Institutional consequentialism and global governance

Elsewhere we have responded to the so-called demandingness objection to consequentialism – that consequentialism is excessively demanding and is therefore unacceptable as a moral theory – by introducing the theoretical position we call institutional consequentialism. This is a consequentialist view that, however, requires institutional systems, and not individuals, to follow the consequentialist principle. In this paper, we first introduce and explain the theory of institutional consequentialism and the main reasons that support it. In the remainder of the paper, we turn to the global dimension where the first and foremost challenge is to explain how institutional consequentialism can deal with unsolved global problems, such as poverty, war and climate change. In response, following the general idea of institutional consequentialism, we draw up three alternative routes: relying on existing national, transnational and supranational institutions; promoting gradual institutional reform; and advocating radical changes to the status quo. We evaluate these routes by describing normatively relevant properties of the existing global institutional system, as well as by showing what institutional consequentialism can say about alternatives to it: a world government; and multi-layered sovereignty/neo-medieval system.     

现代语境中的伦理学和伦理学家

Ethics in the modern context is under the dual pressure of scientific-technological rationality and market commercialization, which has led to breakthroughs in the original boundaries of knowledge and academic methodology. The gradual separation of the domain of public life and that of private life in modern society and the former’s increasing pressure on the latter, in addition to the above dual pressure on ethics, is causing a dramatic transformation of the structure of ethical knowledge itself. All of these raise new theoretical problems for ethics and ethicists in the modern context. Answering and solving these problems makes sense for the future development of ethics as one of the classic humanities, and tests modern ethicists’ ability to realize their moral and theoretical duties. Translated by Yan Xin from Daode yu wenming 道德与文明 (Morality and Civilization), 2007, (4): 4–9     

从现代系统科学角度看冠状动脉支架置入术后再狭窄

随着介入治疗技术在临床的广泛应用,目前已成为治疗冠心病(CAD)的主要方法之一.目前国内外指南一致推荐对于CAD的大多数de novo病变常规置入支架,可有效减少单纯球囊扩张的并发症和再狭窄的发生率,但支架内再狭窄的形成又日益突出,成为严重影响介入治疗远期疗效的主要问题.对再狭窄发生机制的研究近十年来取得诸多新进展,对其发生机制的研究和探索为解决这个世纪难题提供了理论基础和依据.本文应用现代系统科学的自组织理论,从哲学角度深入认识和理解这一病理过程.     

《管子》农学思想及其现代意义

《管子》是管仲学派的著作集,是我国古代最早的一部百科全书。其中包含大量独具特色的农学思想：以农为基础、农工商并举的农业经营思想;摸清国家土地家底,实行土地经营制度改革,实行因时因地制宜的土地利用思想;加强田间管理,充分利用劳动生产工具,勤于耕耘,深耕除草,适度灌溉、实行轮栽制度的田间耕作思想;善待自然,防止各种农业灾害的农业哲学思想。这些思想至今仍对我国正确处理农工商的关系,合理解决“三农”问题;确保生态农业建设;正确认识国家土地形势,搞好土地经营权流转制度改革具有十分重要的现实意义。     

Insular activity during passive viewing of aversive stimuli reflects individual differences in state negative affect

People differ with regard to how they perceive, experience, and express negative affect. While trait negative affect reflects a stable, sustained personality trait, state negative affect represents a stimulus limited and temporally acute emotion. So far, little is known about the neural systems mediating the relationship between negative affect and acute emotion processing. To address this issue we investigated in a healthy female sample how individual differences in state negative affect are reflected in changes in blood oxygen level-dependent responses during passive viewing of emotional stimuli. To assess autonomic arousal we simultaneously recorded changes in skin conductance level. At the psychophysiological level we found increased skin conductance level in response to aversive relative to neutral pictures. However, there was no association of state negative affect with skin conductance level. At the neural level we found that high state negative affect was associated with increased left insular activity during passive viewing of aversive stimuli. The insula has been implicated in interoceptive processes and in the integration of sensory, visceral, and affective information thus contributing to subjective emotional experience. Greater recruitment of the insula in response to aversive relative to neutral stimuli in subjects with high state negative affect may represent increased processing of salient aversive stimuli.     

Sex–related self–concepts, cognitive styles and cultural values of traditionality–modernity as predictors of general and domain–specific sexism

Previous studies have determined that masculinity, femininity, need for closure and authoritarianism are significant predictors of sexism. The present study attempted to integrate these variables in order to better understand the nature of general ambivalent sexism and workplace–specific sexism in Singapore. Chinese traditionality and Chinese modernity were specifically examined as potential predictors of sexism. Robust results from hierarchical regressions indicated that these indigenous cultural variables were highly important in predicting general and workplace–specific sexism. Although masculinity and need for closure were unrelated to sexism, participant sex, femininity and authoritarianism significantly predicted sexist attitudes towards women. Most important, Chinese values were found to add significant incremental validity in predicting sexist attitudes beyond what was accounted by the aforementioned predictors. Chinese traditionality significantly predicted sexist attitudes towards women, but Chinese modernity was unrelated to sexism. Implications of these findings were discussed.     

现代医学的有限与无奈

在充分肯定现代医学在取得巨大进步的同时,分别从疾病病因、发病机制、早期诊断、疗效和预后等8个方向阐述了现代医学在防治人类疾病中的局限性,并简要分析了产生这种局限性的原因。     

焦虑水平与体育高考生竞技状态关系及其对策

通过对体育高考学生焦虑状况的调查与评定 ,探讨焦虑水平与体育高考生竞技状态的关系。采用Spielberger状态 -特质焦虑量表对 2 5 9名考生进行调查 ,其中男 2 0 5人 ,女 5 4人。结果表明 ,在体育高考的情境压力下 ,学生的焦虑水平普遍提高 ,女生明显高于男生 (p <0 .0 1) ,其状态焦虑得分既非常显著地高于常模 (p <0 .0 1) ,也高于相关研究报告中普通高考学生的平均得分。体育高考学生适宜的状态焦虑水平为男 38～ 5 0分 ,女 4 1～ 5 2分。作者对结果进行了讨论分析 ,认为这反映了体育高考情境的特殊性 ,也反映了个体间最佳焦虑水平的差异性。其结果为我们重视对体育高考学生这一特殊的应试群体进行心理技能训练提供了依据。     

Three- and four-year-olds spontaneously use others' past performance to guide their learning

A wealth of human knowledge is acquired by attending to information provided by other people – but some people are more credible sources than others. In two experiments, we explored whether young children spontaneously keep track of an individual’s history of being accurate or inaccurate and use this information to facilitate subsequent learning. We found that 3- and 4-year-olds favor a previously accurate individual when learning new words and learning new object functions and applied the principle of mutual exclusivity to the newly learned words but not the newly learned functions. These findings expand upon previous research in a number of ways, most importantly by showing that (a) children spontaneously keep track of an individual’s history and use it to guide subsequent learning without any prompting, and (b) children’s sensitivity to others’ prior accuracy is not specific to the domain of language.     

From psychosocial equilibrium to catastrophic breakdown: Cyprus 1955–1974

The recent history of Cyprus presents an example of a society in which a centuries-long peaceful coexistence of diverse populations gave way to violence and murderous hate, with devastating end results. This paper tries to understand and describe the process by which Cypriot society slid from a position of psychosocial equilibrium and integration towards one of disintegration, fragmentation and catastrophic breakdown. This paper draws from work by social anthropologists, sociologists, historians and others, and from my own personal experience. To these I applied insights afforded by psychoanalysis to identify and explore the psychic processes and states of mind that characterized a psychosocial disintegrative process. I came to see external political events and internal psychological processes as inseparably intertwined and dynamically interdependent, each emanating from and catalysing the other. The factual details of the process described are of course unique in their local specificity, but the psychic phenomena that characterized it are not: at both the individual and group levels they are replicated in other societies undergoing similar processes of self-destruction.