Piece of cake? Allocating rewards to third parties when fairness is costly

Reactions to third-party inequality were investigated in three experiments. In Experiment 1, 52 undergraduates allocated money between themselves and two others. Preferences for equal and unequal distributions were also rated. The results show that people are averse to inequalities between themselves and others, and to inequalities between others. Post-experimental ratings indicate that egocentric equality, third-party equality, and max–min preferences are important motives. The findings were replicated in Experiment 2, where 74 undergraduates allocated compensation for a previously conducted task, and in Experiment 3, where 112 participants rated preferences. In these experiments random determination of rewards to third parties altered participants’ behavior and preferences. The results indicated that random determination decreases the importance of all fairness motives while increasing the importance of monetary payoff. While people still care about economic equality under these conditions, contextual factors, such as perceived responsibility for unfair outcomes, seem to alter the impact of fairness.     

Technological Delegation: Responsibility for the Unintended

This article defends three interconnected premises that together demand for a new way of dealing with moral responsibility in developing and using technological artifacts. The first premise is that humans increasingly make use of dissociated technological delegation. Second, because technologies do not simply fulfill our actions, but rather mediate them, the initial aims alter and outcomes are often different from those intended. Third, since the outcomes are often unforeseen and unintended, we can no longer simply apply the traditional (modernist) models for discussing moral responsibility. We need to reinterpret moral responsibility. A schematic layout of a model on Social Role-Responsibility that incorporates these three premises is presented to allow discussion of a new way of interpreting moral responsibility.

Problems of collegial learning in psychoanalysis: Narcissism and curiosity1

Despite clinical sensitivity when listening to patients, analysts have not fared well in hearing and talking to each other with respectful open‐mindedness. Underlying factors are considered with particular focus on the interplay between self‐aimed forces of narcissism and outward‐aimed forces of curiosity. Included in examination of problems of collegial communication are limitations structurally inherent to the human mind (such as the need to abstract aspects of experience in order to focus attention plus the mind’s tendency to categorical thinking), those derived from individual psychology (such as vulnerability of self‐esteem), and those related to group dynamics (such as the problems attendant to new ideas and the allegiances they stir, parochialism and the development of radical schools, the competitiveness between schools). The contribution of cultural influences and the multiply determined uses of language are also highlighted. The core sense of smallness in the strangeness of the universe and in the presence of others is seen as a common thread.     

Hard incompatibilism and its rivals

In this article I develop several responses to my co-authors of Four Views on Free Will. In reply to Manuel Vargas, I suggest a way to clarify his claim that our concepts of free will and moral responsibility should be revised, and I question whether he really proposes to revise the notion of basic desert at stake in the debate. In response to Robert Kane, I examine the role the rejection of Frankfurt-style arguments has in his position, and whether his criticism of my version of this argument is sound. In reply to John Fischer, I argue that the reasons-responsiveness central to his account of moral responsibility is not best characterized counterfactually, and I provide a suggestion for revision.

RESPONSIBILITY AND DISABILITY

Abstract: This essay explores the boundaries of the moral community—the collection of agents eligible for moral responsibility—by focusing on those just inside it and those just outside it. In particular, it contrasts mild mental retardation with psychopathy, specifically among adults. For those who work with and know them, adults with mild mental retardation are thought to be obvious members of the moral community (albeit not full-fledged members). For those who work with and theorize about adult psychopaths, by contrast, they are not members of the moral community (albeit not in such a full-fledged fashion as the insane). Both psychopaths and adults with MMR have a disability, and the essay is interested in how disability sometimes exempts one from the moral community and sometimes doesn't. It will be through two associated puzzles that we will eventually come to see the complicated tripartite relation between disability, responsibility, and moral community.     

Do We Need Berlin Walls or Chinese Walls between Research, Public Consultation, and Advice? New Public Responsibilities for Life Scientists

During the coming decades, life scientists will become involved more than ever in the public and private lives of patients and consumers, as health and food sciences shift from a collective approach towards individualization, from a curative to a preventive approach, and from being driven by desires rather than by technology. This means that the traditional relationships between the activities of life scientists – conducting research, advising industry, governments, and patients/consumers, consulting the public, and prescribing products, be it patents, drugs or food products, information, or advice – are getting blurred. Traditional concepts of the individual, role, task, and collective responsibility have to be revised. This paper argues, from a pragmatic point of view, that the concept of public responsibility can contribute considerably in delineating new gray zones between the various roles of the life scientist: conducting research for governments or industry, giving advice, prescribing and selling products, and doing public consultation. The main issues are where new Chinese walls (not Berlin walls) need to be built between these activities, thereby increasing trust between life scientists and the public at large, and how to organize research agendas and to decide upon research topics. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

英国青少年科学创造力的发展研究

对英国6所学校11岁到15岁的1087名中学生的科学创造力进行了研究,结果表明：英国青少年科学创造力及其各成分的发展存在着显著的年龄差异,随着年龄的增大,科学创造力及其各成分呈持续发展趋势,但在14岁时要下降;第二,英国青少年的科学创造力存在明显的性别差异。总的来讲,女生优于男生。但就科学创造力的各个成分来看,男女生具有不同的特点。     

从与"非典"的斗争中理解"科学精神"的内涵

通过分析与“非典”斗争中表现出来的科学精神,来理解其深刻而广泛的哲学内涵,它包括探索、求实、怀疑、合作、创新等精神,以及科学精神在社会生活中的重要作用和重大意义,从而动员在全社会提倡科学精神。