虚拟与虚拟实在

虚拟是这个时代的热门词,也是当下文化的关键词.在三亿多的网民中,很多人见面时的问候语从吃过没有变为魔兽了吗抑或摘菜了没有,网络虚拟生活已经成为国人乃至世人一种必不可少的生活方式.二十年前美国学者迈克海姆写过一本关于虚拟实在的书,大约十年前引入国内,引发了国内学者关于虚拟实在的研究和讨论.但由于当时国内的信息技术尚未普及,网民数量稀少,所以他的书和这场讨论未能引起社会轰动并深入持久下去.如今恰逢读网时代,我们重拾虚拟实在,重新探讨它的形而上以及与虚拟的区别与联系,因为它是我们在谈及当下文化时绝不能回避和忽略的问题.     

The Convergence of Virtual Reality and Social Networks: Threats to Privacy and Autonomy

The rapid evolution of information, communication and entertainment technologies will transform the lives of citizens and ultimately transform society. This paper focuses on ethical issues associated with the likely convergence of virtual realities (VR) and social networks (SNs), hereafter VRSNs. We examine a scenario in which a significant segment of the world’s population has a presence in a VRSN. Given the pace of technological development and the popularity of these new forms of social interaction, this scenario is plausible. However, it brings with it ethical problems. Two central ethical issues are addressed: those of privacy and those of autonomy. VRSNs pose threats to both privacy and autonomy. The threats to privacy can be broadly categorized as threats to informational privacy, threats to physical privacy, and threats to associational privacy. Each of these threats is further subdivided. The threats to autonomy can be broadly categorized as threats to freedom, to knowledge and to authenticity. Again, these three threats are divided into subcategories. Having categorized the main threats posed by VRSNs, a number of recommendations are provided so that policy-makers, developers, and users can make the best possible use of VRSNs.     

Applied Ethics: Naturalism, Normativity and Public Policy

abstract   Normative argument is supposed to guide ways in which we might change the world, rather than to fit the world as it is. This poses certain difficulties for the notion of applied ethics. Taken literally the phrase 'applied ethics' suggests that principles or standards with substantial philosophical justification, in particular ethical and political principles with such justification, are applied to particular cases and guide action. However, the 'cases' which applied ethics discusses are themselves indeterminate, and the relation of principles to these 'cases' differs from the relation of principles to cases in naturalistic, truth-oriented inquiry. Writing in 'applied ethics', I shall argue, does not need elaborate case histories or scenarios, since the testing points for normative principles are other normative principles rather than particular cases. Normative principles and contexts to which they are applicable are indeed needed for any reasoning that is practical, but they are not sufficient. Practical ethics needs principles that can not merely be applied in certain cases or situations, but also enacted in certain ways, and requires an account of practical judgement and of the public policies that support that judgement .     

Confucian Ethics, Public Policy, and the Nurse-Family Partnership

The Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP), a thirty-year program of research in the United States focused on early childhood preventive intervention, offers a powerful example of the kinds of programs and public policies that Confucian understandings of parent?Cchild relationships and moral cultivation might recommend in contemporary societies today. NFP findings, as well as its theoretical foundations, lend empirical support to early Confucian views of the role of parent?Cchild relationships in human moral development, the nature and possibility of moral self-cultivation, and the task of creating and sustaining a good society, which gives philosophers who are interested in ethical claims that reflect and inform actual practice good reasons to take Confucian ethics seriously. Additionally, the evidence provided by the NFP and early Confucian accounts can both be used to promote social change, which highlights how the sciences and the humanities can work together in complementary ways to address societal problems.     

Determining Public Policy and Resource Allocation Priorities for Mitigating Natural Hazards: A Capabilities-based Approach

This paper proposes a Capabilities-based Approach to guide hazard mitigation efforts. First, a discussion is provided of the criteria that should be met by an adequate framework for formulating public policy and allocating resources. This paper shows why a common decision-aiding tool, Cost-benefit Analysis, fails to fulfill such criteria. A Capabilities-based Approach to hazard mitigation is then presented, drawing on the framework originally developed in the context of development economics and policy. The focus of a Capabilities-based Approach is protecting and promoting the well-being of individuals. Capabilities are dimensions of well-being and specified in terms of functionings. Functionings capture the various things of value an individual does or becomes in his or her life, including being alive, being healthy, and being sheltered. Capabilities refer to the real achievability of specific functionings. In the context of hazard mitigation, from a Capabilities-based Approach, decision- and policy-makers should consider the acceptability and tolerability of risks along with the affectability of hazards when determining policy formulation and resource allocation. Finally, the paper shows how the proposed approach satisfies the required criteria, and overcomes the limitations of Cost-benefit Analysis, while maintaining its strengths.     

公共利益:公共伦理的价值基础

公共伦理是公共管理行为应遵循的准则与规范体系,其功能在于有效调节、规范和引导公共管理行为,促进公共管理目标的实现,公共伦理必须寻找到合理的价值基础。本文认为,公共利益既是公共伦理建设的出发点,又是公共伦理致力于实现的目标,理应成为公共伦理的价值基础。同时,以公共利益作为公共伦理的价值基础,实现了义务论与目的论的统一,使公共伦理具备了很强的实践品质。     

Philosophy and Public Policy: A Role for Social Moral Epistemology

abstract   Part 1 of this essay argues that one of the most important contributions of philosophers to sound public policy may be to combat the influence of bad Philosophy (which includes, but is not limited to, bad Philosophy produced by accredited academic philosophers). Part 2 argues that the conventional conception of Practical Ethics (CPE) that philosophers bring to issues of public policy is defective because it fails to take seriously the phenomenon of the subversion of morality, the role of false factual beliefs in this subversion, and the vulnerability to the exploitation of our moral powers that our social-epistemic dependency entails. Given the serious risks of the subversion of morality through the propagation of false factual beliefs, CPE's near exclusive emphasis on identifying sound moral principles greatly constrains its potential contribution to the Negative Task of Practical Ethics, the endeavour to reduce the incidence of the most grievously wrong behaviour. Practical ethicists should focus more on the ethics of believing, and develop a more sophisticated conception of the moral and epistemic virtues of individuals and of institutions, one that includes protective meta-virtues, whose function it is to guard us against the more frequent and predictable subversions of morality, including those subversions that are facilitated by the processes of belief-formation that our social institutions and practices foster .     

A New Social Contract: Substituting the Neoliberal Public Policy Paradigm with a Participatory Public Policy Paradigm

Peter Hall introduced the concept of paradigm shifts into the public policy discourse. His account explains the seismic transition the world experienced in the 1980s. With this neoliberal paradigm the former social contract between the public leadership and the people unraveled and the future of humanity has been put at risk. To steer humanity back in the direction of a sustainable future, the author argues for a participatory public policy paradigm instituted as a reinvention of Rousseau’s social contract theory with tree distinct features that respond to the complexity of life in modern times.     

艾滋病高危行为的伦理分析与公共伦理政策选择

艾滋病迅速蔓延与高危行为有着密切的直接关联。艾滋病高危行为的产生与行为者的伦理态度、社会伦理态度又有着深刻的关联。从伦理学角度分析艾滋病高危行为,可以从源头上了解高危行为产生的内在动因。由此,从公共伦理政策构建的层面上对艾滋病高危行为提出干预,是有效预防艾滋病的重要途径和措施。     

Ethics for Mental Health Influencers: MFTs as Public Social Media Personalities

The increase in social media usage contributes to a greater number of Marriage and Family Therapists (MFTs) using social media to grow their professional outreach and to increase awareness about mental health by engaging with online audiences. Although existing literature has discussed how MFTs can make ethical use of personal social media in and around their therapeutic role, no literature at this time has explored the potential ethical issues faced by MFTs seeking to build public presence on social media as a “mental health influencer.” The present paper intends to provide a definition of mental health influencers (MHIs) and reviews ethical concerns relevant to MFTs acting as MHIs. Particular consideration is given to ethical dilemmas and conflicts-of-interest which may emerge via parasocial relationships developed through social media influencing, as well as how the boundaries and the limitations of an MFT’s professional scope can be tested when presenting as a personable, public figure over digital platforms. A framework for conceptualizing ethical issues for MHI-MFTs is offered, with a selection of prescient issues being examined within the scope of existing ethical standards set forth by the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy’s (AAMFT) Code of Ethics. Reflections are offered about what questions and guidelines should be observed by MFTs in order to avoid unethical use of social media as an MHI, followed by a brief discussion about future considerations which should be considered by MHIs.

     

改革开放与中国社会伦理价值观的转向

如果我们追问改革开放30年来中国经济发生了什么变化,人们会毫不犹豫地回答,中国经济发生了翻天覆地的变化,取得了骄人的成就.但是,如果我们追问改革开放30年来中国的伦理道德发生了什么变化,人们的回答却并不一致.可以说,对中国当前社会的道德状况,点头称许的少,摇头批评的多.不可否认,中国当前的伦理道德状况确实有许多不如人意的地方,甚至有许多在人们看来是最基本的道德底线也遭到破坏,近年来社会对"诚信"品质的呼吁就是明证.     

Subjective Well-Being and Retirement: Analysis and Policy Recommendations

This study examines the relationship between retirement and subjective well-being (SWB), utilizing international data from sixteen countries in Western Europe and the US. Differences in social security regimes are exploited to estimate the retirement decision such that it is exogenous to individual-level characteristics. Although results from traditional ordinary least squares suggest an ambiguous relationship between retirement and SWB, this is due to comparatively lower SWB among those who choose retirement. The removal of selection bias reveals a large, positive effect that fades over a few years, suggesting a multi-stage adjustment to retirement. Individuals facing formal retirement at age 65 or later experience an increase in SWB that is roughly equivalent in total value to that of individuals facing earlier retirement, and both groups return to trend by age 70. This suggests that raising the formal retirement age, which is widely discussed today by policymakers, is relatively neutral with regard to SWB in the long-term.     

The Evolution of Social Ethics: Using Economic History to Understand Economic Ethics

In the development of Roman Catholic social thought from the teachings of the scholastics to the modern social encyclicals, changes in normative economics reflect the transformation of an economic terrain from its feudal roots to the modern industrial economy. The preeminence accorded by the modern market to the allocative over the distributive function of price broke the convenient convergence of commutative and distributive justice in scholastic just price theory. Furthermore, the loss of custom, law, and usage in defining the boundaries of economic behavior led to a depersonalization of economic relationships that had previously provided effective informal means of protecting individual well-being. Hence, recent economic ethics has had to look for nonprice, nonmarket mechanisms for distributive justice. This is reflected, for example, in the shift in attitude from the medieval antipathy toward unions to the contemporary defense of organized labor on moral grounds.     

虚拟现实技术应用于心理治疗领域的最新进展

本文综述了近年西方将虚拟现实技术(VR技术)应用于心理治疗领域的最新进展.VR技术以治疗恐怖症,PTSD等闻名于世之后,近年来不断拓广应用领域,用于自闭症,弱智,脑损伤康复等的治疗;与此同时,VR技术正成为各心理治疗取向的辅助工具,并有效应用于心理咨询师培训.本文探讨了VR技术辅助各心理治疗流派的内在机制,以及VR技术应用于心理治疗的优势、局限与发展前景.     

The Assessment of Spatial Orientation Using Virtual Reality Techniques

Visual-spatial ability has been identified as one of the primary factors of intelligence. Numerous tests, including paper-and-pencil tasks and laboratory experiments, have attempted to provide an accurate measure of this ability. However, the majority of these tests serve only as surrogate measures of visual-spatial ability and may not provide a precise prediction of the individuals' performance in a real environment. We propose a new approach for evaluating spatial ability. In this article, we introduce the use of virtual reality (VR) or virtual environments (VEs) as a new method to measure human spatial orientation. We then discuss the advantages of using VR or VE over traditional measures. We also comment on their limitations and their future direction.     

制度伦理思想的传统溯源

制度伦理的兴起,在今天的中国是与社会主义市场经济的建立与发展紧密相联的。市场经济从根本上改变了传统社会的生产方式,从而动摇了传统德性伦理的生存土壤,致使德性伦理的边缘化。但由此就认为制度伦理是现代社会的产物,是市场经济的唯一形式显然又是有失偏颇的。追溯制度伦理文化的传统根源,对于我们弘扬民族文化和培育民族精神有一定的现实价值和借鉴意义。