Originally titled “Is It Murder in Tennessee to Kill a Chimpanzee,” this article argues in some detail that typical legal definitions of “murder” as involving the intentional killing of “a reasonable being” would require classifying the intentional killing of chimpanzees as murder.

In his Edifying Discourses, Soren Kierkegaard published a sermon entitled ‘The Unchangeableness of God’ in which he reiterated the dogma which dominated Catholic, Protestant and even Jewish expressions of classical supernaturalist theology from the first century A.D. until the advent of process theology in the twentieth century. The dogma that as a perfect being, God must be totally unchanging in every conceivable respect was expressed by Kierkegaard in such ways as: He changes all, Himself unchanged. When everything seems stable and (...) in the overturn of all things, He remains equally unchanged; no change touches Him, not even the shadow of a change; in unaltered clearness He, the father of lights, remained eternally unchanged. 1. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 7, July 2024, Page 6-12.

Recent theorizing about the cognitive underpinnings of dilemmatic moral judgment has equated slow, deliberative thinking with the utilitarian disposition and fast, automatic thinking with the deontological disposition. However, evidence for the reflective utilitarian hypothesis—the hypothesized link between utilitarian judgment and individual differences in the capacity for rational reflection has been inconsistent and difficult to interpret in light of several design flaws. In two studies aimed at addressing some of the flaws, we found robust evidence for a reflective minimalist hypothesis—high CRT (...) performers’ tendency to regard utility-optimizing acts as largely a matter of personal prerogative, permissible both to perform and to leave undone. This relationship between CRT and the “minimalist” orientation remained intact after controlling for age, sex, trait affect, social desirability, and educational attainment. No significant association was found between CRT and the strict utilitarian response pattern or CRT and the strict deontological response pattern, nor did we find any significant association between CRT and willingness to act in the utility-optimizing manner. However, we found an inverse association between empathic concern and a willingness to act in the utility-optimizing manner, but there was no comparable association between empathic concern and the deontological judgment pattern. Theoretical, methodological, and normative implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

How does a country achieve a public capital market in which firms can raise capital from investors? In seeking clues and hypotheses, this article looks back to the dawn of the public corporation in the United States. The battles for control of the Erie Railroad, known as the "Scarlet Woman of Wall Street," a reference to its ill repute, stand at the symbolic center of these developments. The battles for control, which waxed and waned between 1868 and 1872, involved: the (...) titan of the transportation age, Cornelius Vanderbilt; the brilliant and notorious stock market manipulator and takeover entrepreneur, Jay Gould; the largest and most powerful railroad of the era, the Pennsylvania; control over rail transportation to New York City; and the politics and courts of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. It was played out in the securities markets, the courts, the legislatures, and the newspapers and attracted the attention, and condemnation, of some of the leading commentators of the day. Rereading this history from the vantage point of the end of the twentieth century, several features are striking. First, the battles are remarkably familiar: they are recognizably modern battles for control over a widely-held corporation. Second, many of the tactics utilized are now illegal. Finally, surprising connections emerge between antitrust, federalism, and the emergence of public capital markets. (shrink)

Susan Edwards-McKie interviews Professor Dr B. F. McGuinness on the occasion of his 90th birthday.

In many learning or inference tasks human behavior approximates that of a Bayesian ideal observer, suggesting that, at some level, cognition can be described as Bayesian inference. However, a number of findings have highlighted an intriguing mismatch between human behavior and standard assumptions about optimality: People often appear to make decisions based on just one or a few samples from the appropriate posterior probability distribution, rather than using the full distribution. Although sampling-based approximations are a common way to implement Bayesian (...) inference, the very limited numbers of samples often used by humans seem insufficient to approximate the required probability distributions very accurately. Here, we consider this discrepancy in the broader framework of statistical decision theory, and ask: If people are making decisions based on samples—but as samples are costly—how many samples should people use to optimize their total expected or worst-case reward over a large number of decisions? We find that under reasonable assumptions about the time costs of sampling, making many quick but locally suboptimal decisions based on very few samples may be the globally optimal strategy over long periods. These results help to reconcile a large body of work showing sampling-based or probability matching behavior with the hypothesis that human cognition can be understood in Bayesian terms, and they suggest promising future directions for studies of resource-constrained cognition. (shrink)

Though it is commonplace in discussions of science and religion to make the distinction between scientific explanations of how and religious explanations of why, the distinction does not hold up under close examination. In recent discussions of big bang cosmology, scientists are more and more addressing of the questions of why, particularly in discussions of the role of symmetry in contemporary physics and in debates about the relevance of the anthropic principle.

This article asks: Is the human self, the stream of human consciousness, a single unique enduring actual entity or whole (like Alfred North Whitehead’s God) or a society of transient actual occasions (like Charles Hartshorne’s God)? It argues forcefully for the former and against the latter and concludes that both God and human selves are enduring but constantly developing actual entities who are constantly being enriched by new events, experiences, and activities in time.

This article is in a larger textbook of articles on Medical Ethics. It identifies a number of values that underlie professional commitments to confidentiality that are involved in protecting or promoting the client's (1) privacy, (2)social status, (3) economic advantages, (4) openness of communications, (5) seeking professional help, (6) trust in professionals, (7) autonomous control over personal information. The problem of making exceptions to confidentiality commitments is also examined.

Tom Regan's seafaring dog that is justifiably thrown out of the lifeboat built for four to save the lives of four humans has been the topic of much discussion. Critics have argued in a variety of ways that this dog nips at Regan's Achilles heel. Without reviewing previous discussions, with much of which I certainly agree, this article develops an unexplored approach to exposing the vulnerability of the position that Regan takes on sacrificing the dog to save the humans. It (...) argues that when dealing with the seafaring dog, Regan abandons his own principles, and that this is exactly what he should do. Regan should abandon his view that all subjects-of-a-life have equal inherent worth. (shrink)

This article explains that and how Robert S. Hartman and Brand Blanshard, two of the most insightful philosophers of the 20th Century, were complete rationalists in their approach to philosophical problems, especially those in value theory. They both rejected emotive, subjectivist, and relativistic approaches to ethical values. Both were convinced that “intrinsic goodness” is the most important, meaningful, and basic of all ethical or moral concepts. Just how they understood reasonableness and the task of philosophers is explored. Significant differences between (...) the two on the meaning of “good” are examined. Blanshard’s equating of “intrinsically good” with “fulfillment and pleasure” is critiqued, and Hartman’s alternative to this is presented and defended. (shrink)

This article explains that and how values and evaluations are unavoidably and conspicuously present within natural scientists and their sciences—and why they are definitely not “value-free”. It shows how such things can be rationally understood and assessed within the framework of formal axiology, the value theory developed by Robert S. Hartman and those who have been deeply influenced by his reflections. It explains Hartman’s highly plausible and applicable definitions of “good” and related value concepts. It identifies three basic kinds of (...) value objects and human evaluations of these, and it shows how these should be ranked or prioritized in comparative worth. Finally, throughout, it applies all of the above to what is really going on within natural scientists and their sciences. It shows how anyone, scientists included, should proceed in order to make sense of what and how they value. (shrink)

Rather than eliminate the terms "mental health and illness" because of the grave moral consequences of psychiatric labeling, conservative definitions are proposed and defended. Mental health is rational autonomy, and mental illness is the sustained loss of such. Key terms are explained, advantages are explored, and alternative concepts are criticized. The value and descriptive components of all such definitions are consciously acknowledged. Where rational autonomy is intact, mental hospitals and psychotherapists should not think of themselves as treating an illness. Instead, (...) they are functioning as applied axiologists, moral educators, spiritual mentors, etc. They deal with what Szasz has called "personal, social, and ethical problems in living." But mental illness is real. (shrink)

This article tries to show that commonplace economic, ethico-religious, anti-racist,and logical-consistency objections to public funding of abortions and abortion counseling for poor women are quite weak. By contrast, arguments appealing to basic human rights to freedom of speech, informed consent, protection from great harm, justice and equal protection under the law, strongly support public funding. Thus, refusing to provide abortions at public expense for women who cannot afford them is morally unacceptable and rationally unjustifiable, despite the opinions of former Presidents (...) Reagan and Bush, the more conservative members of the Supreme Court of the United States, the current Congress, and the majority of the American people. (shrink)

The mammalian placenta exhibits elevated expression of endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), but the evolutionary significance of this feature remains unclear. I propose that ERV‐mediated regulatory evolution was, and continues to be, an important mechanism underlying the evolution of placental development. Many recent studies have focused on the co‐option of ERV‐derived genes for specific functional adaptations in the placenta. However, the co‐option of ERV‐derived regulatory elements could potentially lead to the incorporation of entire gene regulatory networks, which, I argue, would facilitate relatively (...) rapid developmental evolution of the placenta. I suggest a model in which an ancient retroviral infection led to the establishment of the ancestral placental developmental gene network through the co‐option of ERV‐derived regulatory elements. Consequently, placental development would require elevated tolerance to ERV activity. This in turn would expose a continuous stream of novel ERV mutations that may have catalyzed the developmental diversification of the mammalian placenta. (shrink)

Traditional hedonists like Epicurus, Bentham and Sidgwick were quantitative hedonists who assumed that pleasures and pains differ, not just from each other, but also from other pleasures and pains only in such quantitatively measurable ways as intensity, duration, and nearness or remoteness in time. They also differ with respect to their sources or causes. John Stuart Mill introduced an interesting and important complication into the modern theory of hedonism by insisting that pleasures also differ qualitatively as well as quantitatively. This (...) article thoroughly and critically examines Mill’s attempt to explain what qualitative differences might mean, and it proposes, defends, and extends a plausible theory of qualitative differences. (shrink)

This article explains that, why, and how process thinkers and Hartmanian axiologists affirm most, if not all, that Buddhism denies with respect to the positive goodness of ordinary conscious or aware lives, human and nonhuman. According to mainstream Buddhism, all the intrinsic, extrinsic, and systemic values of ordinary human existence are illusions, so we should avoid being involved with or attaching ourselves to any of them. By contrast, process thought and axiology affirm, cultivate, nurture, and encourage involvement with and attachment (...) to all positive human values. Buddhism insists on the illusory nature of all intrinsic values (e.g., individual human selves, including ourselves), all extrinsic values (e.g., the everyday practical, useful, and sensory objects, processes, and activities of life), and all systemic values (e.g., all human thoughts, beliefs, and systems, except for the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path). Process thinkers and Hartmanian axiologists insist that such things are very real and should be taken with utmost seriousness. By “illusory,” Buddhists may mean nothing more than that all such things are temporal, fleeting, transient. For this reason, they claim, all attachment to or positive valuation of such things leads to suffering. I fully agree with the transience of all momentary actualities, but I react to and deal very differently with the positive values involved in such transience. (shrink)

Formulations of Mill's principle of utility are examined, and it is shown that Mill did not recognize a moral obligation to maximize the good, as is often assumed. His was neither a maximizing act nor rule utilitarianism. It was a distinctive minimizing utilitarianism which morally obligates us only to abstain from inflicting harm, to prevent harm, to provide for others minimal essentials of well being (to which rights correspond), and to be occasionally charitable or benevolent.

Because suppression of sex has been and is at the core of puritanical morals, a proper account thereof would need to explain why suppression of sex has been largely directed towards the human female. Not only do the authors not account for this pattern, but their general model would seem to predict the reverse – that is, greater suppression/control of the male libido.

Most process theologians have rejected the creation of the world out of nothing, holding that our universe was created out of some antecedent universe. This article shows how on process grounds, and with faithfulness to much of what Whitehead had to say, process theologians can and should affirm the creation of our universe out of nothing. Standard process objections to this are refuted.