In the age of globalization, and increased interdependence in the world that we face today, there is a question we may have to raise: Do we need and could we attain a world government, capable of insuring the peace and facilitating worldwide well-being in a just and efficient manner? In the twenty chapters of this book, some of the most prominent living philosophers give their consideration to this question in a provocative and engaging way. Their essays are not only of (...) wide theoretical interest but also provide a thought-provoking approach to this most timely and urgent issue. A wide range of perspectives are represented here. -/- The authors include Richard Falk, Michael Walzer, Thomas Pogge, Larry May, Alfred Rubin, Stanley Hoffman, Jan Narveson, Virginia Held, Pauline Kleingeld and Luis Cabrera. Jovan Babic is Professor of Ethics at the University of Belgrade and Visiting Professor at Portland State University. Petar Bojanic is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Ethics, Law and Applied Philosophy (CELAP) as well as the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory (Belgrade). (shrink)

A leading cognitive scientist argues that a deep sense of good and evil is bred in the bone. From John Locke to Sigmund Freud, philosophers and psychologists have long believed that we begin life as blank moral slates. Many of us take for granted that babies are born selfish and that it is the role of society—and especially parents—to transform them from little sociopaths into civilized beings. In Just Babies, Paul Bloom argues that humans are in fact hardwired with a (...) sense of morality. Drawing on groundbreaking research at Yale, Bloom demonstrates that, even before they can speak or walk, babies judge the goodness and badness of others’ actions; feel empathy and compassion; act to soothe those in distress; and have a rudimentary sense of justice. -/- Still, this innate morality is limited, sometimes tragically. We are naturally hostile to strangers, prone to parochialism and bigotry. Bringing together insights from psychology, behavioral economics, evolutionary biology, and philosophy, Bloom explores how we have come to surpass these limitations. Along the way, he examines the morality of chimpanzees, violent psychopaths, religious extremists, and Ivy League professors, and explores our often puzzling moral feelings about sex, politics, religion, and race. In his analysis of the morality of children and adults, Bloom rejects the fashionable view that our moral decisions are driven mainly by gut feelings and unconscious biases. Just as reason has driven our great scientific discoveries, he argues, it is reason and deliberation that makes possible our moral discoveries, such as the wrongness of slavery. Ultimately, it is through our imagination, our compassion, and our uniquely human capacity for rational thought that we can transcend the primitive sense of morality we were born with, becoming more than just babies. -/- Paul Bloom has a gift for bringing abstract ideas to life, moving seamlessly from Darwin, Herodotus, and Adam Smith to The Princess Bride, Hannibal Lecter, and Louis C.K. Vivid, witty, and intellectually probing, Just Babies offers a radical new perspective on our moral lives. (shrink)

Peer review is widely recognized as a mechanism for quality control of academic content. This research article aims at comparing the review reports and decisions of reviewers who are members of the editorial board of the European Scientific Journal with those reviewers suggested by the authors and who are not affiliated with the journal. 457 review reports on 378 papers submitted to the ESJ in the period of October–December 2017 were analysed. Statistical methods including OLS and Wilcoxon rank-sum test were (...) applied based on the score approach toward the reviewers’ assessments of the papers and their characteristics related to the country, gender, and time of revisions. Results show the difference between the decisions these two groups of reviewers made. Even though editor-suggested and author-suggested reviewers need equal time to review a paper, the former are less favourable towards the authors of the papers. It is also concluded that factors such as time and country of the reviewers influence their decisions. In this regard, the editors should avoid relying their decisions solely on review reports received from reviewers suggested by the authors. However, further research with larger sample sizes should be conducted. (shrink)

Warm-up -- Definability -- Neti neti -- Space-time -- The known universe -- The biosphere -- The separation region -- The sociosphere -- The phenomenon of family -- The phenomenon of state -- The phenomenon of religion -- The phenomenon of norms -- Where's the future?

Résumé Le présent travail retrace le parcours intellectuel, dans la Serbie communiste, de Jovan Deretic, grand historien de la littérature serbe. L’analyse se fonde sur ses diverses lectures de l’œuvre de Dositej Obradovic. Elle présente d’abord l’importance de ce dernier pour la culture serbe à l’époque des Lumières. Elle montre ensuite que les premières analyses de son œuvre par Deretic sont ancrées principalement dans le matérialisme dialectique. Dans une deuxième étape, Deretic se tourne vers le structuralisme néo-positiviste pour offrir (...) une approche plus immanente de l’œuvre d’Obradovic. Il aboutit finalement à une prise de conscience des contradictions et des limites de l’analyse immanente tout autant que de l’interprétation idéologique d’une œuvre. (shrink)

The Singer-Regan debate -- Reciprocity -- Frey's challenge -- The criticisms of Leahy and Carruthers -- The great ape project and slavery -- The Nozick-Rachels debate.

In Kise and Ngyuen’s “Adult Baby Syndrome and Gender Identity Disorder” (2011), the authors refer to their male subject as “Ms B” because he prefers to identify with being a female. But they do not refer to her as being a baby, even though the subject also prefers to identify with being a baby. This shows that although they respect the subject’s gender identity preferences, they do not respect the subject’s age identity preferences. One reason for this might be that (...) some people feel the term “adult baby syndrome” sounds a bit silly and therefore that the wishes of someone having this syndrome are not worthy of being taken seriously, not as seriously, at least, as someone who shows the more scientifically respectable gender identity disorder. A solution here might be to replace the term “adult baby syndrome” with the term “age identity disorder”, perhaps involving “age dysphoria”. This would also be more accurate because not all of those who are discussed under the heading of “adult baby syndrome” wish to be identified as babies, but rather as toddlers or older children. The problem then is that numerous people prefer to identify with being a different age. Such people do not believe they are older or younger than they really are, but neither do those with adult baby syndrome. (shrink)

Among the many ethical problems brought about by the latest developments in medical sciences is the possibility of creating "designer" babies. In this paper I will look at one such a case from the viewpoint of the Kantian "humanity principle". The various aspects of treating people as a means that can be brought up in discussions about "designer" babies are scrutinised. These will obviously include treating the future child as a mere means, but the proper role of the mother and (...) others involved are also looked at. I will conclude by arguing that, contrary to the usual presuppositions, the humanity principle is of very limited use in discussions about designer babies, in this case and in others too. (shrink)

Although Archimandrite Jovan Rajić's Catechism is not an original contribution to Serbian theology, the historical context of its origin makes it extremely significant. The theological analysis of the Catechism must therefore take into account the specific circumstances of its origin. Rajić's Catechism is significantly influenced by Latin theological heritage, which can be seen both in the layout of the material and in its content. However, at a given historical moment, by writing and publishing his Catechism, Rajić managed to prevent (...) another one in a series of attempts to unite the Orthodox Serb population in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The effects of Latin theological heritage on Rajić's work are significant, and these influences will continue in later times, so it is important that they are clarified and recognized. These impacts are manifested in many ways. The first one is reflected in the layout of the material, the second in its processing, and the third in the absence of specifically Orthodox viewpoints. Nevertheless, the final judgment on the Catechism must be made on the basis of the historical context of its origin. (shrink)

A simple, fact-filled introduction for the smallest citizen on the judicial branch of the government.

On October 26, 1984, Dr. Leonard Bailey and the transplant team of Loma Linda University Medical Center in California operated on a five-pound baby girl born a few weeks earlier with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. In babies born with this defect the left side of the heart is much smaller than the right and is unable to pump sufficient blood to sustain life for more than a few weeks. This rare defect occurs about once in every 12,000 live births; it (...) accounts for about a quarter of all cardiac deaths of newborns. In an operation known as a xenograft, involving cross-species transplantation of an organ, Dr. Bailey removed the defective heart from the baby and replaced it with the heart of a baboon. (shrink)

DEBBIE MANDEL: The funny face of a baby makes us smile at potential and fresh life that is uninhibited. Everyone has an inner child that he wishes to release to..

After a short historical survey of philosophical views on property, the article contains an analysis of the argument which justifies property by referring to the universal respect due to anyone’s right to use any thing for any purpose. Usage 224 JOVAN BABIĆ SVOJINA ҄ FILOZOFSKA ANALIZA: ARGUMENT of things for the realization of set ends (or goals) is among the conditions of action/ agency. The capacity of freedom as a specific causal power in real world is dependent on the (...) possibility of using things as means. However, without a real prospect to finish the process of realization of set goals, this causal power would not be real. Property is a scheme within which this prospect becomes a real possibility. Property is thus a condition of effective successful purposeful agency. In property the normative position of all others, besides the owner, has been changed, as they do not have the right to use things possessed for their ends, although they have a right to use any non-possessed thing as a means for whichever end they might set. As a right, property entails, first, the obligation to respect the fact of any established possession, and, second, an obligation to accept and recognize the established possession as ownership, which does not depend on the fact of factual physical control of the property. Ownership is therefore a guarantee of future possession. For this to be established there is a need for an explicit recognition from all others; however this recognition is normatively necessary for everybody, as no-one has a right to withdraw the recognition of a legitimate right to property. This comes from the ontological and axiological difference between persons and things: persons have a right to use and possess unpossessed things as means for realization of ends they set. (shrink)

While situation theory and situation semantics provide an appropriate framework for a realistic model-theoretic treatment of natural language, serious thinking on their 'computational' aspects has just started. Existing proposals mainly offer a Prolog- or Lisp-like programming environment with varying degrees of divergence from the ontology of situation theory. In this paper, we introduce a computational medium (called BABY-SIT) based on situations. The primary motivation underlying BABY-SIT is to facilitate the development and testing of programs in domains ranging from linguistics to (...) artificial intelligence in a unified framework built upon situation-theoretic constructs. (shrink)

My focus in this paper is the question of the moral acceptability of attempts to modify the human genome. Much of the debate in this area has revolved around the distinction between supposedly therapeutic modification on the one hand, and eugenic modification on the other. In the first part of the paper I reject some recent arguments against genetic engineering. In the second part I seek to distinguish between permissible and impermissible forms of intervention in such a way that does (...) not appeal to the therapeutic/eugenic distinction. If I am right much of what we would intuitively call eugenic intervention will be morally acceptable. Central to my argument is an asymmetry in the way genetic engineers can influence a person's capacities on the one hand and life‐goals on the other. Forms of genetic intervention that have a high probability of producing a mismatch of life‐goals and capacities will be ruled out. (shrink)

The paper examines the justification of warfare. The main thesis is that war is very difficult to justify, and justification by invoking “justice” is not the way to succeed it. Justification and justness are very different venues: while the first attempts to explain the nature of war and offer possible schemes of resolution, the second aims to endorse a specific type of warfare as correct and hence allowed – which is the crucial part of “just war theory.” However, “just war (...) theory,” somewhat Manichean in its nature, has very deep flaws. Its final result is criminalization of war, which reduces warfare to police action, and finally implies a very strange proviso that one side has a right to win. All that endangers the distinction between ius ad bellum and ius in bello, and destroys the collective character of warfare. Justification of war is actually quite different – it starts from the definition of war as a kind of conflict which cannot be solved peacefully, but for which there is mutual understanding that it cannot remain unresolved. The aim of war is not justice, but peace, i.e. either a new articulation of peace, or a restoration of the status quo ante. Additionally, unlike police actions, the result of war cannot be known or assumed in advance, giving war its main feature: the lack of control over the future. Control over the future, predictability, is a feature of peace. This might imply that war is a consequence of failed peace, or inability to maintain peace. The explanation of this inability forms the justification of war. Justice is always an important part of it, but justification cannot be reduced to it. The logic contained here refers to ius ad bellum, while ius in bello is relative to various parameters of sensitivity prevalent in a particular time, with the purpose to make warfare more humane and less expensive. (shrink)

Our time is characterized by what seems like an unprecedented process of intense global homogenization. This reality provides the context for exploring the nature and value of toleration. Hence, this essay is meant primarily as a contribution to international ethics rather than political philosophy. It is argued that because of the non-eliminability of differences in the world we should not even hope that there can be only one global religion or ideology. Further exploration exposes conceptual affinity between the concepts of (...) intolerance, ideology, and doctrinal evil. The last concept is developed in contrast to pure evil and average evil, and under the assumption of the metaphysical necessity of free will. Doctrinal evil is found to represent the main source of intolerance as a result of a mechanism that tends to confuse doctrinal evil (or the competing conceptions of the good) with pure evil. This connection between doctrinal evil and pure evil provides ideologies with their forcefulness. Tolerance cannot be properly understood in terms of a simple opposition to intolerance, however. Tolerance emerges as a sort of vigilance, conscientiousness, and non-negligence based not on a supposedly correct interpretation of the good, but rather on the acceptance of the fallibility of any such attempted definition. Conversely, the principal evil in doctrinal evil is found in arrogance that accompanies the intolerance-inducing irresponsible thoughtlessness. With this conceptual topology in mind the paper also addresses questions regarding religious tolerance, the ideology of human rights and democracy, the right to self-defense, ways to face evil, the dialectics of using old names for novel evils, and related issues. (shrink)

Edward Granville Browne was a British orientalist renowned for his work on Persia. In this book, which was first published in 1918, Browne provided readers with access to previously unpublished material on the Bábí religious movement, which came to prominence in Persia between 1844 and 1852, before continuing in exile in the Ottoman Empire. This material was gathered by the author as a result of the development of personal relationships with key figures in the movement, such as Subh-i-Azal and Bahá'u'lláh, (...) from 1890 onwards. Prior to publication, it was translated into English, where necessary, and properly organised to increase intelligibility. This is a highly informative text that will be of value to anyone with an interest in the development of Bábism. (shrink)

The first issue raised in the paper is difference between social and institutional facts; both exist only because we believe they are real. Second is the claim that belonging to collectives is always a social fact, not necessarily as a result of any decision-making process; it might also become institutional through actual, sometimes only implicit, acceptance of some constitutive rules. Third, accepting constitutive rules functions by setting an irreversible point in time after which the scope of available justificatory reasons for (...) deciding and doing narrows. The implication is that reality of collectives cannot be reduced to individuals. Individuals often participate in this reality by belonging. Belonging thus becomes a social and sometimes also an institutional fact. (shrink)

A family had a child in large part to use its marrow in the hopes of saving the life of an older child afflicted with leukaemia. Public response from medical ethicists was negative. This paper argues that what the family did was not clearly wrong and that the ethicists should not have made public pronouncements calling the morals of the family into question.

Designer babies are often presented in the popular media as a kind of apocalyptical spectre of things to come in a brave new world where reproduction is the province of white coated scientists and potential parents in pursuit of trophy children. In this realm physical, intellectual, and social perfection is sought through the manipulation of genes and selection of favoured traits and attributes to the detriment of individuals who cannot compete and of society more generally through the loss of natural (...) selection. It is therefore a pleasure to discover a short readable book that sets out the discussion and its many nuances in concise and accurate terms that will be accessible to all and should help to dispel some of these science fiction myths through scholarly debate.This volume is part of a collection of books under the title Debating Matters that sprang out of a series of public debates organised by the Institute of Ideas. The conferences were intended to reinvigorate debate and the contestation of ideas and contemporary issues the Institute regards as “too frequently sidelined”. The arguments are presented by an authoritative who’s who of commentators who offer their own insightful readings of various aspects of the debate. Each essayist confirms the fact that the term “ designer babies ” is an inaccurate reflection of the current ability of science to actively fashion children with selected characteristics, and as a result …. (shrink)

Teza o "neskrivljenom neznanju" je instrument u okviru teorije pravednog rata koja sluzi da se moralno opravda ucesce u ratu za pripadnike one strane koja je porazena; uslovi za neskrivljenost su da su porazeni borci iskreno verovali da brane pravednu stvar i da su takodje iskreno verovali da imaju nekih izgleda da pobede. Bez ovog instrumenta teorija pravednog rata, jedna teorija koja opravdava rat preko pravednog uzroka rata, bi porazenoj strani narocito ako je slabija, morala da unapred pripise krivicu sto (...) je uopste usla u rat. Medjutim, u savremenoj situaciji rasirene kriminalizacije rata sam pojam rata se menja i postaje izuzetno neodredjen. Kako ratovi postaju sve vise i vise "asimetricni", pre svega u snazi sukobljenih strana, cini se da se teorija pravednog rata suocava sa teskocom da u svoje okvire uopste situira "neskrivljeno neznanje", ali to povlaci teskocu te teorije da pokaze da pravda ide sa pobedom, otvarajuci tako pitanje artikulacije pravednog mira. (shrink)

In order to meet the explanatory challenge levelled against non-representationalist views on cognition, radical enactivists claim that cognition about potentially absent targets involves the socioculturally scaffolded capacity to manipulate public symbols. At a developmental scale, this suggests that higher cognition gradually emerges as humans begin to master language use, which takes place around the third year of life. If, however, it is possible to show that pre-linguistic infants represent their surroundings, then the radical enactivists’ explanation for the emergence of higher (...) cognition is defeated. In this paper, I critically assess experiments designed to show that pre-linguistic infants inherit representational abilities. I begin by outlining these experiments in Sect. 2. In Sect. 3, I argue that these experiments only succeed in supporting widespread representationalism by committing a particular kind of circular reasoning, which I call conjunctivist reasoning due to its origins in the debates about the nature of perception. I conclude by developing two independent yet congruent enactivist lines of interpretation for the experiments discussed in 2. I explain the infants’ responses to atypical experimental conditions based on agent-environment codetermination and then I argue that surprise behavior can be explained in terms of embodied habits and unfulfilled anticipation. (shrink)

The Baby Fae experiment has highlighted the growing trend in medicine of using animal parts in the treatment of humans. This paper raises the question of the logical and moral justification for these current practices and their proposed expansion. We argue that the Cognitive Capacity Principle establishes morally justified necessary and sufficient conditions for the use of non-human animals in medical treatments and research. Some alternative sources for medical uses are explored as well as some possible programmes for their implementation.

A research forum published in Business & Society in 1995 (Issue 2) analyzed whether Fortune magazine's annual Reputation Survey (FRS) is viable as a corporate social performance (CSP) research database. We examine plausible alternative interpretations for a number of assertions and conclusions by the forum authors, including the premise for Brown and Perry's proposed transformation: that the Fortune data are confounded by the presence of a financial "halo," which biases ratings of nonfinancial attributes. Finally, we examine the appropriate roles of (...) the two primary corporate rating systems in the context of CSP. (shrink)

Human social intelligence comprises a wide range of complex cognitive and affective processes that appear to be selectively impaired in autistic spectrum disorders. The study of these neuro- developmental disorders and the study of canonical social intelligence have advanced rapidly over the last twenty years by investigating the two together. Specifically, studies of autism have provided important insights into the nature of ‘theory of mind’ abilities, their normal development and underlying neural systems. At the same time, the idea of impaired (...) development of the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying ‘theory of mind’ has shed new light on the nature of autistic disorders. This general approach is not restricted to the study of impairments but extends to mapping areas of social intelligence that are spared in autism. Here we investigate basic moral judgment and find that it appears to be substantially intact in children with autism who are severely impaired in ‘theory of mind’. At the same time, we extend studies of moral reasoning in normal development by way of a new control task, the ‘cry baby’ task. Cry baby scenarios, in which the distress of the victim is ‘unreasonable’ or ‘unjustified,’ do not elicit moral condemnation from normally developing preschoolers or from children with autism. Judgments of moral transgressions in which the victim displays distress are therefore not likely the result of a simple automatic reaction to the distress and more likely involve moral reasoning. Mapping the cognitive co-morbidity patterns of disordered development should encompass both impairments and sparings because both will be needed to make sense of the neural and genetic levels. (shrink)

This paper examines the phenomenon of ‘baby factories’ as an abusive pattern of surrogacy and child adoption practices in Nigeria. Relying on a mixed qualitative approach that draws on extant literature and field-based personal insights, the paper posits that the economic, socio-cultural and psycho-emotional value of bearing and having a child, as well as the tacit disapproval of adoptive parenting by some cultures in Nigeria, have driven childless couples and adults into seeking child adoption through illicit and unconventional paths, such (...) as ‘baby factories’. The paper contends that the commercialization and non-regulation of surrogacy in Nigeria has created pretexts for the proliferation of ‘baby factories’, where babies are bought and sold, with pregnant girls and infants objectified as ‘stocks-in-trade’. To mitigate the phenomenon, it is expedient to regulate the bourgeoning illicit baby market in the country through proper legislation that is capable of moderating the excesses of surrogate and adoptive practices. (shrink)