走出决定论因果观的阴影

国家侵权赔偿因果关系的理解应当走出决定论因果观的阴影。哲学因果描述不仅有决定论描述,还有概率论描述。法律因果追问不是对客观、必然、本质联系的探索。国家怠于履行职责侵权因果关系的判断应当打断决定论的强大心理惯性,向普通人的因果观念求解。     

基因决定论的伦理审视

基因决定论认为,基因决定有机个体性状,基因变异是疾病的根源,基因又是人类社会文化进化的决定力量。但基因决定论以线性因果模型说明整体与部分关系,对人类基因变异进行简化处理,将基因变异简化为对正常基因的偏离,并用简化的个体DNA序列来界定复杂的生物物种,从而构成了基因决定论的伦理困惑。从整体性出发,基因非决定论不再视基因为孤立单位,而将其置于非线性的"基因群"网络之中,通过基因与基因、基因与环境的相互作用来理解基因的多重功能。     

Who's flying the plane: serotonin levels, aggression and free will

The present paper addresses the philosophical problem raised by current causal neurochemical models of impulsive violence and aggression: to what extent can we hold violent criminal offenders responsible for their conduct if that conduct is the result of deterministic biochemical processes in the brain. This question is currently receiving a great deal of attention among neuroscientists, legal scholars and philosophers. We examine our current knowledge of neuroscience to assess the possible roles of deterministic factors which induce impulsive aggression, and the extent to which this behavior can be controlled by neural conditioning mechanisms. Neural conditioning mechanisms, we suggest, may underlie what we consider the basis of responsible (though not necessarily moral) behavior: the capacity to give and take reasons. The models we first examine are based in part upon the role played by the neurotransmitter, serotonin, in the regulation of violence and aggression. Collectively, these results would appear to argue in favor of the view that low brain serotonin levels induce impulsive aggression which overrides mechanisms related to rational decision making processes. We next present an account of responsibility as based on the capacity to exercise a certain kind of reason-responsive control over one's conduct. The problem with such accounts of responsibility, however, is that they fail to specify a neurobiological realization of such mechanisms of control. We present a neurobiological, and weakly determinist, framework for understanding how persons can exercise guidance control over their conduct. This framework is based upon classical conditioning of neurons in the prefrontal cortex that allow for a decision making mechanism that provides for prefrontal cortical control of the sites in the brain which express aggressive behavior that include the hypothalamus and midbrain periaqueductal gray. The authors support the view that, in many circumstances, neural conditioning mechanisms provide the basis for the control of human aggression in spite of the presence of brain serotonin levels that might otherwise favor the expression of impulsive aggressive behavior. Indeed if those neural conditioning mechanisms underlie the human capacity to exercise control, they may be the neural realization of reason-responsiveness generally.     

犯罪对策与刑罚措施－从自由意志与决定论出发

犯罪人的意志既是自由的又是被社会现实条件所制约的,因此,必须在认清个人责任和社会责任的基础上采取相应的犯罪对策与刑罚措施。