The Silk Road, which began operating more than two thousand years ago, constituted certainly for many centuries the main cultural and linguistic highway between peoples of the East and peoples of the West, and to an even greater extent between the peoples of the East or West and those living along the Silk Road in Central Asia. This is reflected by the many loan words transmitted along the Silk Road from one end to the other, especially those connected with the (...) textile trade. (shrink)

Rather than being inherently evil, business lobbying is a socially responsible activity which needs to be restrained by ethical standards. To be effective in a business environment, traditional ethical standards need to be translated into language which business persons can speak comfortably. Economical explanations must also be available to explain why ethical standards are appropriate in business. Eight such standards and their validating arguments are proposed with examples showing their use. Internal dialogues regarding the ethics of lobbying objectives and tactics (...) will plausibly occur only in businesses which recognize social responsibility mandates. Public interest stakeholders could hasten this recognition by making use of information made available by the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 to institute external dialogues regarding lobbying by specific businesses and industry groups. Given practical ethical standards and the information on business lobbying provided by the law, the press, corporate activists, consumers, pension fund managers and the public can apply pressure for ethical lobbying practices. (shrink)

The fact that Kantian beneficence is constrained by Kantian respect appears to seriously restrict the Kantian's moral response to agents who have embraced self-destructive ends. In this paper I defend the Kantian duties of love and respect by arguing that Kantians can recognize attempts to get an agent to change her ends as a legitimate form of beneficence. My argument depends on two key premises. First, that rational nature is not identical to the capacity to set ends, and second, that (...) an agent's conception of her happiness is not identical to the satisfaction of her ends. (shrink)

The mother sacrificing herself while rescuing someone else's child is a red herring. Neither behaviorism nor cognitivism can explain it. Unlike behaviorism, however, the cognitive process of projection can explain cooperation in one-shot social dilemmas.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 218 Seiten: 21-64.

This is a selection of readings about professionalism and ethics in engineering. It addresses topics such as the concept of professionalism, education, and maintenance of competence, registration, professional autonomy, social effects and responsibilities, and enforcement of codes of ethics.

The aim of this paper is to investigate how alternative land ethics of agricultural stakeholders may help explain recent land use changes. The paper first explores the historical development of the land ethic concept in the United States and how those ethics have impacted land use policy and use of private lands. Secondly, primary data gathered from semi-structured interviews of farmers, ranchers, and influential stakeholders are then analyzed using stakeholder analysis methods to identify major factors considered in land use decisions, (...) priorities of factors of each group, and to define relevant mental models describing each group’s view of the land ethic concept. Results show that these stakeholder groups prioritize land use factors qualitatively differently and possess strikingly different land ethics. It is concluded that shifts in stakeholder land ethics have contributed to recent land use changes. Lastly, we discuss how current agricultural policy sends mixed signals about preferred land use and the potential ramifications based on the different land ethics we’ve described. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 29, Issue 2, pp 129 - 147 Thomas Hobbes’s concept of felicity is a re-imagining of the Hellenistic concept of _eudaimonia_, which is based on the doctrine that people by nature are happy with little. His concept is based instead on an alternative view, that people by nature are never satisfied and it directly challenges the Aristotelian and Hellenistic concepts of _eudaimonia_. I also will suggest that Hobbes developed it from ideas he found in Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_ as (...) well as in Francis Bacon’s critique of ancient moral philosophy in _The Advancement of Learning_. (shrink)

In The Book on Adler and “Does a Human Being Have the Right to Let Himself Be Put to Death for the Truth,” Kierkegaard relies on logical reasoning and grammatical analysis in order to arrive at categorical normative conclusions against the use of religious belief and authority as a justification for ethical action. These arguments demonstrate that some types of moral knowledge can be arrived at through reason/logic, despite Kierkegaard’s efforts to separate the spheres of logic and existence. Kierkegaard thereby (...) offers a strong critique of both moral exceptionalism and an ethics of conviction, a critique which—as the paper argues—is not incompatible with his existential and Christian ethics. (shrink)

Building on case studies of Wikipedia and the Daily Kos, this essay argues that different kinds of rules shape relations between members of the majority and of the minority in these communities in important and consequential ways.

Name der Zeitschrift: Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Jahrgang: 23 Heft: 1 Seiten: 3-32.

Name der Zeitschrift: Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 1 Seiten: 395-419.

Salespeople have a moral obligation to prospect/customer, company and self. As such, they continually encounter truth-telling dilemmas. "lgnorance" and "conflict" often block the path to morally correct sales behaviors. Academics and practitioners agree that adoption of ethical codes is the most effective measure for encouraging ethical sales behaviors. Yet no ethical code has been offered which can be conveniently used to overcome the unique circumstances that contribute to the moral dilemmas often encountered in personal selling. An ethical code is developed (...) that charts ethical paths across a variety of sales settings (addressing "ignorance") while illustrating why the cost associated with acting morally is generally reasonable (addressing "conflict"). The code applies the universal transactional notions of customer expectations and salesperson reputation to illustrate why and when salespeople are morally required to tell the truth. In doing so, the code tackles head-on the vexing question of how best to juggle mixed motives - involving self-interests, corporate-concerns, cus-tomer-needs and other influences such as the nature of the transaction. The issue of how mixed motives can be dealt with through moral means is one that ethicists have previously sidestepped (Stark, 1993). (shrink)

First isolated in the fly and now characterised in vertebrates, the Slit proteins have emerged as pivotal components controlling the guidance of axonal growth cones and the directional migration of neuronal precursors. As well as extensive expression during development of the central nervous system (CNS), the Slit proteins exhibit a striking array of expression sites in non-neuronal tissues, including the urogenital system, limb primordia and developing eye. Zebrafish Slit has been shown to mediate mesodermal migration during gastrulation, while Drosophila slit (...) guides the migration of mesodermal cells during myogenesis. This suggests that the actions of these secreted molecules are not simply confined to the sphere of CNS development, but rather act in a more general fashion during development and throughout the lifetime of an organism. This review focuses on the non-neuronal activities of Slit proteins, highlighting a common role for the Slit family in cellular migration. (shrink)

Military reproductive health policies affect large numbers of women. In 2006 servicewomen numbered nearly 350,000 and comprised 14.5% of active-duty forces and 17.4% of the reserve force. In addition, approximately 165,000 female dependents of active duty military personnel and 157,000 female dependents of reserve duty personnel are between the ages of 12 and 22 and are eligible for military health care services. Dependents of military personnel are eligible for military health care coverage until age 21, or up to the age (...) of 23 if considered a full-time student.About 10% of active duty female servicemembers become pregnant each year. Pregnant servicewomen are considered non-deployable and are usually not assigned to overseas commands. Pregnant women in the Army, the service branch with the greatest number of women on active duty, can choose to remain on active duty, request temporary leave from service, or request separation from service. Separation options include either discharge, honorable or uncharacterized depending on rank, or transfer to individual ready reserve. (shrink)

The endogenous opioid system has received attention and extensive research for its effects on reward, pleasure, and pain. However, relative to other neurochemicals, such as oxytocin, vasopressin and dopamine, the function of opioids in regulating human attachment, sociosexuality, and other aspects of human sociality has not received much consideration. For example, nonapeptides have been extensively studied in animals and humans for their possible roles in mother-offspring attachment, romantic attachment, fatherhood, and social cognition. Likewise, others have proposed models wherein oxytocin and (...) vasopressin are moderators of the relationship between steroid hormones and human social behaviors. Recently, opioids have generated renewed interest in relation to social pain, and importantly, the brain opioid hypothesis of social attachment, which suggests that endogenous opioids are a key implementer in primate and human bonding, has received some support. Here we focus on romantic bonds by proposing that endogenous opioids are an important mechanism mediating reproductive trade-offs through their inhibitory effects on testosterone production. (shrink)

The object of this article is to examine the letter from which Plutarch quotes in the above passage from the twenty-eighth chapter of his life of Alexander; to attempt to prove, particularly by a comparison of the letter with the Sidypafifia sent in 319 B.C. by Polyperchon to the Greek cities, that it is a genuine part of Alexander's correspondence; and further to consider what light the letter, if genuine, throws upon the person of Alexander himself.

Whereas boson coherent states with complex parametrization provide an elegant, and intuitive representation, there is no counterpart for fermions using complex parametrization. However, a complex parametrization provides a valuable way to describe amplitude and phase of a coherent beam. Thus we pose the question of whether a fermionic beam can be described, even approximately, by a complex-parametrized coherent state and define, in a natural way, approximate complex-parametrized fermion coherent states. Then we identify four appealing properties of boson coherent states and (...) show that these approximate complex fermion coherent states fail all four criteria. The inapplicability of complex parametrization supports the use of Grassman algebras as an appropriate alternative. (shrink)

This is the first exploration of how ideas of politeia structure both political and extra-political relations throughout the entirety of Greek and Roman philosophy, ranging from Presocratic to classical, Hellenistic, and Neoplatonic thought. A highly distinguished international team of scholars investigate topics such as the Athenian, Spartan and Platonic visions of politeia, the reshaping of Greek and Latin vocabularies of politics, the practice of politics in Plato and Proclus, the politics of value in Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, and the (...) extension of constitutional order to discussions of animals, gods and the cosmos. The volume is dedicated to Professor Malcolm Schofield, one of the world's leading scholars of ancient philosophy. (shrink)

Individuals typically resist changing their minds, but support for same-sex marriage increased from 35% to 61% between 2006-2016. What explains this anomaly?

Much of the focus of the published 2011 symposium that inspired this work focused on the question, “When have you reduced risk enough to move from bench/animal studies to ‘first in-human’ studies?” Building applied research ethics related to nanotherapeutics requires bench and clinical scientists to have a clear vision about how to test nanotherapeutic safety, and it is clear that there is still much to be considered at the steps before “in-human” assessment. Herein, the perspective of the bench scientist is (...) brought to bear on using in vivo and in vitro models to assess the safety of nanotherapeutics. Much of this work falls under the purview of the field of nanotoxicology that aims to understand the toxicological impact of engineered nanoscale materials. Engineered nanomaterials include a wide variety of materials that are manipulated and controlled on the nanoscale level where, typically, the nanoparticle or nanomaterial has some dimension that is less than 100 nm. (shrink)

When Congress passed HIPAA, it did not intend to constrain public health's data sharing in the same way as clinical or payers. In fact, HIPAA recognizes data sharing with public health as a matter of national priority and shields this function from its reach. However, a health department may offer services that bring it within HIPAA's purview, such as running a Children's Health Insurance Program or a laboratory that bills electronically. When this is the case, HIPAA requires all information and (...) departments be subject to HIPAA unless the public health authority chooses to hybridize. Health departments might re-assess their coverage and elect to become a hybrid entity, thereby restricting HIPAA to only where required and removing barriers to information sharing with communities. (shrink)