There are a number of recent attempts to introduce Confucian values to the ethical analysis of technology. These works, however, have not attended sufficiently to one central aspect of Confucianism, namely Ritual (‘Li’). Li is central to Confucian ethics, and it has been suggested that the emphasis on Li in Confucian ethics is what distinguishes it from other ethical traditions. Any discussion of Confucian ethics for technology, therefore, remains incomplete without accounting for Li. This chapter aims to elaborate on the (...) concept of Confucian Li and discuss its relevance to ethics of technology. Particularly, by referring to Li’s communicative, formative, and aesthetic function, I formulate an approach to ethics of technology with an emphasis on community, performance, and the aesthetic and demonstrate how this approach proceeds with the ethical analysis of technology. In doing so, I attempt to answer the question: why Confucianism matters in ethics of technology. (shrink)

This introduction provides an overview of the life, career, and social thought of Gerhard Lenski. Following a preliminary description of Lenski's contributions, this essay is divided into two sections. The first section examines the origins, education, and biographical influences on Lenski as a major social theorist as well as the intellectual foundation of his sociological theories. The second section presents Lenski's work, impact, and legacy and sets the stage for the original essays that are grouped around four of six key (...) areas of Lenski's work, which has had enormous impact on both American and international sociology: (1) teaching sociology; (2) "status crystallization" and "status inconsistency"; (3) sociology of religion and "the religious factor"; (4) social stratification, "power and privilege"; (5) gender stratification in comparative-historical perspective; and (6) ecological-evolutionary theory. While these six areas do not correspond neatly to the progressive phases of Lenski's theory development and sociological career, they are interconnected and reflect Lenski's central concerns in asking the big questions about human societies and in providing explanations for understanding the processes of social change, differentiation, and inequality among and within human societies, across time and space, from hunting and gathering to postindus trial societies. (shrink)

In this book, David B. Wong defends an ambitious and important new version of moral relativism. He does not espouse the type of relativism that says anything goes, but he does start with a relativist stance against alternative theories such that there need not be only one universal truth. Wong proposes that there can be a plurality of true moralities existing across different traditions and cultures, all with one core human question as to how we can all live (...) together. (shrink)

The view defended is one sense externalist on the relation between moral reasons and motivation: A's having a moral reason to do X does not necessarily imply that A has a motivation that would support A's doing X via some appropriate deliberative route. However, it is in another sense externalist in holding that there are the kind of moral reasons there are only if the relevant motivational capacities are "generally present" in human beings, if not in all individuals. The process (...) of socialization is an attempt to embed the recognition of what we have moral reason to do in the intentional content of one's feelings. E.g., learning that about others' suffering embeds their suffering as a reason to help in the intentional content of incipient compassionate feelings. This endows the reason with motivational efficacy while conferring further direction to the feelings in ways that shape us for social cooperation. (shrink)

I thought the paper by Kai-yee Wong and Chris Fraser was fascinating and insightful. Two things I especially appreciated are the clarity with which they summarize my views. I think they are quite fair and accurate. Second, I appreciate their suggestion that the way to deal with the practical problem of weakness of will has much to do with the role of the Background in shaping our actions. I think they are especially on the right track when they say (...) that the improvement of Background skills may actually narrow the range of real options for action, (p. 21) nonetheless, they do not decrease freedom. As they say, “It is a process of strengthening the self, and the agent is likely to experience the concomitant restriction of ‘live’ options not as a limitation but as strength of character.” (p. 21). That seems to me very much on the right track. What they are suggesting, and it is a powerful addition to my own writings, is that we should not just think of the Background as facilitating languages, games and social practices generally, but for morality as well (p. 23). (shrink)

The essence of the associated-proposition strategy is to distinguish the necessary proposition _expressed by_ a sentence.

A celebration of a distinctly American form of commercial architecture The only comprehensive history of America's 5-&-10-cent stores It was where you went to browse the latest issues of Life and Photoplay, where the folks bought reading glasses, and where your mom took you for a hot dog and a malted. It was the local 5-&-10-cent store, and it was an integral part of everyday life. In this lavishly illustrated homage to the 5-&-10-cent store, architectural historian Bernice Thomas looks (...) at the architectural achievements of the Kress Company. Devoted to bringing outstanding design to Main Street America, Kress supported an architectural division of more than 100 architects and draftsmen. The over 200 stores these people designed and built between 1900 and 1950 set a new standard in commercial architecture. Thomas takes us on an illustrated tour of sites across the United States —from New Orleans to Honolulu, Albuquerque to New York. She introduces us to the architects and how they deftly balanced sound merchandising principles with aesthetics. (shrink)

With more than 700 specific strategies and solutions to use in the classroom, school, and community, this book covers just about everything that educators need, providing a comprehensive and detailed blueprint for an overall plan and policy to prevent and deal with peer harassment.

Suppose “chicken” eggs could be produced by quasi‐chickens—genetically engineered humps of living chicken‐flesh that do nothing but lay eggs. Would there be anything amiss with that? Animal ethicists invoke the notion of animal integrity in order to give intellectual content to the intuition that there would be. On inspection, ‘integrity’ isn't everything its proponents want it to be. Yet there's enough in it to make reasoned argument possible.

The present study investigates the dynamics of emotional processing and awareness using an affective facial priming paradigm in conjunction with a multimodal assessment of awareness. Key facial primes are visually masked, and are presented for brief and extended durations. Using a preference measure, we examine whether the effects of the primes differ qualitatively . We show that: unconscious affective priming with faces emerges strongly in initial presentations and diminishes rapidly with repetition; conscious affective priming also emerges strongly in initial presentations, (...) however it persists in strength with repetition; and in contrast to other reports on the salience of negative stimuli, happy faces appear more salient than sad faces when presented outside awareness. We discuss the limits and extensions of unconscious affective priming with faces, and consider several methodological and conceptual questions concerning emotional processing out of awareness. (shrink)

In spite of their performance of highly valuable roles in the civil rights movement, southern Black women remain a category of invisible, unsung heroes and leaders. Utilizing archival data and a subsample of personal interviews conducted with civil rights leaders, this article explores the specific leadership roles of Black women activists; describes the experiences of selected Black women activists from their own “standpoint”; and offers explanations for the lack of recognition and non-inclusion of Black women in the recognized leadership cadre (...) of the civil rights movement. The modern southern-based struggle is most illustrative of how the interlocking systems of gender, race, and class structure Black women's movement leadership and participation. (shrink)

As the world population is growing and government directives tell us to consume more fatty acids, the demand for fish is increasing. Due to declines in wild fish populations, we have come to rely more and more on aquaculture. Despite rapid expansion of aquaculture, this sector is still in a relatively early developmental stage. This means that this sector can still be steered in a favorable direction, which requires discussion about sustainability. If we want to avoid similar problems to the (...) ones we have experienced with livestock farming, we need to generate knowledge of the biology, profitability, environmental aspects, consumer awareness, and product appreciation of particular fish species. However, the discussion about a sustainable aquaculture also raises the question how we should treat fish. This moral question is regularly addressed as a problem of applied ethics with a focus on tailoring ethical principles to practical questions. In this article we do not deny the importance of the practical accounts, but we start from the fundamental question whether and why fish matter in our moral deliberations, i.e., from the discussion on moral status. We elaborate the distinction between moral considerability and moral significance in order to show both the importance and the limitations of the discussion about moral status for practical problems in aquaculture. We illustrate these points with a case-study about the farming of a specific fish species, the African catfish. (shrink)

This paper is to inform the recent situations of work by the foreign domestic workers (FDWs) in Hong Kong through the lens of Covid-19. Through the interviews with seven informants — two employers and five FDWs, stories describing the changes in their working conditions, rights and entitlement, and the contextual environment related to the impacts of Covid-19 were collected. They were analysed through three theoretical tools — visibility/invisibility, mobility/immobility, and work boundary. The findings show that under the Covid-19 crisis, the (...) FDWs experienced more hardships and struggles in both the home country and host country. The paradoxes of visibility/invisibility and mobility/immobility together with blurred work boundary were found in their experience of work, rights and entitlement, and the contextual environment. On one hand, the employers’ power of controlling FDWs has increased, but the agency to resist by the FDWs has decreased making them to turn to more passive means of resistance which could harm the FDWs’ physical and mental health and wellbeing. (shrink)

This article explores trends in the presence and centrality of males and females in American children's picture books in the twentieth century. Using the Children's Catalog as a population base and a time series analysis, we found that the imbalance in depicting males and females varies through the century in a curvilinear fashion. The earlier and later periods of the century show more egalitarian representations of females in titles and central roles. However, when stories involving only adults or animal characters (...) are considered, males become more prominent over time. Changes in literary themes and the position of women during this time span may be useful in developing a theory to account for these trends. (shrink)

Climate change could be described as an unstructured policy problem, in which we encounter disagreement on facts and values, problem definition, policy aims, procedures and instruments. For the solution of this type of problem public deliberation is often proposed. According to theories of deliberative democracy all those potentially affected by a decision should have the opportunity to participate in the drafting of that decision. However, in the context of climate change many of the potentially affected cannot speak for themselves, because (...) they do not yet exist. Could future generations nevertheless be represented in public deliberations? And if so, who could legitimately represent them? Moreover, how could such representation get shape institutionally within a deliberative democracy? I will examine some obstacles––in particular the non-identity and the pluralism problems––that have to be overcome before future generations can be represented and question how deliberative democracy could deal with these.. (shrink)

With In Focus Sacred Geometry, learn the fascinating history behind this ancient tradition as well as how to decipher the geometrical symbols, formulas, and patterns based on mathematical patterns. People have searched for the meaning behind mathematical patterns for thousands of years. At its core, sacred geometry seeks to find the universal patterns that are found and applied to the objects surrounding us, such as the designs found in temples, churches, mosques, monuments, art, architecture, and nature. Learn the fundamental principles (...) behind: Interpreting the sacred symbolism and principles behind shapes Calculating numbers used in sacred geometry Applying the golden ratio and Fibonacci’s Sequence to objects Translating symbolic and geometrical letters and alphabets This accessible and beautifully designed guide to sacred geometry includes a frameable poster of the main sacred geometrical shapes and their unique, innate arrangements. The In Focus series applies a modern approach to teaching the classic body, mind, and spirit subjects. Authored by experts in their respective fields, these beginner's guides feature smartly designed visual material that clearly illustrates key topics within each subject. As a bonus, each book includes reference cards or a poster, held in an envelope inside the back cover, that give you a quick, go-to guide containing the most important information on the subject. (shrink)

This is a critical discussion of Paul Humphreys's fusion view of emergence, focusing on the basal loss feature of his ontology. The discussion yields some general morals for special science ontology.

In the future, policies surrounding end-of-life decisions will be faced with the question of whether competent people in a completely locked-in state should be enabled to make end-of-life decisions via brain-computer interfaces (BCI). This article raises ethical issues with acting through BCIs in the context of these decisions, specifically self-administration requirements within assisted suicide policies. We argue that enabling patients to end their life even once they have entered completely locked-in state might, paradoxically, prolong and uphold their quality of life.

I argue that it is a main theme of Davidson's theory of interpretation that interpretive charity implies the impossibility of massive disagreement. There is clear textual support for that. I then argue that from the first-person point of view of a full-blooded interpreter, the theme must be accepted; and that is precisely why Davidson accepts it. If massive disagreement between speaker and interpreter seems to us easy to imagine, it is only because the imagination involved is third-personal and not full-blooded.

The leading question of this article is whether it is acceptable, from a moral point of view, to take wild animals that are ill out of their natural habitat and temporarily bring them under human control with the purpose of curing them. To this end the so-called 'seal debate' was examined. In the Netherlands, seals that are lost or ill are rescued and taken into shelters, where they are cured and afterwards reintroduced into their natural environment. Recently, this practice has (...) been criticised because it is thought to interfere with the wildness of the animals and population. In this research, the moral assumptions behind the arguments of both the proponents and opponents of sheltering have been analysed within a morally pluralistic framework. It is concluded that sheltering on too large a scale would be contrary to the efforts of the last few decades to maintain an independent or wild seal population, which means that a certain amount of caution is called for. However, in the current situation there is no decisive reason to completely prohibit shelters either. Good arguments can even be given in favour of sheltering. It also becomes clear that the acceptability of sheltering wild animals depends on the specific circumstances in which an animal is encountered. (shrink)

Personal recovery entails the idea of learning to live a good life in the face of mental illness. It takes place in a continuous dynamic between change and acceptance and involves the existential dimension in the broadest sense. With cognitive self-regulation and empowerment as central elements, however, current models of recovery mostly have an individual focus instead of a relational one. Furthermore, there seems to be an emphasis on the component of change. Little attention is payed to the role and (...) integration of dealing with loss in personal recovery. In this paper, the role of loss in mental illness will be elaborated from an existential perspective. This will be done by relating existential changes to possibly disruptive experiences of loss in wider experience. With the help of several perspectives on dealing with loss it will be argued this can be integrated in processes of recovery. Then, it will be elaborated how reexperiencing a state of being surrounded, or being included, being held is a necessary part of recovery. The result consists of a refinement of the view on personal recovery. The aim of this paper is therefore twofold: (1) to arrive at a better understanding of what existential loss and loss in wider experience in the context of psychopathology entails, and (2) to further develop perspectives on recovery in mental health care. (shrink)

The Art of War application to education is about solving problems to improve student and school success. The Art of War describes the significance of a leader and his knowledge and prudent application of the strategies. At the core of theses strategies is the non-negotiable moral purpose of the leader to be reinforced by other fine qualities as wisdom, commitment, discipline, and courage.

Developments in the last several years have sparked renewed interest in the ethics of research involving humans. Issues relating to the global extent of research and its guiding principles are of particular importance to researchers, health officials, and individual ethics committees who want a deeper and more encompassing inquiry regarding the foundation and evolution of human research. This department of CQ launches a long overdue effort to explore these wider issues. Readers are invited to submit papers to Charles MacKay, 5011 (...) Worthington Drive, Bethesda, MD, 20816, USA. E-mail: [email protected]. a. (shrink)

Interpreting a scene of lactation failure allows us to represent breast-feeding as a contested social practice. This essay reads a novelistic scene of lactation failure in the context of the decline of breast-feeding in the twentieth century. The protagonist's ignorance of the female experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and lactation is an effect of her objectification within the opposition between science and nature. Unnatural as a woman because she is a natural individual, the pastor's wife exemplifies the dilemmas of breast-feeding as (...) a biosocial practice of maternity in a technological society which features the breakdown of traditional female networks in which knowledge about maternity and breast-feeding are circulated. (shrink)

In this article, two ways of thinking about the potential disruptiveness of de-extinction and gene drives for conservation are presented. The first way of thinking zooms in on particular technologies and assesses the disruptiveness of their potential implications. This approach is exemplified by a framework proposed by Hopster (2021) that is used to conduct our assessment. The second way of thinking turns the logic of the first around. Here, the question is how gene drives and de-extinction fit into a wider (...) and partly pre-existing context of disruption of human-nature relations. By only zooming in on a particular technology and its potential implications, the context out of which the technology is born is unavoidably disregarded. Gene drives and de-extinction are catalysts of a wider disruption already underway. And it is precisely because this disruption is already underway that the terrain is opened for the development and application of these technologies. In other words, the disruptiveness of these technologies strengthens the disruptiveness that was already underway and vice versa. It is argued that the two ways of thinking about emerging technologies in conservation need to go together, meaning in technology assessment both perspectives need to be included. (shrink)