The Milgram obedience studies are widely presented in psychology textbooks as integral to understanding the behavior of Holocaust perpetrators. Recent appraisals of the Milgram legacy have not challenged this view. Discussions of the Holocaust in the historical literature are often cited by psychologists to support the claim of the centrality of the Milgram studies to understanding the Holocaust. More recent historical literature presents a different view of the Holocaust, one that directly questions the relevance of Milgram's obedience studies in understanding (...) the Holocaust. This view has not been well represented in discussions of Milgram in psychology, and is discussed here. The nature of the evidence for the ecological validity of the Milgram studies, and the broader issue of the role of the Milgram studies as "scientific parables" are also discussed. Authors of future psychology textbooks may wish to examine the controversial nature of the claim that Milgram's studies are central to understanding the Holocaust more fully. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The so-called person?situation debate in psychology, which pits internal, personality-based explanations of behavior against external, environment or situation-based explanations seems headed for a resolution that will somehow include elements of both perspectives. These two alternative views of human behavior have also been applied to that subset of human behavior thought of as leadership, and in this domain a rapprochement also seems well underway. In the domain of ethical leadership, however, especially as applied to military misconduct, public discussion of such events (...) is dominated by strictly situation-based explanations, while institutional developments within the military are showing signs of integration, paralleling developments in the broader academic domain. The public discussion of such events thus lags behind the approach to ethical conduct in war taken by the military, which increasingly integrates personal and situational factors in the moral and ethical development of soldiers and leaders. Potential consequences of overreliance on situationist approaches to military ethics are discussed. (shrink)

What significance does "ethics" have for the men and women serving in the military forces of nations around the world? What core values and moral principles collectively guide the members of this "military profession?" This book explains these essential moral foundations, along with "just war theory," international relations, and international law. The ethical foundations that define the "Profession of Arms" have developed over millennia from the shared moral values, unique role responsibilities, and occasional reflection by individual members the profession on (...) their own practices - eventually coming to serve as the basis for the "Law of Armed Conflict" itself.This book focuses upon the ordinary men and women around the world who wear a military uniform and are committed to the defense of their countries and their fellow citizens. It is about what they do, how they do it, what they think about it, how they behave when carrying out their activities, and how they are expected to behave, both on and off the battlefield - and what everyone needs to know about this. The book also examines how military personnel are treated and regarded by those whom they have sworn to defend and protect, as well as how they treat and regard one another within their respective services and organizational settings. Finally, the book discusses the transformations in military professionalism occasioned by new developments in armed conflict, ranging counterinsurgency warfare and humanitarian military intervention, to cyber conflict, military robotics, and private military contracting. From China to Russia, author George Lucas effectively sheds light on today's military ethics in existence throughout the world. What Everyone Needs to Know® is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press. (shrink)

Shoemaker (1996) presenteda prioriarguments against the possibility of ‘self‐blindness’, or the inability of someone, otherwise intelligent and possessed of mental concepts, to introspect any of her concurrent attitude states. Ironically enough, this seems to be a position that Gopnik (1993) and Carruthers (2006, 2008, 2009a,b) have proposed as not only possible, but as the actual human condition generally! According to this ‘Objectivist’ view, supposed introspection of one's attitudes is not ‘direct’, but an ‘inference’ of precisely the sort we make about (...) the attitudes of others, an inference that has the advantage in our own case ofonlyour own sensory data and memories, our behavior, and of the context we are in; i.e. we are all substantially self‐ blind. After sorting out a number of methodological and verbal issues, I argue, first, that thea prioriarguments against Objectivism don't succeed, and that Gopnik and Carruthers are right to regard the issue as an empirical one. On the other hand, I think they seriously underestimate the difficulty of establishing Objectivism. It is unlikely there is an inferential procedure from the data of pure sensation, behavior and context to the relevant self‐attributions that would be as spectacularly reliable as people manifestly seem to be. Moreover, there is a simpler model: the mind very likely consists of a panoply of sub‐routines some of whose outputs are ‘tagged’ for their having been so processed, rather in the way that software ‘documents’ are on standard computers. Introspection plausibly consists in a person's simply attending to distinctive constellations of these tags, even though they may lack phenomenal feels. This draws attention to an important independent fact: that much of phenomenology (or ‘what it's like’ to be in a certain state) may be constituted by facts that are not phenomenal. (shrink)

From North Korea's recent attacks on Sony to perpetual news reports of successful hackings and criminal theft, cyber conflict has emerged as a major topic of public concern. Yet even as attacks on military, civilian, and commercial targets have escalated, there is not yet a clear set of ethical guidelines that apply to cyber warfare. Indeed, like terrorism, cyber warfare is commonly believed to be a war without rules. Given the prevalence cyber warfare, developing a practical moral code for this (...) new form of conflict is more important than ever. In Ethics and Cyber Warfare, internationally-respected ethicist George Lucas delves into the confounding realm of cyber conflict. Comparing "state-sponsored hacktivism" to the transformative impact of "irregular warfare" in conventional armed conflict, Lucas offers a critique of legal approaches to governance, and outlines a new approach to ethics and "just war" reasoning. Lucas draws upon the political philosophies of Alasdair MacIntyre, John Rawls, and Jürgen Habermas to provide a framework for understanding these newly-emerging standards for cyber conflict, and ultimately presents a professional code of ethics for a new generation of "cyber warriors." Lucas concludes with a discussion of whether preemptive self-defense efforts - such as the massive government surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden - can ever be justified, addressing controversial topics such as privacy, anonymity, and public trust. Well-reasoned and timely, Ethics and Cyber Warfare is a must-read for anyone with an interest in philosophy, ethics, or cybercrime. (shrink)

Whatever else one might say concerning the legality, morality, and prudence of his actions, Edward Snowden, the former U.S. National Security Agency contractor, is right about the notion of publicity and informed consent, which together constitute the hallmark of democratic public policy. In order to be morally justifiable, any strategy or policy involving the body politic must be one to which it would voluntarily assent when fully informed about it. This, in essence, was Snowden's argument for leaking, in June 2013, (...) the documents that revealed the massive NSA surveillance program: So long as there's broad support amongst a people, it can be argued there's a level of legitimacy even to the most invasive and morally wrong program, as it was an informed and willing decision.... However, programs that are implemented in secret, out of public oversight, lack that legitimacy, and that's a problem. It also represents a dangerous normalization of “governing in the dark,” where decisions with enormous public impact occur without any public input. (shrink)

The Routledge Handbook of Military Ethics is a comprehensive reference work that addresses concerns held in common by the military services of many nations. It attempts to discern both moral dilemmas and clusters of moral principles held in common by all practitioners of this profession, regardless of nation or culture. Comprising essays by contributors drawn from the four service branches as well as civilian academics specializing in this field, this handbook discusses the relationship of ethics in the military setting to (...) applied and professional ethics generally. Leading scholars and senior military practitioners from countries including the US, UK, France, China, Australia and Japan, discuss various national cultural views of the moral dimensions of military service. With reference to the responsibilities of professional orientation and education, as well as the challenges posed by recent technological developments, this handbook examines the difficulties underpinning the fundamental framework of military service. This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, war theory, ethics philosophy, sociology, war and conflict studies, and security studies. (shrink)

A number of observations have led researchers to postulate that, despite being replication‐defective, human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) may have retained the potential to cause or contribute to disease. However, mechanisms of HERV pathogenicity might differ substantially from those of modern infectious retroviruses or of the infectious precursors of HERVs. Therefore, novel pathways of HERV involvement in disease pathogenesis should be investigated. Recent technological advances in sequencing and bioinformatics are making this task increasingly feasible. The accumulating knowledge of HERV biology may (...) also facilitate the definition and general acceptance of criteria that establish HERV pathogenicity. Here, we explore possible mechanisms whereby HERVs may cause disease and examine the evidence that either has been or should be obtained in order to decisively address the pathogenic potential of HERVs. (shrink)

This is the second installment in a series that reports on the progress of some of the more interesting discoveries emerging from ongoing work on the new and comprehensive critical edition of Whitehead being published by Edinburgh University Press. This installment deals, as the subtitle indicates, with the emergence of Whitehead’s metaphysics from 1925 until 1929. The first installment appeared in Process Studies 45.1.

The Modern Synthesis (MS) gene-centered population model of evolution is currently being challenged by the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (ESS) organism-centered developmental model of evolution. The predictions of the EES are here examined with respect to the arguments of Edward Drinker Cope (1840–1897) for an organism-centered evolutionary process in which organisms both shape and are shaped by their environments such that the activities of the organisms themselves play a role in their own evolution.

We have conducted an experimental study of V-type electromagnetically induced transparency in sodium. Its principles are elucidated by a simple model. Measurements show decreased fluorescence and absorption depending on the detuning of the driving and probe fields, which is in agreement with the results of numerical simulation.

The inherently subjective nature of consciousness severely limits our ability to make progress on the problem of consciousness. The inability to acquire objective, publicly available data on the phenomenal aspect of consciousness makes evaluating alternative theories very difficult, if not impossible. However, the anomalous nature of subjective states with respect to our conventional theories of the physical world suggests the possibility of considering other anomalous data around consciousness that happen to be objective. For such purposes, I propose that we examine (...) the psi data gathered under laboratory conditions, which generally receive little attention. I wish to consider whether we have theories or frameworks of consciousness that attempt to account for subjective qualia but also fit the psi data. I argue that Russellian monism can be combined with an argument regarding quantum holism to arrive at a version of cosmopsychism that fits very well with the psi data. While I do not argue that such a framework exhausts the theoretical possibilities, I do suggest we can move forward with a framework that has attractive theoretical features and is also consistent with objective data currently on the table. (shrink)

This book examines the importance of 'military ethics' in the formulation and conduct of contemporary military strategy. Clausewitz's original analysis of war relegated ethics to the side-lines in favour of political realism, interpreting the proper use of military power solely to further the political goals of the state, whatever those may be. This book demonstrates how such single-minded focus no longer suffices to secure the interest of states, for whom the nature of warfare has evolved to favour strategies that hold (...) combatants themselves to the highest moral and professional standards in their conduct of hostilities. Waging war has thus been transformed in a manner that moves beyond Clausewitz's original conception, rendering political success wholly dependent upon the cultivation and exercise of discerning moral judgment by strategists and combatants in the field. This book utilises a number of perspectives and case studies to demonstrate how ethics now plays a central role in strategy in modern armed conflict. This book will be of much interest to students of just war, ethics, military strategy, and international relations. in strategy in modern armed conflict. This book will be of much interest to students of just war, ethics, military strategy, and international relations. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of the current “ethics controversy” within the American Anthropological Association over the U.S. Army’s “Human Terrain Systems” project, this article evaluates the moral obligations of scholars and academics asked by their governments to contribute their unique expertise toward the waging or ending of wars of which those scholars morally disapprove. Citing the examples of moral dilemmas occasioned by conflicts between duties of scholarship and duties of citizenship from past wars, together with examples like “Doctors without Borders” at (...) present, I argue that it is not automatically, or in principle, morally objectionable for scholars and academics to provide assistance to their governments or militaries, even in what they regard as unjustifiable wars, nor would suchassistance necessarily involve an inherent violation of professional principle (as the AAA Executive leadership has claimed in recent public proclamations). Rather, the permissibility, or in some cases even obligation, to assist one’s government when requested depends critically upon the government’s intention in lodging this request, as well as upon both what the scholar is being asked to do, and whether those specific activities would result in violations of accepted canons of professional practice. I illustrate the resulting decision dilemmas with cases of anthropologists or psychologists asked to assist in humanitarian military interventions or in mitigating or helping to end misguided or mistaken campaigns of counter-terrorism. (shrink)

While Professor Miller claims that just war theory cannot "provide sufficient guidance" on the question of Afghanistan, his concerns actually fall squarely within its purview, and do not suggest its inability to critique proposals to prolong the American and NATO presence in Afghanistan.

Modern religions are confronted by three crises: the scientific evolution, the historical revolution, and the pluralistic revolution. The development of each of these diverse revolutions in Western intellectual history has posed serious challenges to traditional conceptions of religious authority. This paper seeks to briefly elucidate the nature of each of these revolutions and their significance for religious traditions. While the specific challenges posed are separate, the revolutions share common traits. Additionally, it is not enough for a religious tradition to deal (...) with only one of the crises; to proceed into the next stage of religious reflection, it must deal with them all. (shrink)

Improving Human Learning in the Classroom provides a functional and realistic approach to facilitate learning through a demonstration of commonalities between the various theories of learning. Designed to assist educators in eliciting students' prior knowledge, providing feedback, transfer of knowledge, and promoting self-assessment, Taylor and MacKenney provide proven strategies for infusing various learning theories into a curriculum, guiding educators to find their own strategies for promoting learning in the classroom. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods investigate learning theories and reforms (...) in education. Quantitative data sources build the theoretical framework for educating the student, as well as developing strategies for closing the achievement gap. Taylor and MacKenney fuse personal experiences with solid strategies for human learning. (shrink)

The third edition covers topics of recent interest in the twenty-first century, such as Heroic Medicine, Gender Identity, Wealth Inequality, LGBTQ Issues, and more. This encyclopedic work includes more than 1,000 essays organized by broad categories related to ethical issues.

In this short article, the conditions surrounding the recent discovery of Whitehead's first lecture at Harvard University are detailed. This article is meant as an introduction to Whitehead's lecture, which is published for the first time in the present issue of Process Studies. The previous two installments of the series titled "On the Trail ofWhitehead" can be found in Process Studies issues 45.1 and 46.1.

Originally presented at a forum sponsored by Concerned Philosophers for Peace at the Eastern Division annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association (Philadelphia, PA: 29 December 2008), this essay discusses two ethical challenges in foreign policy likely to be confronted by the new U.S. presidential administration. The increased reliance on private military contractors, including security contractors, poses a number of difficulties, the most troubling of which is the erosion of civil-military relations. Modern military campaigns cannot be waged without some degree (...) of reliance on the logistical support such contractors provide, but their use makes it easier for governments to hide the true risks and costs of modern war from the electorate, serving to undermine key conceptions of “just war” principles like “legitimate authority” and “public declaration” of war. On the other hand, the dramatic increase in maritime piracy forces an unpleasant choice between either increasing defense spending on appropriate weapons systems and personnel during a global economic crises in order to provide enhanced maritime security, or else, ironically, relying even more on private security contractors to protect global shipping and transportation. Both these and similar foreign policy challenges focus attention on the need for “ethical interoperability,” the ability to share common notions of military ethics, public service, and professional responsibility among coalition military forces otherwise drawn from a variety of disparate national, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds. (shrink)

Originally presented at a forum sponsored by Concerned Philosophers for Peace at the Eastern Division annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association (Philadelphia, PA: 29 December 2008), this essay discusses two ethical challenges in foreign policy likely to be confronted by the new U.S. presidential administration. The increased reliance on private military contractors, including security contractors, poses a number of difficulties, the most troubling of which is the erosion of civil-military relations. Modern military campaigns cannot be waged without some degree (...) of reliance on the logistical support such contractors provide, but their use makes it easier for governments to hide the true risks and costs of modern war from the electorate, serving to undermine key conceptions of “just war” principles like “legitimate authority” and “public declaration” of war. On the other hand, the dramatic increase in maritime piracy forces an unpleasant choice between either increasing defense spending on appropriate weapons systems and personnel during a global economic crises in order to provide enhanced maritime security, or else, ironically, relying even more on private security contractors to protect global shipping and transportation. Both these and similar foreign policy challenges focus attention on the need for “ethical interoperability,” the ability to share common notions of military ethics, public service, and professional responsibility among coalition military forces otherwise drawn from a variety of disparate national, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds. (shrink)