TRANSCENDING OUR BIOLOGY: A VIRTUE ETHICS INTERPRETATION OF THE APPEAL TO NATURE IN TECHNOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

“Arguments from nature” are used, and have historically been used, in popular responses to advances in technology and to environmental issues—there is a widely shared body of ethical intuitions that nature, or perhaps human nature, sets some limits on the kinds of ends that we should seek, the kinds of things that we should do, or the kinds of lives that we should lead. Virtue ethics can provide the context for a defensible form of the argument from nature, and one that makes proper sense of its enduring role in debates concerning our relationship to technology and the environment. However, the notion of an ethics founded upon an account of the essential features of human nature is controversial. On the one hand, contemporary biological science no longer defines species by their essential characteristics, so from a biological point of view there just are no essential characteristics of human beings. On the other hand, it might be argued that humans have, in some sense, “transcended our biology,” so an understanding of humans as a biological species is extraneous to ethical questions. In this article, I examine and defend the argument from nature, as a way to ground an ethic of virtue, from some of the more common criticisms that are made against it. I argue that, properly interpreted as an appeal to an evaluative account of human nature, the argument from nature is defensible with the context of virtue ethics and, in this light, I show how arguments from nature made in popular responses to technological and environmental issues are best understood.     

GENETICS AND THE ETHICS OF COMMUNITY

At times decisions are made in the field of genetics that are presented as if the ethical debates have been adequately treated and so all moral considerations have been addressed, when the truth is very different. Nor is it always easy or desirable to separate the ethical, legal and social questions posed by new developments. The impact of developments in genetic science upon communities is one field of enquiry that envelops each of these areas. This paper explores the impact of genetics upon communities through focusing, in particular, upon certain developments in reproductive science. After introducing core issues and technologies, it discusses particular ethical concerns in relation to the ‘shadow’ of eugenics over such developments, before exploring the role of legislative debates and procedures in transforming social attitudes, values and hence norms. It then turns to consider debates concerning the ‘quality of life ethic’ now prevalent in healthcare, and moves on to discuss the issue of genetic discrimination – focusing, in particular, upon discrimination against disabled persons as a representative instance of the actual ethical and social/communitarian implications of the foregoing. It ends by highlighting the need to discern the ways in which the ethics of genetics is presently shaped and practised in order to discern better the particular social and communitarian implications of certain technological advances.     

THE NATURE OF MOTIVATION (AND WHY IT MATTERS LESS TO ETHICS THAN ONE MIGHT THINK)

Philosophical Studies -     

MORALITY AND NATURE: EVOLUTIONARY CHALLENGES TO CHRISTIAN ETHICS

Christian ethics accentuates in manifold ways the unique character of human nature. Personalists believe that the mind is never reducible to material and physical substance. The human person is presented as the supreme principle, based on arguments referring to free‐willed actions, the immateriality of both the divine spirit and the reflexive capacity, intersubjectivity and self‐consciousness. But since Darwin, evolutionary biology slowly instructs us that morality roots in dispositions that are programmed by evolution into our nature. Historically, Thomas Huxley, “Darwin's bulldog,” agreed with Darwin on almost everything, except for his gradualist position on moral behavior. Huxley's “saltationism” has recently been characterized by Frans de Waal as “a veneer theory of morality.” Does this mark the end of a period of presenting morality as only the fruit of socialization processes (nurture) and as having nothing in common with nature? Does it necessarily imply a corrosion of personalist views on the human being or do Christian ethics have to become familiar again with their ancient roots?     

元认知的本质与要素

该文就元认知的本质和要素进行了探讨。文章首先对已有的相关观点进行了分析,在此基础上,将元认知的内涵界定为“个体对当前认知活动的认知调节”,并确定了元认知活动的三要素,即元认知技能、元认知知识、元认知体验,论述了每一要素在元认知活动中的作用,并以元认知三要素关系示意图描述了三者之间的关系。     

NATURE, NURTURE, AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT FROM 1 TO 16 YEARS:

Abstract— Children increasingly resemble their parents in cognitive abilities from infancy through adolescence Results obtained from a 20-year longitudinal adoption study of 245 adopted children and their biological and adoptive parents, as well as 245 matched nonadoptive (control) parents and offspring, show that this increasing resemblance is due to genetic factors Adopted children resemble their adaptive parents slightly in early childhood but not at all in middle childhood or adolescence. In contrast, during childhood and adolescence, adopted children become more like their biological parents, and to the same degree as children and parents in control families Although these results were strongest for general cognitive ability and verbal ability similar results were found for other specific cognitive abilities—spatial ability, speed of processing, and recognition memory. These findings indicate that within this population, genes that stably adolescence and that environmental factors that contribute to cognitive development are not correlated with parents' cognitive ability.