The first part of the paper is mainly descriptive. Starting from a short historical sketch of the European construction process, from the initial Treaty of Rome to the actual Treaty of the European Union, the changing trade-offs between the environmental and the economic domain will be overviewed. We will focus on a pragmatic examination of the texts, in their dynamic historical evolution.The second part is evaluative. Examining the fifth Environmental Action Programme more in detail, we will try to determine for (...) which environmental ethics the E.U. stands, as confronted with the alternative paradigm defended by environmentalists and the Green Group in the European Parliament. Is the environmental issue a unifying or a dividing factor in the contrasting cultural landscape of the Old Continent? I think probably Cortona is an excellent place to ask such a speculative question, because we are not far away from Assisi, where a successful Interfaith Meeting on the Environment was organised by the W.W.F. in 1986. (shrink)

Promoting the ethical formation of engineering students through the cultivation of their discipline-specific knowledge, sensitivity, imagination, and reasoning skills has become a goal for many engineering education programs throughout the United States. However, there is neither a consensus throughout the engineering education community regarding which strategies are most effective towards which ends, nor which ends are most important. This study provides an overview of engineering ethics interventions within the U.S. through the systematic analysis of articles that featured ethical interventions in (...) engineering, published in select peer-reviewed journals, and published between 2000 and 2015. As a core criterion, each journal article reviewed must have provided an overview of the course as well as how the authors evaluated course-learning goals. In sum, 26 articles were analyzed with a coding scheme that included 56 binary items. The results indicate that the most common methods for integrating ethics into engineering involved exposing students to codes/standards, utilizing case studies, and discussion activities. Nearly half of the articles had students engage with ethical heuristics or philosophical ethics. Following the presentation of the results, this study describes in detail four articles to highlight less common but intriguing pedagogical methods and evaluation techniques. The findings indicate that there is limited empirical work on ethics education within engineering across the United States. Furthermore, due to the large variation in goals, approaches, and evaluation methods described across interventions, this study does not detail “best” practices for integrating ethics into engineering. The science and engineering education community should continue exploring the relative merits of different approaches to ethics education in engineering. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article we call for a paradigm change in relation to the way we tend to look at how markets and morals are entwined in the writings of Jonathan Swift (1667–1745). We argue that it would be wrong to apply contemporary notions of economics retrospectively and somewhat a-historically to a thinker of an axial time in which economics as a separate sphere did not exist, and morals and markets and the way they relate to each other were about (...) to be reconceptualised. We argue that it is thus no accident that Scottish Enlightenment thinkers such as David Hume and Adam Smith took to Swift. They admired more than the expressive or rhetorical skills in Swift; in the first instance, they read Swift as somebody who managed to express moral sentiments (and even outrage) in an appealing, that is mostly satirical way, thereby not only criticizing the cruel conditions in Ireland at the time but also identifying the gap between rhetoric and reality and thus taking issue with the hypocrisy and double standards of the time. We will use two famous examples of Swift's work to illustrate our case, A Modest Proposal (1729) and Directions to Servants (1745). (shrink)

ABSTRACTPeople can be moved and overwhelmed, a phenomenon typically accompanied by goose-bumps and tears. We argue that these feelings of being moved are not limited to situations that are appraise...

For decades now, researchers in the social sciences and humanities have been expressing a deep dissatisfaction with the process of research-ethics review in academia. Continuing the ongoing critique of ethics review begun in Will C. van den Hoonard's Walking the Tightrope and The Seduction of Ethics, The Ethics Rupture offers both an account of the system's failings and a series of proposals on how to ensure that social research is ethical, rather than merely compliant with institutional requirements. Containing twenty-five essays (...) written by leading experts from around the world in various disciplines, The Ethics Rupture is a landmark study of the problems caused by our current research-ethics system and the ways in which scholars are seeking solutions. (shrink)

Sex differences in physical and indirect aggression have been found in many societies but, to our knowledge, have not been studied in a population of hunter-gatherers. Among Aka foragers of the Central African Republic we tested whether males physically aggressed more than females, and whether females indirectly aggressed more than males, as has been seen in other societies. We also tested predictions of an evolutionary theory of physical strength, anger, and physical aggression. We found a large male bias in physical (...) aggression. Controlling for anger, we found an adult female bias in indirect aggression. Physical strength predicted anger, which predicted hitting, although results were sensitive to the inclusion or exclusion of traditional healers, who were physically and emotionally distinct from other Aka. With some important caveats, our results generally support the predicted sex differences in physical aggression and indirect aggression, and the predicted relationships among anger, strength, and aggression. (shrink)

Recently, a number of people have argued that certain entities embodied by groups of agents themselves qualify as agents, with their own beliefs, desires, and intentions; even, some claim, as moral agents. However, others have independently argued that fully-fledged moral agency involves a capacity for reactive attitudes such as guilt and indignation, and these capacities might seem beyond the ken of “collective” or “ corporate ” agents. Individuals embodying such agents can of course be ashamed, proud, or indignant about what (...) the agent has done. But just as an entity needs to have its own beliefs, desires, and intentions to qualify as a bona fide agent, the required capacity for reactive attitudes is a capacity to have one’s own reactive attitudes. If fully-fledged moral agency requires reactive attitudes, the corporate agent must itself be capable of guilt and indignation. In this paper, we argue that at least certain corporate agents are. Or, more precisely, we argue that if there are bona fide corporate agents, these agents can have the capacities that are both associated with guilt and indignation and plausibly required for moral agency; in particular certain epistemic and motivational capacities. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFacial mimicry has long been considered a main mechanism underlying emotional contagion. A closer look at the empirical evidence, however, rev...

According to Seungbae Park, two versions of the pessimistic induction argument against scientific realism, what he calls the "absolute" and "relative" versions, each fail for the same reason. Depending on whether their respective premises refer to distant or recent past theories, either each premise is implausible, or the conclusion does not probably follow from them. I suggest that Park has misconstrued the sort of argument his pessimist interlocutors rely on. When properly recast, the absolute and relative versions of the argument (...) become deductive rather than inductive. The result in each case is an argument that, contra Park, has both a plausible premise and a conclusion that follows from it. (shrink)

Eye contact is an essential element of human interaction and direct eye gaze has been shown to have effects on a range of attentional and cognitive processes. Specifically, direct eye contact evokes a positive affective reaction. As such, it has been proposed that obstructed eye contact reduces emotional mimicry. So far, emotional mimicry research has used averted-gaze faces or unnaturally covered eyes to analyze the effect of eye contact on emotional mimicry. However, averted gaze can also signal disinterest/ disengagement and (...) censor bars obscure eye-adjacent areas as well and hence impede emotion recognition. In the present study, we used a more ecological valid approach by showing photos of actors who expressed either happiness, sadness, anger, or disgust while either wearing mirroring sunglasses that obstruct eye contact or clear glasses. The glasses covered only the direct eye region but not the brows, nose ridge, and cheeks. Our results confirm that participants were equally accurate in recognizing the emotions of their counterparts in both conditions. Further, in line with our hypotheses, participants felt closer to the targets and mimicked affiliative emotions more intensely when their counterparts wore glasses instead of sunglasses. For antagonistic emotions, we found the opposite pattern: Disgust mimicry, which was interpreted as an affective reaction rather than genuine mimicry, could be only found in the sunglasses condition. It may be that obstructed eye contact increased the negative impression of disgusted facial expressions and hence the negative feelings disgust faces evoked. The present study provides further evidence for the notion that eye contact is an important prerequisite for emotional mimicry and hence for smooth and satisfying social interactions. (shrink)

In considering the potential of world music in music education, we might imagine ways to think about musics in cultural context or on their own terms. Engaging musics on their own terms involves embracing epistemological diversity; different epistemological frameworks accompany different musics and treating musics ethnocentrically is both an injustice and effectively an epistemological colonization. In considering how to engage musics and their accompanying sociohistorical and sociopolitical contexts on their own terms, I put forward Mikhail Bakhtin’s work on dialogism as (...) a theoretical framework to examine the encounter, drawing also upon Sara Ahmed’s conceptualization of the “strange encounter” and Megan Boler’s “pedagogy of discomfort” to consider pedagogical possibilities for fostering ethical encounters in music education and critical and mindful engagement in any musical encounter. (shrink)

Ethical becoming represents a novel framework for teaching engineering ethics. This framework insists on the complementarity of pragmatism, care, and virtue. The dispositional nature of the self is a central concern, as are relational considerations. However, unlike previous conceptual work, this paper introduces additional lenses for exploring ethical relationality by focusing on indebtedness, harmony, potency, and reflective thought. This paper first reviews relevant contributions in the engineering ethics literature. Then, the relational process ontology of Alfred North Whitehead is described and (...) identified as the foundation of the ethical becoming concept. Following this, ethical becoming is imagined as comprising five components: relationality and indebtedness, harmony and potency (i.e., beauty), care, freedom and reflective thought, and ethical inquiry. Each component will be unpacked and knit together to argue that (1) becoming in all its forms is relational and, therefore, whatever becomes is indebted to all to which it relates; (2) one’s ethical engagement must be directed toward the creation of harmony and potency; (3) care practices are necessary to ensure that multiplicity is valued and safeguarded in the meeting of needs; (4) the capacity for reflective thought is necessary to fashion one’s self and others in the direction of harmony, potency, and care; and (5) ethical thought and action must operate through a cycle of ethical inquiry. This paper will close with a brief exploration of how ethical becoming could be utilized in engineering education contexts. (shrink)

Engineers make decisions with global impacts and empathy can motivate ethical reasoning and behavior that is sensitive to the needs and perspectives of stakeholders across the globe. Microethics and macroethics offer two frames of reference for engineering ethics education, but different dimensions of empathy play distinct roles in micro- and macroethics. Microethics emphasizes individual responsibility and interpersonal relationships whereas macroethics emphasizes societal obligations and impacts. While empathy can support ethical reasoning and behavior for each, in this paper I argue that (...) affective empathy plays a primary (but not exclusive) role in microethics whereas cognitive empathy plays a primary role in macroethics. Gilligan’s and Kohlberg’s theories of moral development are used to further depict how affective empathy aligns with care (depicted as an interpersonal phenomenon) and how cognitive empathy aligns with justice (depicted as a systems-focused phenomenon), thus positioning these ethical principles as playing primary (but again, not exclusive) roles in micro- and macro-ethics, respectively. Building on these ideas, this study generates a framework that describes and visualizes how empathy manifests across six frames of reference, each of which are increasingly macro-ethical in nature: self, team, operators, participants, bystanders, and future generations. The paper describes how proxy stakeholders can be identified, developed, and leveraged to empathize with stakeholder groups. Taken together, the manuscript seeks to clarify the role of empathy in engineering ethics and can enable engineering students to better empathize with the range of stakeholders impacted by engineering decisions, ranging from one’s self to stakeholders across the globe. The intrapersonal understandings and motivations that students generate by empathizing across six frames of reference can facilitate ethical reasoning processes and behaviors that are more inclusive and comprehensive. (shrink)

Starting from the observation that there is a gap between knowledge of the environmental sciences and practical engagement, for example, in climate change or biodiversity loss, this article explores one possible explanation for this situation—namely, the process of objectification inherent in science. It then proposes to remedy the situation by defending the idea of a ‘first-person ecology’. This term refers to a field of research and practice that looks at the relationship between humans and nature from the point of view (...) of the embodied and situated nature of lived experience. The lived experience of nature at the heart of a first-person ecology is first studied from an epistemic perspective using the concept of recognition, inspired by the Frankfurt School philosopher and sociologist Axel Honneth. It is then approached from a phenomenological perspective, using the emerging field of ecospirituality to describe the characteristics of this experience. (shrink)

People often get angry when they perceive an injustice that affects others but not themselves. In two studies, we investigated the elicitation of third-party anger by varying moral violation and others’ outcome presented in newspaper articles. We found that anger was highly contingent on the moral violation. Others’ outcome, although relevant for compassion, were not significantly relevant for anger or less relevant for anger than for compassion. This indicates that people can be morally outraged: anger can be elicited by a (...) perceived violation of moral values alone, independent of the harm done. A severe negative consequence for others is not necessary to elicit anger. (shrink)

Despite the trend of secularization, pilgrimages to sacred sites flourish. Most of the pilgrims are women and the reasons for their visits often have to do with the dynamics of women's lives. Some of the pilgrims to sites dedicated to St Mary are Muslims. This is interesting in the present political context in which lines are being redrawn between Christians and Muslims and their respective religious identities. Why would Muslims go to Marian shrines and how do they negotiate their relationship (...) to the figure of the Virgin Mary and thereby define their gender and religious position? This article describes the experiences of Muslim pilgrims at Marian sites in Germany, Portugal and Turkey, and analyses these in terms of gender and religious identity. (shrink)

AGRIPPA, THE 16TH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHER, published a well-known and often referenced esoteric classic -- Three Books of Occult Philosophy (Natural Magic, Celestial Magic, and Ceremonial Magic). Until recently these three volumes were hard to find in English, although they had been translated in the 17th century and published in England. Willy Schrodter saw the value in these texts from a contemporary point of view, and compiled copious notes and commentary on many of the subjects mentioned in Agrippa's opus. His research (...) makes Agrippa understandable, providing scientific confirmation for Agrippa's seemingly outlandish claims with carefully documented parallel cases. It is Schrodter's illuminating examples, taken from the most varied fields of research, that constitute the real and lasting value of this compilation. (shrink)

Individuals who show anger are rated as higher in dominance and lower in affiliation, whereas those who express sadness are rated lower in dominance and higher in affiliation. Little is known about situations where people show both expressions in sequence as happens when a first emotional reaction is followed by a second, different one. This question was examined in two studies. Overall, we found that the last emotion shown had a strong impact on perceived behavioural intentions. However, the information about (...) the previously shown emotion was also integrated. The specific mode of integration was dependent on the salience of the change and naive theories about the type of person who changes their emotion in the face of changing events. (shrink)

Das Buch widmet sich Komparatistischen Studien der interkulturellen Germanistik zu den Beziehungen zwischen Literaturen und anderen Künsten, Gattungen, Medien aus Mitteleuropa und aus anderen Kontinenten mit dem Ziel der Entwicklung einer Pluralität von Perspektiven auf gemeinsame Gegenstände 'Komparativer Ästhetik(en)'.

The aim of the paper is to reveal and criticize some of the hidden assumptions of the discussion on the nature of proper names. Those assumptions work in favor of the New Theory of Reference (NTR), which in fact seems more plausible than it should, were the assumptions made explicit. Three theses, it is argued, are assumed with no proof by all sides of the proper names debate: (1) proper names refer to their objects in a different way than common (...) names do; (2) proper names are rigid designators; (3) "we know what we say", i.e. the meaning of a sentence is identical to some cognitive content that is associated with it by the speaker. It is shown that the main source of plausibility of those assumptions, which serve as premises in arguments for the NTR, is the NTR itself. (shrink)

The paper concerns mutual relations between two metaphysical positions: “superessentialism,” claiming that all properties of every object are essential, i.e.necessary, and “necessitarianism,” claiming that everything is necessary, i.e. there is only one possible world. The theories of Spinoza and Lewis serve as examples. In section I the two positions are characterized. In section II and III interpretations of Spinoza’s and Lewis’s metaphysics are presented, and it is explained to what extent they can both be considered superessentialists and necessitarians. In section (...) IV the two theories are compared. In section V three possible ways of arguing for superessentialism are presented. It is then shown that the premises of these arguments appear, at least implicitly, in both of the theories. In section VI additional premises are numbered which have to be further assumed to prove necessitarianism. In the final section it is shown how Lewis can claim that there are contingent facts, while being a superessentialist and a necessitarian. It is argued that his claim of contingency is a matter of semantics, not of metaphysics. (shrink)

The authors, one a trained geneticist and the other a trained ethicist, designed and team-taught a bioethics course where nineteen third- and fourth-year undergraduate students were enrolled at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, during the fall 2016 semester. The syllabus, including democratically-chosen ethical debate topics, peer-led student working groups, and varied assessment methods were novel aspects of the course. The students, being either philosophy or biology majors or minors, successfully completed the course and indicated being highly satisfied with the (...) course at its completion. Although there were limitations to a course such as this one, educators at similar small liberal arts institutions could offer a bioethics course by following our suggestions, including collaborative teaching and assessment and incorporating students’ preferences into the scheduled curriculum. (shrink)