Common Law Approaches to the Relationship Between Law and Morality

How are general relations of law and morality typically conceived in an environment of Anglo-saxon common law? This paper considers some classical common law methods and traditions as these have confronted and been overlaid with modern ideas of legal positivism. While classical common law treated a community and its morality as the cultural foundation of law, legal positivism's analytical separation of law and morals, allied with liberal approaches to legal regulation, have made the relationship of legal and moral principles more complex and contested. Using ideas from Durkheim's and Weber's sociology, I argue that the traditional common law emphasis on an inductive, empirical treatment of moral practices has continuing merit, but in contemporary conditions the vague idea of community embedded in classical common law thought must be replaced with a much more precise conceptualisation of coexisting communities, whose moral bonds are diverse and require a corresponding diversity of forms of legal recognition or protection.     

Sensitivity to reinforcer duration in a self-control procedure

In a concurrent-chains procedure, pigeons' responses on left and right keys were followed by reinforcers of different durations at different delays following the choice responses. Three pairs of reinforcer delays were arranged in each session, and reinforcer durations were varied over conditions. In Experiment 1 reinforcer delays were unequal, and in Experiment 2 reinforcer delays were equal. In Experiment 1 preference reversal was demonstrated in that an immediate short reinforcer was chosen more frequently than a longer reinforcer delayed 6 s from the choice, whereas the longer reinforcer was chosen more frequently when delays to both reinforcers were lengthened. In both experiments, choice responding was more sensitive to variations in reinforcer duration at overall longer reinforcer delays than at overall shorter reinforcer delays, independently of whether fixed-interval or variable-interval schedules were arranged in the choice phase. We concluded that preference reversal results from a change in sensitivity of choice responding to ratios of reinforcer duration as the delays to both reinforcers are lengthened.     

A Response to G. Scott Davis

This defense of my essay on Vitoria and Suárez argues that my use of the term “religious war” is based on religious authority at least as much as religious cause, and that Davis’s decision to discuss only Vitoria limits his ability to come to terms with my thesis. To Davis’s argument that for Vitoria war was justified against the Indians only as a necessity of simple justice and to protect the innocent, I argue that his disjunction between simple justice and religious cause is a false one that fails to come to term with the church’s primary reason for approaching Indians, with the Thomistic understanding of the relation between nature and grace and between reason and revelation, and with the distinction between what justice requires in relation to the church and Christians and what it requires for others. I explain finally that my claim is not that the Catholic political rulers readily responded to papal calls for war except when it was in their interest, but that papal war was central to the normative just‐war tradition of the church in canon law and among major theologians like Vitoria and Suárez.     

试论《淮南子》对"法"、"德"、"风俗"的糅合

在《淮南子》糅合“法”、“德”、“俗”的治道思想中,蕴涵了“反秦／袭秦”（对“法”的改良）、“倡道德／斥礼乐”（对“德”的期待）并存的内在特质,同时,还对风俗在民间社会中的教化、规范功能有着充分的认识。     

循证卫生管理的探讨

培养博学而人道的医学工作者是医学教育所追求的目标。作为一门交叉学科,医学哲学在医学生的人文素质培养中占有重要地位。对医学哲学的教学内容、理念与方法分别进行探讨,期望医学哲学教育能够提高医学生对与现代医学有关的知识、活动和态度进行批判性反思的意识和能力。     

Reanalysis of the equation for simple action

De Villiers and Herrnstein (1976) have shown that the equation for simple action, derived from the matching law, predicts change in behavioral output for some 40 experiments in which the value of a single source of reinforcement has been varied. Using only the positive-reinforcement studies they cite that used five or more different reinforcement values, we found the high percentage of variance they report accommodated by this equation (94%) is predicated on instances of averaging rates of behavioral output before making a least-squares fit of the equation. In our reanalysis, which minimizes rate averaging, only 78% of the data variance is accommodated. This diminished data-variance accommodation can be improved by adding parameters that permit the equation's scaling constant to change as a function of reinforcement. Although these parameters permit acceptable levels of accommodation of data variance, they correspond to no obvious psychological processes. These findings support the view that the equation for simple action is an inadequate model for behavioral output.     

试论《管子》对法的渊源的探索

《管子》作为“齐法家”思想的重要著作,其中的法家思想融进了当时多家学说对法的认识,反映了齐国变法时期的政治实践以及战国时期法律思想发展的特点,在我国法律思想发展史上具有重要的历史地位。它对法的渊源的探索,开辟了思想融合的趋势,这种思想上的包容精神影响了我国后世许多重要文化和国家治理思想的形成。     

论医学思维和法律思维的差异

医学思维和法律思维是两种不同的思维方式。在卫生法律的实施过程中,经常会遇到这两种思维方式相互冲突的现象。究其原因,在于医学思维和法律思维之间存在的差异。认清差异、分析成因、寻求处置思路和办法对于正确处理医疗纠纷、和谐医患关系具有重要意义。     

性别选择与法律之回应——法理视野中的变性手术

变性人的出现对社会秩序及法律制度提出了挑战。自然人生而具有的人作为社会主体定在的自由和健康权利,为变性人享有性别选择的权利提供了法理支撑。在权利确认后,很有必要在变性手术的对象、施行者及程序上作出规范的应对,而变性人术后的社会角色及权利保护也应该得到法律的适时回应,以实现法的秩序、公正等价值。     

THE CONFLICTING LOYALTIES OF STATISM AND GLOBALISM: CAN GLOBAL DEMOCRACY RESOLVE THE LIBERAL CONUNDRUM?

Abstract: The cosmopolitan ideal of liberal universalism seems to be at odds with liberalism's insistence on national borders for liberal democratic communities, creating disparate standards of distributive justice for insiders and outsiders. The liberal's dilemma on the question of cosmopolitan justice would seem to be an extension of this broader conundrum of conflicting loyalties of statism and globalism. The challenge for liberalism, then, seems to be to show how the practices of exclusive membership embody the principle of moral equality. While discerning a variety of liberal reasons to give some scope to the claim that statism and globalism need not be an irreconcilable dilemma within liberalism, the essay argues that these reasons fail to provide a satisfactory resolution. Instead, the essay points out, global democracy can be the direction for both a statist and a cosmopolitan liberal, and the two camps a case not of conflicting loyalties but of multiple loyalties.