The work of Lawrence Kohlberg has become the central focus in both the research and applied dimensions of moral education. While teachers and academics are generally familiar with Kohlberg's account of his six stages of moral development, his hints about a highest and culminating seventh stage have had no sustained critique. This essay attempts to provide a detailed account and critique of all of Kohlberg's writings dealing with stage seven, from a philosophical standpoint. This essay critiques Kohlberg's analysis of Moore's (...) naturalistic fallacy, and rejects his attempt to disarm the fallacy by adopting a strategy of ?parallelism?, or ?complementarity?. I argue that it might be better to accept the fact that one cannot derive an ought from an is, and then to view ought-claims as selected or preferred is-claims. This allows morality to remain sui generis, and the support for a moral choice must arise from the complete ?story? or world-view in which it is embedded. Stage seven is not just any ?whole story?, however, but the best or ideal whole story. As well, it serves as the answer to the fundamental ethical question, ?but why should I be moral in the first place?? Stage seven gains its justificatory power from its stance of empathetic identification of the moral agent with others, and with the cosmos as a whole, as thinkers as varied as Marcus Aurelius and Teilhard de Chardin have suggested. If stage seven is, as Kohlberg argues, an ethics of love, and if the first six stages are to be thought of as comprising an ethics of justice, then what is to be done if they conflict? Kohlberg deals with this question, and eventually decides in favour of justice, even given the seventh stage as somehow the ground of all normativity in his system. I argue that he cannot consistently adopt a parallelist thesis here, but needs to recognize the normatively fundamental character of his own seventh stage. It serves as his ?whole story?, on which the previous six stages all rest. Kohlberg's own thesis forces him to retain an ethics of justice only until one reaches the level of agape. Then, as with all higher stages, the lower stages are not abandoned, but are taken up and enriched by the thinking and acting which emerge from the higher stage perspective. Neither justice nor agape can stand alone as sufficient basis for an adequate ethics. But it is agape that is the more fundamental, and which enriches justice without rejecting its generally overwhelming claims. Stage seven consciousness simply reminds one that justice is not enough, even though it does constitute the largest part of ethics. (shrink)

Remaining important tasks in finding and developing new drugs and vaccines for HIV/AIDS, malaria, cancer and other diseases require continued industry research and development. Industry’s research and development pipeline has produced drugs that have saved AIDS victims previously facing certain death, but still no cure nor vaccine is yet available. Experience with the process of research and development indicates that it requires more than a decade of development to produce a new drug with costs in the hundreds of millions of (...) dollars. Intellectual property protection is critically important in assuring that drug development continues. Partnerships between industry and the public sector have increased access to new therapies in developing countries and promise to enhance access to both patented and generic medicines in the future. (shrink)

Early research examining the relationship between corporate social practices and candidate attraction generally concludes that prospective employees prefer to be affiliated with socially responsible organizations (Dolan, 1997; Greening & Turban, 2000; Turban & Greening, 1996). A basic assumption embedded in these studies is that there is a generalized consensus among job candidates regarding the factors that constitute a desirable social record. Our project challenges this assumption and seeks to uncover variation among prospective job candidates’ attraction to specific organizations’ social practices. (...) We draw on the model of stakeholder orientation outlined by Mitroff (1983) to build a theoretical framework to explain variations in candidate attraction to specific practices and to guide the development of propositions that outline how candidates might be attracted to certain practices. Analysis of pilot data provides an illustration of how various corporate social practices cluster in a manner that is consistent with the theoretical propositions. (shrink)

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) represent two distinct but equally impactful challenges in the field of neurology and cognitive health. AD is a degenerative neurological condition characterized by its progressive nature, typically affecting individuals in later stages of life. The hallmark features include cognitive impairment, mem- ory deterioration, and alterations in behavior. In contrast, ASD is a developmental disorder typically diagnosed in childhood, marked by difficulties in social interaction, communication, and repetitive behaviors. This paper explores the potential (...) of the time-frequency feature extraction model known as the Left-Right Fast Fourier Transform (LR-FFT) in the context of these two disorders. While AD and ASD differ significantly in their onset, presentation, and demographic affected, both necessitate early and accurate diagnosis to enable timely intervention and tailored treatment strategies. Our research yields promising results, with classification accuracies reaching 88.26% for AD and 99.86% for ASD, demonstrating the LR-FFT’s potential to enhance diagnostic accuracy. By contributing to improved differentiation between these complex neurological conditions, this work aims to advance our understanding and management of AD and ASD, ultimately benefiting patients, their families, and healthcare practitioners. (shrink)

The ability to reason about how things were made is a pervasive aspect of how humans make sense of physical objects. Such reasoning is useful for a range of everyday tasks, from assembling a piece of furniture to making a sandwich and knitting a sweater. What enables people to reason in this way even about novel objects, and how do people draw upon prior experience with an object to continually refine their understanding of how to create it? To explore these (...) questions, we developed a virtual task environment to investigate how people come up with step‐by‐step procedures for recreating block towers whose composition was not readily apparent, and analyzed how the procedures they used to build them changed across repeated attempts. Specifically, participants (N = 105) viewed 2D silhouettes of eight unique block towers in a virtual environment simulating rigid‐body physics, and aimed to reconstruct each one in less than 60 s. We found that people built each tower more accurately and quickly across repeated attempts, and that this improvement reflected both group‐level convergence upon a tiny fraction of all possible viable procedures, as well as error‐dependent updating across successive attempts by the same individual. Taken together, our study presents a scalable approach to measuring consistency and variation in how people infer solutions to physical assembly problems. (shrink)

Numerous accounting and economics research studies employ an experimental research method requiring student participants to make representations about an individual characteristic (e.g., ability, cost) that provides a basis for payment of cash rewards. In response, many participants intentionally misrepresent the nature of that characteristic to receive a greater reward. Typically, such studies are deemed to be either exempt from review by institutional review boards (IRBs) or subject only to an expedited review. Moreover, investigators seldom debrief participants, purportedly to avoid contamination (...) of the participant pool. The authors question the ethics of inducing strategic misrepresentation and rewarding fraudulent behavior without appropriate debriefing. A theoretical framework of cognitive ethical development indicates that such research methods can be harmful to student participants. Furthermore, principles of operant conditioning suggest that the rewards reinforce fraudulent behavior. It is recommended that research studies inducing strategic misrepresentation should not be exempt from IRB review and should be required to include desensitization procedures for debriefing participants. (shrink)

Science and Technology Ethics re-examines the ethics by which we live and asks the question: do we have in place the ethical guidelines through which we can incorporate these developments with the minimum of disruption and disaffection? It assesses the ethical systems in place and proposes new approaches to our scientific and engineering processes and products, our social contacts, biology and informatics, the military industry and our environmental responsibilities. The volume is multidisciplinary and reflects the aim of the book to (...) promote a state of the art assessment of these issues. Science and Technology Ethics is a much-needed discussion of the scientific developments that have major effects on the way we live. It will be of interest to all students of science and technology and all professionals involved with administrating laws in these fields. (shrink)

In the past ten years, there has been growing interest in and concern about protecting the privacy of personal medical information. Insofar as medical records increasingly are stored electronically, and electronic information can be shared easily and widely, there have been legislative efforts as well as scholarly analyses calling for greater privacy protections to ensure that patients can feel safe disclosing personal information to their health-care providers. At the same time, the volume of biomedical research conducted in this country continues (...) to grow. The budget of the National Institutes of Health, for example, was $20,298 million in 2001, having more than doubled from a budget of $9,218 million 10 years before. This growing body of research includes increased efforts to use stored medical records as a source of data for health services, epidemiologic, and clinical studies. (shrink)

An approach to phenomenology, by D. Cairns.--Husserl's critique of psychologism: its historic roots and contemporary relevance, by J. Wild.--The ideal of a presuppositionless philosophy, by M. Farber.--On the intentionality of consciousness, by A. Gurwitsch.--The "reality-phenomenon" and reality, by H. Spiegelberg.--The phenomenological concept of "horizon", by H. Kuhn.--Phenomenology and logical empiricism, by F. Kaufmann.--Phenomenology and the history of science, by J. Klein.--Phenomenology and the social sciences, by A. Schuetz.--Art and phenomenology, by F. Kaufmann.--The relation of science to philosophy in the light (...) of Husserl's thought, by L. O. Kattsoff.--Husserl and the social structure of immediacy, by C. Hartshorne.--A materialist approach to Husserl's philosophy, by V. J. McGill.--Outline-sketch of a system of metaphysics, by W. E. Hocking.--Men and the law, by G. Husserl.--The ghost of modality, by H. Weyl.--Supplement: Grundlegende untersuchungen zum phänomenologischen ursprung der räumlichkeit der natur, by E. Husserl. (shrink)

Este artigo contém um estudo sobre a Ciência a partir do ponto de vista bíblico, por meio da fé na revelação divinamente inspirada. A Bíblia revela a origem e a plenitude da Ciência no ato da criação do Universo e a apresenta como uma dádiva especial de Deus aos homens. As Escrituras também demonstram que a Ciência genuína existe para glorificar a Deus, sendo a sua instrumentalidade uma forma excelente de comunicação divina.

O objetivo do presente estudo é apresentar o debate travado por Leão XIII sobre a libertação dos escravos no Brasil. Afirma-se que a libertação dos escravos, no Brasil e nos demais países das Américas, não significou o fim dos problemas e conflitos sociais que os negros e seus descendentes historicamente enfrentaram, mas o início de um novo ciclo de lutas e conquistas sociais e políticas. No entanto, não se pode negar que a luta pelo fim do sistema escravagista e, por (...) conseguinte, da libertação dos cativos, foi de suma importância. Dentro dessa luta a Igreja e outras organizações sociais tiveram um papel decisivo. (shrink)

O artigo visa analisar como as representações simbólicas da teologia pentecostal clássica, e a vivência comunitária no pentecostalismo clássico, ajudam as pessoas excluídas, cultural, econômica e socialmente a encontrarem um espaço onde lhes é oferecido autonomia. A análise refere-se ao pentecostalismo clássico, ou seja, se busca na tipologia clássica da Assembléia de Deus as representações simbólicas para a construção das argumentações do texto. Referencia-se, o artigo, em autores consagrados que estudaram o pentecostalismo de matriz clássica.

The central purpose of the paper is to elucidate the inalienable rights thesis, I.E. That there is at least one inalienable right. Various senses of 'natural right' and 'inalienable' are analyzed so as to further clarify what is or could be the meaning and the truth of that thesis. A widespread confusion between the meaning of the terms 'inalienable natural right' and 'indefeasible natural right' is dispelled. It is concluded that present thinking about inalienable natural rights does not reveal precisely (...) why and in what sense there is such a right. A successful defense of the inalienable rights thesis is suggested. (shrink)

O objetivo desse artigo é realizar uma revisitação, ou seja, uma tentativa de construir um diálogo entre o princípio da sacralidade da vida e o aborto. São apresen-tados quatro motivos para realizar esse diálogo. O primeiro é o fato de constante-mente o cristianismo e especialmente a Igreja Católica ser acusada de ter criado o princípio da sacralidade da vida. O segundo é o fato de que fundações multibilionárias planejam impor o aborto ao mundo até o ano de 2025. O terceiro (...) é que em muitos países o aborto foi legalizado por meio de medida judicial. O quarto é o fato de o Estado possuir uma taxa de nascimentos ideal. Após essa apresentação, são cons-truídas três reflexões sobre o tema. A primeira é que o princípio da sacralidade da vida não é uma construção ou invenção da Igreja Católica. A segunda é a dimensão da dignidade humana dentro das atuais pré-ocupações do Estado. A terceira é a crise do indivíduo. Por fim, afirma-se que a vida continua sendo um mistério para o ser humano. E este mistério carrega, em seu ventre, grande parcela do sagrado. A atual ideologia que propaga o aborto, como forma terapêutica do homem resolver seus problemas, não passa de pura alienação que nega a sacralidade da vida e, em seu lugar, deixa apenas um homem descarnado de sua própria dignidade. (shrink)

Play requires security from sober concems, and only recently have non-native North Americans feIt secure enough in wildemess lands to view them as potential playgrounds. Employing a pretend quality of play illusion, many kinds of play are derivatives from normally sober activities. I argue that the most genuine sorts of wildemess play derive from the activities of the original geographical explorers. It is thus possible to distinguish types of play for which wildemess is especially suited from types that merely happen (...) in the wildemess-i.e., for which wildemess is an accidental playground. Play values are important enough to receive serious consideration in the administration of wildemess lands, and Iconclude that our public policy ought to favor wildemess activities that most closely imitate the activities of the original geographical explorers. (shrink)

A pesquisa sobre o dogma mariano mostra que, no seu desenvolvimento, a experiência, mas, sobretudo, a fé vivida, precedeu as proclamações dogmáticas oficiais, de modo que é importante que o dogma mantenha contato com a fé viva da Igreja, pois é nesse contato, que aquilo que está ainda implícito se torne sempre mais explícito sem que haja mudança no seu conteúdo formal, porque não se trata de adição de verdades, e sim de clarificação da verdade. Esse estudo mostra também a (...) contribuição da psicologia das profundezas na compreensão da relação entre experiência e dogma. (shrink)

Metacognition is associated with planning, monitoring, evaluating and repairing performance Designers of elearning systems can improve the quality of their environments by explicitly structuring the visual and interactive display of learning contexts to facilitate metacognition. Typically page layout, navigational appearance, visual and interactivity design are not viewed as major factors in metacognition. This is because metacognition tends to be interpreted as a process in the head, rather than an interactive one. It is argued here, that cognition and metacognition are part (...) of a continuum and that both are highly interactive. The tenets of this view are explained by reviewing some of the core assumptions of the situated and distribute approach to cognition and then further elaborated by exploring the notions of active vision, visual complexity, affordance landscape and cue structure. The way visual cues are structured and the way interaction is designed can make an important difference in the ease and effectiveness of cognition and metacognition. Documents that make effective use of markers such as headings, callouts, italics can improve students’ ability to comprehend documents and ‘plan’ the way they review and process content. Interaction can be designed to improve ‘the proximal zone of planning’ – the look ahead and apprehension of what is nearby in activity space that facilitates decisions. This final concept is elaborated in a discussion of how e-newspapers combine effective visual and interactive design to enhance user control over their reading experience. (shrink)

The central purpose of this paper is to examine the case for political authority, i.e., the argument for having political authority rather than for having none. Thus, the case for political authority is the case against anarchism. My construction of that case owes much, no doubt, to observations made long ago by Thomas Hobbes and john locke. Nevertheless, these observations have never been stated in a satisfactory and systematic fashion, not even by Hobbes and locke themselves. Hobbes’ observations have, more (...) often than not, been misunderstood, and those of locke have generally been overlooked. However, this paper is not intended to be an exercise in the history of political philosophy. Rather, it is an assessment of a philosophical thesis, namely, that political authority is essential to man's survival and well-being. Although this thesis is rarely contested and, in fact, borders on the commonplace, it is contestable. Moreover, since disenchantment with authority and how it is exercised is growing, an examination of how men are likely to fare in its absence is appropriate. Such an examination is complex, but it is not impossible. (shrink)

The source of this presentation is the thesis PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY AND JEWISH EDUCATION: THE LAWS OF TORAH STUDY OF THE CODE GUIDE Maimonides. The thesis argues that in response to the challenge of transmitting Judaism to the new generations, in a world often hostile to the Jewish worldview, there is a proposal that is halachika vision of Jewish education that is based on the articulation of knowledge of the ways Jewish laws or mandatory (Hebrew: halachot), transformed into concrete actions and (...) behaviors that carry, which is fundamental and structuring a philosophical question about the principles that underlie and its applications in other cases and situations. (shrink)

This book brings together scholars from a variety of epistemological perspectives to explore the multiple ways in which sexuality does indeed matter in the arena of public education.

This work highlights the faith of Jesus as a response to the affiliate relationship between the Father and the Son. This intimate union, characterized by the word Abba, reveals that the very existence of Jesus took place in the bosom of the Father and it was developed in the intimacy with Him. It is in thi.s loving bosom of the Father that, from the beginning, Jesus constitutes the consciousness of a God who is close, loving and able to hear the (...) cries of his people. The Lordship of God is crystallized in the actions of Jesus through the proclamation of the Kingdom. The force that makes Jesus embrace the plan of God is the Spirit, making Jesus desirous and able to carry out the will of the Father. (shrink)