In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 14.1 (2004) 47-54 [Access article in PDF] Ethical Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research*(A Recommended Manuscript) Adopted on 16 October 2001Revised on 20 August 2002 Ethics Committee of the Chinese National Human Genome Center at Shanghai, Shanghai 201203 Human embryonic stem cell (ES) research is a great project in the frontier of biomedical science for the twenty-first century. Be- cause the research involves (...) the use of human embryos, it triggers serious debate on ethical issues. Opponents consider the embryo to be an early form of human life that should be respected and not destroyed. However, the majority of scientists support embryonic stem cell research, believing that it offers good prospects for the treatment of diseases that have remained incurable until now and so will benefit humankind. The Ethics Committee of the Department of Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of the Chinese National Human Genome Center at Shanghai seriously discussed the ethical debate initiated by embryonic stem cell research. We concluded that we should support the scientists of our country in actively carrying out human embryonic stem cell research for the noble cause of "medicine being a beneficent art." For the healthy and orderly development of human embryonic stem cell research in our country, we put forward the following recommended Ethical Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research as a reference for leaders, administrative departments, and related scientists. Preface Article 1. Human embryonic stem cells are the primitive cells that play the main role in the growth and development of a human body. These [End Page 47] primitive cells have the potential for infinite proliferation, self-renewal, and multi-directional differentiation. If scientists can discover the mechanism of differentiation of human embryonic stem cells, it will be possible to induce differentiation of human embryonic stem cells to form various types of human cells for clinical cell therapy. If human embryonic stem cell research can be integrated with modern biomedical engineering techniques, it also will be possible to make repair and replacement of human tissues and organs a reality. Article 2. There are two ways to classify human embryonic stem cells. One way is to classify them according to their potential for differentiation. There could be three kinds of stem cells: totipotent stem cells, pluripotent stem cells, and unipotent stem cells.A totipotent stem cell has the potential to develop into a whole individual. It can differentiate into the more than 200 cell types in the whole body, construct any tissue or organ of the body, and finally develop into a whole individual. The fertilized egg and the cleavage cells at the very early stage of embryonic development are totipotent stem cells.A pluripotent stem cell has the potential to differentiate into many cell types derived from the three embryonic layers. However, it has lost the capacity to develop into a complete organism.A unipotent stem cell is derived from the further differentiation of the pluripotent stem cell. It can differentiate only into one cell type such as a hematopoietic stem cell, neural stem cell, and others.The other way is to classify human stem cells according to their source. There could be two kinds of human stem cells: embryonic stem cells and tissue stem cells (also called adult stem cells). The former involves experimentation with embryos, which has serious ethical implications. Ethical issues associated with the latter are mainly expressed in the various opinions regarding the allocation of health resources. Article 3. Human embryonic stem cells are the group of cells called the blastocyst inner cell mass during the early stage of embryonic development. They are the main source of totipotent stem cells, and hence the focal and hot point in stem cell research. Studies on the clinical application of embryonic stem cells probably will involve use of the somatic cell nucleus transfer (SCNT) technique, which destroys the early human embryo. At present, the ethical and moral debate is very serious in human embryonic stem cell research regarding whether the research will develop... (shrink)

It has recently been alleged that expressivism cannot account for the obvious fact that normative sentences and their negations express inconsistent kinds of attitudes. I explain how the expressivist can respond to this objection. I offer an account of attitudinal inconsistency that takes it to be a combination of descriptive and normative relations. The account I offer to explain these relations relies on a combination of functionalism about normative judgments and expressivism about the norms governing them. It holds that the (...) inconsistency of normative judgments is primitive. One potential problem for this view is that the large number of normative primitives that the expressivist will allegedly need to accept will render the view grossly unparsimonious. In defending this thesis, I suggest that it is a mistake to hold the lack of normative parsimony of expressivism against its core psychological claims. (shrink)

30th Nov. and 1st Dec. 2013 at Kyoto University. Organizer: Takeshi Sakon.

The Trobriand Islanders about whom this study-is concerned, have been studied intensively by Professor Bronislaw Malinowski, who has published his results in several monographs. This essay is based entirely on his writings. It does not add any material to what Professor Malinowski has presented. It tries, rather, to formulate what is not explicitly stated;— the logical and ethical implications of the customary behavior of the Trobrianders. If at times I venture to disagree with Professor Malinowski's own deductions, it is only (...) because, in presenting the material with such a wealth of pertinent detail and emotional association, he has made it possible for his readers to draw conclusions as valid as his own. (shrink)

Preference, according to many theories of human behaviour, is a very important phenomenon. It is therefore some what surprising that philosophers of mind pay so little attention to it. One question about preference concerns its variety. Is preference always preference for one option or state of affairs rather than another? Or is there also, as ordinary language suggests, object-preference – preferences for one person rather than another, for one country rather than another, for one value rather than another? Another question (...) or rather group of questions concerns the nature of preference. Is it a mental state, disposition, act or episode, a theoretical construct, a purely behavioural phenomenon? If it is a mental state or act, is it an intellectual, affective or a conative phenomenon? If it is an affective phenomenon, does it enjoy a positive or negative “valence”? Is preference to be understood as a relation between a person’s attitudes or is it a primitive phenomenon? (shrink)

Three basic political positions on embryo research will be identified as libertarian, conservative, and social-democratic. The Human Embryo Research Panel will be regarded as an expression of the social-democratic position. A taxonomy of the ethical issues addressed by the Panel will then be developed at the juncture of political and ethical modes of reflection. Among the arguments considered will be those for the separability of the abortion and embryo research debates; arguments against the possibility of the preembryo being a person, (...) especially arguments associated with totipotency and the significance of the primitive streak; and the various reasons for regulating embryo research, including those associated with respect for the preembryo, the protection of traditional views of human procreation, and the prevention of commercialization. (shrink)

Ethics is a study which deals fundamentally with the rules of conduct from moral point of view. The main characteristic of ethics is to judge the value of moral act or moral conduct. Therefore, ethics means a code of conduct. The history of the development of morality grew through a long process of evolution of certain morality like ‘taboos’, habits and customs in the primitive society. There are two broad divisions of ethics i. e., secular ethics and theological ethics. (...) The history of the development of secular ethics flourished through four periods i. e., the Greek ethics, the Medieval ethics, the Modern ethics and the Contemporary ethics. Each period has its own prominent characteristics. Moreover, the history of theological ethics grew with the rise of different religions like Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism. Morality has been developed during the period of more than two thousand years. Within this long span of time, many doctrines, ideas and values are included in it. Hence, morality takes different shapes in different periods and ethical views also develop accordingly. In this article, an attempt has been made to show a gradual development of morality- secular and theological. Again, the similarities and the dissimilarities between secular and theological ethics are the additional concerns of this paper. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#73-74; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2023 P 59-94. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Ethics of Justice in a Cross-Cultural ContextMichael von BrückThe central thesis of this paper is, primarily, that justice is neither a qualification of actions nor a political expediency, but is an existential reality. This reality is symbolized in different ways depending on religious experience and cultural conditioning. Underlying all concepts and ethics of justice is a dimension of basic insight that is beyond rational quantifying analysis.The semantics of (...) concepts of justice is different in various contexts and meaning systems, that is, in more general political and social contexts and in the rational discourse of philosophy. The general political term for justice is more confusing than helpful for a clear conceptualization; it might be treated more as a symbol in a mythological framework than a concept. In this context justice is defined in terms of what it is not, or metaphorically in differing categories, for example, justice as impartiality, equality. Thus, many programmatic formulae, such as "International Movement for a Just World,"1 express a utopia against the frustration with regard to social, economic, and political conditions and call for action to establish a "just world" without defining what the standard of this action must be in order to qualify as just and what exactly the notion of a "just world" actually might mean conceptually. Certain political actions are condemned from a particular standpoint, but the very foundation of any standpoint remains controversial. "Just" or "unjust" are actions that are determined according to the two standards of an Aristotelian suum cuique and the principle of treating equal cases in equal ways. Here, actions and their results as well as human freedom of action and the respective responsibility are a matter of debate. The problem is how to establish criteria for what is regarded as being "equal."2I suggest that justice can be discussed in two ways: (1) as an agreement or result of negotiation and better insight that is worked out between partners in social processes, and/or (2) as a reflection of the cosmic order, the divine will, or any pre-established harmony that is not negotiable by human beings. Whereas the first assumption is reflected in the theories of Aristotle, Rousseau, John Rawls,3 and others, the second one seems to be one of the basic contents of any religious worldview. Rawls actually constructs his idea of justice as fairness in the line of the familiar theory [End Page 61] of the social contract, following Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. Accordingly, justice is the basic assumption that generates the condition for any further discourse in societies. It is an "original position," an "initial status," the "symmetry of everyone's relations to each other," which, of course, is neither an actual state of historical affairs nor a primitive condition of culture, but a purely hypothetical situation.4 For Rawls, to think justice requires the task to acknowledge interdependencies and mutual dependence of the different factors and actors in societies on the basis of reflexive reason. In religions, however, it is the dharma, the commandment of God, the Tao, or the cosmic harmony or "symmetry" of forces that is the root cause for justice in human relations.In this essay I will not argue any of these positions mentioned above as such but maintain only that any particular discourse depends on communication processes, that is, language and actors. Actors have interests that are mediated through claims. These claims may be compatible or not. However, in both cases they are part of the communication processes itself. And it is in communication that discourses materialize. Therefore, dialogue is the framework for any theory of justice, which may be inclined more to the first or the second position outlined above. Because today, due to economic, political, and cultural circumstances, all discourses are linked to each other, it is in cross-cultural communication and dialogue that a theory of justice has to be worked out. The question is whether justice should be regarded as a precondition for dialogue or a wanted result of dialogue. The hypothesis I want to argue for is that justice is neither only a precondition nor only a result, but that it is the very... (shrink)

This chapter provides interpretations of Homeric poems. Homer reflects a view of the nature of human beings and their place in the world, and their reasons for living and acting in that world, but exactly what that view is has been debated for centuries. In the early to mid-twentieth century, Bruno Snell and other classical scholars proposed a developmental view known as ‘progressivism’, according to which the Homeric understanding of the human mind, and consequently morality, is in certain important ways (...) ‘primitive’. There was disagreement about exactly when development took place after Homer, but it was generally agreed that the modern position on such issues was superior. The debate about progressivism led to the adoption of various positions, some more antagonistic to progressivism than others, on the nature of virtue in the poems, the role of shame in Homeric morality, and justice. The chapter discusses each of these positions and debates. It then focuses on shame and guilt, and concludes with a section on virtue, including a sub-section on pity – a highly salient emotion and virtue in Homer that appears not to have received the attention in the literature it might have. (shrink)

This analysis focuses on a particular sedimented construction of the child found in child development theory. In traditional developmental theory the child is conceptualized as being qualitatively different from the adult; the child is conceived as "other" and as an incomplete version of the adult. The historical roots of this construction of meaning are explored through examination of two influential contributors in the child development field, G. S. Hall and Jean Piaget. The source of Hall's conception of the "child-as-primitive" (...) in evolutionary theory is demonstrated, and the consequences of his romanticized view of the "primitive" child are examined. Piaget's stage approach to cognitive development is similarly analyzed, with an emphasis on the way in which his method of inquiry reflects the fundamental assumption of the child's incompleteness, and the on the use of the "child-as-primitive" image in his theory. Anthropological and philosophical contributions in this area are reviewed, and ethical consequences of the "primitive" notion are explored. Implications for phenomenological approaches to child development research and theory are offered, with emphasis on Merleau-Ponty's contributions in this area. (shrink)

Medical bribery seems to be a global problem from Eastern Europe and the Balkans to China, a diffuse phenomenon, starting with morally acceptable gratitude and ending with institutional bribery. I focus my attention on Romania and analyze similar cases in Eastern European and postcommunist countries. Medical bribery can be regarded as a particular form of human transaction, a kind of primitive contract that occurs when people do not trust institutions or other forms of social contract that are meant to (...) guarantee their rights and protect their interests. Concluding with strategies to fight medical bribery, I will underline better public policies for financing health and social care, and an ethic of trust that may help to restore trustworthiness of institutions and to rebuild interpersonal trust. This should be complemented by an educational program dedicated to understanding the negative consequences and mechanisms of corruption and the importance of ethical behavior. (shrink)

The upper time limit on growing embryos in culture for research could be revised, following a new recommendation by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the regulator of embryo research and fertility treatments in the UK. The recommendation was agreed at a meeting of the HFEA Authority, as part of wider discussions about modernising fertility law in the UK.1 Under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 (as amended), embryos which have been donated or created for research may be (...) grown in culture for up to 14 days or until the appearance of the primitive streak (whichever occurs sooner).2 This rule is widely replicated in other jurisdictions which permit the use of embryos in research.3 When this rule was adopted nearly 35 years ago, there was no prospect of sustaining embryos in vitro for more than a few days, and until recently, it has not posed a significant barrier to research.4 However, pressure to review the limit has grown following the publication of two studies in 2016 which demonstrated the technical feasibility of growing embryos to and potentially beyond the 14-day-limit.5 6 Proponents of changing the limit point to possible benefits of allowing …. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The philosophical tradition approaches to morals have their grounds predominantly on metaphysical and theological concepts and theories. Among the traditional ethics concepts, the most prominent is the Divine Command Theory (DCT). As per the DCT, God gives moral foundations to the humankind by its creation and through Revelation. Morality and Divinity are inseparable since the most remote civilization. These concepts submerge in a theological framework and are largely accepted by most followers of the three Abrahamic traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and (...) Islam: the greatest part of the human population. Holding faith and Revelation for its grounds, the Divine Command Theories are not strictly subject to the demonstration. The opponents to the Divine Command conception of morals, grounded in the impossibility of demonstration of its metaphysical and religious assumptions, have tried for many centuries (albeit unsuccessfully) to devalue its importance. They held the argument that it does not show material evidence and logical coherence and, for this reason, cannot be taken into account for scientific nor philosophical purposes. It is just a belief and, as so, should be understood. Besides these extreme oppositions, many other concepts contravene the Divine Command theories, in one or another way, in part or in full. Many philosophers and social scientists, from the classic Greek philosophy up to the present date, for instance, sustain that morality is only a construct, and thus culturally relative and culturally determined. However, this brings many other discussions and imposes the challenge to determine what is the meaning of culture, which elements of culture are morally determinant, and finally, what are the boundaries of such relativity. Moral determinists claim that everything related to human behavior, including morality, is determined, once free will does not exist. More recently, modern thinkers argued that there is a strict science of morality. However, the scientific method alone, despite explaining several facts and evidence, cannot enlighten the entire content and full meaning of ethics. Morals’ understanding requires a broader perception, and an agreement among philosophers, which they have never achieved. All of these questions have many different configurations depending on each philosophical strand, and start complex analysis and endless debates, as long as many of them are reciprocally conflictive. The universe and the atmosphere involving this thesis are the dominions of all these conceptual conflicts, observed from an objective and evolutionary standpoint. Irrespective of this circumstance and its intrinsic importance, however, these questions are far distant from the methodological approach of an analytical discussion on objective morals, what is, indeed, the aim and scope of this work. We should briefly revisit these prominent traditional theories because this thesis shelters a comparative study, and its assumptions at least differ profoundly from all traditional theories. Therefore, it becomes necessary offering direct and specific elements of comparison to the reader, for the right criticism, dispensing interruptive researches. However, even revisiting the traditional theories, for this comparative and critical exposure purpose, they will be kept by the side of our main concerns, as “aliena materia.” Irrespective of the validity of any or all of the elements of this discussion, and their meaning as the philosophical universe of this thesis, the purpose of this work is demonstrating and justifying the existence and meaning of prehistoric moral archetypes arisen directly from the very first social needs and efforts for survival. These archetypes are the definition of the essential foundation of ethics, its aggregation to the collective unconscious and corresponding logic organization and transmission to evolutionary stages of the human genome and different relations space-time, irrespective of any contemporary experience of the individuals. The system defined by these archetypes composes an evolutionary human social model. Is this a metaethical position? Yes, it is. Moreover, as in any metaethical reasoning, we should look carefully for the best and coherent routes, as the Analytical Philosophy offers them. Thus, this work should reasonably demonstrate that morals are not a cultural product of the civilized men or modern societies and that despite being subject to several cultural relative aggregations and subtractions, its essential foundations are archetypal and have never structurally changed. This reasoning induces that morality is an original attribute of the “homo sapiens”; it is not a property and nor an accident: it integrates the human essence and belongs to the realm of the ontological human identity. The human phenomena is a continuing process, playing its role between random determination and free will, and we need to question how morality began and how did it come to us in the present. (shrink)

Motivating my discussion is a puzzle in Spinoza’s account of the primary affects – his shift away from adopting Descartes’s list of six primitive passions in the Short Treatise to the three primary affects in the Ethics. I lay out this puzzle in Section 1. In Section 2, I approach this puzzle by considering the taxonomy offered by Descartes of the basic or primitive passions. In considering Descartes, I will also briefly consider Aquinas’s view since Descartes positions himself (...) as rejecting the Thomist account. Doing so brings out that the basic passions highlight structures of cognition for these thinkers. In Section 3, I return to Spinoza and consider what light his pared down account of the primary affects can shed on his account of the human mind. (shrink)

Charvet’s arguments revolve around very recent discussions in Anglo-American analytical ethics and political philosophy. He considers and rejects, for example, arguments in favor of both Thomas Nagel’s version of ethical realism and the view that value is constituted by fulfillment of our strongest desires. Both suffer from the inadequate “shared assumption as to the fundamental independence of desire and value, and hence desire and reason”. Instead, we should see both as “interdependent”; value “comes into the world through the medium of (...) the interacting desire and the belief systems of the organism as these articulate and project onto the environment the organism’s needs”. He likewise rejects Nagel’s and Parfit’s views on prudential rationality and personal identity, arguing that no “attempt to establish [personal identity] purely in impersonal terms” can succeed, that “the self is a basic primitive concept that is presupposed in all experience”. (shrink)

The work of Luciano Floridi lies at the interface of philosophy, information science and technology, and ethics, an intersection whose existence and significance he was one of the first to establish. His closely related concepts of a philosophy of information (PI), informational structural realism, information logic (IL), and information ethics (IE) provide a new ontological perspective from which moral concerns can be addressed, especially but not limited to those arising in connection with the new information and communication technologies. In this (...) paper, I relate Floridi's approach to another novel perspective, namely, that of an extension of logic to complex real processes, including those of information production and transfer. This non-propositional, non-truth-functional logic (logic in reality (LIR)) is grounded in the fundamental dualism (dynamic opposition) inherent in energy and accordingly present at all levels of reality. The LIR description of the dynamics of processes and their evolution is relevant to what Floridi refers to as the possible non-linguistic aspects of information. It suggests answers to some of Floridi's “outstanding problems” in PI related to the ontological status of information and how it is used in cognition. Floridi's IL retains the formal structure of the doxastic and epistemic logics from which he correctly distinguishes it and is the basis for his conceptual PI. However, LIR fulfills Floridi's implied requirement that logic be regarded as a natural phenomenon dealing with other natural phenomena, recovering its original philosophical function. LIR provides a logical foundation for discussion of ethical questions based on kinds of information that complements IL. Both are reconsiderations of logic that, as Marijuan suggests, may be necessary for the advancement of information technology in an ethical direction (cf. also Brenner). IE focuses on entities as constituted by information in an overall strategy that generalizes the concept of moral agents. LIR and its related ontology naturalize critical aspects of Floridi's theses, especially, the moral value of being as such and a non-separable joint responsibility of individuals and groups. I compare IE to other current approaches to ethics and information technology (e.g., phenomenological and social constructivist). Ethical information is defined “ecologically” in process terms as reality in a physical space (cf. Floridi), with an intentional “valence,” positive and negative, in the morally valued interaction between producer and receiver. LIR is neither topic-neutral nor context independent and can support an ethics involving apparently contradictory perspectives (e.g., internalist and externalist). Ethics involves practical reasoning, and unlike standard logics, LIR supports Magnani's approach to abductive reasoning in rational moral decision making. The basis of moral responsibility and the consequent behavior of individuals involved in information and communications technologies is the same logical–metaphysical principle of dynamic opposition instantiated at other levels of reality. The way moral responsibilities are actively accepted (or not) by individuals supervenes on their primitive psychological structure, which in turn reflects an evolutionary development grounded in the fundamental dualism of the physical world. The paper concludes with some suggestions of areas of philosophical research, such as causality, identity, and the ontological turn, where convergence of the Floridi and LIR approaches might be envisaged. Their overall motivation is the same, namely, the development of strategies for reinforcing and increasing ethical sensitivity wherever possible. The ethical information concept outlined in the paper supports the function of IE, assigned to it by Floridi, of potentially determining what is right and what is wrong. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Imagining Karma, Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek RebirthA. L. HermanImagining Karma, Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek Rebirth. By Gananath Obeyesekere. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. 448 pp.Gananath Obeyesekere, professor emeritus of anthropology at Princeton University, is probably one of the world's greatest living anthropologists. The proof of that assertion lies in this his latest work on comparative anthropology, a study of the concept (...) and practice of rebirth—"reincarnation" as he calls it—from ancient Greece and India to modern West Africa, Melanesia, and North America. In what follows let me briefly set forth what I understand his central thesis to be, the evidence for it, and the conclusions to be drawn from it. I will end with two very modest problems connected with this altogether intriguing and brilliant investigation into the doctrine of rebirth.As a modified structural anthropologist, Gananath Obeyesekere rejects the rationalist model structuralism of Claude Levi-Strauss. He follows instead the lead of two of his empiricist predecessors, Max Weber and Fernand Braudel, pointing out that structures, types, or models "are constructions of scholars, not universals waiting to be discovered" (p. 351). Consequently, as this book aptly proves, Obeyesekere's own "imagined" models are based on parole data following the actual language of the cultures being studied.Obeyesekere thus begins his book with an elementary rebirth structure based on such parole. He refers to this primitive, first structure as "rebirth eschatology," which entails the rebirth of a deceased's soul into the body of a newborn relative of the deceased but without any determining ethical component as found in the more sophisticated and complex "karmic eschatologies." Such ethically neutral kin group rebirths are found among certain small-scale societies in West Africa, the Trobriand Islands, the Northwest American coast tribes, and the Inuits (Eskimos). Obeyesekere [End Page 303] draws extensively on field studies of these groups to bolster his conclusions about them. This simple rebirth eschatology is non-Indic in origin, Obeyesekere claims, since no evidence of influences have been found between these practitioners of rebirth eschatology and work relating to the Indic religions (Hinduism and Buddhism). The entry of the soul into postdeath life, either in this world or the world of the ancestors, depends not at all, consequently, on one's this-worldly behavior such that "morality does not affect the fate of the soul after death" (p. 74).Obeyesekere turns next to the "transformation" of this rebirth eschatology. It occurs with the introduction of the concept of ethicization, "the processes whereby morally right or wrong action becomes a religiously right or wrong action that in turn affects a person's destiny after death" (p. 75). It is Obeyesekere's contention that when ethicization is systematically introduced into any rebirth eschatology the latter must logically transform itself into a so-called "karmic eschatology." In other words, this second topological model or conceptual structure, karmic eschatology, the new ethicized rebirth eschatology, says that the otherworld for the dead is not simply a way station for departed souls waiting to be reborn, but rather that otherworld is now a place of retribution and punishment. Kinship affiliation alone no longer determines who goes where after death but moral action does. My own guess is that rebirth eschatology was introduced to answer the question of why the grandchild resembles the deceased grandparent. Karmic eschatology, on the other hand, was probably introduced to solve a more complex and sophisticated puzzle: Why is it, if there really is justice in the universe, that the wicked never get appropriately punished and the good never get sufficiently rewarded? At this stage of transformation, the law of karma, or some other principle of universal justice, now says that everyone gets what's coming to them, either in this life or the next, and that rebirth is necessary to make that principle of justice workable.1 In arguing that "rebirth cannot be divorced from ethics; it looks as if it is generated from ethics" (p. 82), Obeyesekere would seem to concur that karmic eschatology was introduced to answer the question: Why do the wicked seem to prosper and the good appear to suffer?Following... (shrink)

While the consequences of mathematically-based software, algorithms and strategies have become ever wider and better appreciated, ethical reflection on mathematics has remained primitive. We review the somewhat disconnected suggestions of commentators in recent decades with a view to piecing together a coherent approach to ethics in mathematics. Calls for a Hippocratic Oath for mathematicians are examined and it is concluded that while lessons can be learned from the medical profession, the relation of mathematicians to those affected by their work (...) is significantly different. There is something to be learned also from the codes of conduct of cognate but professionalised quantitative disciplines such as engineering and accountancy, as well as from legal principles bearing on professional work. We conclude with recommendations that professional societies in mathematics should sponsor an (international) code of ethics, institutional mission statements for mathematicians and syllabuses of ethics courses for incorporation into mathematics degrees. (shrink)

In their latest target article, Zilio and Lavazza (2023) major claim is that research on human cerebral organoids (HCOs) must take into account whether they can acquire sentience or a primitive for...

This essay demonstrates the prominence of imitation in Kierkegaard’s ethics. I move beyond his idea of authentic existence modeled on Christ and explore the secular dimension of Kierkegaard’s insights about human nature and imitation. I start with presenting imitation as key to understanding the ethical dimension of the relationship between the universal and individual aspects of the human self in Kierkegaard. I then show that Kierkegaard’s moral concepts of “primitivity” and “comparison” are a response to his sociological and psychological observations (...) about imitation from an ethical point of view. In the final section of this paper, I briefly engage Friedrich Schleiermacher’s “ethics of individuality” and Gabriel Tarde’s “laws of imitation” to explore Kierkegaard’s consideration of ethics and imitation as situated within the context of a broader conversation on imitation. (shrink)

In Method in Theology (chapter 3) Lonergan points to a parallel between instances of a mediated return to immediacy: “Finally there is a withdrawal from objectification and a mediated return to immediacy in the mating of lovers and in the prayerful mystic’s cloud of unknowing.” Soto’s essay explores the question: “If it is possible, as some couples report, for the mating of lovers to be a prayerful, mystical experience, what does this mean?”Soto explores the physiological, psychological and spiritual dimensions of (...) the lover’s immediacies. She finds three centers of natural immediacies in the lovers’ return via their lovemaking, and one supernatural immediacy. They include a primitive psychological state, Lonergan’s notion of spontaneous intersubjectivity, and the self-presence of contemplation. All three immediacies have transformative potential for the lovers, and position them for mystical experience. The fourth center of immediacy is the supernatural gift of the indwelling Christ. His presence in the lover’s awareness is mystical immediacy. Christ is mediator and mediated in the couple’s objectification of their mystical immediacy and their ensuing graced living, or, life of prayer.Through scholarly research and supporting, concrete interviews of couples, Soto sketches out some of the ways the lovers cooperate with the precept to “be in love.” The ethic is framed around the developments and conversions in Lonergan’s trajectory that moves from eros to friendship and to a special order of charity. (shrink)

This article considers the methodological limits and possibilities of a cultural turn in comparative religious ethics by “translating” the Latin American Indigenous meanings of buen vivir (living well), a subsistent mode of interdependent flourishing resistant to Western models of extractive development amid the Anthropocene. It problematizes the methodological challenge of translating Indigenous cultures from within a Western colonial political economy that has historically relegated Indigenous Americans to the primitive level of savage inferiority according to a stadial theory of socioeconomic (...) development. However, constructive methodological options for translating Indigenous cultures emerge from the Journal of Religious Ethics's existing conversations about comparative religious ethics. On the one hand, recent critical anthropology and ethnography, abetted by intellectual history, provide tools for ethicists in the recovery of Indigenous critiques and meanings against longstanding Western cultural patterns. On the other hand, nativizing the concept of the religious classic thematizes the normative dimensions of Indigenous cultures, demonstrating how the translation of buen vivir points to intercultural dialogue rather than cooptation and manipulation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT If we accept that the behaviour of humans and other animals is very substantially channelled by evolutionary constraints, it might appear that there can be no place for animals within the protection of a human system of morality. However, the nature of plausible evolutionary constraints on the cognition of social animals, including humans, suggests that this is not so. It is likely that the most important element in our morality is the capacity to imagine the feelings of other individuals, (...) and this capacity is so important for our ability to understand and predict their behaviour that it would be likely to be preserved by evolution even if moral behaviour had no survival value in its own right. We also use this kind of imaginative sympathy to understand and predict the behaviour of other animals, and it is this which provides the main reason for the inclusion of such animals within a human moral system. The primitive elements of morality have a survival value that is probably common to many other social species of animals. Since one of our reasons for putting a special value on human life is the human capacity for moral behaviour, we ought also to view members of these species as being of special significance. (shrink)

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Do we have control of how we act, and does it matter to morality whether we do? Thomas Pink examines this free will problem by arguing that what matters to morality is not in fact the freedom to do otherwise, but something more primitive, a basic capacity or power to determine for ourselves what we do.

Michael Lockwood has recently concluded that it can be morally permissible to perform potentially damaging non-therapeutic experiments on live human (pre)embryos. The reasons he provides in support of this conclusion commit him inter alia to the following controversial theses: (i) an organism's potential for twinning bears critically on the identity conditions for that organism; and (ii) functionally intact mentality-mediating neurological structures play a critical role in establishing the identity conditions for human organisms. I argue that Lockwood has given us no (...) good reason to endorse either of these theses and, hence, that he has given us no good reason to believe that it can be morally permissible to perform potentially damaging non-therapeutic experiments on live human (pre)embryos. (shrink)

in Undetermined Table d’Hôte Ingar Brinck: Investigating the development of creativity: The Sahlin hypothesis 7 Linus Broström: Known unknowns and proto-second-personal address in photographic art 25 Johan Brännmark: Critical moral thinking without moral theory 33 Martin Edman: Vad är ett missförhållande? 43 Pascal Engel: Rambling on the value of truth 51 Peter Gärdenfors: Ambiguity in decision making and the fear of being fooled 75 Göran Hermerén: NIPT: Ethical aspects 89 Mats Johansson: Roboethics: What problems should be addressed and why? 103 (...) Johan Laserna: Ambivalenta bilder 113 Anna-Sofia Maurin: Metaphysical explanation 161 Kevin Mulligan: Is preference primitive? 169 John D. Norton: How does your garden grow? 181 Johannes Persson & Annika Wallin: The distinction between internal and external validity 187 Johanna Seibt: Becoming our selves 197 Paul Slovic, Robin Gregory, David Frank, and Daniel Vastfjall: Confronting the collapse of humanitarian values in foreignpolicy decision making 209 Peter Sylwan: Det eviga livet 215 Claudine Tiercelin: Chance, love and logic: Ramsey and Peirce on norms, rationality and the conduct of life 221 Epilog 257 Frank Ramsey. (shrink)