112 年 國立臺灣大學哲學系碩士班甲組《哲學英文與哲學概論》

But if the mere fact that I can produce from my thought the idea of something entails that everything which I clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to that thing really does belong to it, is not this a possible basis for another argument to prove the existence of God? Certainly, the idea of God, or a supremely perfect being, is one which I find within me just as surely as the idea of any shape or number. And my understanding that it belongs to his nature that he always exists is no less clear and distinct than is the case when I prove of any shape or number that some property belongs to its nature. Hence, even if it turned out that not everything on which I have meditated in these past days is true, I ought still to regard the existence of God as having at least the same level of certainty as I have hitherto attributed to the truths of mathematics?
At first sight, however, this is not transparently clear, but has some appearance of being a sophism. Since I have been accustomed to distinguish between existence and essence in everything else, I find it easy to persuade myself that existence can also be separated from the essence of God, and hence that God can be thought of as not existing. But when I concentrate more carefully, it is quite evident that existence can no more be separated from the essence of God than the fact that its three angles equal two right angles can be separated from the essence of a triangle, or than the idea of a mountain can be separated from the idea of a valley. Hence it is just as much of a contradiction to think of God (that is, a supremely perfect being) lacking existence (that is, lacking a perfection), as it is to think of a mountain without a valley.
(From: Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings, Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988)

請盡可能以直譯的方式中譯以下段落。

2.閱讀以下段落,並回答以下問題。
(a)請問作者此處討論的「決定論」(determinism)是什麼意義下的決定論?作者是否同意這種版本的決定論?理由為何?(12%)
(b)作者舉出「語言」為例的意圖為何?最終來說,作者認為道德環境(moral environment)是否重要?(13%)

The other implication of the life sciences that threatens ethics, in many peoples' minds, is the threat of determinism. The idea here is that since it is 'all in the genes', the enterprise of ethics becomes hopeless. The basket of motivations that in fact move people may not be as simple as the Grand Unifying Theories have it, but they may be fixed. And then we just do as we are programmed to do. It is no use railing about it or regretting it: we cannot kick against nature.
This raises the whole thorny topic of free will. Here, I want to look at only one particular version of the problem. This takes our genetic make-up to imply the futility of ethics, meaning in particular the futility of moral advice or education or experience. The threat is the paralysing effect of realizing that we are what we are: large mammals, made in accordance with genetic instructions about which we can do nothing.
A moral enterprise might be hopeless because it tries to alter fixed nature. A prohibition on long hair may be enforceable, say in the army or the police force. But a prohibition on growing hair at all is not, since we are indeed programmed to do it. An order forbidding hunger or thirst is futile, since we cannot control them. Some cases are less clear. Imagine a particularly ascetic monastic order, whose rule not only enjoins chastity, but forbids sexual desire. The rule is probably futile. It cannot be obeyed because it is not up to us whether we feel sexual desire. At the right time the hormones boil, and sexual desire bubbles up (lust was an object of particular horror to early Christian moralists just because of its 'rebellious' or involuntary nature). The chemical instructions are genetically encoded. There may indeed be marginal technologies of control: yoga, or biofeedback, or drugs. But for most young people most of the time, any injunction not to feel desire is futile. This is not to say that the injunction has no effect at all. It may well bring shame and embarrassment to those who find that they cannot conform to it. This may even be its function, since it may thereby reinforce their subservience in the face of the implacable authority that commanded it. It can increase the power of churches or parents to keep their dependents in a state of guilt or a state of shame. But the rule is directly futile: it cannot be obeyed. So the question is, are all rules similarly futile, because of genetic determinism?
The answer is No, because whatever our genetic make-up programs us to do, it leaves room for what we can call input-responsiveness.' It leaves room for us to vary our behaviour in response to what we hear or feel or touch or see (otherwise there would be little point in having these senses in the first place). It leaves room for us to vary our desires in accordance with what we learn (discovering that the glass contains sulphuric acid, I lose the desire to drink it that I had when I thought it contained gin). It leaves room for us to be influenced by information gathered from others. Finally, it leaves room for us to be affected by the attitudes of others. In other words, it makes us responsive to the moral climate.
If we liked paradox, we might put this by saying that genetics programs us to be flexible. But there is no paradox, really. Even an inanimate structure that is literally programmed can be made to be flexible. A chess program will be designed to give a different response depending on what move its opponent has just made. It is input-responsive. Inflexible traits (growing hair) are not
input-responsive because no matter what beliefs, desires, or attitudes we have they go on just the same. But many of our own beliefs and desires and attitudes are not like that. They show endless plasticity. They vary with our surroundings, including the moral climate in which we find ourselves.
It is an empirical matter how flexible we are in any particular respect. Thus, consider language. Many theorists believe that the extraordinary facility with which children pick up language requires a dedicated 'module' or structure within the brain that has this as its function. Its function is not to pick up English, German, or Latin, for any child can pick up any language. Its function is to pick up whichever language the child grows up with: its mother tongue, or tongues if it is lucky. After a time, the evidence suggests, this flexibility is substantially lost. Beyond about the age of twelve, it is almost impossible to pick up a language so as to speak it like a native. The responsiveness diminishes or vanishes. We are no longer so good at copying the inputs and finding ourselves falling in with the grammar of what we hear.
So, for all genetics tells us, a child may be disposed to become kind and loving in a kind and loving environment, vicious and aggressive in a vicious and aggressive one, intellectual and musical in an intellectual and musical one. Or, these dispositions may in turn be liable to be displaced if other factors influence things. We just have to look and see.
Very possibly, what we find is greater receptivity at some stages, and relative inflexibility thereafter, rather as in the case of language. If this is so, far from sidelining the importance of the moral environment, the excursus through determinism will catapult it to the head of the agenda. That is where it should be if it turns out that, once we have been weaned into an atmosphere of violence, aggression, insensitivity, sentimentality, manipulation, and furtiveness-the everyday world of television, for example, we can never or almost never climb out. (From: Simon Blackburn, Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)

5. DETERMINISM AND FUTILITY
   The other implication of the life sciences that threatens ethics, in many peoples' minds, is the threat of determinism. The idea here is that since it is 'all in the genes', the enterprise of ethics becomes hopeless. The basket of motivations that in fact move people may not be as simple as the Grand Unifying Theories have it, but they may be fixed. And then we just do as we are programmed to do. It is no use railing about it or regretting it: we cannot kick against nature.
   This raises the whole thorny topic of free will. Here, I want to look at only one particular version of the problem. This takes our genetic make-up to imply the futility of ethics, meaning in particular the futility of moral advice or education or experience. The threat is the paralysing effect of realizing that we are what we are: large mammals, made in accordance with genetic instructions about which we can do nothing.
   A moral enterprise might be hopeless because it tries to alter fixed nature. A prohibition on long hair may be enforceable, say in the army or the police force. But a prohibition on growing hair at all is not, since we are indeed programmed to do it. An order forbidding hunger or thirst is futile, since we cannot control them. Some cases are less clear. Imagine a particularly ascetic monastic order, whose rule not only enjoins chastity, but forbids sexual desire. The rule is probably futile. It cannot be obeyed because it is not up to us whether we feel sexual desire. At the right time the hormones boil, and sexual desire bubbles up (lust was an object of particular horror to early Christian moralists just because of its 'rebellious' or involuntary nature). The chemical instructions are genetically encoded. There may indeed be marginal technologies of control: yoga, or biofeedback, or drugs. But for most young people most of the time, any injunction not to feel desire is futile. This is not to say that the injunction has no effect at all. It may well bring shame and embarrassment to those who find that they cannot conform to it. This may even be its function, since it may thereby reinforce their subservience in the face of the implacable authority that commanded it. It can increase the power of churches or parents to keep their dependents in a state of guilt or a state of shame. But the rule is directly futile: it cannot be obeyed. So the question is, are all rules similarly futile, because of genetic determinism?
   The answer is No, because whatever our genetic make-up programs us to do, it leaves room for what we can call input-responsiveness.' It leaves room for us to vary our behaviour in response to what we hear or feel or touch or see (otherwise there would be little point in having these senses in the first place). It leaves room for us to vary our desires in accordance with what we learn (discovering that the glass contains sulphuric acid, I lose the desire to drink it that I had when I thought it contained gin). It leaves room for us to be influenced by information gathered from others. Finally, it leaves room for us to be affected by the attitudes of others. In other words, it makes us responsive to the moral climate.
   If we liked paradox, we might put this by saying that genetics programs us to be flexible. But there is no paradox, really. Even an inanimate structure that is literally programmed can be made to be flexible. A chess program will be designed to give a different response depending on what move its opponent has just made. It is input-responsive. Inflexible traits (growing hair) are not
   input-responsive because no matter what beliefs, desires, or attitudes we have they go on just the same. But many of our own beliefs and desires and attitudes are not like that. They show endless plasticity. They vary with our surroundings, including the moral climate in which we find ourselves.
   It is an empirical matter how flexible we are in any particular respect. Thus, consider language. Many theorists believe that the extraordinary facility with which children pick up language requires a dedicated 'module' or structure within the brain that has this as its function. Its function is not to pick up English, German, or Latin, for any child can pick up any language. Its function is to pick up whichever language the child grows up with: its mother tongue, or tongues if it is lucky. After a time, the evidence suggests, this flexibility is substantially lost. Beyond about the age of twelve, it is almost impossible to pick up a language so as to speak it like a native. The responsiveness diminishes or vanishes. We are no longer so good at copying the inputs and finding ourselves falling in with the grammar of what we hear.
   So, for all genetics tells us, a child may be disposed to become kind and loving in a kind and loving environment, vicious and aggressive in a vicious and aggressive one, intellectual and musical in an intellectual and musical one. Or, these dispositions may in turn be liable to be displaced if other factors influence things. We just have to look and see.
   Very possibly, what we find is greater receptivity at some stages, and relative inflexibility thereafter, rather as in the case of language. If this is so, far from sidelining the importance of the moral environment, the excursus through determinism will catapult it to the head of the agenda. That is where it should be if it turns out that, once we have been weaned into an atmosphere of violence, aggression, insensitivity, sentimentality, manipulation, and furtiveness-the everyday world of television, for example, we can never or almost never climb out. (From: Simon Blackburn, Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)

一、請閱讀以下的文本段落,然後回答問題:
Consider...the recent case of David Pugh, a 55-year old man from West Midlands who fought off five machete-wielding intruders with his bare hands. According to news reports, the intruders stormed his house in the middle of the night, demanded cash and attacked Pugh's teenage son. Pugh used material arts to fight them off. He and his son received various injuries, and his house was trashed, but the intruders eventually left empty-handed. (From: van Zyl, 2019, "Does Virtue Ethics Allow Us to Make Better Judgments of the Action of Others?" in Elisa Grimi (ed.) Virtue Ethics: Retrospect and Prospect, Springer, pp. 99-110.)

(1)請試著依據效益主義(Utilitarianism),評判 David Pugh 之行為的對錯。(7%)
(2)請試著依據義務論(Deontology),評判 David Pugh 之行為的對錯。(7%)
(3)請試著依據德行倫理學(Virtue Ethics),評判 David Pugh 之行為的對錯(或好壞)。(7%)
(4)關於 David Pugh 之行為對錯(或好壞)的評判,你自己的主張是什麼?請提出理由支持你的主張。(9%)