The Great Divorce: Ethics and Identity

Significant epistemological shifts took place during the modern period that led to the exclusion of ethical constructs of the human self. Subsequently, ethics or morality was systematically divorced from reason and human identity. This has left modern psychologies with impoverished languages for understanding morality and ethics, especially as it relates to human identity. Some of these changes and their subsequent effects are chronicled. Toward this end, three unique influences of the modern era are surveyed. First, it is argued that the nature of reasoning and rationality underwent a significant shift in definition and emphasis, becoming autonomous and secular. Second, it is suggested that the scope of inquiry was restricted to the natural order, creating an immanentization of knowledge. Lastly, it is argued that modernity ushered in a promotion of and preoccupation with the individual subject. The context of each influence are explored, along with a subsection in each describing how the effects of these impacted the growing divorce between ethics and human identity.     

Reflections on Ethics and Game Theory

Applications of game theory to moral philosophy are impededby foundational issues and troublesome examples. In the first part of this paper,questions are raised about the appropriate game-theoretical frameworks for applications to moralphilosophy and about the proper interpretations of the theoretical devices employed inthese frameworks. In the second part, five examples that should be of particular interest to thoseinterested in the connections between ethics and game theory are delineated and discussed. Thefirst example comprises games in which there is an outcome unanimously preferred to the``solution' of the game, appropriately defined. The second comprises games whose solution callsfor different players to employ different strategies. The third comprises games whosesolution calls for players to adopt mixed strategies. The fourth comprises games whose solutionrequires players to cycle among a variety of strategies. The fifth comprises games whose solutionrequires players to discriminate in morally inappropriate ways.     

Reflections on Ethics in Journal Publications

This paper addresses a number of ethical issues that arise in the context of journal publishing. These include both issues for the researcher and issues for the editors and editorial board members of journals.     

The Nazi Engineers: Reflections on Technological Ethics in Hell

Engineers, architects, and other technological professionals designed the genocidal death machines of the Third Reich. The death camp operations were highly efficient, so these technological professionals knew what they were doing: they were, so to speak, good engineers. As an educator at a technological university, I need to explain to my students—future engineers and architects—the motivations and ethical reasoning of the technological professionals of the Third Reich. I need to educate my students in the ethical practices of this hellish regime so that they can avoid the kind of ethical justifications used by the Nazi engineers. In their own professional lives, my former students should not only be good engineers in a technical sense, but good engineers in a moral sense. In this essay, I examine several arguments about the ethical judgments of professionals in Nazi Germany, and attempt a synthesis that can provide a lesson for contemporary engineers and other technological professionals. How does an engineer avoid the error of the Nazi engineers in their embrace of an evil ideology underlying their technological creations? How does an engineer know that the values he embodies through his technological products are good values that will lead to a better world? This last question, I believe, is the fundamental issue for the understanding of engineering ethics.     

符号消费与身份伦理

消费社会的特点是从"物的消费"过渡到"符号消费",消费不再是物的占有和消耗,而是一种符号的系统化操控活动.大众传媒既是符号消费的技术支撑,也是消费符号的直接生产者.符号消费的社会文化意义是满足人们对差异的追求、加剧社会分层、证明人们在消费社会中的身份.符号消费通过积极的关系方式和炫耀性消费来建构自我身份、强化身份伦理.消费社会中的符号消费文化,催化了从众和势利式的消费主义生活方式的膨胀,用符号消费确证身份伦理的努力,不仅没有展现真实的自我、实现自身的价值,而且对个体选择多样化的生活产生了消极影响.     

生态伦理背景中的健康道德凝思

健康道德是关于人类健康的一种道德观念.在生态伦理视域中健康道德观念被拓展、更新.它把人的健康、社会的健康和自然界的健康共同作为研究对象.它提出生态伦理视域下的健康道德具有公益性、代继性和共生性的基本特点,提出人人参加,事事参与;健康生活,健康行为;抵制陋习,抵制败俗;爱护环境,履行责任的道德要求.     

放弃治疗的法律和伦理学思考

调查放弃治疗后死亡病案629例,主要病因为恶性肿瘤和脑血管病.目前在临床工作中,对疾病晚期和临终期的患者,放弃治疗已成为家属和患者本人重要的选择之一.医患双方应该尊重医学科学,理性对待放弃治疗,履行双方应尽的义务,维护双方合法权力,维护法律的尊严.医院应该加强管理,正确处理放弃治疗的相关问题,更好地服务于患者和社会.     

厘清伦理与道德的关系

伦理与道德是伦理学的两个最基本概念。从古至今,关于什么是“伦理”,什么是“道德”,以及二者到底有着什么样的关系,一直就是伦理学界讨论的主要话题之一。伦理与道德的关系十分紧密,以至于我们经常将二者混同,但是严格地讲,伦理与道德是有着显著区别的两个概念。     

Reflections on My Experience in Human Research Ethics

This paper was delivered at the 2009 annual conference of the National Council on Ethics in Human Research. It is a reflective piece based on many years of experience with human research ethics and the role of Research Ethics Boards in human participant research.     

网络功能设计的伦理学反思

网络功能设计的功利价值导向导致网络用户不同程度的感知异化、能力异化和社会角色异化,引发了一系列重大的社会伦理问题。解决这些问题的可能途径是加强伦理因素在网络功能设计的评估和控制中的作用,以此来影响网络技术的发展方向、网络的社会管理和相应的伦理教育。     

Hume's Reflections on the Identity and Simplicity of Mind1

The article presents a new interpretation of Hume's treatment of personal identity, and his later rejection of it in the “Appendix” to the Treatise. Hume's project, on this interpretation, is to explain beliefs about persons that arise primarily within philosophical projects, not in everyday life. the belief in the identity and simplicity of the mind as a bundle of perceptions is an abstruse belief, not one held by the “vulgar” who rarely turn their minds on themselves so as to think of their perceptions. the author suggests that it is this philosophical observation of the mind that creates the problems that Hume finally acknowledges in the “Appendix.” He is unable to explain why we believe that the perceptions by means of which we observe our minds while philosophizing are themselves part of our minds. This suggestion is then tested against seven criteria that any interpretation of the “Appendix” must meet.     

The Ethics of Alpha: Reflections on Statistics,Evidence and Values in Medicine

As health care embraces the tenets of evidence-based medicine it is important to ask questions about how evidence is produced and interpreted. This essay explores normative dimensions of evidence production, particularly around issues of setting the tolerable level of uncertainty of results. Four specific aspects are explored: what health care providers know about statistics, why alpha levels have been set at 0.05, the role of randomization in the generation of sufficient grounds of belief, and the role of observational studies. The essay concludes with recommendations to acknowledge the value permeation of outcome measures and suggests that attention to reasoning and argument analysis can augment traditional evidence-based approaches in providing a robust critical approach to medical knowledge. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Translating Neuroethics: Reflections from Muslim Ethics

Muslim ethics is cautiously engaging developments in neuroscience. In their encounters with developments in neuroscience such as brain death and functional magnetic resonance imaging procedures, Muslim ethicists might be on the cusp of spirited debates. Science and religion perform different kinds of work and ought not to be conflated. Cultural translation is central to negotiating the complex life worlds of religious communities, Muslims included. Cultural translation involves lived encounters with modernity and its byproduct, modern science. Serious ethical debate requires more than just a mere instrumental encounter with science. A robust Muslim approach to neuroethics might require an emulsion of religion and neuroscience, thought and body, and body and soul. Yet one must anticipate that Muslim debates in neuroethics will be inflected with Muslim values, symbols and the discrete faith perspectives of this tradition with meanings that are specific to people who share this worldview and their concerns.     

Negotiating Identity: Post-colonial Ethics and Transnational Adoption

This paper examines the overwhelming desire of transnational adoptees to establish a connection with their origins in order to both come to terms with the past and develop an understanding of their identity. It considers the ethical ramifications of the commodification of human bodies. It is suggested that the idea of displacement is most helpful in approaching questions of transnational adoption. In this way, we can look at transnational adoption as a ‘beginning’—one that disappears into the present moment, becoming the constitutive reality underlying Derrida's concern with displacement—rather than its origin. For, what does the quest for a return to the point of origin entail? Transnational adoptees, when they embark on the journey of reclaiming their past, of coming to terms with their sense of loss, realise that there is no simple comfort in returning—that they are inevitably caught in the two worlds in which they co-exist. It is through this recognition of the traces that are contained in them, through this displacement, that they are able to negotiate identity.     

当代医学伦理学的四种研究进路及其反思

当代中国医学伦理学尚未形成统一的学科范式,但主要有四种研究进路：应用伦理学进路、经验主义进路、道德教育进路和生命伦理学进路。这四种进路在学术界占据着主导地位,构成了医学伦理学的基本知识图景。但是任何未经反思的知识前提都是不可靠的,需要从本体论、知识论和价值论的层面对它们进行认真的反思,以构建更加科学和系统的理论体系。在本体论上,需要考虑伦理学概念的本质属性及其与医学实践的联系。在知识论上,需要质疑伦理理论和具体应用之间的适用性和相关性。在价值论上,需要考虑伦理学研究和实践中所涉及的价值取向。

     

Ethics,Identity and the Boundaries of the Person

Abstract

Ethical theories and theories of the person constrain each other, in that a proposition about the person may be a reason for or against an ethical proposition, and conversely. An important class of such propositions about the person concern the boundaries of the person. These boundaries enclose a person's defining properties, which constitute his identity. A person's identity may partly determine and partly be determined by his ethical judgments. An equilibrium between one's identity and one's ethical judgments is the counterpart, at the personal level, of the philosophical ideal of reflective equilibrium between a theory of the person and an ethical theory.     

Comparative Religious Ethics and the Politics of Christian Identity

I present a brief historical narrative of the legacy of Christian ethics in comparative religious ethics (CRE) that attempts to make sense of the tensions within the field from the perspective of the politics of identity with reference to its changing content and practices—its internal history—and what might be called the background conditions—its external history—that shaped not only the content and methods of CRE but also its self‐understanding. Given the politics of Christian identity and the historical development of religious ethics within the American academy, I recommend that scholars of CRE adopt a more confessional mode of inquiry that makes explicit their ultimate commitments.