论技术主义对人类道德责任的消解

技术主义流行于 2 0世纪的工业社会之中 ,成为支配人们思维方式和生活方式的意识形态。“知识就是力量”的技术主义知识立论 ,在学理层面上消解了人的道德责任 ;技术意志取代人的自由意志 ,在伦理层面上消解了人的道德责任 ;社会生产领域和政治领域的标准化和科层制 ,在操作层面上颠覆了人的道德责任 ;人与自然关系问题上的人类中心主义拒斥了对自然的道德责任。     

Evolution and Free Will: A Defense of Darwinian Non–naturalism

In his recent book The Natural Selection of Autonomy , Bruce Waller defends a view that he calls "natural autonomy." This view holds that human beings possess a kind of autonomy that we share with nonhuman animals, a capacity to explore alternative courses of action, but an autonomy that cannot support moral responsibility. He also argues that this natural autonomy can provide support for the ethical principle of noninterference. I argue that to support the ethical principle of noninterference Waller needs either a libertarian or a compatibilist theory of autonomy. I then go on to argue that, contra Waller, the libertarian view is both compatible with Darwinism and able to make sense of how autonomous acts belong to the agents who perform them. Thus, I conclude that the libertarian position is a live option for Darwinians. If however, naturalism is taken to include a deterministic view of the universe (at least at the nonquantum level), as is often the case, then my article takes some strides in defending "Darwinian non–naturalism."     

Compatibilism &; desert: critical comments on <Emphasis Type="Italic">four views on free will</Emphasis>

In this paper I offer from a source compatibilist’s perspective a critical discussion of Four Views on Free Will by John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom, and Manuel Vargas. Sharing Fischer’s semi-compatibilist view, I propose modifications to his arguments while resisting his coauthors’ objections. I argue against Kane that he should give up the requirement that a free and morally responsible agent be able to do otherwise (in relevant cases). I argue against Pereboom that his famed manipulation argument be resisted by contending that the agents in it are free and responsible. And I also argue against Vargas by challenging the sense in which his revisionist thesis differs from a position like Fischer’s and mine. I close by reflecting on the nature of desert. All seem to assume it is central to the debate, but what is it?     

Simple additivity of stochastic psychological processes: Tests and measures

In this article, some additive models of behavioral measures are defined, and distributional tests of them are proposed. Major theoretical results include (a) conditions for additivity of components to predict the highest level of dominance in a model-free stochastic dominance hierarchy, (b) methods of identifying the shape of the hazard rate function of an added component from certain relationships among the observable density and distribution functions, and (c) effects of stochastic dependence between components on the distributional tests. Feasibility and usefulness of the methods are demonstrated by application to choice RT and ratings experiments.The author was supported by grants MH44640 to Roger Ratcliff and AFOSR 90-0246 (jointly funded by NSF) to Gail McCoon. Parts of this work were presented at the European Mathematical Psychology meetings of 1991. My thanks to F. Gregory Ashby, Bruce Bloxom, Roger Ratcliff, W. Schwarz, Jim Townsend, and an anonymous reviewer for their many helpful suggestions.     

Hypocrisy, Change of Mind, and Weakness of Will: How to Do Moral Philosophy with Examples

What are the differences between hypocrisy, change of mind, and weakness of will? Each typically involves a gap between word and deed, yet they do not seem morally equivalent. Moreover, they are intuitively different concepts, even though the conceptual boundaries between them are fuzzy. This paper explores diverse examples, attempting to identify elements which may be distinctive of each concept, with special attention to hypocrisy. It also provides a discussion of the appropriateness of such use of examples in moral philosophy.     

Alternative Possibilities and Moral Responsibility: The Flicker of Freedom

Some defenders of the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) have responded to the challenge of Frankfurt-style counterexamples (FSCs) to PAP by arguing that there remains a flicker of freedom -- that is, an alternative possibility for action -- left to the agent in FSCs. I argue that the flicker of freedom strategy is unsuccessful. The strategy requires the supposition that doing an act-on-one's-own is itself an action of sorts. I argue that either this supposition is confused and leads to counter-intuitive results; or, if the supposition is acceptable, then it is possible to use it to construct a FSC in which there is no flicker of freedom at all. Either way, the flicker of freedom strategy is ineffective against FSCs. Since the flicker of freedom strategy is arguably the best defense of PAP, I conclude that FSCs are successful in showing that PAP is false. An agent can act with moral responsibility without having alternative possibilities available to her.     

Responses

This essay consists in my replies to Professors John Martin Fischer, Patricia Greenspan, Eleonore Stump, Peter van Inwagen and Gary Watson regarding various aspects of my analysis of moral responsibility.     

Power and the origins of unhappiness: Working with individuals

Evidence that the ‘ultimate repressed’ in our understanding of emotional distress is power can be gleaned even from Freud's writing. This is a form of repression which community psychology is well placed to lift. Impossible though it is to stand outside the ‘apparatus of power’ (and, therefore to give a complete analysis of it), we cannot achieve an accurate account of the causes of human unhappiness without taking its operations into account as fully as possible. The psychological therapies do have an implicit notion of will power, but this serves only to distract our attention from the external, material nature of power. We have to be careful, moreover, not to ‘psychologize’ power by trying to turn it into an internal attribute to be ‘switched on’ by an essentially mysterious process of ‘empowerment’. We need to specify empirically the types of power that contribute to ‘clinical’ distress and give an account of ‘therapy’ in terms of the powers to which it has access (recognizing also that these are limited).