This chapter contains section titled: General Philosophical Goals The American Philosophical Community General Consequences and Effects on Latinos Economic Survival and Intellectual Flourishing.

This Discussion Note calls for attention to the cultural practices of Neural Engineering as part of the life sciences as practices and technologies of manufacturing life. Through focusing on Disability, Ableism, and especially Technoableism within the field, I point out instances of onto-epistemological violence, which influence the likelihood of survival of disabled people individually and as a group. By drawing on Crip Technoscience, a method assemblage is introduced that allows to address these issues in an intersectional-kyriarchal understanding of interlocking (...) systems of privilege and oppression through generative critique and productive collaborative work. Criptical Neural Engineering is dedicated to disability justice and disability gain. It centers disabled people as epistemic activists and demands response-ability and accountability from non-disabled people, specifically engineers that want to build adaptive technologies with disabled people. (shrink)

The trials of life can wear us down. Unexpected events force us to face a new reality and unanswered prayers lead us to a growing frustration about why God doesn't intervene. We wonder if anything good can come out of this painful, dark, winter season. Grace Wabuke Klein knows that there is purpose in our darkest days and seasons of waiting. In Flourish, Grace meets the reader in their heartache, disappointment, and pain and gives encouragement and a fresh perspective on (...) the winter seasons we all go through, as well as practical steps to not just survive but to find purpose in the unknown and unexpected. Drawing insight from her own winter seasons, Grace reveals the divine purpose in each season of our lives. She explains how: -Fall is a time of release-a necessary season of letting go of offenses, unhealthy relationships, hurts, bad habits, toxic friendships, pride, unforgiveness and other heart issues before we can ever move on to the next season -Winter is a time of unexpected challenges and unknown futures-yet lessons learned in life's storms are deep and full of growth to shape us and makes us stronger. -Spring is a time of new things that require us to be open to new experiences, people, ideas, and perspective-stepping out into the unknown and uncomfortable. -Summer is a time when everything is flourishing-we clearly see how each season cultivated a deeper level of faith and spiritual muscles, developing our character and perseverance. Grace discovered there is value and unseen gifts in each season, but only in the hard seasons and storms of life are vital spiritual disciplines developed. Flourish connects with the reader in the tension and storms of life to bring a word of hope. (shrink)

Aristotle’s ethical system was guided by his vision of human flourishing (also, but potentially misleadingly, translated as happiness). For Aristotle, human flourishing was a rich holistic concept about a life lived well until its ending. Both living a long life and dying well were integral to the Aristotelian ideal of human flourishing. Using Aristotle’s concept of human flourishing to inform the goals of medicine has the potential to provide guidance to clinical decision-makers regarding the provision of (...) burdensome treatments, such as intensive care treatment, where pursuing a chance of survival must be balanced against the risk of exposing patients to a negative dying experience. By conceptually uniting potentially competing goals of medicine, such as prolonging life and the promotion of peaceful deaths, Aristotle’s understanding of human flourishing creates an argument for the integration of palliative care considerations into intensive care decision-making and for advanced care planning with healthy patients. (shrink)

According to the neo-Aristotelian moral tradition, every living thing has an ultimate end: To flourish as a member of its species. This view of the ultimate end shapes inquiry into what is the ultimate end of human living things. In this paper, I develop an alternative view of the ultimate end of a living thing: The ultimate end is only to survive, not as a member of a species, but as a living thing. There are four steps to my development. (...) First, I criticize the prevailing species-based view of the ultimate end. Second, I argue that other-regarding behavior is not normative for living things; only survival is. Third, I elucidate a new and what I take to be correcting understanding of survival. Fourth, I programmatically develop the idea that inquiry into human well-being and into morality (for human beings) should be understood as aspects of inquiry into human survival. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that intrinsic benefit to a human being consists exclusively in survival. It takes as its point of departure the neo-Aristotelian view that inquiry into intrinsic benefit to a human being should take place within a wider theory of intrinsic benefit to living things, generally. The paper first argues that the neo-Aristotelian view that intrinsic benefit to a living thing consists in flourishing as a member of its species, is mistaken. Rather, intrinsic benefit to (...) a living thing consists in survival, and not survival as a member of its species, but survival simpliciter. A refined understanding of survival is developed in the paper. The paper then applies this Survivalist account of intrinsic benefit to human beings: The things we take to be good for human beings—e.g., pleasure, desire-fulfillment, etc.—are good to the extent and because they promote the one intrinsic benefit of survival. (shrink)

This article presents a skeleton of a potential paradigm of human flourishing and happiness in a free society. It is an exploratory attempt to construct an understanding from various disciplines and to integrate them into a clear, consistent, coherent, and systematic whole. Holding that there are essential interconnections among objective ideas, the article specifically emphasizes the compatibility of Aristotelianism, Austrian Economics, Positive Psychology, and Ayn Rand’s Objectivism arguing that particular ideas from these areas can be integrated into a paradigm (...) of human flourishing and happiness based on the nature of man and the world. Such a paradigm will help people to understand the world and to survive and flourish in it. It is hoped that the paradigm will grow and evolve as scholars engage, question, critique, interpret, and extend its ideas. Our goal is to have a paradigm that accords with reality and there is always more to learn from reality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:My Ability to FlourishPaulette KoehlerIn twenty years of convulsions, I’ve never heard a neurologist mention the word “epilepsy.” Over this time, the intensity of my original simple partial seizures, “simple” signifying retained consciousness and “partial” indicating disturbances restricted to a specific area of my brain, grew to the complex level on my left temporal lobe. I believe this development was influenced by my use of prescribed medications. Several neurologists (...) from Los Angeles to San Francisco directed various electroencephalograms (EEGs), including a week–long, prescription–free EEG in the hospital; magnetic resonance imaging tests (MRIs); computed tomography (CT) scans anywhere from forty–five minutes to four hours each; and blood profiles to help determine my situation. For legal reasons, one neurologist even had me sign a release stating that he was not able to diagnose my situation.Test results present limited information about my brain and without ever saying, “I don’t know,” these neurologists communicated my test results by utilizing technical terms and thus not always answering my questions. After explaining that my head turns to the left while my right hand shakes, symptoms that have been recognized and reported by several friends and family members, my doctor replied that a seizure on the left side of my brain should cause my head to turn to the right and then changed the subject. I felt like asking, “Am I doing it wrong?”The brain is different from other parts of our anatomy in that it can’t be replaced like a kidney, heart or other organ. It cannot be removed like tonsils, an appendix or even a limb. It can be physically studied or repaired while functioning but the resulting percentage of survival or proper operation of the body after surgery is minimal and the number of people requiring such attention is so low that the amount is scanty. A dead brain limits the analysis of its functions.My “disabilities” involve spontaneous uncontrolled loss of consciousness, exhaustion, mood swings, and the suspension of driving privileges. Activity interference, extra naps, losing friends and not being able to get around are definite disadvantages. However, everyone needs to manage personal problems. No one is perfect.Public transit schedules and directions don’t always offer me the transportation I need. Fortunately, the combination of a bus ride with walking or running can serve my needs while also helping me to keep physically healthy.Limited benefits include discounted transit and the option to ride instead of walking or running. A trip to Nana’s on the train is always a treat.I’d rather not be branded “disabled” even though those who understand my situation address me with compassionate, sympathetic attention, [End Page E4] always asking how I physically feel. I feel fine. A seizure is only a quick, conscious loss of time and an occasional scrape on the knee. I’m more annoyed when I notice strangers looking suspiciously at my public transport discount card as if I don’t really deserve it.Like the “disability” brand, the medications I’ve taken, Dilantin, Neurontin, Depakote, Keppra and Lamictal, among others, all of which produced serious side effects without reducing the frequency of my seizures have only been a cover–up, preventing a search for the true cause and effective treatment of my seizures. Being identified as disabled has only limited my daily schedule. I am not disabled, as society has unfortunately characterized me.My seizures began in 1993, the year our FDA started approving rBGH, recombinant bovine growth hormone, man–made for the use on dairy cows to enhance their milk production. As a result, milk on the market increased while keeping the price from rising, as demonstrated in Economics I. Can the use of rBGH act on my brain in any way?One neurologist, in order to avoid the responsibility of inappropriate recommendations, presented his thoughts in the form of questions, encouraging me to consider options.“You’ve tried all of these medications?”“Has your diet alteration made any difference in your seizures?”“Have you tried organic foods?”His inquiries persuaded me to contemplate whether drugs are an answer to my problem, pay attention to differences in my life and... (shrink)

In this article, I argue for a novel understanding of compassion—what I call a ‘compassion towards thriving’ approach—to inform public mental health ethics. The argument is developed through two main parts. In the first part, I develop an account of compassion towards thriving that builds upon Martha Nussbaum’s philosophical work on compassion. This account expands the ambit of compassion from a focus on the alleviation of existing suffering to the prevention of potential future suffering through the facilitation of personal growth (...) based on a ‘psychosocial’ understanding of mental health. In the second part of the article, I discuss the aims of public mental health and examine compassion towards thriving’s normative synergies with existing approaches in public health ethics. I explain how compassion towards thriving supports a vision of public health ethics which is concerned with solidarity, social justice and flourishing. I then apply this compassion towards thriving approach to evaluate the ‘Every Mind Matters’ public mental health campaign in England, highlighting its affinities with the ethos of the campaign. I also identify and explain two ways in which the application of a compassion towards thriving approach could enhance its delivery. (shrink)

Time-limited trials of intensive care have arisen in response to the increasing demand for intensive care treatment for patients with a low chance of surviving their critical illness, and the clinical uncertainty inherent in intensive care decision-making. Intensive care treatment is reported by most patients to be a significantly unpleasant experience. Therefore, patients who do not survive intensive care treatment are exposed to a negative dying experience. Time-limited trials of intensive care treatment in patients with a low chance of surviving (...) have both a small chance of benefiting this patient group and a high chance of harming them by depriving them of a good death. A ‘rule of rescue’ for the critically unwell does not justify time-limiting a trial of intensive care treatment and overlooks the experiential costs that intensive care patients face. Offering time-limited trials of intensive care to all patients, regardless of their chance of survival, overlooks the responsibility of resource-limited intensive care clinicians for suffering caused by their actions. A patient-specific risk–benefit analysis is vital when deciding whether to offer intensive care treatment, to ensure that time-limited trials of intensive care are not undertaken for patients who have a much higher chance of being harmed, rather than benefited by the treatment. The virtue ethics concept of human flourishing has the potential to offer additional ethical guidance to resource-limited clinicians facing these complex decisions, involving the balancing of a quantifiable survival benefit against the qualitative suffering that intensive care treatment may cause. (shrink)

Is there such a thing as “a/the greater good”? Could it be conceived in radically ecological terms? By critically drawing on skeptical insights presented by Slavoj Žižek and Hans Sluga, the article articulates what I am calling “a/the greater ecological good” as an end and as the ethico-political means to this end. I begin by describing this good as an aim: the survival-flourishing of earthly entities and environs. Its contours and limits are outlined, and various Žižekian objections are (...) addressed. Next, the ethical and political means for this good’s realization are delineated. We are summoned to allow things to survive-thrive. But the existing order excessively disallows things from surviving-flourishing, so we are compelled to struggle against it and foster a society of letting-be. The article concludes by proffering an outline of a possible strategy for this political struggle. It would involve the collaborative conception of a blueprint of this envisioned society; popularizing and building mass solidarity around the blueprint; and leveraging this solidarity to, ideally, peacefully implement the blueprint; otherwise, ethico-political violence may be required in order to realize this greater ecological good. (shrink)

This essay has one simple theme: the family does a very important job that no other institution can do. What is that job? Inside a family, helpless babies are transformed from being self-centered bundles of impulses, desires, and emotions to being adult people capable of social behavior of all kinds. Why is this job important? The family teaches the ability to trust, cooperate, and self-restrain. Neither the free market nor selfgoverning political institutions can survive unless the vast majority of the (...) population possesses these skills. Why is the family uniquely situated to teach these skills and the values that go with them? People develop these qualities in their children as a side effect of loving them. What does this have to do with a free society? Contracts and free political institutions, the foundational structures of a free society, require these attributes that only families can inculcate. Without loving families, no society can long govern itself, for the family teaches the skills of individual self-governance. (shrink)

This paper argues that Baruch Spinoza, a 17th-century philosopher committed to the pure immanence of the natural world and the location of human striving firmly within that natural order, provides unlikely resources for addressing our current ecological crisis. My central claim is that Spinoza's views on power grasp the amoral striving characteristic of all natural beings, while simultaneously offering an immanent basis for normative critique. This, I will argue, is especially potent for the work of addressing ecological harm and fashioning (...) ways of human life consistent with planetary survival. Spinoza's central insight—that the conatus, or characteristic striving to persevere in one's being, actually powers... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 3-19 [Access article in PDF] Some Reflections about Community and Survival Rita M. Gross University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Many studies have indicated that at both ends of the life cycle human beings more readily survive and flourish if they experience significant contact with other humans, if they experience nurturing, love, and relationship. Having physical needs met, by itself, is not sufficient. Both infants and (...) old people, as well as people recovering from serious illness, are much more likely to survive if, in addition to having their physical needs met, they experience the emotional well-being brought about by sufficient companionship.Though the issue is less discussed, one wonders why things would be different in those phases of the life cycle in which one is seemingly more independent. How can adults flourish and thrive without sufficient companionship, love, and community? How do adults react to the absence of these important elements of life? I would suggest that relatively helpless infants, invalids, and aged people simply die, but adults have enough power and independence to react to their loneliness and frustration in ways that lash out at the social fabric that fails to love and nurture them sufficiently. In Buddhist psychology an organism's two most frequent reactions to stimulation are grasping at something or aggression toward it. I would suggest that unnurtured adults express their frustration with loneliness and lack of love precisely in those two ways. We have discussed these reactions in our previous sessions on war and on consumerism and its attendant environmental degradation.I agreed very reluctantly to write a paper for this session on community. I am reluctant for two reasons. First, I have already written on community, do not wish to repeat myself, and am not sure I have anything new to say. Thus, I end up with the option of being more personal in my reflections than I usually am. (I know some of you will think that could not be possible, because I always go too far on that score. My apologies.) Second, as a female academic and someone with no family who has been single most of my life, I know only too well the loneliness and frustration that come with living in a society with declining "social capital," to use the phrase so aptly employed by Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone. The topic is simply too painful for me, because I know intimately, by virtue of their absence in my life, the importance of companionship, friendship, and community. I appreciated all the [End Page 3] graphs and documentation in Putnam's book, but despite my many years of intense involvement in the Buddhist world, I already knew in my gut the main thesis of his book. Nevertheless, much of what I will write about in this paper is informed by Putnam's book, as well as by David Korten's The Post-Corporate World and bell hooks's All About Love, both of which I recommend as relevant reading materials as we prepare to discuss the topic of community.By contrast, for our first discussions of community in our 1987 meetings, I was eager to make a contribution. 1 I had discovered something, or so it seemed to me, that was both painful and important. In the early 1980s I began to realize that despite the energy and loyalty I brought to my Buddhist community, I was still lonely and was not experiencing the friendship, community, companionship, and support that seemed to me to be implied in the act of "going for refuge to the sangha. " Instead, people constantly told me that being alone was essential to Buddhist practice—a claim that I would contend has more to do withWestern notions of individualism and self-reliance than with Buddhism. Understandably, these values are especially strong among convert Buddhists, who had to defy convention and assert their individuality in the process of becoming Buddhists. Nevertheless, we were signing on to honor the refuge of sangha, not merely the refuges of Buddha and dharma, a point that is still underappreciated by many... (shrink)

Populations in developed societies are rapidly aging: fertility rates are at all-time lows while life expectancy creeps ever higher. This is triggering a social crisis in which shrinking youth populations are required to pay for the care and retirements of an aging majority. Some people argue that by investing in the right kinds of lifespan extension technology – the kind that extends the healthy and productive phases of life – we can avoid this crisis (thereby securing a ‘longevity dividend’). This (...) chapter argues that this longevity dividend is unlikely to be paid if lifespan extension coincides with rampant technological unemployment. This does not mean that we should not pursue lifespan extension, but it does mean that the argument in its favor needs to rest on other grounds. After articulating these grounds, the chapter proceeds to consider the implications this has for our vision of the extended life, postwork utopia. It argues that this vision may need to be reconceived and suggests that one plausible reconception involves prioritizing the role of games in the well-lived life. (shrink)

The monograph At the Crossroads of Ages: Choosing a Strategy for Building the Future by Belarusian philosopher P.A. Vodopyanov, Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, presents a comprehensive and thought-provoking study focused on identifying and analyzing strategies that contribute to achieving a sustainable and secure future for humanity. In the face of escalating global challenges, such as ecological crises, the depletion of natural resources, and the looming threat of pandemic diseases, the author highlights the critical need (...) to fundamentally rethink and transform the prevailing anthropocentric approach to nature. P.A. Vodopyanov advocates for a profound shift from the consumerist ideology that has long dominated modern society to the cultivation of a new type of mentality and morality, emphasizing the paramount importance of aligning economic activities with the intricate laws governing the evolution of the biosphere. The author delves into the complex problems surrounding the preservation of the biosphere, illuminating its remarkable resilience and the crucial role of maintaining biological diversity in ensuring its stability. Central to P.A. Vodopyanov’s argument is the assertion that understanding and incorporating the intricate mechanisms that underpin the stability of the biosphere into environmental policy is of utmost importance in preventing environmental degradation and maintaining the delicate balance of the biosphere. These mechanisms include the hierarchical organization of living systems, the presence of redundant and backup elements, and the homeostatic processes that enable organisms to adapt to changing environmental conditions. The monograph dedicates significant attention to the analysis of evolutionary processes, exploring the directionality of ontogenetic and phylogenetic development and the profound significance of stability in the evolution of living nature. In his concluding remarks, P.A. Vodopyanov issues a compelling call for a radical restructuring of value orientations in the interaction between society and nature, stressing the vital importance of aligning economic development with the fundamental laws of biosphere evolution, and also proposes a compelling formulation of a moral imperative that demands human actions to be consistent with the laws governing the biosphere’s evolution, ensuring the survival and flourishing of humanity in the face of extreme environmental challenges. (shrink)

This paper discusses Aristotle’s theory of reproduction: specifically, the good that he thinks organisms attain by reproducing. The aim of this paper is to refute the widespread theory that Aristotle believes plants and animals reproduce for the sake of attenuated immortality. This interpretive claim plays an important role in supporting one leading interpretation of Aristotle’s teleology: the theory that Aristotelian nature is teleologically oriented with a view solely to what benefits individual organisms, and what benefits the organism is its (...) class='Hi'>survival and well–being. This paper challenges the theories that Aristotle takes plants and animals to reproduce for the sake of attenuated immortality, and that he believes survival to be the most basic of goods. It is argued that Aristotle believes reproduction is detrimental to organisms’ health and longevity but nonetheless is central to plant and animal flourishing. It is claimed that, to explain the fundamentality of the reproductive soul function, Aristotle appeals to the eternal and divine. (shrink)

A democratic society cannot flourish if its citizens merely pursue their own narrow interests. If it is to do more than survive, at least a substantial proportion of its citizens must fulfill responsibilities that go beyond simply avoiding the violation of others' rights and occasionally casting a vote. The vitality and success of a democracy requires that many citizens — ideally all of them — contribute something to their communities and participate responsibly in the political process. The disposition to do (...) these things is a large part of what constitutes civic virtue. But that virtue encompasses considerably more. My task here is to explore civic virtue. I first outline a conception of virtue in general and, with that set out, pursue the question of what makes a virtue civic. My special concern is to articulate what constitutes civic virtue in relation to an enduring problem for democratic societies and especially for the pluralistic democracies of the Western world: how to determine what constitutes a proper relation between religion and politics and, in the lives of religious citizens having civic virtue, an appropriate balance between religious and secular considerations. (shrink)

In Against Moral Responsibility, Bruce Waller launches a spirited attack on a system that is profoundly entrenched in our society and its institutions, deeply rooted in our emotions, and vigorously defended by philosophers from ancient times to the present. Waller argues that, despite the creative defenses of it by contemporary thinkers, moral responsibility cannot survive in our naturalistic-scientific system. The scientific understanding of human behavior and the causes that shape human character, he contends, leaves no room for moral responsibility. Waller (...) argues that moral responsibility in all its forms--including criminal justice, distributive justice, and all claims of just deserts--is fundamentally unfair and harmful and that its abolition will be liberating and beneficial. What we really want--natural human free will, moral judgments, meaningful human relationships, creative abilities--would survive and flourish without moral responsibility. In the course of his argument, Waller examines the origins of the basic belief in moral responsibility, proposes a naturalistic understanding of free will, offers a detailed argument against moral responsibility and critiques arguments in favor of it, gives a general account of what a world without moral responsibility would look like, and examines the social and psychological aspects of abolishing moral responsibility. Waller not only mounts a vigorous, and philosophically rigorous, attack on the moral responsibility system, but also celebrates the benefits that would result from its total abolition. (shrink)

Some twenty-five centuries after the Buddha started teaching, his message continues to inspire people across the globe, including those living in predominantly secular societies. But what does it mean to adapt religious practices to secular contexts? Stephen Batchelor, an internationally known author and teacher, is committed to a secularized version of the Buddha's teachings. The time has come, he feels, to articulate a coherent ethical, contemplative, and philosophical vision of Buddhism for our age. _After Buddhism, _the culmination of four decades (...) of study and practice in the Tibetan, Zen, and Theravada traditions, is his attempt to set the record straight about who the Buddha was and what he was trying to teach. Combining critical readings of the earliest canonical texts with narrative accounts of five of the Buddha’s inner circle, Batchelor depicts the Buddha as a pragmatic ethicist rather than a dogmatic metaphysician. He envisions Buddhism as a constantly evolving culture of awakening, its long survival due to its capacity to reinvent itself and interact creatively with each society it encounters. This original and provocative book presents a new framework for understanding the remarkable spread of Buddhism in today’s globalized world. It also reminds us of what was so startling about the Buddha’s vision of human flourishing. (shrink)

The notion of mutual aid, which Peter Kropotkin introduced in the 19th century, goes against the logic of competition as a natural condition, and instead shows how mutual aid is a more important factor to consider for the survival and flourishing of a group. The best cooperation strategies allow organisms to adapt to different types of changes in their environment—and we have witnessed a lot of these changes since the start of the COVID‐19 pandemic. This propensity towards cooperation (...) is not a foreign concept, despite how it seems to be overshadowed by individualism in Western societies. These reflections then lead us to believe it is possible to apply the anarchist philosophical principle of mutual aid to our social organizations, rather than giving priority, again and again, to competition and professional hierarchies, especially in healthcare systems, and particularly in hospitals were the majority of nurses work. For us, anarchist philosophical precepts, including but not limited to mutual aid, can be the key to a more adequate functioning of healthcare institutions. Anarchism can help to imagine the first steps needed to take to gradually move away from ideologies that encourage competition, professional hierarchies, and illegitimate authority. In this paper, we will first explore some anarchist philosophical precepts before turning to mutual aid as it is currently conceptualised, then highlight several concrete ways it is visible in nursing, as well as ways it can be applied in hospitals, and healthcare systems. (shrink)

The study of law and information technology comes with an inherent contradiction in that while technology develops rapidly and embraces notions such as internationalization and globalization, traditional law, for the most part, can be slow to react to technological developments and is also predominantly confined to national borders. However, the notion of the rule of law defies the phenomenon of law being bound to national borders and enjoys global recognition. However, a serious threat to the rule of law is looming (...) in the form of an assault by technological developments within artificial intelligence (AI). As large strides are made in the academic discipline of AI, this technology is starting to make its way into digital decision-making systems and is in effect replacing human decision-makers. A prime example of this development is the use of AI to assist judges in making judicial decisions. However, in many circumstances this technology is a ‘black box’ due mainly to its complexity but also because it is protected by law. This lack of transparency and the diminished ability to understand the operation of these systems increasingly being used by the structures of governance is challenging traditional notions underpinning the rule of law. This is especially so in relation to concepts especially associated with the rule of law, such as transparency, fairness and explainability. This article examines the technology of AI in relation to the rule of law, highlighting the rule of law as a mechanism for human flourishing. It investigates the extent to which the rule of law is being diminished as AI is becoming entrenched within society and questions the extent to which it can survive in the technocratic society. (shrink)

Although the world has experienced remarkable progress in health care since the last half of the 20th century, global health inequalities still persist. In some poor countries life expectancy is between 37-40 years lower than in rich countries; furthermore, maternal and infant mortality is high and there is lack of access to basic preventive and life-saving medicines, as well a high prevalence of neglected diseases, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Moreover, globalization has made the world more connected than before such that (...) health challenges today are no longer limited within national or regional boundaries, making all persons equally vulnerable. Because of this, diseases in the most affluent countries are closely connected with diseases in the poorest countries. In this paper, we argue that, because of global health inequalities, in a situation of equal vulnerability, there is need for global solidarity not only as a means of reducing health inequalities, but also as a way of putting up a united force against global health challenges. We argue for an African approach to solidarity in which the humanity of a person is not determined by his/her being human or rational capacity, but by his/her capacity to live a virtuous life. According to this view of solidarity, because no one is self-sufficient, no individual can survive alone. If we are to collectively flourish in a world where no individual, nation or region has all the health resources or protection needed for survival, we must engage in solidarity where we remain compassionate and available to one another at all times. (shrink)

In this paper, I give an account of how our hominin ancestors evolved a conscious ability I call scenario visualization that enabled them to manufacture novel tools so as to survive and flourish in the ever-changing and complex environments in which they lived. I first present the ideas and arguments put forward by evolutionary psychologists that the mind evolved certain mental capacities as adaptive responses to environmental pressures. Specifically, Steven Mithen thinks that the mind has evolved cognitive fluidity, viz., an (...) ability to exchange information flexibly between and among mental modules. Showing the deficiency in Mithen’s view, I then argue that the flexible exchange of information between and among modules together with scenario visualization is what explains the ability to construct the novel tools needed to survive and flourish in the environments in which our hominin ancestors resided. Finally, I trace the development of the multi-purposed javelin, from its meager beginnings as a stick, in order to illustrate scenario visualization in novel tool manufacturing. (shrink)

In England and Wales we have had a National Curriculum since 1988. How can it have survived so long without aims to guide it? This IMPACT pamphlet argues that curriculum planning should begin not with a boxed set of academic subjects of a familiar sort, but with wider considerations of what schools should be for. We first work out a defensible set of wider aims backed by a well-argued rationale. From these we develop sub-aims constituting an aims-based curriculum. Further detail (...) is provided here on one of the most central educational aims, to do with equipping each child to live a flourishing personal and civic life. [A later, more detailed account of an aims-based curriculum is available in Reiss, M and White J <An Aims-based Curriculum: the significance of human flourishing for schools> Institute of Education Press 2013]. (shrink)

The Philosophical Society of Edinburgh which had flourished for a few years after 1738 was as good as dead in 1748. Lord Morton, its President, now lived most of the time in London whence he wrote to Sir John Clerk in 1747 that he regarded the Society as ‘annihilated’, apparently thinking that the death of Colin MacLaurin in 1746 and the temporary retirement to the countryside of its other Secretary, Andrew Plummer, had put an end to it. Sir John had (...) hoped to revive it through association with the Royal Society of London, but Morton did not encourage him in this scheme, about which he had ‘great doubts’. The Society needed a mathematician and an experimenter who could carry on the consulting work which MacLaurin had done, but Morton glumly wondered if ‘the new professor of Mathematics [Matthew Stewart] will be as zealous as MacLaurin had been.’ The Society's other officers, Dr John Clerk and Alexander Lind, are not known to have tried to revive the Society. Perhaps they were discouraged by the fact that ten of the members of the Society were dead, and that six more had left the kingdom. At least three others were likely to have been habitually absent from meetings because they lived some distance from Edinburgh. Of the remaining forty-five known members in 1748, nine were over sixty-one years of age with four being between seventy-one and seventy-six. In 1737 the average age of thirty-eight of the founders had been 46.0, but by 1748 it had risen to 53.9 for the thirty-three men for whom it can be calculated. Disruption, death, and age had diminished enthusiasm for the Society and jeopardized its survival. Only two meetings are known to have been held in 1746. Sir John's letter to Morton about affiliation with the Royal Society is the only clear sign of life in 1747. We may well ask why this floundering body survived, to whom and to what it owed its revival? The answers to these questions tell us something about the intellectual needs and interests of the Edinburgh intelligentsia of the mid-eighteenth century. (shrink)

Humanity stands at a precipice. -/- Our species could survive for millions of generations — enough time to end disease, poverty, and injustice; to reach new heights of flourishing. But this vast future is at risk. With the advent of nuclear weapons, humanity entered a new age, gaining the power to destroy ourselves, without the wisdom to ensure we won’t. Since then, these dangers have only multiplied, from climate change to engineered pandemics and unaligned artificial intelligence. If we do (...) not act fast to reach a place of safety, it may soon be too late. -/- The Precipice explores the science behind the risks we face. It puts them in the context of the greater story of humanity: showing how ending these risks is among the most pressing moral issues of our time. And it points the way forward, to the actions and strategies we can take today to safeguard humanity’s future. (shrink)

Many Japanese American Buddhist families in the San Jose, California area observe a series of late life celebrations in honor of their elders. The sixty-first, the seven-tieth, the seventy-seventh, and eighty-eighth birthdays are celebrated with special flourish. These celebrations mark milestones in life and underscore the respect and gratitude elders are accorded by the family and community. At these gatherings the talk among family and guests invariably turns to the life of the elder and they wonder how the elder was (...) able to survive and even flourish amid the hard- ships and setbacks during his or her long life. Indeed, long-lived elders do seem to have a presence of being that can only come from many years of living. The idea of kyogai, “one's station in life,” is especially revered in the elder. Ordinarily, kyogai refers to one's place in society. Kyogai also suggests the spiritual maturity of being able to live with equanimity and ease in a transient and interdependent world. For Shiryu Morita, a leading Japanese sho-artist or calligrapher and student of Buddhist thought and practice, kyogai is both a spiritual and an aesthetic quality. I reflect on Morita's notion of kyogai within the context of the Buddha's attitude toward aging and elders. I offer my reflections as a Buddholo- gist interested in elder ethics and as a Buddhist priest concerned with caring for and empowering elders. I begin with a description of the Buddha's attitude toward aging and elders outlined in the Sutta-Nipata, an early Buddhist document. The “Salla Sutta” in the Sutta-Nipata outlines the Buddha's attitude toward old age, elders and elder tasks. Old age is linked to the question of death and the unease of living in a transient world, in the passages cited below.1. (shrink)

In recent years the science-and-religion/spirituality/theology dialogue has flourished, but the impact on the minds of the general public, on society as a whole, has been less impressive. Also, religious believers and outspoken atheists face each other without progressing toward a common understanding. The view taken here is that achieving a more marked impact of the dialogue would be beneficial for a peaceful survival of humanity. I aim to argue the why and how of that task by analyzing three possible (...) purposes of the dialogue and their logical interdependence, suggest conceivable improvements of the quality and extent of the current efforts toward a negotiated action plan, and consider an enlargement of the circle of the actors involved. The dialogue that has been carried on between science and religion/spirituality/theology could be expanded and usefully applied to some major problems in the present world. (shrink)

It seems that a Greek romance named Chaereas and Callirhoe—if it was in fact written about A.D. 50—might be the oldest extant romantic novel.1 Chaucer's Troilus, Chretien's Erec, Apuleius' Metamorphoses, and for all l know Homer's Odyssey have already blushed under this dubious accolade; and I do not mean to celebrate an old Greek book by thrusting an English genre-label upon it. But nothing quite like Callirhoe survives from an earlier period of western literature; and following our inclination to comprehend (...) such a phenomenon by fitting it into familiar categories we would call it a Greek romance because it is written in Greek, a novel because it is an extensive prose fiction of ordinary moral life that conforms to a recognizable canon of realism, and a romance because its admirable protagonists suffer the most serious threats to their lives and values but survive them all. Its author, a certain Chariton of Aphrodisia, a small city in the province of Caria in Asia Minor, places his book about Callirhoe in the Hellenistic genre of the erotikon pathematon—a story of erotic suffering. This is an accurate label and perhaps a bold one, as erotic pathemata were thought to be more suitable for epic or elegiac verse than for prose. In any case, I am not here concerned to argue that Callirhoe is the precursor of such entities as the novel, nor to speculate about its cultural origins, nor to point out its obvious likenesses to later narratives. I do want to discuss the habits of narrative art Chariton exploits in his book, and to explore a few of the ways he makes erotic suffering pleasurable for his readers—us, and the leisured, literate members of the bourgeois households that had for centuries flourished in the great Hellenic cities of the eastern Mediterranean basin. · 1. I accept the date accepted by Ben E. Perry, The Ancient Romances , p. 350. The standard edition is W.E. Blake's , whose translation I use throughout. Chariton's work did not see print until 1750, so it did not enjoy the vogue enjoyed by other Greek romances in the Renaissance. Arthur Heiserman is the author of several articles, short stories, and Skelton and Satire. 'Aphrodisian Chastity" will appear as a chapter in his forthcoming book, Romance in Antiquity: Essays and Discussions about the Beginnings of Prose Fiction in the West. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the landscape of working conditions world-wide, fast tracking the reality of the digital-driven workplace. Concepts such as remote working, working-from-home and hybrid working models are now considered as the “new normal.” Employes are expected to advance, flourish and survive in this digitally connected landscape. Different age and generational groups may experience this new organizational landscape differently and may expect different organizational outcomes in exchange for their inputs. Accordingly, the study investigated differences regarding the value-oriented psychological (...) contract expectations of employes from different generational groups. An ANOVA test for significant mean differences and a post hoc test for multiple comparisons were conducted on a sample of employes in the services industry in Southern Africa and other European countries. The observed generational cohort differences regarding value-orientated psychological contract expectations for job characteristics and work-life balance could be utilized to develop interventions and strategies to promote retention of employes in the post-pandemic digital-orientated workplace. (shrink)

Based on a condensed historical overview of management as an artifact, the article argues that management is still suffused by an implicit paradigm of value extraction that is ideologically and culturally tinted and that we need to find a new foothold in theory and practice, a more universally valid approach with an encompassing awareness of societal well-being and long-term impact. The radically new approach proposed is based on free energy minimization, a concept from computational neuroscience, as a universally valid principle (...) derived from the biological imperative to survive that holds true for individuals and social systems alike. In order to reduce harmful free energy from entropy and stochastic adversity, an amplified way of perceiving and being aware of reality is required that needs to be cultivated. This is achieved through the guiding principle of Minding, an ongoing process of inner and outer awareness and caring consideration of oneself, others and the world around us, routed in a comprehensive consciousness including awareness of Body sensations, Emotions, Thoughts and Action impulses (BETA). This comprehensive, strategic awareness is proposed as a unifying, contextual framework for individual and collective well-being rather than a categorical imperative, and therefore may, when and where indispensable, include value extraction and value maximization if required for the overall objective of shared, long-term flourishing. The article also presents examples of implementation of the proposed approach for both individuals and organizations and briefly introduces MBSAT-Mindfulness-based Strategic Awareness Training, a training protocol designed specifically to enhance the competence of Minding, the guiding principle. (shrink)

The 2011 tsunami had a devastating effect on the east coast of Japan. Particularly poignant were the century-old markers on hillsides warning against building anywhere below. Nevertheless, such wisdom from traditional knowledge was disregarded because of the perceived invulnerability of the modern. This paper attempts to garner such traditional empirical knowledge regarding the siting of towns and cities by considering the Chinese art/science of fengshui or dili, the original purpose of which was to site human habitation in the most favourable (...) places for long term survival. This knowledge is then used to consider the placement of cities created by modernity, those founded on and flourishing through the advent of globalisation, such as Hong Kong, Shanghai, St Petersburg, and Sydney. (shrink)

Journal of Human Values, Volume 28, Issue 1, Page 44-56, January 2022. The children of today inhabit the planet when CO2 levels have exceeded 400 parts per million. Crucial planetary boundaries are breached, and the climate crisis has manifested itself menacingly along with several accompanying civilizational crises be it health, socio-economic, political or humanitarian. It is, according to us, the crisis of Industrialism. At this crucial juncture of converging planet-scale disasters where the very survival of humanity is at severe (...) risk, we explore fresh insights into alternative imaginations that can foster a new world where we not just survive but flourish.One such alternative imagination of a good society is that by Gandhi. A century ago, he outlined this vision as Swaraj and, over the years, fleshed out this vision. It is for this Swaraj that in 1937, Gandhi, conceptualizing his educational ideas, initiated a programme known as Nai Talim. Swaraj was diametrically opposite to Industrialism. And, therefore, Nai Talim was in sharp contrast to the state-approved school education that promoted Industrialism.In this article, we give a brief outline of Swaraj; highlight the interconnections between Swaraj and Nai Talim; and expand on ways in which one can reimagine Gandhi’s Nai Talim for contemporary times. We also argue that such an imagination of reinvented Nai Talim is possible today in Indigenous communities, where there is a spirited resistance to industrialism. And as an example, we look at the ongoing experiment of the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico. (shrink)

This article presents some of the personal observations of a veteran Israeli scholar whose long-years' encounters with the 'real' as well as the 'imagined' eastern Europe have shaped his historical research. As an Israeli-born historian of Polish-Ukrainian origin, he claims to share an ambivalent attitude towards his countries of origin with other fellow- historians. Jewish emigrants from eastern Europe have been until very late in the modern era members of an old ethno-religious group. One ethnos out of many in a (...) diverse multi-ethnic environment, whose demographic core survived and flourished for centuries in the old places. Several decades of social, economic, and political upheavals exposed the Jewish population to drastic changes. These changes lead several intellectuals who left their home countries to look back at what have happened as both involved actors, and distant observers. Israeli historians of east European origin found themselves confronted with a crucial question: in what way the past in the Old Country connected to the history of Israel. Following some 40 years of academic career in the field of eastern European Jewish history, it is claimed that until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the image of eastern Europe that runs through the Israeli historical research has been shaped in large part by members of the different generations of emigrants, outside of eastern Europe. The renewed direct contact after 1989 caused a dramatic change: within a few years, Israeli historians were examining archives and libraries throughout eastern Europe. After seven decades of isolation between the Israeli historian and the primary sources necessary to his/her research in the archives, the new wave of documents was celebrated in Israeli Universities. Yet far more influential was the revolution prompted in 1989 on the historical perspective from which Israeli historians could now examine the Jewish past. What happened in 1989 has seemed, to some Israeli historians, a breaking point marking the end of the eastern European period in the course of Jewish history. The article concludes with some thoughts on a new historical perspective. A one that fits a time when hundreds of thousands of immigrants from what was the largest eastern-European Jewish collective in the world inhabit a remote Middle Eastern nation-state. (shrink)

David Thomasma called for the development of a medical ethics based squarely on the philosophy of medicine. He recognized, however, that widespread anti-essentialism presented a significant barrier to such an approach. The aim of this article is to introduce a theory that challenges these anti-essentialist objections. The notion of natural kinds presents a modest form of essentialism that can serve as the basis for a foundationalist philosophy of medicine. The notion of a natural kind is neither static nor reductionistic. Disease (...) can be understood as making necessary reference to living natural kinds without invoking the claim that diseases themselves are natural kinds. The idea that natural kinds have a natural disposition to flourish as the kinds of things that they are provides a telos to which to tether the notion of disease – an objective telos that is broader than mere survival and narrower than subjective choice. It is argued that while nosology is descriptive and may have therapeutic implications, disease classification is fundamentally explanatory. Sickness and illness, while referring to the same state of affairs, can be distinguished from disease phenomenologically. Scientific and diagnostic fallibility in making judgments about diseases do not diminish the objectivity of this notion of disease. Diseases are things, not kinds. Injury is a concept parallel to disease that also makes necessary reference to living natural kinds. These ideas provide a new possibility for the development of a philosophy of medicine with implications for medical ethics. (shrink)

Countering hegemonic understandings of rage as a deleterious emotion, this article examines rage across specific sites of trans cultural production—the prison letters of CeCe McDonald and the durational performance art of Cassils—in order to argue that it is integral to trans survival and flourishing. Theorizing rage as a justified response to unlivable circumstances, a response that plays a key role in enabling trans subjects to detach from toxic relational dynamics in order to transition toward other forms of gendered (...) subjectivity and intimate communality, I develop an account of what I call an “infrapolitical ethics of care” that indexes a web of communal practices that empathetically witness and amplify rage, as well as support subjects during and after moments of grappling with overwhelming negative affect. I draw on the work of trans, queer, and feminist theorists who have theorized the productivities of so‐called “negative” affects, particularly Sara Ahmed's work on willfulness and killing joy, María Lugones's writing on anger, Judith Butler's Spinozan reassessment of the vexed relations between self‐preservation and self‐destruction, and the rich account of trans rage provided by Susan Stryker. (shrink)

Liberal or democratic virtue theories have successfully spread the idea that liberal democracies cannot flourish unless their citizens have certain qualities of mind and character. Such theories cannot agree, however, on what those qualities are. This article attempts to explain and solve this problem. It proposes distinguishing between core virtues, necessary for the actual survival of liberal democracies, and ideal virtues, which promote "progress" according to a given conception of what liberal democracies ought to be about and which values (...) they should most embody. Beyond this, it portrays the relevant virtues as pluralistic (not everyone need have the same ones) and episodic (different virtues are relevant at different times and under different circumstances). It then applies this framework to some key issues of political action and motivation: acts of loyalty and dissent express different aspects of a common response to moral pluralism, and the virtues of citizens differ fundamentally in origin and nature from those of professional politicians. Finally, it suggests more briefly that questions of civil religion, patriotic mobilization in times of war, civic courage, and selfish versus altruistic motives for public action can profit from being seen in this new way. (shrink)

Two profound atrocities in the history of Western culture form the subject of this moving philosophical exploration: American Slavery and the Holocaust. An African American and a Jew, Laurence Mordekhai Thomas denounces efforts to place the suffering of one group above the other. Rather, he pronounces these two defining historical experiences as profoundly evil in radically different ways and points to their logically incompatible aims. The author begins with a discussion of the nature of evil, exploring the fragility of human (...) beings and the phenomena of compartmentalizing, unquestioning obedience to authority, and moral drift. Citing compelling examples from history and contemporary life, he characterizes evil acts in terms of moral agency, magnitude, and intent. With moving testimony, Thomas depicts the moral pain of African Americans and Jews during their ordeals and describes how their past as victims has affected their future. Without invidious comparison, he distinguishes between extermination and domination, death and natal alienation, physical and mental cruelty, and between being viewed as irredeemable evil and as a moral simpleton. Thomas also considers the role of blacks and Jews in the Christian narrative. _In Vessels of Evil_, Thomas also considers the ways Jews and blacks have gone on to survive. He analyzes the relative flourishing of Jews and the languishing of blacks in this country and examines the implications of their dissimilar tragedies on any future relationship between these two minorities. (shrink)

It is increasingly clear that virtue ethics has an important role to play in environmental ethics. However, virtue ethics—which has always been characterized by a degree of ambiguity—is faced with substantial challenges in the contemporary “postmodern” cultural milieu. Among these challenges is the lure of relativism. Most virtue ethics depend upon some view of the good life; however, today there is no unambiguous, easily agreed-upon account of the good life. Rather, we are presented with a bewildering variety of conflicting accounts (...) of the good life. Narrative—in particular Paul Ricoeur’s account of narrative identity—has much to contribute to virtue ethics, including resources that can help us respond to the chal­lenges presented by the postmodern context. Narrative constitutes an “ethical laboratory” by providing us with an “as if” experience through which we can try out various ethical alternatives. Two sorts of environmental narratives, working in concert, further help to limit relativist objections: (1) narratives of environmental survival (which identify dispositions, such as simplicity, necessary for our long-term survival) and (2) narratives of environmental flourishing (which make a virtue of necessity by pointing out those dispositions necessary for our survival often contribute to our flourishing beyond mere survival). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Environmental Atrocities and Non-Sentient LifeClaudia Card (bio)Environmental Atrocities and Non-Sentient Life1. To Whom (or to What) Can Evils Be Done?Mention of environmental atrocities calls to mind such catastrophes as major oil spills, which ruin the fishing (not to mention the fish) for extended periods. Such carelessness is not simply a disaster to human projects. It destroys or endangers species and ecosystems as well as individual organisms, plant and animal. (...) It pollutes waters that normally sustain life and interferes with the healthy development of new biotic communities. Not all environmental catastrophes result from of failures of attention. Massive deforestation with agent orange by U.S. armed forces during the war in Viet Nam was no accident.If culpably produced, such catastrophes are moral atrocities—major evils—at least to humans and other animals who suffer horribly or die miserable deaths. Intuitively, I lean toward the even stronger judgment that such culpable omissions and deeds are atrocities also in the sense of evils to a great many kinds of life, including non-sentient nature—plants, [End Page 23] species, biotic communities, and ecosystems. But can that intuition be sustained philosophically?To do so may require showing not only that non-sentient lives suffer but also that they create moral constraints. Some argue, using Kenneth Goodpaster's concept "moral considerability" (what a being has if it should receive direct moral consideration), that even non-sentient beings can constrain us morally in virtue of their having interests that give rise to rights or define a good, a wellbeing, that can be harmed.1 "Interests" here cannot refer, of course, to what the organism cares about. They refer, rather, to what it needs in order to survive, do well, even flourish; what is in the organism's interests is what contributes to its good or wellbeing.Yet thinking about evil has led me to distinguish questions of harm from questions of wrong, that is, of moral constraint. It is not always wrong to cause even extreme harm. In this essay I support the more modest thesis that the idea of "intolerable harm" is no barrier to the idea that environmental atrocities can be evils even to non-sentient life. The question remains whether there are other barriers. Evildoers not only cause intolerable harm but are culpably wrong to do it. To whom must that wrong be done? In concluding I turn briefly to that issue, raising more questions than I can currently answer. Some may be disappointed. Yet the limits of my ambitions in this essay do not make them trivial. For any plausible account of environmental atrocities in a sense that includes evil to non-sentient beings must be able to make sense of the idea of doing such entities intolerable harm and should also indicate something of the range of non-sentient beings so vulnerable and in what ways they are vulnerable. These are my present objectives.In my book The Atrocity Paradigm I develop the theory that evils are reasonably foreseeable intolerable harms produced (or supported, aggravated, maintained, and so on) by culpable wrongdoing.2 Taking atrocities, such as genocide, slavery, and saturation bombings of cities, as paradigm evils, I refer to this view as "the atrocity theory" of evils. It both draws on and mediates between stoic and utilitarian approaches to evil. On my theory, evils have two irreducibly distinct components, wrongdoing and harm, linked by causality. Evil is popularly equated with wickedness or moral turpitude. But on the atrocity theory, the depth of harm to victims, rather than perpetrators' motives, is usually what distinguishes evils from other wrongs.The atrocity theory not only focuses attention more on harm than on [End Page 24] wrongdoing but also directs attention to the grossest harms. Some of the worst damage culpably inflicted by human agents has been to the natural environment. Can such damage be downright evil? In my book I indicated that the atrocity theory was intended to make sense of evils done "to many living beings, not just people or even just sentient beings,"3 although I did not defend that idea or work out the details. The present essay attempts a working out of... (shrink)

This article aims to present the philosophical perspective upon the birth of the idea of the individual and the consequences of the discovery of the self-image on the techniques of image reproduction from the Renaissance to the present day. The process of projecting the self-image into the public space acquires a special importance with the elaboration of the portrait technique in the Italian painting of the 15th century. Through Leonardo da Vinci's paintings, this technique of reproducing self-image reaches a certain (...) perfection. Following the evolution of this kind of projections and reproductions of the self-image, it is found that there is an obvious tendency by which the individual tends to free himself from certain patterns, or rather canons, which a certain epoch imposes. This process manifested in the visual arts corresponds to a new philosophical perception of man opened by the works of Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. The assertion of a new type of dignity, correlated with the idea of the microcosm, of the Renaissance man will lead to an affirmation of his own personality and especially to an increase of the will to power reflected more and more in the works of art. With the resurgence of the Italian renaissance, artists and philosophers experienced a decline, but found a favorable space for their development at the court of Elizabeth I, Queen of England. The art of portraiture, but also the philosophy of renaissance survives and is even more flourishing at the court of this queen. But the most important moment of this renaissance is marked by Dutch art after its liberation from Spanish rule. From this moment on, the emancipation of the individual will occur on an unimaginable scale until then. (shrink)

The human microbiome is the bacteria, viruses, and fungi that cover our skin, line our intestines, and flourish in our body cavities. Work on the human microbiome is new, but it is quickly becoming a leading area of biomedical research. What scientists are learning about humans and our microbiomes could change medical practice by introducing new treatment modalities. This new knowledge redefines us as superorganisms comprised of the human body and the collection of microbes that inhabit it and reveals how (...) much we are a part of our environment. The understanding that microbes are not only beneficial but sometimes necessary for survival recasts our interaction with microbes from adversarial to neighborly. This volume explores some of the science that makes human microbiome research possible. It then considers ethical, legal, and social concerns raised by microbiome research. Chapters explore issues related to personal identity, property rights, and privacy. The authors reflect on how human microbiome research challenges reigning views on public health and research ethics. They also address the need for thoughtful policies and procedures to guide the use of the biobanked human samples required for advancing this new domain of research. In the course of these explorations, they introduce examples from the history of biomedical science and recent legal cases that shed light on the issues and inform the policy recommendations they offer at the end of each topic's discussion.This volume is the product of an NIH Human Microbiome Project grant. It represents three years of conversations focused on consensus formation by the twenty-seven members of the interdisciplinary Microbiome Working Group. (shrink)

Which and how much of our current drives –individually and as a global community– are driven by ancestral, inherited traits or imprinted on our animal condition? An attempt to approximate this intriguing query is explored here. It pertains to our identity, social constructions, and our ecological interaction. The origin of our species has its roots in ancestral habits, behaviors and a survival drive, transformed from changing environmental conditions. We were not born in a mother-of-pearl cradle nor were protected by (...) magical agents. We grew on the thread of time within the complex nature of bio-ecological interactions. They carved our identity, our genetic expression and the possible origin of our beliefs, resulting in an arch of various behaviors and cultural phenotypes. The biological nature of our construction dragged through millennia through species trials with variable rates of survival times provided traces of inconstant and multiple evolutive chains. Our modern cultural contexts –norms, priorities, values– appear as newly born. Yet, socio-cultural ecology upon which our brain organization and behavioral constructs derive include shared basic behavioral drives with non-human primates. The emergence of humans with a sophisticated language allowed the development of complex virtual constructs based on symbolism and the instruments of culture. This has enhanced cognitive capacity and emotional interaction supported by processes anchored in neural networks distributed within cortical and subcortical levels. Basic, essential neural connectivities were preserved during the evolutionary development of the species. The biological matrix and inheritance are usually segregated from the social and cultural construction. Sophistication of our cultural development tends to set up a divisive fault from primitive foundations of non-human animal behavior (survival, territory, reproduction, prevalence, access to nutrients). These are basic templates and underlie essential individual and group basic drives, and cultural constructs. Humans have not ceased from being territorial (whether applied to virtual or material dimensions). Various forms of social inequities have been expressed in our time and through human history. On evolutive terms, the notion of individual social status within the social structure of a gregarious community generated the probability of an individual ascending or descending that hierarchy. Thus, becoming a potential figure of leadership, or the subordinate or the marginalized. Is there an evolutive antecedent for human social inequities? How do we construct a different future? Post-industrial societies became increasingly dependent on material consumerism and technological cultures, to the point of embraining them; conceptually becoming technological hybrids. Are these a developmental must, or an uncontrolled spin-off of human inventiveness affecting our future? Construction of supernatural agents played a significant role in the socialization/domestication processes. Agents’ intentionality flourished through altered states of conscience, or under fear of natural phenomena attributed to supposed inhabitants of the Natural Kingdom or virtual beings. This imaginary universe, reinforced by ritual behaviors, contributed to control personal/collective distress of various possible origins and conditioned our degrees of emotional and cognitive freedom. (shrink)

And at the End They Took Care of the Science Museum… This is the story of history of science, and why in the twenty‐first century it ended up curating the legacy of science, as we knew it. Once upon a time, history of science lived quietly and studious next to the Natural and the Medical Sciences and their wax models, their herbaria, the geological collections, and all the scientific instruments that once had been modern. Suddenly, around 1980, new interests in (...) Philosophy, Sociology and Cultural Studies arose. Provocative research questions as for example the history of rationality, the history of the subaltern technicians in the laboratory, and the ontology and epistemology of the hybrids between nature and culture inspired the intellectual discussions. Although the field flourished, received an abundance of funding and could even build up its own research institutes, after the Millennium, its very existence became gradually jeopardized. Science as we knew it since the Enlightenment lost grounds. The New Economy and not the state anymore provided the funding for research. History of science didn't succeed to survive as expert for data, blind spots, fakes, misinformation, lies, conspiracy theories, and historical thinking in times of scientific accelerations. It began with the loss of reputation, followed by the loss of the job. At the end, history of science lived, not unhappily, ever after as curators of the legacy of Science as we knew it. (shrink)

n ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ Anscombe argues that the moral ‘ought’ should be abandoned as the senseless survivor from a defunct conceptual scheme. I argue 1) That even if the moral ‘ought’ derives its meaning from a Divine Law conception of ethics it does not follow that it cannot sensibly survive the Death of God. 2) That anyway Anscombe is mistaken since ancestors of the emphatic moral ‘ought’ predate the system of Christian Divine Law from which the moral ‘ought’ supposedly derives (...) its meaning (Cicero in particular subscribed to something like the modern conception of a duty which seems to be a generalization of the duties attendant on particular roles). 3) That if the moral ‘ought’ derived its meaning from embodying Gods’ commands then the two should have been equated in the minds of true believers. This was not the case. 4) That Anscombe is absurdly wrong in supposing that Protestant moralists had abandoned a Divine Law conception of ethics. 5) That the virtue-based ought-free Aristotelian alternative suggested by Anscombe is unworkable since the basic idea is that it pays in terms of human flourishing to be good (which means inter alia being just). Since it is pretty obvious that there are plenty of good people who don’t flourish and flourishing people who are not good, the neo-Aristotelian program has gradually undergone a degenerating problem-shift: either the pay-off is deferred to the hereafter or being good is incorporated into the pay-off. 6) That there is a certain amount of sophistry in selling the neo-Aristotelian virtues. Since the unjust person is simply somebody who is NOT systematically just, you cannot prove that it pays to be just by arguing that it is a mistake to be systematically UNjust. So too for many of the other virtues. (shrink)

M.H.L. is a theatrical production dedicated to the first Slovak professional female director Magda Husáková-Lokvencová, which combines documentary theatre and performance. Sláva Daubnerová wrote the script and scene concept and is director and plays the sole character in the play. She portrays the private and professional life of M.H.L. in a chronologically sequenced and mosaic-like fashion. M.H.L. is portrayed as an educated, broad-minded and intelligent woman who knows her own mind. She graduated in law and then took up theatre direction. (...) Her private and professional life represented a series of ups and downs. Initially happy at the side of her husband, Gustáv Husák—successful early on as a politician, and flourishing in the theatre, she later had to struggle to survive and make a comeback to the theatre. Performer Daubnerová, enhanced the performance by using video art and sound design as important elements in the production. (shrink)

Epictetus (pronounced Epic-TEE-tus) was an exponent of Stoicism who flourished in the early second century C.E. about four hundred years after the Stoic school of Zeno of Citium was established in Athens. He lived and worked, first as a student in Rome, and then as a teacher with his own school in Nicopolis in Greece. Our knowledge of his philosophy and his method as a teacher comes to us via two works composed by his student Arrian, the Discourses and the (...) Handbook. Although Epictetus based his teaching on the works of the early Stoics (none of which survives) which dealt with the three branches of Stoic thought, logic, physics and ethics, the Discourses and the Handbook concentrate almost exclusively on ethics. The role of the Stoic teacher was to encourage his students to live the philosophic life, whose end was eudaimonia (‘happiness’ or ‘flourishing’), to be secured by living the life of reason, which – for Stoics – meant living virtuously and living ‘according to nature’. The eudaimonia (‘happiness’) of those who attain this ideal consists of ataraxia (imperturbability), apatheia (freedom from passion), eupatheiai (‘good feelings’), and an awareness of, and capacity to attain, what counts as living as a rational being should. The key to transforming oneself into the Stoic sophos (wise person) is to learn what is ‘in one’s power’, and this is ‘the correct use of impressions’ (phantasiai), which in outline involves not judging as good or bad anything that appears to one. For the only thing that is good is acting virtuously (that is, motivated by virtue), and the only thing that is bad is the opposite, acting viciously (that is, motivated by vice). Someone who seeks to make progress as a Stoic (a prokoptôn) understands that their power of rationality is a fragment of God whose material body – a sort of rarefied fiery air – blends with the whole of creation, intelligently forming and directing undifferentiated matter to make the world as we experience it. The task of the prokoptôn, therefore, is to ‘live according to nature’, which means (a) pursuing a course through life intelligently responding to one’s own needs and duties as a sociable human being, but also (b) wholly accepting one’s fate and the fate of the world as coming directly from the divine intelligence which makes the world the best that is possible. (shrink)

Spinoza's concept of ?power? finds expression in every major topic of which he treats. Some of the ways to the understanding of that concept are: the metaphysical, the genetic, and the political. I. Metaphysically, Spinoza distinguishes power from force or energy and defines it as the ability of a system to survive. The most interesting application of this definition is to that system, man, for whom survival means realization of his essence, achievement of understanding. II. The depth and generality (...) of Spinoza's concept of power can be appreciated more clearly if we refer to its sources in (1) the classical analysis of ?virtue? beginning with Plato, (2) the traditional theological ponderings on the nature of God, and (3) the method and presuppositions of physical science. III. At the metaphysical level of analysis, power and liberty are shown to be all but synonymous. Spinoza's analysis of political power undermines previous authoritarian, hierarchical, and elitist theories of government and ends with a proof that both individual and social power flourish best under democratic government. (shrink)

Otto Neurath experienced an adventurous as well as dangerous life. Already in his childhood, he was fascinated by his father’s huge library. He was especially impressed by images and illustrations since Ancient times and the French Encyclopédie, which inspired his lifelong dealing with picture language. This became manifest with the founding of his “Social and Economic Museum of Vienna” and the invention of his “Vienna Method of Pictorial Language,” later on renamed ISOTYPE. In the flourishing period of “Red Vienna” (...) he acquired a lot of books in several languages covering his research fields and practical activities as a social reformer, teacher and museologist, philosopher, sociologist and historian of science. With his forced migrations from Vienna and The Hague, this most valuable collection of books and brochures was partly destroyed, dispersed, and aryanized, when Austro-Fascism came into power in Austria and Hitler’s troops invaded into the Netherlands. Luckily, Otto Neurath and some members of his family and collaborators could survive and save parts of this unique collection of books which mirrors the education and intellectual background of the polymath Neurath in Dutch and British exile. Here, he again bought and published books continuing his activities for the Vienna Circle of Logical Empiricism as well as the Unity of Science and the Isotype movements covering some 3000 books in 1945. Three typical case studies from the Neurath library are provided covering economics, philosophy, and literature: Neurath’s annotations in books of Friedrich A. von Hayek, Karl Popper, and the writer Stefan Zweig. (shrink)