微观、中观和宏观工程伦理问题——五谈工程伦理学

伦理学中存在着微观、中观和宏观三种不同"层次"或"尺度"的伦理问题.从微观、中观和宏观的相互联系、相互作用中认识和分析伦理问题有可能成为一种新的伦理学研究范式.伦理学研究者应该善于识别"三观"伦理问题,强化从"三观"互动中分析伦理问题的意识和能力.在工程伦理学中,工程共同体成员--工程师、投资者、管理者、工人、其他利益相关者--的"个体伦理"是微观伦理问题,有关企业、组织、制度、行业、项目等等的伦理问题是中观伦理问题,而宏观伦理则是指国家和全球尺度的伦理问题.微观、中观和宏观伦理问题既有性质、层次、范围上的区别,同时又相互渗透、相互纠缠、密切联系、相互作用.     

On Self,Empathy, and Shame

Abstract

Replies to the comments on Self and Other in this Review Symposium by O’Shea, Magri, Papazian and Stout     

On privacy, causes, and contingencies

Radical behaviorism may be distinguished from other varieties of behaviorism, notably methodological behaviorism, by the way it accommodates private events in causal explanations of behavior. That is, in an operational sense, radical behaviorism accommodates private phenomena in the context of the three term contingency of reinforcement with regard to their discriminative function, their nature as responses, or their reinforcing function. In any case, any contribution of a private phenomenon is presumably linked at some point to a prior public event that has endowed the private phenomenon with its functional significance.     

On Silencing,Rape, and Responsibility

In a recent article in this journal, Nellie Wieland argues that silencing in the sense put forward by Rae Langton and Jennifer Hornsby has the unpalatable consequence of diminishing a rapist's responsibility for the rape. We argue both that Wieland misidentifies Langton and Hornsby's conception of silencing, and that neither Langton and Hornsby's actual conception, nor the one that Wieland attributes to them, in fact generates this consequence.     

On nystagmus,saccades, and fixations

Investigations of the ways in which the eyes move came to prominence in the 19th century, but techniques for measuring them more precisely emerged in the 20th century. When scanning a scene or text the eyes engage in periods of relative stability (fixations) interspersed with ballistic rotations (saccades). The saccade-and-fixate strategy, associated with voluntary eye movements, was first uncovered in the context of involuntary eye movements following body rotation. This pattern of eye movements is now referred to as nystagmus, and involves periods of slow eye movements, during which objects are visible, and rapid returns, when they are not; it is based on a vestibular reflex which attempts to achieve image stabilisation. Post-rotational nystagmus was reported in the late 18th century (by Wells), with afterimages used as a means of retinal stabilisation to distinguish between movement of the eyes and of the environment. Nystagmus was linked to vestibular stimulation in the 19th century, and Mach, Breuer, and Crum Brown all described its fast and slow phases. Wells and Breuer proposed that there was no visual awareness during the ballistic phase (saccadic suppression). The saccade-and-fixate strategy highlighted by studies of nystagmus was shown to apply to tasks like reading by Dodge, who used more sophisticated photographic techniques to examine oculomotor kinematics. The relationship between eye movements and perception, following earlier intuitions by Wells and Breuer, was explored by Dodge, and has been of fundamental importance in the direction of vision research over the last century.     

On progress,values, and Marx

Marx, like many of his contemporaries, uncritically assumed that humanity develops from primitive beginnings to ever more perfect stages. In his theory of human development he measured progress by two main standards: the decrease of all forms of dependence, and the increase of universality in man's relations to nature and to his fellow man. In our century, not only have new structures of power and dependence emerged, but successive movements have also been generated to restore the more ordered and limited relationships of the past. If belief in progress is nowadays no longer self-evident, such a state of affairs can help us reflect on the conditions necessary to realize the values which determined Marx's categorical imperative, or his insistence that we overthrow all relations by which man is made a debased and enslaved being. One of these conditions is the voluntary limitation of our needs: the need to use material goods without regard for others, the need to build up or maintain security even at the cost of violence, and the need to restrict the circle of those with whom we identify to our own particular culture, race, class or ways of thinking and acting.     

On Loneliness,Narcissism, and Intimacy

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

On doing better, experimental-style

Timothy Williamson devotes significant effort in his The Philosophy of Philosophy to arguing against skepticism about judgment. One might think that the recent “experimental philosophy” challenge to the philosophical practice of appealing to intuitions as evidence is a possible target of those arguments. However, this is not so. The structure of that challenge is radically dissimilar from that of traditional skeptical arguments, and the aims of the challenge are entirely congruent with the spirit of methodological improvement that Williamson himself exemplifies in the Afterword of his book.