The creation of a cloned sheep from mammary tissue has raisedmajor social concern, and much talk about major ethical issuesoccasioned by this technology. It is necessary to separategenuine from spurious ethical issues here, a task made failureto initiate ethical discussion and explanation of new technologyas well as by fear reactions in society. As in geneticengineering of animals, issues about cloning fall into threecategories – suggestions that the technology is inherently wrong,risk emerging from the technology and harm to the creatureengendered. The (...) issues regarding the cloning of humans can beanalyzed using the same categories. (shrink)

Requiring covariance of Maxwell's equations without a priori imposing charge invariance allows for both spin-1 and spin-1/2 transformations of the complete Maxwell field and current. The spin-1/2 case yields new transformation rules, with new invariants, for all traditional Maxwell field and source quantities. The accompanying spin-1/2 representations of the Lorentz group employ the Minkowski metric, and consequently the primary spin-1/2 Maxwell invariants are also spin-1 invariants; for example, Φ2−A2, E2−B2+2iE⋅B−2. The associated Maxwell Lagrangian density is also the same for both (...) spin-1 and spin-1/2 fields. However, in the spin-1/2 case, standard field and source quantities are complex and both charge and gauge invariance are lost. Requiring the potentials to satisfy the Klein–Gordon equation equates the Maxwell and field-potential equations with two Dirac equations of the Klein–Gordon mass, and thus one complex Klein–Gordon Maxwell field describes either two real vector fields or two Dirac fields, all of the same mass. (shrink)

Gareth B. Matthews (1929–2011) was a specialist in ancient and medieval philosophy whose conversations with young children led him to discover their penchant for philosophical thinking, which often enriched his own. Those conversations became the impetus for a substantial component of Matthews’ scholarship, from which our book, Gareth B. Matthews, The Child’s Philosopher, features essays spanning the length of his career. Contemporary contributors to the book critically evaluate Matthews’ scholarship in three fields he helped to initiate: philosophy in children’s literature, (...) philosophy for children, and philosophy of childhood. They assess where he broke new ground and identify developments and debates in those fields. In the reviews that follow, Harry Brighouse, David Bakhurst, and Sheron Fraser-Burgess respond to Matthews’ original essays and those of the contemporary scholars. While recognizing Matthews’ significant contribution to advancing philosophy in the lives of children, all three reviewers indicate ways to push his agenda forward. We read Brighouse as calling for engagement with philosophy in media (including television and film) beyond classical and contemporary children’s literature. Bakhurst explicitly calls for further empirical study of children’s philosophical thinking to support more realistic conceptions of childhood and philosophy—including when philosophy might not be appropriate for children. Fraser-Burgess calls for an accounting of the ways that philosophy for children may reinscribe unjust hierarchies of race, gender, and culture, and of the ways it can be used to confront and combat them. (shrink)

In this article we respond to the reviews, which appear in this issue, by Harry Brighouse, David Bakhurst, and Sheron Fraser-Burgess of our edited book Gareth B. Matthews, The Child’s Philosopher (Routledge 2022a). We are grateful for their sympathetic yet critical perspectives, which we take to be the very kind of engagement the philosophy for children movement requires in order to become more integrated with professional philosophical and educational theory and practice. We particularly value this opportunity to dialogue with scholars (...) outside the movement, which has generated the insights we address here. In what follows, we think with our reviewers about what Matthews’ work reveals about areas of promise and of concern in the movement. (shrink)

The dominant feature of eighteenth-century aesthetic is the inquiry and discussion concerning the theory of “taste.” There is material or bibliographical evidence of this in the rapid sequence of treatises, essays, inquiries, observations, and controversies on this subject, extending from the close of the seventeenth to the last years of the eighteenth century, and bearing the names, in France, of Dacier, Bellegarde, Bouhours, Rollin, Seran de la Tour, Trublet, Formey, Bitaubé, Marmontel, and, still more eminent, of Montesquieu, Voltaire, d’Alembert; (...) in England, of Addison, Hume, Gerard, Home, Burke, Priestley, Blair, Beattie, Percival, Reid, Alison; in Italy, of Muratori, Calepio, Pagano, Corniani; in Germany, of Thomasius, J. U. König, Bodmer, A. von Schlegel, Wegelin, Heyne, Herz, Eberhard, J. C. König, and, by German influence in Hungary, Szardahely; and, greatest of all, Immanuel Kant, whoseCritique of Judgmentconsists in the main of a critique of the aesthetic judgment of taste. (shrink)

Biotechnology applied to traditional foodanimals raises ethical issues in three distinctcategories. First are a series of issues that arise inthe transformation of pigs, sheep, cattle and otherdomesticated farm animals for purposes that deviatesubstantially from food production, including forxenotransplantation or production of pharmaceuticals.Ethical analysis of these issues must draw upon theresources of medical ethics; categorizing them asagricultural biotechnologies is misleading. The secondseries of issues relate to animal welfare. Althoughone can stipulate a number of different philosophicalfoundations for the ethical assessment of welfare,most (...) either converge on Bernard Rollins principle ofwelfare conservation (Rollin, 1995), or devolve intodebates over the ethical significance of animaltelos or species integrity. The principle of welfareconservation prohibits disfunctional geneticengineering of food animals, but would permit alteringanimals biological functions, especially when (as inmaking animals less susceptable to pain or suffering)do so improves an individual animals well being.Objections to precisely this last form of geneticengineering stress telos or species integrity asconstraints on modification of animals, and thisrepresents the third class of ethical issues. Most whohave formulated such arguments have failed to developcoherent positions, but the notion of species being,derived from the 19th century German tradition,presents a promising way to analyze the basis forresisting the transformation of animal natures. (shrink)

The dominant feature of eighteenth-century aesthetic is the inquiry and discussion concerning the theory of “taste.” There is material or bibliographical evidence of this in the rapid sequence of treatises, essays, inquiries, observations, and controversies on this subject, extending from the close of the seventeenth to the last years of the eighteenth century, and bearing the names, in France, of Dacier, Bellegarde, Bouhours, Rollin, Seran de la Tour, Trublet, Formey, Bitaubé, Marmontel, and, still more eminent, of Montesquieu, Voltaire, d’Alembert; (...) in England, of Addison, Hume, Gerard, Home, Burke, Priestley, Blair, Beattie, Percival, Reid, Alison; in Italy, of Muratori, Calepio, Pagano, Corniani; in Germany, of Thomasius, J. U. König, Bodmer, A. von Schlegel, Wegelin, Heyne, Herz, Eberhard, J. C. König, and, by German influence in Hungary, Szardahely; and, greatest of all, Immanuel Kant, whose Critique of Judgment consists in the main of a critique of the aesthetic judgment of taste. (shrink)

Bridging the gap between the world of science and the realm of the spiritual, B. Alan Wallace introduces a natural theory of human consciousness that has its roots in contemporary physics and Buddhism. Wallace's "special theory of ontological relativity" suggests that mental phenomena are _conditioned_ by the brain, but do not _emerge_ from it. Rather, the entire natural world of mind and matter, subjects and objects, arises from a unitary dimension of reality that is more fundamental than these dualities, as (...) proposed by Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. To test his hypothesis, Wallace employs the Buddhist meditative practice of _samatha_, refining one's attention and metacognition, to create a kind of telescope to examine the space of the mind. Drawing on the work of the physicist John Wheeler, he then proposes a more general theory in which the participatory nature of reality is envisioned as a self-excited circuit. In comparing these ideas to the Buddhist theory known as the Middle Way philosophy, Wallace explores further aspects of his "general theory of ontological relativity," which can be investigated by means of _vipasyana_, or insight, meditation. Wallace then focuses on the theme of symmetry in reference to quantum cosmology and the "problem of frozen time," relating these issues to the theory and practices of the Great Perfection school of Tibetan Buddhism. He concludes with a discussion of the general theme of complementarity as it relates to science and religion. The theories of relativity and quantum mechanics were major achievements in the physical sciences, and the theory of evolution has had an equally deep impact on the life sciences. However, rigorous scientific methods do not yet exist to observe mental phenomena, and naturalism has its limits for shedding light on the workings of the mind. A pioneer of modern consciousness research, Wallace offers a practical and revolutionary method for exploring the mind that combines the keenest insights of contemporary physicists and philosophers with the time-honored meditative traditions of Buddhism. (shrink)

Offers a forthright approach to the many disquieting questions surrounding the emotional debate over animal rights. This book includes a chapter on animal agriculture, and additional discussions of animal law, companion animal issues, genetic engineering, animal pain, animal research, and other topics.

Seventeen years before Kant published The Critique of Pure Reason, there appeared another work designed to undercut Hume’s skepticism and the principles upon which that skepticism was based—Thomas Reid’s Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense. In this ambitious work, Reid hoped to show, against Hume, that there need be no quarrel between common sense and philosophical inquiry. “Philosophy,” proclaimed Reid, “has no other roots but the principles of Common Sense; it grows out of them, and (...) draws its nourishment from them.” Reid’s self-imposed task was thus two-fold—to expose the errors in philosophical method which had inexorably culminated in Hume’s phenomenalistic atomism, and correlatively to provide a more adequate metaphysical scheme which could avoid the pitfalls of skepticism while doing justice to our ordinary beliefs about the world. (shrink)

The ability to alter one’s emotional responses is central to overall well-being and to effectively meeting the demands of life. One of the chief symptoms of events such as trauma, that overwhelm our capacities to successfully handle and adapt to them, is a shift in our internal baseline reference such that there ensues a repetitive activation of the traumatic event. This can result in high vigilance and over-sensitivity to environmental signals which are reflected in inappropriate emotional responses and autonomic nervous (...) system dynamics. In this article we discuss the perspective that one’s ability to self-regulate the quality of feeling and emotion of one’s moment-to-moment experience is intimately tied to our physiology, and the reciprocal interactions among physiological, cognitive, and emotional systems. These interactions form the basis of information processing networks in which communication between systems occurs through the generation and transmission of rhythms and patterns of activity. Our discussion emphasizes the communication pathways between the heart and brain, as well as how these are related to cognitive and emotional function and self-regulatory capacity. We discuss the hypothesis that self-induced positive emotions increase the coherence in bodily processes, which is reflected in the pattern of the heart’s rhythm. This shift in the heart rhythm in turn plays an important role in facilitating higher cognitive functions, creating emotional stability and facilitating states of calm. Over time, this establishes a new inner-baseline reference, a type of implicit memory that organizes perception, feelings, and behavior. Without establishing a new baseline reference, people are at risk of getting “stuck” in familiar, yet unhealthy emotional and behavioral patterns and living their lives through the automatic filters of past familiar or traumatic experience. (shrink)

Since the election of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016, extra-judicial killings have become commonplace as a result of his administration’s declaration of war on drugs. Empirical cross-national work on examining determinants behind state repression remains scant especially in understanding the phenomenon at the sub-national level. This study investigates what accounts for variations on EJKs at the level of Philippine provinces. Using monthly panel-data for 62 provinces and employing various count-model regressions, the findings indicate that Philippine provinces which have large (...) populations, stronger state capacity, and are more affluent in terms of the human development index are more likely to exhibit higher rates of EJKs. Furthermore, the vote share of the President in the 2016 elections and presidential visits to specific provinces are correlated with higher incidences of EJKs—corroborating theories on delegative democracies and penal populism. Lastly, it is found that drug-prone provinces are more likely to experience a higher share of human rights violations in terms of EJKs, compared to provinces that have lower affectation rates. The implications suggest that the Philippine war on drugs seem to promote vertical accountability as international criticism and domestic opposition mounts. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Moral Critique of Research on Animals The Uses of Animals in Research The Response of the Research Community to the Moral Critique of Animal Research Practical Resolution References Further reading.

Bridging the gap between the world of science and the realm of the spiritual, B. Alan Wallace introduces a natural theory of human consciousness that has its roots in contemporary physics and Buddhism. Wallace's "special theory of ontological relativity" suggests that mental phenomena are _conditioned_ by the brain, but do not _emerge_ from it. Rather, the entire natural world of mind and matter, subjects and objects, arises from a unitary dimension of reality that is more fundamental than these dualities, as (...) proposed by Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. To test his hypothesis, Wallace employs the Buddhist meditative practice of _samatha_, refining one's attention and metacognition, to create a kind of telescope to examine the space of the mind. Drawing on the work of the physicist John Wheeler, he then proposes a more general theory in which the participatory nature of reality is envisioned as a self-excited circuit. In comparing these ideas to the Buddhist theory known as the Middle Way philosophy, Wallace explores further aspects of his "general theory of ontological relativity," which can be investigated by means of _vipasyana_, or insight, meditation. Wallace then focuses on the theme of symmetry in reference to quantum cosmology and the "problem of frozen time," relating these issues to the theory and practices of the Great Perfection school of Tibetan Buddhism. He concludes with a discussion of the general theme of complementarity as it relates to science and religion. The theories of relativity and quantum mechanics were major achievements in the physical sciences, and the theory of evolution has had an equally deep impact on the life sciences. However, rigorous scientific methods do not yet exist to observe mental phenomena, and naturalism has its limits for shedding light on the workings of the mind. A pioneer of modern consciousness research, Wallace offers a practical and revolutionary method for exploring the mind that combines the keenest insights of contemporary physicists and philosophers with the time-honored meditative traditions of Buddhism. (shrink)

Numerous ethical issues have emerged from the industrialization of animal agriculture. Those issues ultimately rest in large measure upon overuse of antibiotics. How this has occurred is discussed in detail in this paper.

Although 20th-century empiricists were agnostic about animal mind and consciousness, this was not the case for their historical ancestors – John Locke, David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and, of course, Charles Darwin and George John Romanes. Given the dominance of the Darwinian paradigm of evolutionary continuity, one would not expect belief in animal mind to disappear. That it did demonstrates that standard accounts of how scientific hypotheses are overturned – i.e., by empirical disconfirmation or by exposure of logical (...) flaws – is inadequate. In fact, it can be demonstrated that belief in animal mind disappeared as a result of a change of values, a mechanism also apparent in the Scientific Revolution. The “valuational revolution” responsible for denying animal mind is examined in terms of the rise of Behaviorism and its flawed account of the historical inevitability of denying animal mentation. The effects of the denial of animal consciousness included profound moral implications for the major uses of animals in agriculture and scientific research. The latter is particularly notable for the denial of felt pain in animals. The rise of societal moral concern for animals, however, has driven the “reappropriation of common sense” about animal thought and feeling. (shrink)

Purpose The developing academic field of machine ethics seeks to make artificial agents safer as they become more pervasive throughout society. In contrast to computer ethics, machine ethics is concerned with the behavior of machines toward human users and other machines. This study aims to use an action-based ethical theory founded on the combinational aspects of deontological and teleological theories of ethics in the construction of an artificial moral agent. Design/methodology/approach The decision results derived by the AMA are acquired via (...) fuzzy logic interpretation of the relative values of the steady-state simulations of the corresponding rule-based fuzzy cognitive map. Findings Through the use of RBFCMs, the following paper illustrates the possibility of incorporating ethical components into machines, where latent semantic analysis and RBFCMs can be used to model dynamic and complex situations, and to provide abilities in acquiring causal knowledge. Research limitations/implications This approach is especially appropriate for data-poor and uncertain situations common in ethics. Nonetheless, to ensure that a machine with an ethical component can function autonomously in the world, research in artificial intelligence will need to further investigate the representation and determination of ethical principles, the incorporation of these ethical principles into a system’s decision procedure, ethical decision-making with incomplete and uncertain knowledge, the explanation for decisions made using ethical principles and the evaluation of systems that act based upon ethical principles. Practical implications To date, the conducted research has contributed to a theoretical foundation for machine ethics through exploration of the rationale and the feasibility of adding an ethical dimension to machines. Further, the constructed AMA illustrates the possibility of utilizing an action-based ethical theory that provides guidance in ethical decision-making according to the precepts of its respective duties. The use of LSA illustrates their powerful capabilities in understanding text and their potential application as information retrieval systems in AMAs. The use of cognitive maps provides an approach and a decision procedure for resolving conflicts between different duties. Originality/value This paper suggests that cognitive maps could be used in AMAs as tools for meta-analysis, where comparisons regarding multiple ethical principles and duties can be examined and considered. With cognitive mapping, complex and abstract variables that cannot easily be measured but are important to decision-making can be modeled. This approach is especially appropriate for data-poor and uncertain situations common in ethics. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Resemblance Modularity Conclusion.

One of the major values of animal ethical theory can be found in the light it sheds on practical ethical problems involving animals. McCulloch and Reiss’ paper does precisely this regarding the culling of badgers in England to limit the spread of tuberculosis. Perspicaciously realizing that societal ethics represents a combination of utilitarian and rights-based theorizing, the authors apply both of these perspectives to the issue, noting that both theoretical approaches generate a rejection of culling in the presence of other (...) viable alternatives. In addition, the authors suggest and defend the use of an Animal Welfare Impact Assessment tool to assess the impact of various management approaches on the animals, and demonstrate its congruence with both the ethical theories considered, and with societal moral attitudes. In this way, they show that their conclusion is directly compatible with the societal ethic, in my view a major prerequisite for effecting social change. (shrink)

Newtonian theory has usually been accepted as a paradigm example of an explanation. There are two widely known analyses of what makes it so. According to one analysis, the deductive and predictive nature of the theory is what counts. The second analysis emphasizes the ability of the theory to connect widely different events and laws. The present paper proposes a third analysis stressing three characteristics. (1) The explanation includes a description which is in part of something unobserved. (2) The description (...) is true in the sense of corresponding to the facts. (3) Through the description, the explanation confers "naturalness" upon the thing explained. (shrink)

Offers a forthright approach to the many disquieting questions surrounding the emotional debate over animal rights. This book includes a chapter on animal agriculture, and additional discussions of animal law, companion animal issues, genetic engineering, animal pain, animal research, and other topics.

How can science teach us that animals feel no pain when our common sense observations tell us otherwise? Rollin offers a welcome insight into questions like this in The Unheeded Cry, a rare, reasonable account of the difficult and controversial issues surrounding the images of animals found in science. Widely hailed on its first appearance, the book is updated here to include recent changes in thinking and practice in this fast growing field. With anecdotes and a dose of humour, (...) Rollin pokes holes in the neutral, objective, and value-free stance of animal-using scientists in the positivist tradition. He shows how this stance leads to the denial of the existence of animal consciousness and pain, and he points out the consequences. His work will help professionals and amateurs with an interest in the moral status of animals in their attempts to penetrate the fortress of scientific ideology and practice, and to effect change. (shrink)