Exemplarist Environmental Ethics

This article argues that environmental ethics can deemphasize environmental problem‐solving in preference for a more exemplarist mode. This mode will renarrate what we admire in those we have long admired, in order to make them resonate with contemporary ethical needs. First, I outline a method problem that arose for me in ethnographic fieldwork, a problem that I call, far too reductively, “solution thinking.” Second, I relate that method problem to movements against “quandary ethics” in ethical theory more broadly. Third, I discuss some interpretive work I am engaged in about Henry David Thoreau and how it bears on the methodological issues my fieldwork raised. I argue that some of the most important icons of right relation to environment, especially Francis of Assisi and Thoreau, should be envisioned as far more politically invested than they usually are. They demonstrate to scholars of religious ethics that an exemplarist ethic focused on character need not neglect politics.     

克林强三值模式与修正过程

真之修正理论主要在经典二值模式下展开修正过程,但这种过程同时也兼容非经典赋值模式。本文在克林强三值这一典型的非经典赋值模式下规定修正过程,并利用这种过程对带真谓词的语句尤其是悖论语句进行了分析。由此给出了这些语句的一个更多样化的分类。这表明克林强三值赋值下的修正理论不但是一个包容性更强的修正理论,而且还为古普塔提出的真谓词的描述性问题提供了一个更全面的解决方案。     

中国颜色体系研究

概述了用颜色立体模型表示物体颜色,并做定量表示的颜色体系研究的理论意义及应用价值。介绍了国际上影响较大的颜色体系理论和编制原则的特点。中国颜色体系研究是在对国际上其它颜色体系的理论分析和对颜色样品测试的基础上,确立其理论依据和编制原则,开展了中国人眼对明度、色调、彩度等间距排列的视觉评价实验,建立了中国颜色体系理论模型。同时研制出《中国颜色体系样册》。该项研究于１９９３年７月通过了国家自然科学基金委员会和中国科学院联合召开的成果鉴定会,并得到良好的评价,又于１９９４年６月通过国家标准审查。该项研究的完成和推广,不仅能为我国国民经济各部门的颜色控制、标定和交流提供科学的颜色定量手段,同时也是对实用色度学的发展和颜色标准化工作做了有益的工作,产生了积极的经济效益和社会效益。     

Losing My Religion as a Natural Experiment: How State Pressure and Taxes Led to Church Disaffiliations between 1940 and 2010 in Germany

The sociological literature has produced a remarkably consistent picture of the quantitative patterns of religious disaffiliations in Western countries. This article argues, and demonstrates, that strong changes in a social context may lead individuals to disaffiliate rapidly, leading to very different aggregate effects from those in the “western model.” We use the unique situation of the separation of Germany from 1949 to 1989 and its subsequent reunification as a “natural experiment” to show just how much the relationships routinely found can be disrupted under changed conditions. The state socialist “treatment” affected religious disaffiliations in East Germany profoundly as it (a) made disaffiliations 10 times more probable in the East than in the West in the 1950s and 1960s, (b) shielded East German church members from factors that led to mass disaffiliations in the West in the late 1960s and early 1970s, (c) reversed the education‐disaffiliation link in the East, thus making disaffiliation more likely among the less educated, and (d) led to an especially strong increase in disaffiliations in the East right after the reunification     

Changing the Criminal Justice System Response to Sexual Assault: An Empirical Study of a Participatory Action Research Project

In jurisdictions throughout the United States, thousands of sexual assault kits (SAKs; also known as a “rape kits”) have not been submitted by the police for forensic DNA testing. DNA evidence may be helpful to sexual assault investigations and prosecutions by identifying perpetrators, revealing serial offenders through DNA matches across cases, and exonerating those who have been wrongly accused. This paper describes a longitudinal action research project conducted in Detroit, Michigan after that city discovered approximately 11,000 untested sexual assault kits in a police department storage facility. We conducted a root cause analysis to examine individual, organizational, community, and societal factors that contributed to the development of the rape kit backlog in Detroit. Based on those findings, we implemented and evaluated structural changes to increase staffing, promote kit testing, and retrain police and prosecutors so that cases could be reopened for investigation and prosecution. As we conducted this work, we also studied how this action research project impacted the Detroit criminal justice system. Participating in this project changed stakeholders’ attitudes about the utility of research to address community problems, the usefulness of DNA evidence in sexual assault cases, and the impact of trauma on survivors. The results led to new protocols for SAK testing and police investigations, and new state legislation mandating SAK forensic DNA testing.