The last sentence of Chapter 10 of the Analects describes a brief encounter between Confucius and a hen-pheasant, and it does so in puzzling terms, ridden with lexical difficulties. At the same time, intertextual references insert this fragment into the context of Confucius’ life mission as well as of Chinese mythological narratives. This contribution assesses the fragment’s meaning and significance: Confucius’ reaction to the hen-pheasant unveils his evolving understanding of the Heavenly Mandate bestowed upon him. The fragment thus forcefully concludes (...) the chapter in which it is inserted. Additionally, I put forward a hypothesis: the focus of this narrative, coupled with its positioning at the end of Chapter 10, induce us to postulate that it may have been purposefully located at the very center of the Analects, a proposition that reverberates on the way we look at the composition of the book. (shrink)

Is Female Genital Cosmetic Surgery for an adolescent with Body Dysmorphic Disorder ever ethically justified? Cosmetic genital surgery for adolescent girls is one of the most ethically controversial forms of cosmetic surgery and Body Dysmorphic Disorder is typically seen as a contraindication for cosmetic surgery. Two key ethical concerns are that Body Dysmorphic Disorder undermines whatever capacity for autonomy the adolescent has; and even if there is valid parental consent, the presence of Body Dysmorphic Disorder means that cosmetic surgery will (...) fail in its aims. In this article, we challenge, in an evidence-based way, the standard view that Body Dysmorphic Disorder is a contraindication for genital cosmetic surgery in adolescents. Our argument gathers together and unifies a substantial amount of disparate research in the context of an ethical argument. We focus on empirical questions about benefit and harm, because these are ethically significant. Answers to these questions affect the answer to the ethical question. We question the claim that there would be no benefit from surgery in this situation, and we consider possible harms that might be done if treatment is refused. For an adolescent with Body Dysmorphic Disorder, the most important thing may be to avoid harm. We find ourselves arguing for the ethical justifiability of cosmetic labioplasty for an adolescent with Body Dysmorphic Disorder, even though we recognize that it is a counter intuitive position. We explain how we reached our conclusion. (shrink)

The new prominence given to science for economic growth and industry comes with an increased policy focus on the promotion of commodification and commercialization of academic science. This paper posits that this increased interest in commodification is a new steering mechanism for governing science. This is achieved by first outlining what is meant by the commodification of scientific knowledge through reviewing a selection of literatures on the concept of commodification. The paper concludes with a discussion of how commodification functions as (...) a means for governing science. (shrink)

In contrast to the traditional view of Kant as apure retributivist, the recent interpretations ofKant's theory of punishment (for instance Byrd's)propose a mixed theory of retributivism and generalprevention. Although both elements are literallyright, I try to show the shortcomings of each. I thenargue that Kant's theory of punishment is notconsistent with his own concept of law. Thus I proposeanother justification for punishment: specialdeterrence and rehabilitation. Kant's critique ofutilitarianism does not affect this alternative, whichmoreover has textual support in Kant and is (...) fullyconsistent with his concept of law. (shrink)

Henry James and the Philosophical Novel breaks fresh ground by examining James's unique position as a philosophical novelist, closely associated with the climate of ideas generated by his brother William. It considers storytelling as a mode of philosophical enquiry, showing how a range of distinguished thinkers have relied on fictional narrative as a technique for formulating and clarifying their ideas; and investigates (with close reference to his novels) the affiliations between James's practice as a novelist and contemporary epistemological, moral, and (...) linguistic concerns. (shrink)

Combining insights from two of the most influential approaches in linguistics, Construction Grammar and Relevance Theory, this book furthers our understanding of how meaning comes about. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Kant nimmt in der Einleitung zur Metaphysik der Sitten eine Einteilung in innere und äußere Gesetzgebung vor. Beide leitet er aus demselben in der Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten formulierten kategorischen Imperativ ab, und fügt Letzterem weitere Elemente einer Grundanthropologie hinzu, die das Material für die einzelnen Teile der Rechts- und Tugendlehre darstellen. Die Zusammenhänge zwischen Rechts- und Tugendlehre sind aber komplexer als die Einteilung in äußere und innere Gesetzgebung es nahelegt. Sie teilen etwa dieselben Anwendungsmethoden und Metaphern, und bei (...) einer näheren Untersuchung der einzelnen Teile erweist sich diese Einteilung als entweder problematisch oder unscharf. In der Textinterpretation der einzelnen Beiträge kommen die genannten Zusammenhänge und Beziehungen zum Vorschein – insbesondere weil ein Teil der Autoren dieses Bandes zum Kommentar beider Werken beiträgt. Ein weiterer Schwerpunkt dieser Textinterpretationen liegt bei der kritischen Untersuchung des Ertrags dieser Werke für die entsprechenden heutigen Debatten und die Auseinandersetzung mit heutigen im weiten Sinne „Kantischen“ Positionen. (shrink)

Volume 195 in the North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures series.

(2010). Ashley's Interests Were Not Violated Because She Does Not Have the Necessary Interests. The American Journal of Bioethics: Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 52-54.

In this book, Benoît Dubreuil explores the creation and destruction of hierarchies in human evolution. Combining the methods of archaeology, anthropology, cognitive neuroscience and primatology, he offers a natural history of hierarchies from the point of view of both cultural and biological evolution. This volume explains why dominance hierarchies typical of primate societies disappeared in the human lineage and why the emergence of large-scale societies during the Neolithic period implied increased social differentiation, the creation of status hierarchies, and, eventually, political (...) centralisation. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that humans have specific abilities for cooperation and culture that evolved since their split with their last common ancestor with chimpanzees. Many uncertainties remain, however, about the exact moment in the human lineage when these abilities evolved. This article argues that cooperation and culture did not evolve in one step in the human lineage and that the capacity to stick to long-term and risky cooperative arrangements evolved before properly modern culture. I present evidence that Homo heidelbergensis (...) became increasingly able to secure contributions form others in two demanding Paleolithic public good games (PPGGs): cooperative feeding and cooperative breeding. I argue that the temptation to defect is high in these PPGGs and that the evolution of human cooperation in Homo heidelberngensis is best explained by the emergence of modern-like abilities for inhibitory control and goal maintenance. These executive functions are localized in the prefrontal cortex and allow humans to stick to social norms in the face of competing motivations. This scenario is consistent with data on brain evolution that indicate that the largest growth of the prefrontal cortex in human evolution occurred in Homo heidelbergensis and was followed by relative stasis in this part of the brain. One implication of this argument is that subsequent behavioral innovations, including the evolution of symbolism, art, and properly cumulative culture in modern Homo sapiens , are unlikely to be related to a reorganization of the prefrontal cortex, despite frequent claims to the contrary in the literature on the evolution of human culture and cognition. (shrink)

Experimental research has shown that pairs of stimuli which are congruent and assumed to 'go together' are recalled more effectively than an item presented in isolation. Will this multisensory memory benefit occur when stimuli are richer and longer, in an ecological setting? In the present study, we focused on an everyday situation of audio-visual learning and manipulated the relationship between audio guide tracks and viewed portraits in the galleries of the Tate Britain. By varying the gender and narrative style of (...) the voice-over, we examined how the perceived congruency and assumed unity of the audio guide track with painted portraits affected subsequent recall. We show that tracks perceived as best matching the viewed portraits led to greater recall of both sensory and linguistic content. We provide the first evidence that manipulating crossmodal congruence and unity assumptions can effectively impact memory in a multisensory ecological setting, even in the absence of precise temporal alignment between sensory cues. (shrink)

The Prometheus myth has long now provided inspiration for those who envision solutions to environmental issues. Prometheus is the figure par excellence of human forethought and progress in the anthropocene. In this article, we introduce the concept of ambient Prometheanism to describe the way of thinking that foregrounds foresight and anticipation and advances technological solutions developed by capital and energy-intensive projects. We question this stance, arguing that ambient Prometheanism, with its emphasis on technofix, leads to the economisation and depoliticisation of (...) planetary environmental issues. Following Bernard Stiegler, we recover from the myth the figure of Epimetheus, Prometheus’ brother, as well as his associated faculty, epimetheia to theorise what we call an ‘Epimethean politics’. Thinking the anthropocene from the perspective of ambient Prometheanism and Epimetheanism means to consider the role of technology in climate politics, and in particular to make the case for the importance of afterthought in face of unintended consequences and accumulated errors. To substantiate our argument, we outline the challenge posed by emerging solutions focussed on technological intensification and socio-economic acceleration. An Epimethean politics of the climate requires to use reflexivity as a capacity to anticipate, but also to mobilise epimetheia to account for accidents and past mistakes. Such a politics builds from an alternative conception of technology, one that radically differs from ambient Prometheanism. Finally we read as actualisations of Epimethean politics contemporary eco-political struggles and their imperatives for multispecies living and convivial livelihoods. (shrink)

By looking closely at the ideas of Rosseau, Kant, and Mill, Autonomy and Patients' Decisions traces the modern concept of autonomy from its historical roots, ...

National electronic health record initiatives are in progress in many countries around the world but the debate about the ethical issues and how they are to be addressed remains overshadowed by other issues. The discourse to which all others are answerable is a technical discourse, even where matters of privacy and consent are concerned. Yet a focus on technical issues and a failure to think about ethics are cited as factors in the failure of the UK health record system. In (...) this paper, while the prime concern is the Australian Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR), the discussion is relevant to and informed by the international context. The authors draw attention to ethical and conceptual issues that have implications for the success or failure of electronic health records systems. Important ethical issues to consider as Australia moves towards a PCEHR system include: issues of equity that arise in the context of personal control, who benefits and who should pay, what are the legitimate uses of PCEHRs, and how we should implement privacy. The authors identify specific questions that need addressing. (shrink)

Benoit Delbecq reflects upon the conditions under which his creative activity, as a pianist, a composer and an improviser, has to take place within the French context. Status of the copyrights, contribution of public funding, new modes of distribution, ambiguous irruptions of the show business mega-machine, fictions of freedom generated within the creative moment, polymorphous collective structures: this concrete work of knitting a new autonomous artistic network sheds light, beyond the microcosm of jazz, on the production of sociality in (...) today’s France. (shrink)

Benoit Mathot | : La négativité, comme catégorie fondamentale de l’existence humaine, connaît aujourd’hui une crise profonde qui la conduit à son effacement progressif des pratiques et des discours sociaux, culturels, religieux, au profit d’une logique de la coïncidence. Dans cette perspective, cet article a pour projet de proposer un parcours interdisciplinaire à travers la psychanalyse, les études littéraires et la théologie chrétienne, afin de montrer la centralité de ce phénomène. | : The negativity, as fundamental category of the (...) human existence, knows a deep crisis today which leads it to the progressive disappearance of the socials, cultural and religious practices and speeches, for the benefit of a logic of the coincidence. In this perspective, this article plans to propose an interdisciplinary work through the psychoanalysis, the literary studies and the Christian theology, to show the centrality of this phenomenon. (shrink)

The recent literature on social norms has stressed the centrality of emotions in explaining punishment and norm enforcement. This article discusses four negative emotions (righteous anger, indignation, contempt, and disgust) and examines their relationship to punitive behavior. I argue that righteous anger and indignation are both punitive emotions strictly speaking, but induce punishments of different intensity and have distinct elicitors. Contempt and disgust, for their part, cannot be straightforwardly considered punitive emotions, although they often blend with a colder form of (...) indignation to favor low-cost, indirect, and collective forms of punishment such as mockery, exclusion, and ostracism. (shrink)

The paper defends the idea that strong reciprocity, although it accounts for the existence of deep cooperation among humans, has difficulty explaining why humans lived for most of their history in band-size groups and why the emergence of larger societies was accompanied by increased social differentiation and political centralization. The paper argues that the costs of incurring an altruistic punishment rise in large groups and that the emergence of large-scale societies depends on the creation of institutions that render control of (...) these costs possible through a social division of sanction. Key Words: cooperation • strong reciprocity • cultural evolution • political evolution. (shrink)

Why was it not until the mid-1980s that the intellectuals, the "democratic elite" of China, initiated a public dialogue about "inalienable" rights in the Western sense? The reason may lie in the impact of events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Future automated vehicles of different sizes will share the same space with other road users, e. g., pedestrians. For a safe interaction, successful communication needs to be ensured, in particular, with vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians. Two possible communication means exist for AVs: vehicle kinematics for implicit communication and external human-machine interfaces for explicit communication. However, the exact interplay is not sufficiently studied yet for pedestrians' interactions with AVs. Additionally, very few other studies focused on the interplay of vehicle (...) kinematics and eHMI for pedestrians' interaction with differently sized AVs, although the precise coordination is decisive to support the communication with pedestrians. Therefore, this study focused on how the interplay of vehicle kinematics and eHMI affects pedestrians' willingness to cross, trust and perceived safety for the interaction with two differently sized AVs. In this experimental online study, the participants interacted with the AVs in a shared space. Both AVs were equipped with a 360° LED light-band eHMI attached to the outer vehicle body. Three eHMI statuses were displayed. The vehicle kinematics were varied at two levels. Moreover, “non-matching” conditions were included for both AVs in which the dynamic eHMI falsely communicated a yielding intent although the vehicle did not yield. Overall, results showed that pedestrians' willingness to cross was significantly higher for the smaller AV compared to the larger AV. Regarding the interplay of vehicle kinematics and eHMI, results indicated that a dynamic eHMI increased pedestrians' perceived safety when the vehicle yielded. When the vehicle did not yield, pedestrians' perceived safety still increased for the dynamic eHMI compared to the static eHMI and no eHMI. The findings of this study demonstrated possible negative effects of eHMIs when they did not match the vehicle kinematics. Further implications for a holistic communication strategy for differently sized AVs will be discussed. (shrink)

Children’s linguistic and social skills develop through play with siblings, but there is little research into sibling interaction using naturally occurring data. This conversation analytic case study presents an evidence-based account of how an older sibling responds to verbal challenges from her younger sibling during free play at home. The older sibling employs prosodic, rhetorical and linguistic devices to deflect challenges while avoiding conflict. She does this by acknowledging the grounds of the challenge, before invoking privileged information or epistemic differences (...) to reject it. Structurally, the older sibling inserts extended digressions which obfuscate challenges by engaging the challenger and switching topic. These phenomena blur the traditional accept/reject response dichotomy. The findings provide insight into the complexity of a 5-/6-year-old’s challenge-defence strategies and highlight the importance of face preservation and mitigation of disagreement. We propose that the ability to respond to challenges while maintaining intersubjectivity is a component of communicative competence. (shrink)

Hoy en día la mayoría de los teóricos liberales o no consideran el tema de un derecho general a la inmigración o simplemente lo rechazan. Esto contradice no sólo la doctrina tradicional del derecho natural, sino también principios actuales de justicia tales como el principio de la diferencia postulado por Rawls. En el presente artículo se propone el siguiente experimento mental: comparar la situación imaginaria en la que la inmigración proveniente del Tercer Mundo estuviera permitida sin restricciones, pero en la (...) que no hubiera ninguna prestación social o asistencial para los inmigrantes, con la situación actual en la que aunque la inmigración está muy limitada, las prestaciones sociales y asistenciales habituales se encuentran aseguradas para los inmigrantes. Contra la opinión predominante hoy en día, la suerte de los peor situados parece ser en la situación actual claramente peor que en la situación imaginaria. Teorías liberales como la rawlsiana deben superar esta inconsistencia entre sus principios de justicia y su posición con respecto a la cuestión de la inmigración y decidirse por una cuestión más coherente. (shrink)