Gratuity,Embodiment, and Reciprocity

Protestant Christian ethicist Timothy Jackson and secular feminist philosopher Eva Feder Kittay each explore the relationship between love or care and justice through the lens of human dependency. Jackson sharply prioritizes agape over justice, whereas Kittay articulates a more complex and integrated understanding of the relationship of care and distributive justice. An account of Christian love and its relation to justice must account for the gratuity, mutuality, and reciprocity that pervade human existence. Such an account must integrate provision for another's basic needs, a feature of agape, with a distributive justice that fairly allocates the material prerequisites of care and the burden of caring labor. Kittay's treatment of care and justice is more adequate to the realities of human embodiment and the social organization of care than Jackson's, but neither offers a fully adequate ground for the moral personhood of all human beings, including deeply dependent persons.     

自我损耗对利他惩罚的影响:愤怒与公正敏感性的作用

采用2个行为实验探讨了自我损耗对利他惩罚的影响。实验1采用“Stroop”任务操纵被试的自我损耗，并考察愤怒情绪在其中的中介作用；实验2使用公正敏感性量表选出高低两组被试后采用“划e”任务操纵被试的自我损耗。两个实验均用最后通牒博弈考察被试的利他惩罚行为。结果发现：高损耗组被试对不公平分配方案的拒绝比例显著高于低损耗组；愤怒情绪在两者间起部分中介作用；高公正敏感组中出现了明显了自我损耗促进效应，低公正敏感组不存在。证实了自我损耗对利他惩罚促进作用。     

Mobility,Cognitions, and panic

Responses to the Mobility Inventory for Agoraphobia and the Cognitions Questionnaire were compared from samples of agoraphobics, social phobics, senior citizens, students, and students' relatives. The data illustrate the occurrence of avoidant behavior and panic in groups other than agoraphobics. The Mobility Inventory was shown to have good discriminative power, but the Cognitions Questionnaire failed to discriminate between agoraphobics and social phobics. The relationship of panic to mobility and cognitions is considered.     

Des raisons d'être d'une argumentation rhétorique selon Aristote

The main purpose of this paper is to explore the reasons Aristotle gives for being able to use rhetorical argumentation, which is obviously not a scientific mode of expression. This faculty which was condemned by Plato as lacking morality, is paradoxically regarded by Aristotle as necessary on moral grounds. For, according to him, it would be blameworthy to keep silent when being verbally assailed. The necessity of rhetoric is, however, more deeply founded. First, because justice has to be saved from its enemies in the City's courts of law. Secondly, because everyone has to be convicted to follow in practice the rules of the City's laws and such a conviction, in the case of the multitude, cannot be obtained by the means of scientific arguments. Thirdly and above all, because, in forensic disputes, characteristics of free political societies, the demagogic power, which regularly leads to tyrannical regimes, can only be avoided by the weapons of rhetoric. From these explanations, one does see that rhetoric, for Aristotle, seems to be the necessary substitute for ancient and traditional instruments securing obedience to legal justice, i.e. myths and pure constraint or coercion. In civilized and free political communities, rhetoric is required for civilization and freedom.

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Des raisons d'être d'une argumentation rhétorique selon Aristote

     

Skinner on cognition

One of the most controversial, if not the most controversial, aspect of behaviorism is its claims (actual and putative) concerning cognition. Part of this controversy is caused by egregious exegetical errors on the part of Skinner's critics. Critics can then easily refute behaviorism by attributing these problematic claims to Skinner. This paper attempts to faithfully describe Skinner's claims regarding cognition. Skinner advances several arguments regarding the role of cognitions in human behavior and in the science of human behavior. We suggest that there are two distinct kinds of claims in this web: 1) claims regarding the proper relation between science and cognitions and 2) claims regarding the status of cognitions as natural events. Due to the multiplicity and interdependence of many of these arguments, it is best to view Skinner's position on cognition as consisting of a web of interdependent claims.     

Distributive Justice in Competitive Access to Intercollegiate Athletic Teams Segregated by Sex

A theory of justice for the basic structure of society may constrain though not directly govern colleges. The principle of "equal opportunity" commonly applied to jobs either does or does not apply to varsity opportunities. If it applies, it interdicts sex discrimination but, one fallacious argument notwithstanding, it states no obligation to expend resources on new teams. If it does not apply, an analogue of Rawls's difference principle may appropriately constrain inequalities between the sexes. In either case the preferences of a majority of the sex affected by any inequality are pivotal in fashioning any tenable distributive policy. Those preferences are neglected by a government policy that assimilates equal opportunity to equality of (i) the ratio of male:female varsity athletes and (ii) the ratio of male:female students. It is argued that such policy rests on affirming the consequent. Its effects include misallocations of resources and overvaluation of athletics. It is argued that what should approximately be equal is competitive access, the ratio of available positions to aspirants, for each sex. Two versions of a principle of equal competitive access are proposed, the recommended one of which pertains to teams whose net consumption of resources is positive.     

Chaïm Perelman: Justice,argumentation and ancient rhetoric

Theoretical interest in Perelman's thought is linked, for the main part, to the place he accords to the notion of argumentation, defined in his work in reference to the Greek philosophy, as represented by Plato and Aristotle, in contrast to the assertions of the sophists and rhetors. He separates the notion of demonstration and that of argumentation and supports his position on an analysis of the debates which were common in the sophistic and rhetoric period.It is in different ways that the notion of argumentation comes into the work of Perelman. By taking up again the analysis of justice with the aim of removing the various strata of meaning which had accumulated on it as a result of the reductions of Plato and the dialectical analyses of Aristotle, Perelman showed that the theory of argumentation transcends the domain of right in which it is rooted and ought not be abandoned to lawyers only. Thus, he follows a train of thought to which he accords a certain nobilty in the name of the new rhetoric. This manner of considering the relationship of the moderns to the Greeks leads him to set up the notion of argumentation in his own texts, where it demonstrates a logical retreat which enables him to work back from Aristotle to Plato and from him to the rhetors and sophists, whose discourse is defined on the level of the self-referential.The exemplary character of Perelman's work is on account of this rehabilitation of argumentation in the old rhetoric which will be examined here.A slightly different version of this essay was presented at the Third Intenational Philosophy Symposium on Justice, Athens, 22–27 May 1987.     

Preschoolers’ Distributive Justice When They Distribute Few Total Rewards in a Third‐Party Task

Five‐year‐old children were presented with a story in which one character made three origami stars and another made nine. Then the participants were asked to distribute small rewards to each character (“Three” or “Four” candies), and were told to use all the candies (“All” instruction), or that “You can leave some candies, if you don't want to use all the candies (‘Partial’ instruction).” In Study 1, almost all children distributed the candies equally (Four). Some participants (28.1%) refused the All instruction for Three, and then equally distributed the candies. They conducted equality allocations in three or all four of the conditions, giving a ratio for “Thorough Egalitarians” of 20–30%. Study 2 used looking‐time measures to assess participants’ judgment. Children looked longer at the amounts of production of two characters in condition Three than in condition Four. Allocation patterns were almost identical to Study 1, but the condition “Partial‐Three” results were not reproduced. The paper discusses the types of egalitarian behavior and the associated production and reward quantities observed.     

The Cross

ABSTRACT

My aim is a philosophical understanding of sacrifice, and especially of the Christian conception of sacrifice. Initially distancing myself a little from the strictly ritual notion of sacrifice, I work with a concept of sacrifice as 1) a voluntary choice (2) to forgo or lose or give away (3) something costly, perhaps supremely costly, (4) as an expressive action, where (5) what is so expressed typically is or includes devotion or loyalty to something exalted. I consider three historical examples of political sacrifices, sacrifices made for a cause, and three literary examples of personal sacrifices, sacrifices made by one person for another. I note that in the Christian context it is very common for sacrifices either political or personal to be taken to be imitations of Jesus’ sacrifice as presented in the New Testament, and ask therefore how we are to understand that. My conclusion is that Jesus’ sacrifice can be seen as involving both a political and a personal aspect—but that in fact, it can only be made as intelligible as may be by understanding it, as the Letter to the Hebrews does, in ritual terms.     

权利游戏——中国文化中的人情对腐败意识的影响

腐败是危害社会公正、法治的不良现象。为考察中国文化中的人情对腐败意图的影响,通过两轮问卷向190名大学生进行调查,结果发现:(1)人情不是单一整体,而是包含情感、资源、规范三个维度的复杂构念;(2)人情中的资源维度显著正向影响腐败意图,并且这一过程不受道德认同的影响。研究结果说明,为建立一个清廉、和谐的社会,人情中的不良成分,如利用人情资源获得优先对待必须被避免。