This paper gives two complete and elementary proofs that if the speed of light over closed paths has a universal value c, then it is possible to synchronize clocks in such a way that the one-way speed of light is c. The first proof is an elementary version of a recent proof. The second provides high precision experimental evidence that it is possible to synchronize clocks in such a way that the one-way speed of light has a universal (...) value. We also discuss an old incomplete proof by Weyl which is important from an historical perspective. (shrink)

Despite the fact that business people and business students often cast doubt on the relevance of universal moral principles in business, the rejection of relativism is a precondition for business ethics to get off the ground. This paper proposes an educational strategy to overcome the philosophical confusions about relativism in which business people and students are often trapped. First, the paper provides some conceptual distinctions and clarifications related to moral relativism, particularism, and virtue ethics. More particularly, it revisits arguments (...) demonstrating that virtues in business are not in contradiction with the relevance of universal principles, despite the fact that virtue ethics is often identified with particular relationships and contexts. It goes on to show how students and managers, but also researchers, often mix up radically different conceptions of moral relativism. It is also argued that this confusion is in part created by the cross-cultural management literature in which the methodological stance of the value-freedom of the social sciences is, in a perplexingly mistaken way, transformed into a rejection of all normative discussion and a plea for relativism. The remainder of the paper presents some tools that may be helpful in steering people toward less simplistic views about moral relativism and virtue ethics. It further argues that it is equally important to spell out that moral universalism can be understood in a humble way, without implying either arrogant ethnocentrism or omniscience, as part of an ongoing debate that progresses gradually. (shrink)

This is a comparison of graduate students attitudes in Spain and the United States on the issue of universal versus relativist ethics. The findings show agreement on fundamental universal values across cultures but differences in responses to behavioral ethics within the context of entrepreneurial dilemmas.

This essay explores the possibility of universal values. Universal values do not exist as Platonic ideals nor do they exist in clearly defined lists of rules or laws. Rather, universal ethical claims are constructed through the actions of individual political leaders, scholars, and activists. This essay explores how such normative constructions take place. It uses an initiative undertaken by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime to further education around corruption as an example of how (...) such universal values come into existence. The initiative focused on developing teaching materials for higher education. The essay focuses on two particular modules, both their content and the process by which they were written. (shrink)

Religious traditions can be sources of values and attitudes supporting the liberal polity in ways that political theorizing and conceptions of public reason often fail to recognize. moreover, religious traditions can give support through the ways reason is crucial to their self-understanding. one understanding of Judaism is examined as an example. Also, the particularism of traditions can encourage commitment to universally valid values and ideals. reason’s role in Judaism and other religious traditions makes possible constructive interaction between those (...) traditions and between religious and secular thought. exclusion of religiously grounded considerations from the discourse and deliberations of liberal polities can be counterproductively illiberal. (shrink)

Philosophers have used the terms 'impersonal' and 'personal value' to refer to, among others things, whether something's value is universal or particular to an individual. In this paper, I propose an account of impersonal value that, I argue, better captures the intuitive distinction than potential alternatives, while providing conceptual resources for moving beyond the traditional stark dichotomy. I illustrate the practical importance of my theoretical account with reference to debate over the evaluative scope of cultural heritage.

The article explores the extent to which experts from different countries share the same axiological approaches with regard to the dialogue among civilizations and international cooperation at governmental and grass-roots levels. The article shows how subject matter experts provide collaborative input into the features and limits that shape global universal values. Interactions among civilizations promoting their equality and partnership as opposed to clashes should be at the heart of the transformations of values. Such transformations are expected to (...) foster mutual exchange and enrichment achieved through a deeper understanding of the inevitability of increasing global interconnectedness and mutual dependence. (shrink)

The article informs about the international scientific conference "Universal values of religions of the world: history and modernity", which took place on October 24-25, 2019 in Kyiv.

In the summer of 1997, I was asked by a leading Japanese newspaper what I thought was the most important thing that had happened in the twentieth century. I found this to be an unusually thought-provoking question, since so many things of gravity have happened over the last hundred years. The European empires, especially the British and French ones that had so dominated the nineteenth century, came to an end. We witnessed two world wars. We saw the rise and fall (...) of fascism and Nazism. The century witnessed the rise of communism, and its fall (as in the former Soviet bloc) or radical transformation (as in China). We also saw a shift from the economic dominance of the West to a new economic balance much more dominated by Japan and East and Southeast Asia. Even though that region is going through some financial and economic problems right now, this is not going to nullify the shift in the balance of the world economy that has occurred over many decades (in the case of Japan, through nearly the entire century). The past hundred years are not lacking in important events. (shrink)

This paper adopts a comparative approach to analyze the crucial issue of the dynamics between universally shared values and the essentials of different cultures. It presents the ways in which universal values are conceptualized in Western, Indian and Muslim philosophy, presenting not only a historical overview but referring to modern authors such as Daya Krishna, D.P. Chattopadhyaya, Richard Rorty, Muhammad Iqbal, S.H. Nasr and Abdolkarim Soroush to show how these authors implicitly use, or do not use, cultural (...) essential and universal values in their own work. It is eventually claims that comparative philosophy is of crucial importance for the future of philosophical thought in a global world. (shrink)

This article questions the universal value attributed to the idea of democracy within a global intercultural context. The point is: do “mature” Western democracies,with their history, their nature and their limits, meet the needs of intercultural ethics? A first factual finding shows that outside, at the frontiers of “mature” democracies, all possible openings to the exercise of democratic freedoms, to the protection of human rights, and to any hybrid form of relationship and dialogue are near to nothing. Not even (...) within Western liberal democracies do egalitarian guarantees, which in any case are the heart and soul of the culture of democratic societies, manage to make room for the recognition of differences in equality and for truly dialogic practices. When they face up to the needs of a possible ethical culture, the principles that underpin contemporary democracies (one of them being universal equality) show an unpliability and an ambivalence often concealed up to now. Conversely, an a posteriori and artificially progressive pattern of the historical course of democracies has been constructed that has ended up “triumphing” and attaining the global, universal “success” of our days. (shrink)

The present paper argues that as basic schools become more pluralistic, it is important to (re)discuss the value base on which education should be built. Many see human rights as a universal principle of Western democratic societies and thus a universal value base of education. However, human rights seem to be insufficient – first, because many question their universality, and second, because they are understood mainly as legal rather than ethical principles. The concept that is known to ethically (...) support human rights is the global ethic. And from one of the main pillars of the global ethic we derive the universal value base of education – the responsibility for the other, understood as care for the other, being for the other, treating and approaching the other with respect. To this end, teachers should encourage social interactions, based on active listening and exotopy. (shrink)

The crisis or "death" of philosophy currently identified both within and outside professional circles is commonly attributed to the failure to find universals in metaphysics, epistemology, and, most obviously, in valuational judgment. _Profundity_ concentrates on an assumption uniformly upheld in the theory of value, that all human values are contextually dependent. Harrell contends, to the contrary, that there exists one major value that is universal to humans, regardless of context. That value is profundity, or depth. Considering how "profundity" (...) is used in our language leads Harrell to identify two fundamental sensory patterns that are common to all human life at its origin—an auditory pattern that is first experienced before birth and a visual one that is experienced immediately after birth. From analysis of these patterns as they recur in music and the visual arts, Harrell moves on to discuss their related manifestations in religious doctrine, ceremony, and experience and also in works of literature. Overall her theory entails a radical revamping of the concept of creativity, since no artist can create profundity as a universal value, and provides the first full-scale treatment of profundity in the history of Western philosophy. (shrink)

I consider several related challenges to the idea of democracy as a universal value, among them the “Asian values” argument and the claim that Islam can recognize only God as sovereign. I argue specifically against each of these challenges and attempt to demonstrate that it is possible to find strands within the Confucian tradition and Islam which can be woven into a democratic fabric. I also explore several attempts to argue in favor of democracy as a universal (...) value and then offer a political historical argument that its universality is historically contingent. Finally, I consider whether liberal democracy has a universal value and argue that it does not. My conclusion is that each culture must find a democratic version of itself and that any attempt to impose a historically specific form of democracy on another culture is a denial of the universal significance of democracy. (shrink)

My intent in this discussion is to offer a glimpse into our popular and political culture and to unpack some of the values inherent in our university system. Educational institutions evolve because of changes in our cultural relationship to knowledge. Only by understanding this relationship can we respond coherently to criticism aimed at the university and its population.

This article analyses the core values of the biggest and oldest university in Estonia, University of Tartu, as 237 undergraduate students perceive them. The reporting of values is combined with critical incident technique, based on which the values in–action are obtained. It appeared that UT is best characterized by values such as ‘traditions and continuity’, ‘academic atmosphere’ and ‘quality of education’. It was also found that male students are more critical about specifically one value–set: ‘innovation and (...) development’ and that students, who fund the studies themselves, are more supportive about ‘quality of education’ and ‘concern for student’ values. Contrary to expectations, study time had no influence on the student perception of values. Implications of the results for the university are discussed, in order to better cope with the tightening competition in the educational market. (shrink)

History and criticism on the work of Sir Muhammad Iqbal, 1877-1938.

Harrell contends, to the contrary, that there exists one major value that is universal to humans, regardless of context. That value is profundity, or depth.

The compelling ethical legacy of Clifford Christians's and his profound commitment to moral action is enriched by his engagement with universal proto-norms, values that order all human relationships and institutions and so bypass the divisiveness of appeals to individual rights, cultural practices, or national prerogatives. According to Christians, the primal sacredness of life establishes mutual respect as a basis for ethics and thus constitutes the premier proto-norm; our obligation to sustain one another defines human existence. Entailed by the (...) sacredness of life are other basic ethical values, such as truth, human dignity, and non-violence. This essay considers whether generating all ethics from such universals has downsides and whether the ethics derived from this “primordial generality” produces the maximal ethics required by a complex, modern world. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to add one further value to the previously articulated “universal values” and to describe the constituent components of three universal values.Design/methodology/approachThis interpretive/constructivist study of Australia's largest online community of seniors involved a 30‐month ethnographic investigation. After an initial period of 11 months of observing social interaction on the entire site, in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 30 participants, selected according to criterion sampling, a form of purposive sampling.FindingsFour key moral (...) class='Hi'>values were identified: equality, freedom, respect and trust. All of them had been found in other studies, with equality and respect (as human dignity) identified as universal values. The findings from this study suggest that freedom is another universal value.Originality/valueThis study extends the understanding of universal values to include freedom. Further, it demonstrates the constituent components for freedom, and those of two other universal values previously identified in the literature, equality and human dignity, as well as revealing linkages between these three values. (shrink)

The most popular argument against moral realism is the argument from disagreement: if there are mind‐independent moral facts, then we would not expect to find as much moral disagreement as we in fact do; therefore, moral realism is false. In this paper, I develop the flipside of this argument. According to this argument from agreement, we would expect to find lots of moral disagreement if there were mind‐independent moral facts. But we do not, in fact, find much moral disagreement; therefore, (...) moral realism is false. I defend the argument, explain the empirical evidence that supports it, and show what makes this challenge novel and powerful. (shrink)

In the globalizing world, it is seen that life is more intertwined with different cultures. Therefore, intercultural sensitivity has vital importance for a peaceful harmonious common life. In order to ensure this sensitivity, societies must unite with common accepted values. In this regard, the adoption of universal values expressed by the UNESCO-UNICEF has particular importance. Therefore, schools have important responsibilities. Schools may prefer out-of-class activities in the development of positive sensitivity behaviors. In this study, the sensitivities developed (...) by secondary-school students, who are the target group, toward living universal values after participating in out-of-school socio-cultural short-term trip activities were examined. The research adopts the phenomenological approach, which is one of the qualitative research methods. Interview techniques were used in accordance with this model. In line with the purpose of this research, the school administrators, who have the ability to witness the changes in the behavior of the children during and after the socio-cultural planned trip activities and who can best interpret them by filtering, have been reached. According to this criterion, 51 school administrators were selected. The results of the research revealed that short-term socio-cultural trips abroad have effects on living-universal values. It was observed that the positive behaviors in the school environment continued after the trip. We can say that, the development of sensitivity toward living-universal values also positively affects students’ intercultural sensitivity. As a result, it is recommended that school administrators give importance to such activities. (shrink)

The threats we face today are unprecedented, from the existential crisis of climate change to the prospect of self-annihilation brought about by the uncontrolled expansion of AI. Add to this the crisis of liberal democracy and we seem to be swirling in a state of moral disarray, unsure whether there are any principles to which we can appeal today that would be anything other than particularistic. In contrast to this view, Markus Gabriel puts forward the bold argument that there are (...) guiding moral principles for human behaviour. These guiding principles extend across cultures, they are universally valid and form the source of universal values in the twenty-first century. In developing what he calls a 'New Moral Realism', Gabriel breathes new life into the idea that humanity's task on our planet is to enable moral progress through co-operation. It is only by achieving moral progress in a way that incorporates universal values - and thus embraces all of humanity - that we can avoid the abyss into which we will otherwise slide. Written with verve, wit and imagination, Gabriel's call for a new enlightenment is a welcome antidote to the value relativism and nihilism of our times and it lays out a moral framework within which we can work together, as surely we must, to deal with the great challenges we now face. (shrink)

Referring to James Legge's translation of the Liji 禮記, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's justification for legalizing same-sex marriage was based on the statement, "Confucius taught that marriage lies at the foundation of government."1 Justice Kennedy universalized and applied Confucius' comment in a way that Confucius would never have imagined it would be. Yet, Justice Kennedy's universalization fits into a legacy of Western utilizations of the wisdom of the ancient Chinese sage. Although in recent history many Europeans and North Americans (...) regard universal values as a challenge to other societies to reform, it is important to remember that, in the eighteenth century, Europeans looked to China for universal... (shrink)

This article moves beyond the narrow discussion of the applicability of Total Quality Management to the university which has amounted to a debate over whether business has something to teach the university about customers and satisfaction. The article goes at the matter from a different direction as it investigates what business can learn from the university about quality.

Democratic politics might be defined as the agonistic struggle of different parties, groups or individuals over resources, recognition and influence under reciprocal and inclusive conditions. It is based on an unconditional orientation to equality as well as freedom of all those involved to consent to - or dissent from - the norms, policies and practices that are established in the process of public dialogue. This article reconstructs the general agent-based capabilities required for a democratically defined public sphere under conditions of (...) globalization. Making capabilities central is intended to correct a certain over-emphasis regarding institutional macro-structures in the discourse on globalization and cosmopolitanism. After setting the stage with a critical analysis of Martha Nussbaum’s concept of capabilities, the analysis proceeds in two major steps. In the first part, a notion of hermeneutic agency is introduced that avoids a Foucauldian reduction of agency to power structures, while thoroughly situating agency in a symbolically mediated social context. The symbolic mediation of agency is, in the second part, taken as a ground of potentiality for reflexive capabilities that, once actualized and enacted, allow for a normatively satisfying process of public deliberation. The aim of the analysis is to relate a normative model of value-orientation to the linguistically grounded empirical resources of social agents. The core argument lays out as basic capabilities (1) to be able to normatively orient oneself at contextually defined yet universally open postconventional commitments, (2) to be able to engage in an interpretive and dialogical perspective-taking vis-a-vis differently situated agents and backgrounds, and (3) to be able to critically distance oneself from one’s taken-for-granted assumptions and background structures via a power-alert social reflexivity. (shrink)

The long human odyssey of self-discovery has reached a crucial stage: everything we do affects everyone and everything else - and we know it. The next hundred years will bring more change than we can easily imagine: more opportunities for more people to achieve the fulfilment of a good life, and more risks that could result in catastrophic harm to the entire planet.Viewed geopolitically, the main question is whether the world-views of the world's most important and influential powers - China (...) and America (the one fundamentally Confucian, the other essentially individualist) - can be made to work together constructively.At the same time, on a deeper level, the even greater question is how the irreversible fact of urbanisation may nurture healthy and mature human individuality, such that the accumulated wisdom of the world's great cultures becomes mutually transforming and enriching.This bold and wide-ranging book explores those questions, with all the risks and opportunities they hold for generations still to com"--Publisher information. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to analyse the effects of personal demographic factors on Chinese university students’ values and perceptions of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) issues, and to identify the link between personal values and perceptions of CSR. The quantitative data consisted of 980 Chinese university students, and were collected by using a structured self-completion questionnaire. This study found that: 1) the importance of values education should be stressed, because we found that altruistic values associate (...) negatively with perception of CSR, in contrast, egoistic values associate positively; 2) a CSR education programme should be designed accordingly to fit different student characteristics and needs such as gender and major differences; 3) values should be used as criteria for education and recruitment purposes, e.g., we found that female students represent more ethical values than male students, and have a more negative perception of the CSR performance; 4) the importance of environment performance should be recognised by Chinese corporations and policy-makers, because we found that Chinese corporations perform better in economic and social responsibilities than environmental responsibility. It provides an insight of the value structures of Chinese university students and the forces that shape ethical perceptions. It offers a comprehensive study of Chinese companies’ CSR performance, and the results improve the awareness of scholars and managers in solving the current problems and developing their CSR performances further. (shrink)

How can one establish if a corporate code of ethics is ethical in terms of its content? One important first step might be the establishment of core universal moral values by which corporate codes of ethics can be ethically constructed and evaluated. Following a review of normative research on corporate codes of ethics, a set of universal moral values is generated by considering three sources: (1) corporate codes of ethics; (2) global codes of ethics; and (3) (...) the business ethics literature. Based on the convergence of the three sources of standards, six universal moral values for corporate codes of ethics are proposed including: (1) trustworthiness; (2) respect; (3) responsibility; (4) fairness; (5) caring; and (6) citizenship. Relying on the proposed set of universal moral values, implications are discussed as to what the content of corporate codes of ethics should consist of. The paper concludes with its limitations. (shrink)

Any value statement belongs to a certain value code shared, to a certain degree, by a number of people. Is the value code itself relative or not? To solve this problem, one must assume that universal value statements and principles always have a prima‐facie character. Prima‐facie value propositions not only claim universality but can also be understood as universally valid in the following sense. First, their validity does not depend on an individual's free preferences. Second, although they are culture‐bound, (...) there is something all cultures must have in common. But such prima‐facie propositions do not logically imply a moral judgement in any particular case. They are merely a starting point of an evaluation procedure, i.e., of weighing and balancing, nothing more. On the other hand, the final (contextual, all things considered) evaluations are necessarily relative to a certain culture and, indeed, to individual preferences. When claiming universality of values, people see the first side of the problem. When endorsing relativism, they see only the second side. (shrink)

In this paper we characterize, classify and axiomatize all universal classes of MV-chains. Moreover, we accomplish analogous characterization, classification and axiomatization for congruence distributive quasivarieties of MV-algebras. Finally, we apply those results to study some finitary extensions of the Łukasiewicz infinite valued propositional calculus.

Suppose there is no God. This might imply that human life is meaningless, that there are no moral obligations and hence people can do whatever they want, and that the notions of virtue and vice and good and evil have no place. Erik J. Wielenberg believes this view to be mistaken and in this book he explains why. He argues that even if God does not exist, human life can have meaning, we do have moral obligations, and virtue is possible. (...) Naturally, the author sees virtue in a Godless universe as different from virtue in a Christian universe, and he develops naturalistic accounts of humility, charity, and hope. The moral landscape in a Godless universe is different from the moral landscape in a Christian universe, but it does indeed exist. Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe is a tour of some of the central landmarks of this under-explored territory. (shrink)

When considering the social valuation of a life-year, there is a conflict between two basic intuitions: on the one hand, the intuition of universality, according to which the value of an additional life-year should be universal, and, as such, should be invariant to the context considered; on the other hand, the intuition of complementarity, according to which the value of a life-year should depend on what this extra-life-year allows for, and, hence, on the quality of that life-year, because the (...) quantity of life and the quality of life are complement to each other. This paper proposes three distinct accounts of the intuition of universality, and shows that those accounts either conflict with a basic monotonicity property, or lead to indifference with respect to how life-years are distributed within the population. Those results support the abandon of the intuition of universality. But abandoning the intuition of universality does not prevent a social evaluator from giving priority, when allocating life-years, to individuals with the lowest quality of life. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: How can we think about a universal ethics that could be adopted by any intelligent being, including the rising population of cyborgs, intelligent machines, intelligent algorithms or even potential extraterrestrial life? We generally give value to complex structures, to objects resulting from a long work, to systems with many elements and with many links finely adjusted. These include living beings, books, works of art or scientific theories. Intuitively, we want to keep, multiply, and share such structures, as well (...) as prevent their destruction. Such objects have value not because more information would simply mean more value. Instead, they have value because they require a long computational history, numerous interactions for their construction that we can assimilate to a computation, and they display what we call organized complexity. To propose the foundations of a universal ethics based on the intrinsic value of organized complexity, we first discuss conceptions of complexity, and argue that Charles Bennett’s logical depth is certainly a first approximation of what we are looking for. We then put forward three fundamental imperatives: to preserve, augment and recursively promote organized complexity. We show a broad range of applications with human, non-human and non-living examples. Finally, we discuss some specific issues of our framework such as the distribution of complexity, of managing copies and erasures, and how our universal ethics tackles classical ethical issues. In sum, we propose a clear, homogenous and consistent ethical foundation that can integrate many universal ethics desiderata. (shrink)