even going so far as to claim that laws of all scientific theories currently on offer are merely CP. We argue here that one of the common props of such a thesis, that there are numerous examples of CP laws in physics, is false. Moreover, besides the absence of genuine examples from physics, we suggest that otherwise unproblematic claims are rendered untestable by the mere addition of the CP operator. Thus, “CP all Fs are Gs” when read as a straightforward statement of fact, cannot be the stuff of scientific theory. Rather, we suggest that when ``ceteris paribus' appears in scientific works it plays a pragmatic role of pointing to more respectable claims. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

后伯林自由观:概念辨析

本文旨在对以赛亚·伯林<两种自由概念>发表后西方政治哲学中关于自由概念与观念的争论作一综合评析.本文评介了麦卡勒姆的三要素自由概念,分析了哈耶克、阿伦特以及米勒等人对自由观念的划分,以揭示自由这一复杂的政治哲学概念的多重维度及其关联.     

Human Rights,Legitimacy, Political Judgement

Res Publica - This paper grapples with Bernard Williams’s prima vista enigmatic assertion that ‘[w]hether it is a matter of good philosophical sense to treat a practice as a violation...