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issue 88
开头
科技有影响
有利
有弊
但不决定
结尾
In a review of history, science and technologies have come to pervade every aspect of our lives. Meanwhile due to a sequence of technologic breakthroughs, the society has been changing at a unprecedented speed. Technologies are imposing both negative and positive impacts on the society and I am in favor of that technologies are influencing social customs and ethics, however, in referration to whether technologies are dominant I have my reservations.
Thanks to the highly developed technology, our lives are becoming more and more convenient and the operation of the whole society is more and more effective. More approaches to acquiring what we want and to achieving where we want to be are available. As the life styles are under a great revolution, the values of the society are also changing rapidly. One representation of this is that social customs and ethics are gradually altered and everything has its two sides.
Not only do technologies contribute to improvement of our living conditions but also help human beings know more about nature and ourselves. Hence some customs that actually have a lot of disadvantages are abandoned. For instance, in ancient China, people attributed disasters to the fury of the ghosts and thus sacrificed animals and sometimes even human beings to appease the ghosts. As technologies are developed, the causes of disasters are clarified so that people begin to regard the superstition as nonsense and similar activities are aborted.
However, technologies have negative effects on social customs and ethics as well and unfortunately human beings easily yield to those degenerations. For example, the internet is playing a more and more significant part in our daily lives and we are becoming accustomed to communicating with others through the net. Rather than take a conversation in the real world, we prefer to express our feelings in the virtual world. Our abilities of speaking and talking are fading seriously and what is more, people begin to estrange themselves from others.
Admittedly, the social customs and ethics are vulnerable to the development of technologies; nevertheless, they are not determined by technologies. In a society, it is the ideas and values of the society that are decisive factors instead of the technologies. In some countries in Europe euthanasia is considered illegal because the residents of these countries insists that the life of a person should be paid as much respect as possible and no one has the right to deprive the life of one person regardless of his willingness. In other countries euthanasia is considered reasonable because that will release the huge pain the patient suffers and therefore is a great favor to him which should be appreciated and admired.
In conclusion, technologies play an important role, and the ideas and values play a vital role about the changes of social customs and ethics. Moreover we should take the possibilities into account that the development of technologies may bring about new social problems in the aspect of ethics. So we should impose moral constrains on the development of technologies.
argument 53
In this analysis the arguer claims that increased levels of melatonin before birth lead to shyness to the infant and will last to the later life. The arguer inferred that from a survey that a group of 25 infants, who responded with mild distress to unfamiliar stimuli, had more chances to have been conceived in early autumn during which time their mothers' produced increasingly melatonin. In addition the author referred to that more than half of those children considered themselves shy. While the reasoning is not without merits, the conclusion is seriously undermined by several critical fallacies.
The major problem is that the discrimination of the survey is too vague to make the result warranted. In the first place, we can easily assume that a group of 25 infants is not a sample large enough to be representative of the infants as a whole. So the generalization is premature. In the second place, without more details of how the infants responded to those stimuli, we cannot judge the symptom as a representation of shyness. The assumption that the infants had developed shyness is not substantiated yet and therefore cannot be cited as an evidence to draw any conclusion. In the third place, whether
melatonin, which is only known as a hormone that have an effect on some brain functions, actually contributes to the characters of people is still open to doubt. Hence the mild distress displayed by the infants should not be attributed to melatonin.
Moreover, 13 years is quite a long period of time during which many changes may have occurred. Admittedly, not only the surroundings but also how the infants are cultivated has impact on the characters of the children. The shyness maybe result from that she was not equipped with skills of communication by her parents. Without considering and ruling out possibilities in all dimensions, the assertion that it is the factor concerning melatonin that is responsible to this shyness.
In conclusion, failing to establish a causal relationship between the shyness and the increased levels of melatonin and ignoring many critical factors that contribute to shaping one person, the author is presumptuous to draw the conclusion. To strengthen this argument, the author has to provide more details about the survey and melatonin. To better evaluate this argument, we need to take more possibilities which maybe induce the result into account.
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发表于 2009-7-7 12:55:22
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