体现着人权诉求的消费者权益

对于传统的中国人来讲,义务与责任几乎是伦理、道德的同义词,因此,谈到消费伦理,在过去人们马上会想到勤俭节约的美德.而今天,随着公民意识的觉醒,消费者勇于维权的表现已经成为改革开放以来中国价值观念变革的一道重要景观.现在再谈及消费伦理,自然会将消费者的权益维护作为整个消费伦理阐释框架的基石与出发点.而这一消费伦理研究视角的明显变换,实际上折射出了正在迅速发生着的中国社会道德思维结构从以义务为本位到以权利为本位的巨大转型.     

Human Rights and Human Dignity

Why should all human beings have certain rights simply by virtue of being human? One justification is an appeal to religious authority. However, in increasingly secular societies this approach has its limits. An alternative answer is that human rights are justified through human dignity. This paper argues that human rights and human dignity are better separated for three reasons. First, the justification paradox: the concept of human dignity does not solve the justification problem for human rights but rather aggravates it in secular societies. Second, the Kantian cul-de-sac: if human rights were based on Kant’s concept of dignity rather than theist grounds, such rights would lose their universal validity. Third, hazard by association: human dignity is nowadays more controversial than the concept of human rights, especially given unresolved tensions between aspirational dignity and inviolable dignity. In conclusion, proponents of universal human rights will fare better with alternative frameworks to justify human rights rather than relying on the concept of dignity.     

Inferentialism and Communicative Action: Robust Conceptions of Intersubjectivity

Brandom's inferentialism provides a semantics that complements Habermas's theory of communicative action without sacrificing its intersubjectivist insights. Pace Habermas, Brandom's conception of communication is robustly intersubjective. At the pragmatic level, interlocutors inherit each other's commitments and entitlements and must justify their claims when challenged; at the semantic level, anaphora show how the web of meaning is knit together, connecting expressions of the language as well as interlocutors. Finally, Habermas's thesis that there are three irreducible types of validity claim is preserved by linking claims to truth and rightness with mutually irreducible patterns of inference.     

Human Echolocation as a Basic Form of Perception and Action

In this article we discuss known and possible uses of echolocation by humans. We argue that echolocation may be a basic perception-action ability of humans. We review studies which suggest that both blind and sighted humans are capable of substantial precision in the perception of properties of distal objects, such as distance, size, shape, substance, and relative motion. We analyze relations between acoustic pulse and echo that may provide information to support these percepts and others. Our analysis predicts echolocation-based sensitivity in humans and other animals to a number of properties of the animal-environment interaction. We also discuss echolocation-based acoustic specification of time-to-contact. We develop a new variable that provides this information and discuss acoustic Τs recently developed by Shaw, McGowan, and Turvey (1991) and by Lee, van der Weel, Hitchcock, Matejowsky, and Pettigrew (1992).Our analysis suggests that there may be important insights to be gained from an ecological study of echolocation in humans and other species. We end with suggestions for research derived from our analysis.     

霍布斯人权思想论要

托马斯·霍布斯是 17世纪英国伟大的哲学家和政治思想家。他在对科学理论探索的过程中 ,揭露、批判了封建专制制度和天主教会压迫、摧残人民的罪恶 ,积极倡导关于人的自由权、财产权、平等权和安全权等思想 ,对英国、法国的资产阶级革命的发展产生重要的影响     

Agency and Human Rights

What grounds human rights? How do we determine that something is a human right? James Griffin has persuasively argued that the notion of agency should determine the content of human rights. However, Griffin's agency account faces the question of why agency should be the sole ground for human rights. For example, can Griffin's notion of agency by itself adequately explain such human rights as that against torture? Or, has Griffin offered a plausible explanation as to why one should not broaden the ground for human rights to include other elements of a good life such as freedom from great pain, understanding, deep personal relations, and so on? These concerns have been raised regarding Griffin's agency account, but in his new book, On Human Rights, Griffin has offered new arguments in support of his view that agency is the sole ground for human rights. In this paper, I examine these new arguments, and I argue that Griffin's arguments are ultimately unsuccessful.