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Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Right to equal protection
The Right to Equal Protection is a concept that was introduced into the Constitution of the United States during the American Civil War. It is intended to protect the rights provided by the United States Constitution for all individuals regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, etc. It is fundamentally based on the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, intended to secure rights for former slaves. The Constitution is claimed to uphold racial and gender equality, but until the 1950s, enforcing slavery, segregation, and gender inequality were major aspects of the history of the American federal government.
In 1896, the United States Supreme Court determined that the "separate but equal" doctrine was constitutional in the case "Plessy v. Ferguson." Although the Fourteenth Amendment abolished slavery, and intended to end racial segregation, the Southern States initiated Jim Crow Laws, which segregated people of color in public schools, public transportation, restaurants, etc. The ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson meant that as long as facilities for both colored and white individuals were equal, it was constitutional. In 1954, the ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson was overturned in the Supreme Court case "Brown v. Board of Education. "The Supreme Court determined that the establishment of separate schools for whites and blacks inherently unequal, and as a result unconstitutional. This ruling put an end to segregation on the basis of equal rights of protection.
These court cases however had no bearing on women's suffrage or equality. The Nineteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution legislates that neither the individual states of the United States nor its federal government may deny a citizen the right to vote because of the citizen's sex.
In recent years equal protection of citizens within the workplace has become a major issue. As a result of various amendments, citizens can not be discriminated against in work places based on terms of gender, ethnicity, race, height, or other similar differences. For example, a potential employee who is unusually short and weak can not be denied a job in a police force based upon his size.
An Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which would grant equal rights to women, has been a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution since 1972. Having failed to meet the deadline requirements for passage incorporated into the original proposed amendment, efforts to reintroduce and ratify similar amendments have come before Congress every year since 1982.
The very existence of equal rights, however, is controversial because it sets boundaries and makes clear the differences among citizens. In order to declare something as equal, there must exist a comparison to something that is unequal. In doing this, people are forced to compare equality in terms of education, wage, and many other controversial considerations.
| 11224741 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11224741 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Interpersonal deception theory
Interpersonal deception theory
(IDT) attempts to explain how individuals handle actual (or perceived) deception at the conscious or subconscious level while engaged in face-to-face communication. IDT assumes that communication is not static; it is influenced by personal goals and the meaning of the interaction as it unfolds. The sender's overt (and covert) communications are affected by the overt and covert communications of the receiver, and vice versa. Intentional deception requires greater cognitive exertion than truthful communication, regardless of whether the sender attempts falsification (lying), concealment (omitting material facts) or equivocation (skirting issues by changing the subject or responding indirectly). IDT explores the interrelation between the sender's communicative meaning and the receiver's thoughts and behavior in deceptive exchanges.
IDT views deception through the lens of interpersonal communication, considering deception as an interactive process between sender and receiver. In contrast with previous studies of deception (which focused on the sender and receiver individually), IDT focuses on the dyadic and relational nature of deceptive communication. Behaviors by sender and receiver are dynamic, multifunctional, multidimensional and multi-modal.
Dyadic communication is communication between two people; a dyad is a group of two people between whom messages are sent and received. Relational communication is communication in which meaning is created by two people simultaneously filling the roles of sender and receiver. Dialogic activity is the active communicative language of the sender and receiver, each relying upon the other in the exchange. “Both individuals within the communicative situation are actively participating in strategies to obtain or achieve goals set by themselves. The decision to actively device or not, is not that of a passive nature, it is done with intent by both individuals during the conversation”.
In psychotherapy and psychological counseling, dyadic, relational and dialogic activity between therapist and patient relies on honest, open communication if the patient is to recover and be capable of healthier relationships. Deception uses the same theoretical framework in reverse; the communication of one participant is deliberately false.
Current research literature documents well that human beings are poor detectors of deception. The research reveals that while people show a reliable ability to tell truth from deception, accuracy rates are only a little above chance (54%).
Interpersonal Deception Theory (IDT) attempts to explain the manner in which individuals engaged in face-to-face communication deal with actual or perceived deception on the conscious and subconscious levels. IDT proposes that the majority of individuals overestimate their ability to detect deception. In some cultures, various means of deception are acceptable while other forms are not. Acceptance of deception can be found in language terms that classify, rationalize or condemn, such behavior. Deception that may be considered a simple white lie to save feelings may me be determined socially acceptable, while deception used to gain certain advantages can be determined to be ethically questionable. It has been estimated that “deception and suspected deception arise in at least one quarter of all conversations”.
Interpersonal deception detection between partners is difficult unless a partner tells an outright lie or contradicts something the other partner knows is true. While it is difficult to deceive a person over a long period of time, deception often occurs in day-to-day conversations between relational partners. Detecting deception is difficult because it places a significant cognitive load on the deceiver. The deceiver must recall previous statements so that their story remains consistent and believable. As a result, deceivers often leak important information both verbally and nonverbally.
In the early nineteenth century, Sigmund Freud studied nonverbal cues to detect deception about a century ago. Freud observed a patient being asked about his darkest feelings. If his mouth was shut and his fingers were trembling, he was considered to be lying. Freud also noted other nonverbal cues, such as drumming one's fingers when telling a lie. More recently, scientists have attempted to establish the differences between truthful and deceptive behavior using a myriad of psychological and physiological approaches. In 1969, Ekman and Friesen used straightforward observation methods to determine deceptive non-verbal leakage cues, while more recently Rosenfeldet et al. used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to detect differences between honest and deceptive responses.
In 1989, DePaulo and Kirkendol developed the Motivation Impairment Effect (MIE). MIE states the harder people try to deceive others, the more likely they are to get caught. Burgoon and Floyd, however, revisited this research and formed the idea that deceivers are more active in their attempt to deceive than most would anticipate or expect.
IDT was developed in 1996 by David B. Buller and Judee K. Burgoon. Prior to their study, deception had not been fully considered as a communication activity. Previous work had focused upon the formulation of principles of deception. These principles were derived by evaluating the lie detection ability of individuals observing unidirectional communication. These early studies found initially that "although humans are far from infallible in their efforts to diagnose lies, they are substantially better at the task than would result merely by chance." Buller and Burgoon discount the value of highly controlled studies – usually one-way communication experiments – designed to isolate unmistakable cues that people are lying. Therefore, IDT is based on two-way communication and intended to describe deception as an interaction communicative process.
Buller and Burgoon initially based their theory of IPD on the four-factor model of deception developed by social psychologist Miron Zuckerman, who argues that the four components of deceit inevitably cause cognitive overload and therefore leakage. Zuckerman's four factors include the attempt to control information, which fosters behavior that can come across as too practiced, followed by physiological arousal as a result of deception. This arousal then leads to the third factor, felt emotions, which are usually guilt and anxiety, which can become noticeable to an observer. Additionally, the many cognitive factors and mental gymnastics that are going on during a deception often lead to nonverbal leakage cues, such as increased blinking and a higher pitched voice.
IDT's model of interpersonal deception has 18 verifiable propositions. Based on assumptions of interpersonal communication and deception, each proposition can generate a testable hypothesis. Although some propositions originated in IDT, many are derived from earlier research. The propositions attempt to explain the cognition and behavior of sender and receiver during the process of deception, from before interaction through interaction to the outcome after interaction.
IDT's explanations of interpersonal deception depend on the situation in which interaction occurs and the relationship between sender and receiver.
Individuals approach deceptive exchanges with factors such as expectancy, knowledge, goals or intentions and behaviors reflecting their communication competence. IDT posits that these factors influence the deceptive exchange.
IDT posits that factors before the interaction influence the sender's deception and fear of detection.
IDT also posits that factors before the interaction, combined with initial behavior, affect receiver suspicion and detection accuracy.
IDT describes receiver suspicion and sender reaction.
IDT posits that interaction between sender and receiver influences how credible the receiver thinks the sender is and how suspicious the sender thinks the receiver is.
Although most people believe they can spot deception, IDT posits that they cannot. A deceiver must manages his or her verbal and nonverbal cues to ensure that what they are saying appears true. According to IDT, the more socially aware a receiver is, the better he or she is at detecting deceit.
Humans have a predisposition to believe what they are told. This is referred to as a "truth bias." In a common social agreement, people are honest with one another and believe that others will be honest with them. If a deceiver begins a deceptive exchange with an accurate statement, the statement may induce the receiver to believe the rest of the deceiver's story is also true. The sender prepares the receiver to accept his or her information as truth, even if some (or all) of the dialogue is false. If the sender repeats the same tactic, the receiver will become more aware that the sender is lying.
Emotion plays a central role in IDT as a motivation and result of deception. Emotion can motivate deception, with the sender relying on relevant knowledge (informational, relational and behavioral familiarity) to achieve goals such as self-gratification, avoiding a negative emotional outcome or creating a negative emotional outcome for the target of deception. Emotion can be a result of deception, since a physical response occurs in the sender (usually arousal and negative affect).
The concept of leakage predates the development of IDT and was developed by Miron Zuckerman, et al., who created a four-factor model to explain when and why leakage is apt to occur. Leakage in deception is manifested most overtly in nonverbal signals; studies indicate that over 90 percent of emotional meaning is communicated non-verbally. Humans are sensitive to body signals, and communication is often ambiguous; something is communicated verbally and its opposite non-verbally. Leakage occurs when nonverbal signals betray the true content of a contradictory verbal message. Facial expression is difficult to read, and the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is a means of uncovering deception. Small facial movements, known as micro-expressions, can be detected in this system using action units.
Action units (AUs) can be examined frame by frame, since these micro-expressions are often rapid. Paul Ekman’s research in facial deception has found several constants in certain expressions, with the action units relating to lip-corner pulling (AU12) and cheek-raising (AU6) qualifiers for happiness in most people. Brow-lowering (AU4) and lip-stretching (AU20) are disqualifiers for happiness. Emotional leakage appears in these fleeting expressions.
A study of Ekman’s observations revealed that AUs appear in over 90 percent of facial expressions. Despite the progress of the facial deception theory and the use of video to capture micro-expressions, it is more practical to search the body for signs of betraying what the sender is trying to communicate. The following signs may indicate deception:
University of Virginia social psychologist Bella DePaulo has said, "Facial cues ... are indeed faking cues".
Seven basic emotions are communicated through facial expression: anger, fear, sadness, joy, disgust, surprise and contempt. These emotions are recognized universally. These expressions are innate of develop through socialization.
Cultures have a variety of rules governing the social use of facial expression; for example, the Japanese discourage the display of negative emotions. Individuals may find it difficult to control facial expression, and the face may "leak" information about how they feel.
People use eye contact to indicate threat, intimacy and interest. Eye contact is used to regulate turn-taking in conversation, and indicates how interested the listener (receiver) is in what the speaker is saying. Receivers make eye contact about 70–75 percent of the time, with each contact averaging 7.8 seconds.
Gestures are among the most culture-specific forms of nonverbal communication, and may lead to misinterpretation. Involuntary self-touching, such as touching the face, scratching, gripping the hands together or putting the hands in (or near) the mouth, occur when people experience intense emotions such as depression, elation or extreme anxiety.
Ekman and Friesen demonstrated gesture leakage by showing films of a depressed woman to a group, which was asked to judge the woman's mood. Those shown only the woman's face thought she was happy and cheerful, while the group who saw only her body thought she was tense and disturbed.
Touch can reassure and indicate understanding. Humans touch one another in sexual intimacy, affiliation and understanding; in greetings and farewells; as an act of aggression, and to demonstrate dominance. According to Argyle (1996), there "appear to be definite rules which permit certain kinds of touch, between certain people, on certain occasions only. Bodily contact outside these narrow limits is unacceptable".
DePaulo, Ansfield and Bell questioned IDT: "We can find the 'why' question in Buller and Burgoon's synthesis. There is no intriguing riddle or puzzle that needs to be solved, and no central explanatory mechanism is ever described." Although they praised Buller and Burgoon's 18 propositions as a comprehensive description of the timeline of deceptive interactions, they said the propositions lacked the interconnectedness and predictive power of a unifying theory. DePaulo "et al." criticized IDT for failing to distinguish between interactive communication (which emphasizes the situational and contextual aspects of communicative exchanges) from interpersonal communication, which emphasizes exchanges in which the sender and receiver make psychological predictions about the other's behavior based on specific prior knowledge; this conceptual ambiguity limited IDT's explanatory power.
Park and Levine (2015) provide additional commentary questioning IDT stating that “because both interactive and noninteractive experiments lead to the same conclusions about truth-bias and accuracy regardless of interactivity, interactivity is not the all-important consideration as IDT claims.” In IDT, a crucial emphasis is placed in the aspect of interactivity to determine deception detection accuracy. However, Park and Levine do not see an empirical basis for this foundational claim of IDT.
Park and Levine provide additional commentary questioning IDT stating that “because both interactive and noninteractive experiments lead to the same conclusions about truth-bias and accuracy regardless of interactivity, interactivity is not the all-important consideration as IDT claims.” In IDT, a crucial emphasis is placed in the aspect of interactivity to determine deception detection accuracy. However, Park and Levine do not see an empirical basis for this foundational claim of IDT.
Buller and Burgoon have conducted over two dozen experiments in which they ask participants to deceive another person, and the researchers have found that people often find themselves in situations where they make statements that are not completely honest "to avoid hurting or offending another person, to emphasize their best qualities, to avoid getting into a conflict, or to speed up or slow down a relationship".
Buller and Burgoon asked participants to put themselves in the following situation:
"You've been dating Pat for nearly three years and feel quite close in your relationship. Since Pat goes to a different school upstate, the two of you have agreed to date other people. Nevertheless, Pat is quite jealous and possessive. During the school year you see Pat only occasionally, but you call each other every Sunday and talk for over an hour. On Friday one of your friends invites you to a party on Saturday night, but the party is 'couples only' so you need a date. There's no way that Pat could come down for the weekend. You decide to ask someone from your class who you've been attracted to so that you can go to the party. The two of you go and have a great time. On Sunday afternoon, there's a knock on your door and it's Pat. Pat walks in and says, 'Decided to come down and surprise you, tried calling you all last night, but you weren't around. What were you doing? The researchers listed three possible responses: lying ("I was at the library getting ready for my theory exam"), telling part of the truth while omitting important details ("Went to a party at a friend's apartment") or being intentionally vague or evasive ("Went out for a while").
Research on the use of deception in online dating has shown that people are generally truthful about themselves with the exception of physical attributes to appear more attractive. Most online deception is subtle with slight exaggerations, representing people’s attempts to portray themselves in the best possible light. Of all online contexts, online dating appears the most prone to deception. In general, no matter the setting, people are more likely to be deceptive when looking for a date than in other social situations.
Research suggests that while slight misrepresentations on online dating sites are quite common, major deceptions are actually rare. It seems that those who engage in online dating realize that while they want to make the best possible impression, if they want to pursue an offline relationship, they can’t begin it with outright falsehoods that will quickly be revealed. One survey of over 5,000 users of online dating sites how likely they were to misrepresent themselves in areas such as appearance and job information. The average rating on these items was a 2 on a 10-point scale, indicating a relatively low level of deception overall.
Some people are more prone to deceptive behavior online than others, such as those with high sensation-seeking tendencies, and those who show addictive behavior toward the Internet. Conversely, those who are introverted or have high tendencies for social anxiety are especially likely to be honest about their personalities online, revealing hidden aspects of the self that they would not normally show to others offline.
According to the Scientific American, “nine out of ten online daters will fib about their height, weight, or age” such that men were more likely to lie about height while women were more likely to lie about weight. In addition, those high in the trait of self-monitoring are more likely to be dishonest on dating websites. In all aspects of their social lives, self-monitors are concerned with outward appearance and adapt their behavior to match the social situation. Thus, they also tend to be more deceptive in their attempts to attract dates both offline and online.
In a study conducted by Toma and Hancock, “less attractive people were found to be more likely to have chosen a profile picture in which they were significantly more attractive than they were in everyday life." Both genders used this strategy in online dating profiles, but women more so than men. Additionally, the researchers found that those deemed less attractive were more likely to express deception in the areas of physical attractiveness such as height and weight.
A qualitative study investigated deception in online dating. The study focused on four questions: (1) About what characteristics are online daters deceptive? (2) What motivation do online daters have for their deception of others in the online-dating environment? (3) What perceptions do online daters have about other daters' deceit towards them in the online-dating environment? (4) How does deception affect romantic relationships formed in the online-dating environment? In an online survey, data was collected from 15 open-ended questions. The study had 52 participants, ranging in age from 21 to 37, and found that most online daters consider themselves (and others) mostly honest in their online self-presentation. Online daters who used deception were motivated to do so by the desire to attract partners and project a positive self-image. Daters were willing to overlook deception in others if they viewed the dishonesty as a slight exaggeration or a characteristic of little value to the dater. Despite deception, participants believe that the online-dating environment can develop successful romantic relationships.
| 11234681 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11234681 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Cyphonism
Cyphonism (, from , "bent, crooked") was a form of punishment using a (), a kind of wooden pillory in which the neck of a malefactor would be fastened. Formerly, this term was widely believed to refer to scaphism, a form of punishment or torture in which a person's naked body was smeared with honey, and exposed to flies, wasps, and other pests.
| 11239314 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11239314 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Michael Reiss
Michael J. Reiss, FRSB FRSA (born 1960) is a British bioethicist, educator, and journalist. He is also an Anglican priest. Reiss is professor of science education at the Institute of Education, University College London, where he is assistant director, research and development.
Reiss's father was an obstetrician; his mother, a midwife. His father was Jewish; his mother, an agnostic. Reiss had a secular upbringing in north London.
He began his career as a schoolteacher at Hills Road Sixth Form College, Cambridge in 1983. In 1989, he became a lecturer and tutor in the Department of Education at the University of Cambridge. At the age of 29, Reiss began training to be a priest in the Church of England and was ordained in 1991. For many years, he led the Sunday service in his local village near Cambridge. He was a senior lecturer at Cambridge until 1998, then reader in education and bioethics until 2000. From 2003, he was chief executive of the Science Learning Centre in London.
From 2006 to 2008, he was director of education at the Royal Society, a position he resigned on 16 September 2008, following protests about his views on tackling creationism when teaching evolution in schools, which the Royal Society said were "open to misinterpretation".
Reiss works in the fields of science education, bioethics, and sex education. He has a special interest in the ethical implications of genetic engineering. He was formerly head of the School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology at the Institute of Education, University College London. In science education, he currently directs projects funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, including a longitudinal, ethnographic study of pupils' learning, currently in its eleventh year.
Reiss is a frequent consultant to the Royal Society, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the Training and Development Agency for Schools (formerly known as the Teacher Training Agency or the TTA) and other organisations. He serves on the editorial board of the "International Journal of Science Education". He was a specialist adviser to the House of Lords Select Committee on Animals in Scientific Procedures, 2001–02, and is a member of the Farm Animal Welfare Council.
As early as November 2006, Reiss suggested that, rather than dismissing creationism as a "misconception," teachers should take the time to explain why creationism had no scientific basis. In September 2008, his views were presented in some media reports as lending support to teaching creationism as a legitimate point of view; however both he and the Royal Society later stated that this was a misrepresentation. Reiss stressed that the topic should not be taught as science, but rather should be construed as a cultural "Worldview." Reiss argued that it was more effective to engage with pupils' ideas about creationism, rather than to obstruct discussion with those who do not accept the scientific version of the evolution of species.
In July 2009, he led a number of the UK's most senior scientists in writing to the Schools Secretary Ed Balls to complain that Ofsted's proposed new curriculum for primary schools did not mention evolution.
In 2010 Reiss debated Michael Behe on the topic of Intelligent Design.
| 11244549 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11244549 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Adrian Raine
Adrian Raine (born 27 January 1954) is a British psychologist. He currently holds the chair of Richard Perry University Professor of Criminology & Psychiatry in the Department of Criminology of the School of Arts and Sciences and in the Department of Psychiatry of the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is noted for his research on the neurobiological and biosocial causes of antisocial and violent behavior in children and adults. He was the first scientist to use neuroimaging to study the brains of murderers. His 2013 book "The Anatomy of Violence" won that year's Athenaeum Literary Award.
Raine received his bachelor's degree in experimental psychology from Oxford University in 1977. He received his D.Phil. in psychology from the University of York in 1982.
Raine spent four years in two high-security prisons in England working as a prison psychologist. He was appointed lecturer in Behavioural Sciences in the Department of Psychiatry at Nottingham University in 1984 and in 1986 became director of the Mauritius Child Health Project, a continuing longitudinal study of child mental health following a group of 1795 people form Mauritius from the age of three onward. Raine moved to the United States in 1987 to become assistant professor in psychology at the University of Southern California (USC). His motives in moving from Britain to the United States were twofold: first, he thought that American scientists were more open-minded regarding the potential role of genetics in crime than their British counterparts, and second, there were more murderers in the United States for him to study. He was promoted to tenured associate professor there in 1990. In 1999, he was given the endowed chair of Robert G. Wright Professor of Psychology at USC. In 2007, he made the move to serve as Richard Perry University Professor of Criminology & Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He also serves as the University's fourth Penn Integrates Knowledge professor.
Raine has received the Young Psychologist of the Year Award from the British Psychological Society (1980), a Research Scientist Development Award from the National Institute of Mental Health (1993), an Independent Scientist Award from the National Institute of Mental Health (1999), the Joseph Zubin Memorial Award (1999), and USC's Associate's Award for Creativity in Research (2003). He has been a fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology since 2007 and of the American Psychological Society since 2011.
| 11267046 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11267046 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Conjugal Lewdness
The full original title of this 1727 essay by Daniel Defoe was "Conjugal Lewdness or, Matrimonial Whoredom", though he was later asked to rename it for the sake of propriety. The modified title became "A Treatise Concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed".
The essay dealt primarily with contraception, comparing it directly with infanticide. Defoe accomplished this through anecdotes, such as a conversation between two women in which the right-minded chides the other for asking for "recipes" that might prevent pregnancy. In the essay, he further referred to contraception as "the diabolical practice of attempting to prevent childbearing by physical preparations."
| 11267562 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11267562 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | John Beatty (philosopher)
John Beatty (born 1951) is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia. He received his PhD in 1979 in the History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. His research focuses on the theoretical foundations, methodology, and socio-political dimensions of genetics and evolutionary biology. He is well known in the philosophy of biology community.
| 11270115 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11270115 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Subversion and containment
Subversion and containment is a concept in literary studies introduced by Stephen Greenblatt in his 1988 essay "Invisible Bullets". It has subsequently become a much-used concept in new historicist and cultural materialist approaches to textual analysis. Literary critic Louis A. Montrose writes that the terms are often used to refer to the "capacity of the dominant order to generate subversion so as to use it to its own ends".
In his essay "Invisible Bullets", Stephen Greenblatt introduced the concept of subversion and containment as an instrument by describing Thomas Hariot's report on his experience in the colony of Virginia in 1586. Sir Walter Raleigh's duty had been in part to bring civilisation to the Native Americans (then referred to as "Indians"). As civilisation was purportedly impossible without Christianity, this was to be imposed upon the Native Americans. Harriot documented two relevant observations in his "Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia". Firstly, that the natives had a degree of religion to their culture of which Harriot drew parallels to Christianity. Secondly, he noticed that everyday non-divine objects caused the natives to believe in the divinity of the invaders, noting
It would seem that Harriot used this to impose Christianity upon the natives. At one point, as the native crop was scarce one year, Harriot suggested that the Christian God would provide better for their land. Thus the subversion was both produced and contained.
This theory immediately implies maliciousness and Machiavellian callousness; this is not always the case. Greenblatt takes pains to stress that Harriot may not have been acting maliciously. The name of the essay "Invisible Bullets" is so as the Subversion must be invisible to the Subverted; Harriot could not simply state that the natives were being converted to (or assimilated into) another religion and culture. If the subversion and containment were invisible to Harriot, he would be merely an agent of hegemony. It is not unlikely that Harriot wholeheartedly believed that England and its people were blessed by the only true Christian God, that the very fact that he was born into the bourgeoisie provided his intellectual (and divine) superiority - in which case he would have been acting out of compassion.
During Columbus's fourth voyage, the natives began aggression towards the invaders. Columbus, after consulting his calendars warned that God would demonstrate his favour towards the Europeans. Only he knew that a solar eclipse was to shortly occur. This subverted the natives' belief system.
Greenblatt originally wrote of this theory in its application to theatre. He applied it extensively to Shakespeare's "Henry IV, Part 1", "Henry IV, Part 2" and "Henry V", but has largely been disputed in his initial findings.
Stephen Weeks, in his essay "The Question of Liz: Staging the Prisoner in 'Our Country's Good' " applied the Theory to Timberlake Wertenbaker's "Our Country's Good". Here, Weeks chronicles the Machiavellian connotations shadowing the teaching of 'high' language to a group of convicts. The convicts have their own codes and culture. They are offered the chance to take part in a theatrical performance, which gives them 'high language' that can be used to get them out of trouble. The language, however, is packaged with parts of culture which eventually causes them to betray their own culture and dreams. On the surface, "Our Country's Good" is a play about people discovering art but Weeks exposes this as an empirical act of production and containment and subversion. Again it is ambiguous whether the English officer is callously converting the convicts or whether he is merely an agent of English imperial hegemony attempting benevolence.
| 11272365 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11272365 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Solomon Joseph Solomon
Solomon Joseph Solomon (16 September 1860 – 27 July 1927) was a British painter, a founding member of the New English Art Club and member of the Royal Academy.
Solomon's family was Jewish, and his sister, Lily Delissa Joseph (née Solomon), was also a painter. He made an important contribution to the development of camouflage in the First World War, working in particular on tree observation posts and arguing tirelessly for camouflage netting.
Born in London in 1860, Solomon studied at various art schools, sequentially, Heatherley School of Fine Art, the Royal Academy Schools, the Munich Academy, and École des Beaux-Arts (under Alexandre Cabanel). Solomon also studied separately under Rev. S. Singer. He exhibited his first works as early as 1881, and showed at the Royal Academy, the New Gallery, and the Society of British Artists. In 1886, he became one of the founding members of the New English Art Club. In 1896, he became an associate of the Royal Academy, with full membership following in 1906, one of the few Jewish painters to do so. He joined, and became president of, the Royal Society of British Artists in 1919. In 1921 "Col. S.J. Solomon, R.A., P.R.B.A." was listed as one of the early members of the newly-formed Society of Graphic Art.
Solomon's painting was grounded in his influence from his teacher Alexandre Cabanel, but was also influenced by Frederic Leighton and Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Solomon painted mainly portraits to earn a living, but also painted dramatic, theatrical scenes from mythology and the bible on large canvasses. These scenes include some of his more popular paintings. In 1897 he painted a mural for the Royal Exchange, London "Charles I demanding the Five Members at the Guildhall, 1641–42". One of Solomon's most popular works was "Samson" (1887), depicting a scene from the biblical story of Samson and Delilah. This painting was praised for its use of multiple male nudes in active poses. "Samson" is one of few Solomon paintings on regular display, at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. Some other Solomon paintings that have received significant attention include "Ajax and Cassandra" (1886, "illustration, right") and "The Birth of Love" (1896).
Solomon became well known as an innovative portrait artist by the time he painted "Mrs Patrick Campbell as 'Paula Tanqueray"' (1894), her role in Arthur Wing Pinero's "The Second Mrs Tanqueray", and went on to paint a number of portraits of well-known people, including the architect Sir Aston Webb, and later in life, the royals King George V, Queen Mary, and Prince Edward (later King Edward VIII). Solomon was also in demand as a book illustrator, particularly adventure books. In 1914, Solomon authored "The Practice of Oil Painting and Drawing".
During World War I, Solomon was a pioneer of camouflage techniques. Having originally signed-up at the start of the war as a private in The Artists Rifles, a home defence corps, he promoted his ideas on camouflage, initially in the press and then directly to senior army officers.
In December 1915, General Herbert Plumer arranged for Solomon to visit the front lines and investigate techniques in use by the French. His ideas were accepted, and he was asked to set up a team to start the production of camouflage materials in France. On 31 December 1915, General Haig, Commander-in-chief of the British forces in France, instructed that Solomon be given the temporary rank of Lieutenant-Colonel to enable him to carry out his new duties.
The new unit's first task was the design of armoured observation posts disguised as trees, following the pioneering work of the French Section de Camouflage led by Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola. The first British tree observation post was put up on 22 March 1916. Solomon was effective at the artistic and technical tasks of designing trees and nets, but not as a commander. He was replaced in March 1916, instead becoming a technical advisor, a role that suited him better. In May 1916, he was sent to England to help develop tank camouflage. Solomon doubted that tanks could be effectively camouflaged since they cast a large shadow. Instead, he argued for the use of camouflage netting, with which he gradually became obsessed, claiming that the Germans were hiding huge armies under immense nets. Camouflage netting was at first considered unimportant by the army; it was not manufactured in large quantities until 1917. Eventually, in 1920, he published a book, "Strategic Camouflage", arguing this case, to critical derision in England but with some support from German newspapers.
In December 1916, Solomon established a camouflage school in Hyde Park which was eventually taken over by the army.
Solomon's daughter, Iris, was married to Ewen Montagu, one of the "brains" behind Operation Mincemeat in World War Two. Solomon was an uncle of the American playwright Moss Hart.
| 11275060 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11275060 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Basic goodness
Basic goodness is a term coined by Tibetan spiritual teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and is a core concept in his terma. It is used both to discuss the experience of reality and also basic human virtue.
In his 1980 Seminary, he associates this term with both absolute bodhicitta and specifically the Tibetan term "künshi ngangluk kyi gewa" (Wylie: "kun gzhi ngang lugs kyi dge ba"), which comes from the Kadam tradition and refers to the natural virtues of the "künshi" (Tibetan; Sanskrit: ālāya).
This ethical scheme presents three virtues:
In his 1981 Seminary, he described the term as also referring to personal wholesomeness and dedication to others.
Melvin McLeod explains the term "basic" as indicating the primordial, self-existing nature and "goodness" as a faultless aspect. John Miller associated the term with Buddha-nature.
Trungpa Rinpoche's son, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, expressed the relationship between basic goodness and enlightened society in these words:
| 11294267 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11294267 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Cupboard love
Cupboard love is a popular learning theory of the 1950s and 1960s based on the research of Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein and Mary Ainsworth. Rooted in psychoanalysis, the theory speculates that attachment develops in the early stages of infancy. This process involves the mother satisfying her infant's instinctual needs, exclusively. Cupboard love theorists conclude that during infancy, our primary drive is food which leads to a secondary drive for attachment.
Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, was the first to suggest that attachment is a result of the mother fulfilling her infant's physiological needs. Eventually, the infant begins to comprehend that the mother is the primary caregiver, becoming attached through the feeding process.
Freud believed this instinctive demeanor was rooted in years of evolution, from the time of hunter gatherers. Approximately four million years ago, humans were governed by instinctive behaviors, where they learned how to live in difficult conditions. Similarly, Freud hypothesized that the infant is also guided by an instinctive nature, forming a bond with the person who will ensure their survival.
René Spitz (1959) proposed a phase called "eight-month anxiety" when an infant develops anxiety when left alone with strangers, and the mother is absent.
Therese Benedek (1952) studied symbiosis between the mother and infant. She suggested that the phase of extra-uterine symbiosis (events characteristic of a mother infant relationship, including crying, sleep, feeding, etc.) produces reciprocal interactions between the mother and infant. When the mother satisfies the needs of the infant, the infant is not only grateful having been satisfied, but it is also grateful to the mother for providing protection and a sense of security. These interactions build a sense of trust and preserve the security of symbiosis.
Heinz Hartmann focused on the connection between ego functions and object relations. He acknowledged the importance of communication and understanding between the child and the mother. His research concluded, that during a later phase of infancy, the child begins to comprehend the difference between the love or loss of love from the mother and an object.
Sigmund Freud's youngest daughter, Anna Freud (1954) expanded on her father's idea of the instinct theory, associating the origin of object relations with gratification. Her research deduced that an infant is naturally self-centered, only communicating with the mother to satisfy its needs and produce a pleasurable state of being. She concluded that in the early stages of infancy, the child does not love their mother, but rather the experience of being fed.
In 1965, she defined true object relations as the later stage in development where "the baby perceives his/her mother as a person separate from himself." Regardless of the infant's needs, the mother is not forgotten and is missed when absent.
Melanie Klein's emphasizes that the mother's breast is the infant's perceived object of maximum gratification. Klein claims that the infant's concept of gratification is just as strongly related to the object which provides gratification, as to the food itself.
Margaret Mahler (1965) modified Benedek's concept of symbiosis. Mahler described a "parasite-host relationship" between the fetus and mother during the prenatal period. During the postnatal period, the baby enters a phase called the "symbiotic envelope" where their primary task is to separate from the mother, instead of forming a relationship of attachment.
Sibylle Escalona (1953) placed less emphasis on need-gratification than previous literature. Instead, she suggested that mother-infant interactions, such as smiling, babbling and playing, do not fulfill the infant's physiological needs, as the baby's self and non-self awareness is not fully developed.
Psychoanalyst John Bowlby argued that the cupboard love theory overemphasized the positive aspects of the infant-mother relationship. His research aimed to expand on initial studies and perspectives on attachment to include the nature and emotional dynamic of the child's tie to his mother.
Bowlby described attachment as being a reciprocal relationship, where both the parents and the child become attached to each other. He also favored the ethological view of attachment, rooted in instinct. The foundation of his research inferred that our ability to form attachment is based on a genetic blueprint, allowing the mother to interact and communicate with her infant.
In addition, Bowbly also strongly debated the idea of monotropy; the scenario where the infant will only form attachment with one person.This concept was proven false by studies in psychoanalytic literature.
Mary Ainsworth supported the cupboard love theory early in her career, but was later swayed otherwise by Bowlby and his studies focused on ethology. She reasoned against, claiming that the cupboard love theory supported the rationale that attachment is only a one-way relationship. It did not factor in the significance of the mother's acceptance towards her child in developing attachment. Sigmund Freud's research also highlighted the significance of an emotional bond between the infant and caregiver in developing a child's superego.
Prior to their meeting, Ainsworth was inspired by Bowlby to travel to Uganda to study infant-mother interaction. Based on her findings in Uganda, she later conducted a longitudinal study in Baltimore. Here, she studied infant behavior, making observations based on infants responses during the Strange Situation task. Her results led to the identification of four key dimensions of maternal care: sensitivity - insensitivity, cooperation - interference, acceptance - rejection, and accessibility - ignoring/neglecting.
Later in her career, Ainsworth collaborated with John Bowbly (1949–1953) to further develop the Theory of Attachment. Her experimental research provided empirical evidence, validating Bowlby's hypothesis on the infant attachment process with their primary caregivers.
Bowbly describes attachment as the ""affectionate ties we feel for the special people in our lives"." The child begins the process of attachment in early infancy, eventually relying on the caregiver for feelings of comfort and safety. In time, the child may become distressed when the caregiver is absent, wanting to remain in their proximity.
Attachment is the result of social interaction between an infant and caregiver over a gradual period of time.
Infants develop attachment through a series of phases that range from ages 0 to 9 months. A secure attachment promotes the exploration of the close surrounding environment.
The asocial phase occurs during the first 0–6 weeks of infancy. Infants respond equally to both social and nonsocial stimuli, but show preference for a smiling face.
The phase of indiscriminate attachment occurs between six weeks and six to seven months. During this phase, the infant begins to favor social interaction, especially from primary caregivers.
The specific attachment phase occurs between seven and nine months. During this period, the infant becomes increasingly attached to the mother, and becomes distressed and cautious around strangers.
At 18 months, infants develop multiple attachments towards other family members and relatives.
It is possible to characterize the attachment between the infant and the caregiver using the Strange Situation procedure. Following the experiment, the infant's quality of attachment is characterized in one of four ways.
This is the most common categorization, occurring in 60–65% of American infants. The infant feels safe to explore and interact with strangers while the mother is nearby, preferring her company when distressed.
This category makes up 10% of infants. They are insecure, remaining close to their mother. They explore very little, are cautious of strangers, and become stressed when the mother is absent. When the mother returns, the infant will remain near her but will avoid physical contact.
20% of infants in American are considered to have avoidant attachment. They remain neutral when the mother is absent, often ignoring both the mother and strangers.
The infants categorized as disorganized/disorientated are the most insecure and make up 5–15% of American infants. They exhibit both avoidant and resistant attachment behavior. This infant will become fearful when the mother is absent, and avoid her when reunited.
Synchronized routines play a significant role in the development of interactional synchrony, predictors for quality attachment. During the first few months of infancy it is important for the caregiver to react using appropriate facial gestures, to the infant's behavior. An infant may experience distress if the mother chooses to communicate with her child using a "still-face." Therefore, unpredictable responses from the mother towards the infant can have the power to affect the quality and the speed at which attachment develops.
Culture can affect the categorization of infant attachment. In Germany, infants are encouraged to be more independent, exhibiting what is perceived as avoidant attachment. In Japan, children are more likely to develop stranger anxiety as parents rarely leave them in the care of another. This phenomenon is referred to as Amae, where children are dependent on their mother.
Ainsworth speculates that quality attachment is dependent on quality attention from the mother. A mother who promotes secure infant attachment is generally sensitive, has a positive attitude, and is supportive. Infants often develop resistant attachment when the parents are inconsistent in their caregiving. An infant is at risk of developing insecure attachment when the mother is self-centered, abusive, depressed, or mistreats her infant.
Insecure attachment is likely to develop if the parents are experiencing health-related, legal, financial or relationship problems.
An infant who resists change and is easily distressed is more likely to develop resistant attachment. Whereas, an infant who is friendly and easy going to more prone to develop a secure attachment.
Until the 1970s, fathers were perceived as biological necessities with a minor role in their development. Today, there is a range of data illustrating that fathers are highly involved in their infant's life, but play a different role than the mother. Mothers are more like to hold, talk, and soothe the infants, whereas fathers provide physical stimulation and unpredictable games.
Both psychoanalytic and behaviorist theories acknowledge that attachment is formed when the mother satisfies her infant's basic needs. However, they argue on how these needs are met. Psychoanalysts debate that a baby can only be gratified through physiological means (feeding, security, etc.). Whereas, behaviorists contend that conditioning is more probable. Regardless, each theory suggests that attachment is a form of “cupboard love” as the mother is only loved because she satisfies her infant's needs.
Psychoanalytic theory focuses on personality organization, specifically the dynamics of personality development. Sigmund Freud theorized that an infant's instinctual needs for food, security, and oral sexual gratification are all satisfied by the mother. Through this process of gratification, the infant begins to desire the mother. This form of attachment is often referred to as cupboard love.
The Behaviorism theory rose in popularity during the 20th century, as it had roots in science, focusing on objective observation and measured outcomes. The results were particularly influential in determining the future behaviors of infants.
Behaviorists similarly theorize that infants become attached to whoever satisfies their needs through conditioning. In this theory, any caregiver (often parents) can reinforce conditioning. Caregivers then become associated with gratification, and a feeling of security.
Classical conditioning is a theory of learning discovered by physiologist, Ivan Pavlov. It supports assumptions that form the foundation of behaviorism. These basic ideas suggest that all learning occurs through interactions within the environment, and that environment shapes behavior.
Various similarities exist between cupboard love and classical conditioning. Pavlov, known for Pavlov's dog experiment, discovered that his dog would salivate at the sound of a bell, associating the ringing with food. Eventually, the dog would salivate each time he heard the bell ring. When there was no food, the dog would still show affection to Pavlov in an attempt to be fed. Similarly, the cupboard love theory suggests that an infant will demonstrate characteristics perceived as affection and love towards the mother in order to be fed.
Cupboard love is not to be confused with the term refrigerator mother. The refrigerator mother theory claimed that autism is caused by lack of maternal affection. This theory has been dumped by the current research on autism.
The term ""cupboard love"" is a British idiom, used most commonly in the United Kingdom and Australia. It describes the selfish, greedy or insincere affection displayed towards another person in order to get what they want. Pets are most frequently described as demonstrating cupboard love.
The term ""cupboard-lover"" refers to someone who will only profess their love, or act endearingly for the sake of gain from another person.
| 11312592 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11312592 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Richard Arneson
Richard J. Arneson is an American philosopher specializing in political philosophy who has taught at the University of California, San Diego since 1973. He chaired the department during 1992–1996 and served as graduate adviser. In 1996, he also served as visiting professor in the ethics, politics, and economics program at Yale University. Arneson earned his PhD in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1975. His work has largely focused on utilitarianism and on luck egalitarianism. He is also a proponent of prioritarianism.
Richard Arneson has also critiqued Marxism in great depth; he argued that capitalism was exploitative for more complex reasons than the labour theory of value accounted for. He argued that surplus transfer was only wrong when it was the result of an unequal distribution of social goods. Therefore, under capitalism, the majority of exchanges are inherently exploitative because the benefits end up in the hands of those who do not need it. Nonetheless, surplus transfer is legitimate when it arises independently or when it is used to compensate the unequal distribution of natural endowments and wealth.
| 11335565 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11335565 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Traveler's dilemma
In game theory, the traveler's dilemma (sometimes abbreviated TD) is a non-zero-sum game in which each player proposes a payoff. The lower of the two proposals wins; the lowball player receives the lowball payoff plus a small bonus, and the highball player receives the same lowball payoff, minus a small penalty. Surprisingly, the Nash equilibrium is for both players to aggressively lowball. The traveler's dilemma is notable in that naive play appears to outperform the Nash equilibrium; this apparent paradox also appears in the centipede game and the finitely-iterated prisoner's dilemma.
The original game scenario was formulated in 1994 by Kaushik Basu and goes as follows:
"An airline loses two suitcases belonging to two different travelers. Both suitcases happen to be identical and contain identical antiques. An airline manager tasked to settle the claims of both travelers explains that the airline is liable for a maximum of $100 per suitcase—he is unable to find out directly the price of the antiques."
"To determine an honest appraised value of the antiques, the manager separates both travelers so they can't confer, and asks them to write down the amount of their value at no less than $2 and no larger than $100. He also tells them that if both write down the same number, he will treat that number as the true dollar value of both suitcases and reimburse both travelers that amount. However, if one writes down a smaller number than the other, this smaller number will be taken as the true dollar value, and both travelers will receive that amount along with a bonus/malus: $2 extra will be paid to the traveler who wrote down the lower value and a $2 deduction will be taken from the person who wrote down the higher amount. The challenge is: what strategy should both travelers follow to decide the value they should write down?"
The two players attempt to maximize their own payoff, without any concern for the other player's payoff.
One might expect a traveler's optimum choice to be $100; that is, the traveler values the antiques at the airline manager's maximum allowed price. Remarkably, and, to many, counter-intuitively, the Nash equilibrium solution is in fact just $2; that is, the traveler values the antiques at the airline manager's "minimum" allowed price.
For an understanding of why $2 is the Nash equilibrium consider the following proof:
Another proof goes as follows:
The ($2, $2) outcome in this instance is the Nash equilibrium of the game. By definition this means that if your opponent chooses this Nash equilibrium value then your best choice is that Nash equilibrium value of $2. This will not be the optimum choice if there is a chance of your opponent choosing a higher value than $2. When the game is played experimentally, most participants select a value higher than the Nash equilibrium and closer to $100 (corresponding to the Pareto optimal solution). More precisely, the Nash equilibrium strategy solution proved to be a bad predictor of people's behavior in a traveler's dilemma with small bonus/malus and a rather good predictor if the bonus/malus parameter was big.
Furthermore, the travelers are rewarded by deviating strongly from the Nash equilibrium in the game and obtain much higher rewards than would be realized with the purely rational strategy. These experiments (and others, such as focal points) show that the majority of people do not use purely rational strategies, but the strategies they do use are demonstrably optimal. This paradox could reduce the value of pure game theory analysis, but could also point to the benefit of an expanded reasoning that understands how it can be quite rational to make non-rational choices, at least in the context of games that have players that can be counted on to not play "rationally." For instance, Capraro has proposed a model where humans do not act a priori as single agents but they forecast how the game would be played if they formed coalitions and then they act so as to maximize the forecast. His model fits the experimental data on the Traveler's dilemma and similar games quite well. Recently, the traveler's dilemma was tested with decision undertaken in groups rather than individually, in order to test the assumption that groups decisions are more rational, delivering the message that, usually, two heads are better than one. Experimental findings show that groups are always more rational – i.e. their claims are closer to the Nash equilibrium - and more sensitive to the size of the bonus/malus.
Some players appear to pursue a Bayesian Nash equilibrium.
The traveler's dilemma can be framed as a finitely repeated prisoner's dilemma. Similar paradoxes are attributed to the centipede game and to the p-beauty contest game (or more specifically, "Guess 2/3 of the average"). One variation of the original traveler's dilemma in which both travelers are offered only two integer choices, $2 or $3, is identical mathematically to the standard non-iterated Prisoner's dilemma and thus the traveler's dilemma can be viewed as an extension of prisoner's dilemma. These games tend to involve deep iterative deletion of dominated strategies in order to demonstrate the Nash equilibrium, and tend to lead to experimental results that deviate markedly from classical game-theoretical predictions.
The canonical payoff matrix is shown below (if only integer inputs are taken into account):
Denoting by formula_1 the set of strategies available to both players and by formula_2
the payoff function of one of them we can write
(Note that the other player receives formula_4 since the game is quantitatively symmetric).
| 11336559 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11336559 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Arne Johan Vetlesen
Arne Johan Vetlesen (born 10 September 1960) is a Norwegian professor of philosophy at the University of Oslo, who concentrates on the topic of ethics and social philosophy.
He took the cand.mag. (similar to BA) degree in sociology and anthropology, before studying at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main from 1985 to 1990. He took the dr.philos. degree at the University of Oslo in 1993. Before becoming a full professor at the University of Oslo in 1998, Vetlesen worked as a research fellow and associate professor. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
His books in English include "The Denial of Nature" (2015), "A Philosophy of Pain" (2009), "Evil and Human Agency" (2005), "Perception, Empathy, and Judgment" (1994), and "Closeness" (1997).
Evil and Human Agency is a 2005 book written by Arne Johan Vetlesen. Vetlesen combines philosophical, sociological, and psychological approaches in order to contend that evil is defined by its intentionality and harmfulness and to investigate why people commit acts of organized evil. He uses Hannah Arendt and Zygmunt Bauman as his main sources.
Vetlesen focuses on large-scale acts of evil such as the Holocaust and former Yugoslavia's “ethnic cleansing” in order to investigate how human agency allows an individual to cause harm to another intentionally and how personal intention turns into a collective evil. He argues that collective evil stems from a combination of “character, situation, and structure.” Vetlesen poses an important distinction between immorality and evil. While many acts may be considered immoral, only acts that harm another with intentionality are considered acts of evil. He aims to push away what he considers to be the current “shallow” understanding of evil that observes an immoral action's bad effects or consequences by instead focusing on what causes someone to deliberately inflict harm or pain. In the first three chapters, Vetlesen analyzes Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust, Hannah Arendt's ideas on “the banality of evil” and Adolf Eichmann, and C. Fred Alford's theories on the individual desire to commit evil. He focuses on theories of collective evil by detailing former Yugoslavia's “ethnic cleansing.”
| 11348580 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11348580 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Volunteer's dilemma
The volunteer's dilemma game models a situation in which each player can either make a small sacrifice that benefits everybody, or instead wait in hope of benefiting from someone else's sacrifice.
One example is a scenario in which the electricity supply has failed for an entire neighborhood. All inhabitants know that the electricity company will fix the problem as long as at least one person calls to notify them, at some cost. If no one volunteers, the worst possible outcome is obtained for all participants. If any one person elects to volunteer, the rest benefit by not doing so.
A public good is only produced if at least one person volunteers to pay an arbitrary cost. In this game, bystanders decide independently on whether to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the group. Because the volunteer receives no benefit, there is a greater incentive for freeriding than to sacrifice oneself for the group. If no one volunteers, everyone loses. The social phenomena of the bystander effect and diffusion of responsibility heavily relate to the volunteer's dilemma.
The payoff matrix for the game is shown below:
When the volunteer's dilemma takes place between only two players, the game gets the character of the game 'chicken'.
As seen by the payoff matrix, there is no dominant strategy in the volunteer's dilemma. In a mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium, an increase in N players will decrease the likelihood that at least one person volunteers, which is a result of the bystander effect.
The story of Kitty Genovese is often cited as an example of the volunteer's dilemma. Genovese was stabbed to death outside her apartment building in Queens, New York, in 1964. According to a highly influential "New York Times" account, dozens of people witnessed the assault but did not get involved because they thought others would contact the police anyway and did not want to incur the personal cost of getting involved. Subsequent investigations have shown the original account to have been unfounded, and although it inspired sound scientific research, its use as a simplistic parable in psychology textbooks has been criticized.
The meerkat exhibits the volunteer's dilemma in nature. One or more meerkats act as sentries while the others forage for food. If a predator approaches, the sentry meerkat lets out a warning call so the others can burrow to safety. However, the altruism of this meerkat puts it at risk of being discovered by the predator.
| 11351776 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11351776 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Pivot Legal Society
Pivot Legal Society is a legal advocacy organization based in Vancouver, British Columbia's Downtown Eastside. Founded in 2001, Pivot's goal is to represent and defend the interests of marginalized communities affected by poverty and social exclusion. It accomplishes this through strategic litigation and public advocacy directed at government.
Pivot Legal Society has four main campaign areas: homelessness and housing justice, sex work law reform, drug policy, and policing and police accountability.
Hope in Shadows is a photography contest organized by Pivot Legal Society, for residents of the Downtown Eastside since 2003. Every summer, up to 200 residents are given single-use cameras and encouraged to capture their community and their lives through images. The contest is designed to raise awareness about life in the Downtown Eastside, presenting reality from a distinctly personal point of view. Forty photographs are chosen by a panel of Vancouver artists and photographers, which are put on display on the street outside the Carnegie Community Centre. Here, local residents can vote to select the winning entries, which are compiled in an annual calendar, sold by residents on the streets of Vancouver. In 2010 216 local residents received job training to sell the 2011 Hope in Shadows calendar. More than $130,000 was earned by licensed street vendors selling 2011 calendars. The calendar sales were a 10% increase over the previous year. The Hope in Shadows book which won the 2008 City of Vancouver Book Award in October 2008 and has now sold more than 5,000 copies on the streets (if they had been sold in bookstores it would be an official B.C. Best Seller). Many of the calendar and book sellers are photographers in the competition. The 2011 contest will be held June 1–4. The top 40 pictures will be exhibited in the Pendulum Gallery in October, and the 2012 calendar will become available on October 4, 2011. Past Hope in Shadows photographs can be viewed on Flickr via the Hope in Shadows website.
| 11382687 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11382687 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Firebug (software)
Firebug is a discontinued free and open-source web browser extension for Mozilla Firefox that facilitated the live debugging, editing, and monitoring of any website's CSS, HTML, DOM, XHR, and JavaScript.
Firebug was licensed under the BSD license and was initially written in January 2006 by Joe Hewitt, one of the original Firefox creators. The Firebug Working Group oversaw the open source development and extension of Firebug. It had two major implementations: an extension for Mozilla Firefox and a bookmarklet implementation called Firebug Lite which can be used with Google Chrome.
In addition to debugging web pages, Firebug was used for web security testing and web page performance analysis.
Firebug has been deprecated in favor of the integrated developer tools added to Firefox itself, whose functionality has been unified with those of Firebug. As Firefox 57 no longer supports XUL add-ons, Firebug is no longer compatible.
Firebug 2.0 introduced many new features to the Firebug extension including JavaScript syntax highlighting, pretty print for minified JavaScript code, and a DOM Event Inspector to handle all event handlers on a web page. Additionally, users can search for page elements using CSS selectors in the search bar. The debugging tool now allows users to inspect JavaScript expressions as they are evaluated. Moreover, users can inspect values returned from JavaScript functions. It also adds the ability to create new HTML attributes for existing HTML elements.
On November 10, 2014, Firebug 3.0 was announced and an alpha was made available to the public. This version was to feature a new theme and would have focused on user experience.
Firebug makes changes immediately and gives constant feedback to the user. All editors in Firebug support autocomplete.
The Firebug command line accepts commands written in JavaScript. The result of executing each command is displayed in the console, appearing as hyperlinks. The Firebug application contains multiple windows, splitting related features to a common window. Firebug also allows users to view the download time for individual files. It separates different types of objects, such as JavaScript files and images, and can determined which files are loaded from a browser's cache. Firebug also features the ability to examine HTTP headers and time stamps relative to when an HTTP request is made. Its net panel can monitor URLs that the browser requests, such as external CSS, JavaScript, and image files.
The HTML and CSS tools allow for the inspection and editing of HTML and CSS elements on a web page. Later versions of Firebug allow users to see live changes to the CSS. Visualization of CSS elements is shown while inspecting HTML elements. The Firebug layout tab is used to display and manipulate CSS property values. Furthermore, users can click on any visible HTML elements on a web page to access its CSS property values.
Firebug's script tab enables users to set breakpoints and step through lines of code. Additionally, Firebug can navigate directly to a line of JavaScript code, watch expressions, call stacks, and launch the debugger in the event an error occurs during execution. Firebug can also log errors. Logging uses a Firebug JavaScript API. Firebug's JavaScript panel can log errors, profile function calls, and enable the developer to run arbitrary JavaScript. Firebug allows users to run JavaScript code through the command line and allows the user to log errors that occur in the JavaScript, CSS, and XML. Firebug provides a separate text editor to modify the JavaScript and see immediate results on the user's browser.
As provided in an update, the JavaScript command line features an autocomplete function. The text editor also provides the ability to write full functions. Firebug requires a user to refresh a web page in the event of a crash.
Many extensions have been made to enhance Firebug. Since Firebug is open source, users can contribute their own extensions to the Firebug community.
FlashFirebug is a paid Firebug extension that helps Flash and Flex developers debug Adobe SWF files on the web. FlashFirebug was developed by O-Minds and is licensed under the GPLv3.
In February 2012, O-Minds purchased the code to FlashBug, a competing Firefox extension. Flashbug had extensive capabilities to parse AMF and Shared Objects objects and partially decompile Adobe SWF files directly in the browser. Soon after the purchase, O-Minds integrated key features of FlashBug into FlashFirebug and retired Flashbug from the AMO repository.
Currently the extension displays textual Output from trace() commands within the Adobe SWF movie, a Display Tree with the hierarchy of display objects and their properties, viewers for AMF and Shared Objects, and a tool to modify the 3D transformation of any display object on the stage.
| 11387385 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11387385 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Zona Norte, Tijuana
Zona Norte (officially "Colonia Zona Norte", "North Zone (neighborhood)") is an official neighborhood, as well as a red light district located in Tijuana, Mexico. It is among the largest red-light districts in North America known for its brothels, which present themselves in public as strip clubs and bars, similar to gentlemen's clubs in the United States.
Many bars and strip clubs in Tijuana's red light district in which women are the feature entertainment also operate as brothels, which offer attached hotel rooms for short intervals of time. Many other bars, styled "lady bars", function as less explicit social clubs where prostitutes and nude sex shows are not accommodated on site, but "fichas" (drinks for the working ladies) are offered at elevated prices, and freelance prostitutes look for clients.
These compare in most respects to the hostess bars in Japan. The red light district in Tijuana is also known for street prostitution, particularly behind the main strip clubs on Calle Coahuila, in a large high-traffic alley named "Primer Callejón Coahuila".
Illicit drug sales are also common to the red light district, but they occur largely out of the public eye. Heroin use and theft, not common elsewhere in Mexico, are rampant here.
Due to its proximity to San Diego, California, it is frequented by US citizens, as well as locals. The district is also known as La Coahuila for the name of the primary avenue that runs through it.
Zona Norte is bordered by Downtown Tijuana (Zona Centro) on the south, Zona Río on the east, San Diego and the Mexico–United States border on the north, and colonia Castillo on the west. Politically, the Zona Norte neighborhood is part of the Delegación Centro (Central Borough). Tijuana's red light district itself encompasses just a couple of blocks within Zona Norte.
The unofficial boundaries of the red light district extend from Avenida Revolución to Av. Miguel F. Martinez, east to west, and from Baja California to Calle Primera, north to south. The focal point of the red light district, however, is the core block bordered by Calle Coahuila on the north and Primer Callejón Coahuila on the south between Constitucion and Niños Heroes.
Prostitution is permitted in Tijuana's red light district, designated a "zona de tolerancia", or "tolerance zone." Legal prostitution within the city requires sex workers to obtain a permit and be subjected to monthly health checkups. Brothels in Tijuana, many of them modeled on strip clubs and hostess clubs, must also conform to certain health regulations, such as standards of cleanliness, fixed operating hours, and be placed a regulated distance from schools or day care centers.
In addition to established brothels, there are prostitutes who work outside on the "callejones" or alleys and are referred to as "paraditas", Spanish for "the standing girls", for their practice of standing on the street to advertise their services. Paraditas have been regarded as part of Tijuana's cultural history, and attempts to force the women off the streets to curb such public advertising have proven unpopular and unsuccessful. These street workers are legal prostitutes who simply prefer the relatively quiet environment of the street to the loud music and smoky atmosphere of the bars.
Illegal drug sales occur in Zona Norte. Substance abuse is not uncommon. 10% of hospitalizations in Tijuana are for alcoholism.
Prostitution of children is a problem in Tijuana's Zona Norte, both in the form of voluntary acts as well as illegal child trafficking. Voluntary prostitution by children, often referred to as survival sex in order to obtain a warm meal or a place to sleep for the night is prevalent in the area. Often these children are smuggled across the border into San Diego and other nearby areas.
Michael Hemmingson's ethnographic study, "Zona Norte: The Post-Structural Body of Erotic Dancers and Sex Workers in Tijuana, San Diego, and Los Angeles", found that many of these girls lie about their age, saying they are 19–22, and do not work the streets, but special brothels. The study suggests much of trafficking claims are exaggerated by organizations with political, moral, and religious agendas.
Young boys are also often recruited as prostitutes, sometimes as early as age 8. This forced prostitution tends to cater more to pedophiles from the United States.
| 11388640 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11388640 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity is a 1989 book by the American philosopher Richard Rorty, based on two sets of lectures he gave at University College, London and at Trinity College, Cambridge. In contrast to his earlier work, "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" (1979), Rorty mostly abandons attempts to explain his theories in analytical terms and instead creates an alternate conceptual schema to that of the "Platonists" he rejects. In this schema "truth" (as the term is used conventionally) is considered unintelligible and meaningless.
The book is divided into three parts—"Contingency", "Ironism and Theory" and "Cruelty and Solidarity".
Here, Rorty argues that all language is contingent. This is because only descriptions of the world can be true or false, and descriptions are made by humans who must also make truth or falsity: truth or falsity is thus not determined by any intrinsic property of the world being described. Instead, they purely belong to the human realm of description and language. For example, a factual case of green grass is not true or false, in and by itself, but "that grass is green" may be true. I can say that "that grass is green" and you could agree with this statement (which for Rorty makes the statement true), but our use of the words to describe grass is distinct and independent of the grass itself.
Apart from human expression in language, notions of truth or falsity are simply irrelevant, or maybe inexistent or nonsensical. Rorty consequently argues that all discussion of language in relation to reality should be abandoned and that one should instead discuss vocabularies in relation to other vocabularies. In coherence with this view, he thus states that he will not exactly be making "arguments" in this book, because arguments, as expression mostly within the domain of a given vocabulary, preclude novelty.
Rorty proposes that each of us has a set of beliefs whose contingency we more or less ignore, which he dubs our "final vocabulary". One of the strong poet's greatest fears, according to Rorty, is that he will discover that he has been operating within someone else's final vocabulary all along; that he has not "self-created". It is his goal, therefore, to recontextualize the past that led to his historically contingent self, so that the past that defines him will be created by him, rather than creating him.
Rorty begins this chapter by addressing critics who accuse him of irrationality and moral relativism. He asserts that accusations of irrationality are merely affirmations of vernacular "otherness". We use the term "irrational" when we come across a vocabulary that cannot be synthesized with our own, as when a father calls his son irrational for being scared of the dark, or when a son calls his father irrational for not checking under the bed for monsters. The vocabulary of "real monsters" is not shared between father and son, and so accusations of irrationality fly. As for moral relativism, for Rorty, this accusation can only be considered a criticism if one believes in a metaphysically salient and salutary moral, which Rorty firmly does not.
Rorty then discusses his liberal utopia. He gives no argument for liberalism and believes that there have been and will be many ironists who are not liberal, but he does propose that we as members of a democratic society are becoming more and more liberal. In his utopia, people would never discuss restrictive metaphysical generalities such as "good", "moral", or "human nature", but would be allowed to communicate freely with each other on entirely subjective terms.
Rorty sees most cruelty as stemming from metaphysical questions like, "what is it to be human?", because questions such as these allow us to rationalize that some people are to be considered less than human, thus justifying cruelty to those people. In other words, we can only call someone "less than human" if we have a metaphysical "yardstick" with which to measure their prototypical human-ness. If we deprive ourselves of this yardstick (by depriving ourselves of metaphysics altogether), we have no means with which to dehumanize anyone.
Rorty introduces a term that he believes effectively describes the status of a person holding the "axioms" set out in the first three chapters. This person is an ironist. An ironist is someone who fulfils three conditions:
Rorty views Proust, Nietzsche, and Heidegger each as different types of ironists. In "Remembrance of Things Past", Proust almost perfectly exemplifies ironism by constantly recontextualizing and redefining the characters he meets along the way, thus preventing any particular final vocabulary from becoming especially salient. Nietzsche is an ironist because he believes all truths to be contingent, but he tends to slip back into metaphysics, especially when discussing his superman. Heidegger is an ironist because he has mostly rejected metaphysics, but his discussion of elementary words forces him to propose a generality that cannot be considered contingent or ironic.
For Rorty, Derrida most perfectly typifies the ironist. In his "", especially, Derrida free-associates about theori"zers" instead of theories, thus preventing him from discussing metaphysics at all. This keeps Derrida contingent, and maintains Derrida's ability to recreate his past so that his past does not create him. Derrida is, therefore, autonomous and self-creating, two properties which Rorty considers most valuable to a private ironist. While Derrida does not discuss philosophies per se, he responds, reacts, and is primarily concerned with philosophy. Because he is contained in this philosophical tradition, he is still a philosopher, even if he does not philosophize.
Rorty furthers his distinction between public and private by classifying books into those "which help us become autonomous" and those "which help us become less cruel", and roughly dividing the latter group into "books which help us see the effects of social practices and institutions on others" and "those which help us see the effects of our private idiosyncrasies on others." He dismisses the moral-aesthetic contrast, instead proposing the separation of books which offer relaxation from books which supply novel stimuli to action. Metaphysicians, having little doubt about their final vocabularies, confuse private projects with the pleasure of relaxation, and hence dismiss, as not serious or merely aesthetic, not only those writers with no relevance to liberal hope, like Nietzsche and Derrida, but also those warning against the potential for cruelty inherent in the quest for autonomy, among which Rorty places Nabokov and Orwell, since "both of them dramatize the tension between private irony and liberal hope."
Nabokov's dismissal of "topical trash" and Orwell's rejection of "art for art’s sake" are criticized as attempts to excommunicate writings different from their own while perpetuating the moral-aesthetic contrast. Rorty brings together their contrasting claims about art by saying that there is no such thing as "the writer" or "the nature of literature" (we can instead ask, "What purposes does this book serve?"), and that the pursuit of private perfection, as well as serving human liberty, are both perfectly reasonable aims for writers with different gifts. He wants to stress their similarities, seeing them both as political liberals (like Proust and Derrida, unlike Nietzsche and Heidegger), and as having tried to get us inside cruelty, which in Orwell's case refers to the end of "1984", differing from his usual "topical trash", i.e. descriptions of cruelty from the outside.
Nabokov is described as horrified by the possibility of having been cruel, particularly as a consequence of a lack of curiosity about others. In a rare attempt at general ideas, he equates art, or "aesthetic bliss", with "curiosity, tenderness, kindness and ecstasy," hence apparently resolving the dilemma of the liberal aesthete by offering the curious artist, or non-obsessed poet, as the paradigm of morality. Rorty argues that Nabokov's most important creations, Humbert Humbert and Charles Kinbote, originate from his knowledge that actually "there is no synthesis of ecstasy and kindness". As opposed to the non-obsessed and second-rate poet John Shade, they are as artistically gifted as Nabokov, selectively curious and cruel. "This particular sort of genius-monster - the monster of incuriosity - is Nabokov's contribution to our knowledge of human possibilities."
The title of the chapter refers to a crucial part of "Lolita", Humbert's reminiscence about his late realisation that the son the barber was telling him about was actually dead, which Rorty sees as a pointer to the nature of Humbert's relation to Lolita. Likewise, there are the few subtle hints to the importance of Lolita's brother's death, that the reader is expected to connect, as opposed to Humbert, and that end up being stressed by the author in the Afterword.
Rorty ends the chapter with:
George Orwell, especially in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and "Animal Farm", represents public, or institutional cruelty. Rorty argues that Orwell deprived the liberal community of their hopes for liberal utopia without providing them with an alternative. For Rorty, Orwell represents a liberal who is not an ironist, while Heidegger represents an ironist who is not a liberal.
In this chapter, Rorty argues that because humans tend to view morals as "we-statements" (e.g., "We Christians do not commit murder"), they find it easier to be cruel to those whom they can define as "them" (meaning, as "we"). He therefore urges that they continue to expand their definition of "we" to include more and more subsets of the human population until no one can be considered less-than-human.
| 11391963 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11391963 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Mutual aid (organization theory)
In organization theory, mutual aid is a voluntary reciprocal exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit.
Mutual aid is arguably as ancient as human culture: an intrinsic part of the small, communal societies universal to humanity's ancient past. From the dawn of humanity, until far beyond the invention of agriculture, humans were foragers, exchanging labor and resources for the benefit of groups and individuals alike.
As an intellectual abstraction, mutual aid was developed and advanced by mutualism or labor insurance systems and thus trade unions, and has also been used in cooperatives and other civil society movements.
Mutual aid groups sprang up across the world in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, including Covid 19 Mutual Aid UK and USA Covid 19 Mutual Aid.
The first of these groups was Lewisham Covid-19 Mutual Aid. These groups serve as a central network for community members to connect with and support each other.
Typically, mutual-aid groups will be free to join and participate in, and all activities will be voluntary. They are often structured as non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, non-profit organizations, with members controlling all resources and no external financial or professional support. They are member-led and member-organized. They are egalitarian in nature and designed to support participatory democracy, equality of member status and power shared leadership and cooperative decision-making. Members' external societal status is considered irrelevant inside the group: status in the group is conferred by participation.
Inspired by Kropotkin, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin of the Catholic Worker Movement wrote about mutual aid and encouraged the practice as a way of performing the works of mercy.
Based on Peter Kropotkin's theories on mutual aid, and in parallel with Marxism, those small groups are also discussed as a Hegelian synthesis of Lockean autonomous individualism and Hobbesian corporate collectivism. Those discussions emphasize an open model of voluntary cooperation in mutual-aid groups as opposed to induced cooperation. Therefore, they raise questions regarding the tension of the individual's adaption and self-determination with the overall aims of the group. Overcoming this tension requires an insight in the life perspective of others, and a radical openness to all situations possible; a high awareness of and confidence in the self is necessary to alleviate the apparent contradiction with the collective and develop a proper dialectical synthesis.
Examples of mutual-aid organizations include unions, the Friendly Societies that were common throughout Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, medieval craft guilds, the American "fraternity societies" that existed during the Great Depression providing their members with health and life insurance and funeral benefits, and the English "workers clubs" of the 1930s that also provided health insurance.
During the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, local mutual aid tools were established to help share resources and run errands.
| 11419474 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11419474 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | The Moral Animal
The Moral Animal is a 1994 book by the journalist Robert Wright, in which the author explores many aspects of everyday life through evolutionary biology.
Wright explores many aspects of everyday life through evolutionary biology. He provides Darwinian explanations for human behavior and psychology, social dynamics and structures, as well as people's relationships with lovers, friends, and family.
Wright borrows extensively from Charles Darwin's better-known publications, including "On the Origin of Species" (1859), but also from his chronicles and personal writings, illustrating behavioral principles with Darwin's own biographical examples.
"The New York Times Book Review" chose "The Moral Animal" as one of the 12 best books of 1994; it was a national bestseller and has been published in 12 languages. The paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould criticized the book in "The New York Review of Books". The anthropologist Melvin Konner called the book "delightful".
| 11431117 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11431117 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Casual dating
Casual dating or a casual relationship is a physical and emotional relationship between two people who may have casual sex or a near-sexual relationship without necessarily demanding or expecting the extra commitments of a more formal romantic relationship. Motives for casual relationships vary. There are significant gender and cultural differences in acceptance of and breadth of casual relationships, as well as in regrets about action/inaction in those relationships.
Casual dating may or may not entail partner-exclusivity. In each case, the relationship's dominance in the lives of those involved is being voluntarily limited, and there is usually a sense that the relationship is intended to endure only so long as both parties wish it to. Casual relationships sometimes include mutual support, affection and enjoyment, which underpin other forms of loving relationship.
A casual relationship is sometimes referred to as a "no strings attached" relationship.
A "no strings attached" relationship is most commonly found in young adults such as college students. The shift from childhood to adulthood brings on much exploration in different fields. One of these fields include relationships and sexual activity. Grello "et al."'s study suggests that, in most cases, the same students who lost their virginity in high school did so in a romantic relationship. After experiencing sexual intercourse, many college students go on to have casual sex with either friends or peers they have been recently or newly acquainted with.
A casual relationship, unlike a romantic relationship, is difficult to ascribe norms, scripts, and expectations to. Rebecca Plante, an associate professor at Ithaca College who has specialized in research on casual relationships, says that this type of relationship can be beneficial, saying that casual relationships can establish a "healthy outlet for sexual needs and desires."
J.A. Lee defined two main types of lovers for college aged young adults: "Eros" lovers who are passionate lovers, and "Ludas" or "Ludic" lovers, which are game-playing lovers. "Eros" lovers are lovers that immediately form a close connection. They fall in love with the physical appearance of another before considering other characteristics of the person. This type of lover is also commits to casual sex relationships. Because physical appearance is the main reason for their attraction, it is difficult for a genuine romantic relationship to form. "Ludic" lovers look for the feeling of a conquest, and typically enter a relationship or hook-up with very little or no intentions of commitment. In most cases, they will have more than one sexually active partner at a given time. They also find it difficult to consider a serious relationship.
Many casual relationships establish guidelines or a set of rules. The two participants in the relationship will reach an agreement about what each expects from the relationship. Another major concern is that one of the partners will develop romantic feelings for the other. Communication between the two partners is essential to making this type of relationship work and because the partners in the casual relationship are often friends beforehand, talking to one another is a much simpler task.
Casual relationships, being a mix between a friendship and a non-romantic sexual relationship, result in the partners facing many challenges in maintaining a working relationship. Based on the exchange theory, Hughes witnessed an individual dependency on either partner as the exchange of resources, knowledge, rewards, and costs of items, becomes more and more prominent. The partners may become dependent on advice the other partner gives, or the company they receive when being around one another. This may be a one-way street and one partner may not feel this way. Any partner that is not fully dependent upon the other typically controls the casual relationship. The dependent partner is more submissive to their dominant partner as they do not want the relationship to end. This allows the less dependent partner to be able to fix and maintain the relationship the way he/she wants it to be. They normally control when they meet up, when they have sex, and when they do things together.
Hughes's study also revealed the four main categories of why partners participating in a casual relationship did not feel the need to tell their same sex friends about the relationship. The first category was that the partners did not feel that their same sex friends needed to know this information. The second category consisted of people wanting to keep the casual relationship a secret and didn't want their same sex friends to know. The feeling of embarrassment was the third category. Many students said that they would feel ashamed or didn't want to be judged by their same sex friends. The final category is students who didn't want to tell their same sex friends because they would show disapproval of the relationship.
Hughes's study suggests that there were five main motivations to why college students wanted to be in a casual relationship. The five main motivators are:
A traditional stereotype of heterosexual casual relationships in college is that the men initiate the sexual activity. Another stereotype is that men are more sexually active and women link sex with romance. This is not true all the time, especially in college students.
A study conducted by Paul and her team suggests that when it comes to gender participation, there are just as many women initiating these relationships. Pressure from friends and other social means may persuade college students to participate in a casual relationship or "hook-up" regardless of their gender.
Many casual dating sites have an unbalanced gender ratio, as they have much more men than women. Some of these sites are animating their male users to keep them interested or to lure them into paid subscriptions. Usually, these animated casual dating sites are stating this directly in their Terms of Service (as they could be sued otherwise for fraud). As most users do not read Terms of Service when they register on a new website, the animation stays hidden for most users.
Alcohol consumption and parties often taken place on college and university campuses. Promiscuity is also prevalent. Being placed in an environment of sexually active students can put pressure on other students to consume alcohol, become sexually active, and engage in casual dating. Colleges and universities known for a larger alcohol consumption by their students seem to also have a larger number of students participating in casual relationships. Researchers have struggled with the idea that the "perceived disinhibitory function" leads to the reason for increased sexual activity.
Casual sex are certain types of sexual activity outside the context of a romantic relationship. Although individuals in a casual relationship may engage in casual sex, the former encompasses a range of activities not confined to the context of the latter.
In sexual relationships among teenagers in the U.S., it is common that penetrative sex is not the predominant sexual activity. Rather oral sex and mutual masturbation are more common, as this reduces the risks associated with sexual promiscuity, such as pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Some teenagers do not view oral sex as "real sex" and use it to retain what they consider "technical" virginity.
A common aspect of casual sex is that sexual activity occurs within a relationship between two partners that have no commitment to one another. Casual sex presents itself as less risky than random sexual activity because of the person's prior knowledge of the partner they are engaging in sexual activity with. When participating in casual sex, a person may be more likely to know their partner (on a more personal level) than someone they just had a one-night stand with.
Notes
| 11444067 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11444067 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Geoffrey Sayre-McCord
Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (né McCord, born December 10, 1956) is a philosopher who works in moral theory, meta-ethics, the history of ethics, and epistemology. He teaches at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is also the director of the Philosophy, Politics and Economics Society.
Sayre-McCord received his BA from Oberlin College and his PhD (under the direction of David Gauthier) from the University of Pittsburgh. The recipient of several university-wide teaching awards, Sayre-McCord is the Morehead-Cain Alumni Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program at the University of North Carolina, where he has taught since 1985.
He is known especially for his work on moral realism and on David Hume's moral theory. He is author of the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy" entry on "Moral Realism." He has also written on contractualism. He was, for five years, a co-editor of the journal "Noûs".
| 11457292 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11457292 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Incest in folklore and mythology
Incest in folklore is found in many countries and cultures in the world.
In Greek mythology, Zeus and Hera were brother and sister as well as husband and wife. They were the children of Cronus and Rhea (also married siblings). Cronus and Rhea, in turn, were children of Uranus and Gaia (a son who took his mother as consort, in some versions of the myth). Cronus and Rhea's siblings, the other Titans, were all also married siblings like Nyx and Erebus. Sea god Phorcys fathered many offspring by his sister Ceto. Myrrha committed incest with her father, Theias, and bore Adonis.
Sophocles' tragic play "Oedipus Rex" features the ancient Greek king Oedipus inadvertently consummating an incestuous relationship with his mother Jocasta. When the truth is revealed, Jocasta hangs herself and Oedipus blinds himself.
Persephone is the daughter of Demeter and her brother Zeus, and becomes the consort of her uncle Hades. Some legends indicate that her father impregnated her and begat Dionysus Zagreus.
Byblis changed into a spring in her grief over her unrequited love for her brother Caunus. In some versions of the story of Auge and her son by Heracles, Telephus, the two were nearly married before Heracles revealed the truth of their relation.
Nyctimene was seduced or raped by her father, King Epopeus of Lesbos. In her shame, she avoided showing herself by day, and Athena turned her into an owl.
Orestes married his uncle Menelaus' daughter Hermione.
In Norse mythology, Loki accuses Freyr and Freyja of committing incest, in "Lokasenna". He also says that Njörðr had Freyr with his sister. This is also indicated in the "Ynglinga saga", which says that incest was traditional among the Vanir.
In Norse legends, the hero Sigmund and his sister Signy murdered her children and begot a son, Sinfjötli. When Sinfjötli had grown up, he and Sigmund murdered Signy's husband Siggeir. The element of incest also appears in the version of the story used in Wagner's opera-cycle "Der Ring des Nibelungen", in which Siegfried is the offspring of Siegmund and his sister Sieglinde.
The legendary Danish king Hrólfr kraki was born from an incestuous union of Halgi and Yrsa.
In Egyptian mythology, the gods frequently married their siblings. For example, Shu and Tefnut are brother and sister and they produced another pair of gods, Geb and Nut. Their children were Isis, Osiris, Set and Nephthys; Isis married Osiris, and Set with Nephthys.
In Chinese mythology, Fu Xi was a god-king who took his sister Nüwa as his bride.
In Japanese mythology, the divine siblings Izanagi and Izanami were married, along with Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi in some versions.
In Icelandic folklore a common plot involves a brother and sister (illegally) conceiving a child. They subsequently escape justice by moving to a remote valley. There they proceed to have several more children. The man has some magical abilities which he uses to direct travelers to or away from the valley as he chooses. The siblings always have exactly one daughter but any number of sons. Eventually the magician allows a young man (usually searching for sheep) into the valley and asks him to marry the daughter and give himself and his sister a civilized burial upon their deaths. This is subsequently done.
In the ancient Indonesian folklore of Tangkuban Perahu, Dayang Sumbi expelled her son, Sangkuriang, for his disobedience. After many years of expulsion, Sangkuriang came home and he saw Dayang Sumbi, who had long been granted the power of eternal youth by the gods. Sangkuriang fell in love with Dayang Sumbi. Sangkuriang intended on marrying Dayang Sumbi without realising she was his mother. However, Dayang Sumbi recognised Sangkuriang's birthmark. In order to prevent the marriage from taking place, Dayang Sumbi asked Sangkuriang to build a dam on the river Citarum and to build a large boat to cross the river, both before the sunrise. Sangkuriang meditated and summoned mythical ogre-like creatures – buto ijo or green giant(s) – to do his bidding. Dayang Sumbi saw that the tasks were almost completed and called on her workers to spread red silk cloths east of the city, to give the impression of impending sunrise. Sangkuriang was fooled, and upon believing that he had failed, kicked the dam and the unfinished boat, resulting in severe flooding and the creation of Tangkuban Perahu from the hull of the boat.
In the Old Irish saga "Tochmarc Étaíne" ("The Wooing of Étaín"), Eochaid Airem, the high king of Ireland is tricked into sleeping with his daughter, whom he mistakes for her mother Étaín. The child of their union becomes the mother of the legendary king Conaire Mor.
In some versions of the medieval British legend of King Arthur, Arthur accidentally begets a son by his half sister Morgause in a night of blind lust, then seeks to have the child killed when he hears of a prophecy that it will bring about the undoing of the Round Table. The child survives and later becomes Mordred, his ultimate nemesis.
In ancient Vietnamese folklore, there is a tale of a brother and a sister. As children, the brother and sister fought over a toy. The brother smashes a stone over his sister's head, and the girl falls down unconscious. The boy thinks he has killed his sister, and afraid of punishment, he flees. Years later, by coincidence, they meet again, fall in love, and marry without knowing they are siblings. They build a house along a seashore, and the brother becomes a fisherman while his sister tends to the house. Together they have a son. One day, the brother discovers a scar on his wife's head. She tells him about the childhood fight with her brother, and the brother realizes that he has married his own sister. Overwhelmed with guilt over his incest, the brother goes out on the sea. Every day, the sister climbs to the top of the hill to look for her brother, but he never comes back. She died in waiting and became "Hon Vong Phu" ("the stone waiting for her husband").
In fairy tales of Aarne-Thompson folktale type 510B, the persecuted heroine, the heroine is persecuted by her father, and most usually, the persecution is an attempt to marry her, as in "Allerleirauh" or "Donkeyskin". This was taken up into the legend of Saint Dymphna.
Several child ballads have the motif of incest between brothers and sisters who are raised apart. This is usually unwitting (as in "The Bonny Hind" and "Sheath and Knife", for example), but always brings about a tragic end.
"'The Scripture of the Holy Bible: The Old Testament: The Book of Genesis: The Seven Days of Creation, The Creation of Adam, Cain's Fate: A Wife, A Descendent Line Inheriting Cain's Established Authority, and, a Final Dwelling, in the Land Nod"
| 11466053 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11466053 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Intensive animal farming
Intensive animal farming or industrial livestock production, also known by its opponents as factory farming, is a type of intensive agriculture, specifically an approach to animal husbandry designed to maximize production, while minimizing costs. To achieve this, agribusinesses keep livestock such as cattle, poultry, and fish at high stocking densities, at large scale, and using modern machinery, biotechnology, and global trade. The main products of this industry are meat, milk and eggs for human consumption. There are issues regarding whether intensive animal farming is sustainable or ethical.
There is a continuing debate over the benefits, risks and ethics of intensive animal farming. The issues include the efficiency of food production; animal welfare; health risks and the environmental impact (e.g. agricultural pollution and climate change).
Intensive animal farming is a relatively recent development in the history of agriculture, and the result of scientific discoveries and technological advances. Innovations from the late 19th century generally parallel developments in mass production in other industries in the latter part of the Industrial Revolution. The discovery of vitamins and their role in animal nutrition, in the first two decades of the 20th century, led to vitamin supplements, which allowed chickens to be raised indoors. The discovery of antibiotics and vaccines facilitated raising livestock in larger numbers by reducing disease. Chemicals developed for use in World War II gave rise to synthetic pesticides. Developments in shipping networks and technology have made long-distance distribution of agricultural produce feasible.
Agricultural production across the world doubled four times between 1820 and 1975 (1820 to 1920; 1920 to 1950; 1950 to 1965; and 1965 to 1975) to feed a global population of one billion human beings in 1800 and 6.5 billion in 2002. During the same period, the number of people involved in farming dropped as the process became more automated. In the 1930s, 24 percent of the American population worked in agriculture compared to 1.5 percent in 2002; in 1940, each farm worker supplied 11 consumers, whereas in 2002, each worker supplied 90 consumers.
The era of factory farming in Britain began in 1947 when a new Agriculture Act granted subsidies to farmers to encourage greater output by introducing new technology, in order to reduce Britain's reliance on imported meat. The United Nations writes that "intensification of animal production was seen as a way of providing food security." In 1966, the United States, United Kingdom and other industrialized nations, commenced factory farming of beef and dairy cattle and domestic pigs. From its American and West European heartland, intensive animal farming became globalized in the later years of the 20th century and is still expanding and replacing traditional practices of stock rearing in an increasing number of countries. In 1990 intensive animal farming accounted for 30% of world meat production and by 2005 this had risen to 40%.
Intensive farms hold large numbers of animals, typically cows, pigs, turkeys, or chickens, often indoors, typically at high densities. The aim is to produce large quantities of meat, eggs, or milk at the lowest possible cost. Food is supplied in place. Methods employed to maintain health and improve production may include the use of disinfectants, antimicrobial agents, anthelmintics, hormones and vaccines; protein, mineral and vitamin supplements; frequent health inspections; biosecurity; and climate-controlled facilities. Physical restraints, e.g. fences or creeps, are used to control movement or actions regarded as undesirable. Breeding programs are used to produce animals more suited to the confined conditions and able to provide a consistent food product.
Intensive production of livestock and poultry is widespread in developed nations. For 2002–2003, FAO estimates of industrial production as a percentage of global production were 7 percent for beef and veal, 0.8 percent for sheep and goat meat, 42 percent for pork, and 67 percent for poultry meat. Industrial production was estimated to account for 39 percent of the sum of global production of these meats and 50 percent of total egg production. In the U.S., according to its National Pork Producers Council, 80 million of its 95 million pigs slaughtered each year are reared in industrial settings.
The major milestone in 20th century poultry production was the discovery of vitamin D, which made it possible to keep chickens in confinement year-round. Before this, chickens did not thrive during the winter (due to lack of sunlight), and egg production, incubation, and meat production in the off-season were all very difficult, making poultry a seasonal and expensive proposition. Year-round production lowered costs, especially for broilers.
At the same time, egg production was increased by scientific breeding. After a few false starts, (such as the Maine Experiment Station's failure at improving egg production) success was shown by Professor Dryden at the Oregon Experiment Station.
Improvements in production and quality were accompanied by lower labor requirements. In the 1930s through the early 1950s, 1,500 hens provided a full-time job for a farm family in America. In the late 1950s, egg prices had fallen so dramatically that farmers typically tripled the number of hens they kept, putting three hens into what had been a single-bird cage or converting their floor-confinement houses from a single deck of roosts to triple-decker roosts. Not long after this, prices fell still further and large numbers of egg farmers left the business. This fall in profitability was accompanied by a general fall in prices to the consumer, allowing poultry and eggs to lose their status as luxury foods.
Robert Plamondon reports that the last family chicken farm in his part of Oregon, Rex Farms, had 30,000 layers and survived into the 1990s. However, the standard laying house of the current operators is around 125,000 hens.
The vertical integration of the egg and poultry industries was a late development, occurring after all the major technological changes had been in place for years (including the development of modern broiler rearing techniques, the adoption of the Cornish Cross broiler, the use of laying cages, etc.).
By the late 1950s, poultry production had changed dramatically. Large farms and packing plants could grow birds by the tens of thousands. Chickens could be sent to slaughterhouses for butchering and processing into prepackaged commercial products to be frozen or shipped fresh to markets or wholesalers. Meat-type chickens currently grow to market weight in six to seven weeks, whereas only fifty years ago it took three times as long. This is due to genetic selection and nutritional modifications (but not the use of growth hormones, which are illegal for use in poultry in the US and many other countries, and have no effect). Once a meat consumed only occasionally, the common availability and lower cost has made chicken a common meat product within developed nations. Growing concerns over the cholesterol content of red meat in the 1980s and 1990s further resulted in increased consumption of chicken.
Today, eggs are produced on large egg ranches on which environmental parameters are well controlled. Chickens are exposed to artificial light cycles to stimulate egg production year-round. In addition, forced molting is commonly practiced in the US, in which manipulation of light and food access triggers molting, in order to increase egg size and production. Forced molting is controversial, and is prohibited in the EU.
On average, a chicken lays one egg a day, but not on every day of the year. This varies with the breed and time of year. In 1900, average egg production was 83 eggs per hen per year. In 2000, it was well over 300. In the United States, laying hens are butchered after their second egg laying season. In Europe, they are generally butchered after a single season. The laying period begins when the hen is about 18–20 weeks old (depending on breed and season). Males of the egg-type breeds have little commercial value at any age, and all those not used for breeding (roughly fifty percent of all egg-type chickens) are killed soon after hatching. The old hens also have little commercial value. Thus, the main sources of poultry meat 100 years ago (spring chickens and stewing hens) have both been entirely supplanted by meat-type broiler chickens.
Intensive piggeries (or hog lots) are a type of what in America is called a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO), specialized for the raising of domestic pigs up to slaughterweight. In this system, grower pigs are housed indoors in group-housing or straw-lined sheds, whilst pregnant sows are confined in sow stalls (gestation crates) and give birth in farrowing crates.
The use of sow stalls has resulted in lower production costs and concomitant animal welfare concerns. Many of the world's largest producers of pigs (such as U.S. and Canada) use sow stalls, but some nations (such as the UK) and U.S. states (such as Florida and Arizona) have banned them.
Intensive piggeries are generally large warehouse-like buildings. Indoor pig systems allow the pig's condition to be monitored, ensuring minimum fatalities and increased productivity. Buildings are ventilated and their temperature regulated. Most domestic pig varieties are susceptible to heat stress, and all pigs lack sweat glands and cannot cool themselves. Pigs have a limited tolerance to high temperatures and heat stress can lead to death. Maintaining a more specific temperature within the pig-tolerance range also maximizes growth and growth to feed ratio. In an intensive operation pigs will lack access to a wallow (mud), which is their natural cooling mechanism. Intensive piggeries control temperature through ventilation or drip water systems (dropping water to cool the system).
Pigs are naturally omnivorous and are generally fed a combination of grains and protein sources (soybeans, or meat and bone meal). Larger intensive pig farms may be surrounded by farmland where feed-grain crops are grown. Alternatively, piggeries are reliant on the grains industry. Pig feed may be bought packaged or mixed on-site. The intensive piggery system, where pigs are confined in individual stalls, allows each pig to be allotted a portion of feed. The individual feeding system also facilitates individual medication of pigs through feed. This has more significance to intensive farming methods, as the close proximity to other animals enables diseases to spread more rapidly. To prevent disease spreading and encourage growth, drug programs such as antibiotics, vitamins, hormones and other supplements are preemptively administered.
Indoor systems, especially stalls and pens (i.e. ‘dry,’ not straw-lined systems) allow for the easy collection of waste. In an indoor intensive pig farm, manure can be managed through a lagoon system or other waste-management system. However, odor remains a problem which is difficult to manage.
The way animals are housed in intensive systems varies. Breeding sows spend the bulk of their time in sow stalls during pregnancy or farrowing crates, with their litters, until market.
Piglets often receive range of treatments including castration, tail docking to reduce tail biting, teeth clipped (to reduce injuring their mother's nipples, gum disease and prevent later tusk growth) and their ears notched to assist identification. Treatments are usually made without pain killers. Weak runts may be slain shortly after birth.
Piglets also may be weaned and removed from the sows at between two and five weeks old and placed in sheds. However, grower pigs – which comprise the bulk of the herd – are usually housed in alternative indoor housing, such as batch pens. During pregnancy, the use of a stall may be preferred as it facilitates feed-management and growth control. It also prevents pig aggression (e.g. tail biting, ear biting, vulva biting, food stealing). Group pens generally require higher stockmanship skills. Such pens will usually not contain straw or other material. Alternatively, a straw-lined shed may house a larger group (i.e. not batched) in age groups.
Cattle are domesticated ungulates, a member of the family Bovidae, in the subfamily Bovinae, and descended from the aurochs ("Bos primigenius"). They are raised as livestock for meat (called beef and veal), dairy products (milk), leather and as draught animals. As of 2009–2010 it is estimated that there are 1.3–1.4 billion head of cattle in the world.
The most common interactions with cattle involve daily feeding, cleaning and milking. Many routine husbandry practices involve ear tagging, dehorning, loading, medical operations, vaccinations and hoof care, as well as training for agricultural shows and preparations.
Once cattle obtain an entry-level weight, about , they are transferred from the range to a feedlot to be fed a specialized animal feed which consists of corn byproducts (derived from ethanol production), barley, and other grains as well as alfalfa and cottonseed meal. The feed also contains premixes composed of microingredients such as vitamins, minerals, chemical preservatives, antibiotics, fermentation products, and other essential ingredients that are purchased from premix companies, usually in sacked form, for blending into commercial rations. Because of the availability of these products, a farmer using their own grain can formulate their own rations and be assured the animals are getting the recommended levels of minerals and vitamins.
There are many potential impacts on human health due to the modern cattle industrial agriculture system. There are concerns surrounding the antibiotics and growth hormones used, increased "E. coli" contamination, higher saturated fat contents in the meat because of the feed, and also environmental concerns.
As of 2010, in the U.S. 766,350 producers participate in raising beef. The beef industry is segmented with the bulk of the producers participating in raising beef calves. Beef calves are generally raised in small herds, with over 90% of the herds having less than 100 head of cattle. Fewer producers participate in the finishing phase which often occurs in a feedlot, but nonetheless there are 82,170 feedlots in the United States.
Integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA), also called integrated aquaculture, is a practice in which the by-products (wastes) from one species are recycled to become inputs (fertilizers, food) for another, making aquaculture intensive. Fed aquaculture (e.g. fish and shrimp) is combined with inorganic extractive (e.g. seaweed) and organic extractive (e.g. shellfish) aquaculture to create balanced systems for environmental sustainability (biomitigation), economic stability (product diversification and risk reduction) and social acceptability (better management practices).
The system is multi-trophic as it makes use of species from different trophic or nutritional level, unlike traditional aquaculture.
Ideally, the biological and chemical processes in such a system should balance. This is achieved through the appropriate selection and proportions of different species providing different ecosystem functions. The co-cultured species should not just be biofilters, but harvestable crops of commercial value. A working IMTA system should result in greater production for the overall system, based on mutual benefits to the co-cultured species and improved ecosystem health, even if the individual production of some of the species is lower compared to what could be reached in monoculture practices over a short-term period.
In various jurisdictions, intensive animal production of some kinds is subject to regulation for environmental protection. In the United States, a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) that discharges or proposes to discharge waste requires a permit and implementation of a plan for management of manure nutrients, contaminants, wastewater, etc., as applicable, to meet requirements pursuant to the federal Clean Water Act. Some data on regulatory compliance and enforcement are available. In 2000, the US Environmental Protection Agency published 5-year and 1-year data on environmental performance of 32 industries, with data for the livestock industry being derived mostly from inspections of CAFOs. The data pertain to inspections and enforcement mostly under the Clean Water Act, but also under the Clean Air Act and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Of the 32 industries, livestock production was among the top seven for environmental performance over the 5-year period, and was one of the top two in the final year of that period, where good environmental performance is indicated by a low ratio of enforcement orders to inspections. The five-year and final-year ratios of enforcement/inspections for the livestock industry were 0.05 and 0.01, respectively. Also in the final year, the livestock industry was one of the two leaders among the 32 industries in terms of having the lowest percentage of facilities with violations. In Canada, intensive livestock operations are subject to provincial regulation, with definitions of regulated entities varying among provinces. Examples include Intensive Livestock Operations (Saskatchewan), Confined Feeding Operations (Alberta), Feedlots (British Columbia), High-density Permanent Outdoor Confinement Areas (Ontario) and Feedlots or Parcs d'Engraissement (Manitoba). In Canada, intensive animal production, like other agricultural sectors, is also subject to various other federal and provincial requirements.
In the United States, farmed animals are excluded by half of all state animal cruelty laws including the federal Animal Welfare Act. The 28-hour law, enacted in 1873 and amended in 1994 states that when animals are being transported for slaughter, the vehicle must stop every 28 hours and the animals must be let out for exercise, food, and water. The United States Department of Agriculture claims that the law does not apply to birds. The Humane Slaughter Act is similarly limited. Originally passed in 1958, the Act requires that livestock be stunned into unconsciousness prior to slaughter. This Act also excludes birds, who make up more than 90 percent of the animals slaughtered for food, as well as rabbits and fish. Individual states all have their own animal cruelty statutes; however many states have a provision to exempt standard agricultural practices.
In the United States there is an attempt to regulate farms in the most realistic way possible. The easiest way to effectively regulate the most animals with a limited number of resources and time is to regulate the large farms. In New York State many Animal Feeding Operations are not considered CAFOs since they either have less than 300 cows. These farms are not regulated to the level that CAFOs are. This can lead to pollution and nutrient leaching. The EPA website illustrates the scale of this problem by saying in New York State's Bay watershed there are 247 animal feeding operations and only 68 of them are State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (SPDES) permitted CAFOs. This is the issue we need to deal with as the regulations on the non-CAFO farms are much less strict if there are any.
In Ohio animal welfare organizations reached a negotiated settlement with farm organizations while in California, Proposition 2, Standards for Confining Farm Animals, an initiated law was approved by voters in 2008. Regulations have been enacted in other states and plans are underway for referendum and lobbying campaigns in other states.
An action plan has been proposed by the USDA in February 2009, called the Utilization of Manure and Other Agricultural and Industrial Byproducts. This program's goal is to protect the environment and human and animal health by using manure in a safe and effective manner. In order for this to happen, several actions need to be taken and these four components include:
• Improving the Usability of Manure Nutrients through More Effective Animal Nutrition and Management
• Maximizing the Value of Manure through Improved Collection, Storage, and Treatment Options
• Utilizing Manure in Integrated Farming Systems to Improve Profitability and Protect Soil, Water, and Air Quality
• Using Manure and Other Agricultural Byproducts as a Renewable Energy Source
In 2012 Australia's largest supermarket chain, Coles, announced that as of January 1, 2013, they will stop selling company branded pork and eggs from animals kept in factory farms. The nation's other dominant supermarket chain, Woolworths, has already begun phasing out factory farmed animal products. All of Woolworth's house brand eggs are now cage-free, and by mid-2013 all of their pork will come from farmers who operate stall-free farms.
Advocates of factory farming claim that factory farming has led to the betterment of housing, nutrition, and disease control over the last twenty years, while opponents claim that it harms wildlife and the environment, creates health risks, abuses animals, and raises ethical issues.
In the UK, the Farm Animal Welfare Council was set up by the government to act as an independent advisor on animal welfare in 1979 and expresses its policy as five freedoms: from hunger & thirst; from discomfort; from pain, injury or disease; to express normal behavior; from fear and distress.
There are differences around the world as to which practices are accepted and there continue to be changes in regulations with animal welfare being a strong driver for increased regulation. For example, the EU is bringing in further regulation to set maximum stocking densities for meat chickens by 2010, where the UK Animal Welfare Minister commented, "The welfare of meat chickens is a major concern to people throughout the European Union. This agreement sends a strong message to the rest of the world that we care about animal welfare."
Factory farming is greatly debated throughout Australia, with many people disagreeing with the methods and ways in which the animals in factory farms are treated. Animals are often under stress from being kept in confined spaces and will attack each other. In an effort to prevent injury leading to infection, their beaks, tails and teeth are removed. Many piglets will die of shock after having their teeth and tails removed, because painkilling medicines are not used in these operations. Factory farms are a popular way to gain space, with animals such as chickens being kept in spaces smaller than an A4 page.
For example, in the UK, de-beaking of chickens is deprecated, but it is recognized that it is a method of last resort, seen as better than allowing vicious fighting and ultimately cannibalism. Between 60 and 70 percent of six million breeding sows in the U.S. are confined during pregnancy, and for most of their adult lives, in gestation crates. According to pork producers and many veterinarians, sows will fight if housed in pens. The largest pork producer in the U.S. said in January 2007 that it will phase out gestation crates by 2017. They are being phased out in the European Union, with a ban effective in 2013 after the fourth week of pregnancy. With the evolution of factory farming, there has been a growing awareness of the issues amongst the wider public, not least due to the efforts of animal rights and welfare campaigners. As a result, gestation crates, one of the more contentious practices, are the subject of laws in the U.S., Europe and around the world to phase out their use as a result of pressure to adopt less confined practices.
Death rates for sows have been increasing in the US from prolapse, which has been attributed to intensive breeding practices. Sows produce on average 23 piglets a year.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), farms on which animals are intensively reared can cause adverse health reactions in farm workers. Workers may develop acute and chronic lung disease, musculoskeletal injuries, and may catch infections that transmit from animals to human beings (such as tuberculosis).
Pesticides are used to control organisms which are considered harmful and they save farmers money by preventing product losses to pests. In the US, about a quarter of pesticides used are used in houses, yards, parks, golf courses, and swimming pools and about 70% are used in agriculture. However, pesticides can make their way into consumers' bodies which can cause health problems. One source of this is bioaccumulation in animals raised on factory farms.
"Studies have discovered an increase in respiratory, neurobehavioral, and mental illnesses among the residents of communities next to factory farms."
The CDC writes that chemical, bacterial, and viral compounds from animal waste may travel in the soil and water. Residents near such farms report problems such as unpleasant smell, flies and adverse health effects.
The CDC has identified a number of pollutants associated with the discharge of animal waste into rivers and lakes, and into the air. Antibiotic use in livestock may create antibiotic-resistant pathogens; parasites, bacteria, and viruses may be spread; ammonia, nitrogen, and phosphorus can reduce oxygen in surface waters and contaminate drinking water; pesticides and hormones may cause hormone-related changes in fish; animal feed and feathers may stunt the growth of desirable plants in surface waters and provide nutrients to disease-causing micro-organisms; trace elements such as arsenic and copper, which are harmful to human health, may contaminate surface waters.
Zoonotic diseases such as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID19), which caused the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, are increasingly linked to environmental changes associated with intensive animal farming. The disruption of pristine forests driven by logging, mining, road building through remote places, rapid urbanisation and population growth is bringing people into closer contact with animal species they may never have been near before. According to Kate Jones, chair of ecology and biodiversity at University College London, the resulting transmission of disease from wildlife to humans is now “a hidden cost of human economic development".
Intensive farming may make the evolution and spread of harmful diseases easier. Many communicable animal diseases spread rapidly through densely spaced populations of animals and crowding makes genetic reassortment more likely. However, small family farms are more likely to introduce bird diseases and more frequent association with people into the mix, as happened in the 2009 flu pandemic
In the European Union, growth hormones are banned on the basis that there is no way of determining a safe level. The UK has stated that in the event of the EU raising the ban at some future date, to comply with a precautionary approach, it would only consider the introduction of specific hormones, proven on a case by case basis. In 1998, the European Union banned feeding animals antibiotics that were found to be valuable for human health. Furthermore, in 2006 the European Union banned all drugs for livestock that were used for growth promotion purposes. As a result of these bans, the levels of antibiotic resistance in animal products and within the human population showed a decrease.
The international trade in animal products increases the risk of global transmission of virulent diseases such as swine fever, BSE, foot and mouth and bird flu.
In the United States, the use of antibiotics in livestock is still prevalent. The FDA reports that 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in 2009 were administered to livestock animals, and that many of these antibiotics are identical or closely related to drugs used for treating illnesses in humans. Consequently, many of these drugs are losing their effectiveness on humans, and the total healthcare costs associated with drug-resistant bacterial infections in the United States are between $16.6 billion and $26 billion annually.
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has been identified in pigs and humans raising concerns about the role of pigs as reservoirs of MRSA for human infection. One study found that 20% of pig farmers in the United States and Canada in 2007 harbored MRSA. A second study revealed that 81% of Dutch pig farms had pigs with MRSA and 39% of animals at slaughter carried the bug were all of the infections were resistant to tetracycline and many were resistant to other antimicrobials. A more recent study found that MRSA ST398 isolates were less susceptible to tiamulin, an antimicrobial used in agriculture, than other MRSA or methicillin susceptible "S. aureus". Cases of MRSA have increased in livestock animals. CC398 is a new clone of MRSA that has emerged in animals and is found in intensively reared production animals (primarily pigs, but also cattle and poultry), where it can be transmitted to humans. Although dangerous to humans, CC398 is often asymptomatic in food-producing animals.
A 2011 nationwide study reported nearly half of the meat and poultry sold in U.S. grocery stores – 47 percent – was contaminated with S. aureus, and more than half of those bacteria – 52 percent – were resistant to at least three classes of antibiotics. Although Staph should be killed with proper cooking, it may still pose a risk to consumers through improper food handling and cross-contamination in the kitchen. The senior author of the study said, "The fact that drug-resistant S. aureus was so prevalent, and likely came from the food animals themselves, is troubling, and demands attention to how antibiotics are used in food-animal production today."
In April 2009, lawmakers in the Mexican state of Veracruz accused large-scale hog and poultry operations of being breeding grounds of a pandemic swine flu, although they did not present scientific evidence to support their claim. A swine flu which quickly killed more than 100 infected persons in that area, appears to have begun in the vicinity of a Smithfield subsidiary pig CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation).
Intensive factory farming has grown to become the biggest threat to the global environment through the loss of ecosystem services and global warming. It is a major driver to global environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. The process in which feed needs to be grown for animal use only is often grown using intensive methods which involve a significant amount of fertiliser and pesticides. This sometimes results in the pollution of water, soil and air by agrochemicals and manure waste, and use of limited resources such as water and energy at unsustainable rates. Entomophagy is evaluated by many experts as a sustainable solution to traditional livestock, and, if intensively farmed on a large-scale, would cause a far-lesser amount of environmental damage.
Industrial production of pigs and poultry is an important source of Greenhouse gas emissions and is predicted to become more so. On intensive pig farms, the animals are generally kept on concrete with slats or grates for the manure to drain through. The manure is usually stored in slurry form (slurry is a liquid mixture of urine and feces). During storage on farm, slurry emits methane and when manure is spread on fields it emits nitrous oxide and causes nitrogen pollution of land and water. Poultry manure from factory farms emits high levels of nitrous oxide and ammonia.
Large quantities and concentrations of waste are produced. Air quality and groundwater are at risk when animal waste is improperly recycled.
Environmental impacts of factory farming include:
Small farmers are often absorbed into factory farm operations, acting as contract growers for the industrial facilities. In the case of poultry contract growers, farmers are required to make costly investments in construction of sheds to house the birds, buy required feed and drugs – often settling for slim profit margins, or even losses.
Research has shown that many immigrant workers in concentrated animal farming operations (CAFOs) in the United States receive little to no job-specific training or safety and health information regarding the hazards associated with these jobs. Workers with limited English proficiency are significantly less likely to receive any work-related training, since it is often only provided in English. As a result, many workers do not perceive their jobs as dangerous. This causes inconsistent personal protective equipment (PPE) use, and can lead to workplace accidents and injuries. Immigrant workers are also less likely to report any workplace hazards and injuries.
The major concentration of the industry occurs at the slaughter and meat processing phase, with only four companies slaughtering and processing 81 percent of cows, 73 percent of sheep, 57 percent of pigs and 50 percent of chickens. This concentration at the slaughter phase may be in large part due to regulatory barriers that may make it financially difficult for small slaughter plants to be built, maintained or remain in business. Factory farming may be no more beneficial to livestock producers than traditional farming because it appears to contribute to overproduction that drives down prices. Through "forward contracts" and "marketing agreements", meatpackers are able to set the price of livestock long before they are ready for production. These strategies often cause farmers to lose money, as half of all U.S. family farming operations did in 2007.
In 1967, there were one million pig farms in America; as of 2002, there were 114,000.
Many of the nation's livestock producers would like to market livestock directly to consumers but with limited USDA inspected slaughter facilities, livestock grown locally can not typically be slaughtered and processed locally.
From 2011 to 2014 each year between 15,000 and 30,000 people gathered under the theme "We are fed up!" in Berlin to protest against industrial livestock production.
| 11469677 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11469677 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Antonio Millán-Puelles
Antonio Millán-Puelles (February 11, 1921 – March 22, 2005) was a Spanish philosopher interested in phenomenology and metaphysics, who published many books and articles. He discovered his vocation to philosophy when he read Husserl’s "Logical Investigations" and abandoned the medical studies he had just begun.
His preferred topics were the relationship between conscience and subjectivity, the value of freedom, the ideal and the unreal being, and the rapport between metaphysics and logic. "The properly and refreshing philosophical attitude of the author is precisely made evident by the fact that he is open to the truth regardless of who stayed it. He is close to the phenomena and data of experience and analyzes them carefully and without a trace of reductionism and constructivism".
Among his most important books there are:
His books could be divided in three main groups: those devoted to the theory of knowledge and metaphysics, those devoted to ethics and society, and educational handbooks. In all these works he studies and comments Brentano, Aristotle, Aquinas, Husserl, Kant, Hartmann, Meinong, Sartre, Heidegger, and many other ancient, medieval, and modern philosophers.
| 11482495 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11482495 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | De Grote Donorshow
De Grote Donorshow (The Great Donor Show) was a reality television program which was broadcast in the Netherlands on Friday, June 1, 2007, by BNN. The program involved a supposedly terminally ill 37-year-old woman donating a kidney to one of twenty-five people requiring a kidney transplantation. After a first selection, three people remained. Viewers were able to send advice on whom they thought she should choose to give her kidney to via text messages. The profit made by the text messages was given to the Dutch Kidney Foundation. The program, due to its controversial nature, had received heavy international criticism in the run-up to the broadcast. In the end, it was revealed during the course of the show that the "terminally ill" woman was, in reality, an actress, although the three candidates were, in fact, real kidney patients; they were aware that Lisa was an actress, and participated because they were supportive of BNN's cause to give awareness to the limited number of organ donors in the Netherlands.
In a press statement after the show, Paul Römer, the director of the program's creator Endemol, stated that the show was necessary in order to get the shortage of donors back on the political agenda.
Bart de Graaff, the BNN founder who died in May 2002 (almost exactly 5 years before the broadcast of the show), obtained a donor kidney in 1997. De Graaff had renal failure stemming from a car accident in his youth. The studio from which the show was aired contained photos of him, as seen in the adjacent picture. It has been claimed that De Graaff was BNN's source of inspiration for the show, both by the show's host, Lodiers, as well as in the post-broadcast press release.
Joop Atsma, a member of the House of Representatives for the Christian Democratic Appeal, had attempted to censor the show. Dutch culture minister Ronald Plasterk, citing Dutch law, refused to prohibit the television program, although he found the program to be unethical due to its competitive element. Before the show aired, the Dutch Kidney Foundation told a reporter "they welcomed all the attention the show had brought on the subject" but also stated that "their way of doing it is not ours, and it will bring no practical solution". In a press statement, the foundation also stated that they had asked BNN to cease using their logo in The Great Donor Show's logo (note the icon of a kidney instead of an "o" in the logo, as seen at the top right of the page), for which BNN had never asked permission. The Dutch prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, had expressed his concerns for what he believed would damage the reputation of the Netherlands.
Laurens Drillich, the chairman of BNN at the time, defended the program and argued that the network deliberately wants to shock people and draw attention to the shortage of organ donors. "We very much agree that it's bad taste but we also believe that reality is even worse taste. I mean, it's going very, very bad with organ donorship in the Netherlands. We as a broadcaster, BNN, had someone who started our TV station who needed kidneys and was on a waiting list and died eventually at the age of 35. That happened five years ago and in the last five years the situation has only gotten worse in the Netherlands."
In a press statement after the show, the director of Endemol, Paul Römer, stated "Let there be no misunderstanding, I would never make a program such as 'The Great Donor Show' for real. I do understand the massive outrage very well. But I also hope for people to understand why we did this. It was necessary to get the shortage of donors back on the political agenda. I call up everybody to get very angry about that, and to fill in a donor form."
Minister of Education, Culture, and Science Ronald Plasterk told the press he now thought that "the show had been a fantastic idea, and a great stunt". Joop Atsma, MP for the Christian Democrats, who had previously attempted to prohibit the show, has called it a "tasteless show", and claimed that he feels it didn't contribute to the solving of the problem.
A few hours after the show BNN had already received SMS messages from over 12,000 viewers who told the network that they would fill in a donor form. The day after, 30,000 donor forms were requested, and two days after the show the official Dutch TV news broadcast "NOS News" announced that 50,000 people had requested a donor form to be sent to them, a figure that is expected to still rise. In July, a month after the show aired, 7,300 new donors were registered by the Dutch donor registration.
Laurens Drillich, BNN's chairman, told the press "It was very hard to keep this a secret, and to tell this lie time after time, but I did it because of the good cause."
On January 12, 2008, the scene during which Patrick Lodiers revealed that the show was a hoax with the purpose of drawing attention to the Dutch donor shortage problem was voted as the best Dutch TV moment of the year 2007. During a brief speech, the chairman of BNN, Laurens Drillich, said the following: "The show was aired in June, today is January. Dutch politicians promised to put donor shortage on their agenda. We're still waiting for a reaction."
The show won a 2008 International Emmy for non-scripted entertainment.
| 11486308 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11486308 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | David Fordyce
David Fordyce (1711, Broadford, Aberdeenshire – 1751) was a Scottish philosopher, a contributor to the Scottish Enlightenment.
Fordyce was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen (MA, 1728). He entered the ministry and returned to Marischal as regent in 1742, teaching Moral Philosophy there until 1751, when he died by drowning at sea. His popular "Elements of Moral Philosophy" was first published in Robert Dodsley's "Preceptor", vol. 2 (1748).
He was born at Broadford, near Aberdeen, and baptised 1 April 1711, the second son of George Fordyce (1663–1733) of Broadford, provost of Aberdeen; he was brother to the physician William Fordyce and the minister James Fordyce. After attending Aberdeen grammar school he was entered Marischal College in 1724, where he went through a course of philosophy under Daniel Garden, and took mathematics under John Stewart. He took his M.A. degree in 1728. Being intended for the church he next studied divinity under James Chalmers (Teacher), and obtained a licence as a preacher; but he never received a call.
There followed an itinerant period, of nearly a decade. He was in Glasgow, taking part in some intellectual debates as a protégé of Thomas Blackwell, in 1735. He had preoccupations with family business, and then travelled to England, where he associated with Philip Doddridge, whose dissenting academy was then in Northampton; he served briefly as a minister in Newport Pagnell, in 1739. Via France he returned to Edinburgh as an assistant at the Tron Kirk.
In 1742 he was appointed professor of moral philosophy in Marischal College. By Dodsley he was employed to write the article "Moral Philosophy" for the "'Modern Preceptor", which was afterwards published separately as "The Elements of Moral Philosophy", London, 1754. It reached a fourth edition in 1769, and was translated into German, Zurich, 1757. Fordyce had already attracted some notice for his anonymous "Dialogues concerning Education", 2 vols. London, 1745-8.
In 1750 he made a tour through France, Italy, and other countries, and was returning home in September 1751 when he lost his life in a storm off the coast of Holland. His death was noticed by his brother James Fordyce in one of his "Addresses to the Deity".
| 11520964 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11520964 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | George Turnbull (theologian)
George Turnbull (11 July 1698 – 31 Jan 1748) was a Scottish philosopher, theologian, teacher, writer on education and an early but little-known figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. He taught at Marischal College, Aberdeen, worked as a tutor and became an Anglican clergyman. Aside from his published writings on moral philosophy, he is also known for the influence he exerted on Thomas Reid and as the first member of the Scottish Enlightenment to publish a formal treatise on the theory and practice of education.
George Turnbull was born on 11 July 1698 in Alloa, Clackmannanshire. He was the son of George Turnbull, a minister, and his wife Elizabeth, and the third of their nine children. Turnbull began his studies at the University of Edinburgh in 1711 and started studying for a degree in divinity in 1717, graduating MA in 1721. During his years of study in Edinburgh, he became involved with the Rankenian Club, a circle of intellectuals, which included those who would become his closest associates: George Young, the surgeon and William Wishart, a preacher. At this time, Turnbull was interested in creating a rational form of Christianity, which led to his correspondence with John Toland, and the writing of an essay in defence of religious toleration which was never published.
Turnbull was made regent at Marischal College, Aberdeen, on 14 April 1721. His two graduation theses were "De scientiae naturalis cum philosophia morali conjunctione" from 1723 and "De pulcherrima mundi cum materialis tum rationalis constitutione" from 1726. These two works indicate that he was the first Scottish thinker to publish writings that argued for the use of the so-called Newtonian method in constructing a moral philosophy. Turnbull also drew heavily on the ideas of Lord Shaftesbury. Although this might be taken to indicate a preoccupation with the scholarship of his time, Turnbull showed great fondness for the classical moralists of antiquity.
Although Turnbull was a popular teacher and exerted lasting influence on pupils such as Thomas Reid, he nevertheless decided to leave Marischal. He sought a position elsewhere and had disputes with the principal of the college, Thomas Blackwell. Turnbull left the college without prior leave and went to serve as tutor to the Udney family. In 1727 he formally resigned. After his resignation, he took on tutoring jobs and travelled on the Continent of Europe. He then received a degree from the University of Edinburgh. At this point, Turnbull decided that he might seek employment in the Anglican church, and matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, in 1733 and received a BCL degree.
Financial difficulties forced Turnbull to resume tutoring, and with some misgivings he spent 2 years in Italy, tutoring the son of Lord Rockingham. In 1737 he used his connections with Thomas Birch to secure his ordination by the bishop of Winchester. This precipitated his entry into court circles and in 1741 he was made chaplain to the Prince of Wales. A year later, Turnbull was granted the position of rector of Drumachose by the bishop of Derry and became the tutor of Horace Walpole in 1744.
Over the course of the 1730s and 1740s, Turnbull published a series of pamphlets and books which drew heavily on his theological concerns. He published a small tract in 1731 which was inspired by a passage in Lord Shaftesbury's writings: "A philosophical enquiry concerning the connexion betwixt the doctrines and miracles of Jesus Christ", where he maintains that just as experiments confirm scientific theories, so the miracles of Jesus Christ confirm Christian doctrine. Turnbull then wrote a critique of Matthew Tindal in "Christianity neither False nor Useless, Tho' not as Old as the Creation" in 1732, which dwelled on the relationship between natural religion and revealed religion.
In 1740, Turnbull published "A Treatise on Ancient Painting", where he argued for the educational usefulness of the finer arts, based on the idea that painting was a kind of language, conveying ideas and truths about life, philosophy and nature, with drawings by Camillo Paderni. Later that year, he published a brief religious work, "An Impartial Enquiry into the Moral Character of Jesus Christ". In this work, Turnbull expounded Christ as the greatest of moral philosophers. He also published the greatest statements of his philosophy in "The Principles of Moral and Christian Philosophy", which drew on his old Aberdeen lectures as well as his discussions with philosophers on the Continent. Turnbull's last significant work was published in 1742: "Observations upon Liberal Education", where he suggested a new categorisation and breakdown of knowledge, and a revision of university curriculum.
Turnbull died in The Hague on 31 January 1748 for reasons unknown.
| 11521384 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11521384 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | William Lee Bradley
The Reverend Doctor William Lee Bradley (September 6, 1918 – April 29, 2007, born in Oakland, California), was a scholar of comparative religion, ethics, and theology, as well as a philanthropist.
Bradley was born in Oakland to Kathryn Lee Culver, an author and artist, and Dwight Jaques Bradley, author and Congregational Church leader. He was raised in El Paso, Texas, Webster Groves, Missouri, and Newton Centre, Massachusetts. In 1947, he married Paula Anne Elliott, later a New Hampshire State Representative (1992–98; 2000–02). He received his B.A. from Oberlin College (1941), B.D. from Andover Newton Theological School (1950), and Ph.D. from University of Edinburgh, Scotland (1949). He was a Sergeant in the United States Army Air Corps in World War II (1942–45), serving in the South Pacific.
A fifth-generation ordained minister in the Congregational Christian Churches (later merging to become the United Church of Christ), he served as a Professor at Hartford Seminary from 1950-1966. He was a visiting Professor at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand for the last three years of his tenure at Hartford. In Bangkok, he served on the field staff of The Rockefeller Foundation and researched his ancestor, the Dr. Dan Beach Bradley, the first medical missionary to Siam and court physician to Siam's King Mongkut and his son, King Chulalongkorn.
After his time at Hartford, Bradley took a position at the Rockefeller Foundation as Associate Director for the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, from 1966–1971, and was then President of the Edward W. Hazen Foundation in New Haven, Connecticut from 1971-1984. At The Rockefeller Foundation, he was particularly proud of his work assisting emerging playwrights and theatres in the heydey of the Off-Off-Broadway theatre movement in New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s, assisting such emerging talents as playwrights Julie Bovasso, Maria Irene Fornes, John Guare, Sam Shepard, Ron Whyte, and Lanford Wilson, as well as theatres such as the artistic leadership of producers such as Ellen Stewart (La MaMa Experimental Theatre Company or LaMaMa, E.T.C.), Joseph Papp (New York Shakespeare Festival - The Public Theater), Wyn Handman (The American Place Theatre), Joe Cino (Caffe Cino), and the theatre at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery. His theatre involvement continued in the 1980s when he served as Chair of the Board of Circle Repertory Company in New York City. As President of the Hazen Foundation, he was known for taking creative philanthropic risks by providing crucial seed funding for innovative programs and organizations that often later attracted substantial funding from larger foundations. The reach and influence of the Hazen Foundation under his leadership therefore was amplified well beyond the value of the grants awarded.
While in Connecticut, Bradley also served on the Governor's Commissions on Human Services; Libraries; and Equity and Excellence in Education. Following his retirement from the Hazen Foundation, which he continued to serve as President Emeritus, William and Paula moved to Randolph, New Hampshire, where both became active in that community. Bradley co-founded and served as the first editor of the "Mountain View", a quarterly news magazine in Randolph, served as President of the Randolph Foundation from 1991–1996, and continued his lifelong activity in Democratic Party politics on the local and statewide level.
Bradley was the author of many articles and several books, including "P.T. Forsyth: The Man and His Work", "The Meaning of Christian Values Today", "Introduction to Comparative Religion", and "Siam Then: The Foreign Colony in Bangkok Before and After Anna". He was the coauthor of "Thailand: Domino By Default?" He remained active in ministry throughout his career, performing weddings and funerals for several generations of friends and family in the several communities he and Paula called home.
Bradley died in Concord, New Hampshire at Havenwood-Heritage Heights Health Services Center on April 29, 2007, of complications from Alzheimer's Disease.
| 11525202 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11525202 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | He who does not work, neither shall he eat
He who does not work, neither shall he eat is a New Testament aphorism originally by Paul the Apostle, later cited by John Smith in the early 1600s colony of Jamestown, Virginia, and by communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin during the early 1900s Russian Revolution.
The aphorism is found in the Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle (with Silvanus and Timothy) to the Thessalonians (3:10), in which Paul writes:
that is,
The Greek phrase means "is not willing to work". Other English translations render this as "would" or "will not work", which may confuse readers unaccustomed to this use of the verb "will" in the archaic sense of "want to, desire to".
In the spring of 1609, John Smith cited the aphorism to the colonists of Jamestown:
Countrymen, the long experience of our late miseries I hope is sufficient to persuade everyone to a present correction of himself, And think not that either my pains nor the adventurers' purses will ever maintain you in idleness and sloth...
...the greater part must be more industrious, or starve...
You must obey this now for a law, that he that will not work shall not eat (except by sickness he be disabled). For the labors of thirty or forty honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain a hundred and fifty idle loiterers.
According to Vladimir Lenin, "He who does not work shall not eat" is a necessary principle under socialism, the preliminary phase of the evolution towards communist society. The phrase appears in his 1917 work, "The State and Revolution". Through this slogan Lenin explains that in socialist states only productive individuals could be allowed access to the articles of consumption.
In Lenin’s writing, this was directed at the bourgeoisie, as well as "those who shirk their work".
The principle was enunciated in the Russian Constitution of 1918, and also article twelve of the 1936 Soviet Constitution:
Criticizing Stalin, Leon Trotsky wrote that: "The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat."
| 11556364 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11556364 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Swords of Truth
The Swords of Truth is a Palestinian Islamist group based in the Gaza Strip.
In 2007, the group threatened to behead female TV broadcasters who don't wear strict Islamic dress. The threat was sent by e-mail to news organizations: "We will cut throats, and from vein to vein, if needed to protect the spirit and moral of this nation."
The group has previously claimed responsibility for bombing Internet cafes and music shops. The assailants used to detonate small bombs outside businesses at night, causing damage but no injuries.
According to a senior Palestinian security official The Swords of Truth has fewer than 100 members and was formed in 2006.
| 11556950 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11556950 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Euphoria
Euphoria () is the experience (or affect) of pleasure or excitement and intense feelings of well-being and happiness. Certain natural rewards and social activities, such as aerobic exercise, laughter, listening to or making music, and dancing, can induce a state of euphoria. Euphoria is also a symptom of certain neurological or neuropsychiatric disorders, such as mania. Romantic love and components of the human sexual response cycle are also associated with the induction of euphoria. Certain drugs, many of which are addictive, can cause euphoria, which at least partially motivates their recreational use.
Hedonic hotspots – i.e., the pleasure centers of the brain – are functionally linked. Activation of one hotspot results in the recruitment of the others. Inhibition of one hotspot results in the blunting of the effects of activating another hotspot. Therefore, the simultaneous activation of every hedonic hotspot within the reward system is believed to be necessary for generating the sensation of an intense euphoria.
The word "euphoria" is derived from the Ancient Greek terms : εὖ "eu" meaning "well" and φέρω "pherō" meaning "to bear". It is semantically opposite to dysphoria.
A 1706 English dictionary defines euphoria as "the well bearing of the Operation of a Medicine, i.e., when the patient finds himself eas'd or reliev'd by it".
In the 1860s, the English physician Thomas Laycock described euphoria as the feeling of bodily well-being and hopefulness; he noted its misplaced presentation in the final stage of some terminal illnesses and attributed such euphoria to neurological dysfunction. Sigmund Freud's 1884 monograph "Über Coca" described (his own) consumption of cocaine producing "the normal euphoria of a healthy person", while about 1890 the German neuropsychiatrist Carl Wernicke lectured about the "abnormal euphoria" in patients with mania.
A 1903 article in "The Boston Daily Globe" refers to euphoria as "pleasant excitement" and "the sense of ease and well-being". In 1920 "Popular Science" magazine described euphoria as "a high sounding name" meaning "feeling fit": normally making life worth living, motivating drug use, and ill formed in certain mental illnesses. Robert S. Woodworth's 1921 textbook "Psychology: A study of mental life", describes euphoria as an organic state which is the opposite of fatigue, and "means about the same as feeling good."
In 1940 "The Journal of Psychology" defined euphoria as a "state of general well being ... and pleasantly toned feeling." A decade later, finding "ordinary feelings of well being" difficult to evaluate, American addiction researcher Harris Isbell redefined euphoria as behavioral changes and objective signs typical of morphine. However, in 1957 British pharmacologist D. A. Cahal did not regard opioid euphoria as medically undesirable but an effect which "enhance[s] the value of a major analgesic." The 1977 edition of "A Concise Encyclopaedia of Psychiatry" called euphoria "a mood of contentment and well-being," with pathologic associations when used in a psychiatric context. As a sign of cerebral disease, it was described as bland and out of context, representing an inability to experience negative emotion.
In the 21st century, euphoria is "generally" defined as a state of great happiness, well-being and excitement, which may be normal, or abnormal and inappropriate when associated with psychoactive drugs, manic states, or brain disease or injury.
Hedonic hotspots – i.e., the pleasure centers of the brain – are functionally linked. Activation of one hotspot results in the recruitment of the others. Inhibition of one hotspot results in the blunting of the effects of activating another hotspot. Therefore, the simultaneous activation of every hedonic hotspot within the reward system is believed to be necessary for generating the sensation of euphoria.
Many different types of stimuli can induce euphoria, including psychoactive drugs, natural rewards, and social activities. Affective disorders such as unipolar mania or bipolar disorder can involve euphoria as a symptom.
Continuous physical exercise, particularly aerobic exercise, can induce a state of euphoria; for example, distance running is often associated with a "runner's high", which is a pronounced state of exercise-induced euphoria. Exercise is known to affect dopamine signaling in the nucleus accumbens, producing euphoria as a result, through increased biosynthesis of three particular neurochemicals: anandamide (an endocannabinoid), β-endorphin (an endogenous opioid), and phenethylamine (a trace amine and amphetamine analog).
Euphoria can occur as a result of dancing to music, music-making, and listening to emotionally arousing music. Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that the reward system plays a central role in mediating music-induced pleasure. Pleasurable emotionally arousing music strongly increases dopamine neurotransmission in the dopaminergic pathways that project to the striatum (i.e., the mesolimbic pathway and nigrostriatal pathway). Approximately 5% of the population experiences a phenomenon termed "musical anhedonia", in which individuals do not experience pleasure from listening to emotionally arousing music despite having the ability to perceive the intended emotion that is conveyed in passages of music.
A clinical study from January 2019 that assessed the effect of a dopamine precursor (levodopa), dopamine antagonist (risperidone), and a placebo on reward responses to music – including the degree of pleasure experienced during musical chills, as measured by changes in electrodermal activity as well as subjective ratings – found that the manipulation of dopamine neurotransmission bidirectionally regulates pleasure cognition (specifically, the hedonic impact of music) in human subjects. This research suggests that increased dopamine neurotransmission acts as a "sine qua non" condition for pleasurable hedonic reactions to music in humans.
The various stages of copulation may also be described as inducing euphoria in some people. Various analysts have described either the entire act of copulation, the moments leading to orgasm, or the orgasm itself as the pinnacle of human pleasure or euphoria.
A euphoriant is a type of psychoactive drug which tends to induce euphoria. Most euphoriants are addictive drugs due to their reinforcing properties and ability to activate the brain's reward system.
Dopaminergic stimulants like amphetamine, methamphetamine, cocaine, MDMA, and methylphenidate are euphoriants. Nicotine is a parasympathetic stimulant that acts as a mild euphoriant in some people.
Chewing areca nut (seeds from the "Areca catechu" palm) with slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) – a common practice in South- and Southeast Asia – produces stimulant effects and euphoria. The major psychoactive ingredients – arecoline (a muscarinic receptor partial agonist) and arecaidine (a GABA reuptake inhibitor) – are responsible for the euphoric effect.
Certain depressants can produce euphoria; some of the euphoriant drugs in this class include alcohol in moderate doses, , and ketamine.
Some barbiturates and benzodiazepines may cause euphoria. Euphoriant effects are determined by the drug's speed of onset, increasing dose, and with intravenous administration. Barbiturates more likely to cause euphoria include amobarbital, secobarbital and pentobarbital. Benzodiazepines more likely to cause euphoria are flunitrazepam, alprazolam and clonazepam. Benzodiazepines also tend to enhance opioid-induced euphoria.
Pregabalin induces dose-dependent euphoria. Occurring in a small percentage of individuals at recommended doses, euphoria is increasingly frequent at supratherapeutic doses (or with intravenous- or nasal administration). At doses five times the maximum recommended, intense euphoria is reported. Another GABA analogue, gabapentin, may induce euphoria. Characterized as opioid-like but less intense, it may occur at supratherapeutic doses, or in combination with other drugs, such as opioids or alcohol. Ethosuximide and perampanel can also produce euphoria at therapeutic doses.
µ-Opioid receptor agonists are a set of euphoriants that include drugs such as heroin, morphine, codeine, oxycodone, and fentanyl. By contrast, κ-opioid receptor agonists, like the endogenous neuropeptide "dynorphin", are known to cause dysphoria, a mood state opposite to euphoria that involves feelings of profound discontent.
Cannabinoid receptor 1 agonists are a group of euphoriants that includes certain plant-based cannabinoids (e.g., THC from the cannabis plant), endogenous cannabinoids (e.g., anandamide), and synthetic cannabinoids.
Certain gases, like nitrous oxide (NO, aka "laughing gas"), can induce euphoria when inhaled.
Acute exogenous glucocorticoid administration is known to produce euphoria, but this effect is not observed with long-term exposure.
Fasting has been associated with improved mood, well-being, and sometimes euphoria. Various mechanisms have been proposed and possible applications in treating depression considered.
Euphoria is also strongly associated with both hypomania and mania, mental states characterized by a pathological heightening of mood, which may be either euphoric or irritable, in addition to other symptoms, such as pressured speech, flight of ideas, and grandiosity.
Although hypomania and mania are syndromes with multiple etiologies (that is, ones that may arise from any number of conditions), they are most commonly seen in bipolar disorder, a psychiatric illness characterized by alternating periods of mania and depression.
Euphoria may occur during auras of seizures typically originating in the temporal lobe, but affecting the anterior insular cortex. This euphoria is symptomatic of a rare syndrome called ecstatic seizures, often also involving mystical experiences. Euphoria (or more commonly dysphoria) may also occur in periods between epileptic seizures. This condition, "interictal dysphoric disorder", is considered an atypical affective disorder. Persons who experience feelings of depression or anxiety between or before seizures occasionally experience euphoria afterwards.
Some persons experience euphoria in the prodrome – hours to days before the onset – of a migraine headache. Similarly, a euphoric state occurs in some persons following the migraine episode.
Euphoria sometimes occurs in persons with multiple sclerosis as the illness progresses. This euphoria is part of a syndrome originally called "euphoria sclerotica," which typically includes disinhibition and other symptoms of cognitive and behavioral dysfunction.
| 11563109 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11563109 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Lying-in
Lying-in is the term given to the European forms of postpartum confinement, the traditional practice involving long bed rest after giving birth. The term and the practice it describes are old-fashioned or archaic, but it used to be considered an essential component of the postpartum period, even if there were no medical complications during childbirth.
A 1932 publication refers to lying-in as ranging from two weeks to two months. It also does not suggest "Getting Up" (getting out of bed post-birth) for at least nine days and ideally for 20 days. Care was provided either by her female relatives (mother or mother-in-law), or, for those who could afford it, by a temporary worker called the monthly nurse. These weeks ended with the re-introduction of the mother to the community in the Christian ceremony of the churching of women. When lying-in was a more common term, it was used in the names of several maternity hospitals, for example the General Lying-In Hospital in London. Up until the 1970s, standard NHS postpartum care involved ten days in hospital, with the newborns taken to the nursery overnight, ensuring the mothers were well rested by the time they returned home.
A caudle was a hot drink, well documented in British cuisine, particularly in Victorian times, as suitable for invalids and new mothers. So much was it associated with the visits of friends to see the new baby, that "cake and caudle" or "taking caudle" became a metonym for postpartum social visits.
Women received congratulatory visits from friends and family during the period, and among many traditional customs around the world the "desco da parto" was a special form of painted tray presented to the mother in Renaissance Florence. The many scenes painted on these trays show female visitors bringing presents, received by the mother in bed, while other women tend to the baby. Equivalent gifts in contemporary culture include baby showers and push presents.
No fixed term of lying-in is recommended in Renaissance manuals on family life (unlike in some other cultures), but it appears from documentary records that the mother was rarely present at the baptism, in Italian cities usually held within a week of the birth at the local parish church, normally a few minutes' walk from any house.
In art, the immensely popular scene of the "Birth of Jesus" technically shows the Virgin Mary, who reclines on a couch in most medieval examples, lying-in, but in famously un-ideal conditions. More ideal images of lying-in in well-off households are represented in the subjects, also popular, of the "Birth of the Virgin" and "Birth of John the Baptist". These are generally given contemporary settings, and differ little from other images that are purely secular, especially those on "desci da parto".
| 11581752 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11581752 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Principle of humanity
In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of humanity states that when interpreting another speaker we must assume that his or her beliefs and desires are connected to each other and to reality in some way, and attribute to him or her "the propositional attitudes one supposes one would have oneself in those circumstances". The principle of humanity was named by Richard Grandy (then an assistant professor of philosophy at Princeton University) who first expressed it in 1973.
| 11585926 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11585926 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Hatata
Hatata (; Ge'ez: ሓተታ "ḥatäta" "inquiry") is a 1667 ethical philosophical treatise by the Abyssinian philosopher Zera Yacob, written at the request of his patron's son Walda Heywat. The philosophy is theistic in nature. It has often been compared by scholars to Descartes' "Discours de la methode" (1637).
Yacob wrote "Hatata" as an investigation of the light of reason. Yacob is most noted for this philosophy surrounding the principle of harmony. He asserted that an action's morality is decided by whether it advances or degrades overall harmony in the world. While he did believe in a deity, whom he referred to as God, he rejected any set of religious beliefs. Rather than deriving beliefs from any organized religion, Yacob sought the truth in observing the natural world.
Upon Yacob's death in 1692 his pupil Walda Heywat updated the work to include his death.
Though it is generally taken by most scholars of Ethiopic literature and of Africana Philosophy to an authentic work written by a certain Abyssinian from Aksum in the 17th Century, there have been doubts over his authorship since the early 20th Century. This comes from the fact that the Franciscan Jesuit monk Giusto Da Urbino, had not sent the original manuscripts to his patron and collector Antoine D'Abbadie, but 'copies' he'd made by his own hand. The other reason that doubts emerged arose from a rumour by a monk Teklehaymanot, who claimed that he'd heard other people say that 'he might written the treatise himself'. This and other plot-holes in the story of the acquisition by D'Abbadie and curious exchanges between D'Urbino and his patron, make authentic authorship all the more doubtful. For instance, the fact that there was an anticipated place in D'Abbadie's then growing collection of Ethiopia literature for 'scientific' and other rare subjects to be placed in, and the all-too-coincidental fact that D'Urbino was able to deliver and satisfy this need of his financial sponsor. Scholars who fall into this camp of the doubtful have included Enno Littmann, and presently "Anaïs Wion", a prominent French scholar of Ethiopic Literature. On the other side, those who affirm Zara Yacob's authentic authorship of the original texts include the Canadian Scholar Claude Sumner who translated the treatises into English, and Ethiopian Scholar and Philosopher Teodros Kiros. Both of the latter strongly argue for their authenticity and have written extensively on the texts.
| 11632490 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11632490 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Guilty pleasure
A guilty pleasure is something, such as a film, a television program or a piece of music, that one enjoys despite understanding that it is not generally held in high regard, or is seen as unusual or weird. For example, a person may secretly like a movie but will admit that particular movie is poorly made and/or generally seen as "not good."
Fashion, video games, music, theatre, television series, films, food and fetishes can be examples of guilty pleasures.
| 11650517 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11650517 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Millennium Seed Bank Partnership
The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership (MSBP or MSB), formerly known as the Millennium Seed Bank Project, is the largest "ex situ" plant conservation programme in the world coordinated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. After being awarded a Millennium Commission grant in 1995, the project commenced in 1996, and is now housed in the Wellcome Trust Millennium Building situated in the grounds of Wakehurst Place, West Sussex. Its purpose is to provide an "insurance policy" against the extinction of plants in the wild by storing seeds for future use. The storage facilities consist of large underground frozen vaults preserving the world's largest wild-plant seedbank or collection of seeds from wild species. The project had been started by Dr Peter Thompson and run by Paul Smith after the departure of Roger Smith. Roger Smith was awarded the OBE in 2000 in the Queen's New Year Honours for services to the Project.
In collaboration with other biodiversity projects around the world, expeditions are sent to collect seeds from dryland plants. Where possible, collections are kept in the country of origin with duplicates being sent to the Millennium Seed Bank Project for storage. Major partnerships exist on all the continents, enabling the countries involved to meet international objectives such as the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation and the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations Environment Programme.
The seed bank at Kew has gone through many iterations. The Kew Seed Bank facility, set up by Peter Thompson in 1980, preceded the MSBP and was headed by Roger Smith from 1980 to 2005. From 2005, Paul Smith took over as head of the MSBP. The Wellcome Trust Millennium Seed Bank building was designed by the firm Stanton WIlliams and opened by Prince Charles in 2000. The laboratories and offices are in two wings flanking a wide space open to visitors housing an exhibition, and also allowing them to watch the work of cleaning and preparing seeds for storage through the large windows of the work areas. There is also a view down to the entrance to the underground vaults where the seeds are stored at . In 2001, the international programme of the MSBP was launched.
In April 2007, it banked its billionth seed, the "Oxytenanthera abyssinica", a type of African bamboo.
In October 2009, it reached its 10% goal of banking all the world's wild plant species by adding "Musa itinerans", a wild banana, to its seed vault. As estimates for the number of seed bearing plant species have increased, 34,088 wild plant species and 1,980,405,036 seeds in storage as of June 2015 represent over 13% of the world's wild plant species.
The main aims of the project are to:
There are over 100 partnerships worldwide, including Australia, Mexico, Chile, Kenya, China, United States, Jordan, Mali, Malawi, Madagascar, Burkina Faso, Botswana, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and South Africa. Australia is particularly significant as its flora constitutes 15% of the world's total of species, with 22% of them identified as under threat of extinction.
Seed collections arrive at the MSBP in varying states, sometimes attached to fruits, sometimes clean. The collections usually also include a voucher specimen that can be used to identify the plant. The collections are immediately moved to a dry room until processing can be conducted where the seeds are cleaned of debris and other plant material, X-rayed, counted, and banked at . Seeds are banked in hermetically sealed glass containers along with Silica gel packets impregnated with indicator compounds that change colour if moisture seeps into the collection. Seeds are tested for viability with a germination test shortly after banking and then at regular 10 year intervals. If seed collections are low, re-harvesting from the wild is always the preferred option.
When seeds are required for research purposes, they can be requested from the MSBP's seedlist. If it has the legal permission to do so, the MSB can then provide up to 60 seeds for free, to bona fide, non-commercial organisations for the purposes of research, restoration, and reintroduction. All seeds provided to institutions are on a non-profit mutual benefit basis. The MSB also operates the UK Native Seed Hub which aims to improve the resilience of the UK's ecological networks by providing high-quality UK native seeds to conservation and restoration groups.
| 11679320 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11679320 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Ecosharing
Ecosharing is an environmental ethic for people to live by: that their own impact on the Earth’s biosphere be limited to no more than their own fair ecoshare. The term seems to have been first used by G. Tyler Miller, Jr. in the 1975 edition of his "Living in the Environment" text. The 1990 book "Coming of Age in the Global Village" sought to quantify an "ecoshare" by linking it to average world per capita income and energy use. A more modern approach might extend this by also including one's carbon footprint. However it is gauged, an ecoshare is determined by overall assessment of the human impact on the biosphere, computer models of its future condition, and necessary limits imposed by sustainability criteria.
| 11714262 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11714262 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Avaaz
Avaaz, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization launched in January 2007, promotes global activism on issues such as climate change, human rights, animal rights, corruption, poverty, and conflict. The UK-based newspaper "The Guardian" considers it "the globe's largest and most powerful online activist network".
The name chosen for the community is a Romanization of a word meaning "voice" in various languages, such as
Hindi आवाज़ and Urdu آواز.
Avaaz.org was co-founded by Res Publica, a "community of public sector professionals dedicated to promoting good governance, civic virtue and deliberative democracy," and MoveOn.org, an American non-profit progressive public policy advocacy group. It was also supported by Service Employees International Union, a founding partner.
Avaaz's individual co-founders include Ricken Patel, Tom Pravda, former Virginia congressman Tom Perriello, MoveOn Executive Director Eli Pariser, Australian progressive entrepreneur David Madden, Jeremy Heimans (co-founders of Purpose.com), and Andrea Woodhouse. The board consists of Ricken Patel (president), Ian Bassin, and Sam Barratt.
Avaaz's founding President and CEO is the Canadian-British Ricken Patel. He studied PPE (politics, philosophy, economics) at Balliol College, Oxford University. He received a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University. He worked for the International Crisis Group around the world, including in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan and Afghanistan, where he says "he learnt how to bring rebel forces to the negotiation table, to monitor elections (covertly), to restore public faith in once corrupt political systems and to spot when foreign forces were being manipulated." He returned to the US and volunteered for MoveOn.org, where he learned how to use online tools for activism.
"Since 2009, Avaaz has not taken donations from foundations or corporations, nor has it accepted payments of more than $5,000 (£3,100)," "The Guardian" reported. "Instead, it relies simply on the generosity of individual members, who have now raised over $20m (£12.4m)." Prior to 2009 various foundations had funded Avaaz's staff and start-up costs.
Avaaz global campaigns are managed by a team of campaigners working from over 30 countries, including the UK, India, Lebanon and Brazil. They communicate with members via email, and employ campaigning tactics including online public petitions, videos, and email-your-leader tools. In some cases Avaaz also uses advertisements and commissions legal advice to clarify how best to take a campaign forward, and stages "sit-ins, rallies, phone-ins and media friendly stunts". Examples of stunts include "taking a herd of cardboard pigs to the doors of the World Health Organisation to demand an investigation into the link between swine flu and giant pig farms and creating a three-mile human chain handshake from the Dalai Lama to the doors of the Chinese Embassy in London to request dialogue between the parties".
Suggestions for campaigns come from members, supplemented by guidance from teams of specialists. Once a suggestion has been taken up as having potential, tester email are polled to 10,000 Avaaz members; if the emails receive a sufficient response, the campaign is opened up to all Avaaz members. In 2010 "The Economist" suggested that "the way Avaaz bunches unlikely causes together may be an asset in a world where campaigns, like race and class, can still segregate people, not reconcile them."
Avaaz claims to unite practical idealists from around the world. Director Ricken Patel said in 2011, "We have no ideology per se. Our mission is to close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want. Idealists of the world unite!"
In practice, Avaaz often supports causes considered progressive, such as calling for global action on climate change, challenging Monsanto, and building greater global support for refugees.
During the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests, Avaaz set up Internet proxy servers to allow protesters to upload videos onto public websites.
Avaaz supported the establishment of a no-fly zone over Libya, which led to the military intervention in the country in 2011. It was criticized for its pro-intervention stance in the media and blogs.
Avaaz supported the civil uprising preceding the Syrian Civil War. This included sending $1.5 million of Internet communications equipment to protesters, and training activists. Later it used smuggling routes to send over $2 million of medical equipment into rebel-held areas of Syria. It also smuggled 34 international journalists into Syria. Avaaz coordinated the evacuation of wounded British photographer Paul Conroy from Homs. Thirteen Syrian activists died during the evacuation operation. Some senior members of other non-governmental organizations working in the Middle East have criticized Avaaz for taking sides in a civil war. As of November 2016, Avaaz continues campaigning for no-fly zones over Syria in general and specifically Aleppo. (Gen. Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, has said that establishing a no-fly zone means going to war against Syria and Russia.) It has received criticism from parts of the political blogosphere and has a single digit percentage of its users opposing the petitions, with a number of users ultimately leaving the network. The Avaaz team responded to this criticism by issuing two statements defending their decision to campaign.
In the 2016 United States presidential election, Avaaz campaigned against Donald Trump with the slogan "Defeat Donald Trump", and produced a software tool to simplify overseas voter registration.
In September 2017, Avaaz took legal action in the British High Court of Justice to oppose 21st Century Fox's bid to take over the pan-European broadcasting company Sky plc, by seeking a judicial review of the regulator Ofcom's decision not to recommend rejection of the takeover.
In January 2018, Monsanto requested Avaaz hand over all documents the organization held in relation to glyphosate. Lawyers for the company said they planned to use the documentation in their defense during an upcoming court case involving two plaintiffs in Missouri who say their cancer was caused by exposure to Monsanto's "Roundup" herbicide. Avaaz argued that a successful subpoena would result in a "chilling effect" on the group's work.
On September 5, 2018 a New York judge sided with Avaaz. The judge stated that the subpoena "risked 'chilling' free speech and political activity", and argued that Monsanto's request was "anti-democratic".
Some question whether Avaaz's focus on online petitions and email campaigns may encourage laziness, transforming potential activism into clicktivism. Malcolm Gladwell says that petition tools do not create "close-knit, disciplined and tenacious" networks of activists. In February 2012, Avaaz raised money for the evacuation of Paul Conroy from Syria, a mission that led to the deaths of 13 activists in Syria. A "New Republic" article accused Avaaz of making false claims about their own role in the evacuation. Jillian York has accused Avaaz of lack of transparency and arrogance. The "Defensor Da Natureza" blog has accused Avaaz of taking credit for the success of the Ficha Limpa anti-corruption bill in Brazil, which Luis Nassif reposted.
In 2008, Canadian conservative minister John Baird labeled Avaaz a "shadowy foreign organization" tied to billionaire George Soros.
Another Canadian, conservative media personality Ezra Levant, tried to make a link between Soros and Avaaz.org as an indirect supporter through MoveOn, but the article was later retracted as baseless and an apology was offered to Soros.
| 11714761 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11714761 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Spectacle (critical theory)
The spectacle is a central notion in the Situationist theory, developed by Guy Debord in his 1967 book, "The Society of the Spectacle". In the general sense, the spectacle refers to "the autocratic reign of the market economy which had acceded to an irresponsible sovereignty, and the totality of new techniques of government which accompanied this reign." It also exists in its limited sense, where "spectacle" means the mass media, which are "its most glaring superficial manifestation." Debord said that the society of the spectacle came to existence in the late 1920s.
The critique of the "spectacle" is a development and application of Karl Marx's concept of fetishism of commodities, reification and alienation, and the way it was reprised by György Lukács in 1923. In the society of the spectacle, the commodities rule the workers and the consumers, instead of being ruled by them, are passive subjects that contemplate the reified spectacle.
Debord claims that in its limited sense, "spectacle" means the mass media, which are "its most glaring superficial manifestation.". However T. J. Clark regards this as a journalistic cliché. Clark argues that the spectacle came to dominate Paris during the Second Empire thanks to Haussmann's renovation of Paris. Debord, however, said that the society of the spectacle came to existence in the late 1920s. This is the period in which modern advertising and public relations were introduced, most significantly with the innovative techniques developed by Edward Bernays in his campaigns for the tobacco industry. In his 1928 book "Propaganda", Bernays theorized the "conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses." The critique of the society of the spectacle shares many assumptions and arguments with the critique of the "culture industry" made by Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer in 1944.
With "The Society of the Spectacle", Debord attempted to provide the Situationist International (SI) with a Marxian critical theory. The concept of "the spectacle" expanded to all society the Marxist concept of reification drawn from the first section of Karl Marx's "Capital", entitled "The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof" and developed by György Lukács in his work, "History and Class Consciousness". This was an analysis of the logic of commodities whereby they achieve an ideological autonomy from the process of their production, so that "social action takes the form of the action of objects, which rule the producers instead of being ruled by them."
Developing this analysis of the logic of the commodity, "The Society of the Spectacle" generally understood society as divided between the passive subject who consumes the spectacle and the reified spectacle itself. In a spectacular society, the system of commodity production generates a continual stream of images, for consumption by people who lack the experiences represented therein. The spectacle represents people solely in terms of their subordination to commodities, and experience itself becomes commodified.
In the opening of "Das Kapital", Marx makes the observation that within the capitalist mode of production we evaluate materials not by what purpose they serve or what they're actually useful for, but we instead recognize them based on their value in the market. In capitalist society, virtually identical products often have vastly different values simply because one has a more recognizable or prestigious brand name. The value of a commodity is abstract and not tied to its actual characteristics. Much in the same way capitalism commodifies the material world, the situationists assert that advanced capitalism commodifies experience and perception.
As early as 1958, in the situationist manifesto, Debord described official culture as a "rigged game", where conservative powers forbid subversive ideas to have direct access to the public discourse. Such ideas get first trivialized and sterilized, and then they are safely incorporated back within mainstream society, where they can be exploited to add new flavors to old dominant ideas. This technique of the spectacle is sometimes called "recuperation".
To survive, the spectacle must maintain social control and effectively handle all threats to the social order. Recuperation, a concept first proposed by Guy Debord, is the process by which the spectacle intercepts socially and politically radical ideas and images, commodifies them, and safely incorporates them back within mainstream society. More broadly, it may refer to the appropriation or co-opting of any subversive works or ideas by mainstream media. It is the opposite of détournement, in which conventional ideas and images are reorganized and recontextualized with radical intentions.
Debord discusses the close link between revolution and culture and everyday life, and the reason why conservative powers are interested in forbidding them "any direct access to the rigged game of official culture." Debord recalls that worldwide revolutionary movements that emerged during the 1920s were followed by "an ebbing of the movements that had tried to advance a liberatory new attitude in culture and everyday life," and that such movements were brought to a "complete social isolation."
In "Comments on the Society of the Spectacle" (1988), Debord modified his argument, and claimed that the spectacle manifests itself in three different forms:
The spectacle associated with concentrated bureaucracy. Debord associated this spectacular form mostly with the Eastern Bloc and Fascism, although today mixed backward economies import it, and even advanced capitalist countries in times of crisis. Every aspect of life, like property, music, and communication is concentrated and is identified with the bureaucratic class. The concentrated spectacle generally identifies itself with a powerful political leader. The concentrated spectacle is made effective through a state of permanent violence and police terror.
The diffuse spectacle is the spectacle associated with advanced capitalism and commodity abundance. In the diffuse spectacle, different commodities conflict with each other, preventing the consumer from consuming the whole. Each commodity claims itself as the only existent one, and tries to impose itself over the other commodities:
The diffuse spectacle is more effective than the concentrated spectacle. The diffuse spectacle operates mostly through seduction, while the concentrated spectacle operates mostly through violence. Because of this, Debord argues that the diffuse spectacle is more effective at suppressing non-spectacular opinions than the concentrated spectacle.
The spectacle associated with modern capitalist countries. The integrated spectacle borrows traits from the diffuse and concentrated spectacle to form a new synthesis. Debord argues that this is a very recent form of spectacular manifestation, and that it was pioneered in France and Italy. According to Debord, the integrated spectacle goes by the label of liberal democracy. This spectacle introduces a state of permanent general secrecy, where experts and specialists dictate the morality, statistics, and opinions of the spectacle. Terrorism is the invented enemy of the spectacle, which specialists compare with their "liberal democracy", pointing out the superiority of the latter one. Debord argues that without terrorism, the integrated spectacle wouldn't survive, for it needs to be compared to something in order to show its "obvious" perfection and superiority.
A long tradition of work exists in political science on the "political spectacle" started with Debord; many literary critics and philosophers in the 20th century contributed to this analysis. According to anthropologist Meg McLagan, "Debord analyzes the penetration of the commodity form into mass communication, which he argues results in the spectacle". Andrew Hussey claims in his biography of Debord that the term spectacle began life not in a Marxist context, but was first borrowed from Nietzsche and his concept of the mass secret. The critic Sadie Plant argues that later theories of postmodernism, particularly those of Baudrillard and Lyotard, owe much to Debord's theory, and represent an apolitical appropriation of its criticism of the unreality of life under late capitalism. Debord was a rebel to his core and despised academic commodification of his ideas and their integration into the diffuse spectacle. Throughout his life he fought to make his ideas truly revolutionary.
In "Green Illusions", Ozzie Zehner draws largely on Debord to argue that the spectacles of solar cells, wind turbines, and other technologies have organized environmental thinking around energy-production at the expense of energy-reduction strategies.
| 11715643 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11715643 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Trail ethics
Trail ethics deals with ethics as it applies to the use of trails. It is similar to both environmental ethics and human rights in that it deals with the shared interaction of humans and nature. There are multiple agencies and groups that support and encourage ethical behavior on trails.
Trail ethics applies to the use of trails, by pedestrians, dog walkers, hikers, backpackers, mountain bikers, equestrians, hunters, and off-road vehicles.
Sometimes conflicts can develop between different types of users of a trail or pathway. Etiquette has developed to minimize such interference. Examples include:
Some cities have worked to add pathways for pedestrians and cyclists. This can reduce the amount of vehicle traffic in busy urban areas, and make visiting downtown areas more pleasant, There can be difficulties when a path is used by people travelling at different speeds, such as pedestrians, joggers, and cyclists, and the appropriate etiquette is not observed.
In the US off-road vehicle use on public land has been criticized by some members of the government and environmental organizations including the Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society. They have noted several consequences of illegal ORV use such as pollution, trail damage, erosion, land degradation, possible species extinction, and habitat destruction which can leave hiking trails impassable. ORV proponents argue that legal use taking place under planned access along with the multiple environment and trail conservation efforts by ORV groups will mitigate these issues. Groups such as the Blueribbon Coalition advocate Treadlightly, which is the responsible use of public lands used for off-road activities.
| 11759970 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11759970 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Unrelated Business Income Tax
Unrelated Business Income Tax (UBIT) in the U.S. Internal Revenue Code is the tax on unrelated business income, which comes from an activity engaged in by a tax-exempt 26 USCA 501 organization that is not related to the tax-exempt purpose of that organization.
For most organizations, a business activity generates unrelated business income subject to taxation if:
A trade or business includes the selling of goods or services with the intention of having a profit. An activity is regularly carried on if it occurs with a frequency and continuity, similar to what a commercial entity would do if it performed the same activity. An activity is substantially related to furthering the exempt purpose of the organization if the activity contributes importantly to accomplishing the organization's purpose, other than for the sake of producing the income itself.
A university runs a pizza parlor that sells pizza to students and non-students alike. The university is a tax-exempt organization and its pizza parlor generates unrelated business income. While the tuition and fees generated by the university are tax exempt, its income from the pizza parlor is not tax-exempt because the pizza parlor is unrelated to the university's education purpose.
A counter-example is a social-service nonprofit that holds a one-time bake sale. While the sale is unrelated to their mission, it is tax-exempt because it is not regularly carried on. Business activities of an exempt organization ordinarily are considered regularly carried on if they show a frequency and continuity, and they are pursued in a manner similar to comparable commercial activities of nonexempt organizations.
If a nonprofit organization receives income from providing services to outside entities and the performance of those services does not further the organization's mission of the organization, the income may be unrelated business income.
If a nonprofit organization sells advertising in print or on the organization's web site, the income is typically unrelated business income if the advertisements promote the advertiser's business and not the nonprofit organization.
If a nonprofit organization licenses its intangible property and promotes an outside entity's business, the income may be unrelated business income. On the other hand, if the nonprofit organization licenses its intangible property and performs no other services related to the licensing, then the income is consider passive income and it is typically not unrelated business income.
If a nonprofit organization has ownership in an S corporation, the income from the S corporation is typically unrelated business income. Gain or loss from the sale of stock in the S corporation stock is also typically unrelated business income.
Under Internal Revenue Code section 514, property held for the production of income and subject to acquisition or improvement indebtedness is typically unrelated business income.
In most of the above examples, the income may not be considered unrelated business income if the activity is not regularly carried on or if the organization does not intend to recognize a gain from the activity.
Certain types of income are not considered unrelated business income, such as income from dividends; interest; royalties; rental of real property; research for a federal, state, or local government; and charitable contributions, gifts, and grants.
In addition, unrelated business income does not include income derived from the work of unpaid volunteers, income from the sale of donated goods, income from trade shows and conventions, income from legal gaming.
The Internal Revenue Service does not consider the receipt of assets from a closely related tax-exempt organization to be unrelated business income.
The IRS taxes unrelated business income at the corporate tax rates (IRC section 11) except for certain section 511(b)(2) trusts which are taxed at trust tax rates.
Individual retirement accounts generally are subject to tax on income that is taxable to most U.S. tax-exempt entities under 26 U.S.C. §511. 26 U.S.C. §408 contains many of the rules governing the treatment of Individual retirement accounts. §408(e)(1) states: "Any individual retirement account is exempt from taxation under this subtitle unless such account has ceased to be an individual retirement account by reason of paragraph (2) or (3). Notwithstanding the preceding sentence, any such account is subject to the taxes imposed by section 511 (relating to imposition of tax on unrelated business income of charitable, etc. organizations)."
In addition, the IRS unequivocally confirms this in the first few paragraphs of Chapter 1 of the November 2007 revision of Publication 598 that IRAs are "subject to the tax on unrelated business income".
The primary way investors have tried to limit the reach of the UBIT tax is by employing a strategy known as a "C Corp Blocker". The "C Corp Blocker" strategy involves the retirement account holder establishing a C Corporation and then investing the retirement funds into the C Corporation before the funds are ultimately invested into the planned investment. For example, if a retirement account investor is seeking to invest retirement funds into a business operated through a LLC, she can establish a C Corporation, invest her IRA funds through the C Corporation, and then have the C Corporation invest the funds into the business LLC. All income received by the C Corporation would be subject to the new reduced corporate tax rate of 21%, which is less than the 37% maximum UBIT tax rate and less than the old maximum corporate tax rate of 35%.
Since at least 1928, tax-exempt organizations could earn tax-free income from both mission-related activities and commercial business activities that were unrelated to the purpose for which they were exempt, as long as they used the net profits for exempt purposes.
In 1947, a group of wealthy alumni donated C.F. Mueller Company, a pasta manufacturing company, to New York University Law School with the intention of the company's profits being used to fund the law school's educational activities. C.F. Mueller Company did not pay income tax on its profits because it now considered itself a charitable organization. The Internal Revenue Service challenged it. New York University Law School won the case because, at that point, tax-exempt organizations were not subject to income tax on their revenue from any source as long as the revenue was used towards the organization's tax-exempt purpose.
In 1950, Congress amended the tax law to introduce the concept of unrelated business income. Congress enacted the law because it was concerned about nonprofit organizations having an unfair advantage competing in the same activities as for-profit organizations. From that point on, revenue would be considered tax-exempt based on the source of the funds, rather than the use of the funds.
| 11760547 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11760547 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Ecological self
Ecological self is central to the school of "Experiential Deep Ecology", which, based on the work of Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss, argues that through the process of self-actualisation, one transcends the notions of the individuated "egoic" self and arrives at a position of an ecological self. So long as one is working within the narrower concept of self, Næss argues, environmentally responsible behaviour is a form of altruism, a "doing good for the other", which historically has been a precarious ethical basis, usually involved in exhorting others to "be good". Næss argues that in his Ecosophy, the enlargement of the ego-self to the eco-self results in environmentally responsible behaviour as a form of self-interest.
Warwick Fox argued that Næss's philosophy was based upon a variety of "transpersonal ecology" in which self-interest was firmly embedded within the interest of the ecommunity ecosphere of which the self was eternally embedded
As deep ecologist John Seed has stated, "Deep ecology critiques the idea that we are the crown of creation, the measure of all being: that the world is a pyramid with humanity rightly on top, merely a resource, and that nature has instrumental value only". The concept of the Ecological Self goes beyond anthropocentrism, which, by contrast locates human concerns as the exclusive source of all value. It draws upon the Land Ethic of Aldo Leopold. Leopold argued that within conventional ethics, the land itself was considered only as property, occupying a role analogous to slavery in earlier societies that permitted the ownership of people. By comparison a land ethic enlarges the boundary of moral concern to include "soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land". The basis of such a non-anthropocentric ethic, according to Leopold was that "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."
Like Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme, ecological philosopher Freya Mathews argues that in considering the ecological self, we need to look beyond the present to the ""deep time"" of ages past, in the evolution of life and the creation of the cosmos, in order to consider the real roots of human consciousness. Experiential deep ecologist Joanna Macy speaks of the Ecological Self in her book "World as Lover, World as Self", and uses the concept in her work on "Deep Time".
| 11762174 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11762174 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | OLPC XO
The OLPC XO, previously known as the $100 Laptop, Children's Machine, and 2B1, is an inexpensive laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries around the world, to provide them with access to knowledge, and opportunities to "explore, experiment and express themselves" (constructionist learning). The XO was developed by Nicholas Negroponte, a co-founder of MIT's Media Lab, and designed by Yves Behar's Fuseproject company. The laptop is manufactured by Quanta Computer and developed by One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.
The subnotebooks are designed for sale to government-education systems which then give each primary school child their own laptop. Pricing was set to start at $188 in 2006, with a stated goal to reach the $100 mark in 2008 and the 50-dollar mark by 2010. When offered for sale in the Give One Get One campaigns of Q4 2006 and Q4 2007, the laptop was sold at $199.
The rugged, low-power computers used flash memory instead of a hard disk drive (HDD), and came with an operating system derived from Fedora Linux as their pre-installed operating system with the Sugar GUI. Mobile ad hoc networking via 802.11s Wi-Fi mesh networking, to allow many machines to share Internet access as long as at least one of them could connect to an access point, was initially announced, but quickly abandoned after proving unreliable.
The latest version of the OLPC XO is the XO-4 Touch.
The first early prototype was unveiled by the project's founder Nicholas Negroponte and then-United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on November 16, 2005, at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis, Tunisia. The device shown was a rough prototype using a standard development board. Negroponte estimated that the screen alone required three more months of development. The first working prototype was demonstrated at the project's Country Task Force Meeting on May 23, 2006.
In 2006 there was a major controversy because Microsoft had suddenly developed an interest in the XO project and wanted the formerly open source effort to run Windows. Negroponte agreed to provide engineer assistance to Microsoft to facilitate their efforts. During this time, the project mission statement changed to remove mentions of "open source". A number of developers, such as Ivan Krstić and Walter Bender, resigned because of these changes in strategy.
Approximately 400 developer boards (Alpha-1) were distributed in mid-2006; 875 working prototypes (Beta 1) were delivered in late 2006; 2400 Beta-2 machines were distributed at the end of February 2007; full-scale production started November 6, 2007. Quanta Computer, the project's contract manufacturer, said in February 2007 that it had confirmed orders for one million units. Quanta indicated that it could ship five million to ten million units that year because seven nations had committed to buy the XO-1 for their schoolchildren: Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Thailand, and Uruguay. Quanta plans to offer machines very similar to the XO-1 on the open market.
The One Laptop Per Child project originally stated that a consumer version of the XO laptop was not planned. The project later established, in 2007 the laptopgiving.org website for outright donations and for a "Give 1 Get 1" offer valid (but only to the United States, its territories, and Canadian addresses) from November 12, 2007 until December 31, 2007. For each computer purchased at a cost of $399, an XO is also sent to a child in a developing nation. OLPC again restarted the G1G1 program through Amazon.com in November 2008, but has since stopped as of December 31 (2008 or 2009).
On May 20, 2008, OLPC announced the next generation of XO, OLPC XO-2 which was thereafter cancelled in favor of the tablet-like designed XO-3. In late 2008, the NYC Department of Education began a project to purchase large numbers of XO computers for use by New York schoolchildren.
The design received the Community category award of the 2007 .
In 2008 the XO was awarded London's Design Museum "Design of the Year", plus two gold, one silver, and one bronze award at the Industrial Design Society of America's International Design Excellence Awards (IDEAs).
The XO-1 is designed to be low-cost, small, durable, and efficient. It is shipped with a slimmed-down version of Fedora Linux and a GUI named Sugar that is intended to help young children collaborate. The XO-1 includes a video camera, a microphone, long-range Wi-Fi, and a hybrid stylus/touch pad. In addition to a standard plug-in power supply, human power and solar power sources are available, allowing operation far from a commercial power grid. Mary Lou Jepsen has listed the design goals of the device as follows:
Various use models had been explored by OLPC with the help of Design Continuum and Fuseproject, including: laptop, e-book, theatre, simulation, tote, and tablet architectures. The current design, by Fuseproject, uses a transformer hinge to morph between laptop, e-book, and router modes.
In keeping with its goals of robustness and low power consumption, the design of the laptop intentionally omits all motor-driven moving parts; it has no hard drive, no optical (CD/DVD) media, no floppy drives and no fans (the device is passively cooled). An ATA interface is unnecessary due to the lack of hard drive. Storage is via an internal SD card slot. There is also no PC card slot, although USB ports are included.
A built-in hand-crank generator was part of the notebook in the original design; however, it is now an optional clamp-on peripheral.
The latest version of the OLPC XO is the XO-4 Touch.
The first-generation OLPC laptops have a novel low-cost LCD. Later generations of the OLPC laptop are expected to use low-cost, low-power and high-resolution color displays with an appearance similar to electronic paper.
The display is the most expensive component in most laptops. In April 2005, Negroponte hired Mary Lou Jepsen—who was interviewing to join the Media Arts and Sciences faculty at the MIT Media Lab in September 2008—as OLPC Chief Technology Officer. Jepsen developed a new display for the first-generation OLPC laptop, inspired by the design of small LCDs used in portable DVD players, which she estimated would cost about $35. In the OLPC XO-1, the screen is estimated to be the second most expensive component (after the CPU and chipset).
Jepsen has described the removal of the filters that color the RGB subpixels as the critical design innovation in the new LCD. Instead of using subtractive color filters, the display uses a plastic diffraction grating and lenses on the rear of the LCD to illuminate each pixel. This grating pattern is stamped using the same technology used to make DVDs. The grating splits the light from the white backlight into a spectrum. The red, green and blue components are diffracted into the correct positions to illuminate the corresponding pixel with R, G or B. This innovation results in a much brighter display for a given amount of backlight illumination: while the color filters in a regular display typically absorb 85% of the light that hits them, this display absorbs little of that light. Most LCD screens at the time used cold cathode fluorescent lamp backlights which were fragile, difficult or impossible to repair, required a high voltage power supply, were relatively power-hungry, and accounted for 50% of the screens' cost (sometimes 60%). The LED backlight in the XO-1 is easily replaceable, rugged, and inexpensive.
The remainder of the LCD uses existing display technology and can be made using existing manufacturing equipment. Even the masks can be made using combinations of existing materials and processes.
When lit primarily from the rear with the white LED backlight, the display shows a color image composed of both RGB and grayscale information. When lit primarily from the front by ambient light, for example from the sun, the display shows a monochromatic (black and white) image composed of just the grayscale information.
"Mode" change occurs by varying the relative amounts backlight and ambient light. With more backlight, a higher chrominance is available and a color image display is seen. As ambient light levels, such as sunlight, exceed the backlight, a grayscale display is seen; this can be useful when reading e-books for an extended time in bright light such as sunlight. The backlight brightness can also be adjusted to vary the level of color seen in the display and to conserve battery power.
In color mode (when lit primarily from the rear), the display does not use the common RGB pixel geometry for liquid crystal computer displays, in which each pixel contains three tall thin rectangles of the primary colors. Instead, the XO-1 display provides one color for each pixel. The colors align along diagonals that run from upper-right to lower left (see diagram on the right). To reduce the color artifacts caused by this pixel geometry, the color component of the image is blurred by the display controller as the image is sent to the screen. Despite the color blurring, the display still has high resolution for its physical size; normal displays put about 588(H)×441(V) to 882(H)×662(V) pixels in this amount of physical area and support subpixel rendering for slightly higher perceived resolution. A Philips Research study measured the XO-1 display's perceived color resolution as effectively 984(H)×738(V). A conventional liquid crystal display with the same number of green pixels (green carries most brightness or luminance information for human eyes) as the OLPC XO-1 would be 693×520. Unlike a standard RGB LCD, resolution of the XO-1 display varies with angle. Resolution is greatest from upper-right to lower left, and lowest from upper-left to lower-right. Images which approach or exceed this resolution will lose detail and gain color artifacts. The display gains resolution when in bright light; this comes at the expense of color (as the backlight is overpowered) and color resolution can never reach the full 200 dpi sharpness of grayscale mode because of the blur which is applied to images in color mode.
The laptop design specification goals are consumption of about 2 W of power during normal use, far less than the 10 W to 45 W of conventional laptops. With build 656, power consumption is between 5 and 8 watts measured on G1G1 laptop. Future software builds are expected to meet the 2-watt target.
In e-book mode (XO 1.5), all hardware sub-systems except the monochrome dual-touch display are powered down. When the user moves to a different page, the other systems wake up, render the new page on the display, and then go back to sleep. Power consumption in this e-book mode is estimated to be 0.3 to 0.8 W. The XO 2.0 is planned to consume even less power than earlier versions, less than 1.0 W in full color mode.
Power options include batteries, solar power panels, and human-powered generators, which make the XO self-powered equipment. 10 batteries at once can be charged from the school building power in the XO multi-battery charger. The low power consumption combined with these power options are useful in many countries that lack a power infrastructure.
IEEE 802.11b support will be provided using a Wi-Fi "Extended Range" chip set. Jepsen has said the wireless chip set will be run at a low bit rate, 2 Mbit/s maximum rather than the usual higher speed 5.5 Mbit/s or 11 Mbit/s to minimize power consumption. The conventional IEEE 802.11b system only handles traffic within a local cloud of wireless devices in a manner similar to an Ethernet network. Each node transmits and receives its own data, but it does not route packets between two nodes that cannot communicate directly. The OLPC laptop will use IEEE 802.11s to form the wireless mesh network.
Whenever the laptop is powered on it can participate in a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) with each node operating in a peer-to-peer fashion with other laptops it can hear, forwarding packets across the cloud. If a computer in the cloud has access to the Internet—either directly or indirectly—then all computers in the cloud are able to share that access. The data rate across this network will not be high; however, similar networks, such as the store and forward Motoman project have supported email services to 1000 schoolchildren in Cambodia, according to Negroponte. The data rate should be sufficient for asynchronous network applications (such as email) to communicate outside the cloud; interactive uses, such as web browsing, or high-bandwidth applications, such as video streaming should be possible inside the cloud. The IP assignment for the meshed network is intended to be automatically configured, so no server administrator or an administration of IP addresses is needed.
Building a MANET is still untested under the OLPC's current configuration and hardware environment. Although one goal of the laptop is that all of its software be open source, the source code for this routing protocol is currently closed source. While there are open-source alternatives such as OLSR or B.A.T.M.A.N., none of these options is yet available running at the data-link layer (Layer 2) on the Wi-Fi subsystem's co-processor; this is critical to OLPC's power efficiency scheme. Whether Marvell Technology Group, the producer of the wireless chip set and owner of the current meshing protocol software, will make the firmware open source is still an unanswered question. As of 2011, it has not done so.
Yves Behar is the chief designer of the present XO shell. The shell of the laptop is resistant to dirt and moisture, and is constructed with 2 mm thick plastic (50% thicker than typical laptops). It contains a pivoting, reversible display, movable rubber Wi-Fi antennas, and a sealed rubber-membrane keyboard.
More than twenty different keyboards have been laid out, to suit local needs to match the standard keyboard for the country in which a laptop is intended. Around half of these have been manufactured for prototype machines. There are parts of the world which do not have a standard keyboard representing their language. As Negroponte states this is "because there's no real commercial interest in making a keyboard". One example of where the OLPC has bridged this gap is in creating an Amharic keyboard for Ethiopia. For several languages, the keyboard is the first ever created for that language.
Negroponte has demanded that the keyboard not contain a caps lock key, which frees up keyboard space for new keys such as a future "view source" key.
Beneath the keyboard was a large area that resembled a very wide touchpad that Jepsen referred to as the "mousepad". The capacitive portion of the mousepad was an Alps GlidePoint trackpad, which was in the central third of the sensor and could be used with a finger. The full width was a resistive sensor which, though never supported by software, was intended to be used with a stylus. This unusual feature was eliminated in the CL1A hardware revision because it suffered from erratic pointer motion. Alps Electronics provided both the capacitive and resistive components of the mousepad.
The first XO prototype, displayed in 2005, had a built-in hand-crank generator for charging the battery. The XO-1 beta, released in early 2007, used a separate hand-crank generator.
The XO-1 was released in late 2007.
The XO 1.5 was released in early 2010.
The XO 1.75 began development in 2010, with full production commencing in February 2012.
The XO 2, previously scheduled for release in 2010, was canceled in favor of XO 3. With a price target $75, it had an elegant, lighter, folding dual touch-screen design. The hardware would have been open-source and sold by various manufacturers. A choice of operating system (Windows XP or Linux) was intended outside the United States. Its $150 price target in the United States includes two computers, one donated.
The OLPC XO-3 was scheduled for release in late 2012. It was canceled in favor of the XO-4. It featured one solid color multi-touch screen design, and a solar panel in the cover or carrying case.
The XO 4 is a refresh of the XO 1 to 1.75 with a later ARM CPU and an optional touch screen. This model will not be available for consumer sales. There is a mini HDMI port to allow connecting to a display.
The XO Tablet was designed by third-party Vivitar, rather than OLPC, and based on the Android platform whereas all previous XO models were based on Sugar running on top of Fedora. It is commercially available and has been used in OLPC projects.
Countries are expected to remove and add software to best adapt the laptop to the local laws and educational needs. As supplied by OLPC, all of the software on the laptop will be free and open source. All core software is intended to be localized to the languages of the target countries. The underlying software includes:
The laptop uses the Sugar graphical user interface, written in Python, on top of the X Window System and the Matchbox window manager. This interface is not based on the typical desktop metaphor but presents an iconic view of programs and documents and a map-like view of nearby connected users. The current active program is displayed in full-screen mode. Much of the core Sugar interface uses icons, bypassing localization issues. Sugar is also defined as having no folders present in the UI.
Steve Jobs had offered Mac OS X free of charge for use in the laptop, but according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative's founders, the designers wanted an operating system that can be tinkered with: "We declined because it's not open source." Therefore, Linux was chosen. However, after a deal with Microsoft, the laptop will now be offered with Windows XP along with an open source alternative.
Jim Gettys, responsible for the laptops' system software, has called for a re-education of programmers, saying that many applications use too much memory or even leak memory. "There seems to be a common fallacy among programmers that using memory is good: on current hardware it is often much faster to recompute values than to have to reference memory to get a precomputed value. A full cache miss can be hundreds of cycles, and hundreds of times the power consumption of an instruction that hits in the first level cache."
On August 4, 2006, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that static copies of selected Wikipedia articles would be included on the laptops. Jimmy Wales, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation, said that "OLPC's mission goes hand in hand with our goal of distributing encyclopedic knowledge, free of charge, to every person in the world. Not everybody in the world has access to a broadband connection." Negroponte had earlier suggested he would like to see Wikipedia on the laptop. Wales feels that Wikipedia is one of the "killer apps" for this device.
Don Hopkins announced that he is creating a free and open source port of the game "SimCity" to the OLPC with the blessing of Will Wright and Electronic Arts, and demonstrated SimCity running on the OLPC at the Game Developer's Conference in March 2007. The free and open source SimCity plans were confirmed at the same conference by SJ Klein, director of content for the OLPC, who also asked game developers to create "frameworks and scripting environments—tools with which children themselves could create their own content."
The laptop's security architecture, known as Bitfrost, was publicly introduced in February 2007. No passwords will be required for ordinary use of the machine. Programs are assigned certain bundles of rights at install time which govern their access to resources; users can later add more rights. Optionally, the laptops can be configured to request leases from a central server and to stop functioning when these leases expire; this is designed as a theft-prevention mechanism.
The pre-8.20 software versions were criticized for bad wireless connectivity and other minor issues.
The XO-1 is nicknamed "ceibalita" in Uruguay after the Ceibal project.
The hand-crank system for powering the laptop was abandoned by designers shortly after it was announced, and the "mesh" internet-sharing approach performed poorly and was then dropped. Bill Gates of Microsoft criticized the screen quality.
Some critics of the program would have preferred less money being spent on technology and more money being spent on clean water and "real schools". Some supporters worried about the lack of plans for teaching students. The program was based on constructionism, which is the idea that, if they had the tools, the kids would largely figure out how to do things on their own. Others wanted children to learn the Microsoft Windows operating system, rather than OLPC's lightweight Linux derivative, on the belief that the children would use Microsoft Windows in their careers. Intel's Classmate PC used Microsoft Windows and sold for US$200 to $400.
The project was known as "the $100 laptop", but it originally cost US$130 for a bare-bones laptop, and then the price rose to $180 in the next revision. The solid-state alternative to a hard drive was sturdy, which meant that the laptop could be dropped with a lower risk of breaking – although more laptops were broken than expected – but it was expensive, so the machines had limited storage capacity.
| 11778236 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11778236 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Sandra Laugier
Sandra Laugier is a French philosopher, working on moral philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophy of action and philosophy of science. She is currently a full professor of philosophy at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, a Senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France, and a scientific deputy director at the Institute for Humanities & Social Sciences (INSHS, "Institut des sciences humaines et sociales") at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, after being a professor at the University of Picardie Jules Verne in Amiens until 2010.
She has studied at Ecole Normale Supérieure and at Harvard University. She is director of the Center for Contemporary Philosophy, Institut des sciences juridique et philosophique de la Sorbonne (UMR 8103, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne/CNRS).
She has extensively published on ordinary language philosophy (Ludwig Wittgenstein, John L. Austin), moral philosophy (moral perfectionism, ethics of care), American philosophy (Stanley Cavell, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson), gender studies, popular culture (TV series), and more recently about democracy and civil disobedience. She is the French translator of most of Stanley Cavell’s work.
She has been Visiting Researcher at the Max Planck Institute (Berlin), Distinguished Visiting Professor at Johns Hopkins University, Visiting Professor at Pontifical University (Lima), and Visiting Professor “Chaire invitée” at the Facultés Saint-Louis (Bruxelles).
She was also a columnist at the French journal "Libération".
Articles available online
| 11781793 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11781793 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | International Day of Non-Violence
The International Day of Non-Violence is observed on 2 October, the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi.
In January 2004, Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi had taken a proposal for an International Day of Non-Violence from a Hindi teacher in Paris teaching international students to the World Social Forum in Mumbai. The idea gradually attracted the interest of some leaders of India's Congress Party ("Ahimsa Finds Teen Voice", The Telegraph, Calcutta) until a Satyagraha Conference resolution in New Delhi in January 2007, initiated by Indian National Congress President and Chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance Sonia Gandhi and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, called upon the United Nations to adopt the idea.
On 15 June 2007 the United Nations General Assembly voted to establish 2 October as the International Day of Non-Violence. The resolution by the General Assembly asks all members of the UN system to commemorate 2 October in "an appropriate manner and disseminate the message of non-violence, including through education and public awareness."
The United Nations Postal Administration (UNPA) in New York City prepared a special cachet to commemorate this event, following a request from the Indian Ambassador at the Permanent Mission of India to the UN. The boxed pictorial cachet design was prepared by the UNPA and was limited to cancellation at UNPA's NY location (not Geneva and Vienna). The UNPA has indicated that all outgoing UNPA mail between 2 and 31 October carried the cachet.
| 11798752 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11798752 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Douglas Kinsella
Thomas Douglas Kinsella, CM (15 February 1932 – 15 June 2004) was a Canadian medical doctor and expert on medical ethics and founder of Canada's National Council on Ethics in Human Research.
Kinsella is particularly noted for his research on ethical, legal and medical issues surrounding assisted suicide, euthanasia and genetics research. He is well known for championing research ethics, particularly as these apply to human experimentation, and was a founding member of the Tri-Council Working Group on Ethics.
Kinsella studied medicine at McGill University in Montreal in the 1950s and became Professor at Queen's University in 1968. After two years at McGill, he moved to the University of Calgary, where he spend the rest of his career. In 1984, the University of Calgary appointed Kinsella as associate dean for medical bioethics. He practiced as a rheumatologist.
In 1995, he was awarded the Order of Canada for his contributions to the field of bioethics.
He was president of the Canadian Bioethics Society and a prominent witness during hearings on euthanasia held by the Canadian senate in 1995.
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research supply an annual research grant in Kinsella's name to "the highest ranking CIHR Doctoral Research Award or Canada Graduate Scholarships Doctoral Award applicant whose research focuses on ethical issues related to health and/or health research." The "CIHR Douglas Kinsella Doctoral Award for Research in Bioethics" was first awarded in 2005.
Kinsella married his wife Lorna in Montreal in 1955. They had three sons: Warren, Kevin, and Lorne.
| 11832902 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11832902 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Exaggeration
Exaggeration is a representation of something in an excessive manner. The exaggerator has been a familiar figure in Western culture since at least Aristotle's discussion of the alazon: 'the boaster is regarded as one who pretends to have distinguished qualities which he possesses either not at all or to a lesser degree than he pretends...exaggerating'.
It is the opposite of minimisation.
Words or expressions associated with exaggeration include:
Contexts of exaggeration include:
The boasting and bragging by arrogant or manipulative people has been sent up on stage since the first appearance of the alazon – 'a stock character in Greek comedy'. Inflated praise in the form of flattery and puffery has a similarly lengthy history.
Amplifying achievements, obstacles and problems to seek attention is an everyday occurrence, as 'in "exaggerating" what one feels by magnifying the emotional expression: this is the ploy used by the six-year-old who dramatically twists her face into a pathetic frown, lips quivering, as she runs to complain to her mother about being teased'.
Exaggerating is also a type of deception, as well as a means of malingering – magnifying small injuries or discomforts as an excuse to avoid responsibilities.
Cognitive behavioral therapy views "magnification" (as opposed to "minimization") as unconscious, unrealistic mental processing or cognitive distortion, which can take the form of probability overestimation or of catastrophizing. This is better known as 'making a big deal out of nothing.' 'Whereas probability overestimation refers to exaggerating the "likelihood" of an event, catastrophizing refers to exaggerating the "importance" of the event'. Closely related 'is "overgeneralizing", where one takes a single negative event and see it as a never-ending pattern of defeat'.
Another form of cognitive exaggeration is inflation of the difficulty of achieving a goal after attaining it, possibly to improve self-esteem.
In depression, exaggerated all-or-nothing thinking can form a self-reinforcing cycle: these thoughts might be called "emotional amplifiers" because, as they go around and around, they become more intense. Here are some typical all-or-nothing thoughts:
Reaction formation () is believed to be a defense mechanism in which emotions and impulses which are anxiety-producing or perceived to be unacceptable are mastered by exaggeration of the directly opposing tendency.
In cognitive therapy, decatastrophizing or decatastrophization is a cognitive restructuring technique to treat cognitive distortions, such as magnification and catastrophizing, commonly seen in psychological disorders like anxiety and psychosis.
Psychoanalysis considered that neurotic exaggerations were the products of displacement – overvaluations for example being used to maintain a repression elsewhere. Thus a conflict over ambivalence may be resolved by means of exaggerating one's love for a person so as to keep an unconscious hatred in further check.
The grandiose sense of self-importance observed in narcissists also uses exaggeration to thwart any recognition of a moderate fallibility, seeing any departure from complete success as total and hopeless failure.
"Self-dramatization, theatricality, and "exaggerated" expression of emotion" can be observed in those with histrionic personality disorder and other Cluster B personality disorders; while "catastrophizing" is associated with depressive, neurotic or paranoid behavior – focusing on the worst possible outcome, however unlikely, or thinking that a situation is unbearable or impossible when it is really just uncomfortable.
Münchausen syndrome by proxy is a controversial term for a behavior pattern in which a caregiver deliberately exaggerates, fabricates, or induces physical, psychological, behavioral, or mental health problems in those who are in their care.
Alarmism is excessive or exaggerated alarm about a real or imagined threat e.g. the increases in deaths from infectious disease. The alarmist person is subject to the cognitive distortion of catastrophizing – of always expecting the worst of possible futures.
'Some theoreticians of the comic consider exaggeration to be a universal comic device'. It may take different forms in different genres, but all rely on the fact that 'the easiest way to make things laughable is to exaggerate to the point of absurdity their salient traits'.
A caricature can refer to a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness: 'disproportionately increasing and emphasizing the defects of the features'. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.
Slapstick is the recourse to humor involving exaggerated physical activity which exceeds the boundaries of common sense. These exaggerated depictions are often found in cartoons, and light film comedies aimed at younger audiences.
Paradoxical laughter is an exaggerated expression of humor which is unwarranted by external events. It may be uncontrollable laughter which may be recognised as inappropriate by the person involved. Freud considered 'the compulsive laughter which so often occurs on mournful occasions' the by-product of ambivalence.
The boastful soldier or Miles Gloriosus has for thousands of years formed part of the Western stage. 'The original "miles gloriosus" in Plautus is a son of Jove and Venus who has killed an elephant with his fist and seven thousand men in one day's fighting. In other words, he is trying to put on a good show: the exuberance of his boasting helps to put the play over'.
Overacting is the exaggeration of gestures and speech when acting. It may be unintentional, particularly in the case of a bad actor, or be required for the role. For the latter, it is commonly used in comical situations or to stress the evil characteristics of a villain. Since the perception of acting quality differs between people the extent of overacting can be subjective.
Exaggeration is an effect especially useful for animation, as perfect imitation of reality can look static and dull in cartoons. The level of exaggeration depends on whether one seeks realism or a particular style, like a caricature or the style of a specific artist. The classical definition of exaggeration, employed by Disney, was to remain true to reality, just presenting it in a wilder, more extreme form. Other forms of exaggeration can involve the supernatural or surreal, alterations in the physical features of a character; or elements in the storyline itself. It is important to employ a certain level of restraint when using exaggeration. If a scene contains several elements, there should be a balance in how those elements are exaggerated in relation to each other, to avoid confusing or overawing the viewer.
A shock jock, a type of radio broadcaster or disc jockey, entertains listeners or attracts attention using humor and/or melodramatic exaggeration that some portion of the listening audience may find offensive.
Schopenhauer saw exaggeration as essential to journalism.
He may have exaggerated the case slightly, but yellow journalism thrived on exaggeration,
and fact-checking and independent verification have not succeeded in suppressing clickbait or hyperbolic headlines.
Politicians can exaggerate.
In the electoral process one may expect exaggeration.
Outside the electoral process the exaggerations of propaganda
can bolster the position of incumbents.
Although the boaster (alazon) is primarily a comic figure, 'the "alazon" may be one aspect of the tragic hero as well: the touch of "miles gloriosus" in Tamburlaine, even in Othello, is unmistakable, as is the touch of the obsessed philosopher in Faustus and Hamlet'.
'"Expressionist art"...attempted to intensify the expression of feeling and attitude by exaggeration'. In its wake, even the 'new and hard realism...kept much of the distortion and exaggeration which had been one of the chief devices of earlier Expressionism'.
| 11838661 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11838661 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Seventeen Rules of Enjuin
The are a code of conduct developed for students of the Japanese "Ri-shu" school of medicine in the 16th century CE. They contain the same number of precepts as the Seventeen-article constitution of Prince Shōtoku.
The rules are similar to the Vejjavatapada, the Buddhist medical doctor's oath, the Oath of Asaph and the Hippocratic Oath, in that they stress the rights of the physicians' teachers, require the physician to respect the patient's privacy rights, and prohibit both euthanasia and abortion. They also emphasize that physicians should love their patients and that they should work together as a brotherhood.
1) "Each person should follow the path designated by Heaven (Buddha, the Gods)."
2) "You should always be kind to people. You should always be devoted to loving people."
3) "The teaching of Medicine should be restricted to selected persons."
4) "You should not tell others what you are taught, regarding treatments without permission."
5) "You should not establish association with doctors who do not belong to this school."
6) "All the successors and descendants of the disciples of this school shall follow the teachers' ways."
7) "If any disciples cease the practice of Medicine, or, if successors are not found at the death of the disciple, all the medical books of this school should be returned to the School of Enjuin."
8) "You should not kill living creatures, nor should you admire hunting or fishing."
9) "In our school, teaching about poisons is prohibited, nor should you receive instructions about poisons from other physicians. Moreover, you should not give abortives to the people."
10) "You should rescue even such patients as you dislike or hate. You should do virtuous acts, but in such a way that they do not become known to people. To do good deeds secretly is a mark of virtue."
11) "You should not exhibit avarice and you must not strain to become famous. You should not rebuke or reprove a patient, even if he does not present you with money or goods in gratitude."
12) "You should be delighted if, after treating a patient without success, the patient receives medicine from another physician, and is cured."
13) "You should not speak ill of other physicians."
14) "You should not tell what you have learned from the time you enter a woman's room, and, moreover, you should not have obscene or immoral feelings when examining a woman."
15) "Proper or not, you should not tell others what you have learned in lectures, or what you have learned about prescribing medicine."
16) "You should not like undue extravagance. If you like such living, your avarice will increase, and you will lose the ability to be kind to others."
17) "If you do not keep the rules and regulations of this school, then you will be cancelled as a disciple. In more severe cases, the punishment will be greater."
| 11844203 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11844203 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights
The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights is the name of non-governmental organizations in a number of countries established under the now defunct International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights.
The organizations include:
| 11855905 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11855905 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Ten Commandments for Drivers
On June 19, 2007, the Vatican, under the direction of Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Renato Martino, issued a 36-page document entitled Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road, created by the curial Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant People, under the leadership of Renato Raffaele Cardinal Martino, and intended for bishop conferences around the world. The document specifically states that it is aimed at bishops, priests, religious and other pastoral workers in hopes of pastoral caregivers paying greater attention to expressions of human mobility. The document derived some of its material from the Old Testament, the New Testament, the American Automobile Association, and statements by Popes Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II.
On its issue this document received a lot of media attention due to its listing of Ten Commandments for Drivers. In essence, the Vatican is pointing out that the act of driving has a moral and ethical component. The Guidelines make note of both the benefits of the use of automobiles as well as its dangerous and negative consequences. The problem is not as pervasive in the Vatican City itself, which has a speed limit of 30 km/h (18-19 mph) and approximately only 1000 cars; but there were over 35 million deaths resulting from car accidents in the 20th century, and the Vatican is responding. In the same section of the document as the Drivers' Ten Commandments are the so-called Christian virtues of drivers, which include prudence, justice and hope.
The Guidelines not only deal with problems on the road, but also address prostitution, caring for street children and the homeless, found in Parts Two, Three and Four of the Guidelines.
The Guidelines state that driving can bring out primitive behavior in drivers, which leads to road rage, rude gestures, speeding, drinking behind the wheel, cursing, blasphemy, impoliteness, and intentional violation of the highway code. The Guidelines encourage drivers to obey the highway code, pray behind the wheel and recite the rosary, which the Guidelines insist would not distract the driver's attention.
The following are the ten commandments for drivers.
| 11865308 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11865308 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Ken Kirkwood
Kenneth William Kirkwood (born April 27, 1969 in Kingston, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian bioethicist. He is Professor of Applied Health Ethics at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. He specializes in questions of professional ethical standards, enhancement of human physiological and neurological traits, and sociological-philosophical questions of health research.
He is a teacher of some renown, having been declared amongst the top 30 lecturers in Ontario universities by public broadcaster TVOntario in 2007.
His most notable contribution to public debate have been on bioethical questions of doping in sport, specifically in the Olympics and the Tour de France.
| 11871665 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11871665 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Homosexuality and religion
The relationship between religion and homosexuality has varied greatly across time and place, within and between different religions and denominations, with regard to different forms of homosexuality and bisexuality. Generally speaking as well as by denomination, the present-day doctrines of the world's major religions vary vastly in their attitudes toward these sexual orientations.
Among the religious denominations which generally oppose these orientations, there are many different types of actions which they may take: this can range from quietly discouraging homosexual activity, explicitly forbidding same-sex sexual practices among adherents and actively opposing social acceptance of homosexuality, to execution. Religious fundamentalism has been found to correlate positively with anti-homosexual bias. This is the case with common religiosity too, which typically predicts homophobic attitudes but has also been found to lead to physical antigay hostility, in a lab experiment. Religious opposition to gay adoption was found to be explained by collectivistic values (loyalty, authority, purity) and low flexibility in existential issues, and not by high prosocial inclinations for the weak. Attitudes toward homosexuality have been found to be determined not only by personal religious beliefs, but by the interaction of those beliefs with the predominant national religious context—even for people who are less religious or who do not share their local dominant religious context. Many argue that it is homosexual actions which are sinful, rather than same-sex attraction itself. To this end, some discourage labeling individuals according to sexual orientation. Several organizations exist that assert that conversion therapy can help diminish same-sex attraction.
However, some adherents of many religions view the two sexual orientations positively, and some religious denominations may bless same-sex marriages and support LGBT rights, and the amount of those that do are continuously increasing around the world as much of the developed world enacts laws supporting LGBT rights.
Historically, some cultures and religions accommodated, institutionalized, or revered, same-sex love and sexuality; such mythologies and traditions can be found around the world. The status on homosexuality in Hinduism is ambiguous. Hindu texts contain few specific references to same-sex relations, though some punish it. Ayoni sex which includes oral and anal sex never came to be viewed as much of a sin like in Christianity nor a serious crime and could be practiced in some cases. In 2009, the Hindu Council UK released the statement "Hinduism does not condemn homosexuality". Sikh wedding ceremonies are non-gender specific, and so same-sex marriage is possible within Sikhism.
Regardless of their position on homosexuality, many people of faith look to both sacred texts and tradition for guidance on this issue. However, the authority of various traditions or scriptural passages and the correctness of translations and interpretations are continually disputed.
The Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have traditionally forbidden sodomy, believing and teaching that such behavior is sinful. Today some denominations within these religions are accepting of homosexuality and inclusive of homosexual people, such as Reform Judaism, the United Church of Christ and the Metropolitan Community Church. Some Presbyterian and Anglican churches welcome members regardless of same-sex sexual practices, with some provinces allowing for the ordination and inclusion of gay and lesbian clerics, and affirmation of same-sex unions. Reform Judaism incorporates lesbian and gay rabbis and same-sex marriage liturgies, while Reconstructionist Judaism and Conservative Judaism in the US allows for lesbian and gay rabbis and same-sex unions.
The Torah (first five books of the Hebrew Bible) is the primary source for Jewish views on homosexuality. It states that: "[A man] shall not lie with another man as [he would] with a woman, it is a תועבה "toeba" ("abomination")" (Leviticus 18:22). (Like many similar commandments, the stated punishment for willful violation is the death penalty, although in practice rabbinic Judaism no longer believes it has the authority to implement death penalties.)
Orthodox Judaism views homosexual acts as sinful. In recent years, there has been approaches claiming only the sexual anal act is forbidden and considered abomination by the Torah, while the sexual orientation and even other sexual activities are not considered a sin. Conservative Judaism has engaged in an in-depth study of homosexuality since the 1990s with various rabbis presenting a wide array of responsa (papers with legal arguments) for communal consideration. The official position of the movement is to welcome homosexual Jews into their synagogues, and also campaign against any discrimination in civil law and public society, but also to uphold a ban on anal sex as a religious requirement.
Reform Judaism and Reconstructionist Judaism in North America and Liberal Judaism in the United Kingdom view homosexuality to be acceptable on the same basis as heterosexuality. Progressive Jewish authorities believe either that traditional laws against homosexuality are no longer binding or that they are subject to changes that reflect a new understanding of human sexuality. Some of these authorities rely on modern biblical scholarship suggesting that the prohibition in the Torah was intended to ban coercive or ritualized homosexual sex, such as those practices ascribed to Egyptian and Canaanite fertility cults and temple prostitution.
Christian denominations hold a variety of views on the issue of homosexual activity, ranging from outright condemnation to complete acceptance. Most Christian denominations welcome people attracted to the same sex, but teach that homosexual acts are sinful. These denominations include the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox church, the Oriental Orthodox churches, Confessional Lutheran denominations such as the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, the United Methodist Church, and some other mainline denominations, such as the Reformed Church in America and the American Baptist Church, as well as Conservative Evangelical organizations and churches, such as the Evangelical Alliance, and fundamentalist groups and churches, such as the Southern Baptist Convention. Pentecostal churches such as the Assemblies of God, as well as Restorationist churches, like Jehovah's Witnesses and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also take the position that homosexual sexual activity is sinful.
Liberal Christians are supportive of homosexuals. Some Christian denominations do not view monogamous same sex relationships as bad or evil. These include the United Church of Canada, the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the churches of the Old Catholic Union of Utrecht, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, the Church of Sweden, the Lutheran, reformed and united churches in Evangelical Church of Germany, the Church of Denmark, the Icelandic Church, the Church of Norway and the Protestant Church of the Netherlands. In particular, the Metropolitan Community Church, a denomination of 40,000 members, was founded specifically to serve the Christian LGBT community, and is devoted to being open and affirming to LGBT people. The United Church of Christ and the Alliance of Baptists also condone gay marriage, and some parts of the Anglican and Lutheran churches allow for the blessing of gay unions. Within the Anglican communion there are openly gay clergy; for example, Gene Robinson and Mary Glasspool are openly homosexual bishops in the US Episcopal Church and Eva Brunne in Lutheran Church of Sweden. The Episcopal Church's recent actions vis-a-vis homosexuality have brought about increased ethical debate and tension within the Church of England and worldwide Anglican churches. In the United States and many other nations, the religious people are becoming more affirming of same-sex relationships. Even those in denominations with official stances are liberalizing, though not as quickly as those in more affirming religious groups.
Passages from the Mosaic Covenant and its broader Old Testament context have been interpreted to mean that anyone who is engaging in homosexual practices should be punished with death (Leviticus ; cf. Genesis ; Judges ; 2 Peter ; Jude ). HIV/AIDS has also been portrayed by some Christian fundamentalists such as Fred Phelps and Jerry Falwell as a punishment by God against homosexuals. In the 20th century, theologians like Karl Barth, Jürgen Moltmann, Hans Küng, John Robinson, Bishop David Jenkins, Don Cupitt, Bishop Jack Spong challenged traditional theological positions and understandings of the Bible; following these developments some have suggested that passages have been mistranslated, are taken out of context, or that they do not refer to what we understand as "homosexuality."
Conservative denominations generally oppose same-sex sexual relations based on Old Testament and New Testament texts that describe human sexual relations as strictly heterosexual by God's design (Genesis ; ; Matthew ; 1 Corinthians ; Ephesians ), which God declared "very good" (Genesis ). As such, it is argued that sexual desires and actions that contradict God's design are deemed sinful and are condemned by God (e.g. "and with a male you [singular masculine] shall not lie [sexually] as with a female, that is an abomination," Leviticus ; cf. Leviticus ). Since love does not rejoice in unrighteousness or iniquity (cf. 1 Corinthians ), and since homosexual desires and actions are believed to remain contrary to God's design and condemned by God as sinful / iniquity (e.g. "in general", Romans ; "passively", 1 Corinthians ; "actively", including but not limited to "pederasty," 1 Corinthians ; 1 Timothy ; considered sexually "immoral", Galatians ; Colossians ; Ephesians ), adherents of conservative denominations believe that genuine love for God and humanity is best expressed by following God rather than the world (Acts ; cf. Jeremiah ; Romans ).
Where the Catholic view is founded on a natural law argument informed by scripture and proposed by Thomas Aquinas, the traditional conservative Protestant view is based on an interpretation of scripture alone. Protestant conservatives also see homosexual relationships as an impediment to heterosexual relationships. They interpret some Biblical passages to be commandments to be heterosexually married. Catholics, on the other hand, have accommodated unmarried people as priests, monks, nuns and single lay people for over a thousand years. A number of self-described gay and 'ex-gay' Christians have reported satisfaction in mixed-orientation marriages.
The Catholic Church teaches that those who are attracted to persons of the same sex are called to practice chastity, just like everyone else has to before they get married. The Catholic Church does not regard homosexual activity as an expression of the marital sacrament, which it teaches is only possible within a lifelong commitment of a marriage between a man and a woman. According to the Church's sexual ethics, homosexual activity falls short in the complementarity (male and female organs complement each other) and fecundity (openness to new life) of the sexual act.
The views of the Catholic Church, which discourages individuals from acting on sexual desires that they believe to be sinful, and harmful to themselves and others, both physically and mentally. As yet there is no evidence the church is willing to bend on this issue, until then the evidence cited here demonstrates the Catholic Church is unaccepting of homosexual behavior, regardless of what pew studies of parishioners individual views may suggest. Whilst these suggest a growing trend of LGBT acceptance in some Catholic churches, it does however hide a darker picture. There are currently active Ministries which teach the doctrine and interpret the scripture, also point out the majority of the sex abuse in the church have been propagated by homosexuals, upon children of the same sex.
The teachings of the Catholic Church on same-sex attraction are summarized in the "Catechism":
2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that 'homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.' They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.
Despite the beliefs of the Catholic Church and homosexuality, there have been thousands of cases of priests who have sexually assaulted both boy and girl minors, mostly the young boys. These cases didn't start to get media awareness until the 1990s. The cases spread from former Popes, Priests, and Clergymen. In the year 2002 media coverage of sexual assault within the church from Europe, Australia, Chile, and the United States. The current Pope, Pope Francis, is starting to address the assault in the church, rather than keeping it a secret as it has been done in the past.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that no one should arouse sexual feelings outside of marriage, including those towards members of the same sex. The LDS church recognizes that feelings of same-sex attraction may not change or be overcome in this earth life, and expect all un-married members, gay or straight, to abstain from any and all sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage. The LDS church maintains that feelings and inclinations toward the same sex (i.e., homosexual feelings or "temptations") are not inherently sinful, but engaging in homosexual behavior is in conflict with the "doctrinal principle, based on sacred scripture … that marriage between a man and a woman is essential to the Creator's plan for the eternal destiny of His children." Those who experience same-sex attraction should continually exercise self-control and reliance on the atonement of Jesus Christ in order to refrain from acting on such feelings. The LDS church strongly opposes same-sex marriage and teaches that marriage is only to be between a man and a woman, and that this is essential to God's eternal plan.
Such issues are addressed on the LDS church website "Love One Another: A Discussion on Same-Sex Attraction".
All major Islamic schools disapprove of homosexuality, Islam views same-sex desires as an unnatural temptation; and sexual relations are seen as a transgression of the natural role and aim of sexual activity. Islamic teachings (in the "hadith" tradition) presume same-sex attraction, extol abstention and (in the Qur'an) condemn consummation.
The discourse on homosexuality in Islam is primarily concerned with activities between men. There are, however, a few hadith which mention homosexual behavior among women; The fuqaha’ are agreed that "there is no hadd punishment for lesbianism, because it is not zina. Rather a ta’zeer punishment must be imposed, because it is a sin…'" Although punishment for lesbianism is rarely mentioned in the histories, al-Tabari records an example of the casual execution of a pair of lesbian slavegirls in the harem of al-Hadi, in a collection of highly critical anecdotes pertaining to that Caliph's actions as ruler.
Bahá'í law limits permissible sexual relations to those between a man and a woman in marriage. Believers are expected to abstain from sex outside matrimony. Bahá'ís do not, however, attempt to impose their moral standards on those who have not accepted the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh. The Bahá'í Faith takes no position on the sexual practices of those who are not adherents. While requiring uprightness in all matters of morality, whether sexual or otherwise, the Bahá’í teachings also take account of human frailty and call for tolerance and understanding in regard to human failings. In this context, to regard homosexuals with prejudice would be contrary to the spirit of the Bahá’í teachings.
Among the religions that originated in ancient and medieval India, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, teachings regarding homosexuality are less clear than among the Abrahamic traditions, and religious authorities voice diverse opinions. In 2005, an authority figure of Sikhism condemned same-sex marriage and the practice of homosexuality. However, many people in Sikhism do not oppose gay marriage. Hinduism is diverse, with no supreme governing body, but the majority of swamis opposed same-sex relationships in a 2004 survey, and a minority supported them. Ancient religious texts such as the Vedas often refer to people of a third gender known as hijra, who are neither female nor male. Some see this third gender as an ancient parallel to modern western lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex identities.
Hinduism has taken various positions, ranging from positive to neutral or antagonistic. Referring to the nature of Samsara, the Rigveda, one of the four canonical sacred texts of Hinduism says 'Vikruti Evam Prakriti' (perversity/diversity is what nature is all about, or, "what seems unnatural is also natural"). A "third gender" has been acknowledged within Hinduism since Vedic times. Several Hindu texts, such as Manu Smriti and Sushruta Samhita, assert that some people are born with either mixed male and female natures, or sexually neuter, as a matter of natural biology. However, Hindu texts like the Manusmirti do treat Homosexuality as a sin legally punishable. In addition, each Hindu denomination had developed distinct rules regarding sexuality, as Hinduism is not unified and is decentralized in essence.
Several Hindu religious laws contain injunctions against homosexual activity, while some Hindu theories do not condemn lesbian relations and some third-gendered individuals were highly regarded. Hindu groups are historically not unified regarding the issue of homosexuality, each one having a distinct doctrinal view.
The Indian Kama Sutra, written around 150 BC, contains passages describing eunuchs or "third-sex" males performing oral sex on men. The text describes Kama as one of the three objectives to be achieved in life. Though it forbids the educated Brahmins, bureaucrats and wisemen from practicing Auparishtaka (oral sex).
Similarly, some medieval Hindu temples and artifacts openly depict both male homosexuality and lesbianism within their carvings, such as the temple walls at Khajuraho. Some infer from these images that at least part of the Hindu society and religion were previously more open to variations in human sexuality than they are at present.
Ayoni sex, which includes oral and anal sex, never came to be viewed as much of a sin like in Christianity nor a serious crime and could be practiced in some cases. Close friendship between people of same genders has also been seen as permissible in Hindu texts.
In some Hindu sects (specifically among the hijras), many divinities are androgynous. There are Hindu deities who are intersex (both male and female); who manifest in all three genders; who switch from male to female or from female to male; male deities with female moods and female deities with male moods; deities born from two males or from two females; deities born from a single male or single female; deities who avoid the opposite sex; deities with principal companions of the same sex, and so on.
Several Hindu priests have performed same-sex marriages, arguing that love is the result of attachments from previous births and that marriage, as a union of spirit, is transcendental to gender.
The Hindu Council UK stated in 2009 that Hinduism does not condemn homosexuality.
The most common formulation of Buddhist ethics are the Five Precepts and the Eightfold Path, one should neither be attached to nor crave sensual pleasure. The third of the Five Precepts is "To refrain from committing sexual misconduct." However, "sexual misconduct" is a broad term, and is subjected to interpretation relative to the social norms of the followers.
The determination of whether or not same-gender relations is appropriate for a layperson is not considered a religious matter by many Buddhists.
According to the Pāli Canon & Āgama (the Early Buddhist scriptures), there is not any saying that same or opposite gender relations have anything to do with sexual misconduct, and some Theravada monks express that same-gender relations do not violate the rule to avoid sexual misconduct, which means not having sex with someone under age (thus protected by their parents or guardians), someone betrothed or married and who have taken vows of religious celibacy.
Some later traditions gradually began to add new restrictions on sexual misconduct, like non-vagina sex, though its situations seem involving coerced sex. This non-vagina sex as sexual misconduct view is not based on what Buddha's said, but from some later Abhidharma texts.
Buddhism is often characterized as distrustful of sensual enjoyment and sexuality in general. Traditionally, sex and lust are seen as hindering to spiritual progress in most schools of Buddhism; as such monks are expected to refrain from all sexual activity, and the Vinaya (the first book of the Tripitaka) specifically prohibits sexual intercourse, then further explain that anal, oral, and vaginal intercourse amount to sexual intercourse, which will result in permanent exclusion from Sangha. A notable exception in the history of Buddhism occurred in Japan during the Edo period, in which male homosexuality, or more specifically, love between young novices and older monks, was celebrated.
References to pandaka, a eunuch/impotence category that is sometimes interpreted to include homosexual males, can be found throughout the Pali canon as well as other Sanskrit scriptures. In the Chinese version of Sarvastivada Vinaya, the pandaka is mentioned as also trying to have sex with women, not just men. Leonard Zwilling refers extensively to Buddhaghosa's Samantapasadika, where "pandaka" are described as being filled with defiled passions and insatiable lusts, and are dominated by their libido. Some texts of the Abhidharma state that a "pandaka" cannot achieve enlightenment in their own lifetime, (but must wait for rebirth) and Asanga and Vasubandhu discussed if a pandaka was able to be enlightened or not. According to one scriptural story, Ananda—Buddha's cousin and disciple—was a "pandaka" in one of his many previous lives.
Some later classic Buddhist masters and texts disallow contact between monks/Bodhisattva and "pandakas"/women and classify non-vagina sex as sexual misconduct, including for lay followers.
The third of the five precepts of Buddhism states that one is to refrain from sexual misconduct; this precept has sometimes been interpreted to include homosexuality. The Dalai Lama of Tibetan Buddhism interprets sexual misconduct to include lesbian and gay sex, and indeed any sex other than penis-vagina intercourse, including oral sex, anal sex, and masturbation or other sexual activity with the hand; the only time sex is acceptable is when it performed for its purpose of procreation. When interviewed by Canadian TV news anchor Evan Solomon on about whether or not homosexuality is acceptable in Buddhism, the Dalai Lama responded that "it is sexual misconduct." However, the Dalai Lama supports human rights for all, "regardless of sexual orientation."
In Thailand, some accounts propose that "homosexuality arises as a karmic consequence of violating Buddhist proscriptions against heterosexual misconduct. These karmic accounts describe homosexuality as a congenital condition which cannot be altered, at least in a homosexual person's current lifetime, and have been linked with calls for compassion and understanding from the non-homosexual populace." However, Buddhist leaders in Thailand have also condemned homosexuality, ousted monks accused of homosexual acts, and banned kathoey from ordination. In 2009, Senior monk Phra Maha Wudhijaya Vajiramedh introduced a "good manners" curriculum for novices in the monkhood, stating to the BBC that he was concerned by "the flamboyant behaviour of gay and transgender monks, who can often be seen wearing revealingly tight robes, carrying pink purses and having effeminately-shaped eyebrows."
A later popular Japanese legend attributed the introduction of monastic homosexuality to Japan to Shingon founder Kukai, although scholars now dismiss the veracity of this assertion, pointing out his strict adherence to the Vinaya. Nonetheless, the legend served to "affirm same sex relation between men and boys in seventeenth century Japan." However, Japanese Buddhist scholar and author of "Wild Azaleas" Kitamura Kigin argued that there was a tendency in monasteries to avoid heterosexuality and to encourage homosexuality.
Although Mahayana Buddhism has some texts against homosexuality (from later Abhidharma texts & Buddhist apocrypha), the majority of its teachings assert that all beings who correctly practice the dharma may reach enlightenment, since all possess an innate Buddha nature. Enlightenment being achievable even in a single life.
The capacity of Buddhism to reform itself and its great variety of distinct beliefs and schools, provide many liberal streams of Buddhism, which are accepting of all sexual orientations. Reformist Buddhism is predominant in the west and in some eastern cosmopolitan cities.
Sikhism has no written view on the matter, but in 2005, a Sikh religious authority described homosexuality as "against the Sikh religion and the Sikh code of conduct and totally against the laws of nature," and called on Sikhs to support laws against gay marriage. Many Sikhs are against this view, however, and state that the Sikh Scriptures promote equality and do not condemn homosexuality.
Marriage in Sikhism is seen as a union of souls. In Sikhism, the soul is seen as genderless, and the outward appearance of human beings (man, woman) is a temporary state. Same-sex marriage advocates refer to this fact.
In Sikh Scripture
The Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, is the highest authority in the Sikhism, it is seen as the 11th and eternal Guru. It serves as a guide to Sikhs on how to live positive lives, and details what behavior is expected of all Sikhs. It is seemingly silent on the subject of homosexuality; however, married life is encouraged time and again in Guru Granth Sahib Ji. Whenever marriage is mentioned, it is always in reference to a man and a woman. Some Sikhs believe that Guru Granth Sahib Ji is the complete guide to life, and if a marriage between two of the same sexes is not mentioned, it is therefore not right. The counterargument to this is that man and woman are only mentioned in this way to give light to the relationship of the soul and the soul force as being one. This denies gender and sex as an issue. Thus, Sikhism is more concerned with ones attainment of enlightenment rather than habitual desires such as sexuality. True love is attained through the Guru and no man speaks on behalf of the Guru as the Granth is open to interpretation and misrepresentation.
There are five vices (habitual desires) outlined in the Guru Granth Sahib that one should try to control. One of these vices is lust, and some Sikhs believe that homosexual thoughts and behaviour are just manifestations of lust. However, Sikhs that are more accepting of homosexuality claim that this is equally applicable to heterosexuals. These same Sikhs believe that Guru Nanak's emphasis on universal equality and brotherhood is fundamentally in support of the human rights of homosexuals.
Views on homosexuality tend not to be a primary concern in Sikh teachings, as the universal goal of a Sikh is to have no hate or animosity to any person, regardless of race, caste, color, creed, gender, or sex
The Guru's silence on homosexuality has led to a history of ambivalence on the topic.
The Vendidad, one of the later Zoroastrian texts composed in the Artificial Young Avestan language, has not been dated precisely. It is thought that some concepts of law, uncleanliness, dualism, and salvation were shared between the religions, and subsequent interactions between the religions are documented by events such as the release of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity by Zoroastrian Cyrus the Great in 537 BC, and the Biblical account of the Magi visiting the infant Jesus.
The Vendidad generally promotes procreation: "the man who has a wife is far above him who lives in continence; he who keeps a house is far above him who has none; he who has children is far above the childless man; he who has riches is far above him who has none." It details the penance for a worshipper who submits to sodomy under force as "Eight hundred stripes with the Aspahe-astra, eight hundred stripes with the Sraosho-charana." (equal to the penalty for breaking a contract with the value of an ox), and declares that for those participating voluntarily "For that deed there is nothing that can pay, nothing that can atone, nothing that can cleanse from it; it is a trespass for which there is no atonement, for ever and ever". However, those not practicing the Religion of Mazda were pardoned for past actions upon conversion. It has been argued that, in ancient times, those prohibitions against sodomy didn't apply to eunuchs.
However, many Zoroastrians, termed "reformists", eschew the teachings of the Vendidad as corruptions of Zoroaster's original message, claiming the rules do not conform with 'Good Words, Good Thoughts and Good Deeds', and therefore have no spiritual significance. Hence, many of these reformist Zoroastrians are openly accepting and supportive of the LGBT community and same-sex marriage.
Among the Taoic religions of East Asia, such as Taoism, passionate homosexual expression is usually discouraged because it is believed to not lead to human fulfillment.
Confucianism, being primarily a social and political philosophy, focused little on sexuality; whether homosexual or heterosexual. However, the ideology did emphasize male friendships, and Louis Crompton has argued that the "closeness of the master-disciple bond it fostered may have subtly facilitated homosexuality". Homosexuality is not mentioned in the Analects of Confucius.
There is no single official position on homosexuality in Taoism, as the term Taoism is used to describe a number of disparate religious traditions.
In a similar way to Buddhism, Taoist schools sought throughout history to define what would be sexual misconduct. The precept against Sexual Misconduct is sex outside your marriage. The married spouses () usually in Chinese suggest male with female, though the scripture itself does not explicitly say anything against same-gender relations. Many sorts of precepts mentioned in the Yunji Qiqian (), The Mini Daoist Canon, does not explicitly say anything against same-gender relations as well.
Homosexuality is not unknown in Taoist history, such as during the Tang dynasty when Taoist nuns exchanged love poems. Attitudes about homosexuality within Taoism often reflect the values and sexual norms of broader Chinese society (see Homosexuality in China).
The Radical Faeries are a worldwide queer spiritual movement, founded in 1979 in the United States.
The Wiccan "Charge of the Goddess", one of the most famous texts in Neopaganism, states in the words of the Goddess, "all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals". In traditional forms of Wicca, such as Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wicca, magic is often performed between a man and a woman, and the "Great Rite" is a sex ritual performed between a Priest and Priestess representing the God and Goddess; however, this is not generally seen as excluding homosexuals or magic between same-sex couples. Most groups still insist, however, that initiations be conferred from man to woman or woman to man.
Satanism, in both the theistic and the LaVey tradition, is open to all forms of sexual expression, and does not preclude homosexuality.
The first ordained minister of a major religious sect in the U.S. or Canada to come out as gay was the UU Minister James Stoll in 1969. There have been UUA resolutions supporting people regardless of sexual orientation since 1970. Unitarian Universalism was the first denomination to accept openly transgender people as full members with eligibility to become clergy; in 1988 the first openly transgender person was ordained by the Unitarian Universalist Association.
The Unitarian Universalist Association has supported the marriage equality since 1996 and compared those who resisted such equality to the resistance to the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage, and the end of anti-miscegenation laws. Several congregations have undertaken a series of organizational, procedural and practical steps to become acknowledged as a "Welcoming Congregation": a congregation which has taken specific steps to welcome and integrate gay, lesbian, bisexual & transgender (GLBT) members. UU ministers perform same-sex unions and now same-sex marriages where legal (and sometimes when not, as a form of civil protest). On 29 June 1984, the Unitarian Universalists became the first major church "to approve religious blessings on homosexual unions." Unitarian Universalists have been in the forefront of the work to make same-sex marriages legal in their local states and provinces, as well as on the national level. Gay men and lesbians are also regularly ordained as ministers, and a number of gay and lesbian ministers have, themselves, now become legally married to their partners. In May 2004, Arlington Street Church, Boston was the site of the first state-sanctioned same-sex marriage in the United States. The official stance of the UUA is for the legalization of same-sex marriage—"Standing on the Side of Love." In 2004 UU Minister Rev. Debra Haffner of The Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing published An Open Letter on Religious Leaders on Marriage Equality to affirm same-sex marriage from a multi-faith perspective.
Humanism is a non-religious, non-theistic approach to life that supports full equality for LGBTQ individuals, including the right to marry. "Humanism and Its Aspirations", a statement of humanist principles from the American Humanist Association, states that "humanists are concerned for the well being of all, are committed to diversity, and respect those of differing yet humane views...work to uphold the equal enjoyment of human rights and civil liberties in an open, secular society and maintain it is a civic duty to participate in the democratic process and a planetary duty to protect nature's integrity, diversity, and beauty in a secure, sustainable manner." The American Humanist Association provides a LGBT Humanist Pride award and has funded a LGBT-inclusive prom for Itawamba County Agricultural High School in Mississippi. The organisation LGBT Humanists UK "is a United Kingdom-based not-for-profit that campaigns for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equality and human rights and promotes Humanism as an ethical worldview." It was formerly an independent group, but since 2012 has been a part of the charity Humanists UK. In 2009 they gave Stephen Fry an award "for his services to humanism and gay rights."
Humanists UK Chief Executive Andrew Copson, who is gay, once wrote that "humanists have always been champions of LGBT rights" and cited his organisation's many years campaigning for decriminalisation and LGBT equality in the UK, including legal same-sex marriages. He pointed out the large number of LGBT people in the movement, including Stephen Fry, Christian Jessen, and Peter Tatchell, as well as historical associations with humanism like the writer Virginia Woolf and E M Forster. In a statement following the Orlando nightclub shooting for the International Humanist and Ethical Union, of which Copson is also President, he went further, saying "Humanism is the ultimate, long-standing and unfaltering ally of LGBTI people everywhere".
In Candomblé, homosexuality is usually accepted and explained by the sex of one's orisha. Homosexuality would be more probable in a man with a female orisha, a woman with a male orisha, or any of them with an androgynous orisha (such as Olokun).
Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon opposed homosexuality and compared gay people to "dirty dung-eating dogs". He prophesied that "gays will be eliminated" in a "purge on God's orders".
Opposition to same-sex marriage and LGBT rights is often associated with conservative religious views. The American Family Association and other religious groups have promoted boycotts of corporations whose policies support the LGBT community.
In conservative Islamic nations, laws generally prohibit same-sex sexual behaviour, and interpretation of Sharia Law on male homosexuality carries the death penalty. This has been condemned as a violation of human rights by human rights organisation Amnesty International and by the writers of the Yogyakarta principles. With the signature of the US in 2009, the proposed UN declaration on LGBT rights has now been signed by every European secular state and all western nations, as well as other countries—67 members of the UN in total. An opposing statement put forward by Muslim nations was signed by 57 member states, mostly in Africa and Asia. 68 out of the total 192 countries have not yet signed either statement. In 2011 the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a landmark resolution initiated by South Africa supporting LBGT rights ("See Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity at the United Nations")
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Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.
Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of transcendentalism in his 1836 essay "Nature". Following this work, he gave a speech entitled "The American Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America's "intellectual Declaration of Independence."
Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first and then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays, "" (1841) and "" (1844), represent the core of his thinking. They include the well-known essays "Self-Reliance", "The Over-Soul", "Circles", "The Poet", and "Experience." Together with "Nature", these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period. Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for mankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Emerson's "nature" was more philosophical than naturalistic: "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul." Emerson is one of several figures who "took a more pantheist or pandeist approach by rejecting views of God as separate from the world."
He remains among the linchpins of the American romantic movement, and his work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers and poets that followed him. "In all my lectures," he wrote, "I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man." Emerson is also well known as a mentor and friend of Henry David Thoreau, a fellow transcendentalist.
Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on May 25, 1803, a son of Ruth Haskins and the Rev. William Emerson, a Unitarian minister. He was named after his mother's brother Ralph and his father's great-grandmother Rebecca Waldo. Ralph Waldo was the second of five sons who survived into adulthood; the others were William, Edward, Robert Bulkeley, and Charles. Three other children—Phebe, John Clarke, and Mary Caroline—died in childhood. Emerson was entirely of English ancestry, and his family had been in New England since the early colonial period.
Emerson's father died from stomach cancer on May 12, 1811, less than two weeks before Emerson's eighth birthday. Emerson was raised by his mother, with the help of the other women in the family; his aunt Mary Moody Emerson in particular had a profound effect on him. She lived with the family off and on and maintained a constant correspondence with Emerson until her death in 1863.
Emerson's formal schooling began at the Boston Latin School in 1812, when he was nine. In October 1817, at age 14, Emerson went to Harvard College and was appointed freshman messenger for the president, requiring Emerson to fetch delinquent students and send messages to faculty. Midway through his junior year, Emerson began keeping a list of books he had read and started a journal in a series of notebooks that would be called "Wide World". He took outside jobs to cover his school expenses, including as a waiter for the Junior Commons and as an occasional teacher working with his uncle Samuel and aunt Sarah Ripley in Waltham, Massachusetts. By his senior year, Emerson decided to go by his middle name, Waldo. Emerson served as Class Poet; as was custom, he presented an original poem on Harvard's Class Day, a month before his official graduation on August 29, 1821, when he was 18. He did not stand out as a student and graduated in the exact middle of his class of 59 people. In the early 1820s, Emerson was a teacher at the School for Young Ladies (which was run by his brother William). He would next spend two years living in a cabin in the Canterbury section of Roxbury, Massachusetts, where he wrote and studied nature. In his honor, this area is now called Schoolmaster Hill in Boston’s Franklin Park.
In 1826, faced with poor health, Emerson went to seek a warmer climate. He first went to Charleston, South Carolina, but found the weather was still too cold. He then went farther south, to St. Augustine, Florida, where he took long walks on the beach and began writing poetry. While in St. Augustine he made the acquaintance of Prince Achille Murat, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. Murat was two years his senior; they became good friends and enjoyed each other's company. The two engaged in enlightening discussions of religion, society, philosophy, and government. Emerson considered Murat an important figure in his intellectual education.
While in St. Augustine, Emerson had his first encounter with slavery. At one point, he attended a meeting of the Bible Society while a slave auction was taking place in the yard outside. He wrote, "One ear therefore heard the glad tidings of great joy, whilst the other was regaled with 'Going, gentlemen, going!'"
After Harvard, Emerson assisted his brother William in a school for young women established in their mother's house, after he had established his own school in Chelmsford, Massachusetts; when his brother William went to Göttingen to study law in mid-1824, Ralph Waldo closed the school but continued to teach in Cambridge, Massachusetts, until early 1825. Emerson was accepted into the Harvard Divinity School in late 1824, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in 1828. Emerson's brother Edward, two years younger than he, entered the office of the lawyer Daniel Webster, after graduating from Harvard first in his class. Edward's physical health began to deteriorate, and he soon suffered a mental collapse as well; he was taken to McLean Asylum in June 1828 at age 23. Although he recovered his mental equilibrium, he died in 1834, apparently from long-standing tuberculosis. Another of Emerson's bright and promising younger brothers, Charles, born in 1808, died in 1836, also of tuberculosis, making him the third young person in Emerson's innermost circle to die in a period of a few years.
Emerson met his first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, in Concord, New Hampshire, on Christmas Day, 1827, and married her when she was 18. The couple moved to Boston, with Emerson's mother, Ruth, moving with them to help take care of Ellen, who was already ill with tuberculosis. Less than two years later, on February 8, 1831, Ellen died, at the age of 20, after uttering her last words: "I have not forgotten the peace and joy". Emerson was heavily affected by her death and visited her grave in Roxbury daily. In a journal entry dated March 29, 1832, he wrote, "I visited Ellen's tomb & opened the coffin".
Boston's Second Church invited Emerson to serve as its junior pastor, and he was ordained on January 11, 1829. His initial salary was $1,200 a year, increasing to $1,400 in July, but with his church role he took on other responsibilities: he was the chaplain of the Massachusetts legislature and a member of the Boston school committee. His church activities kept him busy, though during this period, facing the imminent death of his wife, he began to doubt his own beliefs.
After his wife's death, he began to disagree with the church's methods, writing in his journal in June 1832, "I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated. In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers". His disagreements with church officials over the administration of the Communion service and misgivings about public prayer eventually led to his resignation in 1832. As he wrote, "This mode of commemorating Christ is not suitable to me. That is reason enough why I should abandon it". As one Emerson scholar has pointed out, "Doffing the decent black of the pastor, he was free to choose the gown of the lecturer and teacher, of the thinker not confined within the limits of an institution or a tradition".
Emerson toured Europe in 1833 and later wrote of his travels in "English Traits" (1856). He left aboard the brig "Jasper" on Christmas Day, 1832, sailing first to Malta. During his European trip, he spent several months in Italy, visiting Rome, Florence and Venice, among other cities. When in Rome, he met with John Stuart Mill, who gave him a letter of recommendation to meet Thomas Carlyle. He went to Switzerland, and had to be dragged by fellow passengers to visit Voltaire's home in Ferney, "protesting all the way upon the unworthiness of his memory". He then went on to Paris, a "loud modern New York of a place", where he visited the Jardin des Plantes. He was greatly moved by the organization of plants according to Jussieu's system of classification, and the way all such objects were related and connected. As Robert D. Richardson says, "Emerson's moment of insight into the interconnectedness of things in the Jardin des Plantes was a moment of almost visionary intensity that pointed him away from theology and toward science".
Moving north to England, Emerson met William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle in particular was a strong influence on him; Emerson would later serve as an unofficial literary agent in the United States for Carlyle, and in March 1835, he tried to persuade Carlyle to come to America to lecture. The two maintained a correspondence until Carlyle's death in 1881.
Emerson returned to the United States on October 9, 1833, and lived with his mother in Newton, Massachusetts. In October 1834, he moved to Concord, Massachusetts to live with his step-grandfather, Dr. Ezra Ripley, at what was later named The Old Manse. Seeing the budding Lyceum movement, which provided lectures on all sorts of topics, Emerson saw a possible career as a lecturer. On November 5, 1833, he made the first of what would eventually be some 1,500 lectures, "The Uses of Natural History", in Boston. This was an expanded account of his experience in Paris. In this lecture, he set out some of his important beliefs and the ideas he would later develop in his first published essay, "Nature":
On January 24, 1835, Emerson wrote a letter to Lidian Jackson proposing marriage. Her acceptance reached him by mail on the 28th. In July 1835, he bought a house on the Cambridge and Concord Turnpike in Concord, Massachusetts, which he named Bush; it is now open to the public as the Ralph Waldo Emerson House. Emerson quickly became one of the leading citizens in the town. He gave a lecture to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the town of Concord on September 12, 1835. Two days later, he married Lidian Jackson in her home town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and moved to the new home in Concord together with Emerson's mother on September 15.
Emerson quickly changed his wife's name to Lidian, and would call her Queenie, and sometimes Asia, and she called him Mr. Emerson. Their children were Waldo, Ellen, Edith, and Edward Waldo Emerson. Edward Waldo Emerson was the father of Raymond Emerson. Ellen was named for his first wife, at Lidian's suggestion.
Emerson was poor when he was at Harvard, but was later able to support his family for much of his life. He inherited a fair amount of money after his first wife's death, though he had to file a lawsuit against the Tucker family in 1836 to get it. He received $11,600 in May 1834, and a further $11,674.49 in July 1837. In 1834, he considered that he had an income of $1,200 a year from the initial payment of the estate, equivalent to what he had earned as a pastor.
On September 8, 1836, the day before the publication of "Nature", Emerson met with Frederic Henry Hedge, George Putnam and George Ripley to plan periodic gatherings of other like-minded intellectuals. This was the beginning of the Transcendental Club, which served as a center for the movement. Its first official meeting was held on September 19, 1836. On September 1, 1837, women attended a meeting of the Transcendental Club for the first time. Emerson invited Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Hoar and Sarah Ripley for dinner at his home before the meeting to ensure that they would be present for the evening get-together. Fuller would prove to be an important figure in transcendentalism.
Emerson anonymously published his first essay, "Nature", on September 9, 1836. A year later, on August 31, 1837, he delivered his now-famous Phi Beta Kappa address, "The American Scholar", then entitled "An Oration, Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge"; it was renamed for a collection of essays (which included the first general publication of "Nature") in 1849. Friends urged him to publish the talk, and he did so, at his own expense, in an edition of 500 copies, which sold out in a month. In the speech, Emerson declared literary independence in the United States and urged Americans to create a writing style all their own and free from Europe. James Russell Lowell, who was a student at Harvard at the time, called it "an event without former parallel on our literary annals". Another member of the audience, Reverend John Pierce, called it "an apparently incoherent and unintelligible address".
In 1837, Emerson befriended Henry David Thoreau. Though they had likely met as early as 1835, in the fall of 1837, Emerson asked Thoreau, "Do you keep a journal?" The question went on to be a lifelong inspiration for Thoreau. Emerson's own journal was published in 16 large volumes, in the definitive Harvard University Press edition issued between 1960 and 1982. Some scholars consider the journal to be Emerson's key literary work.
In March 1837, Emerson gave a series of lectures on the philosophy of history at the Masonic Temple in Boston. This was the first time he managed a lecture series on his own, and it was the beginning of his career as a lecturer. The profits from this series of lectures were much larger than when he was paid by an organization to talk, and he continued to manage his own lectures often throughout his lifetime. He eventually gave as many as 80 lectures a year, traveling across the northern United States as far as St. Louis, Des Moines, Minneapolis, and California.
On July 15, 1838, Emerson was invited to Divinity Hall, Harvard Divinity School, to deliver the school's graduation address, which came to be known as the "Divinity School Address". Emerson discounted biblical miracles and proclaimed that, while Jesus was a great man, he was not God: historical Christianity, he said, had turned Jesus into a "demigod, as the Orientals or the Greeks would describe Osiris or Apollo". His comments outraged the establishment and the general Protestant community. He was denounced as an atheist and a poisoner of young men's minds. Despite the roar of critics, he made no reply, leaving others to put forward a defense. He was not invited back to speak at Harvard for another thirty years.
The transcendental group began to publish its flagship journal, "The Dial", in July 1840. They planned the journal as early as October 1839, but work did not begin until the first week of 1840. George Ripley was the managing editor. Margaret Fuller was the first editor, having been approached by Emerson after several others had declined the role. Fuller stayed on for about two years, when Emerson took over, utilizing the journal to promote talented young writers including Ellery Channing and Thoreau.
In 1841 Emerson published "Essays", his second book, which included the famous essay "Self-Reliance". His aunt called it a "strange medley of atheism and false independence", but it gained favorable reviews in London and Paris. This book, and its popular reception, more than any of Emerson's contributions to date laid the groundwork for his international fame.
In January 1842 Emerson's first son, Waldo, died of scarlet fever. Emerson wrote of his grief in the poem "Threnody" ("For this losing is true dying"), and the essay "Experience". In the same month, William James was born, and Emerson agreed to be his godfather.
Bronson Alcott announced his plans in November 1842 to find "a farm of a hundred acres in excellent condition with good buildings, a good orchard and grounds". Charles Lane purchased a farm in Harvard, Massachusetts, in May 1843 for what would become Fruitlands, a community based on Utopian ideals inspired in part by transcendentalism. The farm would run based on a communal effort, using no animals for labor; its participants would eat no meat and use no wool or leather. Emerson said he felt "sad at heart" for not engaging in the experiment himself. Even so, he did not feel Fruitlands would be a success. "Their whole doctrine is spiritual", he wrote, "but they always end with saying, Give us much land and money". Even Alcott admitted he was not prepared for the difficulty in operating Fruitlands. "None of us were prepared to actualize practically the ideal life of which we dreamed. So we fell apart", he wrote. After its failure, Emerson helped buy a farm for Alcott's family in Concord which Alcott named "Hillside".
"The Dial" ceased publication in April 1844; Horace Greeley reported it as an end to the "most original and thoughtful periodical ever published in this country".
In 1844, Emerson published his second collection of essays, "Essays: Second Series". This collection included "The Poet", "Experience", "Gifts", and an essay entitled "Nature", a different work from the 1836 essay of the same name.
Emerson made a living as a popular lecturer in New England and much of the rest of the country. He had begun lecturing in 1833; by the 1850s he was giving as many as 80 lectures per year. He addressed the Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge and the Gloucester Lyceum, among others. Emerson spoke on a wide variety of subjects, and many of his essays grew out of his lectures. He charged between $10 and $50 for each appearance, bringing him as much as $2,000 in a typical winter lecture season. This was more than his earnings from other sources. In some years, he earned as much as $900 for a series of six lectures, and in another, for a winter series of talks in Boston, he netted $1,600. He eventually gave some 1,500 lectures in his lifetime. His earnings allowed him to expand his property, buying of land by Walden Pond and a few more acres in a neighboring pine grove. He wrote that he was "landlord and waterlord of 14 acres, more or less".
Emerson was introduced to Indian philosophy through the works of the French philosopher Victor Cousin. In 1845, Emerson's journals show he was reading the "Bhagavad Gita" and Henry Thomas Colebrooke's "Essays on the Vedas". He was strongly influenced by Vedanta, and much of his writing has strong shades of nondualism. One of the clearest examples of this can be found in his essay "The Over-soul":
The central message Emerson drew from his Asian studies was that "the purpose of life was spiritual transformation and direct experience of divine power, here and now on earth."
In 1847–48, he toured the British Isles. He also visited Paris between the French Revolution of 1848 and the bloody June Days. When he arrived, he saw the stumps of trees that had been cut down to form barricades in the February riots. On May 21, he stood on the Champ de Mars in the midst of mass celebrations for concord, peace and labor. He wrote in his journal, "At the end of the year we shall take account, & see if the Revolution was worth the trees." The trip left an important imprint on Emerson's later work. His 1856 book "English Traits" is based largely on observations recorded in his travel journals and notebooks. Emerson later came to see the American Civil War as a "revolution" that shared common ground with the European revolutions of 1848.
In a speech in Concord, Massachusetts on May 3, 1851, Emerson denounced the Fugitive Slave Act:
That summer, he wrote in his diary:
In February 1852 Emerson and James Freeman Clarke and William Henry Channing edited an edition of the works and letters of Margaret Fuller, who had died in 1850. Within a week of her death, her New York editor, Horace Greeley, suggested to Emerson that a biography of Fuller, to be called "Margaret and Her Friends", be prepared quickly "before the interest excited by her sad decease has passed away". Published under the title "The Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli", Fuller's words were heavily censored or rewritten. The three editors were not concerned about accuracy; they believed public interest in Fuller was temporary and that she would not survive as a historical figure. Even so, it was the best-selling biography of the decade and went through thirteen editions before the end of the century.
Walt Whitman published the innovative poetry collection "Leaves of Grass" in 1855 and sent a copy to Emerson for his opinion. Emerson responded positively, sending Whitman a flattering five-page letter in response. Emerson's approval helped the first edition of "Leaves of Grass" stir up significant interest and convinced Whitman to issue a second edition shortly thereafter. This edition quoted a phrase from Emerson's letter, printed in gold leaf on the cover: "I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career". Emerson took offense that this letter was made public and later was more critical of the work.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, in the summer of 1858, would venture into the great wilderness of upstate New York.
Joining him were nine of the most illustrious intellectuals ever to camp out in the Adirondacks to connect with nature: Louis Agassiz, James Russell Lowell, John Holmes, Horatio Woodman, Ebenezer Rockwell Hoar, Jeffries Wyman, Estes Howe, Amos Binney, and William James Stillman. Invited, but unable to make the trip for diverse reasons, were: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Charles Eliot Norton, all members of the Saturday Club (Boston, Massachusetts).
This social club was mostly a literary membership that met the last Saturday of the month at the Boston Parker House Hotel (Omni Parker House). William James Stillman was a painter and founding editor of an art journal called the Crayon. Stillman was born and grew up in Schenectady which was just south of the Adirondack mountains. He would later travel there to paint the wilderness landscape and to fish and hunt. He would share his experiences in this wilderness to the members of the Saturday Club, raising their interest in this unknown region.
James Russell Lowell and William Stillman would lead the effort to organize a trip to the Adirondacks. They would begin their journey on August 2, 1858, traveling by train, steam boat, stagecoach and canoe guide boats. News that these cultured men were living like "Sacs and Sioux" in the wilderness appeared in newspapers across the nation. This would become known as the ""Philosophers Camp""
This event was a landmark in the 19th-century intellectual movement, linking nature with art and literature.
Although much has been written over many years by scholars and biographers of Emerson's life, little has been written of what has become known as the "Philosophers Camp". Yet, his epic poem "Adirondac" reads like a journal of his day to day detailed description of adventures in the wilderness with his fellow members of the Saturday Club. This two week camping excursion (1858 in the Adirondacks) brought him face to face with a true wilderness, something he spoke of in his essay "Nature" published in 1836. He said, "in the wilderness I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages".
Emerson was staunchly opposed to slavery, but he did not appreciate being in the public limelight and was hesitant about lecturing on the subject. But in the years leading up to the Civil War, he did give a number of lectures, beginning as early as November, 1837. A number of his friends and family members were more active abolitionists than he, at first, but from 1844 on, he more actively opposed slavery. He gave a number of speeches and lectures, and welcomed John Brown to his home during Brown's visits to Concord. He voted for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, but was disappointed that Lincoln was more concerned about preserving the Union than eliminating slavery outright. Once the American Civil War broke out, Emerson made it clear that he believed in immediate emancipation of the slaves.
Around this time, in 1860, Emerson published "The Conduct of Life", his seventh collection of essays. It "grappled with some of the thorniest issues of the moment," and "his experience in the abolition ranks is a telling influence in his conclusions." In these essays Emerson strongly embraced the idea of war as a means of national rebirth: "Civil war, national bankruptcy, or revolution, [are] more rich in the central tones than languid years of prosperity."
Emerson visited Washington, D.C, at the end of January 1862. He gave a public lecture at the Smithsonian on January 31, 1862, and declared:, "The South calls slavery an institution ... I call it destitution ... Emancipation is the demand of civilization". The next day, February 1, his friend Charles Sumner took him to meet Lincoln at the White House. Lincoln was familiar with Emerson's work, having previously seen him lecture. Emerson's misgivings about Lincoln began to soften after this meeting. In 1865, he spoke at a memorial service held for Lincoln in Concord: "Old as history is, and manifold as are its tragedies, I doubt if any death has caused so much pain as this has caused, or will have caused, on its announcement." Emerson also met a number of high-ranking government officials, including Salmon P. Chase, the secretary of the treasury; Edward Bates, the attorney general; Edwin M. Stanton, the secretary of war; Gideon Welles, the secretary of the navy; and William Seward, the secretary of state.
On May 6, 1862, Emerson's protégé Henry David Thoreau died of tuberculosis at the age of 44. Emerson delivered his eulogy. He often referred to Thoreau as his best friend, despite a falling-out that began in 1849 after Thoreau published "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers". Another friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne, died two years after Thoreau, in 1864. Emerson served as a pallbearer when Hawthorne was buried in Concord, as Emerson wrote, "in a pomp of sunshine and verdure".
He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1864.
Starting in 1867, Emerson's health began declining; he wrote much less in his journals. Beginning as early as the summer of 1871 or in the spring of 1872, he started experiencing memory problems and suffered from aphasia. By the end of the decade, he forgot his own name at times and, when anyone asked how he felt, he responded, "Quite well; I have lost my mental faculties, but am perfectly well".
In the spring of 1871, Emerson took a trip on the transcontinental railroad, barely two years after its completion. Along the way and in California he met a number of dignitaries, including Brigham Young during a stopover in Salt Lake City. Part of his California visit included a trip to Yosemite, and while there he met a young and unknown John Muir, a signature event in Muir's career.
Emerson's Concord home caught fire on July 24, 1872. He called for help from neighbors and, giving up on putting out the flames, all tried to save as many objects as possible. The fire was put out by Ephraim Bull Jr., the one-armed son of Ephraim Wales Bull. Donations were collected by friends to help the Emersons rebuild, including $5,000 gathered by Francis Cabot Lowell, another $10,000 collected by LeBaron Russell Briggs, and a personal donation of $1,000 from George Bancroft. Support for shelter was offered as well; though the Emersons ended up staying with family at the Old Manse, invitations came from Anne Lynch Botta, James Elliot Cabot, James Thomas Fields and Annie Adams Fields. The fire marked an end to Emerson's serious lecturing career; from then on, he would lecture only on special occasions and only in front of familiar audiences.
While the house was being rebuilt, Emerson took a trip to England, continental Europe, and Egypt. He left on October 23, 1872, along with his daughter Ellen while his wife Lidian spent time at the Old Manse and with friends. Emerson and his daughter Ellen returned to the United States on the ship "Olympus" along with friend Charles Eliot Norton on April 15, 1873. Emerson's return to Concord was celebrated by the town and school was canceled that day.
In late 1874, Emerson published an anthology of poetry called "Parnassus", which included poems by Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Julia Caroline Dorr, Jean Ingelow, Lucy Larcom, Jones Very, as well as Thoreau and several others. The anthology was originally prepared as early as the fall of 1871 but was delayed when the publishers asked for revisions.
The problems with his memory had become embarrassing to Emerson and he ceased his public appearances by 1879. As Holmes wrote, "Emerson is afraid to trust himself in society much, on account of the failure of his memory and the great difficulty he finds in getting the words he wants. It is painful to witness his embarrassment at times". On April 21, 1882, Emerson was found to be suffering from pneumonia. He died six days later. Emerson is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts. He was placed in his coffin wearing a white robe given by the American sculptor Daniel Chester French.
Emerson's religious views were often considered radical at the time. He believed that all things are connected to God and, therefore, all things are divine. Critics believed that Emerson was removing the central God figure; as Henry Ware Jr. said, Emerson was in danger of taking away "the Father of the Universe" and leaving "but a company of children in an orphan asylum". Emerson was partly influenced by German philosophy and Biblical criticism. His views, the basis of Transcendentalism, suggested that God does not have to reveal the truth but that the truth could be intuitively experienced directly from nature. When asked his religious belief, Emerson stated, "I am more of a Quaker than anything else. I believe in the 'still, small voice,' and that voice is Christ within us."
Emerson did not become an ardent abolitionist until 1844, though his journals show he was concerned with slavery beginning in his youth, even dreaming about helping to free slaves. In June 1856, shortly after Charles Sumner, a United States Senator, was beaten for his staunch abolitionist views, Emerson lamented that he himself was not as committed to the cause. He wrote, "There are men who as soon as they are born take a bee-line to the axe of the inquisitor. ... Wonderful the way in which we are saved by this unfailing supply of the moral element". After Sumner's attack, Emerson began to speak out about slavery. "I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom", he said at a meeting at Concord that summer. Emerson used slavery as an example of a human injustice, especially in his role as a minister. In early 1838, provoked by the murder of an abolitionist publisher from Alton, Illinois named Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Emerson gave his first public antislavery address. As he said, "It is but the other day that the brave Lovejoy gave his breast to the bullets of a mob, for the rights of free speech and opinion, and died when it was better not to live". John Quincy Adams said the mob-murder of Lovejoy "sent a shock as of any earthquake throughout this continent". However, Emerson maintained that reform would be achieved through moral agreement rather than by militant action. By August 1, 1844, at a lecture in Concord, he stated more clearly his support for the abolitionist movement: "We are indebted mainly to this movement, and to the continuers of it, for the popular discussion of every point of practical ethics".
Emerson is often known as one of the most liberal democratic thinkers of his time who believed that through the democratic process, slavery should be abolished. While being an avid abolitionist who was known for his criticism of the legality of slavery, Emerson struggled with the implications of race. His usual liberal leanings did not clearly translate when it came to believing that all races had equal capability or function, which was a common conception for the period in which he lived. Many critics believe that it was his views on race that inhibited him from becoming an abolitionist earlier in his life and also inhibited him from being more active in the antislavery movement. Much of his early life, he was silent on the topic of race and slavery. Not until he was well into his 30s did Emerson begin to publish writings on race and slavery, and not until he was in his late 40s and 50s did he became known as an antislavery activist.
During his early life, Emerson seems to develop a hierarchy of races based on faculty to reason or rather, whether African slaves were distinguishably equal to white men based on their ability to reason. In a journal entry written in 1822, Emerson wrote about a personal observation: "It can hardly be true that the difference lies in the attribute of reason. I saw ten, twenty, a hundred large lipped, lowbrowed black men in the streets who, except in the mere matter of language, did not exceed the sagacity of the elephant. Now is it true that these were created superior to this wise animal, and designed to control it? And in comparison with the highest orders of men, the Africans will stand so low as to make the difference which subsists between themselves & the sagacious beasts inconsiderable."
As with many supporters of slavery, during his early years, Emerson seems to have thought that the faculties of African slaves were not equal to their white owners. But this belief in racial inferiorities did not make Emerson a supporter of slavery. Emerson wrote later that year that "No ingenious sophistry can ever reconcile the unperverted mind to the pardon of Slavery; nothing but tremendous familiarity, and the bias of private interest". Emerson saw the removal of people from their homeland, the treatment of slaves, and the self-seeking benefactors of slaves as gross injustices. For Emerson, slavery was a moral issue, while superiority of the races was an issue he tried to analyze from a scientific perspective based what he believed to be inherited traits.
Emerson saw himself as a man of "Saxon descent". In a speech given in 1835 titled "Permanent Traits of the English National Genius", he said, "The inhabitants of the United States, especially of the Northern portion, are descended from the people of England and have inherited the traits of their national character". He saw direct ties between race based on national identity and the inherent nature of the human being. White Americans who were native-born in the United States and of English ancestry were categorized by him as a separate "race", which he thought had a position of being superior to other nations. His idea of race was based on a shared culture, environment, and history. He believed that native-born Americans of English descent were superior to European immigrants, including the Irish, French, and Germans, and also as being superior to English people from England, whom he considered a close second and the only really comparable group.
Later in his life, Emerson's ideas on race changed when he became more involved in the abolitionist movement while at the same time he began to more thoroughly analyze the philosophical implications of race and racial hierarchies. His beliefs shifted focus to the potential outcomes of racial conflicts. Emerson's racial views were closely related to his views on nationalism and national superiority, specifically that of the Saxons of ancient England, which was a common view in the United States of that time. Emerson used contemporary theories of race and natural science to support a theory of race development. He believed that the current political battle and the current enslavement of other races was an inevitable racial struggle, one that would result in the inevitable union of the United States. Such conflicts were necessary for the dialectic of change that would eventually allow the progress of the nation. In much of his later work, Emerson seems to allow the notion that different races will eventually mix in America. This hybridization process would lead to a superior race that would be to the advantage of the superiority of the United States.
Emerson was a supporter of the spread of community libraries in the 19th century, having this to say of them: "Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom."
Emerson may have had erotic thoughts about at least one man. During his early years at Harvard, he found himself attracted to a young freshman named Martin Gay about whom he wrote sexually charged poetry. He also had a number of romantic interests in various women throughout his life, such as Anna Barker and Caroline Sturgis.
As a lecturer and orator, Emerson—nicknamed the Sage of Concord—became the leading voice of intellectual culture in the United States. James Russell Lowell, editor of the "Atlantic Monthly" and the "North American Review", commented in his book "My Study Windows" (1871), that Emerson was not only the "most steadily attractive lecturer in America," but also "one of the pioneers of the lecturing system." Herman Melville, who had met Emerson in 1849, originally thought he had "a defect in the region of the heart" and a "self-conceit so intensely intellectual that at first one hesitates to call it by its right name", though he later admitted Emerson was "a great man". Theodore Parker, a minister and transcendentalist, noted Emerson's ability to influence and inspire others: "the brilliant genius of Emerson rose in the winter nights, and hung over Boston, drawing the eyes of ingenuous young people to look up to that great new star, a beauty and a mystery, which charmed for the moment, while it gave also perennial inspiration, as it led them forward along new paths, and towards new hopes".
Emerson's work not only influenced his contemporaries, such as Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, but would continue to influence thinkers and writers in the United States and around the world down to the present. Notable thinkers who recognize Emerson's influence include Nietzsche and William James, Emerson's godson. There is little disagreement that Emerson was the most influential writer of 19th-century America, though these days he is largely the concern of scholars. Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau and William James were all positive Emersonians, while Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James were Emersonians in denial—while they set themselves in opposition to the sage, there was no escaping his influence. To T. S. Eliot, Emerson's essays were an "encumbrance". Waldo the Sage was eclipsed from 1914 until 1965, when he returned to shine, after surviving in the work of major American poets like Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane.
In his book "The American Religion", Harold Bloom repeatedly refers to Emerson as "The prophet of the American Religion", which in the context of the book refers to indigenously American religions such as Mormonism and Christian Science, which arose largely in Emerson's lifetime, but also to mainline Protestant churches that Bloom says have become in the United States more gnostic than their European counterparts. In "The Western Canon", Bloom compares Emerson to Michel de Montaigne: "The only equivalent reading experience that I know is to reread endlessly in the notebooks and journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American version of Montaigne." Several of Emerson's poems were included in Bloom's "The Best Poems of the English Language", although he wrote that none of the poems are as outstanding as the best of Emerson's essays, which Bloom listed as "Self-Reliance", "Circles", "Experience", and "nearly all of "Conduct of Life"". In his belief that line lengths, rhythms, and phrases are determined by breath, Emerson's poetry foreshadowed the theories of Charles Olson.
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Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick (; November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher. He held the Joseph Pellegrino University Professorship at Harvard University, and was president of the American Philosophical Association. He is best known for his books "Philosophical Explanations" (1981), which included his counterfactual theory of knowledge, and "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls' "A Theory of Justice" (1971), in which Nozick also presented his own theory of utopia as one in which people can freely choose the rules of the society they enter into. His other work involved ethics, decision theory, philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. His final work before his death, "Invariances" (2001), introduced his theory of evolutionary cosmology, by which he argues invariances, and hence objectivity itself, emerged through evolution across possible worlds.
Nozick was born in Brooklyn to a family of Kohenic descent. His mother was born Sophie Cohen, and his father was a Jew from the Russian shtetl who had been born with the name Cohen and who ran a small business.
Nozick attended the public schools in Brooklyn. He was then educated at Columbia University (A.B. 1959, "summa cum laude"), where he studied with Sidney Morgenbesser, and later at Princeton University (Ph.D. 1963) under Carl Hempel, and at Oxford University as a Fulbright Scholar (1963–1964). At one point he joined the youth branch of Norman Thomas's Socialist Party. In addition, at Columbia he founded the local chapter of the Student League for Industrial Democracy, which in 1962 changed its name to Students for a Democratic Society.
That same year, after receiving his bachelor of arts degree in 1959, he married Barbara Fierer. They had two children, Emily and David. The Nozicks eventually divorced and he remarried, to the poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg. Nozick died in 2002 after a prolonged struggle with stomach cancer. He was interred at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
For "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" (1974) Nozick received a National Book Award in category Philosophy and Religion.
There, Nozick argues that only a minimal state limited to the narrow functions of protection against "force, fraud, theft, and administering courts of law" could be justified without violating people's rights. For Nozick, a distribution of goods is just if brought about by free exchange among consenting adults from a "just" starting position, even if large inequalities subsequently emerge from the process. Nozick appealed to the Kantian idea that people should be treated as ends (what he termed 'separateness of persons'), not merely as a means to some other end.
Nozick challenged the partial conclusion of John Rawls' Second Principle of Justice of his "A Theory of Justice", that "social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are to be of greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society." "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" claims a heritage from John Locke's "Second Treatise on Government" and seeks to ground itself upon a natural law doctrine, but reaches some importantly different conclusions from Locke himself in several ways.
Most controversially, Nozick argued that a consistent upholding of the non-aggression principle would allow and regard as valid consensual or non-coercive enslavement contracts between adults. He rejected the notion of inalienable rights advanced by Locke and most contemporary capitalist-oriented libertarian academics, writing in "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" that the typical notion of a "free system" would allow adults to voluntarily enter into non-coercive slave contracts.
In "Philosophical Explanations" (1981), which received the Phi Beta Kappa Society's Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, Nozick provided novel accounts of knowledge, free will, personal identity, the nature of value, and the meaning of life. He also put forward an epistemological system which attempted to deal with both the Gettier problem and those posed by skepticism. This highly influential argument eschewed justification as a necessary requirement for knowledge.
Nozick's four conditions for S's knowing that P were:
Nozick's third and fourth conditions are counterfactuals. He called this the "tracking theory" of knowledge. Nozick believed the counterfactual conditionals bring out an important aspect of our intuitive grasp of knowledge: For any given fact, the believer's method must reliably track the truth despite varying relevant conditions. In this way, Nozick's theory is similar to reliabilism. Due to certain counterexamples that could otherwise be raised against these counterfactual conditions, Nozick specified that:
Where M stands for the method by which S came to arrive at a belief whether or not P.
A major criticism of Nozick's theory of knowledge is his rejection of the principle of deductive closure. This principle states that if S knows X and S knows that X implies Y, then S knows Y. Nozick's truth tracking conditions do not allow for the principle of deductive closure. Nozick believes that the truth tracking conditions are more fundamental to human intuition than the principle of deductive closure.
"The Examined Life" (1989), pitched to a broader public, explores love, death, faith, reality, and the meaning of life. According to Stephen Metcalf, Nozick expresses serious misgivings about capitalist libertarianism, going so far as to reject much of the foundations of the theory on the grounds that personal freedom can sometimes only be fully actualized via a collectivist politics and that wealth is at times justly redistributed via taxation to protect the freedom of the many from the potential tyranny of an overly selfish and powerful few. Nozick suggests that citizens who are opposed to wealth redistribution which fund programs they object to, should be able to opt out by supporting alternative government approved charities with an added 5% surcharge.
However, Jeff Riggenbach has noted that in an interview conducted in July 2001, he stated that he had never stopped self-identifying as a libertarian. Roderick Long reported that in his last book, "Invariances", "[Nozick] identified voluntary cooperation as the 'core principle' of ethics, maintaining that the duty not to interfere with another person's 'domain of choice' is '[a]ll that any society should (coercively) demand'; higher levels of ethics, involving positive benevolence, represent instead a 'personal ideal' that should be left to 'a person's own individual choice and development.' And that certainly sounds like an attempt to embrace libertarianism all over again. My own view is that Nozick's thinking about these matters evolved over time and that what he wrote at any given time was an accurate reflection of what he was thinking at that time." Furthermore, Julian Sanchez reported that "Nozick "always" thought of himself as a libertarian in a broad sense, right up to his final days, even as his views became somewhat less 'hardcore.'"
"The Nature of Rationality" (1993) presents a theory of practical reason that attempts to embellish notoriously spartan classical decision theory.
"Socratic Puzzles" (1997) is a collection of papers that range in topic from Ayn Rand and Austrian economics to animal rights. A thesis claims that "social ties are deeply interconnected with vital parts of Nozick's later philosophy", citing these two works as a development of "The Examined Life".
His last production, "Invariances" (2001), applies insights from physics and biology to questions of objectivity in such areas as the nature of necessity and moral value.
Nozick created the thought experiment of the "utility monster" to show that average utilitarianism could lead to a situation where the needs of the vast majority were sacrificed for one individual. He also wrote a version of what was essentially a previously-known thought experiment, the experience machine, in an attempt to show that ethical hedonism was false. Nozick asked us to imagine that "superduper neuropsychologists" have figured out a way to stimulate a person's brain to induce pleasurable experiences. We would not be able to tell that these experiences were not real. He asks us, if we were given the choice, would we choose a machine-induced experience of a wonderful life over real life? Nozick says no, then asks whether we have reasons not to plug into the machine and concludes that since it does not seem to be rational to plug in, ethical hedonism must be false.
Nozick was notable for the exploratory style of his philosophizing and for his methodological ecumenism. Often content to raise tantalizing philosophical possibilities and then leave judgment to the reader, Nozick was also notable for drawing from literature outside of philosophy (e.g., economics, physics, evolutionary biology).
In his 2001 work, "Invariances", Nozick introduces his theory of truth, in which he leans towards a deflationary theory of truth, but argues that objectivity arises through being invariant under various transformations. For instance, space-time is a significant objective fact because an interval involving both temporal and spatial separation is invariant, whereas no simpler interval involving only temporal or only spatial separation is invariant under Lorentz transformations. Nozick argues that invariances, and hence objectivity itself, emerged through a theory of evolutionary cosmology across possible worlds.
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Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Responsible government
Responsible government is a conception of a system of government that embodies the principle of parliamentary accountability, the foundation of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy. Governments (the equivalent of the executive branch) in Westminster democracies are responsible to parliament rather than to the monarch, or, in a colonial context, to the imperial government, and in a republican context, to the president, either in full or in part. If the parliament is bicameral, then the government is responsible first to the parliament's lower house, which is more representative than the upper house, as it usually has more members and they are always directly elected.
Responsible government of parliamentary accountability manifests itself in several ways. Ministers account to Parliament for their decisions and for the performance of their departments. This requirement to make announcements and to answer questions in Parliament means that ministers must have the privileges of the "floor", which are only granted to those who are members of either house of Parliament. Secondly, and most importantly, although ministers are officially appointed by the authority of the head of state and can theoretically be dismissed at the pleasure of the sovereign, they concurrently retain their office subject to their holding the confidence of the lower house of Parliament. When the lower house has passed a motion of no confidence in the government, the government must immediately resign or submit itself to the electorate in a new general election.
Lastly, the head of state is in turn required to effectuate their executive power only through these responsible ministers. They must never attempt to set up a "shadow" government of executives or advisors and attempt to use them as instruments of government, or to rely upon their "unofficial" advice. They are bound to take no decision or action that is put into effect under the colour of their executive power without that action being as a result of the counsel and advisement of their responsible ministers. Their ministers are required to counsel them (i.e., explain to them and be sure they understand any issue that they will be called upon to decide) and to form and have recommendations for them (i.e., their advice or advisement) to choose from, which are the ministers' formal, reasoned, recommendations as to what course of action should be taken.
An exception to this is Israel, which operates under a simplified version of the Westminster system.
In the Canadian system, responsible government was developed between 1846 and 1850, with the executive Council formulating policy with the assistance of the legislative branch, the legislature voting approval or disapproval, and the appointed governor enacting those policies that it had approved. It was a transition from the older system whereby the governor took advice from an executive Council, and used the legislature chiefly to raise money. After the formation of elected legislative assemblies starting with Nova Scotia in 1758, governors and their executive councils did not require the consent of elected legislators in order to carry out all their roles. It was only in the decades leading up to Canadian Confederation in 1867 that the governing councils of those British North American colonies became responsible to the elected representatives of the people.
Responsible government was a major element of the gradual development of Canada towards independence. The concept of responsible government is associated in Canada more with self-government than with parliamentary accountability; hence there is the notion that the Dominion of Newfoundland "gave up responsible government" when it suspended its self-governing status in 1933, as a result of financial problems. It did not regain responsible government until it became a province of Canada in 1949.
In the aftermath of the American Revolution, based on the perceived shortcomings of virtual representation, the British government became more sensitive to unrest in its remaining colonies with large populations of European-descended colonists. Elected assemblies were introduced to both Upper Canada and Lower Canada with the Constitutional Act of 1791. Many reformers thought that these assemblies should have some control over the executive power, leading to political unrest between the governors and assemblies in both Upper and Lower Canada. The Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada Sir Francis Bond Head wrote in one dispatch to London that if responsible government were implemented "Democracy, in the worst possible Form, will prevail in our Colonies."
After the 1837 Lower Canada Rebellion led by Louis-Joseph Papineau, and the 1837–1838 Upper Canada Rebellion led by William Lyon Mackenzie, Lord Durham was appointed governor general of British North America and had the task of examining the issues and determining how to defuse tensions. In his report, one of his recommendations was that colonies which were developed enough should be granted "responsible government". This term specifically meant the policy that British-appointed governors should bow to the will of elected colonial assemblies.
The first instance of responsible government in the British Empire outside of the United Kingdom itself was achieved by the colony of Nova Scotia in January–February 1848 through the efforts of Joseph Howe. Howe's push for responsible government was inspired by the work of Thomas McCulloch and Jotham Blanchard almost two decades earlier. The plaque in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly erected by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada reads:
First Responsible Government in the British Empire.<br>
The first Executive Council chosen exclusively from the party having a majority in the representative branch of a colonial legislature was formed in Nova Scotia on 2 February 1848. Following a vote of want of confidence in the preceding Council, James Boyle Uniacke, who had moved the resolution, became Attorney General and leader of the Government. Joseph Howe, the long-time campaigner for this "Peaceable Revolution", became Provincial Secretary. Other members of the Council were Hugh Bell, Wm. F. Desbarres, Lawrence O.C. Doyle, Herbert Huntingdon, James McNab, Michael Tobin, and George R. Young.
The colony of New Brunswick soon followed in May 1848 when Lieutenant Governor Edmund Walker Head brought in a more balanced representation of Members of the Legislative Assembly to the Executive Council and ceded more powers to that body.
In the Province of Canada, responsible government was introduced with the ministry of Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin in spring 1848; it was put to the test in 1849, when Reformers in the legislature passed the Rebellion Losses Bill. This was a law that provided compensation to French-Canadians who suffered losses during the Rebellions of 1837–1838 in Lower-Canada.
The Governor General, Lord Elgin, had serious misgivings about the bill but nonetheless assented to it despite demands from the Tories that he refuse to do so. Elgin was physically assaulted by an English-speaking mob for this, and the Montreal Parliament building was burned to the ground in the ensuing riots. Nonetheless, the Rebellion Losses Bill helped entrench responsible government into Canadian politics.
In time, the granting of responsible government became the first step on the road to complete independence. Canada gradually gained greater and greater autonomy over a considerable period of time through inter imperial and commonwealth diplomacy, including the British North America Act of 1867, the Statute of Westminster of 1931, and even as late as the patriation of the Constitution Act in 1982 (see Constitution of Canada).
While the various colonies in Australia were either sparsely populated or penal settlements or both, executive power was in the hands of the Governors, who, because of the great distance from their superiors in London and the resulting very slow communication, necessarily exercised vast powers.
However, the early colonists, coming mostly from the United Kingdom, were familiar with the Westminster system and made efforts to reform local government in order to increase the opportunity for ordinary men to participate.
The Governors and London therefore set in motion a gradual process of establishing a Westminster system in the colonies, not so fast as to get ahead of population or economic growth, nor so slow as to provoke clamouring for revolutionary change as happened in the American Revolutionary War and threatened in the Rebellions of 1837–1838 in Canada. This first took the form of appointed or partially elected Legislative Councils. By the 1850s the Australian colonies (with the exception of Western Australia that did so in 1890) and New Zealand had established both representative and responsible government.
The Cape Colony, in Southern Africa, was under responsible self-government from 1872 until 1910 when it became the Cape Province of the new Union of South Africa.
Under its previous system of representative government, the Ministers of the Cape Government reported directly to the British Imperial Governor, and not to the locally elected representatives in the Cape Parliament. Among Cape citizens of all races, growing anger at their powerlessness in influencing unpopular imperial decisions had repeatedly led to protests and rowdy political meetings – especially during the early "Convict Crisis" of the 1840s.
A popular political movement for responsible government soon emerged, under local leader John Molteno. A protracted struggle was then conducted over the ensuing years as the movement (known informally as "the responsibles") grew increasingly powerful, and used their parliamentary majority to put pressure on the British Governor, withholding public finances from him, and conducting public agitations. Not everyone favoured responsible government though, and pro-imperial press outlets even accused the movement of constituting "crafts and assaults of the devil".
Supporters believed that the most effective means of instituting responsible government was simply to change the section of the constitution which prevented government officials from being elected to parliament or members of parliament from serving in executive positions. The conflict therefore centred on the changing of this specific section. "Although responsible government merely required an amendment to s.79 of the constitution, it transpired only after nearly twenty years in 1872 when the so-called "responsibles" under Molteno were able to command sufficient support in both houses to secure the passage of the necessary bill." Finally, with a parliamentary majority and with the Colonial Office and new Governor Henry Barkly won over, Molteno instituted responsible government, making the Ministers directly responsible to the Cape Parliament, and becoming the Cape's first Prime Minister.
The ensuing period saw an economic recovery, a massive growth in exports and an expansion of the colony's frontiers. Despite political complications that arose from time to time (such as an ill-fated scheme by the British Colonial Office to enforce a confederation in Southern Africa in 1878, and tensions with the Afrikaner-dominated Government of Transvaal over trade and railroad construction), economic and social progress in the Cape Colony continued at a steady pace until a renewed attempt to extend British control over the hinterland caused the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer Wars in 1899.
An important feature of the Cape Colony under responsible government was that it was the only state in southern Africa (and one of very few in the world at the time) to have a non-racial system of voting.
Later however – following the South Africa Act 1909 to form the Union of South Africa – this multi-racial universal suffrage was steadily eroded, and eventually abolished by the Apartheid government in 1948.
In the early 1860s, the Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck was involved in a bitter dispute with the Liberals, who sought to institute a system of responsible government modeled on that of Britain. Bismarck, who strongly opposed that demand, managed to deflect the pressure by embarking energetically and successfully on the unification of Germany. The Liberals, who were also strong German nationalists, backed Bismarck's unification efforts and tacitly accepted that the Constitution of Imperial Germany, crafted by Bismarck, did not include a responsible government – the Chancellor being accountable solely to the emperor and needing no parliamentary confidence. Germany gained a responsible government only with the Weimar Republic and more securely with the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany. Historians account the lack of responsible government in the formative decades of united Germany as one of the factors contributing to the prolonged weakness of German democratic institutions, lasting also after such a government was finally instituted.
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Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Linguistic relativity
The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, part of relativism, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis , or Whorfianism is a principle claiming that the structure of a language affects its speakers' world view or cognition, and thus people's perceptions are relative to their spoken language.
The principle is often defined in one of two versions: the "strong hypothesis", which was held by some of the early linguists before World War II, and the "weak hypothesis", mostly held by some of the modern linguists.
The principle had been accepted and then abandoned by linguists during the early 20th century following the changing perceptions of social acceptance for the other especially after World War II. The origin of formulated arguments against the acceptance of linguistic relativity are attributed to Noam Chomsky.
The term "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis" is considered a misnomer by linguists for several reasons: Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf never co-authored any works, and never stated their ideas in terms of a hypothesis. The distinction between a weak and a strong version of this hypothesis is also a later invention; Sapir and Whorf never set up such a dichotomy, although often their writings and their views of this relativity principle are phrased in stronger or weaker terms.
The idea was first clearly expressed by 19th-century thinkers, such as Wilhelm von Humboldt, who saw language as the expression of the spirit of a nation. Members of the early 20th-century school of American anthropology headed by Franz Boas and Edward Sapir also embraced forms of the idea to a certain extent, including in a 1928 meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, but Sapir in particular, wrote more often against than in favor of anything like linguistic determinism. Sapir's student, Benjamin Lee Whorf, came to be seen as the primary proponent as a result of his published observations of how he perceived linguistic differences to have consequences in human cognition and behavior. Harry Hoijer, another of Sapir's students, introduced the term "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis", even though the two scholars never formally advanced any such hypothesis. A strong version of relativist theory was developed from the late 1920s by the German linguist Leo Weisgerber. Whorf's principle of linguistic relativity was reformulated as a testable hypothesis by Roger Brown and Eric Lenneberg who conducted experiments designed to find out whether color perception varies between speakers of languages that classified colors differently. As the study of the universal nature of human language and cognition came into focus in the 1960s the idea of linguistic relativity fell out of favor among linguists. A 1969 study by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay demonstrated the existence of universal semantic constraints in the field of color terminology which were widely seen to discredit the existence of linguistic relativity in this domain, although this conclusion has been disputed by relativist researchers.
From the late 1980s, a new school of linguistic relativity scholars has examined the effects of differences in linguistic categorization on cognition, finding broad support for non-deterministic versions of the hypothesis in experimental contexts. Some effects of linguistic relativity have been shown in several semantic domains, although they are generally weak. Currently, a balanced view of linguistic relativity is espoused by most linguists holding that language influences certain kinds of cognitive processes in non-trivial ways, but that other processes are better seen as arising from connectionist factors. Research is focused on exploring the ways and extent to which language influences thought. The principle of linguistic relativity and the relation between language and thought has also received attention in varying academic fields from philosophy to psychology and anthropology, and it has also inspired and coloured works of fiction and the invention of constructed languages.
The strongest form of the theory is linguistic determinism, which holds that language entirely determines the range of cognitive processes. The hypothesis of linguistic determinism is now generally agreed to be false.
This is the weaker form, proposing that language provides constraints in some areas of cognition, but that it is by no means determinative. Research on weaker forms has produced positive empirical evidence for a relationship.
The idea that language and thought are intertwined is ancient. Plato argued against sophist thinkers such as Gorgias of Leontini, who held that the physical world cannot be experienced except through language; this made the question of truth dependent on aesthetic preferences or functional consequences. Plato held instead that the world consisted of eternal ideas and that language should reflect these ideas as accurately as possible. Following Plato, St. Augustine, for example, held the view that language was merely labels applied to already existing concepts. This view remained prevalent throughout the Middle Ages. Roger Bacon held the opinion that language was but a veil covering up eternal truths, hiding them from human experience. For Immanuel Kant, language was but one of several tools used by humans to experience the world.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the idea of the existence of different national characters, or "Volksgeister", of different ethnic groups was the moving force behind the German romantics school and the beginning ideologies of ethnic nationalism.
Although himself a Swede, Emanuel Swedenborg inspired several of the German Romantics. As early as 1749, he alludes to something along the lines of linguistic relativity in commenting on a passage in the table of nations in the book of Genesis: In 1771 he spelled this out more explicitly:
Johann Georg Hamann is often suggested to be the first among the actual German Romantics to speak of the concept of "the genius of a language." In his "Essay Concerning an Academic Question," Hamann suggests that a people's language affects their worldview:
In 1820, Wilhelm von Humboldt connected the study of language to the national romanticist program by proposing the view that language is the fabric of thought. Thoughts are produced as a kind of internal dialog using the same grammar as the thinker's native language. This view was part of a larger picture in which the world view of an ethnic nation, their "Weltanschauung", was seen as being faithfully reflected in the grammar of their language. Von Humboldt argued that languages with an inflectional morphological type, such as German, English and the other Indo-European languages, were the most perfect languages and that accordingly this explained the dominance of their speakers over the speakers of less perfect languages. Wilhelm von Humboldt declared in 1820:
The idea that some languages are superior to others and that lesser languages maintained their speakers in intellectual poverty was widespread in the early 20th century. American linguist William Dwight Whitney, for example, actively strove to eradicate Native American languages, arguing that their speakers were savages and would be better off learning English and adopting a "civilized" way of life. The first anthropologist and linguist to challenge this view was Franz Boas. While undertaking geographical research in northern Canada he became fascinated with the Inuit people and decided to become an ethnographer. Boas stressed the equal worth of all cultures and languages, that there was no such thing as a primitive language and that all languages were capable of expressing the same content, albeit by widely differing means. Boas saw language as an inseparable part of culture and he was among the first to require of ethnographers to learn the native language of the culture under study and to document verbal culture such as myths and legends in the original language.
Boas:
Boas' student Edward Sapir reached back to the Humboldtian idea that languages contained the key to understanding the world views of peoples. He espoused the viewpoint that because of the differences in the grammatical systems of languages no two languages were similar enough to allow for perfect cross-translation. Sapir also thought because language represented reality differently, it followed that the speakers of different languages would perceive reality differently.
Sapir:
On the other hand, Sapir explicitly rejected strong linguistic determinism by stating, "It would be naïve to imagine that any analysis of experience is dependent on pattern expressed in language."
Sapir was explicit that the connections between language and culture were neither thoroughgoing nor particularly deep, if they existed at all:
Sapir offered similar observations about speakers of so-called "world" or "modern" languages, noting, "possession of a common language is still and will continue to be a smoother of the way to a mutual understanding between England and America, but it is very clear that other factors, some of them rapidly cumulative, are working powerfully to counteract this leveling influence. A common language cannot indefinitely set the seal on a common culture when the geographical, physical, and economics determinants of the culture are no longer the same throughout the area."
While Sapir never made a point of studying directly how languages affected thought, some notion of (probably "weak") linguistic relativity underlay his basic understanding of language, and would be taken up by Whorf.
Drawing on influences such as Humboldt and Friedrich Nietzsche, some European thinkers developed ideas similar to those of Sapir and Whorf, generally working in isolation from each other. Prominent in Germany from the late 1920s through into the 1960s were the strongly relativist theories of Leo Weisgerber and his key concept of a 'linguistic inter-world', mediating between external reality and the forms of a given language, in ways peculiar to that language. Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky read Sapir's work and experimentally studied the ways in which the development of concepts in children was influenced by structures given in language. His 1934 work ""Thought and Language"" has been compared to Whorf's and taken as mutually supportive evidence of language's influence on cognition. Drawing on Nietzsche's ideas of perspectivism Alfred Korzybski developed the theory of general semantics that has been compared to Whorf's notions of linguistic relativity. Though influential in their own right, this work has not been influential in the debate on linguistic relativity, which has tended to center on the American paradigm exemplified by Sapir and Whorf.
More than any linguist, Benjamin Lee Whorf has become associated with what he called the "linguistic relativity principle". Studying Native American languages, he attempted to account for the ways in which grammatical systems and language use differences affected perception. Whorf also examined how a scientific account of the world differed from a religious account, which led him to study the original languages of religious scripture and to write several anti-evolutionist pamphlets. Whorf's opinions regarding the nature of the relation between language and thought remain under contention. Critics such as Lenneberg, Black and Pinker attribute to Whorf a strong linguistic determinism, while Lucy, Silverstein and Levinson point to Whorf's explicit rejections of determinism, and where he contends that translation and commensuration is possible.
Although Whorf lacked an advanced degree in linguistics, his reputation reflects his acquired competence. His peers at Yale University considered the 'amateur' Whorf to be the best man available to take over Sapir's graduate seminar in Native American linguistics while Sapir was on sabbatical in 1937–38. He was highly regarded by authorities such as Boas, Sapir, Bloomfield and Tozzer. Indeed, Lucy wrote, "despite his 'amateur' status, Whorf's work in linguistics was and still is recognized as being of superb professional quality by linguists".
Detractors such as Lenneberg, Chomsky and Pinker criticized him for insufficient clarity in his description of how language influences thought, and for not proving his conjectures. Most of his arguments were in the form of anecdotes and speculations that served as attempts to show how 'exotic' grammatical traits were connected to what were apparently equally exotic worlds of thought. In Whorf's words:
Among Whorf's best-known examples of linguistic relativity are instances where an indigenous language has several terms for a concept that is only described with one word in European languages (Whorf used the acronym SAE "Standard Average European" to allude to the rather similar grammatical structures of the well-studied European languages in contrast to the greater diversity of less-studied languages).
One of Whorf's examples was the supposedly large number of words for 'snow' in the Inuit language, an example which later was contested as a misrepresentation.
Another is the Hopi language's words for water, one indicating drinking water in a container and another indicating a natural body of water. These examples of polysemy served the double purpose of showing that indigenous languages sometimes made more fine grained semantic distinctions than European languages and that direct translation between two languages, even of seemingly basic concepts such as snow or water, is not always possible.
Another example is from Whorf's experience as a chemical engineer working for an insurance company as a fire inspector. While inspecting a chemical plant he observed that the plant had two storage rooms for gasoline barrels, one for the full barrels and one for the empty ones. He further noticed that while no employees smoked cigarettes in the room for full barrels, no-one minded smoking in the room with empty barrels, although this was potentially much more dangerous because of the highly flammable vapors still in the barrels. He concluded that the use of the word "empty" in connection to the barrels had led the workers to unconsciously regard them as harmless, although consciously they were probably aware of the risk of explosion. This example was later criticized by Lenneberg as not actually demonstrating causality between the use of the word "empty" and the action of smoking, but instead was an example of circular reasoning. Pinker in "The Language Instinct" ridiculed this example, claiming that this was a failing of human insight rather than language.
Whorf's most elaborate argument for linguistic relativity regarded what he believed to be a fundamental difference in the understanding of time as a conceptual category among the Hopi. He argued that in contrast to English and other SAE languages, Hopi does not treat the flow of time as a sequence of distinct, countable instances, like "three days" or "five years," but rather as a single process and that consequently it has no nouns referring to units of time as SAE speakers understand them. He proposed that this view of time was fundamental to Hopi culture and explained certain Hopi behavioral patterns. Malotki later claimed that he had found no evidence of Whorf's claims in 1980's era speakers, nor in historical documents dating back to the arrival of Europeans. Malotki used evidence from archaeological data, calendars, historical documents, modern speech and concluded that there was no evidence that Hopi conceptualize time in the way Whorf suggested. Universalist scholars such as Pinker often see Malotki's study as a final refutation of Whorf's claim about Hopi, whereas relativist scholars such as Lucy and Penny Lee criticized Malotki's study for mischaracterizing Whorf's claims and for forcing Hopi grammar into a model of analysis that doesn't fit the data.
Whorf died in 1941 at age 44, leaving multiple unpublished papers. His line of thought was continued by linguists and anthropologists such as Hoijer and Lee who both continued investigations into the effect of language on habitual thought, and Trager, who prepared a number of Whorf's papers for posthumous publishing. The most important event for the dissemination of Whorf's ideas to a larger public was the publication in 1956 of his major writings on the topic of linguistic relativity in a single volume titled "Language, Thought and Reality".
In 1953, Eric Lenneberg criticised Whorf's examples from an objectivist view of language holding that languages are principally meant to represent events in the real world and that even though languages express these ideas in various ways, the meanings of such expressions and therefore the thoughts of the speaker are equivalent. He argued that Whorf's English descriptions of a Hopi speaker's view of time were in fact translations of the Hopi concept into English, therefore disproving linguistic relativity. However Whorf was concerned with how the habitual "use" of language influences habitual behavior, rather than translatability. Whorf's point was that while English speakers may be able to "understand" how a Hopi speaker thinks, they do not "think" in that way.
Lenneberg's main criticism of Whorf's works was that he never showed the connection between a linguistic phenomenon and a mental phenomenon. With Brown, Lenneberg proposed that proving such a connection required directly matching linguistic phenomena with behavior. They assessed linguistic relativity experimentally and published their findings in 1954.
Since neither Sapir nor Whorf had ever stated a formal hypothesis, Brown and Lenneberg formulated their own. Their two tenets were (i) "the world is differently experienced and conceived in different linguistic communities" and (ii) "language causes a particular cognitive structure". Brown later developed them into the so-called "weak" and "strong" formulation:
Brown's formulations became widely known and were retrospectively attributed to Whorf and Sapir although the second formulation, verging on linguistic determinism, was never advanced by either of them.
Since Brown and Lenneberg believed that the objective reality denoted by language was the same for speakers of all languages, they decided to test how different languages codified the same message differently and whether differences in codification could be proven to affect behavior.
They designed experiments involving the codification of colors. In their first experiment, they investigated whether it was easier for speakers of English to remember color shades for which they had a specific name than to remember colors that were not as easily definable by words. This allowed them to compare the linguistic categorization directly to a non-linguistic task. In a later experiment, speakers of two languages that categorize colors differently (English and Zuni) were asked to recognize colors. In this way, it could be determined whether the differing color categories of the two speakers would determine their ability to recognize nuances within color categories. Brown and Lenneberg found that Zuñi speakers who classify green and blue together as a single color did have trouble recognizing and remembering nuances within the green/blue category. Brown and Lenneberg's study began a tradition of investigation of linguistic relativity through color terminology.
Lenneberg was also one of the first cognitive scientists to begin development of the Universalist theory of language that was formulated by Chomsky in the form of Universal Grammar, effectively arguing that all languages share the same underlying structure. The Chomskyan school also holds the belief that linguistic structures are largely innate and that what are perceived as differences between specific languages are surface phenomena that do not affect the brain's universal cognitive processes. This theory became the dominant paradigm in American linguistics from the 1960s through the 1980s, while linguistic relativity became the object of ridicule.
Examples of universalist influence in the 1960s are the studies by Berlin and Kay who continued Lenneberg's color research. They studied color terminology formation and showed clear universal trends in color naming. For example, they found that even though languages have different color terminologies, they generally recognize certain hues as more focal than others. They showed that in languages with few color terms, it is predictable from the number of terms which hues are chosen as focal colors, for example, languages with only three color terms always have the focal colors black, white and red. The fact that what had been believed to be random differences between color naming in different languages could be shown to follow universal patterns was seen as a powerful argument against linguistic relativity. Berlin and Kay's research has since been criticized by relativists such as Lucy, who argued that Berlin and Kay's conclusions were skewed by their insistence that color terms encode only color information. This, Lucy argues, made them blind to the instances in which color terms provided other information that might be considered examples of linguistic relativity.
Other universalist researchers dedicated themselves to dispelling other aspects of linguistic relativity, often attacking Whorf's specific points and examples. For example, Malotki's monumental study of time expressions in Hopi presented many examples that challenged Whorf's "timeless" interpretation of Hopi language and culture, but seemingly failed to address linguistic relativist argument actually posed by Whorf (i.e. that the understanding of time by native Hopi speakers differed from that of speakers of European languages due to the differences in the organization and construction of their respective languages; Whorf never claimed that Hopi speakers lacked any concept of time). Malotki himself acknowledges that the conceptualizations are different, but because he ignores Whorf's use of scare quotes around the word "time" and the qualifier "what we call," takes Whorf to be arguing that the Hopi have no concept of time at all.
Today many followers of the universalist school of thought still oppose linguistic relativity. For example, Pinker argues in "The Language Instinct" that thought is independent of language, that language is itself meaningless in any fundamental way to human thought, and that human beings do not even think in "natural" language, i.e. any language that we actually communicate in; rather, we think in a meta-language, preceding any natural language, called "mentalese." Pinker attacks what he calls "Whorf's radical position," declaring, "the more you examine Whorf's arguments, the less sense they make."
Pinker and other universalists have been accused by relativists of misrepresenting Whorf's views and arguing against strawmen.
Joshua Fishman argued that Whorf's true position was largely overlooked. In 1978, he suggested that Whorf was a "neo-Herderian champion" and in 1982, he proposed "Whorfianism of the third kind" in an attempt to refocus linguists' attention on what he claimed was Whorf's real interest, namely the intrinsic value of "little peoples" and "little languages". Whorf had criticized Ogden's Basic English thus:
Where Brown's weak version of the linguistic relativity hypothesis proposes that language "influences" thought and the strong version that language "determines" thought, Fishman's 'Whorfianism of the third kind' proposes that language "is a key to culture".
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, advances in cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics renewed interest in the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. One of those who adopted a more Whorfian approach was George Lakoff. He argued that language is often used metaphorically and that languages use different cultural metaphors that reveal something about how speakers of that language think. For example, English employs conceptual metaphors likening time with money, so that time can be saved and spent and invested, whereas other languages do not talk about time in that way. Other such metaphors are common to many languages because they are based on general human experience, for example, metaphors likening "up" with "good" and "bad" with "down". Lakoff also argued that metaphor plays an important part in political debates such as the "right to life" or the "right to choose"; or "illegal aliens" or "undocumented workers".
In his book "Women, Fire and Dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind," Lakoff reappraised linguistic relativity and especially Whorf's views about how linguistic categorization reflects and/or influences mental categories. He concluded that the debate had been confused. He described four parameters on which researchers differed in their opinions about what constitutes linguistic relativity:
Lakoff concluded that many of Whorf's critics had criticized him using novel definitions of linguistic relativity, rendering their criticisms moot.
The publication of the 1996 anthology "Rethinking Linguistic Relativity" edited by Gumperz and Levinson began a new period of linguistic relativity studies that focused on cognitive and social aspects. The book included studies on the linguistic relativity and universalist traditions. Levinson documented significant linguistic relativity effects in the linguistic conceptualization of spatial categories between languages. For example, men speaking the Guugu Yimithirr language in Queensland gave accurate navigation instructions using a compass-like system of north, south, east and west, along with a hand gesture pointing to the starting direction.
Separate studies by Bowerman and Slobin treated the role of language in cognitive processes. Bowerman showed that certain cognitive processes did not use language to any significant extent and therefore could not be subject to linguistic relativity. Slobin described another kind of cognitive process that he named "thinking for speaking" – the kind of process in which perceptional data and other kinds of prelinguistic cognition are translated into linguistic terms for communication. These, Slobin argues, are the kinds of cognitive process that are at the root of linguistic relativity.
Researchers such as Boroditsky, Lucy and Levinson believe that language influences thought in more limited ways than the broadest early claims. Researchers examine the interface between thought (or cognition), language and culture and describe the relevant influences. They use experimental data to back up their conclusions. Kay ultimately concluded that "[the] Whorf hypothesis is supported in the right visual field but not the left". His findings show that accounting for brain lateralization offers another perspective.
Psycholinguistic studies explored motion perception, emotion perception, object representation and memory. The gold standard of psycholinguistic studies on linguistic relativity is now finding non-linguistic cognitive differences in speakers of different languages (thus rendering inapplicable Pinker's criticism that linguistic relativity is "circular").
Recent work with bilingual speakers attempts to distinguish the effects of language from those of culture on bilingual cognition including perceptions of time, space, motion, colors and emotion. Researchers described differences between bilinguals and monolinguals in perception of color, representations of time and other elements of cognition.
Lucy identified three main strands of research into linguistic relativity.
The "structure-centered" approach starts with a language's structural peculiarity and examines its possible ramifications for thought and behavior. The defining example is Whorf's observation of discrepancies between the grammar of time expressions in Hopi and English. More recent research in this vein is Lucy's research describing how usage of the categories of grammatical number and of numeral classifiers in the Mayan language Yucatec result in Mayan speakers classifying objects according to material rather than to shape as preferred by English speakers.
The "domain-centered" approach selects a semantic domain and compares it across linguistic and cultural groups. It centered on color terminology, although this domain is acknowledged to be sub-optimal, because color perception, unlike other semantic domains, is hardwired into the neural system and as such is subject to more universal restrictions than other semantic domains.
Space is another semantic domain that has proven fruitful for linguistic relativity studies. Spatial categories vary greatly across languages. Speakers rely on the linguistic conceptualization of space in performing many ordinary tasks. Levinson and others reported three basic spatial categorizations. While many languages use combinations of them, some languages exhibit only one type and related behaviors. For example, Yimithirr only uses absolute directions when describing spatial relations — the position of everything is described by using the cardinal directions. Speakers define a location as "north of the house", while an English speaker may use relative positions, saying "in front of the house" or "to the left of the house".
The "behavior centered" approach starts by comparing behavior across linguistic groups and then searches for causes for that behavior in the linguistic system. Whorf attributed the occurrence of fires at a chemical plant to the workers' use of the word 'empty' to describe the barrels containing only explosive vapors. Bloom noticed that speakers of Chinese had unexpected difficulties answering counter-factual questions posed to them in a questionnaire. He concluded that this was related to the way in which counter-factuality is marked grammatically in Chinese. Other researchers attributed this result to Bloom's flawed translations. Strømnes examined why Finnish factories had a higher occurrence of work related accidents than similar Swedish ones. He concluded that cognitive differences between the grammatical usage of Swedish prepositions and Finnish cases could have caused Swedish factories to pay more attention to the work process while Finnish factory organizers paid more attention to the individual worker.
Everett's work on the Pirahã language of the Brazilian Amazon found several peculiarities that he interpreted as corresponding to linguistically rare features, such as a lack of numbers and color terms in the way those are otherwise defined and the absence of certain types of clauses. Everett's conclusions were met with skepticism from universalists who claimed that the linguistic deficit is explained by the lack of need for such concepts.
Recent research with non-linguistic experiments in languages with different grammatical properties (e.g., languages with and without numeral classifiers or with different gender grammar systems) showed that language differences in human categorization are due to such differences. Experimental research suggests that this linguistic influence on thought diminishes over time, as when speakers of one language are exposed to another.
A study published by the American Psychological Association's Journal of Experimental Psychology claimed that language can influence how one estimates time. The study focused on three groups, those who spoke only Swedish, those who spoke only Spanish and bilingual speakers who spoke both of those languages. Swedish speakers describe time using distance terms like "long" or "short" while Spanish speakers do it using volume related terms like "big" or "small". The researchers asked the participants to estimate how much time had passed while watching a line growing across a screen, or a container being filled, or both. The researchers stated that "When reproducing duration, Swedish speakers were misled by stimulus length, and Spanish speakers were misled by stimulus size/quantity." When the bilinguals were prompted with the word "duración" (the Spanish word for duration) they based their time estimates of how full the containers were, ignoring the growing lines. When prompted with the word "tid" (the Swedish word for duration) they estimated the time elapsed solely by the distance the lines had traveled.
Research continued after Lenneberg/Roberts and Brown/Lenneberg. The studies showed a correlation between color term numbers and ease of recall in both Zuni and English speakers. Researchers attributed this to focal colors having higher codability than less focal colors, and not with linguistic relativity effects. Berlin/Kay found universal typological color principles that are determined by biological rather than linguistic factors. This study sparked studies into typological universals of color terminology. Researchers such as Lucy, Saunders and Levinson argued that Berlin and Kay's study does not refute linguistic relativity in color naming, because of unsupported assumptions in their study (such as whether all cultures in fact have a clearly defined category of "color") and because of related data problems. Researchers such as Maclaury continued investigation into color naming. Like Berlin and Kay, Maclaury concluded that the domain is governed mostly by physical-biological universals.
Linguistic relativity inspired others to consider whether thought could be influenced by manipulating language.
The question bears on philosophical, psychological, linguistic and anthropological questions.
A major question is whether human psychological faculties are mostly innate or whether they are mostly a result of learning, and hence subject to cultural and social processes such as language. The innate view holds that humans share the same set of basic faculties, and that variability due to cultural differences is less important and that the human mind is a mostly biological construction, so that all humans sharing the same neurological configuration can be expected to have similar cognitive patterns.
Multiple alternatives have advocates. The contrary constructivist position holds that human faculties and concepts are largely influenced by socially constructed and learned categories, without many biological restrictions. Another variant is idealist, which holds that human mental capacities are generally unrestricted by biological-material strictures. Another is essentialist, which holds that essential differences may influence the ways individuals or groups experience and conceptualize the world. Yet another is relativist (Cultural relativism), which sees different cultural groups as employing different conceptual schemes that are not necessarily compatible or commensurable, nor more or less in accord with external reality.
Another debate considers whether thought is a form of internal speech or is independent of and prior to language.
In the philosophy of language the question addresses the relations between language, knowledge and the external world, and the concept of truth. Philosophers such as Putnam, Fodor, Davidson, and Dennett see language as representing directly entities from the objective world and that categorization reflect that world. Other philosophers (e.g. Quine, Searle, Foucault) argue that categorization and conceptualization is subjective and arbitrary.
Another question is whether language is a tool for representing and referring to objects in the world, or whether it is a system used to construct mental representations that can be communicated.
Sapir/Whorf contemporary Alfred Korzybski was independently developing his theory of general semantics, which was aimed at using language's influence on thinking to maximize human cognitive abilities. Korzybski's thinking was influenced by logical philosophy such as Russell and Whitehead's "Principia Mathematica" and Wittgenstein's "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus". Although Korzybski was not aware of Sapir and Whorf's writings, the movement was followed by Whorf-admirer Stuart Chase, who fused Whorf's interest in cultural-linguistic variation with Korzybski's programme in his popular work ""The Tyranny of Words"". S. I. Hayakawa was a follower and popularizer of Korzybski's work, writing "Language in Thought and Action". The general semantics movement influenced the development of neurolinguistic programming, another therapeutic technique that seeks to use awareness of language use to influence cognitive patterns.
Korzybski independently described a "strong" version of the hypothesis of linguistic relativity.
In their fiction, authors such as Ayn Rand and George Orwell explored how linguistic relativity might be exploited for political purposes. In Rand's "Anthem", a fictive communist society removed the possibility of individualism by removing the word "I" from the language. In Orwell's "1984" the authoritarian state created the language Newspeak to make it impossible for people to think critically about the government, or even to contemplate that they might be impoverished or oppressed, by reducing the number of words to reduce the thought of the locutor.
Others have been fascinated by the possibilities of creating new languages that could enable new, and perhaps better, ways of thinking. Examples of such languages designed to explore the human mind include Loglan, explicitly designed by James Cooke Brown to test the linguistic relativity hypothesis, by experimenting whether it would make its speakers think more logically. Speakers of Lojban, an evolution of Loglan, report that they feel speaking the language enhances their ability for logical thinking. Suzette Haden Elgin, who was involved in the early development of neurolinguistic programming, invented the language Láadan to explore linguistic relativity by making it easier to express what Elgin considered the female worldview, as opposed to Standard Average European languages which she considered to convey a "male centered" world view. John Quijada's language Ithkuil was designed to explore the limits of the number of cognitive categories a language can keep its speakers aware of at once. Similarly, Sonja Lang's Toki Pona was developed according to a Taoist point of view for exploring how (or if) such a language would direct human thought.
APL programming language originator Kenneth E. Iverson believed that the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis applied to computer languages (without actually mentioning it by name). His Turing award lecture, "Notation as a tool of thought", was devoted to this theme, arguing that more powerful notations aided thinking about computer algorithms.
The essays of Paul Graham explore similar themes, such as a conceptual hierarchy of computer languages, with more expressive and succinct languages at the top. Thus, the so-called "blub" paradox (after a hypothetical programming language of average complexity called "Blub") says that anyone preferentially using some particular programming language will "know" that it is more powerful than some, but not that it is less powerful than others. The reason is that "writing" in some language means "thinking" in that language. Hence the paradox, because typically programmers are "satisfied with whatever language they happen to use, because it dictates the way they think about programs".
In a 2003 presentation at an open source convention, Yukihiro Matsumoto, creator of the programming language Ruby, said that one of his inspirations for developing the language was the science fiction novel "Babel-17", based on the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis.
Ted Chiang's short story "Story of Your Life" developed the concept of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis as applied to an alien species which visits Earth. The aliens' biology contributes to their spoken and written languages, which are distinct. In the 2016 American film "Arrival", based on Chiang's short story, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is the premise. The protagonist explains that "the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is the theory that the language you speak determines how you think".
In his science fiction novel "The Languages of Pao" the author Jack Vance describes how specialized languages are a major part of a strategy to create specific classes in a society, to enable the population to withstand occupation and develop itself.
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Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard ( , , ; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, social critic and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christendom, morality, ethics, psychology, and the philosophy of religion, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and parables. Much of his philosophical work deals with the issues of how one lives as a "single individual", giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment. He was against literary critics who defined idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, and thought that Swedenborg, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schlegel and Hans Christian Andersen were all "understood" far too quickly by "scholars".
Kierkegaard's theological work focuses on Christian ethics, the institution of the Church, the differences between purely objective proofs of Christianity, the infinite qualitative distinction between man and God, and the individual's subjective relationship to the God-Man Jesus the Christ, which came through faith. Much of his work deals with Christian love. He was extremely critical of the practice of Christianity as a state religion, primarily that of the Church of Denmark. His psychological work explored the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with life choices.
Kierkegaard's early work was written under the various pseudonyms to present distinctive viewpoints that interact in complex dialogue. He explored particularly complex problems from different viewpoints, each under a different pseudonym. He wrote many "Upbuilding Discourses" under his own name and dedicated them to the "single individual" who might want to discover the meaning of his works. Notably, he wrote: "Science and scholarship want to teach that becoming objective is the way. Christianity teaches that the way is to become subjective, to become a subject." While scientists can learn about the world by observation, Kierkegaard emphatically denied that observation alone could reveal the inner workings of the world of the spirit.
Some of Kierkegaard's key ideas include the concept of "subjective and objective truths", the knight of faith, the recollection and repetition dichotomy, angst, the infinite qualitative distinction, faith as a passion, and the three stages on life's way. Kierkegaard wrote in Danish and the reception of his work was initially limited to Scandinavia, but by the turn of the 20th century his writings were translated into French, German, and other major European languages. By the mid-20th century, his thought exerted a substantial influence on philosophy, theology, and Western culture.
Kierkegaard was born to an affluent family in Copenhagen. His mother, Ane Sørensdatter Lund Kierkegaard, had served as a maid in the household before marrying his father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard. She was an unassuming figure: quiet, plain, and not formally educated, but Henriette Lund, her granddaughter, wrote that she "wielded the sceptre with joy and protected [Søren and Peter] like a hen protecting her chicks". She also wielded influence on her children so that later Peter said that his brother preserved many of their mother's words in his writings. His father, on the other hand, was a well-to-do wool merchant from Jutland. He was a "very stern man, to all appearances dry and prosaic, but under his 'rustic cloak' demeanor he concealed an active imagination which not even his great age could blunt". He was also interested in philosophy and often hosted intellectuals at his home. The young Kierkegaard read the philosophy of Christian Wolff. He also preferred the comedies of Ludvig Holberg, the writings of Johann Georg Hamann, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Edward Young, and Plato. The figure of Socrates, who Kierkegaard encountered in Plato's dialogues, would prove to be a phenomenal influence on the philosopher's later interest in irony, as well as his frequent deployment of indirect communication.
Copenhagen in the 1830s and 1840s had crooked streets where carriages rarely went. Kierkegaard loved to walk them. In 1848, Kierkegaard wrote, "I had real Christian satisfaction in the thought that, if there were no other, there was definitely one man in Copenhagen whom every poor person could freely accost and converse with on the street; that, if there were no other, there was one man who, whatever the society he most commonly frequented, did not shun contact with the poor, but greeted every maidservant he was acquainted with, every manservant, every common laborer." Our Lady's Church was at one end of the city, where Bishop Mynster preached the Gospel. At the other end was the Royal Theatre where Fru Heiberg performed.
Based on a speculative interpretation of anecdotes in Kierkegaard's unpublished journals, especially a rough draft of a story called "The Great Earthquake", some early Kierkegaard scholars argued that Michael believed he had earned God's wrath and that none of his children would outlive him. He is said to have believed that his personal sins, perhaps indiscretions such as cursing the name of God in his youth or impregnating Ane out of wedlock, necessitated this punishment. Though five of his seven children died before he did, both Kierkegaard and his brother Peter Christian Kierkegaard outlived him. Peter, who was seven years Kierkegaard's elder, later became bishop in Aalborg. Julia Watkin thought Michael's early interest in the Moravian Church could have led him to a deep sense of the devastating effects of sin.
Kierkegaard came to hope that no one would retain their sins even though they have been forgiven. And by the same token that no one who truly believed in the forgiveness of sin would live their own life as an objection against the existence of forgiveness. He made the point that Cato committed suicide before Caesar had a chance to forgive him. This fear of not finding forgiveness is devastating. Edna H. Hong quoted Kierkegaard in her 1984 book, "Forgiveness is a Work As Well As a Grace" and Kierkegaard wrote about forgiveness in 1847. In 1954, Samuel Barber set to music Kierkegaard's prayer, "Father in Heaven! Hold not our sins up against us but hold us up against our sins so that the thought of You when it wakens in our soul, and each time it wakens, should not remind us of what we have committed but of what You did forgive, not of how we went astray but of how You did save us!"
From 1821 to 1830 Kierkegaard attended the School of Civic Virtue, Østre Borgerdyd Gymnasium when the school was situated in Klarebodeme, where he studied Latin and history among other subjects. During his time there he was described as "very conservative"; someone who would "honour the King, love the church and respect the police". He frequently got into altercations with fellow students and was ambivalent towards his teachers. He went on to study theology at the University of Copenhagen. He had little interest in historical works, philosophy dissatisfied him, and he couldn't see "dedicating himself to Speculation". He said, "What I really need to do is to get clear about "what am I to do", not what I must know." He wanted to "lead a completely human life and not merely one of knowledge". Kierkegaard didn't want to be a philosopher in the traditional or Hegelian sense and he didn't want to preach a Christianity that was an illusion. "But he had learned from his father that one can do what one wills, and his father's life had not discredited this theory."
One of the first physical descriptions of Kierkegaard comes from an attendee, Hans Brøchner, at his brother Peter's wedding party in 1836: "I found [his appearance] almost comical. He was then twenty-three years old; he had something quite irregular in his entire form and had a strange coiffure. His hair rose almost six inches above his forehead into a tousled crest that gave him a strange, bewildered look." Another comes from Kierkegaard's niece, Henriette Lund (1829–1909). When Søren Kierkegaard was a little boy he "was of slender and delicate appearance, and ran about in a little coat of red-cabbage color. He used to be called 'fork' by his father, because of his tendency, developed quite early, toward satirical remarks. Although a serious, almost austere tone pervaded the Kierkegaard's house, I have the firm impression that there was a place for youthful vivacity too, even though of a more sedate and home-made kind than one is used to nowadays. The house was open for an 'old-fashioned hospitality'" he was also described "quaintly attired, slight and small".
Kierkegaard's mother "was a nice little woman with an even and happy disposition," according to a grandchild's description. She was never mentioned in Kierkegaard's works. Ane died on 31 July 1834, age 66, possibly from typhus. His father died on 8 August 1838, age 82. On 11 August, Kierkegaard wrote: "My father died on Wednesday (the 8th) at 2:00 a.m. I so deeply desired that he might have lived a few years more... Right now I feel there is only one person (E. Boesen) with whom I can really talk about him. He was a 'faithful friend.'" Troels Frederik Lund, his nephew, was instrumental in providing biographers with much information regarding Søren Kierkegaard. Lund was a good friend of Georg Brandes and Julius Lange. Here is an anecdote about his father from Kierkegaard's journals.
According to Samuel Hugo Bergmann, "Kierkegaard's journals are one of the most important sources for an understanding of his philosophy". Kierkegaard wrote over 7,000 pages in his journals on events, musings, thoughts about his works and everyday remarks. The entire collection of Danish journals ("") was edited and published in 13 volumes consisting of 25 separate bindings including indices. The first English edition of the journals was edited by Alexander Dru in 1938. The style is "literary and poetic [in] manner".
Kierkegaard wanted to have Regine, his fiancée (see below), as his confidant but considered it an impossibility for that to happen so he left it to ""my reader", that single individual" to become his confidant. His question was whether or not one can have a spiritual confidant. He wrote the following in his "Concluding Postscript": "With regard to the essential truth, a direct relation between spirit and spirit is unthinkable. If such a relation is assumed, it actually means that the party has ceased to be spirit."
Kierkegaard's journals were the source of many aphorisms credited to the philosopher. The following passage, from 1 August 1835, is perhaps his most oft-quoted aphorism and a key quote for existentialist studies:
He wrote this way about indirect communication in the same journal entry.
One must first learn to know himself before knowing anything else (γνῶθι σεαυτόν). Not until a man has inwardly understood himself and then sees the course he is to take does his life gain peace and meaning; only then is he free of that irksome, sinister traveling companion – that irony of life, which manifests itself in the sphere of knowledge and invites true knowing to begin with a not-knowing (Socrates) just as God created the world from nothing. But in the waters of morality it is especially at home to those who still have not entered the tradewinds of virtue. Here it tumbles a person about in a horrible way, for a time lets him feel happy and content in his resolve to go ahead along the right path, then hurls him into the abyss of despair. Often it lulls a man to sleep with the thought, "After all, things cannot be otherwise," only to awaken him suddenly to a rigorous interrogation. Frequently it seems to let a veil of forgetfulness fall over the past, only to make every single trifle appear in a strong light again. When he struggles along the right path, rejoicing in having overcome temptation's power, there may come at almost the same time, right on the heels of perfect victory, an apparently insignificant external circumstance which pushes him down, like Sisyphus, from the height of the crag. Often when a person has concentrated on something, a minor external circumstance arises which destroys everything. (As in the case of a man who, weary of life, is about to throw himself into the Thames and at the crucial moment is halted by the sting of a mosquito.) Frequently a person feels his very best when the illness is the worst, as in tuberculosis. In vain he tries to resist it but he has not sufficient strength, and it is no help to him that he has gone through the same thing many times; the kind of practice acquired in this way does not apply here.
Although his journals clarify some aspects of his work and life, Kierkegaard took care not to reveal too much. Abrupt changes in thought, repetitive writing, and unusual turns of phrase are some among the many tactics he used to throw readers off track. Consequently, there are many varying interpretations of his journals. Kierkegaard did not doubt the importance his journals would have in the future. In December 1849, he wrote: "Were I to die now the effect of my life would be exceptional; much of what I have simply jotted down carelessly in the Journals would become of great importance and have a great effect; for then people would have grown reconciled to me and would be able to grant me what was, and is, my right."
An important aspect of Kierkegaard's life – generally considered to have had a major influence on his work – was his broken engagement to Regine Olsen (1822–1904). Kierkegaard and Olsen met on 8 May 1837 and were instantly attracted to each other, but sometime around 11 August 1838 he had second thoughts. In his journals, Kierkegaard wrote idealistically about his love for her.
On 8 September 1840, Kierkegaard formally proposed to Olsen. He soon felt disillusioned about his prospects. He broke off the engagement on 11 August 1841, though it is generally believed that the two were deeply in love. In his journals, Kierkegaard mentions his belief that his "melancholy" made him unsuitable for marriage, but his precise motive for ending the engagement remains unclear. Later on, he wrote: "I owe everything to the wisdom of an old man and to the simplicity of a young girl." The old man in this statement is said to be his father while Olsen was the girl. Martin Buber said "Kierkegaard does not marry in defiance of the whole nineteenth century".
Kierkegaard then turned his attention to his examinations. On 13 May 1839, he wrote, "I have no alternative than to suppose that it is God's will that I prepare for my examination and that it is more pleasing to Him that I do this than actually coming to some clearer perception by immersing myself in one or another sort of research, for obedience is more precious to him than the fat of rams." The death of his father and the death of Poul Møller also played a part in his decision.
On 29 September 1841, Kierkegaard wrote and defended his dissertation, "On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates". The university panel considered it noteworthy and thoughtful, but too informal and witty for a serious academic thesis. The thesis dealt with irony and Schelling's 1841 lectures, which Kierkegaard had attended with Mikhail Bakunin, Jacob Burckhardt, and Friedrich Engels; each had come away with a different perspective. Kierkegaard graduated from university on 20 October 1841 with a Magister Artium. His family's inheritance of approximately 31,000 rigsdaler enabled him to fund his work and living expenses including servants.
Kierkegaard published some of his works using pseudonyms and for others he signed his own name as author. Whether being published under pseudonym or not, Kierkegaard's central writing on religion was "Fear and Trembling", and "Either/Or" is considered to be his magnum opus. Pseudonyms were used often in the early 19th century as a means of representing viewpoints other than the author's own; examples include the writers of the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers. Kierkegaard employed the same technique as a way to provide examples of indirect communication. In writing under various pseudonyms to express sometimes contradictory positions, Kierkegaard is sometimes criticized for playing with various viewpoints without ever committing to one in particular. He has been described by those opposing his writings as indeterminate in his standpoint as a writer, though he himself has testified to all his work deriving from a service to Christianity. After "On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates", his 1841 doctoral thesis under , he wrote his first book under the pseudonym "Johannes Climacus" (after John Climacus) between 1841–1842. "De omnibus dubitandum est" (Latin: "Everything must be doubted") was not published until after his death.
Kierkegaard's magnum opus "Either/Or" was published 20 February 1843; it was mostly written during Kierkegaard's stay in Berlin, where he took notes on Schelling's "Philosophy of Revelation". "Either/Or" includes essays of literary and music criticism and a set of romantic-like-aphorisms, as part of his larger theme of examining the reflective and philosophical structure of faith. Edited by "Victor Eremita", the book contained the papers of an unknown
"A" and "B" which the pseudonymous author claimed to have discovered in a secret drawer of his secretary. Eremita had a hard time putting the papers of "A" in order because they were not straightforward. "B"'s papers were arranged in an orderly fashion. Both of these characters are trying to become religious individuals. Each approached the idea of first love from an esthetic and an ethical point of view. The book is basically an argument about faith and marriage with a short discourse at the end telling them they should stop arguing. Eremita thinks "B", a judge, makes the most sense. Kierkegaard stressed the "how" of Christianity as well as the "how" of book reading in his works rather than the "what".
Three months after the publication of "Either/Or", 16 May 1843, he published "Two Upbuilding Discourses, 1843" and continued to publish discourses along with his pseudonymous books. These discourses were published under Kierkegaard's own name and are available as "Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses" today. David F. Swenson first translated the works in the 1940s and titled them the "Edifying Discourses"; however, in 1990, Howard V. and Edna H. Hong translated the works again but called them the "Upbuilding Discourses". The word "upbuilding" was more in line with Kierkegaard's thought after 1846, when he wrote Christian deliberations about works of love. An upbuilding discourse or edifying discourse isn't the same as a sermon because a sermon is preached to a congregation while a discourse can be carried on between several people or even with oneself. The discourse or conversation should be "upbuilding", which means one would build up the other person, or oneself, rather than tear down in order to build up. Kierkegaard said: "Although this little book (which is called "discourses," not sermons, because its author does not have authority to "preach", "upbuilding discourses," not discourses for upbuilding, because the speaker by no means claims to be a "teacher") wishes to be only what it is, a superfluity, and desires only to remain in hiding".
On 16 October 1843, Kierkegaard published three more books about love and faith and several more discourses. "Fear and Trembling" was published under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio. "Repetition" is about a Young Man (Søren Kierkegaard) who has anxiety and depression because he feels he has to sacrifice his love for a girl (Regine Olsen) to God. He tries to see if the new science of psychology can help him understand himself. Constantin Constantius, who is the pseudonymous author of that book, is the psychologist. At the same time, he published "Three Upbuilding Discourses, 1843" under his own name, which dealt specifically with how love can be used to hide things from yourself or others. These three books, all published on the same day, are an example of Kierkegaard's method of indirect communication.
Kierkegaard questioned whether an individual can know if something is a good gift from God or not and concludes by saying, "it does not depend, then, merely upon what one sees, but what one sees depends upon "how" one sees; all observation is not just a receiving, a discovering, but also a bringing forth, and insofar as it is that, how the observer himself is constituted is indeed decisive." God's love is imparted indirectly just as our own sometimes is.
During 1844, he published two, three, and four more upbuilding discourses just as he did in 1843, but here he discussed how an individual might come to know God. Theologians, philosophers and historians were all engaged in debating about the existence of God. This is direct communication and Kierkegaard thinks this might be useful for theologians, philosophers, and historians (associations) but not at all useful for the "single individual" who is interested in becoming a Christian. Kierkegaard always wrote for "that single individual whom I with joy and gratitude call "my" reader" The single individual must put what is understood to use or it will be lost. Reflection can take an individual only so far before the imagination begins to change the whole content of what was being thought about. Love is won by being exercised just as much as faith and patience are.
He also wrote several more pseudonymous books in 1844: "Philosophical Fragments", "Prefaces" and "The Concept of Anxiety" and finished the year up with "Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1844". He used indirect communication in the first book and direct communication in the rest of them. He doesn't believe the question about God's existence should be an opinion held by one group and differently by another no matter how many demonstrations are made. He says it's up to the single individual to make the fruit of the Holy Spirit real because love and joy are always just possibilities. Christendom wanted to define God's attributes once and for all but Kierkegaard was against this. His love for Regine was a disaster but it helped him because of his point of view.
Kierkegaard believed "each generation has its own task and need not trouble itself unduly by being everything to previous and succeeding generations". In an earlier book he had said, "to a certain degree every generation and every individual begins his life from the beginning", and in another, "no generation has learned to love from another, no generation is able to begin at any other point than the beginning", "no generation learns the essentially human from a previous one." And, finally, in 1850 he wrote, "those true Christians who in every generation live a life contemporaneous with that of Christ have nothing whatsoever to do with Christians of the preceding generation, but all the more with their contemporary, Christ. His life here on earth attends every generation, and every generation severally, as Sacred History..." He was against the Hegelian idea of mediation because it introduces a "third term" that comes between the single individual and the object of desire. Kierkegaard wrote in 1844, 'If a person can be assured of the grace of God without needing temporal evidence as a middleman or as the dispensation advantageous to him as interpreter, then it is indeed obvious to him that the grace of God is the most glorious of all." He was against mediation and settled instead on the choice to be content with the grace of God or not. It's the choice between the possibility of the "temporal and the eternal", "mistrust and belief, and deception and truth", "subjective and objective". These are the "magnitudes" of choice. He always stressed deliberation and choice in his writings and wrote against comparison. This is how Kant put it in 1786 and Kierkegaard put it in 1847:
Kierkegaard believed God comes to each individual mysteriously. Kierkegaard published "Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions" (first called "Thoughts on Crucial Situations in Human Life", in David F. Swenson's 1941 translation) under his own name on 29 April, and "Stages on Life's Way" edited by Hilarius Bookbinder, 30 April 1845. The "Stages" is a rewrite of "Either/Or" which Kierkegaard did not think had been adequately read by the public and in "Stages" he predicted "that two-thirds of the book's readers will quit before they are halfway through, out of boredom they will throw the book away." He knew he was writing books but had no idea who was reading them. His sales were meager and he had no publicist or editor. He was writing in the dark, so to speak.
He then went to Berlin for a short rest. Upon returning he published his "Discourses" of 1843–44 in one volume, "Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses", 29 May 1845 and finished the first part of his authorship with "Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments" which was a rewrite of "Philosophical Fragments" as well as an explanation of the first part of his authorship. In 1851 he further explained himself in his "Journal". "What I have understood as the task of the authorship has been done. It is one idea, this continuity from "Either/Or" to Anti-Climacus, the idea of religiousness in reflection. The task has occupied me totally, for it has occupied me religiously; I have understood the completion of this authorship as my duty, as a responsibility resting upon me." He advised his reader to read his books slowly and also to read them aloud since that might aid in understanding. Kierkegaard identified this leap of faith as the good resolution. Kierkegaard discussed the knight of faith like this in "Works of Love", 1847.
He was writing about the inner being in all of these books and his goal was to get the single individual away from all the speculation that was going on about God and Christ. Speculation creates quantities of ways to find God and his Goods but finding faith in Christ and putting the understanding to use stops all speculation because then one begins to actually exist as a Christian or in an ethical/religious way. He was against an individual waiting until certain of God's love and salvation before beginning to try to become a Christian. He defined this as a "special type of religious conflict the Germans call "Anfechtung"" (contesting or disputing). In Kierkegaard's view the Church should not try to prove Christianity or even defend it. It should help the single individual to make a leap of faith, the faith that God is love and has a task for that very same single individual. He wrote the following about fear and trembling and love as early as 1839, "Fear and trembling is not the "primus motor" in the Christian life, for it is love; but it is what the oscillating balance wheel is to the clock-it is the oscillating balance wheel of the Christian life.
Kierkegaard wrote his "Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments" in 1846 and here he tried to explain the intent of the first part of his authorship. He said, "Christianity will not be content to be an evolution within the total category of human nature; an engagement such as that is too little to offer to a god. Neither does it even want to be the paradox for the believer, and then surreptitiously, little by little, provide him with understanding, because the martyrdom of faith (to crucify one's understanding) is not a martyrdom of the moment, but the martyrdom of continuance." The second part of his authorship was summed up in "Practice in Christianity":
Early Kierkegaardian scholars, such as Theodor W. Adorno and Thomas Henry Croxall, argue that the entire authorship should be treated as Kierkegaard's own personal and religious views. This view leads to confusions and contradictions which make Kierkegaard appear philosophically incoherent. Later scholars, such as the post-structuralists, interpreted Kierkegaard's work by attributing the pseudonymous texts to their respective authors. Postmodern Christians present a different interpretation of Kierkegaard's works. Kierkegaard used the category of "The Individual" to stop the endless "Either/Or".
Kierkegaard's most important pseudonyms, in chronological order, were:
Kierkegaard explained his pseudonyms this way in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript:
All of these writings analyze the concept of faith, on the supposition that if people are confused about faith, as Kierkegaard thought the inhabitants of Christendom were, they will not be in a position to develop the virtue. Faith is a matter of reflection in the sense that one cannot have the virtue unless one has the concept of virtue – or at any rate the concepts that govern faith's understanding of self, world, and God.
On 22 December 1845, Peder Ludvig Møller, who studied at the University of Copenhagen at the same time as Kierkegaard, published an article indirectly criticizing "Stages on Life's Way". The article complimented Kierkegaard for his wit and intellect, but questioned whether he would ever be able to master his talent and write coherent, complete works. Møller was also a contributor to and editor of "The Corsair", a Danish satirical paper that lampooned everyone of notable standing. Kierkegaard published a sarcastic response, charging that Møller's article was merely an attempt to impress Copenhagen's literary elite.
Kierkegaard wrote two small pieces in response to Møller, "The Activity of a Traveling Esthetician" and "Dialectical Result of a Literary Police Action". The former focused on insulting Møller's integrity while the latter was a directed assault on "The Corsair", in which Kierkegaard, after criticizing the journalistic quality and reputation of the paper, openly asked "The Corsair" to satirize him.
Kierkegaard's response earned him the ire of the paper and its second editor, also an intellectual of Kierkegaard's own age, Meïr Aron Goldschmidt. Over the next few months, "The Corsair" took Kierkegaard up on his offer to "be abused", and unleashed a series of attacks making fun of Kierkegaard's appearance, voice and habits. For months, Kierkegaard perceived himself to be the victim of harassment on the streets of Denmark. In a journal entry dated 9 March 1846, Kierkegaard made a long, detailed explanation of his attack on Møller and "The Corsair", and also explained that this attack made him rethink his strategy of indirect communication.
There had been much discussion in Denmark about the pseudonymous authors until the publication of "Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments", 27 February 1846, where he openly admitted to be the author of the books because people began wondering if he was, in fact, a Christian or not. Several Journal entries from that year shed some light on what Kierkegaard hoped to achieve. This book was published under an earlier pseudonym, Johannes Climacus. On 30 March 1846 he published "", under his own name. A critique of the novel "Two Ages" (in some translations "Two Generations") written by Thomasine Christine Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd, Kierkegaard made several insightful observations on what he considered the nature of modernity and its passionless attitude towards life. Kierkegaard writes that "the present age is essentially a sensible age, devoid of passion ... The trend today is in the direction of mathematical equality, so that in all classes about so and so many uniformly make one individual". In this, Kierkegaard attacked the conformity and assimilation of individuals into "the crowd" which became the standard for truth, since it was the numerical. How can one love the neighbor if the neighbor is always regarded as the wealthy or the poor or the lame?
As part of his analysis of the "crowd", Kierkegaard accused newspapers of decay and decadence. Kierkegaard stated Christendom had "lost its way" by recognizing "the crowd", as the many who are moved by newspaper stories, as the court of last resort in relation to "the truth". Truth comes to a single individual, not all people at one and the same time. Just as truth comes to one individual at a time so does love. One doesn't love the crowd but does love their neighbor, who is a single individual. He says, "never have I read in the Holy Scriptures this command: You shall love the crowd; even less: You shall, ethico-religiously, recognize in the crowd the court of last resort in relation to 'the truth.'"
Kierkegaard began to write again in 1847: the three-part "Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits". It included "Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing", "What we Learn from the Lilies in the Field and from the Birds in the Air", and "The Gospel of Sufferings". He asked, What does it mean to be a single individual who wants to do the good? What does it mean to be a human being? What does it mean to follow Christ? He now moves from "upbuilding (Edifying) discourses" to "Christian discourses", however, he still maintains that these are not ""sermons"". A sermon is about struggle with oneself about the tasks life offers one and about repentance for not completing the tasks. Later, in 1849, he wrote devotional discourses and Godly discourses.Is it really hopelessness to reject the task because it is too heavy; is it really hopelessness almost to collapse under the burden because it is so heavy; is it really hopelessness to give up hope out of fear of the task? Oh no, but this is hopelessness: to will with all one's might-but there is no task. Thus, only if there is nothing to do and if the person who says it were without guilt before God-for if he is guilty, there is indeed always something to do-only if there is nothing to do and this is understood to mean that there is no task, only then is there hopelessness. "Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits", Hong p. 277
"Works of Love" followed these discourses on (29 September 1847). Both books were authored under his own name. It was written under the themes "Love covers a multitude of sins" and "Love builds up". (1 Peter 4:8 and 1 Corinthians 8:1) Kierkegaard believed that "all human speech, even divine speech of Holy Scripture, about the spiritual is essentially metaphorical speech". "To build up" is a metaphorical expression. One can never be all human or all spirit, one must be both.
Later, in the same book, Kierkegaard deals with the question of sin and forgiveness. He uses the same text he used earlier in "Three Upbuilding Discourses, 1843" "Love hides a multitude of sins". (1 Peter 4:8). He asks if "one who tells his neighbors faults hides or increases the multitude of sins".
In 1848 he published "Christian Discourses" under his own name and "The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress" under the pseudonym Inter et Inter. "Christian Discourses" deals the same theme as "The Concept of Anxiety", angst. The text is the Gospel of Matthew 6 verses 24–34. This was the same passage he had used in his "What We Learn From the Lilies in the Field and From the Birds of the Air" of 1847. He wrote:
Kierkegaard tried to explain his prolific use of pseudonyms again in "The Point of View of My Work as an Author", his autobiographical explanation for his writing style. The book was finished in 1848, but not published until after his death by his brother Christian Peter Kierkegaard. Walter Lowrie mentioned Kierkegaard's "profound religious experience of Holy Week 1848" as a turning point from "indirect communication" to "direct communication" regarding Christianity. However, Kierkegaard stated that he was a religious author throughout all of his writings and that his aim was to discuss "the problem 'of becoming a Christian', with a direct polemic against the monstrous illusion we call Christendom". He expressed the illusion this way in his 1848 "Christian Address", "Thoughts Which Wound From Behind – for Edification".
He wrote three discourses under his own name and one pseudonymous book in 1849. He wrote "The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air. Three Devotional Discourses", "Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays" and "Two Ethical-Religious Essays." The first thing any child finds in life is the external world of nature. This is where God placed his natural teachers. He's been writing about confession and now openly writes about Holy Communion which is generally preceded by confession. This he began with the confessions of the esthete and the ethicist in "Either/Or" and the highest good peace in the discourse of that same book. His goal has always been to help people become religious but specifically Christian religious. He summed his position up earlier in his book, "The Point of View of My Work as an Author", but this book was not published until 1859.
The Second edition of "Either/Or" was published early in 1849. Later that year he published "The Sickness Unto Death", under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus. He's against Johannes Climacus who kept writing books about trying to understand Christianity. Here he says, "Let others admire and praise the person who pretends to comprehend Christianity. I regard it as a plain ethical task – perhaps requiring not a little self-denial in these speculative times, when all 'the others' are busy with comprehending-to admit that one is neither able nor supposed to comprehend it." Sickness unto death was a familiar phrase in Kierkegaard's earlier writings. This sickness is despair and for Kierkegaard despair is a sin. Despair is the impossibility of possibility. Kierkegaard writes:
In "Practice in Christianity", 25 September 1850, his last pseudonymous work, he stated, "In this book, originating in the year 1848, the requirement for being a Christian is forced up by the pseudonymous authors to a supreme ideality." This work was called "Training in Christianity" when Walter Lowrie translated it in 1941.
He now pointedly referred to the acting single individual in his next three publications; "For Self-Examination", "Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays", and in 1852 "Judge for Yourselves!". "Judge for Yourselves"! was published posthumously in 1876. Here is an interesting quote from "For Self Examination".If in observing the present state of the world and life in general, from a Christian point of view one had to say (and from a Christian point of view with complete justification): It is a disease. And if I were a physician and someone asked me "What do you think should be done?” I would answer, "The first thing, the unconditional condition for anything to be done, consequently the very first thing that must be done is: create silence, bring about silence; God's Word cannot be heard, and if in order to be heard in the hullabaloo it must be shouted deafeningly with noisy instruments, then it is not God’s Word; create silence!
Ah, everything is noisy; and just as strong drink is said to stir the blood, so everything in our day, even the most insignificant project, even the most empty communication, is designed merely to jolt the senses and to stir up the masses, the crowd, the public, noise!
And man, this clever fellow, seems to have become sleepless in order to invent ever new instruments to increase noise, to spread noise and insignificance with the greatest possible haste and on the greatest possible scale. Yes, everything is soon turned upside-down: communication is indeed soon brought to its lowest point in regard to meaning, and simultaneously the means of communication are indeed brought to their highest with regard to speedy and overall circulation; for what is publicized with such hot haste and, on the other hand, what has greater circulation than—rubbish! Oh, create silence!” Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination 1851 p. 47-48 Hong 1990
In 1851 Kierkegaard wrote his "Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays" where he once more discussed sin, forgiveness, and authority using that same verse from 1 Peter 4:8 that he used twice in 1843 with his "Three Upbuilding Discourses, 1843".
Kierkegaard began his 1843 book "Either/Or" with a question: "Are passions, then, the pagans of the soul? Reason alone baptized?" He didn't want to devote himself to Thought or Speculation like Hegel did. Faith, hope, love, peace, patience, joy, self-control, vanity, kindness, humility, courage, cowardliness, pride, deceit, and selfishness. These are the inner passions that Thought knows little about. Hegel begins the process of education with Thought but Kierkegaard thinks we could begin with passion, or a balance between the two, a balance between Goethe and Hegel. He was against endless reflection with no passion involved. But at the same time he did not want to draw more attention to the external display of passion but the internal (hidden) passion of the single individual. Kierkegaard clarified this intention in his "Journals".
Schelling put Nature first and Hegel put Reason first but Kierkegaard put the human being first and the choice first in his writings. He makes an argument against Nature here and points out that most single individuals begin life as spectators of the visible world and work toward knowledge of the invisible world. Is it a perfection on the part of the bird that in hard times it sits and dies of hunger and knows of nothing at all to do, that, dazed, it lets itself fall to the ground and dies? Usually we do not talk this way. When a sailor lies down in the boat and lets matters take their course in the storm and knows nothing to do, we do not speak of his perfection. But when a doughty sailor knows how to steer, when he works against the storm with ingenuity, with strength, and with perseverance, when he works himself out of the danger, we admire him. Søren Kierkegaard, "Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits", 1847, Hong p. 198 Suppose that it were not one man who traveled from Jericho to Jerusalem, but there were two, and both of them were assaulted by robbers and maimed, and no traveler passed by. Suppose, then, that one of them did nothing but moan, while the other forgot and surmounted his own suffering in order to speak comfortingly, friendly words or, what involved great pain, dragged himself to some water in order to fetch the other a refreshing drink. Or suppose that they were both bereft of speech, but one of them in his silent prayer sighed to God also for the other-was he then not merciful? If someone has cut off my hands, then I cannot play the zither, and if someone has cut off my feet, then I cannot dance, and if I lie crippled on the shore, then I cannot throw myself into the sea in order to rescue another person's life, and if I myself am lying with a broken arm or leg, then I cannot plunge into the flames to save another's life-but I can still be merciful. I have often pondered how a painter might portray mercifulness, but I have decided that it cannot be done. As soon as a painter is to do it, it becomes dubious whether it is mercifulness or it is something else.
"Seek Ye First God's Kingdom And His Righteousness"
But what does this mean, what have I to do, or what sort of effort is it that can be said to seek or pursue the kingdom of God? Shall I try to get a job suitable to my talents and powers in order thereby to exert an influence? No, thou shalt "first" seek God's kingdom. Shall I then give all my fortune to the poor? No, thou shalt "first" seek God's kingdom. Shall I then go out to proclaim this teaching to the world? No, thou shalt "first" seek God's kingdom. But then in a certain sense it is nothing I shall do. Yes, certainly, in a certain it is nothing, thou shalt in the deepest sense make thyself nothing, become nothing before God, learn to keep silent; in this silence is the beginning, which is, "first" to seek God's kingdom. In this wise, a godly wise, one gets to the beginning by going, in a sense, backwards. The beginning is not that with which one begins, but at which one arrives at the beginning backwards. The beginning is this art of "becoming" silent; for to be silent, as nature is, is not an art. It is man's superiority over the beasts to be able to speak; but in relation to God it can easily become the ruin of man who is able to speak that he is too willing to speak. God is love, man is (as one says to a child) a silly little thing, even so far as his own wellbeing is concerned. Only in much fear and trembling can a man walk with God; in much fear and trembling. But to talk in much fear and trembling is difficult for as a sense of dread causes the bodily voice to fail; so also does much fear and trembling render the voice mute in silence. This the true man of prayer knows well, and he who was not the true man of prayer learned precisely this by praying.
Nikolai Berdyaev makes a related argument against reason in his 1945 book "The Divine and the Human".
Kierkegaard's final years were taken up with a sustained, outright attack on the Church of Denmark by means of newspaper articles published in "The Fatherland" ("Fædrelandet") and a series of self-published pamphlets called "The Moment" ("Øjeblikket"), also translated as "The Instant". These pamphlets are now included in Kierkegaard's "Attack Upon Christendom". "The Moment" was translated into German and other European languages in 1861 and again in 1896.
Kierkegaard first moved to action after Professor (soon Bishop) Hans Lassen Martensen gave a speech in church in which he called the recently deceased Bishop Jacob Peter Mynster a "truth-witness, one of the authentic truth-witnesses". Kierkegaard explained, in his first article, that Mynster's death permitted him—at last—to be frank about his opinions. He later wrote that all his former output had been "preparations" for this attack, postponed for years waiting for two preconditions: 1) both his father and bishop Mynster should be dead before the attack, and 2) he should himself have acquired a name as a famous theologic writer. Kierkegaard's father had been Mynster's close friend, but Søren had long come to see that Mynster's conception of Christianity was mistaken, demanding too little of its adherents. Kierkegaard strongly objected to the portrayal of Mynster as a 'truth-witness'.
Kierkegaard described the hope the witness to the truth has in 1847 and in his Journals.
Before the tenth issue of his periodical "The Moment" could be published, Kierkegaard collapsed on the street. He stayed in the hospital for over a month and refused communion. At that time he regarded pastors as mere political officials, a niche in society who were clearly not representative of the divine. He said to Emil Boesen, a friend since childhood who kept a record of his conversations with Kierkegaard, that his life had been one of immense suffering, which may have seemed like vanity to others, but he did not think it so.
Kierkegaard died in Frederik's Hospital after over a month, possibly from complications from a fall he had taken from a tree in his youth. It has been suggested by professor Kaare Weismann and literature scientist Jens Staubrand that Kierkegaard died from Pott disease, a form of tuberculosis. He was interred in the Assistens Kirkegård in the Nørrebro section of Copenhagen. At Kierkegaard's funeral, his nephew Henrik Lund caused a disturbance by protesting Kierkegaard's burial by the official church. Lund maintained that Kierkegaard would never have approved, had he been alive, as he had broken from and denounced the institution. Lund was later fined for his disruption of a funeral.
Kierkegaard's pamphlets and polemical books, including "The Moment", criticized several aspects of church formalities and politics. According to Kierkegaard, the idea of congregations keeps individuals as children since Christians are disinclined from taking the initiative to take responsibility for their own relation to God. He stressed that "Christianity is the individual, here, the single individual". Furthermore, since the Church was controlled by the State, Kierkegaard believed the State's bureaucratic mission was to increase membership and oversee the welfare of its members. More members would mean more power for the clergymen: a corrupt ideal. This mission would seem at odds with Christianity's true doctrine, which, to Kierkegaard, is to stress the importance of the individual, not the whole. Thus, the state-church political structure is offensive and detrimental to individuals, since anyone can become "Christian" without knowing what it means to be Christian. It is also detrimental to the religion itself since it reduces Christianity to a mere fashionable tradition adhered to by unbelieving "believers", a "herd mentality" of the population, so to speak. Kierkegaard always stressed the importance of the conscience and the use of it. Nonetheless, Kierkegaard has been described as "profoundly Lutheran."
In September 1850, the "Western Literary Messenger" wrote: "While Martensen with his wealth of genius casts from his central position light upon every sphere of existence, upon all the phenomena of life, Søren Kierkegaard stands like another Simon Stylites, upon his solitary column, with his eye unchangeably fixed upon one point." In 1855, the Danish National Church published his obituary. Kierkegaard did have an impact there judging from the following quote from their article: "The fatal fruits which Dr. Kierkegaard show to arise from the union of Church and State, have strengthened the scruples of many of the believing laity, who now feel that they can remain no longer in the Church, because thereby they are in communion with unbelievers, for there is no ecclesiastical discipline."
Changes did occur in the administration of the Church and these changes were linked to Kierkegaard's writings. The Church noted that dissent was "something foreign to the national mind". On 5 April 1855 the Church enacted new policies: "every member of a congregation is free to attend the ministry of any clergyman, and is not, as formerly, bound to the one whose parishioner he is". In March 1857, compulsory infant baptism was abolished. Debates sprang up over the King's position as the head of the Church and over whether to adopt a constitution. Grundtvig objected to having any written rules. Immediately following this announcement the "agitation occasioned by Kierkegaard" was mentioned. Kierkegaard was accused of Weigelianism and Darbyism, but the article continued to say, "One great truth has been made prominent, viz (namely): That there exists a worldly-minded clergy; that many things in the Church are rotten; that all need daily repentance; that one must never be contented with the existing state of either the Church or her pastors."
Hans Martensen was the subject of a Danish article, "Dr. S. Kierkegaard against Dr. H. Martensen" By Hans Peter Kofoed-Hansen (1813–1893) that was published in 1856 (untranslated) and Martensen mentioned him extensively in "Christian Ethics", published in 1871. "Kierkegaard's assertion is therefore perfectly justifiable, that with the category of "the individual" the cause of Christianity must stand and fall; that, without this category, Pantheism had conquered unconditionally. From this, at a glance, it may be seen that Kierkegaard ought to have made common cause with those philosophic and theological writers who specially desired to promote the principle of Personality as opposed to Pantheism. This is, however, far from the case. For those views which upheld the category of existence and personality, in opposition to this abstract idealism, did not do this in the sense of an either—or, but in that of a both—and. They strove to establish the unity of existence and idea, which may be specially seen from the fact that they desired system and totality. Martensen accused Kierkegaard and Alexandre Vinet of not giving society its due. He said both of them put the individual above society, and in so doing, above the Church." Another early critic was Magnús Eiríksson who criticized Martensen and wanted Kierkegaard as his ally in his fight against speculative theology.
"August Strindberg was influenced by the Danish individualistic philosopher Kierkegaard while a student at Uppsala University (1867–1870) and mentioned him in his book "Growth of a Soul" as well as "Zones of the Spirit" (1913). Edwin Bjorkman credited Kierkegaard as well as Henry Thomas Buckle and Eduard von Hartmann with shaping Strindberg's artistic form until he was strong enough to stand wholly on his own feet." The dramatist Henrik Ibsen is said to have become interested in Kierkegaard as well as the Norwegian national writer and poet Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832–1910) who named one of his characters Søren Pedersen in his 1890 book "In God's Way". Kierkegaard's father's name was Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard.
Several of Kierkegaard's works were translated into German from 1861 onward, including excerpts from "Practice in Christianity" (1872), from "Fear and Trembling" and "Concluding Unscientific Postscript" (1874), "Four Upbuilding Discourses" and "Christian Discourses" (1875), and "The Lillis of the Field and the Birds of the Air" (1876) according to "Kierkegaard's International Reception: Northern and Western Europe: Toma I", by John Stewart, see p. 388ff' "The Sickness Unto Death", 1881 "Twelve speeches by Søren Kierkegaard", by Julius Fricke, 1886 "Stages on Life's Way", 1886 (Bärthold).
Otto Pfleiderer in "The Philosophy of Religion: On the Basis of Its History" (1887), claimed that Kierkegaard presented an anti-rational view of Christianity. He went on to assert that the ethical side of a human being has to disappear completely in his one-sided view of faith as the highest good. He wrote, "Kierkegaard can only find true Christianity in entire renunciation of the world, in the following of Christ in lowliness and suffering especially when met by hatred and persecution on the part of the world. Hence his passionate polemic against ecclesiastical Christianity, which he says has fallen away from Christ by coming to a peaceful understanding with the world and conforming itself to the world's life. True Christianity, on the contrary, is constant polemical pathos, a battle against reason, nature, and the world; its commandment is enmity with the world; its way of life is the death of the naturally human."
An article from an 1889 dictionary of religion revealed a good idea of how Kierkegaard was regarded at that time, stating: "Having never left his native city more than a few days at a time, excepting once, when he went to Germany to study Schelling's philosophy. He was the most original thinker and theological philosopher the North ever produced. His fame has been steadily growing since his death, and he bids fair to become the leading religio-philosophical light of Germany. Not only his theological but also his aesthetic works have of late become the subject of universal study in Europe."
The first academic to draw attention to Kierkegaard was fellow Dane Georg Brandes, who published in German as well as Danish. Brandes gave the first formal lectures on Kierkegaard in Copenhagen and helped bring him to the attention of the European intellectual community. Brandes published the first book on Kierkegaard's philosophy and life, "Søren Kierkegaard, ein literarisches Charakterbild. Autorisirte deutsche Ausg" (1879) which Adolf Hult said was a "misconstruction" of Kierkegaard's work and "falls far short of the truth". Brandes compared him to Hegel and Tycho Brahe in "Reminiscences of my Childhood and Youth" (1906). Brandes also discussed the "Corsair Affair" in the same book. Brandes opposed Kierkegaard's ideas in the 1911 edition of the "Britannica". Brandes compared Kierkegaard to Nietzsche as well. He also mentioned Kierkegaard extensively in volume 2 of his 6 volume work, "Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature" (1872 in German and Danish, 1906 English).
Swedish author Waldemar Rudin published "Sören Kierkegaards person och författarskap – ett försök" in 1880. During the 1890s, Japanese philosophers began disseminating the works of Kierkegaard. Tetsuro Watsuji was one of the first philosophers outside of Scandinavia to write an introduction on his philosophy, in 1915.
One thing James did have in common with Kierkegaard was respect for the single individual, and their respective comments may be compared in direct sequence as follows: "A crowd is indeed made up of single individuals; it must therefore be in everyone's power to become what he is, a single individual; no one is prevented from being a single individual, no one, unless he prevents himself by becoming many. To become a crowd, to gather a crowd around oneself, is on the contrary to distinguish life from life; even the most well-meaning one who talks about that, can easily offend a single individual." In his book "A Pluralistic Universe", James stated that, "Individuality outruns all classification, yet we insist on classifying every one we meet under some general label. As these heads usually suggest prejudicial associations to some hearer or other, the life of philosophy largely consists of resentments at the classing, and complaints of being misunderstood. But there are signs of clearing up for which both Oxford and Harvard are partly to be thanked."
"The Encyclopaedia of religion and ethics" had an article about Kierkegaard in 1908. The article began:
John George Robertson wrote an article called Soren Kierkegaard in 1914: "Notwithstanding the fact that during the last quarter of a century, we have devoted considerable attention to the literatures of the North, the thinker and man of letters whose name stands at the head of the present article is but little known to the English-speaking world. The Norwegians, Ibsen and Bjørnson, have exerted a very real power on our intellectual life, and for Bjørnson we have cherished even a kind of affection. But Kierkegaard, the writer who holds the indispensable key to the intellectual life of Scandinavia, to whom Denmark in particular looks up as her most original man of genius in the nineteenth century, we have wholly overlooked." Robertson wrote previously in (1898) about Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Theodor Haecker wrote an essay titled, "Kierkegaard and the Philosophy of Inwardness" in 1913 and David F. Swenson wrote a biography of Søren Kierkegaard in 1920. Lee M. Hollander translated parts of "Either/Or", "Fear and Trembling", "Stages on Life's Way", and "Preparations for the Christian Life" (Practice in Christianity) into English in 1923, with little impact. Swenson wrote about Kierkegaard's idea of "armed neutrality" in 1918 and a lengthy article about Søren Kierkegaard in 1920. Swenson stated: "It would be interesting to speculate upon the reputation that Kierkegaard might have attained, and the extent of the influence he might have exerted, if he had written in one of the major European languages, instead of in the tongue of one of the smallest countries in the world."
Austrian psychologist Wilhelm Stekel (1868–1940) referred to Kierkegaard as the "fanatical follower of Don Juan, himself the philosopher of Don Juanism" in his book "Disguises of Love". German psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) stated he had been reading Kierkegaard since 1914 and compared Kierkegaard's writings with Friedrich Hegel's "Phenomenology of Mind" and the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Jaspers saw Kierkegaard as a champion of Christianity and Nietzsche as a champion for atheism. Later, in 1935, Karl Jaspers emphasized Kierkegaard's (and Nietzsche's) continuing importance for modern philosophy
Albert Barthod began translating Kierkegaard's works into German as early as 1873. Hermann Gottsche published Kierkegaard's Journals in 1905. It had taken academics 50 years to arrange his journals. Kierkegaard's main works were translated into German by Christoph Schrempf from 1909 onwards. Emmanuel Hirsch released a German edition of Kierkegaard's collected works from 1950 onwards. Both Harald Hoffding's and Schrempf's books about Kierkegaard were reviewed in 1892.
In the 1930s, the first academic English translations, by Alexander Dru, David F. Swenson, Douglas V. Steere, and Walter Lowrie appeared, under the editorial efforts of Oxford University Press editor Charles Williams, one of the members of the Inklings. Thomas Henry Croxall, another early translator, Lowrie, and Dru all hoped that people would not just read about Kierkegaard but would actually read his works. Dru published an English translation of Kierkegaard's Journals in 1958; Alastair Hannay translated some of Kierkegaard's works. From the 1960s to the 1990s, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong translated his works more than once. The first volume of their first version of the "Journals and Papers" (Indiana, 1967–1978) won the 1968 U.S. National Book Award in category Translation. They both dedicated their lives to the study of Søren Kierkegaard and his works, which are maintained at the Howard V. and Edna H. Hong Kierkegaard Library. Jon Stewart from the University of Copenhagen has written extensively about Søren Kierkegaard.
Kierkegaard's influence on Karl Barth's early theology is evident in "The Epistle to the Romans". The early Barth read at least three volumes of Kierkegaard's works: "Practice in Christianity", "The Moment", and an "Anthology" from his journals and diaries. Almost all key terms from Kierkegaard which had an important role in "The Epistle to the Romans" can be found in "Practice in Christianity". The concept of the indirect communication, the paradox, and the moment of "Practice in Christianity", in particular, confirmed and sharpened Barth's ideas on contemporary Christianity and the Christian life.
Wilhelm Pauk wrote in 1931 ("Karl Barth Prophet of a New Christianity") that Kierkegaard's use of the Latin phrase "Finitum Non Capax Infiniti" (the finite does not (or cannot) comprehend the infinite) summed up Barth's system. David G. Kingman and Adolph Keller each discussed Barth's relationship to Kierkegaard in their books, "The Religious Educational Values in Karl Barth's Teachings" (1934) and "Karl Barth and Christian Unity" (1933). Keller notes the splits that happen when a new teaching is introduced and some assume a higher knowledge from a higher source than others. But Kierkegaard always referred to the equality of all in the world of the spirit where there is neither "sport" nor "spook" or anyone who can shut you out of the world of the spirit except yourself. All are chosen by God and equal in His sight. "The Expectancy of Faith"," Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law. You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. "The Bible – NIV" Galatians 3:23–29"; "In the world of spirit to become one’s own master, is the highest – and in love to help someone toward that, to become himself, free, independent, his own master, to help him stand alone – that is the greatest beneficence. The greatest beneficence, to help the other to stand alone, cannot be done directly." "If a person always keeps his soul sober and alert in this idea, he will never go astray in his outlook on life and people or "combine respect for status of persons with his faith." Show no partiality as you hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. "(James 2.1)" Then he will direct his thoughts toward God, and his eye will not make the mistake of looking for differences in the world instead of likeness with God.
Kierkegaard and the early Barth think that in Christianity, direct communication is impossible because Christ appears incognito. For them Christ is a paradox, and therefore one can know him only in indirect communication. They are fully aware of the importance of the moment when the human being stands before God, and is moved by him alone from time to eternity, from the earth to which (s)he belongs to the heaven where God exists. But Kierkegaard stressed the single individual in the presence of God in time in his early discourses and wrote against speculative arguments about whether or not one individual, no matter how gifted, can ascertain where another stood in relation to God as early as his "Two Upbuilding Discourses of 1843" where he wrote against listening to speculative Christians:
Barth endorses the main theme from Kierkegaard but also reorganizes the scheme and transforms the details. Barth expands the theory of indirect communication to the field of Christian ethics; he applies the concept of unrecognizability to the Christian life. He coins the concept of the "paradox of faith" since the form of faith entails a contradictory encounter of God and human beings. He also portrayed the contemporaneity of the moment when in crisis a human being desperately perceives the contemporaneity of Christ. In regard to the concept of indirect communication, the paradox, and the moment, the Kierkegaard of the early Barth is a productive catalyst.
"If I have a system it is limited to a recognition of what Kierkegaard called the 'infinite qualitative distinction' and to my regarding this as possessing negative as well as positive significance: 'God is in heaven. And thou art on earth.' The relation between such a God and such a man, and the relation between such a man and such a God, is for me the theme of the Bible and the essence of philosophy. Philosophers name this KRISIS of human perception- the Prime Cause: the Bible holds at the same cross-roads-the figure of Jesus Christ. When I am faced by such a document as the Epistle of Paul to the Romans, I embark on its interpretation on the assumption that he is confronted with the same unmistakable and unmeasurable significance of that relation as I myself am confronted with, and that it is this situation which moulds his thought and its expression". Karl Barth, "The Epistle to the Romans" 1919 Preface (originally published in German)
William Hubben compared Kierkegaard to Dostoevsky in his 1952 book "Four Prophets of Our Destiny", later titled "Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Kafka".
In 1955 Morton White wrote about the word "exists" and Kierkegaard's idea of God's "is-ness".
John Daniel Wild noted as early as 1959 that Kierkegaard's works had been "translated into almost every important living language including Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and it is now fair to say that his ideas are almost as widely known and as influential in the world as those of his great opponent Hegel, still the most potent of world philosophers."
Mortimer J. Adler wrote the following about Kierkegaard in 1962: For Kierkegaard, man is essentially an individual, not a member of a species or race; and ethical and religious truth is known through individual existence and decision-through subjectivity, not objectivity. Systems of thought and a dialectic such as Hegel’s are matters merely of thought, which cannot comprise individual existence and decision. Such systems leave out, said Kierkegaard, the unique and essential "spermatic point, the individual, ethically and religiously conceived, and existentially accentuated". Similarly in the works of the American author Henry David Thoreau, writing at the same time as Kierkegaard, there is an emphasis on the solitary individual as the bearer of ethical responsibility, who, when he is right, carries the preponderant ethical weight against the state, government, and a united public opinion, when they are wrong. The solitary individual with right on his side is always "a majority of one". "Ethics, the study of moral values", by Mortimer J. Adler and Seymour Cain. Pref. by William Ernest Hocking. 1962 p. 252
In 1964 Life Magazine traced the history of existentialism from Heraclitus (500BC) and Parmenides over the argument over The Unchanging One as the real and the state of flux as the real. From there to the Old Testament Psalms and then to Jesus and later from Jacob Boehme (1575–1624) to Rene Descartes (1596–1650) and Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) and then on to Nietzsche and Paul Tillich. Dostoevski and Camus are attempts to rewrite Descartes according to their own lights and Descartes is the forefather of Sartre through the fact that they both used a "literary style." The article goes on to say,
Kierkegaard's comparatively early and manifold philosophical and theological reception in Germany was one of the decisive factors of expanding his works' influence and readership throughout the world. Important for the first phase of his reception in Germany was the establishment of the journal "Zwischen den Zeiten" ("Between the Ages") in 1922 by a heterogeneous circle of Protestant theologians: Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Rudolf Bultmann and Friedrich Gogarten. Their thought would soon be referred to as dialectical theology.
At roughly the same time, Kierkegaard was discovered by several proponents of the Jewish-Christian philosophy of dialogue in Germany, namely by Martin Buber, Ferdinand Ebner, and Franz Rosenzweig. In addition to the philosophy of dialogue, existential philosophy has its point of origin in Kierkegaard and his concept of individuality. Martin Heidegger sparsely refers to Kierkegaard in "Being and Time" (1927), obscuring how much he owes to him. Walter Kaufmann discussed Sartre, Jaspers, and Heidegger in relation to Kierkegaard, and Kierkegaard in relation to the crisis of religion in the 1960s. Later, Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling" (Series Two) and "The Sickness Unto Death" (Series Three) were included in the Penguin Great Ideas Series (Two and Three).
Kierkegaard has been called a philosopher, a theologian, the Father of Existentialism, both atheistic and theistic variations, a literary critic, a social theorist, a humorist, a psychologist, and a poet. Two of his influential ideas are "subjectivity", and the notion popularly referred to as "leap of faith". However, the Danish equivalent to the English phrase "leap of faith" does not appear in the original Danish nor is the English phrase found in current English translations of Kierkegaard's works. Kierkegaard does mention the concepts of "faith" and "leap" together many times in his works.
The leap of faith is his conception of how an individual would believe in God or how a person would act in love. Faith is not a decision based on evidence that, say, certain beliefs about God are true or a certain person is worthy of love. No such evidence could ever be enough to completely justify the kind of total commitment involved in true religious faith or romantic love. Faith involves making that commitment anyway. Kierkegaard thought that to have faith is at the same time to have doubt. So, for example, for one to truly have faith in God, one would also have to doubt one's beliefs about God; the doubt is the rational part of a person's thought involved in weighing evidence, without which the faith would have no real substance. Someone who does not realize that Christian doctrine is inherently doubtful and that there can be no objective certainty about its truth does not have faith but is merely credulous. For example, it takes no faith to believe that a pencil or a table exists, when one is looking at it and touching it. In the same way, to believe or have faith in God is to know that one has no perceptual or any other access to God, and yet still has faith in God. Kierkegaard writes, "doubt is conquered by faith, just as it is faith which has brought doubt into the world".
Kierkegaard also stresses the importance of the self, and the self's relation to the world, as being grounded in self-reflection and introspection. He argued in "Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments" that "subjectivity is truth" and "truth is subjectivity." This has to do with a distinction between what is objectively true and an individual's subjective relation (such as indifference or commitment) to that truth. People who in "some sense" believe the same things may relate to those beliefs quite differently. Two individuals may both believe that many of those around them are poor and deserve help, but this knowledge may lead only one of them to decide to actually help the poor. This is how Kierkegaard put it: "What a priceless invention statistics are, what a glorious fruit of culture, what a characteristic counterpart to the "de te narratur fabula" [the tale is told about you] of antiquity. Schleiermacher so enthusiastically declares that knowledge does not perturb religiousness, and that the religious person does not sit safeguarded by a lightning rod and scoff at God; yet with the help of statistical tables one laughs at all of life." In other words, Kierkegaard says: "Who has the more difficult task: the teacher who lectures on earnest things a meteor's distance from everyday life – or the learner who should put it to use?" This is how it was summed up in 1940:
Kierkegaard primarily discusses subjectivity with regard to religious matters. As already noted, he argues that doubt is an element of faith and that it is impossible to gain any objective certainty about religious doctrines such as the existence of God or the life of Christ. The most one could hope for would be the conclusion that it is probable that the Christian doctrines are true, but if a person were to believe such doctrines only to the degree they seemed "likely" to be true, he or she would not be genuinely religious at all. Faith consists in a subjective relation of absolute commitment to these doctrines.
Kierkegaard's famous philosophical 20th-century critics include Theodor Adorno and Emmanuel Levinas. Non-religious philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger supported many aspects of Kierkegaard's philosophical views, but rejected some of his religious views. One critic wrote that Adorno's book "Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic" is "the most irresponsible book ever written on Kierkegaard" because Adorno takes Kierkegaard's pseudonyms literally and constructs a philosophy that makes him seem incoherent and unintelligible. Another reviewer says that "Adorno is [far away] from the more credible translations and interpretations of the Collected Works of Kierkegaard we have today."
Levinas' main attack on Kierkegaard focused on his ethical and religious stages, especially in "Fear and Trembling". Levinas criticises the leap of faith by saying this suspension of the ethical and leap into the religious is a type of violence (the "leap of faith" of course, is presented by a pseudonym, thus not representing Kierkegaard's own view, but intending to prompt the exact kind of discussion engaged in by his critics). He states: "Kierkegaardian violence begins when existence is forced to abandon the ethical stage in order to embark on the religious stage, the domain of belief. But belief no longer sought external justification. Even internally, it combined communication and isolation, and hence violence and passion. That is the origin of the relegation of ethical phenomena to secondary status and the contempt of the ethical foundation of being which has led, through Nietzsche, to the amoralism of recent philosophies."
Levinas pointed to the Judeo-Christian belief that it was God who first commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and that an angel commanded Abraham to stop. If Abraham were truly in the religious realm, he would not have listened to the angel's command and should have continued to kill Isaac. To Levinas, "transcending ethics" seems like a loophole to excuse would-be murderers from their crime and thus is unacceptable. One interesting consequence of Levinas' critique is that it seemed to reveal that Levinas viewed God as a projection of inner ethical desire rather than an absolute moral agent. However, one of Kierkegaard's central points in "Fear and Trembling" was that the religious sphere "entails" the ethical sphere; Abraham had faith that God is always in one way or another ethically in the right, even when He commands someone to kill. Therefore, deep down, Abraham had faith that God, as an absolute moral authority, would never allow him in the end to do something as ethically heinous as murdering his own child, and so he passed the test of blind obedience versus moral choice. He was making the point that God as well as the God-Man Christ doesn't tell people everything when sending them out on a mission and reiterated this in "Stages on Life's Way".
I conceive of God as one who approves in a calculated vigilance, I believe that he approves of intrigues, and what I have read in the sacred books of the Old Testament is not of a sort to dishearten me. The Old Testament furnishes examples abundantly of a shrewdness which is nevertheless well pleasing to God, and that at a later period Christ said to His disciples, "These things I said not unto you from the beginning … I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now" – so here is a teleological suspension of the ethical rule of telling the whole truth.
Sartre objected to the existence of God: If existence precedes essence, it follows from the meaning of the term sentient that a sentient being cannot be complete or perfect. In "Being and Nothingness", Sartre's phrasing is that God would be a "pour-soi" (a being-for-itself; a consciousness) who is also an "en-soi" (a being-in-itself; a thing) which is a contradiction in terms. Critics of Sartre rebutted this objection by stating that it rests on a false dichotomy and a misunderstanding of the traditional Christian view of God. Kierkegaard has Judge Vilhelm express the Christian hope this way in "Either/Or":
Either, "the first" contains promise for the future, is the forward thrust, the endless impulse. Or, "the first" does not impel the individual; the power which is in the first does not become the impelling power but the repelling power, it becomes that which thrusts away. ... Thus – for the sake of making a little philosophical flourish, not with the pen but with thought-God only once became flesh, and it would be vain to expect this to be repeated.
Sartre agreed with Kierkegaard's analysis of Abraham undergoing anxiety (Sartre calls it anguish), but claimed that God told Abraham to do it. In his lecture, "Existentialism is a Humanism", Sartre wondered whether Abraham ought to have doubted whether God actually spoke to him. In Kierkegaard's view, Abraham's certainty had its origin in that "inner voice" which cannot be demonstrated or shown to another ("The problem comes as soon as Abraham wants to be understood"). To Kierkegaard, every external "proof" or justification is merely on the outside and external to the subject. Kierkegaard's proof for the immortality of the soul, for example, is rooted in the extent to which one wishes to live forever.
Faith was something that Kierkegaard often wrestled with throughout his writing career; under both his real name and behind pseudonyms, he explored many different aspects of faith. These various aspects include faith as a spiritual goal, the historical orientation of faith (particularly toward Jesus Christ), faith being a gift from God, faith as dependency on a historical object, faith as a passion, and faith as a resolution to personal despair. Even so, it has been argued that Kierkegaard never offers a full, explicit and systematic account of what faith is. "Either/Or" was published 20 February 1843; it was mostly written during Kierkegaard's stay in Berlin, where he took notes on Schelling's "Philosophy of Revelation". According to the "Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Religion", Either/Or (vol. 1) consists of essays of literary and music criticism, a set of romantic-like-aphorisms, a whimsical essay on how to avoid boredom, a panegyric on the unhappiest possible human being, a diary recounting a supposed seduction, and (vol. II) two enormous didactic and hortatory ethical letters and a sermon. This opinion is a reminder of the type of controversy Kierkegaard tried to encourage in many of his writings both for readers in his own generation and for subsequent generations as well.
Kierkegaardian scholar Paul Holmer described Kierkegaard's wish in his introduction to the 1958 publication of Kierkegaard's "Edifying Discourses" where he wrote:
Later, Naomi Lebowitz explained them this way: The edifying discourses are, according to Johannes Climacus, "humoristically revoked" (CUP, 244, Swenson, Lowrie 1968) for unlike sermons, they are not ordained by authority. They start where the reader finds himself, in immanent ethical possibilities and aesthetic repetitions, and are themselves vulnerable to the lure of poetic sirens. They force the dialectical movements of the making and unmaking of the self before God to undergo lyrical imitations of meditation while the clefts, rifts, abysses, are everywhere to be seen.
Throughout retrospective analyses Kierkegaard has been viewed as an apolitical philosopher. Despite this Kierkegaard did publish works of a political nature such as his first published essay, criticizing the women's suffragette movement.
Kierkegaard frequently challenged the cultural norms of his time, particularly the adoption of Hegelianism by philosophers such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, arguing that Hegel's Logic "omit the individual", and therefore present an ultimately limited view of life. He attacked Hegelianism via elaborate parody throughout his works from Either/Or to Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Despite his objections to Hegelianism, he expressed an admiration for Hegel personally and would even regard his system favourably if it was proposed as a thought experiment
Many 20th-century philosophers, both theistic and atheistic, and theologians drew concepts from Kierkegaard, including the notions of angst, despair, and the importance of the individual. His fame as a philosopher grew tremendously in the 1930s, in large part because the ascendant existentialist movement pointed to him as a precursor, although later writers celebrated him as a highly significant and influential thinker in his own right. Since Kierkegaard was raised as a Lutheran, he was commemorated as a teacher in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church on 11 November and in the Calendar of Saints of the Episcopal Church with a feast day on 8 September.
Philosophers and theologians influenced by Kierkegaard are numerous and include major twentieth century theologians and philosophers. Paul Feyerabend's epistemological anarchism in the philosophy of science was inspired by Kierkegaard's idea of subjectivity as truth. Ludwig Wittgenstein was immensely influenced and humbled by Kierkegaard, claiming that "Kierkegaard is far too deep for me, anyhow. He bewilders me without working the good effects which he would in deeper souls". Karl Popper referred to Kierkegaard as "the great reformer of Christian ethics, who exposed the official Christian morality of his day as anti-Christian and anti-humanitarian hypocrisy". Hilary Putnam admired Kierkegaard, "for his insistence on the priority of the question, 'How should I live?'". By the early 1930s, Jacques Ellul's three primary sources of inspiration were Karl Marx, Søren Kierkegaard, and Karl Barth. According to Ellul, Marx and Kierkegaard were his two greatest influences, and the only two authors of which he read all of their work. Herbert Read wrote in 1945 "Kierkegaard’s life was in every sense that of a saint. He is perhaps the most real saint of modern times."
Kierkegaard has also had a considerable influence on 20th-century literature. Figures deeply influenced by his work include W. H. Auden, Jorge Luis Borges, Don DeLillo, Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, David Lodge, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Rainer Maria Rilke, J.D. Salinger and John Updike. What George Henry Price wrote in his 1963 book "The Narrow Pass" regarding the "who" and the "what" of Kierkegaard still seems to hold true today: "Kierkegaard was the sanest man of his generation...Kierkegaard was a schizophrenic...Kierkegaard was the greatest Dane...the difficult Dane...the gloomy Dane...Kierkegaard was the greatest Christian of the century...Kierkegaard's aim was the destruction of the historic Christian faith...He did not attack philosophy as such...He negated reason...He was a voluntarist...Kierkegaard was the Knight of Faith...Kierkegaard never found faith...Kierkegaard possessed the truth...Kierkegaard was one of the damned."
Kierkegaard had a profound influence on psychology. He is widely regarded as the founder of Christian psychology and of existential psychology and therapy. Existentialist (often called "humanistic") psychologists and therapists include Ludwig Binswanger, Viktor Frankl, Erich Fromm, Carl Rogers, and Rollo May. May based his "The Meaning of Anxiety" on Kierkegaard's "The Concept of Anxiety". Kierkegaard's sociological work "Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age" critiques modernity. Ernest Becker based his 1974 Pulitzer Prize book, "The Denial of Death", on the writings of Kierkegaard, Freud and Otto Rank. Kierkegaard is also seen as an important precursor of postmodernism. Danish priest Johannes Møllehave has lectured about Kierkegaard. In popular culture, he was the subject of serious television and radio programmes; in 1984, a six-part documentary presented by Don Cupitt featured an episode on Kierkegaard, while on Maundy Thursday in 2008, Kierkegaard was the subject of discussion of the BBC Radio 4 programme presented by Melvyn Bragg, "In Our Time", during which it was suggested that Kierkegaard straddles the analytic/continental divide. Google honoured him with a Google Doodle on his 200th anniversary. The novel Therapy by David Lodge details a man experiencing a mid-life crisis and becoming obsessed with the works of Kierkegaard.
Kierkegaard is considered by some modern theologians to be the "Father of Existentialism". Because of his influence and in spite of it, others only consider either Martin Heidegger or Jean-Paul Sartre to be the actual "Father of Existentialism". Kierkegaard predicted his posthumous fame, and foresaw that his work would become the subject of intense study and research. In 1784 Immanuel Kant, many years before Kierkegaard, challenged the thinkers of Europe to think for themselves in a manner suggestive of Kierkegaard's philosophy in the nineteenth century. In 1854 Søren Kierkegaard wrote a note to "My Reader" of a similar nature.
| 27069 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27069 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Sexism
Sexism or Gender bias is prejudice or discrimination based on a person's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls. It has been linked to stereotypes and gender roles, and may include the belief that one sex or gender is intrinsically superior to another. Extreme sexism may foster sexual harassment, rape, and other forms of sexual violence. Gender discrimination may encompass sexism, and is discrimination toward people based on their gender identity or their gender or sex differences. Gender discrimination is especially defined in terms of workplace inequality. It may arise from social or cultural customs and norms.
According to Fred R. Shapiro, the term "sexism" was most likely coined on November 18, 1965, by Pauline M. Leet during a "Student-Faculty Forum" at Franklin and Marshall College. Specifically, the word sexism appears in Leet's forum contribution "Women and the Undergraduate", and she defines it by comparing it to racism, stating in part (on page 3): "When you argue ... that since fewer women write good poetry this justifies their total exclusion, you are taking a position analogous to that of the racist—I might call you in this case a 'sexist' ... Both the racist and the sexist are acting as if all that has happened had never happened, and both of them are making decisions and coming to conclusions about someone's value by referring to factors which are in both cases irrelevant."
Also according to Shapiro, the first time the term "sexism" appeared in print was in Caroline Bird's speech "On Being Born Female", which was published on November 15, 1968, in "Vital Speeches of the Day" (p. 6). In this speech she said in part: "There is recognition abroad that we are in many ways a sexist country. Sexism is judging people by their sex when sex doesn't matter. Sexism is intended to rhyme with racism."
Sexism may be defined as an ideology based on the belief that one sex is superior to another. It is discrimination, prejudice, or stereotyping on the basis of gender, and is most often expressed toward girls and women. It has been characterized as the "hatred of women" and "entrenched prejudice against women".
Sociology has examined sexism as manifesting at both the individual and the institutional level. According to Schaefer, sexism is perpetuated by all major social institutions. Sociologists describe parallels among other ideological systems of oppression such as racism, which also operates at both the individual and institutional level. Early female sociologists Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ida B. Wells, and Harriet Martineau described systems of gender inequality, but did not use the term "sexism", which was coined later. Sociologists who adopted the functionalist paradigm, e.g. Talcott Parsons, understood gender inequality as the natural outcome of a dimorphic model of gender.
Psychologists Mary Crawford and Rhoda Unger define sexism as a form of prejudice held by individuals that encompasses "negative attitudes and values about women as a group." Peter Glick and Susan Fiske coined the term "ambivalent sexism" to describe how stereotypes about women can be both positive and negative, and that individuals compartmentalize the stereotypes they hold into hostile sexism or benevolent sexism.
Feminist author bell hooks defines sexism as a system of oppression that results in disadvantages for women. Feminist philosopher Marilyn Frye defines sexism as an "attitudinal-conceptual-cognitive-orientational complex" of male supremacy, male chauvinism, and misogyny.
The status of women in ancient Egypt depended on their fathers or husbands, but they had property rights and were allowed to attend court, including as plaintiffs. Women of the Anglo-Saxon era were commonly afforded equal status. Evidence, however, is lacking to support the idea that many pre-agricultural societies afforded women a higher status than women today. After the adoption of agriculture and sedentary cultures, the concept that one gender was inferior to the other was established; most often this was imposed upon women and girls. Examples of sexism in the ancient world include written laws preventing women from participating in the political process; women in ancient Rome could not vote or hold political office. Another example is scholarly texts that indoctrinate children in female inferiority; women in ancient China were taught the Confucian principles that a woman should obey her father in childhood, husband in marriage, and son in widowhood.
Sexism may have been the impetus that fueled the witch trials between the 15th and 18th centuries. In early modern Europe, and in the European colonies in North America, claims were made that witches were a threat to Christendom. The misogyny of that period played a role in the persecution of these women.
In "Malleus Malificarum", the book which played a major role in the witch hunts and trials, the authors argue that women are more likely to practice witchcraft than men, and write that:
Witchcraft remains illegal in several countries, including Saudi Arabia, where it is punishable by death. In 2011, a woman was beheaded in that country for 'witchcraft and sorcery'. Murders of women after being accused of witchcraft remain common in some parts of the world; for example, in Tanzania, about 500 elderly women are murdered each year following such accusations.
When women are targeted for accusations of witchcraft and subsequent violence, it is often the case that several forms of discrimination interact - for example, discrimination based on gender with discrimination based on caste, as is the case in India and Nepal, where such crimes are relatively common.
Until the 20th century, U.S. and English law observed the system of coverture, where "by marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law; that is the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage". U.S. women were not legally defined as "persons" until 1875 ("Minor v. Happersett", 88 U.S. 162). A similar legal doctrine, called marital power, existed under Roman Dutch law (and is still partially in force in present-day Eswatini).
Restrictions on married women's rights were common in Western countries until a few decades ago: for instance, French married women obtained the right to work without their husband's permission in 1965, and in West Germany women obtained this right in 1977. During the Franco era, in Spain, a married woman required her husband's consent (called "permiso marital") for employment, ownership of property and traveling away from home; the "permiso marital" was abolished in 1975. In Australia, until 1983, the passport application of a married woman had to be authorized by her husband.
Women in parts of the world continue to lose their legal rights in marriage. For example, Yemeni marriage regulations state that a wife must obey her husband and must not leave home without his permission. In Iraq, the law allows husbands to legally "punish" their wives. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Family Code states that the husband is the head of the household; the wife owes her obedience to her husband; a wife has to live with her husband wherever he chooses to live; and wives must have their husbands' authorization to bring a case in court or to initiate other legal proceedings.
Abuses and discriminatory practices against women in marriage are often rooted in financial payments such as dowry, bride price, and dower. These transactions often serve as legitimizing coercive control of the wife by her husband and in giving him authority over her; for instance Article 13 of the Code of Personal Status (Tunisia) states that "The husband shall not, in default of payment of the dower, force the woman to consummate the marriage", implying that, if the dower is paid, marital rape is permitted (in this regard, critics have questioned the alleged gains of women in Tunisia, and its image as a progressive country in the region, arguing that discrimination against women remains very strong in that country).
The OMCT has recognized the "independence and ability to leave an abusive husband" as crucial in stopping mistreatment of women. However, in some parts of the world, once married, women have very little chance of leaving a violent husband: obtaining a divorce is very difficult in many jurisdictions because of the need to prove fault in court; while attempting a "de facto" separation (moving away from the marital home) is also not possible due to laws preventing this. For instance, in Afghanistan, a wife who leaves her marital home risks being imprisoned for "running away". In addition, many former British colonies, including India, maintain the concept of restitution of conjugal rights, under which a wife may be ordered by court to return to her husband; if she fails to do so she may be held in contempt of court. Other problems have to do with the payment of the bride price: if the wife wants to leave, her husband may demand back the bride price that he had paid to the woman's family; and the woman's family often cannot or does not want to pay it back.
Laws, regulations, and traditions related to marriage continue to discriminate against women in many parts of the world, and to contribute to the mistreatment of women, in particular in areas related to sexual violence and to self-determination in regard to sexuality, the violation of the latter now being acknowledged as a violation of women's rights; in 2012, Navi Pillay, then High Commissioner for Human Rights, has stated that:
Gender has been used, at times, as a tool for discrimination against women in the political sphere. Women's suffrage was not achieved until 1893, when New Zealand was the first country to grant women the right to vote. Saudi Arabia was the most recent country, as of August 2015, to extend the right to vote to women in 2011. Some Western countries allowed women the right to vote only relatively recently: Swiss women gained the right to vote in federal elections in 1971, and Appenzell Innerrhoden became the last canton to grant women the right to vote on local issues (in 1991, when it was forced to do so by the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland). French women were granted the right to vote in 1944. In Greece, women obtained the right to vote in 1952. In Liechtenstein, women obtained the right to vote in 1984, through the women's suffrage referendum of 1984.
While almost every woman today has the right to vote, there is still progress to be made for women in politics. Studies have shown that in several democracies including Australia, Canada, and the United States, women are still represented using gender stereotypes in the press. Multiple authors have shown that gender differences in the media are less evident today than they used to be in the 1980s, but are nonetheless still present. Certain issues (e.g., education) are likely to be linked with female candidates, while other issues (e.g., taxes) are likely to be linked with male candidates. In addition, there is more emphasis on female candidates' personal qualities, such as their appearance and their personality, as females are portrayed as emotional and dependent.
Sexism in politics can also be shown in the imbalance of lawmaking power between men and women. Lanyan Chen stated that men hold more political power than women, serving as the gatekeepers of policymaking. It is possible that this leads to women's needs not being properly represented. In this sense, the inequality of lawmaking power also causes gender discrimination in politics. The ratio of women to men in legislatures is used as a measure of gender equality in the UN created Gender Empowerment Measure and its newer incarnation the Gender Inequality Index.
Until the early 1980s, some high-end restaurants had two menus: a regular menu with the prices listed for men and a second menu for women, which did not have the prices listed (it was called the "ladies' menu"), so that the female diner would not know the prices of the items. In 1980, Kathleen Bick took a male business partner out to dinner at L'Orangerie in West Hollywood; after Bick got a women's menu without prices and her guest got the menu with prices, Bick hired lawyer Gloria Allred to file a discrimination lawsuit, on the grounds that the women's menu went against the California Civil Rights Act. Bick stated that getting a women's menu without prices left her feeling "humiliated and incensed". The owners of the restaurant defended the practice, saying it was done as a courtesy, like the way men would stand up when a woman enters the room. Even though the lawsuit was dropped, the restaurant ended its gender-based menu policy.
Gender stereotypes are widely held beliefs about the characteristics and behavior of women and men. Empirical studies have found widely shared cultural beliefs that men are more socially valued and more competent than women in a number of activities. Dustin B. Thoman and others (2008) hypothesize that "[t]he socio-cultural salience of ability versus other components of the gender-math stereotype may impact women pursuing math". Through the experiment comparing the math outcomes of women under two various gender-math stereotype components, which are the ability of math and the effort on math respectively, Thoman and others found that women’s math performance is more likely to be affected by the negative ability stereotype, which is influenced by sociocultural beliefs in the United States, rather than the effort component. As a result of this experiment and the sociocultural beliefs in the United States, Thoman and others concluded that individuals' academic outcomes can be affected by the gender-math stereotype component that is influenced by the sociocultural beliefs.
Sexism in language exists when language devalues members of a certain gender. Sexist language, in many instances, promotes male superiority. Sexism in language affects consciousness, perceptions of reality, encoding and transmitting cultural meanings and socialization. Researchers have pointed to the semantic rule in operation in language of the male-as-norm. This results in sexism as the male becomes the standard and those who are not male are relegated to the inferior. Sexism in language is considered a form of indirect sexism, in that it is not always overt.
Examples include:
Various feminist movements in the 20th century, from liberal feminism and radical feminism to standpoint feminism, postmodern feminism and queer theory have all considered language in their theorizing. Most of these theories have maintained a critical stance on language that calls for a change in the way speakers use their language.
One of the most common calls is for gender-neutral language. Many have called attention, however, to the fact that the English language isn't inherently sexist in its linguistic system, but rather the way it is used becomes sexist and gender-neutral language could thus be employed. At the same time, other opposed critiques of sexism in language with explanations that language is a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, and attempts to control it can be fruitless.
Romanic languages such as French and Spanish may be seen as reinforcing sexism, in that the masculine form is the default form. The word "mademoiselle", meaning "miss", was declared banished from French administrative forms in 2012 by Prime Minister François Fillon. Current pressure calls for the use of the masculine plural pronoun as the default in a mixed-sex group to change. As to Spanish, Mexico's Ministry of the Interior published a guide on how to reduce the use of sexist language.
German speakers have also raised questions about how sexism intersects with grammar. The German language is heavily inflected for gender, number, and case; nearly all nouns denoting the occupations or statuses of human beings are gender-differentiated. For more gender-neutral constructions, gerund nouns are sometimes used instead, as this completely eliminates the grammatical gender distinction in the plural, and significantly reduces it in the singular. For example, instead of "die Studenten" ("the men students") or "die Studentinnen" ("the women students"), one writes "die Studierenden" ("the [people who are] studying"). However, this approach introduces an element of ambiguity, because gerund nouns more precisely denote one currently engaged in the activity, rather than one who routinely engages in it as their primary occupation.
In Chinese, some writers have pointed to sexism inherent in the structure of written characters. For example, the character for man is linked to those for positive qualities like courage and effect while the character for wife is composed of a female part and a broom, considered of low worth.
Gender-specific pejorative terms intimidate or harm another person because of their gender. Sexism can be expressed in language with negative gender-oriented implications, such as condescension. For example, one may refer to a female as a "girl" rather than a "woman", implying that they are subordinate or not fully mature. Other examples include obscene language. Some words are offensive to transgender people, including "tranny", "she-male", or "he-she". Intentional misgendering (assigning the wrong gender to someone) and the pronoun "it" are also considered pejorative.
Occupational sexism refers to discriminatory practices, statements or actions, based on a person's sex, occurring in the workplace. One form of occupational sexism is wage discrimination. In 2008, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that while female employment rates have expanded and gender employment and wage gaps have narrowed nearly everywhere, on average women still have 20% less chance to have a job and are paid 17% less than men. The report stated: [In] many countries, labour market discrimination—i.e. the unequal treatment of equally productive individuals only because they belong to a specific group—is still a crucial factor inflating disparities in employment and the quality of job opportunities [...] Evidence presented in this edition of the "Employment Outlook" suggests that about 8 percent of the variation in gender employment gaps and 30 percent of the variation in gender wage gaps across OECD countries can be explained by discriminatory practices in the labor market.
It also found that despite the fact that almost all OECD countries, including the U.S., have established anti-discrimination laws, these laws are difficult to enforce.
Women who enter predominantly male work groups can experience the negative consequences of tokenism: performance pressures, social isolation, and role encapsulation. Tokenism could be used to camouflage sexism, to preserve male worker's advantage in the workplace. No link exists between the proportion of women working in an organization/company and the improvement of their working conditions. Ignoring sexist issues may exacerbate women’s occupational problems.
In the "World Values Survey" of 2005, responders were asked if they thought that wage work should be restricted only to men. In Iceland, the percentage that agreed was 3.6%, whereas in Egypt it was 94.9%.
Research has repeatedly shown that mothers in the United States are less likely to be hired than equally-qualified fathers and, if hired, receive a lower salary than male applicants with children.
One study found that female applicants were favored; however, its results have been met with skepticism from other researchers, since it contradicts most other studies on the issue. Joan C. Williams, a distinguished professor at the University of California's Hastings College of Law, raised issues with its methodology, pointing out that the fictional female candidates it used were unusually well-qualified. Studies using more moderately-qualified graduate students have found that male students are much more likely to be hired, offered better salaries, and offered mentorship.
In Europe, studies based on field experiments in the labour market, provide evidence for no severe levels of discrimination based on female gender. However, unequal treatment is still measured in particular situations, for instance when candidates apply for positions at a higher functional level in Belgium, when they apply at their fertiles ages in France, and when they apply for male-dominated occupations in Austria.
Studies have concluded that on average women earn lower wages than men worldwide. Some people argue that this is the result of widespread gender discrimination in the workplace. Others argue that the wage gap is a result of different choices by men and women, such as women placing more value than men on having children, and men being more likely than women to choose careers in high paying fields such as business, engineering, and technology.
Eurostat found a persistent, average gender pay gap of 27.5% in the 27 EU member states in 2008. Similarly, the OECD found that female full-time employees earned 27% less than their male counterparts in OECD countries in 2009.
In the United States, the female-to-male earnings ratio was 0.77 in 2009; female full-time, year-round (FTYR) workers earned 77% as much as male FTYR workers. Women's earnings relative to men's fell from 1960 to 1980 (56.7–54.2%), rose rapidly from 1980 to 1990 (54.2–67.6%), leveled off from 1990 to 2000 (67.6–71.2%) and rose from 2000 to 2009 (71.2–77.0%). When the first Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, female full-time workers earned 48.9% as much as male full-time workers.
Research conducted in the Czech and Slovak Republics shows that, even after the governments passed anti-discrimination legislation, two thirds of the gender gap in wages remained unexplained and segregation continued to "represent a major source of the gap".
The gender gap can also vary across-occupation and within occupation. In Taiwan, for example, studies show how the bulk of gender wage discrepancies occur within-occupation. In Russia, research shows that the gender wage gap is distributed unevenly across income levels, and that it mainly occurs at the lower end of income distribution. The research also found that "wage arrears and payment in-kind attenuated wage discrimination, particularly amongst the lowest paid workers, suggesting that Russian enterprise managers assigned lowest importance to equity considerations when allocating these forms of payment".
The gender pay gap has been attributed to differences in personal and workplace characteristics between men and women (such as education, hours worked and occupation), innate behavioral and biological differences between men and women and discrimination in the labor market (such as gender stereotypes and customer and employer bias). Women currently take significantly more time off to raise children than men. In certain countries such as South Korea, it has also been a long-established practice to lay-off female employees upon marriage. A study by professor Linda Babcock in her book "Women Don't Ask" shows that men are eight times more likely to ask for a pay raise, suggesting that pay inequality may be partly a result of behavioral differences between the sexes. However, studies generally find that a portion of the gender pay gap remains unexplained after accounting for factors assumed to influence earnings; the unexplained portion of the wage gap is attributed to gender discrimination.
Estimates of the discriminatory component of the gender pay gap vary. The OECD estimated that approximately 30% of the gender pay gap across OECD countries is due to discrimination. Australian research shows that discrimination accounts for approximately 60% of the wage differential between men and women. Studies examining the gender pay gap in the United States show that a large portion of the wage differential remains unexplained, after controlling for factors affecting pay. One study of college graduates found that the portion of the pay gap unexplained after all other factors are taken into account is 5% one year after graduating and 12% a decade after graduation. A study by the American Association of University Women found that women graduates in the United States are paid less than men doing the same work and majoring in the same field.
Wage discrimination is theorized as contradicting the economic concept of supply and demand, which states that if a good or service (in this case, labor) is in demand and has value it will find its price in the market. If a worker offered equal value for less pay, supply and demand would indicate a greater demand for lower-paid workers. If a business hired lower-wage workers for the same work, it would lower its costs and enjoy a competitive advantage. According to supply and demand, if women offered equal value demand (and wages) should rise since they offer a better price (lower wages) for their service than men do.
Research at Cornell University and elsewhere indicates that mothers in the United States are less likely to be hired than equally-qualified fathers and, if hired, receive a lower salary than male applicants with children. The OECD found that "a significant impact of children on women’s pay is generally found in the United Kingdom and the United States". Fathers earn $7,500 more, on average, than men without children do.
There is research to suggest that the gender wage gap leads to big losses for the economy as a whole.
According to Denise Venable at the National Center for Policy Analysis, the "wage gap" in the United States is not the result of discrimination but of differences in lifestyle choices. Venable's report found that women are less likely than men to sacrifice personal happiness for increases in income or to choose full-time work. She found that among American adults working between one and thirty-five hours a week and part-time workers who have never been married, women earn more than men. Venable also found that among people aged 27 to 33 who have never had a child, women's earnings approach 98% of men's and "women who hold positions and have skills and experience similar to those of men face wage disparities of less than 10 percent, and many are within a couple of points". Venable concluded that women and men with equal skills and opportunities in the same positions face little or no wage discrimination: "Claims of unequal pay almost always involve comparing apples and oranges".
There is considerable agreement that gender wage discrimination exists, however, when it comes to estimating its magnitude, significant discrepancies are visible. A meta-regression analysis concludes that "the estimated gender gap has been steadily declining" and that the wage rate calculation is proven to be crucial in estimating the wage gap. The analysis further notes that excluding experience and failing to correct for selection bias from analysis might also lead to incorrect conclusions.
"The popular notion of glass ceiling effects implies that gender (or other) disadvantages are stronger at the top of the hierarchy than at lower levels and that these disadvantages become worse later in a person's career."
In the United States, women account for 52% of the overall labor force, but only make up 3% of corporate CEOs and top executives. Some researchers see the root cause of this situation in the tacit discrimination based on gender, conducted by current top executives and corporate directors (primarily male), as well as "the historic absence of women in top positions", which "may lead to hysteresis, preventing women from accessing powerful, male-dominated professional networks, or same-sex mentors". The glass ceiling effect is noted as being especially persistent for women of color (according to a report, "women of colour perceive a 'concrete ceiling' and not simply a glass ceiling").
In the economics profession, it has been observed that women are more inclined than men to dedicate their time to teaching and service. Since continuous research work is crucial for promotion, "the cumulative effect of small, contemporaneous differences in research orientation could generate the observed significant gender difference in promotion". In the high-tech industry, research shows that, regardless of the intra-firm changes, "extra-organizational pressures will likely contribute to continued gender stratification as firms upgrade, leading to the potential masculinization of skilled high-tech work".
The United Nations asserts that "progress in bringing women into leadership and decision making positions around the world remains far too slow".
Research by David Matsa and Amalia Miller suggests that a possible remedy to the glass ceiling could be increasing the number of women on corporate boards, which could subsequently lead to increases in the number of women working in top management positions. The same research suggests that this could also result in a "feedback cycle in which the presence of more female managers increases the qualified pool of potential female board members (for the companies they manage, as well as other companies), leading to greater female board membership and then further increases in female executives".
A 2009 study found that being overweight harms women's career advancement, but presents no barrier for men. Overweight women were significantly underrepresented among company bosses, making up between 5% and 22% of female CEOs. However, the proportion of overweight male CEOs was between 45% and 61%, over-representing overweight men. On the other hand, approximately 5% of CEOs were obese among both genders. The author of the study stated that the results suggest that "the 'glass ceiling effect' on women's advancement may reflect not only general negative stereotypes about the competencies of women, but also weight bias that results in the application of stricter appearance standards to women".
Transgender people also experience significant workplace discrimination and harassment. Unlike sex-based discrimination, refusing to hire (or firing) a worker for their gender identity or expression is not explicitly illegal in most U.S. states.
In August 1995, Kimberly Nixon filed a complaint with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal against Vancouver Rape Relief & Women's Shelter. Nixon, a trans woman, had been interested in volunteering as a counselor with the shelter. When the shelter learned that she was transsexual, they told Nixon that she would not be allowed to volunteer with the organization. Nixon argued that this constituted illegal discrimination under Section 41 of the British Columbia Human Rights Code. Vancouver Rape Relief countered that individuals are shaped by the socialization and experiences of their formative years, and that Nixon had been socialized as a male growing up, and that, therefore, Nixon would not be able to provide sufficiently effective counseling to the female born women that the shelter served.
In social philosophy, objectification is the act of treating a person as an object or thing. Objectification plays a central role in feminist theory, especially sexual objectification. Feminist writer and gender equality activist Joy Goh-Mah argues that by being objectified, a person is denied agency. According to the philosopher Martha Nussbaum, a person might be objectified if one or more of the following properties are applied to them:
Rae Helen Langton, in "Sexual Solipsism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification", proposed three more properties to be added to Nussbaum's list:
According to objectification theory, objectification can have important repercussions on women, particularly young women, as it can negatively impact their psychological health and lead to the development of mental disorders, such as unipolar depression, sexual dysfunction, and eating disorders.
While advertising used to portray women and men in obviously stereotypical roles (e.g., as a housewife, breadwinner), in modern advertisements, they are no longer solely confined to their traditional roles. However, advertising today nonetheless still stereotypes men and women, albeit in more subtle ways, including by sexually objectifying them. Women are most often targets of sexism in advertising. When in advertisements with men they are often shorter and put in the background of images, shown in more 'feminine' poses, and generally present a higher degree of 'body display'.
Today, some countries (for example Norway and Denmark) have laws against sexual objectification in advertising. Nudity is not banned, and nude people can be used to advertise a product if they are relevant to the product advertised. Sol Olving, head of Norway's Kreativt Forum (an association of the country's top advertising agencies) explained, "You could have a naked person advertising shower gel or a cream, but not a woman in a bikini draped across a car".
Other countries continue to ban nudity (on traditional obscenity grounds), but also make explicit reference to sexual objectification, such as Israel's ban of billboards that "depicts sexual humiliation or abasement, or presents a
human being as an object available for sexual use".
Anti-pornography feminist Catharine MacKinnon argues that pornography contributes to sexism by objectifying women and portraying them in submissive roles. MacKinnon, along with Andrea Dworkin, argues that pornography reduces women to mere tools, and is a form of sex discrimination. The two scholars highlight the link between objectification and pornography by stating:
"We define pornography as the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures and words that also includes (i) women are presented dehumanized as sexual objects, things, or commodities; or (ii) women are presented as sexual objects who enjoy humiliation or pain; or (iii) women are presented as sexual objects experiencing sexual pleasure in rape, incest or other sexual assault; or (iv) women are presented as sexual objects tied up, cut up or mutilated or bruised or physically hurt; or (v) women are presented in postures or positions of sexual submission, servility, or display; or (vi) women's body parts—including but not limited to vaginas, breasts, or buttocks—are exhibited such that women are reduced to those parts; or (vii) women are presented being penetrated by objects or animals; or (viii) women are presented in scenarios of degradation, humiliation, injury, torture, shown as filthy or inferior, bleeding, bruised, or hurt in a context that makes these conditions sexual."
Robin Morgan and Catharine MacKinnon suggest that certain types of pornography also contribute to violence against women by eroticizing scenes in which women are dominated, coerced, humiliated or sexually assaulted.
Some people opposed to pornography, including MacKinnon, charge that the production of pornography entails physical, psychological, and economic coercion of the women who perform and model in it. Opponents of pornography charge that it presents a distorted image of sexual relations and reinforces sexual myths; it shows women as continually available and willing to engage in sex at any time, with any person, on their terms, responding positively to any requests.
MacKinnon writes:
Defenders of pornography and anti-censorship activists (including sex-positive feminists) argue that pornography does not seriously impact a mentally healthy individual, since the viewer can distinguish between fantasy and reality. They contend that men and women are objectified in pornography (particularly sadistic or masochistic pornography, in which men are objectified and sexually used by women).
Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in sexual relations in exchange for payment. Sex workers are often objectified and are seen as existing only to serve clients, thus calling their sense of agency into question. There is a prevailing notion that because they sell sex professionally, prostitutes automatically consent to all sexual contact. As a result, sex workers face higher rates of violence and sexual assault. This is often dismissed, ignored and not taken seriously by authorities.
In many countries, prostitution is dominated by brothels or pimps, who often claim ownership over sex workers. This sense of ownership furthers the concept that sex workers are void of agency. This is literally the case in instances of sexual slavery.
Various authors have argued that female prostitution is based on male sexism that condones the idea that unwanted sex with a woman is acceptable, that men's desires must be satisfied, and that women are coerced into and exist to serve men sexually. The European Women's Lobby condemned prostitution as "an intolerable form of male violence".
Carole Pateman writes that:
Some scholars believe that media portrayals of demographic groups can both maintain and disrupt attitudes and behaviors toward those groups. According to Susan Douglas: "Since the early 1990s, much of the media have come to overrepresent women as having made it-completely-in the professions, as having gained sexual equality with men, and having achieved a level of financial success and comfort enjoyed primarily by Tiffany's-encrusted doyennes of Laguna Beach." These images may be harmful, particularly to women and racial and ethnic minority groups. For example, a study of African American women found they feel that media portrayals of African American women often reinforce stereotypes of this group as overly sexual and idealize images of lighter-skinned, thinner African American women (images African American women describe as objectifying). In a recent analysis of images of Haitian women in the Associated Press photo archive from 1994 to 2009, several themes emerged emphasizing the "otherness" of Haitian women and characterizing them as victims in need of rescue.
In an attempt to study the effect of media consumption on males, Samantha and Bridges found an effect on body shame, though not through self-objectification as it was found in comparable studies of women. The authors conclude that the current measures of objectification were designed for women and do not measure men accurately. Another study also found a negative effect on eating attitudes and body satisfaction of consumption of beauty and fitness magazines for women and men respectively, but again with different mechanisms, namely self-objectification for women and internalization for men.
Frederick Attenborough argues that sexist jokes can be a form of sexual objectification, which reduce the butt of the joke to an object. They not only objectify women, but can also condone violence or prejudice against women. "Sexist humor—the denigration of women through humor—for instance, trivializes sex discrimination under the veil of benign amusement, thus precluding challenges or opposition that nonhumorous sexist communication would likely incur." A study of 73 male undergraduate students by Ford found that "sexist humor can promote the behavioral expression of prejudice against women amongst sexist men". According to the study, when sexism is presented in a humorous manner it is viewed as tolerable and socially acceptable: "Disparagement of women through humor 'freed' sexist participants from having to conform to the more general and more restrictive norms regarding discrimination against women."
Gender discrimination is discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived gender identity. Gender identity is "the gender-related identity, appearance, or mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, with or without regard to the individual's designated sex at birth". Gender discrimination is theoretically different from sexism. Whereas sexism is prejudice based on biological sex, gender discrimination specifically addresses discrimination towards gender identities, including third gender, genderqueer, and other non-binary identified people. It is especially attributed to how people are treated in the workplace, and banning discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression has emerged as a subject of contention in the American legal system.
According to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service, "although the majority of federal courts to consider the issue have concluded that discrimination on the basis of gender identity is not sex discrimination, there have been several courts that have reached the opposite conclusion". Hurst states that "[c]ourts often confuse sex, gender and sexual orientation, and confuse them in a way that results in denying the rights not only of gays and lesbians, but also of those who do not present themselves or act in a manner traditionally expected of their sex".
Oppositional sexism is a term coined by transfeminist author Julia Serano, who defined oppositional sexism as "the belief that male and female are rigid, mutually exclusive categories". Oppositional sexism plays a vital role in a number of social norms, such as cissexism, heteronormativity, and traditional sexism.
Oppositional sexism normalizes masculine expression in males and feminine expression in females while simultaneously demonizing femininity in males and masculinity in females. This concept plays a crucial role in supporting cissexism, the social norm that views cisgender people as both natural and privileged as opposed to transgender people.
The idea of having two, totally opposite genders is tied to sexuality through what gender theorist Judith Butler calls a "compulsory practice of heterosexuality". Because oppositional sexism is tied to heteronormativity in this way, non-heterosexuals are seen as breaking gender norms.
The concept of opposite genders sets a "dangerous precedent", according to Serano, where "if men are big then women must be small; and if men are strong then women must be weak". The gender binary and oppositional norms work together to support "traditional sexism", the belief that femininity is inferior to and serves masculinity.
Serano states that oppositional sexism works in tandem with "traditional sexism". This ensures that "those who are masculine have power over those who are feminine, and that only those that are born male will be seen as authentically masculine".
Transgender discrimination is discrimination towards peoples whose gender identity differs from the social expectations of the biological sex they were born with. Forms of discrimination include but are not limited to identity documents not reflecting one's gender, sex-segregated public restrooms and other facilities, dress codes according to binary gender codes, and lack of access to and existence of appropriate health care services. In a recent adjudication, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) concluded that discrimination against a transgender person is sex discrimination.
The 2008-09 National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS)—a U.S. study by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in collaboration with the National Black Justice Coalition that was, at its time, the most extensive survey of transgender discrimination—showed that Black transgender people in the United States suffer "the combination of anti-transgender bias and persistent, structural and individual racism" and that "black transgender people live in extreme poverty that is more than twice the rate for transgender people of all races (15%), four times the general Black population rate 9% and over eight times the general US population rate (4%)". Further discrimination is faced by gender nonconforming individuals, whether transitioning or not, due to displacement from societally acceptable gender binaries and visible stigmatization. According to the NTDS, transgender gender nonconforming (TGNC) individuals face between 8% and 15% high rates of self and social discrimination and violence than binary transgender individuals. Lisa R. Miller and Eric Anthony Grollman found in their 2015 study that "gender nonconformity may heighten trans people's exposure to discrimination and health-harming behaviors. Gender nonconforming trans adults reported more events of major and everyday transphobic discrimination than their gender conforming counterparts."
In another study conducted in collaboration with the League of United Latin American Citizens, Latino/a transgender people who were non-citizens were most vulnerable to harassment, abuse and violence.
An updated version of the NTDS survey, called the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, was published in December 2016.
Although the exact rates are widely disputed, there is a large body of cross-cultural evidence that women are subjected to domestic violence mostly committed by men. In addition, there is broad consensus that women are more often subjected to severe forms of abuse and are more likely to be injured by an abusive partner. The United Nations recognizes domestic violence as a form of gender-based violence, which it describes as a human rights violation, and the result of sexism.
Domestic violence is tolerated and even legally accepted in many parts of the world. For instance, in 2010, the United Arab Emirates (UAE)'s Supreme Court ruled that a man has the right to physically discipline his wife and children if he does not leave visible marks. In 2015, Equality Now drew attention a section of the Penal Code of Northern Nigeria, titled "Correction of Child, Pupil, Servant or Wife" which reads: "(1) Nothing is an offence which does not amount to the infliction of grievous hurt upon any persons which is done: (...) (d) by a husband for the purpose of correcting his wife, such husband and wife being subject to any native law or custom in which such correction is recognized as lawful."
Honor killings are another form of domestic violence practiced in several parts of the world, and their victims are predominantly women. Honor killings can occur because of refusal to enter into an arranged marriage, maintaining a relationship relatives disapprove of, extramarital sex, becoming the victim of rape, dress seen as inappropriate, or homosexuality. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime states that, "[h]onour crimes, including killing, are one of history's oldest forms of gender-based violence".
According to a report of the Special Rapporteur submitted to the 58th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights concerning cultural practices in the family that reflect violence against women:
Practices such as honor killings and stoning continue to be supported by mainstream politicians and other officials in some countries. In Pakistan, after the 2008 Balochistan honour killings in which five women were killed by tribesmen of the Umrani Tribe of Balochistan, Pakistani Federal Minister for Postal Services Israr Ullah Zehri defended the practice: "These are centuries-old traditions, and I will continue to defend them. Only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid." Following the 2006 case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani (which has placed Iran under international pressure for its stoning sentences), Mohammad-Javad Larijani (a senior envoy and chief of Iran’s Human Rights Council) defended the practice of stoning; he claimed it was a "lesser punishment" than execution, because it allowed those convicted a chance at survival.
Dowry deaths are the result of the killing women who are unable to pay the high dowry price for their marriage. According to Amnesty International, "the ongoing reality of dowry-related violence is an example of what can happen when women are treated as property".
Female infanticide is the killing of newborn female children, while female selective abortion is the terminating of a pregnancy based upon the female sex of the fetus. Gendercide is the systematic killing of members of a specific gender and it is an extreme form of gender-based violence. Female infanticide is more common than male infanticide, and is especially prevalent in South Asia, in countries such as China, India and Pakistan. Recent studies suggest that over 90 million girls and women are missing in China and India as a result of infanticide.
Sex-selective abortion involves terminating a pregnancy based upon the predicted sex of the baby. The abortion of female fetuses is most common in areas where the culture values male children over females, such as parts of East Asia and South Asia (China, India, Korea), the Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia), and Western Balkans (Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo).
Forced sterilization and forced abortion are also forms of gender-based violence. Forced sterilization was practiced during the first half of the 20th century by many Western countries and there are reports of this practice being currently employed in some countries, such as Uzbekistan and China.
In China, the one child policy interacting with the low status of women has been deemed responsible for many abuses, such female infanticide, sex-selective abortion, abandonment of baby girls, forced abortion, and forced sterilization.
In India the custom of dowry is strongly related to female infanticide, sex-selective abortion, abandonment and mistreatment of girls. Such practices are especially present in the northwestern part of the country (Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Delhi); see Female foeticide in India and Female infanticide in India).
Female genital mutilation is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as "all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons". WHO further state that, "the procedure has no health benefits for girls and women" and "[p]rocedures can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, infertility as well as complications in childbirth increased risk of newborn death," and "is recognized internationally as a violation of the human rights of girls and women" and "constitutes an extreme form of discrimination against women". The European Parliament stated in a resolution that the practice "clearly goes against the European founding value of equality between women and men and maintains traditional values according to which women are seen as the objects and properties of men".
Research by Lisak and Roth into factors motivating perpetrators of sexual assault, including rape, against women revealed a pattern of hatred towards women and pleasure in inflicting psychological and physical trauma, rather than sexual interest. Mary Odem and Peggy Reeves Sanday posit that rape is the result not of pathology but of systems of male dominance, cultural practices and beliefs.
Mary Odem, Jody Clay-Warner, and Susan Brownmiller argue that sexist attitudes are propagated by a series of myths about rape and rapists. They state that in contrast to those myths, rapists often plan a rape before they choose a victim and acquaintance rape (not assault by a stranger) is the most common form of rape. Odem also asserts that these rape myths propagate sexist attitudes about men, by perpetuating the belief that men cannot control their sexuality.
Sexism can promote the stigmatization of women and girls who have been raped and inhibit recovery. In many parts of the world, women who have been raped are ostracized, rejected by their families, subjected to violence, and—in extreme cases—may become victims of honor killings because they are deemed to have brought shame upon their families.
The criminalization of marital rape is very recent, having occurred during the past few decades; and in many countries it is still legal. Several countries in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia made spousal rape illegal before 1970; other European countries and some of the English-speaking countries outside Europe outlawed it later, mostly in the 1980s and 1990s; some countries outlawed it in the 2000s. The WHO wrote that: "Marriage is often used to legitimize a range of forms of sexual violence against women. The custom of marrying off young children, particularly girls, is found in many parts of the world. This practice—legal in many countries—is a form of sexual violence, since the children involved are unable to give or withhold their consent".
In countries where fornication or adultery are illegal, victims of rape can be charged criminally.
Sexism is manifested by the crime of rape targeting women civilians and soldiers, committed by soldiers, combatants or civilians during armed conflict, war or military occupation. This arises from the long tradition of women being seen as sexual booty and from the misogynistic culture of military training.
The United Nations Population Fund writes that "Family planning is central to gender equality and women's empowerment". Women in many countries around the world are denied medical and informational services related to reproductive health, including access to pregnancy care, family planning, and contraception. In countries with very strict abortion laws (particularly in Latin America) women who suffer miscarriages are often investigated by the police under suspicion of having deliberately provoked the miscarriage, and are sometimes jailed, a practice which Amnesty International called a "ruthless campaign against women's rights". Doctors may be reluctant to treat pregnant women who are very ill, because they are afraid the treatment may result in fetal loss. According to Amnesty Intentional, "Discriminatory attitudes towards women and girls also means access to sex education and contraceptives are near impossible [in El Salvador]". The organization has also criticized laws and policies which require the husband's consent for a woman to use reproductive health services as being discriminatory and dangerous to women's health and life: "[F]or the woman who needs her husband's consent to get contraception, the consequences of discrimination can be serious – even fatal".
A child marriage is a marriage where one or both spouses are under 18, a practice that disproportionately affects women. Child marriages are most common in South Asia, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, but occur in other parts of the world, too. The practice of marrying young girls is rooted in patriarchal ideologies of control of female behavior, and is also sustained by traditional practices such as dowry and bride price. Child marriage is strongly connected with the protection of female virginity. UNICEF states that:
Consequences of child marriage include restricted education and employment prospects, increased risk of domestic violence, child sexual abuse, pregnancy and birth complications, and social isolation. Early and forced marriage are defined as forms of modern-day slavery by the International Labour Organisation. In some cases a woman or girl who has been raped may be forced to marry her rapist, in order to restore the honor of her family; or marriage by abduction, a practice in which a man abducts the woman or girl whom he wishes to marry and rapes her, in order to force the marriage (common in Ethiopia).
In several OIC countries the legal testimony of a woman is worth legally half of that of a man (see Status of women's testimony in Islam). Such countries include: Algeria (in criminal cases), Bahrain (in Sharia courts), Egypt (in family courts), Iran (in most cases), Iraq (in some cases), Jordan (in Sharia courts), Kuwait (in family courts), Libya (in some cases), Morocco (in family cases), Palestine (in cases related to marriage, divorce and child custody), Qatar (in family law matters), Syria (in Sharia courts), United Arab Emirates (in some civil matters), Yemen (not allowed to testify at all in cases of adultery and retribution), and Saudi Arabia. Such laws have been criticized by Human Rights Watch and Equality Now as being discriminatory towards women.
The criminal justice system in many common law countries has also been accused of discriminating against women. Provocation is, in many common law countries, a partial defense to murder, which converts what would have been murder into manslaughter. It is meant to be applied when a person kills in the "heat of passion" upon being "provoked" by the behavior of the victim. This defense has been criticized as being gendered, favoring men, due to it being used disproportionately in cases of adultery, and other domestic disputes when women are killed by their partners. As a result of the defense exhibiting a strong gender bias, and being a form of legitimization of male violence against women and minimization of the harm caused by violence against women, it has been abolished or restricted in several jurisdictions.
The traditional leniently towards crimes of passion in Latin American countries has been deemed to have its origin in the view that women are property. In 2002, Widney Brown, advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, stated that, "[S]o-called crimes of passion have a similar dynamic [to honor killings] in that the women are killed by male family members and the crimes are perceived as excusable or understandable." The OHCHR has called for "the elimination of discriminatory provisions in the legislation, including mitigating factors for 'crimes of passion.
In the United States, some studies have shown that for identical crimes, men are given harsher sentences than women. Controlling for arrest offense, criminal history, and other pre-charge variables, sentences are over 60% heavier for men. Women are more likely to avoid charges entirely, and to avoid imprisonment if convicted. The gender disparity varies according to the nature of the case. For example, the gender gap is less pronounced in fraud cases than in drug trafficking and firearms. This disparity occurs in US federal courts, despite guidelines designed to avoid differential sentencing. The death penalty in may also suffer from gender bias. According to Shatz and Shatz, "[t]he present study confirms what earlier studies have shown: that the death penalty is imposed on women relatively infrequently and that it is disproportionately imposed for the killing of women".
There have been several reasons postulated for the gender criminal justice disparity in the United States. One of the most common is expectation that women are predominantly care-givers. Other possible reasons include the "girlfriend theory" (whereby women are seen as tools of their boyfriends), the theory that female defendants are more likely to cooperate with authorities, and that women are often successful at turning their violent crime into victimhood by citing defenses such as postpartum depression or battered wife syndrome. However, none of these theories account for the total disparity, and sexism has also been suggested as an underlying cause.
Gender discrimination also helps explain the differences between trial outcomes in which some female defendants are sentenced to death and other female defendants are sentenced to lesser punishments. Phillip Barron argues that female defendants are more likely to be sentenced to death for crimes that violate gender norms, such as killing children or killing strangers.
Transgender people face widespread discrimination while incarcerated. They are generally housed according to their legal birth sex, rather than their gender identity. Studies have shown that transgender people are at an increased risk for harassment and sexual assault in this environment. They may also be denied access to medical procedures related to their reassignment.
Some countries use stoning as a form of capital punishment. According to Amnesty International, the majority of those stoned are women and women are disproportionately affected by stoning because of sexism in the legal system.
One study found that "on average, women receive lighter sentences in comparison with men... roughly 30% of the gender differences in incarceration cannot be explained by the observed criminal characteristics of offense and offender. We also find evidence of considerable heterogeneity across judges in their treatment of female and male offenders. There is little evidence, however, that tastes for gender discrimination are driving the mean gender disparity or the variance in treatment between judges."
A 2017 study by Knepper found that "female plaintiffs filing workplace sex discrimination claims are substantially more likely to settle and win compensation whenever a female judge is assigned to the case. Additionally, female judges are 15 percentage points less likely than male judges to grant motions filed by defendants, which suggests that final negotiations are shaped by the emergence of the bias."
Women have traditionally had limited access to higher education. In the past, when women were admitted to higher education, they were encouraged to major in less-scientific subjects; the study of English literature in American and British colleges and universities was instituted as a field considered suitable to women's "lesser intellects".
Educational specialties in higher education produce and perpetuate inequality between men and women. Disparity persists particularly in computer and information science, where in the US women received only 21% of the undergraduate degrees, and in engineering, where women obtained only 19% of the degrees in 2008. Only one out of five of physics doctorates in the US are awarded to women, and only about half of those women are American. Of all the physics professors in the country, only 14% are women.
World literacy is lower for females than for males. Data from "The World Factbook" shows that 79.7% of women are literate, compared to 88.6% of men (aged 15 and over). In some parts of the world, girls continue to be excluded from proper public or private education. In parts of Afghanistan, girls who go to school face serious violence from some local community members and religious groups.
According to 2010 UN estimates, only Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen had less than 90 girls per 100 boys at school. Jayachandran and Lleras-Muney's study of Sri Lankan economic development has suggested that increases in the life expectancy for women encourages educational investment because a longer time horizon increases the value of investments that pay out over time.
Educational opportunities and outcomes for women have greatly improved in the West. Since 1991, the proportion of women enrolled in college in the United States has exceeded the enrollment rate for men, and the gap has widened over time. , women made up the majority—54%—of the 10.8 million college students enrolled in the United States. However, research by Diane Halpern has indicated that boys receive more attention, praise, blame and punishment in the grammar-school classroom, and "this pattern of more active teacher attention directed at male students continues at the postsecondary level". Over time, female students speak less in a classroom setting.
Writer Gerry Garibaldi has argued that the educational system has become "feminized", allowing girls more of a chance at success with a more "girl-friendly" environment in the classroom; this is seen to hinder boys by punishing "masculine" behavior and diagnosing boys with behavioral disorders. A recent study by the OECD in over 60 countries found that teachers give boys lower grades for the same work. The researchers attribute this to stereotypical ideas about boys and recommend teachers to be aware of this gender bias. One study found that students give female professors worse evaluation scores than male professors, even though the students appear to do as well under female professors as male professors.
Gender bias and gender-based discrimination still permeate the education process in many settings. For example, in the teaching and learning process, including differential engagement, expectations and interactions by teachers with their male and female students, as well as gender stereotypes in textbooks and learning materials. There has been a lack in adequate resources and infrastructure to ensure safe and enabling learning environments, and insufficient policy, legal and planning frameworks, that respect, protect and fulfil the right to education.
Feminists argue that clothing and footwear fashion has been oppressive to women, restricting their movements, increasing their vulnerability, and endangering their health. The use of thin models within the fashion industry has encouraged the development of bulimia and anorexia nervosa, as well as locking female consumers into false feminine identities.
The assignment of gender-specific baby clothes can instill in children a belief in negative gender stereotypes. One example is the assignment in some countries of the color pink to girls and blue to boys. The fashion is a recent one; at the beginning of the 20th century the trend was the opposite: blue for girls and pink for boys. In the early 1900s, "The Women's Journal" wrote that "pink being a more decided and stronger colour, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl". "DressMaker" magazine also explained that "[t]he preferred colour to dress young boys in is pink. Blue is reserved for girls as it is considered paler, and the more dainty of the two colours, and pink is thought to be stronger (akin to red)". Today, in many countries, it is considered inappropriate for boys to wear dresses and skirts, but this is also a relatively recent view. From the mid-16th century until the late 19th or early 20th century, young boys in the Western world were unbreeched and wore gowns or dresses until an age that varied between two and eight.
Laws that dictate how women must dress are seen by many international human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, as a form of gender discrimination. In many countries, women are faced with violence for failing to adhere to certain dress codes, whether by the authorities (such as the religious police), family members, or the community. Amnesty International states:
The production process also faces criticism for sexist practices. In the garment industry, approximately 80 percent of workers are female. Much garment production is located in Asia because of the low labor cost. Women who work in these factories are sexually harassed by managers and male workers, paid low wages, and discriminated against when pregnant.
Conscription, or compulsory military service, has been criticized as sexist. Prior to the late 20th century, only men were subjected to conscription, and most countries still require only men to serve in the military.
In his book "The Second Sexism: Discrimination Against Men and Boys" (2012), philosopher David Benatar states that "[t]he prevailing assumption is that where conscription is necessary, it is only men who should be conscripted and, similarly, that only males should be forced into combat". This, he believes, "is a sexist assumption". Anthropologist Ayse Gül Altinay has commented that "given equal suffrage rights, there is no other citizenship practice that differentiates as radically between men and women as compulsory male conscription".
Currently, only nine countries conscript women into their armed forces: China, Eritrea, Israel, Libya, Malaysia, North Korea, Norway, Peru, and Taiwan. Other countries—such as Finland, Turkey, and Singapore—still use a system of conscription which requires military service from only men, although women are permitted to serve voluntarily. In 2014, Norway became the first NATO country to introduce obligatory military service for women as an act of gender equality and in 2015, the Dutch government started preparing a gender-neutral draft law. The gender selective draft has been challenged in the United States.
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Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Substance theory
Substance theory, or substance–attribute theory, is an ontological theory about objecthood positing that a "substance" is distinct from its properties. A "thing-in-itself" is a property-bearer that must be distinguished from the properties it bears. The corresponding concept in Eastern philosophy is svabhava.
"Substance" is a key concept in ontology and metaphysics, which may be classified into monist, dualist, or pluralist varieties according to how many substances or individuals are said to populate, furnish, or exist in the world. According to monistic views, there is only one substance. Stoicism and Spinoza, for example, hold monistic views, that pneuma or God, respectively, is the one substance in the world. These modes of thinking are sometimes associated with the idea of immanence. Dualism sees the world as being composed of two fundamental substances (for example, the Cartesian substance dualism of mind and matter). Pluralist philosophies include Plato's Theory of Forms and Aristotle's hylomorphic categories.
Aristotle used the term "substance" ( "ousia") in a secondary sense for genera and species understood as hylomorphic forms. Primarily, however, he used it with regard to his category of substance, the specimen ("this person" or "this horse") or individual, "qua" individual, who survives accidental change and in whom the essential properties inhere that define those universals.
In chapter 6 of book I the "Physics" Aristotle argues that any change must be analysed in reference to the property of an invariant subject: as it was before the change and thereafter. Thus, in his hylomorphic account of change, "matter" serves as a relative substratum of transformation, i.e., of changing (substantial) form. In the "Categories", properties are predicated only of substance, but in chapter 7 of book I of the "Physics", Aristotle discusses substances coming to be and passing away in the "unqualified sense" wherein primary substances (πρῶται οὐσίαι; "Categories" 2a35) are generated from (or perish into) a material substratum by having gained (or lost) the essential property that formally defines substances of that kind (in the secondary sense). Examples of such a substantial change include not only conception and dying, but also metabolism, e.g., the bread a man eats becomes the man. On the other hand, in accidental change, because the essential property remains unchanged, by identifying the substance with its formal essence, substance may thereby serve as the relative subject matter or property-bearer of change in a qualified sense (i.e., barring matters of life or death). An example of this sort of accidental change is a change of color or size: a tomato becomes red, or a juvenile horse grows.
Aristotle thinks that in addition to primary substances (which are particulars), there are secondary substances (δεύτεραι οὐσίαι), which are universals ("Categories" 2a11–a18).
Neither the "bare particulars" nor "property bundles" of modern theory have their antecedent in Aristotle, according to whom all matter exists in some form. There is no "prime matter" or pure elements, there is always a mixture: a ratio weighing the four potential combinations of primary and secondary properties and analysed into discrete one-step and two-step abstract transmutations between the elements.
However, according to Aristotle's theology, a form of invariant form exists without matter, beyond the cosmos, powerless and oblivious, in the eternal substance of the unmoved movers.
Early Pyrrhonism rejected the idea that substances exist. Pyrrho put this as:
"Whoever wants to live well (eudaimonia) must consider these three questions: First, how are "pragmata" (ethical matters, affairs, topics) by nature? Secondly, what attitude should we adopt towards them? Thirdly, what will be the outcome for those who have this attitude?" Pyrrho's answer is that "As for "pragmata" they are all adiaphora (undifferentiated by a logical differentia), "astathmēta" (unstable, unbalanced, not measurable), and "anepikrita" (unjudged, unfixed, undecidable). Therefore, neither our sense-perceptions nor our "doxai" (views, theories, beliefs) tell us the truth or lie; so we certainly should not rely on them. Rather, we should be "adoxastoi" (without views), "aklineis" (uninclined toward this side or that), and "akradantoi" (unwavering in our refusal to choose), saying about every single one that it no more is than it is not or it both is and is not or it neither is nor is not.
The Stoics rejected the idea that incorporeal beings inhere in matter, as taught by Plato. They believed that all being is corporeal infused with a creative fire called pneuma. Thus they developed a scheme of categories different from Aristotle's based on the ideas of Anaxagoras and Timaeus.
Neoplatonists argue that beneath the surface phenomena that present themselves to our senses are three higher spiritual principles or hypostases, each one more sublime than the preceding. For Plotinus, these are the soul or world-soul, being/intellect or divine mind ("nous"), and "the one".
The Christian writers of antiquity adhered to the Aristotelian conception of substance. Their peculiarity was the use of this idea for the discernment of theological nuances. Clement of Alexandria considered both material and spiritual substances: blood and milk; mind and soul, respectively. Origen may be the first theologian expressing Christ's similarity with the Father as consubstantiality. Tertullian professed the same view in the West. The ecclesiastics of the Cappadocian group (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa) taught that the Trinity had a single substance in three hypostases individualized by the relations among them. In later ages, the meaning of "substance" became more important because of the dogma of the Eucharist. Hildebert of Lavardin, archbishop of Tours, introduced the term "transubstantiation" about 1080; its use spread after the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215.
According to Thomas Aquinas, beings may possess substance in three different modes. Together with other Medieval philosophers, he interpreted God's epithet "El Shaddai" (Genesis 17:1) as self-sufficient and concluded that God’s essence was identical with existence. Aquinas also deemed the substance of spiritual creatures identical with their essence (or form); therefore he considered each angel to belong to its own distinct species. In Aquinas' view, composite substances consist of form and matter. Human substantial form, i.e. soul, receives its individuality from body.
Buddhism rejects the concept of substance. Complex structures are comprehended as an aggregate of components without any essence. Just as the junction of parts is called cart, so the collections of elements are called things. All formations are unstable ("aniccā") and lacking any constant core or “self” ("anattā"). Physical objects have no metaphysical substrate. Arising entities hang on previous ones conditionally: in the notable teaching on interdependent origination, effects arise not as caused by agents but conditioned by former situations. Our senses, perception, feelings, wishes and consciousness are flowing, the view "satkāya-dṛṣṭi" of their permanent carrier is rejected as fallacious. The school of Madhyamaka, namely Nāgārjuna, introduced the idea of the ontological void ("śūnyatā"). The Buddhist metaphysics Abhidharma presumes particular forces which determine the origin, persistence, aging and decay of everything in the world. Vasubandhu added a special force making a human, called “"aprāpti"” or “"pṛthagjanatvam."” Because of the absence of a substantial soul, the belief in personal immortality loses foundation. Instead of deceased beings, new ones emerge whose fate is destined by the karmic law. The Buddha admitted the empirical identity of persons testified by their birth, name, and age. He approved the authorship of deeds and responsibility of performers. The disciplinary practice in the Sangha including reproaches, confession and expiation of transgressions, requires continuing personalities as its justification.
René Descartes means by a substance an entity which exists in such a way that it needs no other entity in order to exist. Therefore, only God is a substance in this strict sense. However, he extends the term to created things, which need only the concurrence of God to exist. He maintained that two of these are mind and body, each being distinct from the other in their attributes and therefore in their essence, and neither needing the other in order to exist. This is Descartes' substance dualism.
Baruch Spinoza denied Descartes' "real distinction" between mind and matter. Substance, according to Spinoza, is one and indivisible, but has multiple "attributes". He regards an attribute, though, as "what we conceive as constituting the [single] essence of substance". The single essence of one substance can be conceived of as material and also, consistently, as mental. What is ordinarily called the natural world, together with all the individuals in it, is immanent in God: hence his famous phrase "deus sive natura" ("God or Nature").
John Locke views substance through a corpuscularian lens where it exhibits two types of qualities which both stem from a source. He believes that humans are born "tabula rasa" or “blank slate” – without innate knowledge. In "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" Locke writes that “first essence may be taken for the very being of anything, whereby it is, what it is.” If humans are born without any knowledge, the way to receive knowledge is through perception of a certain object. But, according to Locke, an object exists in its primary qualities, no matter whether the human perceives it or not; it just exists. For example, an apple has qualities or properties that determine its existence apart from human perception of it, such as its mass or texture. The apple itself is also “pure substance in which is supposed to provide some sort of ‘unknown support’ to the observable qualities of things” that the human mind perceives. The foundational or support qualities are called primary essences which “in the case of physical substances, are the underlying physical causes of the object's observable qualities”. But then what is an object except “the owner or support of other properties”? Locke rejects Aristotle's category of the forms, and develops mixed ideas about what substance or “first essence” means. Locke's solution to confusion about first essence is to argue that objects simply are what they are – made up of microscopic particles existing because they exist. According to Locke, the mind cannot completely grasp the idea of a substance as it “always falls beyond knowledge”. There is a gap between what first essence truly means and the mind's perception of it that Locke believes the mind cannot bridge, objects in their primary qualities must exist apart from human perception.
The molecular combination of atoms in first essence then forms the solid base that humans can perceive and add qualities to describe - the only way humans can possibly begin to perceive an object. The way to perceive the qualities of an apple is from the combination of the primary qualities to form the secondary qualities. These qualities are then used to group the substances into different categories that “depend on the properties [humans] happen to be able to perceive”. The taste of an apple or the feeling of its smoothness are not traits inherent to the fruit but are the power of the primary qualities to produce an idea about that object in the mind. The reason that humans can't sense the actual primary qualities is the mental distance from the object; thus, Locke argues, objects remain nominal for humans. Therefore, the argument then returns to how “a philosopher has no other idea of those substances than what is framed by a collection of those simple ideas which are found in them.” The mind's conception of substances “[is] complex rather than simple” and “has no (supposedly innate) clear and distinct idea of matter that can be revealed through intellectual abstraction away from sensory qualities”.
The last quality of substance is the way the perceived qualities seem to begin to change – such as a candle melting; this quality is called the tertiary quality. Tertiary qualities “of a body are those powers in it that, by virtue of its primary qualities, give it the power to produce observable changes in the primary qualities of other bodies”; “the power of the sun to melt wax is a tertiary quality of the sun”. They are “mere powers; qualities such as flexibility, ductility; and the power of sun to melt wax”. This goes along with “passive power: the capacity a thing has for being changed by another thing”. In any object, at the core are the primary qualities (unknowable by the human mind), the secondary quality (how primary qualities are perceived), and tertiary qualities (the power of the combined qualities to make a change to the object itself or to other objects).
Robert Boyle's corpuscularian hypothesis states that "all material bodies are composites of ultimately small particles of matter" that "have the same material qualities as the larger composite bodies do". Using this basis, Locke defines his first group, primary qualities, as "the ones that a body doesn't lose, however much it alters." The materials retain their primary qualities even if they are broken down because of the unchanging nature of their atomic particles. If someone is curious about an object and they say it is solid and extended, these two descriptors are primary qualities. The second group consists of secondary qualities which are "really nothing but the powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities." Locke argues that the impressions our senses perceive from the objects (i.e. taste, sounds, colors, etc.) are not natural properties of the object itself, but things they induce in us by means of the "size, shape, texture, and motion of their imperceptible parts." The bodies send insensible particles to our senses which let us perceive the object through different faculties; what we perceive is based on the object's composition. With these qualities, people can achieve the object through bringing "co-existing powers and sensible qualities to a common ground for explanation". Locke supposes that one wants to know what "binds these qualities" into an object, and argues that a "substratum" or "substance" has this effect, defining "substance" as follows:
This substratum is a construct of the mind in an attempt to bind all the qualities seen together; it is only "a supposition of
an unknown support of qualities that are able to cause simple
ideas in us." Without making a substratum, people would be at a loss as to how different qualities relate. Locke does, however, mention that this substratum is an unknown, relating it to the story of the world on the turtle's back and how the believers eventually had to concede that the turtle just rested on "something he knew not what". This is how the mind perceives all things and from which it can make ideas about them; it is entirely relative, but it does provide a "regularity and consistency to our ideas". Substance, overall, has two sets of qualities — those that define it, and those related to how we perceive it. These qualities rush to our minds, which must organize them. As a result, our mind creates a substratum (or "substance") for these objects, into which it groups related qualities.
Kant observed that the assertion of a spiritual soul as substance could be a synthetic proposition which, however, was unproved and completely arbitrary. Introspection does not reveal any diachronic substrate remaining unchanged throughout life. The temporal structure of consciousness is retentive-perceptive-prognostic. The selfhood arises as result of several informative flows: (1) signals from our own body; (2) retrieved memories and forecasts; (3) the affective load: dispositions and aversions; (4) reflections in other minds. Mental acts have the feature of appropriation: they are always attached to some pre-reflective consciousness. As visual perception is only possible from a definite point of view, so inner experience is given together with self-consciousness. The latter is not an autonomous mental act, but a formal way how the first person has her experience. From the pre-reflective consciousness, the person gains conviction of her existence. This conviction is immune to false reference. The concept of person is prior to the concepts of subject and body. The reflective self-consciousness is a conceptual and elaborate cognition. Selfhood is a self-constituting effigy, a task to be accomplished. Humans are incapable of comprising all their experience within the current state of consciousness; overlapping memories are critical for personal integrity. Appropriated experience can be recollected. At stage B, we remember the experience of stage A; at stage C, we may be aware of the mental acts of stage B. The idea of self-identity is enforced by the relatively slow changes of our body and social situation. Personal identity may be explained without accepting a spiritual agent as subject of mental activity. Associative connection between life episodes is necessary and sufficient for the maintenance of a united selfhood. Personal character and memories can persist after radical mutation of the body.
Two irreducible concepts encountered in substance theory are the "bare particular" and "inherence".
In substance theory, a bare particular of an object is the element without which the object would not exist, that is, its substance, which exists independently from its properties, even if it is impossible for it to lack properties entirely. It is "bare" because it is considered without its properties and "particular" because it is not abstract. The properties that the substance has are said to inhere in the substance.
Another primitive concept in substance theory is the inherence of properties within a substance. For example, in the sentence, "The apple is red" substance theory says that red inheres in the apple. Substance theory takes the meaning of an apple having the property of redness to be understood, and likewise that of a property's inherence in substance, which is similar to, but not identical with, being part of the substance.
The inverse relation is participation. Thus in the example above, just as red inheres in the apple, so the apple participates in red.
Two common arguments supporting substance theory are the argument from grammar and the argument from conception.
The argument from grammar uses traditional grammar to support substance theory. For example, the sentence "Snow is white" contains a grammatical subject "snow" and the predicate "is white", thereby asserting "snow is white". The argument holds that it makes no grammatical sense to speak of "whiteness" disembodied, without asserting that snow or something else "is" white. Meaningful assertions are formed by virtue of a grammatical subject, of which properties may be predicated, and in substance theory, such assertions are made with regard to a substance.
Bundle theory rejects the argument from grammar on the basis that a grammatical subject does not necessarily refer to a metaphysical subject. Bundle theory, for example, maintains that the grammatical subject of statement refers to its properties. For example, a bundle theorist understands the grammatical subject of the sentence, "Snow is white", to be a bundle of properties such as white. Accordingly, one can make meaningful statements about bodies without referring to substances.
Another argument for the substance theory is the argument from conception. The argument claims that in order to conceive of an object's properties, like the redness of an apple, one must conceive of the object that has those properties. According to the argument, one cannot conceive of redness, or any other property, distinct from the substance that has that property.
The idea of substance was famously critiqued by David Hume, who held that since substance cannot be perceived, it should not be assumed to exist.
Friedrich Nietzsche, and after him Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze also rejected the notion of "substance", and in the same movement the concept of subject - seeing both concepts as holdovers from Platonic idealism. For this reason, Althusser's "anti-humanism" and Foucault's statements were criticized, by Jürgen Habermas and others, for misunderstanding that this led to a fatalist conception of social determinism. For Habermas, only a subjective form of liberty could be conceived, to the contrary of Deleuze who talks about ""a" life", as an impersonal and immanent form of liberty.
For Heidegger, Descartes means by "substance" that by which "we can understand nothing else than an entity which "is" in such a way that it need no other entity in order to "be"." Therefore, only God is a substance as "Ens perfectissimus" (most perfect being). Heidegger showed the inextricable relationship between the concept of substance and of subject, which explains why, instead of talking about "man" or "humankind", he speaks about the "Dasein", which is not a simple subject, nor a substance.
Alfred North Whitehead has argued that the concept of substance has only a limited applicability in everyday life and that metaphysics should rely upon the concept of process.
Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner, as part of his critique of transubstantiation, rejected substance theory and instead proposed the doctrine of "transfinalization", which he felt was more attuned to modern philosophy. However, this doctrine was rejected by Pope Paul VI in his encyclical "Mysterium fidei".
In direct opposition to substance theory is bundle theory, whose most basic premise is that all concrete particulars are merely constructions or 'bundles' of attributes or qualitative properties:
The bundle theorist's principal objections to substance theory concern the bare particulars of a substance, which substance theory considers independently of the substance's properties. The bundle theorist objects to the notion of a thing with no properties, claiming that such a thing is inconceivable and citing John Locke, who described a substance as "a something, I know not what." To the bundle theorist, as soon as one has any notion of a substance in mind, a property accompanies that notion.
The indiscernibility argument from the substance theorist targets those bundle theorists who are also metaphysical realists. Metaphysical realism uses the identity of "universals" to compare and identify particulars. Substance theorists say that bundle theory is incompatible with metaphysical realism due to the identity of indiscernibles: particulars may differ from one another only with respect to their attributes or relations.
The substance theorist's indiscernibility argument against the metaphysically realistic bundle theorist states that numerically different concrete particulars are discernible from the self-same concrete particular only by virtue of qualitatively different attributes.
The indiscernibility argument points out that if bundle theory and discernible concrete particulars theory explain the relationship between attributes, then the identity of indiscernibles theory must also be true:
The indiscernibles argument then asserts that the identity of indiscernibles is violated, for example, by identical sheets of paper. All of their qualitative properties are the same (e.g. white, rectangular, 9 x 11 inches...) and thus, the argument claims, bundle theory and metaphysical realism cannot both be correct.
However, bundle theory combined with trope theory (as opposed to metaphysical realism) avoids the indiscernibles argument because each attribute is a trope if can only be held by only one concrete particular.
The argument does not consider whether "position" should be considered an attribute or relation. It is after all through the differing positions that we in practice differentiate between otherwise identical pieces of paper.
| 27568 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27568 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Structuralism
In sociology, anthropology, and linguistics, structuralism is the methodology that implies elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader, overarching system or structure. It works to uncover the structures that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel. Alternatively, as summarized by philosopher Simon Blackburn, structuralism is "the belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract structure".
Structuralism in Europe developed in the early 1900s, mainly in France and Russian Empire, in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague, Moscow and Copenhagen schools of linguistics. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, when structural linguistics were facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance, an array of scholars in the humanities borrowed Saussure's concepts for use in their respective fields of study. French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss was arguably the first such scholar, sparking a widespread interest in structuralism.
The structuralist mode of reasoning has been applied in a diverse range of fields, including anthropology, sociology, psychology, literary criticism, economics and architecture. The most prominent thinkers associated with structuralism include Claude Lévi-Strauss, linguist Roman Jakobson, and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. As an intellectual movement, structuralism was initially presumed to be the heir apparent to existentialism. However, by the late 1960s, many of structuralism's basic tenets came under attack from a new wave of predominantly French intellectuals such as the philosopher and historian Michel Foucault, the philosopher Jacques Derrida, the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, and the literary critic Roland Barthes. Though elements of their work necessarily relate to structuralism and are informed by it, these theorists have generally been referred to as post-structuralists. In the 1970s, structuralism was criticized for its rigidity and ahistoricism. Despite this, many of structuralism's proponents, such as Lacan, continue to assert an influence on continental philosophy and many of the fundamental assumptions of some of structuralism's post-structuralist critics are a continuation of structuralism.
The term "structuralism" in reference to social science first appeared in the works of French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who gave rise in France to the structuralist movement, influencing the thinking of other writers such as Louis Althusser, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, as well as the structural Marxism of Nicos Poulantzas, most of whom disavowed themselves as being a part of this movement.
The origins of structuralism connect with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure on linguistics, along with the linguistics of the Prague and Moscow schools. In brief, Saussure's structural linguistics propounded three related concepts.
Proponents of structuralism would argue that a specific domain of culture may be understood by means of a structure—modelled on language—that is distinct both from the organizations of reality and those of ideas or the imagination—the "third order". In Lacan's psychoanalytic theory, for example, the structural order of "the Symbolic" is distinguished both from "the Real" and "the Imaginary"; similarly, in Althusser's Marxist theory, the structural order of the capitalist mode of production is distinct both from the actual, real agents involved in its relations and from the ideological forms in which those relations are understood.
Blending Freud and Saussure, the French (post)structuralist Jacques Lacan applied structuralism to psychoanalysis and, in a different way, Jean Piaget applied structuralism to the study of psychology. But Jean Piaget, who would better define himself as constructivist, considers structuralism as "a method and not a doctrine" because for him "there exists no structure without a construction, abstract or genetic".
Although the French theorist Louis Althusser is often associated with a brand of structural social analysis which helped give rise to "structural Marxism", such association was contested by Althusser himself in the Italian foreword to the second edition of "Reading Capital". In this foreword Althusser states the following:
Despite the precautions we took to distinguish ourselves from the 'structuralist' ideology ..., despite the decisive intervention of categories foreign to 'structuralism' ..., the terminology we employed was too close in many respects to the 'structuralist' terminology not to give rise to an ambiguity. With a very few exceptions ... our interpretation of Marx has generally been recognized and judged, in homage to the current fashion, as 'structuralist'... We believe that despite the terminological ambiguity, the profound tendency of our texts was not attached to the 'structuralist' ideology.
In a later development, feminist theorist Alison Assiter enumerated four ideas that she says are common to the various forms of structuralism. First, that a structure determines the position of each element of a whole. Second, that every system has a structure. Third, structural laws deal with co-existence rather than change. Fourth, structures are the "real things" that lie beneath the surface or the appearance of meaning.
In "Course in General Linguistics" the analysis focuses not on the "use" of language (called ""parole"", or speech), but rather on the underlying system of language (called ""langue""). This approach examines how the elements of language relate to each other in the present, synchronically rather than diachronically. Saussure argued that linguistic signs were composed of two parts:
This was quite different from previous approaches that focused on the relationship between words and the things in the world that they designate. Other key notions in structural linguistics include paradigm, syntagm, and value (though these notions were not fully developed in Saussure's thought). A structural "idealism" is a class of linguistic units (lexemes, morphemes or even constructions) that are possible in a certain position in a given linguistic environment (such as a given sentence), which is called the "syntagm". The different functional role of each of these members of the paradigm is called "value" ("" in French).
Saussure's "Course" influenced many linguists between World War I and World War II. In the United States, for instance, Leonard Bloomfield developed his own version of structural linguistics, as did Louis Hjelmslev in Denmark and Alf Sommerfelt in Norway. In France Antoine Meillet and Émile Benveniste continued Saussure's project, and members of the Prague school of linguistics such as Roman Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetzkoy conducted research that would be greatly influential. However, by the 1950s Saussure's linguistic concepts were under heavy criticism and were soon largely abandoned by practicing linguists:
Saussure's views are not held, so far as I know, by modern linguists, only by literary critics and the occasional philosopher. [Strict adherence to Saussure] has elicited wrong film and literary theory on a grand scale. One can find dozens of books of literary theory bogged down in signifiers and signifieds, but only a handful that refer to Chomsky.
The clearest and most important example of Prague school structuralism lies in phonemics. Rather than simply compiling a list of which sounds occur in a language, the Prague school sought to examine how they were related. They determined that the inventory of sounds in a language could be analysed in terms of a series of contrasts. Thus in English the sounds /p/ and /b/ represent distinct phonemes because there are cases (minimal pairs) where the contrast between the two is the only difference between two distinct words (e.g. 'pat' and 'bat'). Analyzing sounds in terms of contrastive features also opens up comparative scope—it makes clear, for instance, that the difficulty Japanese speakers have differentiating /r/ and /l/ in English is because these sounds are not contrastive in Japanese. Phonology would become the paradigmatic basis for structuralism in a number of different fields.
According to structural theory in anthropology and social anthropology, meaning is produced and reproduced within a culture through various practices, phenomena and activities that serve as systems of signification. A structuralist approach may study activities as diverse as food-preparation and serving rituals, religious rites, games, literary and non-literary texts, and other forms of entertainment to discover the deep structures by which meaning is produced and reproduced within the culture. For example, Lévi-Strauss analysed in the 1950s cultural phenomena including mythology, kinship (the alliance theory and the incest taboo), and food preparation. In addition to these studies, he produced more linguistically focused writings in which he applied Saussure's distinction between "langue" and "parole" in his search for the fundamental structures of the human mind, arguing that the structures that form the "deep grammar" of society originate in the mind and operate in people unconsciously. Lévi-Strauss took inspiration from mathematics.
Another concept used in structural anthropology came from the Prague school of linguistics, where Roman Jakobson and others analysed sounds based on the presence or absence of certain features (such as voiceless vs. voiced). Lévi-Strauss included this in his conceptualization of the universal structures of the mind, which he held to operate based on pairs of binary oppositions such as hot-cold, male-female, culture-nature, cooked-raw, or marriageable vs. tabooed women.
A third influence came from Marcel Mauss (1872–1950), who had written on gift-exchange systems. Based on Mauss, for instance, Lévi-Strauss argued that kinship systems are based on the exchange of women between groups (a position known as 'alliance theory') as opposed to the 'descent'-based theory described by Edward Evans-Pritchard and Meyer Fortes. While replacing Marcel Mauss at his "Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes" chair, Lévi-Strauss' writing became widely popular in the 1960s and 1970s and gave rise to the term "structuralism" itself.
In Britain, authors such as Rodney Needham and Edmund Leach were highly influenced by structuralism. Authors such as Maurice Godelier and Emmanuel Terray combined Marxism with structural anthropology in France. In the United States, authors such as Marshall Sahlins and James Boon built on structuralism to provide their own analysis of human society. Structural anthropology fell out of favour in the early 1980s for a number of reasons. D'Andrade suggests that this was because it made unverifiable assumptions about the universal structures of the human mind. Authors such as Eric Wolf argued that political economy and colonialism should be at the forefront of anthropology. More generally, criticisms of structuralism by Pierre Bourdieu led to a concern with how cultural and social structures were changed by human agency and practice, a trend which Sherry Ortner has referred to as 'practice theory'.
One example is Learning Capitalist Culture where Douglas E. Foley applies a mixture of structural and Marxist theorys to his ethnographic fieldwork among high schoolers in Texas. Foley analyzes how the high school reaches a shared goal through the lens of social solidarity when he observes "Mexicanos" and "Anglo-Americans" come together on the same football team to defeat the school's rivals. However, he also continually applies a marxist lens and states that he," wanted to wow peers with a new cultural marxist theory of schooling."
Some anthropological theorists, however, while finding considerable fault with Lévi-Strauss's version of structuralism, did not turn away from a fundamental structural basis for human culture. The Biogenetic Structuralism group for instance argued that some kind of structural foundation for culture must exist because all humans inherit the same system of brain structures. They proposed a kind of neuroanthropology which would lay the foundations for a more complete scientific account of cultural similarity and variation by requiring an integration of cultural anthropology and neuroscience—a program that theorists such as Victor Turner also embraced.
In literary theory, structuralist criticism relates literary texts to a larger structure, which may be a particular genre, a range of intertextual connections, a model of a universal narrative structure, or a system of recurrent patterns or motifs. The field of structuralist semiotics argues that there must be a structure in every text, which explains why it is easier for experienced readers than for non-experienced readers to interpret a text. Hence, everything that is written seems to be governed by specific rules, or a "grammar of literature", that one learns in educational institutions and that are to be unmasked.
A potential problem of structuralist interpretation is that it can be highly reductive, as scholar Catherine Belsey puts it: "the structuralist danger of collapsing all difference." An example of such a reading might be if a student concludes the authors of "West Side Story" did not write anything "really" new, because their work has the same structure as Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet". In both texts a girl and a boy fall in love (a "formula" with a symbolic operator between them would be "Boy + Girl") despite the fact that they belong to two groups that hate each other ("Boy's Group - Girl's Group" or "Opposing forces") and conflict is resolved by their death. Structuralist readings focus on how the structures of the single text resolve inherent narrative tensions. If a structuralist reading focuses on multiple texts, there must be some way in which those texts unify themselves into a coherent system. The versatility of structuralism is such that a literary critic could make the same claim about a story of two "friendly" families ("Boy's Family + Girl's Family") that arrange a marriage between their children despite the fact that the children hate each other ("Boy - Girl") and then the children commit suicide to escape the arranged marriage; the justification is that the second story's structure is an 'inversion' of the first story's structure: the relationship between the values of love and the two pairs of parties involved have been reversed.
Structuralistic literary criticism argues that the "literary banter of a text" can lie only in new structure, rather than in the specifics of character development and voice in which that structure is expressed. Literary structuralism often follows the lead of Vladimir Propp, Algirdas Julien Greimas, and Claude Lévi-Strauss in seeking out basic deep elements in stories, myths, and more recently, anecdotes, which are combined in various ways to produce the many versions of the ur-story or ur-myth.
There is considerable similarity between structural literary theory and Northrop Frye's archetypal criticism, which is also indebted to the anthropological study of myths. Some critics have also tried to apply the theory to individual works, but the effort to find unique structures in individual literary works runs counter to the structuralist program and has an affinity with New Criticism.
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, existentialism, such as that propounded by Jean-Paul Sartre, was the dominant European intellectual movement. Structuralism rose to prominence in France in the wake of existentialism, particularly in the 1960s. The initial popularity of structuralism in France led to its spread across the globe.
Structuralism rejected the concept of human freedom and choice and focused instead on the way that human experience and thus, behaviour, is determined by various structures. The most important initial work on this score was Claude Lévi-Strauss's 1949 volume "The Elementary Structures of Kinship". Lévi-Strauss had known Roman Jakobson during their time together at the New School in New York during WWII and was influenced by both Jakobson's structuralism as well as the American anthropological tradition. In "Elementary Structures" he examined kinship systems from a structural point of view and demonstrated how apparently different social organizations were in fact different permutations of a few basic kinship structures. In the late 1950s he published "Structural Anthropology", a collection of essays outlining his program for structuralism.
By the early 1960s structuralism as a movement was coming into its own and some believed that it offered a single unified approach to human life that would embrace all disciplines. Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida focused on how structuralism could be applied to literature.
The so-called "Gang of Four" of structuralism was Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Barthes, and Foucault.
Structuralism is less popular today than other approaches, such as post-structuralism and deconstruction. Structuralism has often been criticized for being ahistorical and for favouring deterministic structural forces over the ability of people to act. As the political turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s (and particularly the student uprisings of May 1968) began affecting academia, issues of power and political struggle moved to the center of people's attention.
In the 1980s, deconstruction—and its emphasis on the fundamental ambiguity of language rather than its crystalline logical structure—became popular. By the end of the century structuralism was seen as an historically important school of thought, but the movements that it spawned, rather than structuralism itself, commanded attention.
Several social thinkers and academics have strongly criticized structuralism or even dismissed it "in toto". The French hermeneutic philosopher Paul Ricœur (1969) criticized Lévi-Strauss for constantly overstepping the limits of validity of the structuralist approach, ending up in what Ricœur described as "a Kantianism without a transcendental subject". Anthropologist Adam Kuper (1973) argued that "'Structuralism' came to have something of the momentum of a millennial movement and some of its adherents felt that they formed a secret society of the seeing in a world of the blind. Conversion was not just a matter of accepting a new paradigm. It was, almost, a question of salvation." Philip Noel Pettit (1975) called for an abandoning of "the positivist dream which Lévi-Strauss dreamed for semiology" arguing that semiology is not to be placed among the natural sciences. Cornelius Castoriadis (1975) criticized structuralism as failing to explain symbolic mediation in the social world; he viewed structuralism as a variation on the "logicist" theme, and he argued that, contrary to what structuralists advocate, language—and symbolic systems in general—cannot be reduced to logical organizations on the basis of the binary logic of oppositions. Critical theorist Jürgen Habermas (1985) accused structuralists, such as Foucault, of being positivists; he remarked that while Foucault is not an ordinary positivist, he nevertheless paradoxically uses the tools of science to criticize science (see "Performative contradiction" and "Foucault–Habermas debate"). Sociologist Anthony Giddens (1993) is another notable critic; while Giddens draws on a range of structuralist themes in his theorizing, he dismisses the structuralist view that the reproduction of social systems is merely "a mechanical outcome".
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Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Simony
Simony () is the act of selling church offices and roles or sacred things. It is named after Simon Magus, who is described in the Acts of the Apostles as having offered two disciples of Jesus payment in exchange for their empowering him to impart the power of the Holy Spirit to anyone on whom he would place his hands. The term extends to other forms of trafficking for money in "spiritual things".
The appointment of ecclesiastical officials, such as bishops and abbots, by a secular authority came to be considered simoniacal and this became a key issue during the Investiture Controversy.
Although an offense against canon law, simony became widespread in the Catholic Church in the 9th and 10th centuries. In the canon law, the word bears a more extended meaning than in English law. "Simony according to the canonists", says John Ayliffe in his "Parergon",
In the "Corpus Juris Canonici", the "Decretum" and the Decretals of Gregory IX dealt with the subject. The offender whether "simoniacus" (the perpetrator of a simoniacal transaction) or "simoniace promotus" (the beneficiary of a simoniacal transaction), was liable to deprivation of his benefice and deposition from orders if a secular priest, or to confinement in a stricter monastery if a regular. No distinction seems to have been drawn between the sale of an immediate and of a reversionary interest. The innocent "simoniace promotus" was, apart from dispensation, liable to the same penalties as though he were guilty.
Certain matters were simoniacal by the canon law but would not be regarded as such in English law. So grave was the crime of simony considered that even infamous persons (deprived of citizens' rights due to conviction) could accuse another of it. English provincial and legatine constitutions continually assailed simony.
In 1494 a member of the Carmelite order, Adam of Genoa was found murdered in his bed with twenty wounds after preaching against the practice of simony.
In the 14th century, Dante Alighieri depicted the punishment of many "clergymen, and popes and cardinals" in hell for being avaricious or miserly.
He also criticised certain popes and other simoniacs:
The Church of England struggled with the practice after its separation from Rome. For the purposes of English law, simony is defined by William Blackstone as "obtain[ing] orders, or a licence to preach, by money or corrupt practices" or, more narrowly, "the corrupt presentation of any one to an ecclesiastical benefice for gift or reward". While English law recognized simony as an offence, it treated it as merely an ecclesiastical matter, rather than a crime, for which the punishment was forfeiture of the office or any advantage from the offence and severance of any patronage relationship with the person who bestowed the office. Both Edward VI and Elizabeth I promulgated statutes against simony, in the latter case through the Simony Act 1588. The cases of Bishop of St. David's Thomas Watson in 1699 and of Dean of York William Cockburn in 1841 were particularly notable.
By the Benefices Act 1892, a person guilty of simony is guilty of an offence for which he may be proceeded against under the Clergy Discipline Act 1892. An innocent clerk is under no disability, as he might be by the canon law. Simony may be committed in three ways – in promotion to orders, in presentation to a benefice, and in resignation of a benefice. The common law (with which the canon law is incorporated, as far as it is not contrary to the common or statute law or the prerogative of the Crown) has been considerably modified by statute. Where no statute applies to the case, the doctrines of the canon law may still be of authority.
, simony remains an offence. An unlawfully bestowed office can be declared void by the Crown, and the offender can be disabled from making future appointments and fined up to £1000. Clergy are no longer required to make a declaration as to simony on ordination, but offences are now likely to be dealt with under the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003, r.8.
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Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Social epistemology
Social epistemology refers to a broad set of approaches that can be taken in the study of knowledge that construes human knowledge as a collective achievement. Another way of characterizing social epistemology is as the evaluation of the social dimensions of knowledge or information. It is sometimes simplified to mean a social justification of belief.
One of the enduring difficulties with defining "social epistemology" that arises is the attempt to determine what the word "knowledge" means in this context. There is also a challenge in arriving at a definition of "social" which satisfies academics from different disciplines. Social epistemologists may exist working in many of the disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, most commonly in philosophy and sociology. In addition to marking a distinct movement in traditional and analytic epistemology, social epistemology is associated with the interdisciplinary field of science and technology studies (STS).
The consideration of social dimensions of knowledge in relation to philosophy started in 380 B.C.E with Plato's dialogue: Charmides. In it he questions the degree of certainty an unprofessional in a field can have towards a person's claim to be a specialist in that same field. As the exploration of a dependence on authoritative figures constitutes a part of the study of social epistemology, it confirms the existence of the ideology in minds long before it was given its label.
In 1936, Karl Mannheim turned Karl Marx's theory of ideology (which interpreted the "social" aspect in epistemology to be of a political or sociological nature) into an analysis of how the human society develops and functions in this respect.
It was not until the 1970s that there was a powerful growth of interest amongst philosophers in topics such as epistemic value of testimony, the nature and function of expertise, proper distribution of cognitive labor and resources among individuals in the communities and the status of group reasoning and knowledge.
The term "social epistemology" was firstly used by the library scientists Margaret Egan and Jesse Shera in the 1950s. Steven Shapin also used it in 1979. However, it was not until the late 1980s that its current sense began to emerge. In 1987, the philosophical journal "Synthese" published a special issue on social epistemology which included two authors that have since taken the branch of epistemology in two divergent directions: Alvin Goldman and Steve Fuller. Fuller founded a journal called "Social Epistemology: A journal of knowledge, culture, and policy" in 1987 and published his first book, "Social Epistemology", in 1988. Goldman's "Knowledge in a Social World" came out in 1999. Goldman advocates for a type of epistemology which is sometimes called "veritistic epistemology" because of its large emphasis on truth. This type of epistemology is sometimes seen to side with "essentialism" as opposed to "multiculturalism". But Goldman has argued that this association between veritistic epistemology and essentialism is not necessary. He describes Social Epistemology as knowledge derived from one's interactions with another person, group or society.
Goldman looks into one of the two strategies of the socialization of epistemology. This strategy includes the evaluation of social factors that impact knowledge formed on true belief. In contrast, Fuller takes preference for the second strategy that defines knowledge influenced by social factors as collectively accepted belief. The difference between the two can be simplified with exemplars e.g.: the first strategy means analyzing how your degree of wealth (a social factor) influences what information you determine to be valid whilst the second strategy occurs when an evaluation is done on wealth’s influence upon your knowledge acquired from the beliefs of the society in which you find yourself.
In 2012, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of "Social Epistemology", Fuller reflected upon the history and the prospects of the field, including the need for social epistemology to re-connect with the larger issues of knowledge production first identified by Charles Sanders Peirce as "cognitive economy" and nowadays often pursued by library and information science. As for the "analytic social epistemology", to which Goldman has been a significant contributor, Fuller concludes that it has "failed to make significant progress owing, in part, to a minimal understanding of actual knowledge practices, a minimised role for philosophers in ongoing inquiry, and a focus on maintaining the status quo of epistemology as a field."
The basic view of knowledge that motivated the emergence of social epistemology as it is perceived today can be traced to the work of Thomas Kuhn and Michel Foucault, which gained acknowledgment at the end of the 1960s. Both brought historical concerns directly to bear on problems long associated with the philosophy of science. Perhaps the most notable issue here was the nature of truth, which both Kuhn and Foucault described as a relative and contingent notion. On this background, ongoing work in the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) and the history and philosophy of science (HPS) was able to assert its epistemological consequences, leading most notably to the establishment of the strong programme at the University of Edinburgh. In terms of the two strands of social epistemology, Fuller is more sensitive and receptive to this historical trajectory (if not always in agreement) than Goldman, whose "veritistic" social epistemology can be reasonably read as a systematic rejection of the more extreme claims associated with Kuhn and Foucault.
As a field within analytic philosophy, social epistemology foregrounds the social aspects of knowledge creation and dissemination. What precisely these social aspects are, and whether they have beneficial or detrimental effects upon the possibilities to create, acquire and spread knowledge is a subject of continuous debate.
Within the field, "the social" is approached in two complementary and not mutually exclusive ways: "the social" character of knowledge can either be approached through inquiries in "inter-individual" epistemic relations or through inquiries focusing on epistemic "communities". The inter-individual approach typically focuses on issues such as testimony, epistemic trust as a form of trust placed by one individual in another, epistemic dependence, epistemic authority, etc. The community approach typically focuses on issues such as community standards of justification, community procedures of critique, diversity, epistemic justice, and collective knowledge.
Social epistemology as a field within analytic philosophy has close ties to, and often overlaps with feminist epistemology and philosophy of science. While parts of the field engage in abstract, normative considerations of knowledge creation and dissemination, other parts of the field are "naturalized epistemology" in the sense that they draw on empirically gained insights---which could mean natural science research from, e.g., cognitive psychology, be that qualitative or quantitative social science research. (For the notion of "naturalized epistemology" see Willard Van Orman Quine.) And while parts of the field are concerned with analytic considerations of rather general character, case-based and domain-specific inquiries in, e.g., knowledge creation in collaborative scientific practice, knowledge exchange on online platforms or knowledge gained in learning institutions play an increasing role.
Important academic journals for social epistemology as a field within analytic philosophy are, e.g., "Episteme", "Hypatia", "Social Epistemology", and "Synthese". However, major works within this field are also published in journals that predominantly address philosophers of science and psychology or in interdisciplinary journals which focus on particular domains of inquiry (such as, e.g., "Ethics and Information Technology").
In both stages, both varieties of social epistemology remain largely "academic" or "theoretical" projects. Yet both emphasize the social significance of knowledge and therefore the cultural value of social epistemology itself. A range of journals publishing social epistemology welcome papers that include a policy dimension.
More practical applications of social epistemology can be found in the areas of library science, academic publishing, guidelines for scientific authorship and collaboration, knowledge policy and debates over the role of the Internet in knowledge transmission and creation.
Social epistemology is still considered a relatively new addition to philosophy, with its problems and theories still fresh and in rapid movement. Of increasing importance is social epistemology developments within transdisciplinarity as manifested by media ecology.
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Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Sin
In a religious context, sin is an act of transgression against divine law. Each culture has its own interpretation of what it means to commit a sin. Sin is associated with the corruption of a being through acts which are wicked or destructive, such that can cause a being to fall from grace and divine providence. While sins are generally actions, any thought, word, or act considered immoral, selfish, shameful, harmful, or alienating might be termed "sinful".
The word derives from "Old English "syn(n)", for original *"sunjō". The stem may be related to that of Latin '"sons", "sont-is"' (guilty). In Old English there are examples of the original general sense, ‘offence, wrong-doing, misdeed'".
Baháʼís consider humans to be naturally good, fundamentally spiritual beings. Human beings were created because of God's immeasurable love for us. However, the Baháʼí teachings compare the human heart to a mirror, which, if turned away from the light of the sun (i.e. God), is incapable of receiving God's love. It is only by turning unto God that the spiritual advancement can be made. In this sense, "sinning" is to follow the inclinations of one's own lower nature, to turn the mirror of one's heart away from God. One of the main hindrances to spiritual development is the Baháʼí concept of the "insistent self" which is a self-serving inclination within all people. Baháʼís interpret this to be the true meaning of Satan, often referred to in the Baháʼí Writings as "the Evil One".Watch over yourselves, for the Evil One is lying in wait, ready to entrap you. Gird yourselves against his wicked devices, and, led by the light of the name of the All-Seeing God, make your escape from the darkness that surroundeth you. — Baháʼu'lláhThis lower nature in humans is symbolized as Satan — the evil ego within us, not an evil personality outside. — ʻAbdu'l-Bahá
There are a few differing Buddhist views on sin. American Zen author Brad Warner states that in Buddhism there is no concept of sin at all. The Buddha Dharma Education Association also expressly states "The idea of sin or original sin has no place in Buddhism."
Ethnologist Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf explained, "In Buddhist thinking the whole universe, men as well as gods, are subject to a reign of law. Every action, good or bad, has an inevitable and automatic effect in a long chain of causes, an effect which is independent of the will of any deity. Even though this may leave no room for the concept of 'sin' in the sense of an act of defiance against the authority of a personal god, Buddhists speak of 'sin' when referring to transgressions against the universal moral code."
However, Anantarika-kamma in Theravada Buddhism is a heinous crime, which through karmic process brings immediate disaster. In Mahayana Buddhism these five crimes are referred to as pañcānantarya (Pāli), and are mentioned in "The Sutra Preached by the Buddha on the Total Extinction of the Dharma", The five crimes or sins are:
The doctrine of sin is central to Christianity, since its basic message is about redemption in Christ. Christian hamartiology describes sin as an act of offense against God by despising his persons and Christian biblical law, and by injuring others. In Christian views it is an evil human act, which violates the rational nature of man as well as God's nature and his eternal law. According to the classical definition of St. Augustine of Hippo sin is "a word, deed, or desire in opposition to the eternal law of God."
Among some scholars, sin is understood mostly as legal infraction or contract violation of non-binding philosophical frameworks and perspectives of Christian ethics, and so salvation tends to be viewed in legal terms. Other Christian scholars understand sin to be fundamentally relational—a loss of love for the Christian God and an elevation of self-love ("concupiscence", in this sense), as was later propounded by Augustine in his debate with the Pelagians. As with the legal definition of sin, this definition also affects the understanding of Christian grace and salvation, which are thus viewed in relational terms.
This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred to as a "sin nature", to something as drastic as total depravity or automatic guilt of all humans through collective guilt.
The concept of original sin was first alluded to in the 2nd century by Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon in his controversy with certain dualist Gnostics. Other church fathers such as Augustine also shaped and developed the doctrine, seeing it as based on the New Testament teaching of Paul the Apostle (Romans and 1 Corinthians ) and the Old Testament verse of Psalms . Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose and Ambrosiaster considered that humanity shares in Adam's sin, transmitted by human generation. Augustine's formulation of original sin after 412 CE was popular among Protestant reformers, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, who equated original sin with concupiscence (or "hurtful desire"), affirming that it persisted even after baptism and completely destroyed freedom to do good. Before 412 CE, Augustine said that free will was weakened but not destroyed by original sin. But after 412 CE this changed to a loss of free will except to sin. Modern Augustinian Calvinism holds this later view. The Jansenist movement, which the Catholic Church declared to be heretical, also maintained that original sin destroyed freedom of will. Instead the Catholic Church declares that Baptism erases original sin.
Sin is an important concept in Islamic ethics. Muslims see sin as anything that goes against the commands of God (Allah), a breach of the laws and norms laid down by religion. Islam teaches that sin is an act and not a state of being. It is believed that God weighs an individual's good deeds against his or her sins on the Day of Judgement and punishes those individuals whose evil deeds outweigh their good deeds. These individuals are thought to be sentenced to afterlife in the fires of "jahannam" (Hell).
Islamic terms for sin include "dhanb" and "khaṭīʾa", which are synonymous and refer to intentional sins; "khiṭʾ", which means simply a sin; and "ithm", which is used for grave sins.
Judaism regards the violation of any of the 613 commandments as a sin. Judaism teaches that to sin is a part of life, since there is no perfect man and everyone has an inclination to do evil. Sin has many classifications and degrees, but the principal classification is that of "missing the mark" ("cheit" in Hebrew). Some sins are punishable with death by the court, others with death by heaven, others with lashes, and others without such punishment, but no sins committed with willful intentions go without consequence. Sins committed out of lack of knowledge are not considered sins, since a sin can't be a sin if the one who did it didn't know it was wrong. Unintentional sins are considered less severe sins.
Sins between people are considered much more severe in Judaism than sins between man and God. Yom Kippur, the main day of repentance in Judaism, can atone for sins between man and God, but not for sins between man and his fellow, that is until he has appeased his friend. Eleazar ben Azariah derived [this from the verse]: "From all your sins before God you shall be cleansed" (Book of Leviticus, 16:30) – for sins between man and God Yom Kippur atones, but for sins between man and his fellow Yom Kippur does not atone until he appeases his fellow.
When the Temple yet stood in Jerusalem, people would offer Karbanot (sacrifices) for their misdeeds. The atoning aspect of "karbanot" is carefully circumscribed. For the most part, "karbanot" only expiate unintentional sins, that is, sins committed because a person forgot that this thing was a sin or by mistake. No atonement is needed for violations committed under duress or through lack of knowledge, and for the most part, "karbanot" cannot atone for a malicious, deliberate sin. In addition, "karbanot" have no expiating effect unless the person making the offering sincerely repents of his or her actions before making the offering, and makes restitution to any person who was harmed by the violation.
Judaism teaches that all willful sin has consequences. The completely righteous suffer for their sins (by humiliation, poverty, and suffering that God sends them) in this world and receive their reward in the world to come. The in-between (not completely righteous or completely wicked), suffer for and repent their sins after death and thereafter join the righteous. The very evil do not repent even at the gates of hell. Such people prosper in this world to receive their reward for any good deed, but cannot be cleansed by and hence cannot leave "gehinnom", because they do not or cannot repent. This world can therefore seem unjust where the righteous suffer, while the wicked prosper. Many great thinkers have contemplated this.
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Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Defamation
Defamation (sometimes known as calumny, vilification, libel, slander or traducement) is the oral or written communication of a false statement about another that unjustly harms their reputation and usually constitutes a tort or crime. In several countries, including South Korea and Sweden, as well as the U.S. state of Louisiana, communicating a true statement can also be considered defamation.
Under common law, to constitute defamation, a claim must generally be false and must have been made to someone other than the person defamed. Some common law jurisdictions also distinguish between spoken defamation, called slander, and defamation in other media such as printed words or images, called libel. In the United States, false light laws protect against statements which are not technically false but are misleading.
In some jurisdictions, defamation is treated as a crime rather than a civil wrong. The United Nations Human Rights Committee ruled in 2012 that the libel law of one country, the Philippines, was inconsistent with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as well as urging that "State parties [to the Covenant] should consider the decriminalization of libel". In Saudi Arabia, defamation of the state, or a past or present ruler, is punishable under terrorism legislation.
A person who defames another may be called a "defamer", "libeler", "slanderer" or rarely a "famacide". The term "libel" is derived from the Latin "libellus" (literally "small book", or "booklet").
As of 2017, at least 130 UNESCO member states retained criminal defamation laws. In 2017, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Office of the Representative on Freedom of the Media issued a report on criminal defamation and anti-blasphemy laws among its member states, which found that defamation is criminalized in nearly three-quarters (42) of the 57 OSCE participating states. Many of the laws pertaining to defamation include specific provisions for harsher punishment for speech or publications critical of heads of state, public officials, state bodies and the state itself. The OSCE report also noted that blasphemy and religious insult laws exist in around one third of OSCE participating states; many of these combine blasphemy and religious insult with elements of hate speech legislation.
In Africa, at least four member states decriminalized defamation between 2012 and 2017. The ruling by the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights in Lohé Issa Konaté v. the Republic of Burkina Faso set a precedent in the region against imprisonment as a legitimate penalty for defamation, characterizing it as a violation of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the treaty of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Countries in every region have moved to advance the criminalization of defamation by extending legislation to online content. Cybercrime and anti-terrorism laws passed throughout the world have led to bloggers appearing before courts, with some serving time in prison. The United Nations, OSCE, Organisation of American States (OAS) and African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights Special Rapporteurs for Freedom of Expression stated in a joint declaration in March 2017 that "general prohibitions on the dissemination of information based on vague and ambiguous ideas, including 'false news' or 'non-objective information', are incompatible with international standards for restrictions on freedom of expression...and should be abolished."
The common law origins of defamation lie in the torts of "slander" (harmful statement in a transient form, especially speech) and "libel", each of which gives a common law right of action.
"Defamation" is the general term used internationally, and is used in this article where it is not necessary to distinguish between "slander" and "libel". Libel and slander both require publication. The fundamental distinction between libel and slander lies solely in the "form" in which the defamatory matter is published. If the offending material is published in some fleeting form, as by spoken words or sounds, sign language, gestures or the like, then it is slander.
Libel is defined as defamation by written or printed words, pictures, or in any form other than by spoken words or gestures. The law of libel originated in the 17th century in England. With the growth of publication came the growth of libel and development of the tort of libel.
An early example of libel is the case of John Peter Zenger in 1735. Zenger was hired to publish "New York Weekly Journal". When he printed another man's article that criticized William Cosby, who was then British Royal Governor of Colonial New York, Zenger was accused of seditious libel. The verdict was returned as "Not Guilty" on the charge of seditious libel, because it was proven that all the statements Zenger had published about Cosby had been true, so there was not an issue of defamation. Another example of libel is the case of "New York Times Co. v. Sullivan" (1964). The U.S. Supreme Court overruled a state court in Alabama that had found "The New York Times" guilty of libel for printing an advertisement that criticized Alabama officials for mistreating student civil rights activists. Even though some of what "The Times" printed was false, the court ruled in its favor, saying that libel of a public official requires proof of actual malice, which was defined as a "knowing or reckless disregard for the truth".
There are several things a person must prove to establish that libel has taken place. In the United States, a person must prove that the statement was false, caused harm, and was made without adequate research into the truthfulness of the statement. These steps are for an ordinary citizen. For a celebrity or public official, a person must prove the first three steps, "and" that the statement was made with the intent to do harm or with reckless disregard for the truth, which is usually specifically referred to as "actual malice".
At one time, the honor of peers was especially protected by the law; while defamation of a commoner was known as libel or slander, the defamation of a peer (or of a Great Officer of State) was called "scandalum magnatum," literally "the scandal of magnates."
Many nations have criminal penalties for defamation in some situations, and different conditions for determining whether an offense has occurred. ARTICLE 19, a British free expression advocacy group, has published global maps charting the existence of criminal defamation law across the globe, as well as showing countries that have special protections for political leaders or functionaries of the state.
There can be regional statutes that may differ from the national norm. For example, in the United States, defamation is generally limited to the living. However, there are 7 states (Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah) that have criminal statutes regarding defamation of the dead.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has also published a detailed database on criminal and civil defamation provisions in 55 countries, including all European countries, all member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the United States and Canada.
In a 2012 ruling on a complaint filed by a broadcaster who had been imprisoned for violating Philippine libel law, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights held that the criminalization of libel without provision of a public figure doctrine – as in Philippine criminal law – violates freedom of expression and is inconsistent with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Questions of group libel have been appearing in common law for hundreds of years. One of the earliest known cases of a defendant being tried for defamation of a group was the case of Rex v. Orme and Nutt (1700). In this case, the jury found that the defendant was guilty of libeling several subjects, though they did not specifically identify who these subjects were. A report of the case told that the jury believed that "where a writing … inveighs against mankind in general, or against a particular order of men, as for instance, men of the gown, this is no libel, but it must descend to particulars and individuals to make it libel." This jury believed that only individuals who believed they were specifically defamed had a claim to a libel case. Since the jury was unable to identify the exact people who were being defamed, there was no cause to identify the statements were a libel.
Another early English group libel which has been frequently cited is King v. Osborne (1732). In this case, the defendant was on trial "for printing a libel reflecting upon the Portuguese Jews." The printing in question claimed that Jews who had arrived in London from Portugal burned a Jewish woman to death when she had a child with a Christian man, and that this act was common. Following Osborne's anti-Semitic publication, several Jews were attacked. Initially, the judge seemed to believe the court could do nothing since no individual was singled out by Osborne's writings. However, the court concluded that "since the publication implied the act was one Jews frequently did, the whole community of Jews was defamed." Though various reports of this case give differing accounts of the crime, this report clearly shows a ruling based on group libel. Since laws restricting libel were accepted at this time because of its tendency to lead to a breach of peace, group libel laws were justified because they showed potential for an equal or perhaps greater risk of violence. For this reason, group libel cases are criminal even though most libel cases are civil torts.
From early times, people have comprehended defamatory and injurious statements made in a public manner ("convicium adversus bonos mores").
The Praetorian Edict, codified circa 130 A.D., declared that an action could be brought up for shouting at someone contrary to good morals: "qui, adversus bonos mores convicium cui fecisse cuiusve opera factum esse dicitur, quo adversus bonos mores convicium fieret, in eum iudicium dabo." In this case the essence of the offense lay in the unwarrantable public proclamation. According to Ulpian, not all shouting was actionable. Drawing on the argument of Labeo, he asserted that the offense consisted in shouting contrary to the morals of the city ("adversus bonos mores huius civitatis") something apt to bring in disrepute or contempt ("quae... ad infamiam vel invidiam alicuius spectaret") the person exposed thereto. Any act apt to bring another person into disrepute gave rise to an "actio injurarum". In such a case the truth of the statements was no justification for the public and insulting manner in which they had been made. But even in public matters, the accused had the opportunity to justify his actions by openly stating what he considered necessary for public safety to be denounced by the libel, and proving his assertions to be true. The second head included defamatory statements made in private, and in this case the offense lay in the content of the imputation, not in the manner of its publication. The truth was therefore a sufficient defense, for no man had a right to demand legal protection for a false reputation.
Roman law was aimed at giving sufficient scope for the discussion of a man's character, while it protected him from needless insult and pain. The remedy for verbal defamation was long confined to a civil action for a monetary penalty, which was estimated according to the significance of the case, and which, although vindictive in its character, doubtless included practically the element of compensation. But a new remedy was introduced with the extension of the criminal law, under which many kinds of defamation were punished with great severity. At the same time increased importance attached to the publication of defamatory books and writings, the "libri" or "libelli famosi", from which we derive our modern use of the word libel; and under the later emperors the latter term came to be specially applied to anonymous accusations or pasquils, the dissemination of which was regarded as particularly dangerous, and visited with very severe punishment, whether the matter contained in them were true or false.
In Anglo-Saxon England, slander was punished by cutting out the tongue.
Even if a statement is defamatory, there are circumstances in which such statements are permissible in law.
In many legal systems, adverse public statements about legal citizens presented as fact must be proven false to be defamatory or slanderous/libellous. Proving adverse public character statements to be true is often the best defense against a prosecution for libel or defamation. Statements of opinion that cannot be proven true or false will likely need to apply some other kind of defense. The use of the defense of justification has dangers, however; if the defendant libels the plaintiff and then runs the defense of truth and fails, he may be said to have aggravated the harm.
Another important aspect of defamation is the difference between fact and opinion. Statements made as "facts" are frequently actionable defamation. Statements of opinion or pure opinion are not actionable. Some jurisdictions decline to recognize any legal distinction between fact and opinion. To win damages in a libel case, the plaintiff must first show that the statements were "statements of fact or mixed statements of opinion and fact" and second that these statements were false. Conversely, a typical defense to defamation is that the statements are opinion, relying on opinion privilege. One of the major tests to distinguish whether a statement is fact or opinion is whether the statement can be proved true or false in a court of law. If the statement can be proved true or false, then, on that basis, the case will be heard by a jury to determine whether it is true or false. If the statement cannot be proved true or false, the court may dismiss the libel case without it ever going to a jury to find facts in the case.
Under English common law, proving the truth of the allegation was originally a valid defense only in civil libel cases. Criminal libel was construed as an offence against the public at large based on the tendency of the libel to provoke breach of peace, rather than being a crime based upon the actual defamation "per se"; its veracity was therefore considered irrelevant. Section 6 of the Libel Act 1843 allowed the proven truth of the allegation to be used as a valid defense in criminal libel cases, but only if the defendant also demonstrated that publication was for the "Public Benefit".
In some systems, however, notably the Philippines, truth alone is not a defense.
It is also necessary in these cases to show that there is a well-founded public interest in the specific information being widely known, and this may be the case even for public figures. Public interest is generally not "what the public is interested in", but rather "what is in the interest of the public".
"Noonan v. Staples" is sometimes cited as precedent that truth is not always a defense to libel in the U.S., but the case is actually not valid precedent on that issue because Staples did not argue First Amendment protection, which is one theory for truth as complete defense, for its statements. The court assumed in this case that the Massachusetts law was constitutional under the First Amendment without it being argued by the parties.
In a 2012 ruling involving Philippine libel law, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights commented, "Penal defamation laws should include defense of truth."
Privilege provides a complete bar and answer to a defamation suit, though conditions may have to be met before this protection is granted.
Privilege is any circumstance that justifies or excuses a prima facie tort. It can be said that privilege recognizes a defendant's action stemmed from an interest of social importance – and that society wants to protect such interests by not punishing those who pursue them. Privilege can be argued whenever a defendant can show that he acted from a justifiable motive. While some privileges have long been recognized, the court may create a new privilege for particular circumstances – privilege as an affirmative defense is a potentially ever-evolving doctrine. Such newly created or circumstantially recognized privileges are referred to as residual justification privileges.
There are two types of privilege in the common law tradition:
Defenses to claims of defamation include:
In addition to the above, the defendant may claim that the allegedly defamatory statement is not actually capable of being defamatoryan insulting statement that does not actually harm someone's reputation is "prima facie" not libelous. Also, the public figure doctrine, also called the absence of malice rule, may be used as a defense.
In the United States, special rules apply in the case of statements made in the press concerning public figures, which can be used as a defense. A series of court rulings led by "New York Times Co. v. Sullivan", 376 U.S. 254 (1964) established that for a public official (or other legitimate public figure) to win a libel case in the United States, the statement must have been published knowing it to be false or with reckless disregard to its truth (also known as actual malice).
Under United States law, libel generally requires five key elements: the plaintiff must prove that the information was published, the plaintiff was directly or indirectly identified, the remarks were defamatory towards the plaintiff's reputation, the published information is false, and that the defendant is at fault.
The Associated Press estimates that 95% of libel cases involving news stories do not arise from high-profile news stories, but "run of the mill" local stories like news coverage of local criminal investigations or trials, or business profiles. Media liability insurance is available to newspapers to cover potential damage awards from libel lawsuits.
Defamation laws may come into tension with freedom of speech, leading to censorship or chilling effects where publishers fear lawsuits. Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights permits restrictions on freedom of speech when necessary to protect the reputation or rights of others.
Jurisdictions resolve this tension in different ways, in particular in determining where the burden of proof lies when unfounded allegations are made. The power of the internet to disseminate comment, which may include malicious comment, has brought a new focus to the issue.
There is a broader consensus against laws that "criminalize" defamation. Human rights organizations, and other organizations such as the Council of Europe and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, have campaigned against strict defamation laws that criminalize defamation. The European Court of Human Rights has placed restrictions on criminal libel laws because of the freedom of expression provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights. One notable case was "Lingens v. Austria" (1986).
Article 17 of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states
In Azerbaijan, the crime of defamation (Article 147) may result in a fine up to "500 times the amount of minimum salaries", public work for up to 240 hours, correctional work for up to one year, or imprisonment of up to six months. Penalties are aggravated to up to three years of prison if the victim is falsely accused of having committed a crime "of grave or very grave nature" (Article 147.2). The crime of insult (Article 148) can lead to a fine of up to 1000 times the minimum wage, or to the same penalties of defamation for public work, correctional work or imprisonment.
According to the OSCE report on defamation laws, "Azerbaijan intends to remove articles on defamation and insult from criminal legislation and preserve them in the Civil Code".
Article 246 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China () criminalizes defamation.
Defamation can be prosecuted either criminally or civilly, according to what is followed under Article 230-1 of the Criminal Code of Japan.(The Japanese word for defamation is meiyokison 名誉毀損 めいよきそん, which, when broken down, literally means "damaged honor".) An example case can be found at
According to the Constitution of India, the fundamental right to free speech (Article 19) is subject to reasonable restrictions. Accordingly, for the purpose of criminal defamation, "reasonable restrictions" are defined in "Section 499" of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. This section defines defamation and provides valid exceptions when a statement is not considered to be defamation. It says that defamation takes place "by words either spoken or intended to be read, or by signs or by visible representations, to make or publish any imputation concerning any person intending to harm, or knowing or having reason to believe that such imputation will harm, the reputation, of such person". In India, a defamation case can be filed under either criminal law or civil law or cyber crime law, together or in sequence.
The punishment for defamation is a simple imprisonment for up to two years or with fine or with both.
According to Defamation Prohibition Law (1965), defamation can constitute either civil or criminal offense.
As a civil offense, defamation is considered a tort case and the court may award a compensation of up to 50,000 NIS to the person targeted by the defamation, while the plaintiff doesn't have to prove a material damage.
As a criminal offense, defamation is punishable by a year of imprisonment. In order to constitute a felony, defamation must be intentional and target at least two persons.
In a 2015 case, a Saudi writer was arrested for defaming a former ruler of the country. Reportedly, under a [2014] counterterrorism law, "actions that 'threaten Saudi Arabia's unity, disturb public order, or defame the reputation of the state or the king' are considered acts of terrorism. The law decrees that a suspect can be held incommunicado for 90 days without the presence of their lawyer during the initial questioning."
In South Korea, both true and false statements are can be considered defamation. Any statement made with the intention to harm another person's reputation can be considered illegal, and those charged may face fines and/or imprisonment of up to seven years. South Korea is the only country in the world where an individual can be found criminally liable and imprisoned for damaging another's reputation by publicly revealing true facts.
Defamation is covered by several laws in South Korea; civil law, traditional criminal law and modern internet criminal law-under the "Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Data Protection, etc." (Internet and email related laws) – 2005 Chapter IX Article 61 (Penal Provisions). As image and "public face" are very important in East Asia, it is not difficult to file a police report for 'loss of face' in South Korea, to the point that many minors file such reports.
In addition to this criminal law, in South Korea one can also sue for damages with civil actions. Generally, criminal actions proceed civil ones with South Korean police as judicial investigators.
As of June 2010, South Korean courts are still hearing defamation cases, and individuals are frequently fined several thousand dollars for exposing true facts. International "comity" procedure or "intent” do not appear to be key in South Korea.
In the former Soviet Union, defamatory insults "could only constitute a criminal offense, not a civil wrong".
Defamation Act, 1859
Title thirteen of the Revised Penal Code of the Philippines addresses "Crimes Against Honor". Chapter one of that title addresses libel and slander. Libel is defined as "public and malicious imputation of a crime, or of a vice or defect, real or imaginary, or any act, omission, condition, status, or circumstance tending to cause the dishonor, discredit, or contempt of a natural or juridical person, or to blacken the memory of one who is dead". Slander is defined as oral defamation. Slander by deed is defined as "any act not included and punished in this title, which shall cast dishonor, discredit or contempt upon another person". Penalties of fine or imprisonment are specified for these crimes and for the threat of libel. A notable characteristic of these crimes under Philippine law is the specification that they apply to imputations both real and imaginary.
In 2012, the Philippines enacted Republic Act 10175, titled "Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012". Essentially, this Act provides that libel is criminally punishable and describes it as: "Libel – the unlawful or prohibited act as defined in Article 355 of the Revised Penal Code, as amended, committed through a computer system or any other similar means which may be devised in the future." Professor Harry Roque of the University of the Philippines has written that under this law, electronic libel is punished with imprisonment from 6 years and one day to up to 12 years. , five petitions claiming the law to be unconstitutional had been filed with the Philippine Supreme Court, one by Senator Teofisto Guingona III. The petitions all claim that the law infringes on freedom of expression, due process, equal protection and privacy of communication.
Article 310 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of China () criminalizes defamation, held constitutional on 7 July 2000 by the Justices of the Constitutional Court, Judicial Yuan ().
According to the Criminal Code of Albania, defamation is a crime. Slandering in the knowledge of falsity is subject to fines from of 40 000 ALL (ca. $350) to 1 million ALL (ca. $8350).. If the slandering occurs in public or damages multiple people, the fine is 40 000 ALL to 3 million ALL (ca. $25 100). In addition, defamation of authorities, public officials or foreign representatives (Articles 227, 239 to 241) are separate crimes with maximum penalties varying from 1 to 3 years of imprisonment.
In Austria, the crime of defamation is foreseen by Article 111 of the Criminal Code. Related criminal offenses include "slander and assault" (Article 115), that happens "if a person insults, mocks, mistreats or threatens will ill-treatment another one in public", and yet "malicious falsehood" (Article 297), defined as a false accusation that exposes someone to the risk of prosecution.
In Belgium, crimes against honor are foreseen in Chapter V of the Belgian Penal Code, Articles 443 to 453-bis. Someone is guilty of calumny "when law admits proof of the alleged fact" and of defamation "when law does not admit this evidence" (Article 443). The penalty is 8 days to one year of imprisonment, plus a fine (Article 444). In addition, the crime of "calumnious denunciation" (Article 445) is punished with 15 days to six months in prison, plus a fine. In any of the crimes covered by Chapter V of the Penal Code, the minimum penalty may be doubled (Article 453-bis) "when one of the motivations of the crime is hatred, contempt or hostility of a person due to his or her intended race, color of the skin, ancestry, national origin or ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, place of birth, age, patrimony, philosophical or religious belief, present or future health condition, disability, native language, political belief, physical or genetical characteristic, or social origin".
In Bulgaria, defamation is formally a criminal offense, but the penalty of imprisonment was abolished in 1999. Articles 146 (insult), 147 (criminal defamation) and 148 (public insult) of the Criminal Code prescribe a penalty of fine.
In Croatia, the crime of insult prescribes a penalty of up to three months in prison, or a fine of "up to 100 daily incomes" (Criminal Code, Article 199). If the crime is committed in public, penalties are aggravated to up to six months of imprisonment, or a fine of "up to 150 daily incomes" (Article 199-2). Moreover, the crime of defamation occurs when someone affirms or disseminates false facts about other person that can damage his reputation. The maximum penalty is one year in prison, or a fine of up to 150 daily incomes (Article 200-1). If the crime is committed in public, the prison term can reach one year (Article 200-2). On the other hand, according to Article 203, there is an exemption for the application of the aforementioned articles (insult and defamation) when the specific context is that of a scientific work, literary work, work of art, public information conducted by a politician or a government official, journalistic work, or the defense of a right or the protection of justifiable interests, in all cases "provided that" the conduct was not aimed at damaging someone's reputation.
According to the Czech Criminal Code, Article 184, defamation is a crime. Penalties may reach a maximum prison term of one year (Article 184-1) or, if the crime is committed through the press, film, radio, TV, publicly accessible computer network, or by "similarly effective" methods, the offender may stay in prison for up to two years or be prohibited of exercising a specific activity.
However, only the most severe cases will be subject to criminal prosecution. The less severe cases can be solved by an action for apology, damages or injunctions.
In Denmark, libel is a crime, as defined by Article 267 of the Danish Criminal Code, with a penalty of up to six months in prison or a fine, with proceedings initiated by the victim. In addition, Article 266-b prescribes a maximum prison term of two years in the case of public defamation aimed at a group of persons because of their race, color, national or ethnic origin, religion or "sexual inclination".
In Finland, defamation is a crime, according to the Criminal Code (Chapter 24, Section 9), with a penalty of imprisonment of up to six months or a fine. When the defamation occurs in public, the crime is "aggravated defamation" (Chapter 24, Section 10), with a maximum punishment of two years in prison or a fine. In addition, there is a crime called "dissemination of information violating personal privacy" (Chapter 24, Section 8), which consists in disseminating information, even accurate, in a way that is apt to harm someone's right to privacy. Information that may be relevant with regard to a person's conduct in public office, in business, or in a comparable position, or of information otherwise relevant to a matter of public interest, is not covered by this prohibition.
In France, defamation is a criminal offense defined as "the allegation or [the] allocation of a fact that damages the honor or reputation of the person or body to which the fact is imputed". A defamatory allegation is considered an insult if it does not include any facts or if the claimed facts cannot be verified.
In German law, there is no distinction between libel and slander. , German defamation lawsuits are increasing. The relevant offences of Germany's Criminal Code are §90 (denigration of the Federal President), §90a (denigration of the [federal] State and its symbols), §90b (unconstitutional denigration of the organs of the Constitution), §185 ("insult"), §186 (defamation of character), §187 (defamation with deliberate untruths), §188 (political defamation with increased penalties for offending against paras 186 and 187), §189 (denigration of a deceased person), §192 ("insult" with true statements). Other sections relevant to prosecution of these offences are §190 (criminal conviction as proof of truth), §193 (no defamation in the pursuit of rightful interests), §194 (application for a criminal prosecution under these paragraphs), §199 (mutual insult allowed to be left unpunished), and §200 (method of proclamation). Paragraph 188 has been criticized for allowing certain public figures additional protection against criticism.
In Greece, the maximum prison term for defamation, libel or insult was five years, while the maximum fine was €15,000.
The crime of insult (Article 361, § 1, of the Penal Code) may have led to up to one year of imprisonment and/or a fine, while unprovoked insult (Article
361-A, § 1) was punished with at least three months in prison. In addition, defamation may have resulted in up to two months in prison and/or a fine, while aggravated defamation could have lead to at least 3 months of prison, plus a possible fine (Article 363) and deprivation of the offender's civil rights. Finally, disparaging the memory of a deceased person is punished with imprisonment of up to 6 months (Penal Code, Article 365).
Individuals are protected under the Defamation Act 2009 which came into force on 1 January 2010. The 2009 Act repeals the Defamation Act 1961, which had, together with the underlying principles of the common law of tort, governed Irish defamation law for almost half a century. The 2009 Act represents significant changes in Irish law, as many believe that it previously attached insufficient importance to the media's freedom of expression and weighed too heavily in favor of the individual's right to a good name. The Act has a one-year limitation period which can be extended to two years in exceptional circumstances.
In Italy, there used to be different crimes against honor. The crime of injury (Article 594 of the penal code) referred to the act of offending someone's honor in their presence and was punishable with up to six months in prison or a fine of up to €516. The crime of defamation (Article 595, Penal Code) refers to any other situation involving offending one's reputation before many persons, and is punishable with a penalty of up to a year in prison or up to €1032 in fine, doubled to up to two years in prison or a fine of €2065 if the offense consists in the attribution of a determined fact. When the offense happens by the means of the press or by any other means of publicity, or in a public demonstration, the penalty is of imprisonment from six months to three years, or a fine of at least €516. Both of them were "a querela di parte" crimes, that is, the victim had the right of choosing, in any moment, to stop the criminal prosecution by withdrawing the "querela" (a formal complaint), or even prosecute the fact only with a civil action with no "querela" and therefore no criminal prosecution at all. However, beginning from 15 January 2016, injury is no longer a crime, but a tort, while defamation is still considered a crime like before.
Finally, Article 31 of the Penal Code establishes that crimes committed with abuse of power or with abuse of a profession or art, or with the violation of a duty inherent to that profession or art, lead to the additional penalty of a temporary ban in the
exercise of that profession or art.
Deliberately false accusations of defamation, as with any other crime, lead to the crime of calumny (Article 368, Penal Code), which, under the Italian legal system, is defined as the crime of falsely accusing, before the authorities, one of a crime it didn't commit.
As to the trial, judgment on the legality of the evidence fades into its relevance.
In the Netherlands, defamation is mostly dealt with by lodging a civil complaint at the District Court. Article 167 of book 6 of the Civil Code holds: "When someone is liable towards another person under this Section because of an incorrect or, by its incompleteness, misleading publication of information of factual nature, the court may, upon a right of action (legal claim) of this other person, order the tortfeasor to publish a correction in a way to be set by court." If the court grants an injunction, the defendant is usually ordered to delete the publication or to publish a rectification statement.
In Norway, defamation was a crime punished with imprisonment of up to 6 months or a fine (Penal Code, Chapter 23, § 246). When the offense is likely to harm one's "good name" and reputation, or exposes him to hatred, contempt or loss of confidence, the maximum prison term went up to one year, and if the defamation happens in print, in broadcasting or through an especially aggravating circumstance, imprisonment may have reached two years (§ 247). When the offender acts "against his better judgment", he was liable to a maximum prison term of three years (§ 248). According to § 251, defamation lawsuits must be initiated by the offended person, unless the defamatory act was directed to an indefinite group or a large number of persons, when it may also have been prosecuted by public authorities.
Under the new Penal Code, decided upon by the Parliament in 2005, defamation would cease to exist as a crime. Rather, any person who believes he or she has been subject to defamation will have to press civil lawsuits. The Criminal Code took effect on October 1, 2015.
In Poland, defamation is a crime that consists of accusing someone of a conduct that may degrade him in public opinion or expose him "to the loss of confidence necessary for a given position, occupation or type of activity". Penalties include fine, limitation of liberty and imprisonment for up to a year (Article 212.1 of the Criminal Code). The penalty is more severe when the offense happens through the media (Article 212.2). When the insult is public and aims at offending a group of people or an individual because of his or their nationality, ethnicity, race, religion or lack of religion, the maximum prison term is 3 years.
In Portugal, defamation crimes are: "defamation" (article 180 of the Penal Code; up to six months in prison, or a fine of up to 240 days), "injuries" (art. 181; up to 3 months in prison, or a fine up to 120 days), and "offense to the memory of a deceased person" (art. 185; up to 6 months in prison or a fine of up 240 days). Penalties are aggravated in cases with publicity (art. 183; up to two years in prison or at least 120 days of fine) and when the victim is an authority (art.184; all other penalties aggravated by an extra half). There is yet the extra penalty of "public knowledge of the court decision" (costs paid by the defamer) (art. 189 of Penal Code) and also the crime of "incitation of a crime" (article 297; up to 3 years in prison, or fine).
In Spain, the crime of calumny (Article 205 of the Penal Code) consists of offending one's reputation knowing the falsity of the offense, or with a reckless contempt for truth. Penalties for cases with publicity are imprisonment from six months to two years or a fine of 12 to 24 months-fine, and for other cases only a fine of 6 to 12 months-fine (Article 206). Additionally, the crime of injury (Article 208 of the Penal Code) consists of hurting someone's dignity, depreciating his reputation or injuring his self-esteem, and is only applicable if the offense, by its nature, effects and circumstances, is considered by the general public as strong. Injury has a penalty of fine from 3 to 7 months-fine, or from 6 to 14 months-fine when it's strong and with publicity. According to Article 216, an additional penalty to calumny or injury may be imposed by the judge, determining the publication of the judicial decision (in a newspaper) at the expenses of the defamer.
In Sweden, the criminal offense of denigration ("ärekränkning") is regulated in Chapter 5 of the Criminal Code. Article 1 regulates defamation ("förtal") and consists of pointing out someone as a criminal or as "having a reprehensible way of living", or of providing information about him "intended to cause exposure to the disrespect of others". The penalty is a fine. It is generally not a requirement that the statements are untrue, it is enough if they statements are meant to be vilifying.
Article 2 regulates gross defamation ("grovt förtal") and has a penalty of up to 2 years in prison or a fine. In judging if the crime is gross, the court should consider whether the information, because of its content or the scope of its dissemination, is calculated to produce "serious damage". For example, if it can be established that the defendant knowingly conveyed untruths.
Article 4 makes it a crime to defame a deceased person according to Article 1 or 2. Most obviously, the paragraph is meant to make it illegal to defame someone's parents as a way to bypass the law.
Article 3 regulates other insulting behavior ("förolämpning"), not characterized under Article 1 or 2 and is punishable with a fine or, if it is gross, with up to six months of prison or a fine. While an act of defamation involves a third person, it is not a requirement for insulting behavior.
Under exemptions in the Freedom of the Press Act, Chapter 7, both criminal and civil lawsuits may be brought to court under the laws on denigration.
In Switzerland, the crime of wilful defamation is punished with a maximum term of three years in prison, or with a fine of at least 30 days' fine, according to Article 174-2 of the Swiss Criminal Code. There is wilful defamation when the offender knows the falsity of his/her allegations and intentionally looks to ruin the reputation of one's victim (see Articles 174-1 and 174-2).
On the other hand, defamation is punished only with a maximum monetary penalty of 180 daily penalty units (Article 173-1). When it comes to a deceased or absent person, there is a limitation to enforce the law up to 30 years (after the death).
With the rise of the internet, and also intranets (closed computer networks), defamatory statements may be communicated on webpages or internal memos, without reaching the attention of the courts. Such "closet defamation" may be used to conceal other criminal or negligent acts.
Modern libel and slander laws (as implemented in many, but not all, Commonwealth nations) in the United Kingdom, and in the Republic of Ireland are originally descended from English defamation law. The history of defamation law in England is somewhat obscure. Civil actions for damages seem to have been relatively frequent so far back as the reign of Edward I (1272–1307), though it is unknown whether any generally applicable criminal process was in use. The first fully reported case in which libel is affirmed generally to be punishable at common law was tried during the reign of James I. From that time, both the criminal and civil remedies have been in full operation.
English law allows actions for libel to be brought in the High Court for any published statements alleged to defame a named or identifiable individual or individuals (under English law companies are legal persons, and allowed to bring suit for defamation) in a manner that causes them loss in their trade or profession, or causes a reasonable person to think worse of them. Allowable defenses are justification (the truth of the statement), fair comment (whether the statement was a view that a reasonable person could have held), absolute privilege (whether the statements were made in Parliament or in court, or whether they were fair reports of allegations in the public interest) and qualified privilege (where it is thought that the freedom of expression outweighs the protection of reputation, but not to the degree of granting absolute immunity). An offer of amends is a barrier to litigation. A defamatory statement is presumed to be false unless the defendant can prove its truth. Furthermore, to collect compensatory damages, a public official or public figure must prove actual malice (knowing falsity or reckless disregard for the truth). A private individual must only prove negligence (not using due care) to collect compensatory damages. To collect punitive damages, all individuals must prove actual malice.
Criminal libel was abolished on 12 January 2010 by section 73 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. There were only a few instances of the criminal libel law being applied. Notably, the Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta was convicted of criminal libel for denouncing the Italian state agent Ennio Belelli in 1912.
Libel law in England and Wales was reformed by the Defamation Act 2013.
In Scots law, as in other jurisdictions that base themselves on the civil law tradition, there is no distinction between libel and slander, and all cases are simply defamation. The equivalent of the defense of justification is "veritas".
In Argentina, the crimes of calumny and injury are foreseen in the chapter "Crimes Against Honor" (Articles 109 to 117-bis) of the Penal Code. Calumny is defined as "the false imputation to a determined person of a concrete crime that leads to a lawsuit" (Article 109). However, expressions referring to subjects of public interest or that are not assertive don't constitute calumny. Penalty is a fine from 3,000 to 30,000 pesos. He who intentionally dishonor or discredit a determined person is punished with a penalty from 1,500 to 20,000 pesos (Article 110).
He who publishes or reproduces, by any means, calumnies and injuries made by others, will be punished as responsible himself for the calumnies and injuries whenever its content is not correctly attributed to the corresponding source. Exceptions are expressions referring to subjects of public interest or that are not assertive (see Article 113). When calumny or injury are committed through the press, a possible extra penalty is the publication of the judicial decision at the expenses of the guilty (Article 114). He who passes to someone else information about a person that is included in a personal database and that one knows to be false, is punished with six months to 3 years in prison. When there is harm to somebody, penalties are aggravated by an extra half (Article 117 bis, §§ 2nd and 3rd).
In Brazil, defamation is a crime, which is prosecuted either as "defamation" (three months to a year in prison, plus fine; Article 139 of the Penal Code), "calumny" (six months to two years in prison, plus fine; Article 138 of the PC) and/or "injury" (one to six months in prison, or fine; Article 140), with aggravating penalties when the crime is practiced in public (Article 141, item III) or against a state employee because of his regular duties. Incitation to hatred and violence is also foreseen in the Penal Code (incitation to a crime, Article 286). Moreover, in situations like bullying or moral constraint, defamation acts are also covered by the crimes of "illegal constraint" (Article 146 of the Penal Code) and "arbitrary exercise of discretion" (Article 345 of PC), defined as breaking the law as a vigilante.
In Chile, the crimes of calumny and slanderous allegation "(injurias)" are covered by Articles 412 to 431 of the Penal Code. Calumny is defined as "the false imputation of a determined crime and that can lead to a public prosecution" (Article 412). If the calumny is written and with publicity, penalty is "lower imprisonment" in its medium degree plus a fine of 11 to 20 "vital wages" when it refers to a crime, or "lower imprisonment" in its minimum degree plus a fine of 6 to 10 "vital wages" when it refers to a misdemeanor (Article 413). If it is not written or with publicity, penalty is "lower imprisonment" in its minimum degree plus a fine of 6 to 15 "vital wages" when it's about a crime, or plus a fine of 6 to 10 "vital wages" when it's about a misdemeanor (Article 414).
According to Article 25 of the Penal Code, "lower imprisonment" is defined as a prison term between 61 days and five years. According to Article 30, the penalty of "lower imprisonment" in its medium or minimum degrees carries with it also the suspension of the exercise of a public position during the prison term.
Article 416 defines "injuria" as "all expression said or action performed that dishonors, discredits or causes contempt". Article 417 defines broadly ""injurias graves"" (grave slander), including the imputation of a crime or misdemeanor that cannot lead to public prosecution, and the imputation of a vice or lack of morality, which are capable of harming considerably the reputation, credit or interests of the offended person. "Grave slander" in written form or with publicity are punished with "lower imprisonment" in its minimum to medium degrees plus a fine of 11 to 20 "vital wages". Calumny or slander of a deceased person (Article 424) can be prosecuted by the spouse, children, grandchildren, parents, grandparents, siblings and heirs of the offended person. Finally, according to Article 425, in the case of calumnies and slander published in foreign newspapers, are considered liable all those who from Chilean territory sent articles or gave orders for publication abroad, or contributed to the introduction of such newspapers in Chile with the intention of propagating the calumny and slander.
In March 2016 a civil action for defamation led to imposition of a four-year prison sentence on a newspaper publisher.
As is the case for most Commonwealth jurisdictions, Canada follows English law on defamation issues (except in Quebec where the private law is derived from French civil law). In common law, defamation covers any communication that tends to lower the esteem of the subject in the minds of ordinary members of the public. Probably true statements are not excluded, nor are political opinions. Intent is always presumed, and it is not necessary to prove that the defendant intended to defame. In "Hill v. Church of Scientology of Toronto" (1995), the Supreme Court of Canada rejected the "actual malice" test adopted in the US case "New York Times Co. v. Sullivan". Once a claim has been made, the defendant may avail themselves of a defense of justification (the truth), fair comment, responsible communication, or privilege. Publishers of defamatory comments may also use the defense of innocent dissemination where they had no knowledge of the nature of the statement, it was not brought to their attention, and they were not negligent.
In Quebec, defamation was originally grounded in the law inherited from France. To establish civil liability for defamation, the plaintiff must establish, on a balance of probabilities, the existence of an injury (fault), a wrongful act (damage), and of a causal connection (link of causality) between the two. A person who has made defamatory remarks will not necessarily be civilly liable for them. The plaintiff must further demonstrate that the person who made the remarks committed a wrongful act. Defamation in Quebec is governed by a reasonableness standard, as opposed to strict liability; a defendant who made a false statement would not be held liable if it was reasonable to believe the statement was true.
Regarding defamation on the internet, in 2011 the Supreme Court of Canada held that a person who posts hyperlinks on a website which lead to another site with defamatory content is not publishing that defamatory material for the purposes of libel and defamation law.
In Canada, the "Criminal Code" specifies the following as criminal offences:
The criminal portion of the law has been rarely applied, but it has been observed that, when treated as an indictable offence, it appears to arise from statements made against an agent of the Crown, such as a police officer, a corrections officer, or a Crown attorney. In the most recent case, in 1994 Bradley Waugh and Ravin Gill were charged with criminal libel for publicly accusing six prison guards of the racially motivated murder of a black inmate.
According to an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe official report on defamation laws issued in 2005, 57 persons in Canada were accused of defamation, libel and insult, among which 23 were convicted – 9 to prison sentences, 19 to probation and one to a fine. The average period in prison was 270 days, and the maximum sentence was 1460 days of imprisonment.
The origins of U.S. defamation law pre-date the American Revolution; one famous 1734 case involving John Peter Zenger sowed the seed for the later establishment of truth as an absolute defense against libel charges. The outcome of the case is one of jury nullification, and not a case where the defense acquitted itself as a matter of law, as before the Zenger case defamation law had not provided the defense of truth.
Though the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect freedom of the press, for most of the history of the United States, the Supreme Court neglected to apply the First Amendment to libel cases involving media defendants. This left libel laws, based upon the traditional common law of defamation inherited from the English legal system, mixed across the states. The 1964 case "New York Times Co. v. Sullivan" dramatically altered the nature of libel law in the United States by elevating the fault element for public officials to actual malicethat is, public figures could win a libel suit only if they could demonstrate the publisher's "knowledge that the information was false" or that the information was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not".
Later the Supreme Court held that statements that are so ridiculous to be clearly not true are protected from libel claims, as are statements of opinion relating to matters of public concern that do not contain a provably false factual connotation. Subsequent state and federal cases have addressed defamation law and the Internet.
Defamation law in the United States is much less plaintiff-friendly than its counterparts in European and the Commonwealth countries. A comprehensive discussion of what is and is not libel or slander under United States law is difficult, as the definition differs between different states and is further affected by federal law. Some states codify what constitutes slander and libel together, merging the concepts into a single defamation law.
Although laws vary by state, in the United States a defamation action typically requires that a plaintiff claiming defamation prove that the defendant:
American writers and publishers are protected from foreign libel judgments not compliant with the US First Amendment, or libel tourism, by the SPEECH Act, which was passed by the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010. It is based on the New York State 2008 Libel Terrorism Protection Act (also known as "Rachel's Law", after Rachel Ehrenfeld who initiated the state and federal laws). Both the New York state law and the federal law were passed unanimously.
Defenses to defamation that may defeat a lawsuit, including possible dismissal before trial, include the statement being one of opinion rather than fact or being "fair comment and criticism". Truth is always a defense.
Most states recognize that some categories of statements are considered to be defamatory "per se", such that people making a defamation claim for these statements do not need to prove that the statement was defamatory.
In an action for defamation "per se", the law recognizes that certain false statements are so damaging that they create a presumption of injury to the plaintiff's reputation, allowing a defamation case to proceed to verdict with no actual proof of damages. Although laws vary by state, and not all states recognize defamation "per se", there are four general categories of false statement that typically support a "per se" action:
If the plaintiff proves that such a statement was made and was false, to recover damages the plaintiff need only prove that someone had made the statement to any third party. No proof of special damages is required. However, to recover full compensation a plaintiff should be prepared to prove actual damages.
As with any defamation case, truth remains an absolute defense to defamation "per se". This means that even if the statement would be considered defamatory "per se" if false, if the defendant establishes that it is in fact true, an action for defamation "per se" cannot survive.
The conception of what type of allegation may support an action for defamation per se can evolve with public policy. For example, in May 2012 an appeals court in New York, citing changes in public policy with regard to homosexuality, ruled that describing someone as gay is not defamation.
The record libel verdict in the United States was rendered in 1997 against Dow Jones in favor of MMAR Group Inc., awarding $222.7 million. However, the verdict was dismissed in 1999 amid allegations that MMAR failed to disclose audiotapes made by its employees.
Less than half of U.S. states have criminal defamation laws, and the applicability of those laws is limited by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the laws are rarely enforced. At the federal level, there are no criminal defamation or insult laws in the United States. However, on the state level, 23 states and 2 territories have criminal defamation laws on the books, along with 1 state (Iowa) establishing defamation/libel as a criminal offense through case law (without statutorily defined crime): Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands.
Group libel has been on many occasions shown to be found by United States courts to be a crime which was punishable under common law. There were three notable early cases in United States law which found group libel to be a criminal offense. The first of these cases was "State v. Brady" (1890). The holding of this court found that "The law is elementary that a libel need not be on a particular person, but may be upon a family, or a class of persons, if the tendency of the publication is to stir up riot and disorder, and incite to a breach of the peace." This holding is similar to that of "King v. Osborne", in that the court found the prevention of riots to take priority over the protection of speech.
"Jones v. State of Texas" (1897) took place a few years after Brady and held a similar view on group libel. This case was, however, different in that it concerned the defamation of streetcar conductors in Galveston. The court still sided with the state, saying that "It therefore would be a violation of our statute to libel any sect, company, or class of men without naming any person in particular who may belong to said class". Going further than strictly outlawing libel against a religious or racial group, the Jones court found that libel against any group, even a class of workers, had potential to lead to violence between groups.
"People v. Spielman" (1925) upheld same statute as the one in "Beauharnais". In this case, publications defamed members of the Knights of Columbus, falsely assigning an oath to them. In this case the defendant was found guilty of a libel on both "the membership of the American Legion and certain named members of that organization". The holding that individual members were libeled relied on doctrine from the Osborne case. Though these individual members were not named in the publication, their ties to the legion gave them adequate claim to a criminal libel offense. These three cases played a large role in solidifying the American conception of group libel law as it was interpreted in the "Beauharnais" case.
Though the common law interpretation of group libel law has generally been referred to in United States court cases prior to the case of "Beauharnais v. Illinois", the courts have not always taken this stance. There are two notable group libel cases prior to "Beauharnais" where the court went contrary to the holding of Osborne. This first of these cases was "Drozda v. State" (1920). This case examined an instance of libel on the leaders of a Bohemian national organization. The court dismissed their claim, stating that "A government or other body politic, a corporation, religious system, race of people, or a political party, are not subject to criminal libel. Nor could a publication referring generally to any of these be made specific or libelous." This judge believed that since the libel in question was directed towards "those people whom you call leaders", there was not sufficient evidence that those claiming to have been libeled against actually had any comments directed towards them.
The court in "People v. Edmonson" (1930) also denied claims to an apparent case of group libel. In this case, the defendant was accused of libel towards the Jewish community. The judge sided with the defendant, writing that "such an indictment cannot be sustained under the laws of this State, and that no such indictment as one based upon defamatory matter directed against a group or community so large as 'all persons of the Jewish Religion' has ever been sustained in this or any other jurisdiction". The judge further said that "when one realizes how many forms of religion might consider themselves libeled and seek legal redress, where our laws so extended, and when we reflect on how our courts might, in such event, find themselves forced into the position of arbiters of religious truth, it is apparent that more would be lost than could be gained by attempting to protect the good name of a religion by an appeal to the criminal law". In this case, the judge finds that it would be unreasonable to expect courts to take on the responsibility of deciding whether statements towards a religion should or should or should not be considered libel. Though group libel generally favored the Osborne holding prior to the Beauharnais case, there is also a well documented record of United States courts taking a position which more closely resembles that of the Orme and Nutt holding.
"Beauharnais v. Illinois" is one of the better known cases of group libel in the United States judicial system. Joseph Beauharnais was arrested in 1950 for distributing leaflets in Chicago. Within these leaflets, Beauharnais called upon the Chicago government to take action to address "the constant and continuous invasion, harassment and encroachment by the Negro". An Illinois law outlawed the distribution of any material which "portrays depravity, criminality, unchastity, or lack of virtue of a class of citizens, of any race, color, creed or religion which said publication or exhibition exposes the citizens of any race, color, creed or religion to contempt, derision, or obloquy or which is productive of breach of the peace or riots". Beauharnais disagreed with this law, and believed that his publications should be viewed as protected speech rather than group libel.
In a 5–4 decision, the court found Beauharnais guilty of libel. In his majority opinion, Justice Frankfurter wrote that Beauharnais' comments provoked hostility, and, given Illinois' history of racial tensions, should be outlawed.
Justice Black, in his dissent, stated that he believed that the statute could be abused to protect speech that otherwise should not be protected. However Frankfurt disagreed and said that "Every power may be abused, but the possibility of abuse is a poor reason for denying Illinois the power to adopt measures against criminal libels sanctioned by centuries of Anglo-American law." Group libel laws, according to Frankfurt, played an important role in the history of common law, and its existence prevents speech that could lead to violence from being recognized as protected speech.
Though the "Beauharnais" case seemed to set a strong precedent protecting criminal group libel laws at the time, subsequent cases took a stance which more strongly favors speech protections. "R. A. V. v. City of St. Paul" (1992) is one of the most notable of these cases. In St. Paul, Minnesota, it was a crime to place something in public which could cause "anger, alarm, or resentment ... on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, or gender". Representing the unanimous court that held the ordinance invalid on its face, Justice Scalia explained and qualified the categorical exclusions for defamation, obscenity, and fighting words. These categories of speech are not "entirely invisible to the Constitution", but instead "can, consistently with the First Amendment, be regulated because of their constitutionally proscribable content". In this case, Scalia believed that the St. Paul law was a clear case of viewpoint-based discrimination, and therefore unconstitutional.
The Court in "Virginia v. Black" (2003) held in a 7–2 decision that its opinion in "R. A. V." did not make it unconstitutional for a state to prohibit burning a cross with the intent of intimidating any person or group of persons because it prevents intimidation rather than discriminate on the basis of a defendant's beliefs. In her opinion, Justice O'Connor wrote that "as a factual matter it is not true that cross burners direct their intimidating conduct solely to racial or religious minorities. ... The First Amendment permits Virginia to outlaw cross burning done with the intent to intimidate because burning a cross is a particularly virulent form of intimidation. Instead of prohibiting all intimidating messages, Virginia may choose to regulate this subset of intimidating messages". She clarified that "a State may choose to prohibit only those forms of intimidation that are most likely to inspire fear of bodily harm".
Justice Thomas dissented to this holding, giving similar to arguments made for prohibiting flag burning. He wrote that all cross burning should be exempt from the 1st amendment "due to the historical association of cross-burning with terrorism".
Justice Souter had his own opinion, defending all cross burning, even those acts which are committed to cause fear because of "R. A. V.", citing a problem with "the statute's content-based distinction".
While common law has traditionally interpreted group libel laws in a way which protects against defamation, subsequent United States court holdings such as that in "R. A. V. v. City of St. Paul" (1992) and "Virginia v. Black" (2003) have taken a stance that is more protective of free speech.
In Mexico, crimes of calumny, defamation and slanderous allegation "(injurias)" have been abolished in the Federal Penal Code as well as in 15 states. These crimes remain in the penal codes of 17 states, where penalty is, in average, from 1.1 years (for ones convicted for slanderous allegation) to 3.8 years in jail (for those convicted for calumny).
Australian law tends to follow the English law of defamation, though there are differences introduced by statute and by the implied constitutional limitation on governmental powers to limit speech of a political nature established in "Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation (1997)".
On 10 December 2002, the High Court of Australia delivered judgment in the Internet defamation case of "Dow Jones v Gutnick". The judgment established that internet-published foreign publications that defamed an Australian in their Australian reputation could be held accountable under Australian defamation law. The case gained worldwide attention and is often said, inaccurately, to be the first of its kind. A similar case that predates "Dow Jones v Gutnick" is "Berezovsky v Forbes" in England.
Among the various common law jurisdictions, some Americans have presented a visceral and vocal reaction to the "Gutnick" decision. On the other hand, the decision mirrors similar decisions in many other jurisdictions such as England, Scotland, France, Canada and Italy.
In 2005, uniform defamation laws were introduced across Australia. The laws made a number of changes to the common law position, including:
The 2006 reforms also established across all Australian states the availability of truth as an unqualified defense; previously a number of states only allowed a defense of truth with the condition that a public interest or benefit existed. The defendant however still needs to prove that the defamatory imputations are substantially true.
The law as it currently stands in Australia was summarized in the 2015 case of Duffy v Google by Justice Blue in the Supreme Court of South Australia.
Defenses available to defamation defendants include absolute privilege, qualified privilege, justification (truth), honest opinion, publication of public documents, fair report of proceedings of public concern and triviality.
Australia's first Twitter defamation case to go to trial is believed to be "Mickle v Farley". The defendant, former Orange High School student Andrew Farley was ordered to pay $105,000 to a teacher for writing defamatory remarks about her on the social media platform.
A more recent case in defamation law was "Hockey v Fairfax Media Publications Pty Limited" [2015], heard in the Federal Court of Australia. This judgment was significant as it demonstrated that tweets, consisting of even as little as three words, can be defamatory, as was held in this case.
New Zealand received English law with the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in February 1840. The current Act is the Defamation Act 1992 which came into force on 1 February 1993 and repealed the Defamation Act 1954.
New Zealand law allows for the following remedies in an action for defamation: compensatory damages; an injunction to stop further publication; a correction or a retraction; and in certain cases, punitive damages. Section 28 of the Act allows for punitive damages only when a there is a flagrant disregard of the rights of the person defamed.
As the law assumes that an individual suffers loss if a statement is defamatory, there is no need to prove that specific damage or loss has occurred. However, Section 6 of the Act allows for a defamation action brought by a corporate body to proceed only when the body corporate alleges and proves that the publication of the defamation has caused or is likely to cause pecuniary loss to that body corporate.
The following defenses are allowed:
matters.
The Hebrew term lashon hara is the halakhic term for derogatory speech about another person. "Lashon hara" differs from defamation in that its focus is on the use of true speech for a wrongful purpose, rather than falsehood and harm arising. By contrast, "hotzaat shem ra" ("spreading a bad name"), also called "hotzaat diba", consists of untrue remarks, and is best translated as "slander" or "defamation". "Hotzaat shem ra" is worse, and consequently a graver sin, than "lashon hara".
In Roman Catholic theology there are seen to be two sins, that of lying and that of impinging on a person's right to a reputation. It is considered to be closed to detraction, the sin of revealing previously unknown faults or sins of another person to a third person.
Some jurisdictions have a separate tort or delict of injury, intentional infliction of emotional distress, outrageousness, or convicium, involving the making of a statement, even if truthful, intended to harm the claimant out of malice; some have a separate tort or delict of "invasion of privacy" in which the making of a true statement may give rise to liability: but neither of these comes under the general heading of "defamation". Some jurisdictions also have the tort of "false light", in which a statement may be technically true, but so misleading as to be defamatory. There is also, in almost all jurisdictions, a tort or delict of "misrepresentation", involving the making of a statement that is untrue even though not defamatory. Thus a surveyor who states a house is free from risk of flooding has not defamed anyone, but may still be liable to someone who purchases the house relying on this statement. Other increasingly common claims similar to defamation in U.S. law are claims that a famous trademark has been diluted through tarnishment, see generally trademark dilution, "intentional interference with contract", and "negligent misrepresentation".
Criminal laws prohibiting protests at funerals, sedition, false statements in connection with elections, and the use of profanity in public, are also often used in contexts similar to criminal libel actions.
The boundaries of a court's power to hold individuals in "contempt of court" for what amounts to alleged defamatory statements about judges or the court process by attorneys or other people involved in court cases is also not well established in many common law countries.
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Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Squatting
Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. Author Robert Neuwirth suggested in 2004 that there were one billion squatters globally.
Squatting occurs worldwide and tends to occur when people who are poor and homeless find empty buildings or land to occupy for housing. It has a long history, broken down by country below. In developing countries and least developed countries, shanty towns often begin as squatted settlements. There are pavement dwellers in India and South Africa, represented by groups such as Slum Dwellers International and Abahlali baseMjondolo. In Hong Kong there are rooftop slums. In Brazil, there are favelas and large social movements of thousands of people such as the Homeless Workers' Movement (MTST) and the Landless Workers' Movement (MST). Squatted settlements are known in Spanish-speaking countries under terms such as villa miseria (Argentina), pueblos jóvenes (Peru), okupas (Chile, Spain) and asentamiento irregulares (Guatemala, Uruguay).
In industrialized countries there are often squats and also political squatting movements, which can be anarchist, autonomist, or socialist in nature. Oppositional movements from the 1960s and 1970s created freespaces such as Freetown Christiania in Denmark or Ruigoord in the Netherlands. Each local situation determines the context, for example in Italy there are self-managed social centres and in Athens, Greece, there are refugee squats. In England and Wales, there were estimated to be 50,000 squatters in the late 1970s.
The majority of squatting is residential in nature. Squatting tends to occur when a poor and homeless population sees derelict property or land. According to author Robert Neuwirth, there were over 1 billion (one in seven) squatters worldwide in 2004. If current trends continue, this will increase to 2 billion by 2030 (one in four), and 3 billion by 2050 (one in three). However, despite the numbers of people squatting, according to academic Kesia Reeve, "squatting is largely absent from policy and academic debate and is rarely conceptualised, as a problem, as a symptom, or as a social or housing movement."
In many of the world's poorer countries, there are extensive slums or shanty towns, typically built on the edges of major cities and consisting almost entirely of self-constructed housing built without the landowner's permission. While these settlements may, in time, grow to become both legalised and indistinguishable from normal residential neighbourhoods, they often start off as squats with minimal basic infrastructure. Thus, there is no sewerage system, drinking water must be bought from vendors or carried from a nearby tap, and if there is electricity, it is stolen from a passing cable. Such settlements also exist in industrialized countries, such as for example Cañada Real on the outskirts of Madrid.
Squatting can be related to political movements, such as anarchist, autonomist, or socialist. It can be a means to conserve buildings or a protest action. Squats can be used by local communities as free shops, cafés, venues, pirate radio stations or as multi-purpose autonomous social centres.
Dutch sociologist Hans Pruijt separates types of squatters into five distinct categories:
In many countries, squatting is in itself a crime; in others, it is only seen as a civil conflict between the owner and the occupants. Property law and the state have traditionally favoured the property owner. However, in many cases where squatters had "de facto" ownership, laws have been changed to legitimize their status. Squatters often claim rights over the spaces they have squatted by virtue of occupation, rather than ownership; in this sense, squatting is similar to (and potentially a necessary condition of) adverse possession, by which a possessor of real property without title may eventually gain legal title to the real property.
Anarchist Colin Ward comments: "Squatting is the oldest mode of tenure in the world, and we are all descended from squatters. This is as true of the Queen [of the United Kingdom] with her as it is of the 54 percent of householders in Britain who are owner-occupiers. They are all the ultimate recipients of stolen land, for to regard our planet as a commodity offends every conceivable principle of natural rights."
Others have a different view. UK police official Sue Williams, for example, has stated that "Squatting is linked to anti-social behaviour and can cause a great deal of nuisance and distress to local residents. In some cases there may also be criminal activities involved."
The public attitude toward squatting varies, depending on legal aspects, socioeconomic conditions, and the type of housing occupied by squatters. In particular, while squatting of municipal buildings may be treated leniently, squatting of private property often leads to strong negative reaction on the part of the public and authorities. Squatting, when done in a positive and progressive manner, can be viewed as a way to reduce crime and vandalism to vacant properties, depending on the squatter's ability and willingness to conform to certain socioeconomic norms of the community in which they reside. Moreover, squatters can contribute to the maintenance or upgrading of sites that would otherwise be left unattended, the neglect of which would create (and has created) abandoned, dilapidated and decaying neighborhoods within certain sections of moderately to highly urbanized cities or boroughs, one such example being New York City's Lower Manhattan from roughly the 1970s to the post-9/11 era of the New Millennium.
Adverse possession, also known as squatter's rights, is a method of acquiring title to property through possession for a statutory period under certain conditions. Countries where this principle exists include England and the United States, based on common law. However, some non-common law jurisdictions have laws similar to adverse possession. For example, Louisiana has a legal doctrine called acquisitive prescription, which is derived from French law.
The Zabbaleen settlement and the City of the Dead are both well-known squatter communities in Cairo, Egypt.
There are large squatter communities in Kenya, such as Kibera in Nairobi.
An estimated 1,000 people live in the Grande Hotel Beira in Mozambique.
Informal settlements in Zambia, particularly around Lusaka, are known as kombonis.
In South Africa, squatters tend to live in informal settlements or squatter camps on the outskirts of the larger cities, often but not always near townships. In the mid-1990s, an estimated 7.7 million South Africans lived in informal settlements: a fifth of the country's population. The number has grown rapidly in the post-apartheid era. Many buildings, particularly in the inner city of Johannesburg have also been occupied by squatters. Property owners or government authorities can usually evict squatters after following certain legal procedures including requesting a court order.
In Durban, the city council routinely evicts without a court order in defiance of the law, and there has been sustained conflict between the city council and a shack dwellers' movement known as Abahlali baseMjondolo. The organisation has represented the squatters in land occupations such as the Macassar Village in 2009 and Marikana in 2013. It has also fought against the KZN Slums Act.
There have been a number of similar conflicts between shack dwellers, some linked with the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, and the city council in Cape Town. One of the most high-profile cases was the eviction of squatters in the N2 Gateway homes in the suburb of Delft, where over 20 residents were shot, including a three-year-old child. There have been numerous complaints about the legality of the government's actions. Many of the families then squatted on Symphony Way, a main road in the township of Delft,before being forced to move to a camp called Blikkiesdorp.
In China, informal settlements are known as urban villages.
Israeli settlements are communities of Israeli citizens living in the Palestinian territories. The international community considers the settlements in occupied territory to be illegal,
In March 2018, Israeli settlers were evicted from a house they had illegally occupied in Hebron, a Palestinian city in the West Bank. The fifteen families had argued that they had bought the house, but the High Court of Justice ruled that they had to leave. The Israel Defense Forces declared the building a closed military zone and it was unclear if the Palestinian owners could regain possession. The settlers had already occupied the house and been evicted in 2012. In October 2018, Fatou Bensouda, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court stated that Israel's planned demolition of Bedouin village Khan al-Ahmar could constitute a war crime.
Squatters in Malaysia live on both privately owned and government-owned land. Some squatters have lived on land owned by national electricity company Tenaga Nasional for over five decades.
In Thailand, although evictions have reduced their visibility or numbers in urban areas, many squatters still occupy land near railroad tracks, under overpasses, and waterways. Commercial squatting is common in Thailand, where businesses temporarily seize nearby public real estate (such as sidewalks, roadsides, beaches, etc.) and roll out their enterprise, and at closing time they fold it in and lock it up, thus avoiding the extra cost of having to rent more property.
In Mumbai, there are an estimated 10 to 12 million inhabitants, and six million of them are squatters. The squatters live in a variety of ways. Some possess two- or three-story homes built out of brick and concrete which they have inhabited for years. Geeta Nagar is a squatter village based beside the Indian Navy compound at Colaba. Squatter Colony in Malad East has existed since 1962, and now, people living there pay a rent to the city council of 100 rupees a month. Dharavi is a community of one million squatters. The stores and factories situated there are mainly illegal and so are unregulated, but it is suggested that they do over $1 million in business every day.
Other squatters are pavement dwellers, with very few possessions. Activists such as Jockin Arputham, Prema Gopalan and Sheela Patel are working for better living conditions for slum dwellers, through organisations such as Mahila Milan and Slum Dwellers International.
In the 2016 Mathura clash, members of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi (Free India Legal Ideas Revolutionary Protesters) who had been living in Mathura's largest public park Jawahar Bagh for two years were evicted in a large police operation. At least 24 squatters were killed.
Squatting is a major issue in the Philippines especially but not exclusively in urban areas of the Philippines. Squatting gained notice right after World War II, when people whose homes were destroyed by war were left homeless. They built makeshift houses called "barong-barong" on abandoned private land.
In the late 20th century, the squatter population largely grew but the Philippine government has made separate attempts over the years to transfer some squatters to low-cost housing projects, such as projects in Tondo (in the former Smokey Mountain landfill), Taguig (BLISS Housing Project), and Rodriguez, Rizal.
Philippine law, and society more generally, distinguishes between squatters who squat because of poverty and "professional squatters" who squat in hopes of getting a payment to leave the property.
Philippine-based media and journalists refer squatters as "informal settlers."
Gecekondu (plural gecekondular) is a Turkish word meaning a house put up quickly without proper permissions, a squatter's house, and by extension, a shanty or shack. Gecekondu bölgesi is a neighborhood made of these informal settlements. Shortly after the eviction of Gezi Park, Don Kişot (Quixote) was occupied and stated to be Istanbul's first occupied and self-managed social centre. There are, or have been, several other political squats in İstanbul: Caferağa in Kadıköy was a squatted neighbourhood house evicted in December 2014. "Caferağa brings life, people, and productivity into that old rotting house" said local Turan Yildirim.
Elsewhere in Turkey, a place was occupied in Beşiktaş on March 18, 2014 and named Berkin Elvan Student House after a 15-year-old boy who was shot during the Gezi protests and later died. Atopya was squatted in Ankara in June 2014 by anarchists, who claimed it was the city's first political squat.
In many European countries, there are squatted houses used as residences and also larger squatted projects where people pursue social and cultural activities. An examples of the latter is a former military barracks called Metelkova in Slovenia.
Squat Milada in Prague, Czech Republic was occupied in 1997 and evicted in 2009. Its longevity was in part due to the building not existing in the Land Registry. Klinika was an occupied social centre between 2014 and 2019.
There was a big squatting movement in the newly formed state of Austria following the First World War. Famine was a significant problem for many people in Austria and the "Siedler" (settler) movement developed as these people tried to create shelter and a source of food for themselves. The Ernst Kirchweger Haus (EKH) in Vienna was squatted as a social centre in 1990 and legalised in 2008. Nowadays from time to time empty buildings are squatted and in the most instances given up after negotiations with the authorities. There are some exceptions like in 2014, when about 1,500 riot police officers, a tank-like police vehicle, a police water cannon and helicopters have been used to clear a building occupied by the group "Pizzeria Anarchia" in Vienna.
Christiania in Copenhagen, Denmark is an independent community of almost 900 people founded in 1971 on the site of an abandoned military zone. In Copenhagen, as in other European cities such as Berlin and Amsterdam, the squatter movement was large in the 1980s. It was a social movement, providing housing and alternative culture. A flashpoint came in 1986 with the Battle of Ryesgade. Another flashpoint came in 2007 when Ungdomshuset was evicted. While not technically a squat until 14 December 2006, it was a social centre used by squatters and people involved in alternative culture more generally. After a year of protests, the city council donated a new building.
In early twentieth century France, several artists who would later become world-famous, such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Amedeo Modigliani and Pablo Picasso squatted at the Bateau-Lavoir, in Montmartre, Paris. Paris moved to legitimize some popular artist squats in the mid-2000s by purchasing and renovating the buildings for artist–residents. An example is Les Frigos. In the 2010s there have been several land squats protesting against large infrastructure projects. These are known collectively as Zone to Defend or ZAD (French: zone à défendre), with the most famous one being the ZAD de Notre-Dame-des-Landes.
Starting from December 2012, Greek Police initiated extensive raids in a number of squats in Athens, arresting and charging with offences all illegal occupants (mostly anarchists). Squats including Villa Amalia were evicted. A march in support of the 92 arrestees drew between 3,000 and 8,000 people. After Villa Amalia, Villa Skaramanga and then Villa Lela Karagianni were evicted. Lela Karagianni had been squatted since 1998 and was later reoccupied. The name came from the street, named for a Greek World War II resistance leader of that name. From 2015 onwards Athens has seen refugee squats in response to the European migrant crisis which are anarchist and self-organised. In 2019, several squats in Exarcheia were evicted by the Greek state. Some of the migrants evicted set up a camp outside the Parliament at Syntagma Square.
Squatting in Moldova started with Centro 73 in Chişinău in September 2010. This project was evicted soon after.
The oldest squat in Poland, Rozbrat, was created in 1994 in Poznań. There are also squats in Białystok, Gdańsk, Gliwice, Warsaw and Wrocław.
Geneva in Switzerland had 160 buildings illegally occupied and more than 2,000 squatters, in the middle of the 1990s. The RHINO ("Retour des Habitants dans les Immeubles Non-Occupés," in English: "Return of Inhabitants to Non-Occupied Buildings") was a 19-year-long squat in Geneva. It occupied two buildings on the Boulevard des Philosophes, a few blocks away from the main campus of the University of Geneva. The RHINO organisation often faced legal troubles, and Geneva police evicted the inhabitants on July 23, 2007. There were large riots in Zürich when the Binz occupation was evicted in 2013. The squatters moved to another building.
In the 1970s, squatting in West German cities led to "a self-confident urban counterculture with its own infrastructure of newspapers, self-managed collectives and housing cooperatives, feminist groups, and so on, which was prepared to intervene in local and broader politics". The Autonomen movement protected squats against eviction and participated in radical direct action.
After the German reunification, many buildings were vacated due to the demise of former state-run enterprises and migration to the western parts of Germany, some of which were then occupied by squatters. In Berlin, the now-legalised squats are in desirable areas such as Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg. Before the reunification, squats in Berlin were mostly located in former West Berlin's borough of Kreuzberg. The squats were mainly for residential and social use. Squatting became known by the term "instandbesetzen", from "instandsetzen" ("renovating") and "besetzen" ("occupying").
Squatters moved into the former factory site of J.A. Topf & Söhne in Erfurt in April 2001 and remained there until they were evicted by police in April 2009. The firm made crematoria for Nazi concentration camps. The squatters ran culture programs which drew attention to the history of the company. The occupation was known simply as "Das Besetzte Haus" (the occupied house) and was one of the most well known actions of left-radicals of that period in Germany. A book about the occupation was published in 2012, titled "Topf & Söhne - Besetzung auf einem Täterort" (Topf & Söhne - Occupation of a crime scene).
Despite being illegal, squats exist in many of the larger cities. Examples are Au in Frankfurt and Rote Flora in Hamburg, although the last open squat of Berlin, Brunnenstraße183, was evicted in November 2009. Legalised housing projects include Hafenstraße and Kiefernstraße.
Squatting can also take place for campaigning purposes, such as the Anatopia project, which protested against a Mercedes-Benz test track.
In Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland, there is a small tradition of squatting. In 1919, anarchists occupied a building and were quickly evicted.
Squatters occupied an empty house in downtown Reykjavík on Vatnsstigur street in April 2009. The squatters set up a freeshop and had plans for a social centre, but the occupation was quickly evicted by the police and 22 people were arrested.
Vatnsstigur 4 was briefly resquatted on May 7, 2009, in solidarity with the Rozbrat squat in Poland, which was threatened with eviction.
Also in 2009, a group of graffiti artists called the Pretty Boys occupied Hverfisgata 34. Their intention was to make a clandestine gallery and then when they were not evicted, they legalised the space and called it Gallery Bosnia.
When the Reykjavíkur Akademían (the Reykjavík Academy) was evicted at short notice from Hringbraut 121 in November 2011, it was occupied in protest. The space, which had hosted lectures and also Iceland's trade union and anarchist libraries, was moved to another location but the occupiers were unhappy that the new use of the building would be a guest house for tourists. An art exhibition was organised, with a camera obscura, live music and shadow theatre.
The exact legal position of squatting in Ireland is ambiguous and the mechanisms for removing squatters from properties varies from case to case, sometimes going through the judicial process, other times not. Trespass and occupation of a property is not illegal, but as a definitive process for dealing with squatters does not exist, unlawful evictions do occur, sometimes with the support of the Garda Síochána (Irish Police). However certain 'squatters rights' do exist and can be invoked in the form of adverse possession. An occupant is entitled to legal possession of the title provided they are in continuous and uninterrupted occupation of the property for 12 years. To claim adverse possession the occupant must register an intent to claim the property with the land registry.
Squatting has no major tradition in Ireland, arguably in part due to the perceived strong position of the title holder. It has largely been confined to major cities but with the construction of Ghost estates across the country there has also been a rise in occupations of residential spaces in rural areas. There have been major housing movements and periods of squatting in Ireland, including the activities of the Dublin and Derry Housing Action Committees of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Each had a militant campaign which participated in dozens or hundreds of actions and protests in demand of better housing conditions.
In 2003 activists calling themselves 'Autonomous Community Spaces' entered 'Disco Disco' in Dublin's Parnell Square to turn the space in a social centre. They were violently evicted 24 hours later. From 2003 to 2004 the Magpie Squat was a residential space which housed activists in Dublin's Upper Leeson Street. It is also where the first meeting was held for the opening of what would become Dublin's first autonomous social centre Seomra Spraoi.
In 2010 activists from Occupy Cork squatted a National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) building in Cork city with the intention of using it as a community resource centre. It was vacated shortly after the occupation.
Squatting has seen a recent surge in Dublin city with frequent occupations of spaces. With squatting becoming more public, Dublin hosted the 2014 'International Squatter Convergence', previously held in cities such as Dijon, Berlin and Brighton. Squatting also became popularised by the successful neighbourhood resistance to an attempted eviction of a large community used squatted space in Grangegorman in Dublin city in 2015. The news of the eviction attempt and eventual successful resistance spread across social media and international news. The squatted complex enjoyed widespread support in the area and was also publicly supported by the city's Lord Mayor, Christy Burke and by Irish Times journalist Una Mullally.
Since 2015 the building which once housed Neary's Hotel on Parnell St in Dublin's north inner city, was occupied and renamed The Barricade Inn by squatters.
In Italy, despite the lack of official data, it appears that about 50,000 buildings all over the country are unused or abandoned and thus subject to squatting. Squatting has no legal basis, but there are many squats used as social centres. The first occupations of abandoned buildings began in 1968 with the left-wing movements Lotta Continua and Potere Operaio. Out of the breakup of these two movements was born Autonomia Operaia, which was composed of a Marxist–Leninist and Maoist wing and also an anarchist and more libertarian one. These squats had Marxist-Leninist (but also Stalinist and Maoist) ideals and came from the left wing of Autonomia. The militants of the Italian armed struggle (the New Red Brigades) were connected to these squats. There are many left-wing self-organised occupied projects across Italy such as Cascina Torchiera in Milan and Forte Prenestino in Rome.
Bussana Vecchia is a ghost town in Liguria which was abandoned in 1887 following an earthquake and subsequently squatted in the 1960s.
There are also far-right social centres such as CasaPound.
This situation has so far received the approval of Italian courts, which have been reluctant to defend the owners’ good reasons. In contrast with the dominant jurisprudence, new case-law (from the Rome Tribunal and the Supreme Court of Cassation) instructs the government to pay damages in case of squatting if the institutions have failed to prevent it.
The Dutch use the term "krakers" to refer to people who squat houses with the aim of living in them (as opposed to people who break into buildings for the purpose of vandalism or theft). Notable squats around the country include ACU in Utrecht, the Poortgebouw in Rotterdam, OCCII, OT301 and Vrankrijk in Amsterdam, the Grote Broek in Nijmegen, Vrijplaats Koppenhinksteeg in Leiden and the Landbouwbelang in Maastricht.
On 1 June, 2010, squatting in the Netherlands became illegal and punishable when a decree was sent out that the squatting ban would be enforced from 1 October. In protest, squatters in Amsterdam had occupied a former fire department the week before the law began (returning it to the owners control on 30 September) and a riot occurred on 1 October when the police blocked a protest and led a horse charge upon it. In Nijmegen (on 2 October), there was also a riot. Following legal challenges, on October 28, 2011, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands decided that the eviction of a squat can only occur after an intervention of a judge.
The Dutch government assessed the effectiveness of the new law in 2015, releasing a report giving statistics on arrests and convictions between October 2010 and December 2014. During this time period, 529 people have been arrested for the act of occupying derelict buildings in 213 separate incidents. Of the 529 arrests, 210 were found guilty. Of those convicted, 39 people were imprisoned for the new offence.
Squatting of empty lots with shanty towns became popular in Spain in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of the shortage of urban accommodation during the rural exodus.
Gradually it was substituted by high-rise blocks (often built quickly and poorly).
It was revived in the mid-1980s during La Movida Madrileña, under the name of the "okupa" (an unofficial spelling applied to "ocupación") movement, when thousands of illegal squatted buildings were legalized. Influenced by the British Levellers, the movement's popularity rose again during the 1990s, once more due to a housing crisis, this time related to the 1992 Summer Olympics and the concomitant urban regeneration. Property speculation and house price inflation continue to catalyze "okupa" activism.
Related to the anarchist movement, "okupas" support the ideal of workers' self-management and create social centers, such as Patio Maravillas in Madrid, which carry out various grassroots activities. The "okupa" movement represents a highly politicized form of squatting, so much so that participants often claim they live in squats as a form of political protest first and foremost. The movement is involved in various other social struggles, including the alter-globalization movement. In 1996, during José María Aznar's presidency, the first specific legislation against squatting was passed and became the prelude to many squat evictions. In the barrio of Lavapiés in Madrid, the Eskalera Karakola was a feminist self-managed squat, which was active from 1996 to 2005 and participated in the nextGENDERation network. Other examples are the Escuela Popular de Prosperidad (La Prospe) o Minuesa.
As of 2007, there were approximately 200 occupied houses in Barcelona. At least 45 of these, as Infousurpa, a collective event calendar, mentions, are used as social and cultural centers – so-called "open houses". A number of popular rock groups have come out of this kind of venue, such as Sin Dios, Extremoduro, Kolumna Durruti, Refugio and Platero y Tú in Madrid and Ojos de Brujo and Gadjo in Barcelona. In 2014, the unsuccessful attempts to evict the long-running social center of Can Vies provoked major riots. Another long-running squat is Can Masdeu.
The Basque Country is another area where a high number of houses have been occupied. There are at least 46 squats, or "" ("youth houses" in Basque). During the 1980s, a house was occupied by squatters in virtually every town, with the booming Basque punk rock thriving on the squatting movement, as it provided the badly needed premises for concerts, exhibitions, and other events. During the last 10 years, at least 15 "gaztetxes" have closed down, often following protests and clashes with the police. The eviction of Kukutza in Bilbao was met with largescale protests. On the outskirts of Vitoria-Gasteiz, the squatted neighbourhood of Errekaleor has around 150 inhabitants.
Parallelly there has been a not-ideologized current of Chabolismo (shanty towns) around big cities.
Initially settled by sedentarized Gitanos and Mercheros, they became known after the 1980s as selling points for heroin and other drugs.
As the Spanish nomads were transferred to public housing, the shanty towns became inhabited by poor immigrants, including Moroccans and Romanian Romas. A famous example is the Cañada Real.
In England, squatting has a long historical tradition. The BBC states that squatting was "a big issue in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and again for the Diggers in the 17th Century [who] were peasants who cultivated waste and common land, claiming it as their rightful due" and that squatting was a necessity after the Second World War when so many were homeless. Mass squats were organised in a number of prominent public buildings in Central London, culminating in the occupation of the Queen Mother’s ex-residence at 144 Piccadilly in 1969 which became known as 'Hippydilly' and made world headline news and the media created what one of the leaders later described as a moral panic. There were estimated to be 50,000 squatters throughout Britain in the late 1970s, with the majority (30,000) living in London. The BBC reported in 2011 that the government estimated that there were "20,000 squatters in the UK" and "650,000 empty properties".
On 1 September 2012, under Section 144 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, squatting in residential property was criminalised by the Government, punishable by up to six months in prison or a £5000 fine, or both. The same year saw the first successful prosecution for squatting, resulting in a 12-week jail sentence. However, squatting in a commercial building is still not a criminal offence.
In the late 1960s, people in Northern Ireland were forced to squat through both poverty and a lack of decent housing. In County Tyrone, there were allegations of unfair housing provision on the basis of politics and religion. When a house in the village of Caledon, near Dungannon, was allocated to a young Protestant woman, Emily Beattie, it caused protests. She was secretary to a solicitor who worked for the Unionist councillor who had given her the house and two Catholic families who had been overlooked complained that the same councillor had scotched plans to build houses for Catholics in the Dungannon area. Several days after the woman had moved in, the Catholic squatters in the house next door were evicted. Austin Currie, then a young politician, complained both at the local council and at Stormont about the situation. He then symbolically occupied the woman's house for a few hours, before being evicted by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). One of the policeman was the woman's brother who himself moved into the house later on. The incident quickly became a media sensation and in August the civil rights movement arranged one of its first marches, from Coalisland to Dungannon. This was followed in October by a civil rights march in Derry which was organised by the Derry Housing Action Committee and the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. The march was brutally repressed by the RUC.
In 2012 activists from Occupy Belfast squatted a Bank of Ireland building in Belfast city centre and used it as a social space. The occupation lasted several months before it was evicted.
Squatting is a criminal offence in Scotland, punishable by a fine or even imprisonment, under the Trespass (Scotland) Act 1865. The owner or lawful occupier of the property has the right to evict squatters without notice or applying to the court for an eviction order, although when evicting, they cannot do anything that would break the law, for example, use violence.
Nevertheless, the 19th and early 20th centuries saw various land raids in which cottars attempted to occupy land for subsistence farming. In 1948, the Seven Men of Knoydart unsuccessfully squatted land owned by the Nazi-supporting Lord Brocket.
The Forest Café in Edinburgh squatted its old premises in 2011 before moving to a new site.
There have been several road protest land squats such as Bilston Glen and Pollok Free State.
In 2010, a representative of the UK Bailiff Company claimed that the number of people squatting in Wales was at its highest for 40 years. The high number of businesses failing in urban Wales has led to squatting becoming a growing issue in large cities like Swansea and Cardiff. Experts said "the majority [of squatters] are forced into the lifestyle by financial pressures." Based on the internal database of UK Bailiff Company, there were 100 cases of squatting in 2009, the highest for 40 years, following trends estimated by the Advisory Service for Squatters that squatting has doubled in England and Wales since 1995.
As with England, from 1 September 2012, squatting in a residential building was made a criminal offence subject to arrest, fine and imprisonment. In December 2012 Cardiff Squatters Network was formed, to network together squatters citywide, and host "skill-share" workshops on squatting legally in commercial buildings.
In Canada, there are two systems to register the ownership of land. Under the land title system, squatter rights, formally known as adverse possession, were abolished. However, under the registry system, these rights have been preserved. If a person occupies land for the required period of time as set out in provincial limitation acts and during that time no legal action is taken to evict them, then the ownership of the land transfers from the legal owner to the squatter.
The Frances Street Squats in Vancouver were a row of six buildings squatted for nine months in 1990. They were evicted in a large operation and a film was subsequently made, called "The Beat of Frances Street". In recent years, there have been a number of public squats which have brought together the two main contemporary reasons for squatting – homelessness and activism. Examples are the Lafontaine squat in Overdale, a district of Montréal (2001), the Woodward's Squat in Vancouver (2002), the Infirmary Squat in Halifax (2002), the Pope Squat in Toronto (2002), the Seven Year Squat in Ottawa (2002), the Water Street Squat in Peterborough (2003), and the North Star hotel in Vancouver (2006). These were squats organised by anti-poverty groups which tended to have a short life expectancy. The Woodward's building was a derelict department store which had stood empty for nine years. After being evicted from the building, two hundred squatters set up a tent city on the pavement outside. The action is credited with putting in motion the eventual redevelopment of the building. The Peterborough Coalition Against Poverty (PCAP) publicly squatted 1130 Water Street, a building which stood empty after a fire. The group offered to repair the place and return it to its use as low-income housing. City officials agreed to the repairs and then City Council voted to demolish the building. The cost of demolition was $8,900 and the cost of repairs had been projected to be $6,900. The North Star hotel was temporarily squatted as a protest against emptiness by the Vancouver Anti-Poverty Committee.
In 2011, the 'Occupy Toronto squat team' squatted a basement at 238 Queen Street West and offered to take on a lease for 99 cents per year. They were evicted after eight hours.
In the United States, squatting laws vary from state to state and city to city. For the most part, it is rarely tolerated to any degree for long, particularly in cities. There have been a few exceptions, notably in 2002 when the New York City administration agreed to turn over eleven squatted buildings in the Lower East Side to an established non-profit group, on the condition that the apartments would later be turned over to the tenants as low-income housing cooperatives.
Community organizations have helped the homeless to take over vacant buildings not only as a place to live but also a part of larger campaign to shine a light on inequity in housing and advocate change in housing and land issues. Some of these include the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, Take Back the Land and Homes not Jails.
Squatters can be young people living in punk houses, low-income or homeless people, street gang members, or artists. During the Great Recession there were increasing numbers of people squatting foreclosed homes. There were also reports of people resquatting their own foreclosed homes.
Around many South American cities there are shanty towns. Sometimes, the authorities tear the houses down, but often, the squatters simply rebuild again. The houses are built out of whatever material can be scavenged from the local area or bought cheaply. As time goes by, the squatters start to form communities and become more established. The houses are rebuilt piece by piece with more durable materials. In some cases, a deal is reached with the authorities and connections for sewage, drinking water, cable television and electricity are made.
In Peru, the name given to the squatter settlements is pueblos jóvenes. In Colombia and Venezuela they are called 'invasiones' (as in "invading a property", as squatting can be related to a building or an empty lot) and in Argentina they are known as villa miseria.
In Chile the correct term used for the squatting is the similar term used in Spain "Casa Okupa". These houses share similar aspects with other squats around the world, such as being political and activist social centres. They are normally associated with the anarchist movement and they openly identify with the squatting movement, particularly the Movimiento Okupa in Spain. The mayor number of Casas Okupas are located in Valparaíso and Santiago de Chile. They must not be confused with another different housing situation which term is "Tomas". These are particular situations of squatting that could be defined more like Shanty Towns, not necessarily involved with the Okupa movement.
In Brazil, some of the squatter communities are called favelas, and a famous example is Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro, estimated to be home of 100,000 people. Favelas are mostly inhabited by the poorest strata, and usually lack much infrastructure and public services, but in some cases, already have reached the structure needed for a city. They are equivalent to slums or shanty towns, and typically occupy unused land (instead of unused or abandoned buildings). There were 25 million people living in favelas all over Brazil, as of 2004.
In São Paulo the largest favela is Heliópolis, with over 200,000 inhabitants. However, its occupied area has been officially recognized as a regular neighborhood of the city. There are also a number of squatter buildings in the inner city, the most famous of which was a 22-story building called Prestes Maia, whose inhabitants were finally evicted by the police in 2007 after a long conflict with the city administration. Inspired both by this movement and increasing property speculation and gentrification, various occupations in buildings and unoccupied areas in big cities, led by groups such as the Homeless Workers' Movement (MTST) or Downtown Roofless Movement (MSTC).
The former Hotel Santos Dumont on Mauá Street in the Luz neighbourhood was occupied in 2007 after being derelict for 17 years. An estimated 1000 people were living in the building, paying a small amount every month to cover maintenance. The community expels people who fight, use drugs or abuse alcohol.
There are also rural squatter movements in Brazil, such as the Landless Workers' Movement (MST), which has an estimated 1.5 million members.
In the 19th century, the British government claimed to own all of Australia and tried to control land ownership. Wealthy farmers of livestock claimed land for themselves and thus were known as squatters. This type of squatting is covered in greater detail at Squatting (Australian history).
In more recent times, Australia has seen occupations in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney. The Aboriginal Tent Embassy was set up in 1972 and is a permanent protest occupation. The 2016 Bendigo Street housing dispute saw squatters successfully contesting road-building plans. The Midnight Star squat was used as an self-managed social centre in a former cinema, before being evicted after being used as a convergence space during the 2002 World Trade Organization meeting.
| 28685 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28685 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Sovereignty
Sovereignty is the full right and power of a governing body over itself, without any interference from outside sources or bodies. In political theory, sovereignty is a substantive term designating supreme legitimate authority over some polity. In international law, sovereignty is the exercise of power by a state. "De jure" sovereignty refers to the legal right to do so; "de facto" sovereignty refers to the factual ability to do so. This can become an issue of special concern upon the failure of the usual expectation that "de jure" and "de facto" sovereignty exist at the place and time of concern, and reside within the same organization.
The term arises from the unattested Vulgar Latin's "*superanus", (itself derived form of Latin "super" - "over") meaning "chief", "ruler". Its spelling, which varied from the word's first appearance in English in the fourteenth century, was influenced by the English reign.
The concepts of sovereignty have been discussed throughout history, and are still actively debated. Its definition, concept, and application has changed throughout, especially during the Age of Enlightenment. The current notion of state sovereignty contains four aspects consisting of territory, population, authority and recognition. According to Stephen D. Krasner, the term could also be understood in four different ways:
Often, these four aspects all appear together, but this is not necessarily the case – they are not affected by one another, and there are historical examples of states that were non-sovereign in one aspect while at the same time being sovereign in another of these aspects. According to Immanuel Wallerstein, another fundamental feature of sovereignty is that it is a claim that must be recognised by others if it is to have any meaning:
The Roman jurist Ulpian observed that:
Ulpian was expressing the idea that the Emperor exercised a rather absolute form of sovereignty, that originated in the people, although he did not use the term expressly.
Ulpian's statements were known in medieval Europe, but sovereignty was an important concept in medieval times. Medieval monarchs were "not" sovereign, at least not strongly so, because they were constrained by, and shared power with, their feudal aristocracy. Furthermore, both were strongly constrained by custom.
Sovereignty existed during the Medieval period as the "de jure" rights of nobility and royalty, and in the "de facto" capability of individuals to make their own choices in life.
Around c. 1380–1400, the issue of feminine sovereignty was addressed in Geoffrey Chaucer's Middle English collection of "Canterbury Tales", specifically in "The Wife of Bath's Tale."
A later English Arthurian romance, "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell" (c. 1450), uses many of the same elements of the Wife of Bath's tale, yet changes the setting to the court of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The story revolves around the knight Sir Gawain granting to Dame Ragnell, his new bride, what is purported to be wanted most by women: sovereignty.
Sovereignty reemerged as a concept in the late 16th century, a time when civil wars had created a craving for stronger central authority, when monarchs had begun to gather power onto their own hands at the expense of the nobility, and the modern nation state was emerging. Jean Bodin, partly in reaction to the chaos of the French wars of religion, presented theories of sovereignty calling for strong central authority in the form of absolute monarchy. In his 1576 treatise "Les Six Livres de la République" ("Six Books of the Republic") Bodin argued that it is inherent in the nature of the state that sovereignty must be:
Bodin rejected the notion of transference of sovereignty from people to the ruler (also known as "the sovereign"); natural law and divine law confer upon the sovereign the right to rule. And the sovereign is not above divine law or natural law. He is above ("ie." not bound by) only positive law, that is, laws made by humans. He emphasized that a sovereign is bound to observe certain basic rules derived from the divine law, the law of nature or reason, and the law that is common to all nations (jus gentium), as well as the fundamental laws of the state that determine who is the sovereign, who succeeds to sovereignty, and what limits the sovereign power. Thus, Bodin’s sovereign was restricted by the constitutional law of the state and by the higher law that was considered as binding upon every human being. The fact that the sovereign must obey divine and natural law imposes ethical constraints on him. Bodin also held that the "lois royales", the fundamental laws of the French monarchy which regulated matters such as succession, are natural laws and are binding on the French sovereign.
Despite his commitment to absolutism, Bodin held some moderate opinions on how government should in practice be carried out. He held that although the sovereign is not obliged to, it is advisable for him, as a practical expedient, to convene a senate from whom he can obtain advice, to delegate some power to magistrates for the practical administration of the law, and to use the Estates as a means of communicating with the people. Bodin believed that “the most divine, most excellent, and the state form most proper to royalty is governed partly aristocratically and partly democratically”.
With his doctrine that sovereignty is conferred by divine law, Bodin predefined the scope of the divine right of kings.
During the Age of Enlightenment, the idea of sovereignty gained both legal and moral force as the main Western description of the meaning and power of a State. In particular, the "Social contract" as a mechanism for establishing sovereignty was suggested and, by 1800, widely accepted, especially in the new United States and France, though also in Great Britain to a lesser extent.
Thomas Hobbes, in "Leviathan" (1651) put forward a conception of sovereignty similar to Bodin's, which had just achieved legal status in the "Peace of Westphalia", but for different reasons. He created the first modern version of the social contract (or contractarian) theory, arguing that to overcome the "nasty, brutish and short" quality of life without the cooperation of other human beings, people must join in a "commonwealth" and submit to a "Soveraigne Power" that is able to compel them to act in the common good. This expediency argument attracted many of the early proponents of sovereignty. Hobbes strengthened the definition of sovereignty beyond either Westphalian or Bodin's, by saying that it must be:
Hobbes' hypothesis—that the ruler's sovereignty is contracted to him by the people in return for his maintaining their physical safety—led him to conclude that if and when the ruler fails, the people recover their ability to protect themselves by forming a new contract.
Hobbes's theories decisively shape the concept of sovereignty through the medium of social contract theories. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's (1712–1778) definition of popular sovereignty (with early antecedents in Francisco Suárez's theory of the origin of power), provides that the people are the legitimate sovereign. Rousseau considered sovereignty to be inalienable; he condemned the distinction between the origin and the exercise of sovereignty, a distinction upon which constitutional monarchy or representative democracy is founded. John Locke, and Montesquieu are also key figures in the unfolding of the concept of sovereignty; their views differ with Rousseau and with Hobbes on this issue of alienability.
The second book of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Du Contrat Social, ou Principes du droit politique" (1762) deals with sovereignty and its rights. Sovereignty, or the general will, is inalienable, for the will cannot be transmitted; it is indivisible, since it is essentially general; it is infallible and always right, determined and limited in its power by the common interest; it acts through laws. Law is the decision of the general will in regard to some object of common interest, but though the general will is always right and desires only good, its judgment is not always enlightened, and consequently does not always see wherein the common good lies; hence the necessity of the legislator. But the legislator has, of himself, no authority; he is only a guide who drafts and proposes laws, but the people alone (that is, the sovereign or general will) has authority to make and impose them.
Rousseau, in the Social Contract"
argued, "the growth of the State giving the trustees of public authority more and means to abuse their power, the more the Government has to have force to contain the people, the more force the Sovereign should have in turn in order to contain the Government," with the understanding that the Sovereign is "a collective being of wonder" (Book II, Chapter I) resulting from "the general will" of the people, and that "what any man, whoever he may be, orders on his own, is not a law" (Book II, Chapter VI) – and furthermore predicated on the assumption that the people have an unbiased means by which to ascertain the general will. Thus the legal maxim, "there is no law without a sovereign."
An important factor of sovereignty is its degree of absoluteness. A sovereign power has absolute sovereignty when it is not restricted by a constitution, by the laws of its predecessors, or by custom, and no areas of law or policy are reserved as being outside its control. International law; policies and actions of neighboring states; cooperation and respect of the populace; means of enforcement; and resources to enact policy are factors that might limit sovereignty. For example, parents are not guaranteed the right to decide some matters in the upbringing of their children independent of societal regulation, and municipalities do not have unlimited jurisdiction in local matters, thus neither parents nor municipalities have absolute sovereignty. Theorists have diverged over the desirability of increased absoluteness.
A key element of sovereignty in a legalistic sense is that of exclusivity of jurisdiction. Specifically, the degree to which decisions made by a sovereign entity might be contradicted by another authority. Along these lines, the German sociologist Max Weber proposed that sovereignty is a community's monopoly on the legitimate use of force; and thus any group claiming the same right must either be brought under the yoke of the sovereign, proven illegitimate, or otherwise contested and defeated for sovereignty to be genuine. International law, competing branches of government, and authorities reserved for subordinate entities (such as federated states or republics) represent legal infringements on exclusivity. Social institutions such as religious bodies, corporations, and competing political parties might represent "de facto" infringements on exclusivity.
"De jure", or legal, sovereignty concerns the expressed and institutionally recognised right to exercise control over a territory. "De facto", or actual, sovereignty is concerned with whether control in fact exists. Cooperation and respect of the populace; control of resources in, or moved into, an area; means of enforcement and security; and ability to carry out various functions of state all represent measures of "de facto" sovereignty. When control is practiced predominantly by military or police force it is considered "coercive sovereignty".
State sovereignty is sometimes viewed synonymously with independence, however, sovereignty can be transferred as a legal right whereas independence cannot. A state can achieve "de facto" independence long after acquiring sovereignty, such as in the case of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Additionally, independence can also be suspended when an entire region becomes subject to an occupation such as when Iraq had been overrun by the forces to take part in the Iraq War of 2003, Iraq had not been annexed by any country, so its sovereignty during this period was not contested by any state including those present on the territory. Alternatively, independence can be lost completely when sovereignty itself becomes the subject of dispute. The pre-World War II administrations of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia maintained an exile existence (and considerable international recognition) whilst their territories were annexed by the Soviet Union and governed locally by their pro-Soviet functionaries. When in 1991 Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia re-enacted independence, it was done so on the basis of continuity directly from the pre-Soviet republics. Another complicated sovereignty scenario can arise when regime itself is the subject of dispute. In the case of Poland, the People's Republic of Poland which governed Poland from 1945 to 1989 is now seen to have been an illegal entity by the modern Polish administration. The post-1989 Polish state claims direct continuity from the Second Polish Republic which ended in 1939. For other reasons however, Poland maintains its communist-era outline as opposed to its pre-World War II shape which included areas now in Belarus, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Slovakia and Ukraine but did not include some of its western regions that were then in Germany.
At the opposite end of the scale, there is no dispute regarding the self-governance of certain self-proclaimed states such as the Republic of Kosovo or Somaliland (see List of states with limited recognition, but most of them are puppet states) since their governments neither answer to a bigger state, nor is their governance subjected to supervision. The sovereignty (i.e. legal right to govern) however, is disputed in all three cases as the first entity is claimed by Serbia and the second by Somaly.
Internal sovereignty is the relationship between a sovereign power and the political community. A central concern is legitimacy: by what right does a government exercise authority? Claims of legitimacy might refer to the divine right of kings, or to a social contract (i.e. popular sovereignty). Max Weber offered a first categorization of political authority and legitimacy with the categories of traditional, charismatic and legal-rational.
With Sovereignty meaning holding supreme, independent authority over a region or state, Internal Sovereignty refers to the internal affairs of the state and the location of supreme power within it. A state that has internal sovereignty is one with a government that has been elected by the people and has the popular legitimacy. Internal sovereignty examines the internal affairs of a state and how it operates. It is important to have strong internal sovereignty in relation to keeping order and peace. When you have weak internal sovereignty, organisations such as rebel groups will undermine the authority and disrupt the peace. The presence of a strong authority allows you to keep agreement and enforce sanctions for the violation of laws. The ability for leadership to prevent these violations is a key variable in determining internal sovereignty. The lack of internal sovereignty can cause war in one of two ways: first, undermining the value of agreement by allowing costly violations; and second, requiring such large subsidies for implementation that they render war cheaper than peace. Leadership needs to be able to promise members, especially those like armies, police forces, or paramilitaries will abide by agreements. The presence of strong internal sovereignty allows a state to deter opposition groups in exchange for bargaining. It has been said that a more decentralized authority would be more efficient in keeping peace because the deal must please not only the leadership but also the opposition group. While the operations and affairs within a state are relative to the level of sovereignty within that state, there is still an argument over who should hold the authority in a sovereign state.
This argument between who should hold the authority within a sovereign state is called the traditional doctrine of public sovereignty. This discussion is between an internal sovereign or an authority of public sovereignty. An internal sovereign is a political body that possesses ultimate, final and independent authority; one whose decisions are binding upon all citizens, groups and institutions in society. Early thinkers believe sovereignty should be vested in the hands of a single person, a monarch. They believed the overriding merit of vesting sovereignty in a single individual was that sovereignty would therefore be indivisible; it would be expressed in a single voice that could claim final authority. An example of an internal sovereign or monarch is Louis XIV of France during the seventeenth century; Louis XIV claimed that he was the state. Jean-Jacques Rousseau rejected monarchical rule in favor of the other type of authority within a sovereign state, public sovereignty. Public Sovereignty is the belief that ultimate authority is vested in the people themselves, expressed in the idea of the general will. This means that the power is elected and supported by its members, the authority has a central goal of the good of the people in mind. The idea of public sovereignty has often been the basis for modern democratic theory.
Within the modern governmental system, internal sovereignty is usually found in states that have public sovereignty and rarely found within a state controlled by an internal sovereign. A form of government that is a little different from both is the UK parliament system. John Austin argued that sovereignty in the UK was vested neither in the Crown nor in the people but in the "Queen-in-Parliament". This is the origin of the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty and is usually seen as the fundamental principle of the British constitution. With these principles of parliamentary sovereignty majority control can gain access to unlimited constitutional authority, creating what has been called "elective dictatorship" or "modern autocracy". Public sovereignty in modern governments is a lot more common with examples like the USA, Canada, Australia and India where government is divided into different levels.
External sovereignty concerns the relationship between a sovereign power and other states. For example, the United Kingdom uses the following criterion when deciding under what conditions other states recognise a political entity as having sovereignty over some territory;
External sovereignty is connected with questions of international law – such as: when, if ever, is intervention by one country into another's territory permissible?
Following the Thirty Years' War, a European religious conflict that embroiled much of the continent, the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 established the notion of territorial sovereignty as a norm of noninterference in the affairs of other states, so-called Westphalian sovereignty, even though the actual treaty itself reaffirmed the multiple levels of sovereignty of the Holy Roman Empire. This resulted as a natural extension of the older principle of "cuius regio, eius religio" (Whose realm, his religion), leaving the Roman Catholic Church with little ability to interfere with the internal affairs of many European states. It is a myth, however, that the Treaties of Westphalia created a new European order of equal sovereign states.
In international law, sovereignty means that a government possesses full control over affairs within a territorial or geographical area or limit. Determining whether a specific entity is sovereign is not an exact science, but often a matter of diplomatic dispute. There is usually an expectation that both "de jure" and "de facto" sovereignty rest in the same organisation at the place and time of concern. Foreign governments use varied criteria and political considerations when deciding whether or not to recognise the sovereignty of a state over a territory. Membership in the United Nations requires that "[t]he admission of any such state to membership in the United Nations will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council."
Sovereignty may be recognized even when the sovereign body possesses no territory or its territory is under partial or total occupation by another power. The Holy See was in this position between the annexation in 1870 of the Papal States by Italy and the signing of the Lateran Treaties in 1929, a 59-year period during which it was recognised as sovereign by many (mostly Roman Catholic) states despite possessing no territory – a situation resolved when the Lateran Treaties granted the Holy See sovereignty over the Vatican City. Another case, "sui generis", is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, the third sovereign entity inside Italian territory (after San Marino and the Vatican City State) and the second inside the Italian capital (since in 1869 the Palazzo di Malta and the Villa Malta receive extraterritorial rights, in this way becoming the only "sovereign" territorial possessions of the modern Order), which is the last existing heir to one of several once militarily significant, crusader states of sovereign military orders. In 1607 its Grand masters were also made Reichsfürst (princes of the Holy Roman Empire) by the Holy Roman Emperor, granting them seats in the Reichstag, at the time the closest permanent equivalent to a UN-type general assembly; confirmed 1620). These sovereign rights were never deposed, only the territories were lost. 100 modern states still maintain full diplomatic relations with the order (now "de facto" "the most prestigious service club"), and the UN awarded it observer status.
The governments-in-exile of many European states (for instance, Norway, Netherlands or Czechoslovakia) during the Second World War were regarded as sovereign despite their territories being under foreign occupation; their governance resumed as soon as the occupation had ended. The government of Kuwait was in a similar situation "vis-à-vis" the Iraqi occupation of its country during 1990–1991. The government of Republic of China was recognized as sovereign over China from 1911 to 1971 despite that its mainland China territory became occupied by Communist Chinese forces since 1949. In 1971 it lost UN recognition to Chinese Communist-led People's Republic of China and its sovereign and political status as a state became disputed and it lost its ability to use "China" as its name and therefore became commonly known as Taiwan.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is commonly mistaken to be sovereign. It has been granted various degrees of special privileges and legal immunities in many countries, including Belgium, France, Switzerland and soon in Ireland. Similarly for Australia, Russia, South Korea, South Africa and the US. that in cases like Switzerland are considerable, The Committee is a private organisation governed by Swiss law.
Just as the office of head of state can be vested jointly in several persons within a state, the sovereign jurisdiction over a single political territory can be shared jointly by two or more consenting powers, notably in the form of a condominium.
Likewise the member states of international organizations may voluntarily bind themselves by treaty to a supranational organization, such as a continental union. In the case of the European Union members states this is called "pooled sovereignty".
Another example of shared and pooled sovereignty is the Acts of Union 1707 which created the unitary state now known as the United Kingdom. It was a full economic union, meaning the Scottish and English systems of currency, taxation and laws regulating trade were aligned. Nonetheless, Scotland and England never fully surrendered or pooled all of their governance sovereignty; they retained many of their previous national institutional features and characteristics, particularly relating to their legal, religious and educational systems. In 2012, the Scottish Government, created in 1998 through devolution in the United Kingdom, negotiated terms with the Government of the United Kingdom for the 2014 Scottish independence referendum which resulted in the people of Scotland deciding to continue the pooling of its sovereignty with the rest of the United Kingdom.
A community of people who claim the right of self-determination based on a common ethnicity, history and culture might seek to establish sovereignty over a region, thus creating a nation-state. Such nations are sometimes recognised as autonomous areas rather than as fully sovereign, independent states.
In a federal system of government, "sovereignty" also refers to powers which a constituent state or republic possesses independently of the national government. In a confederation constituent entities retain the right to withdraw from the national body, but in a federation member states or republics do not hold that right.
Different interpretations of state sovereignty in the United States of America, as it related to the expansion of slavery and fugitive slave laws, led to the outbreak of the American Civil War. Depending on the particular issue, sometimes both northern and southern states justified their political positions by appealing to state sovereignty. Fearing that slavery would be threatened by results of the 1860 presidential election, eleven slave states declared their independence from the federal Union and formed a new confederation. The United States government rejected the secessions as rebellion, declaring that secession from the Union by an individual state was unconstitutional, as the states were part of an indissolvable federation.
A number of modes for acquisition of sovereignty are presently or have historically been recognized in international law as lawful methods by which a state may acquire sovereignty over external territory. The classification of these modes originally derived from Roman property law and from the 15th and 16th century with the development of international law. The modes are:
There exist vastly differing views on the moral basis of sovereignty. A fundamental polarity is between theories that assert that sovereignty is vested directly in the sovereigns by divine or natural right and theories that assert it originates from the people. In the latter case there is a further division into those that assert that the people transfer their sovereignty to the sovereign (Hobbes), and those that assert that the people retain their sovereignty (Rousseau).
During the brief period of absolute monarchies in Europe, the divine right of kings was an important competing justification for the exercise of sovereignty. The Mandate of Heaven had some similar implications in China.
A republic is a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, retain sovereignty over the government and where offices of state are not granted through heritage. A common modern definition of a republic is a government having a head of state who is not a monarch.
Democracy is based on the concept of "popular sovereignty". In a direct democracy the public plays an active role in shaping and deciding policy. Representative democracy permits a transfer of the exercise of sovereignty from the people to a legislative body or an executive (or to some combination of legislature, executive and Judiciary). Many representative democracies provide limited direct democracy through referendum, initiative, and recall.
Parliamentary sovereignty refers to a representative democracy where the parliament is ultimately sovereign and not the executive power nor the judiciary.
According to Matteo Laruffa "sovereignty resides in every public action and policy as the exercise of executive powers by institutions open to the participation of citizens to the decision-making processes"
Another topic is whether the law is held to be sovereign, that is, whether it is above political or other interference. Sovereign law constitutes a true state of law, meaning the letter of the law (if constitutionally correct) is applicable and enforceable, even when against the political will of the nation, as long as not formally changed following the constitutional procedure. Strictly speaking, any deviation from this principle constitutes a revolution or a coup d'état, regardless of the intentions.
| 28791 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28791 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Safe sex
Safe sex is sexual activity using methods or devices (such as condoms) to reduce the risk of transmitting or acquiring sexually transmitted infections (STIs), especially HIV. "Safe sex" is also sometimes referred to as safer sex or protected sex to indicate that some safe sex practices do not completely eliminate STI risks. It is also sometimes used colloquially to describe methods aimed at preventing pregnancy that may or may not also lower STI risks.
The concept of "safe sex" emerged in the 1980s as a response to the global AIDS epidemic, and possibly more specifically to the AIDS crisis in the US. Promoting safe sex is now one of the main aims of sex education and STI prevention, especially reducing new HIV infections. Safe sex is regarded as a harm reduction strategy aimed at reducing the risk of STI transmission.
Although some safe sex practices (like condoms) can also be used as birth control ("contraception"), most forms of contraception do not protect against STIs. Likewise, some safe sex practices, such as partner selection and low-risk sex behavior, might not be effective forms of contraception.
Although strategies for avoiding STIs like syphilis and gonorrhea have existed for centuries and the term "safe sex" existed in English as early as the 1930s, the use of the term to refer to STI-risk reduction dates to the mid-1980s in the United States. It emerged in response to the HIV/AIDS crisis.
A year before the HIV virus was isolated and named, the San Francisco chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence published a small pamphlet titled "Play Fair!" out of concern over widespread STIs among the city's gay male population. It specifically named illnesses (Kaposi's sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia) that would later be understood as symptoms of advanced HIV disease (or AIDS). The pamphlet advocated a range of safe-sex practices, including abstinence, condoms, personal hygiene, use of personal lubricants, and STI testing/treatment. It took a casual, sex-positive approach while also emphasizing personal and social responsibility. In May 1983—the same month HIV was isolated and named in France—the New York City-based HIV/AIDS activists Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen published similar advice in their booklet, "". Neither publication used the term "safe sex" but both included recommendations that are now standard advice for reducing STI (including HIV) risks.
Safe sex as a form of STI risk reduction appeared in journalism as early as 1984, in the British publication 'The Intelligencer': ""The goal is to reach about 50 million people with messages about safe sex and AIDS education."
Although "safe sex" is used by individuals to refer to protection against both pregnancy and HIV/AIDS or other STI transmissions, the term was born in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It is believed that the term "safe sex" was used in the professional literature in 1984, in the content of a paper on the psychological effect that HIV/AIDS may have on gay and bisexual men.
A year later, the same term appeared in an article in "The New York Times." This article emphasized that most specialists advised their AIDS patients to practice safe sex. The concept included limiting the number of sexual partners, using prophylactics, avoiding bodily fluid exchange, and resisting the use of drugs that reduced inhibitions for high-risk sexual behavior. Moreover, in 1985, the first safe sex guidelines were established by the 'Coalition for Sexual Responsibilities'. According to these guidelines, safe sex was practiced by using condoms also when engaging in anal or oral sex.
Although the term "safe sex" was primarily used in reference to sexual activity between men, in 1986 the concept was spread to the general population. Various programs were developed with the aim of promoting safe sex practices among college students. These programs were focused on promoting the use of the condom, a better knowledge about the partner's sexual history and limiting the number of sexual partners. The first book on this subject appeared in the same year. The book was entitled "Safe Sex in the Age of AIDS", it had 88 pages and it described both positive and negative approaches to sexual life. Sexual behavior could be either safe (kissing, hugging, massage, body-to-body rubbing, mutual masturbation, exhibitionism, phone sex, and use of separate sex toys); possibly safe (use of condoms); and unsafe.
In 1997, specialists in this matter promoted the use of condoms as the most accessible safe sex method (besides abstinence) and they called for TV commercials featuring condoms. During the same year, the Catholic Church in the United States issued their own "safer sex" guidelines on which condoms were listed, though two years later the Vatican urged chastity and heterosexual marriage, attacking the American Catholic bishops' guidelines.
A study carried out in 2006 by Californian specialists showed that the most common definitions of safe sex are condom use (68% of the interviewed subjects), abstinence (31.1% of the interviewed subjects), monogamy (28.4% of the interviewed subjects) and safe partner (18.7% of the interviewed subjects).
The term "safer sex" in Canada and the United States has gained greater use by health workers, reflecting that risk of transmission of sexually transmitted infections in various sexual activities is a continuum. The term "safe sex" is still in common use in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
"Safer sex" is thought to be a more aggressive term which may make it more obvious to individuals that any type of sexual activity carries a certain degree of risk.
The term "safe love" has also been used, notably by the French Sidaction in the promotion of men's underpants incorporating a condom pocket and including the red ribbon symbol in the design, which were sold to support the charity.
In March 2020, and at a time of the coronavirus pandemic, the "safest sex partner" is yourself, according to American sex educator Betty Dodson and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
A range of safe-sex practices are commonly recommended by sexual health educators and public health agencies. Many of these practices can reduce (but not completely eliminate) risk of transmitting or acquiring STIs.
Sexual activities, such as phone sex, cybersex, and sexting, that do not include direct contact with the skin or bodily fluids of sexual partners, carry no STI risks and, thus, are forms of safe sex.
A range of sex acts called "non-penetrative sex" or "outercourse" can significantly reduce STI risks. Non-penetrative sex includes practices such as kissing, mutual masturbation, rubbing or stroking. According to the Health Department of Western Australia, this sexual practice may prevent pregnancy and most STIs. However, non-penetrative sex may not protect against infections that can be transmitted via skin-to-skin contact, such as herpes and human papilloma virus. Mutual or partnered masturbation carries some STI risk, especially if there is skin contact or shared bodily fluids with sexual partners, although the risks are significantly lower than many other sexual activities.
In March 2020, and at a time of the coronavirus pandemic, the "safest sex partner" is yourself, according to American sex educator Betty Dodson.
Barriers, such as condoms, dental dams, and medical gloves can prevent contact with body fluids (such as blood, vaginal fluid, semen, rectal mucus), and other means of transmitting STIs (like skin, hair and shared objects) during sexual activity.
Oil-based lubrication can break down the structure of latex condoms, dental dams or gloves, reducing their effectiveness for STI protection.
While use of external condoms can reduce STI risks during sexual activity, they are not 100% effective. One study has suggested condoms might reduce HIV transmission by 85% to 95%; effectiveness beyond 95% was deemed unlikely because of slippage, breakage, and incorrect use. It also said, "In practice, inconsistent use may reduce the overall effectiveness of condoms to as low as 60–70%".
Pre-exposure prophylaxis (often abbreviated as "PrEP") is the use of prescription drugs by those who do not have HIV to prevent HIV infection. PrEP drugs are taken "prior" to HIV exposure to prevent the transmission of the virus, usually between sexual partners. PrEP drugs do not prevent other STI infections or pregnancy.
As of 2018, the most-widely approved form of "PrEP" combines two drugs (tenofovir and emtricitabine) in one pill. That drug combination is sold under the brand name Truvada by Gilead Sciences. It is also sold in generic formulations worldwide. Other drugs are also being studied for use as PrEP.
Different countries have approved different protocols for using the tenofovir/emtricitabine-combination drug as "PrEP". That two-drug combination has been shown to prevent HIV infection in different populations when taken daily, intermittently, and on demand. Numerous studies have found the tenofovir/emtricitabine combination to be over 90% effective at preventing HIV transmission between sexual partners.
Treatment as Prevention (often abbreviated as "TasP") is the practice of testing for and treating HIV infection as a way to prevent further spread of the virus. Those having knowledge of their HIV-positive status can use safe-sex practices to protect themselves and their partners (such as using condoms, sero-sorting partners, or choosing less-risky sexual activities). And, because HIV-positive people with durably suppressed or undetectable amounts of HIV in their blood "cannot transmit HIV to sexual partners", sexual activity with HIV-positive partners on effective treatment is a form of safe sex (to prevent HIV infection). This fact has given rise to the concept of "U=U" ("Undetectable = Untransmittable").
Other methods proven effective at reducing STI risks during sexual activity are:
Most methods of contraception are not effective at preventing the spread of STIs. This includes birth control pills, vasectomy, tubal ligation, periodic abstinence, IUDs and many non-barrier methods of pregnancy prevention. However, condoms are highly effective for birth control and STI prevention.
The spermicide Nonoxynol-9 has been claimed to reduce the likelihood of STI transmission. However, a technical report by the World Health Organization has shown that Nonoxynol-9 is an irritant and can produce tiny tears in mucous membranes, which may increase the risk of transmission by offering pathogens more easy points of entry into the system. They reported that Nonoxynol-9 lubricant do not have enough spermicide to increase contraceptive effectiveness cautioned they should not be promoted. There is no evidence that spermicidal condoms are better at preventing STD transmission compared to condoms that do not have spermicide. If used properly, spermicidal condoms can prevent pregnancy, but there is still an increased risk that nonoxynyl-9 can irritate the skin, making it more susceptible for infections.
The use of a diaphragm or contraceptive sponge provides some women with better protection against certain sexually transmitted diseases, but they are not effective for all STIs.
Hormonal methods of preventing pregnancy (such as oral contraceptives [i.e. 'The pill'], depoprogesterone, hormonal IUDs, the vaginal ring, and the patch) offer no protection against STIs. The copper intrauterine device and the hormonal intrauterine device provide an up to 99% protection against pregnancies but no protection against STIs. Women with copper intrauterine device "may" be subject to greater risk of infection from bacterial infectious such as gonorrhea or chlamydia, although this is debated.
Coitus interruptus (or "pulling out"), in which the penis is removed from the vagina, anus, or mouth before ejaculation, may reduce transmission of STIs but still carries significant risk. This is because pre-ejaculate, a fluid that oozes from the penile urethra before ejaculation, may contain STI pathogens. Additionally, the microbes responsible for some diseases, including genital warts and syphilis, can be transmitted through skin-to-skin or mucous membrane contact.
Unprotected anal penetration is considered a high-risk sexual activity because the thin tissues of the anus and rectum can be easily damaged. Slight injuries can allow the passage of bacteria and viruses, including HIV. This includes penetration of the anus by fingers, hands, or sex toys such as dildos. Also, condoms may be more likely to break during anal sex than during vaginal sex, increasing the risk of STI transmission.
The main risk which individuals are exposed to when performing anal sex is the transmission of HIV. Other possible infections include Hepatitis A, B and C; intestinal parasite infections like "Giardia"; and bacterial infections such as "Escherichia coli."
Anal sex should be avoided by couples in which one of the partners has been diagnosed with an STI until the treatment has proven to be effective.
In order to make anal sex safer, the couple must ensure that the anal area is clean and the bowel empty and the partner on whom anal penetration occurs should be able to relax. Regardless of whether anal penetration occurs by using a finger or the penis, the condom is the best barrier method to prevent transmission of STI. Enemas should be not be used as they can increase the risk of HIV infection and lymphogranuloma venereum proctitis.
Since the rectum can be easily damaged, the use of lubricants is highly recommended even when penetration occurs by using the finger. Especially for beginners, using a condom on the finger is both a protection measure against STI and a lubricant source. Most condoms are lubricated and they allow less painful and easier penetration. Oil-based lubricants damage latex and should not be used with condoms; water-based and silicone-based lubricants are available instead. Non-latex condoms are available for people who are allergic to latex made out of polyurethane or polyisoprene. Polyurethane condoms can safely be used with oil-based lubricant. The "female condom" may also be used effectively by the anal receiving partner.
Anal stimulation with a sex toy requires similar safety measures to anal penetration with a penis, in this case using a condom on the sex toy in a similar way.
It is important that the man washes and cleans his penis after anal intercourse if he intends to penetrate the vagina. Bacteria from the rectum are easily transferred to the vagina, which may cause vaginal and urinary tract infections.
When anal-oral contact occurs, protection is required since this is a risky sexual behavior in which illnesses as Hepatitis A or STIs can be easily transmitted, as well as enteric infections. The dental dam or the plastic wrap are effective protection means whenever anilingus is performed.
Putting a condom on a sex toy provides better sexual hygiene and can help to prevent transmission of infections if the sex toy is shared, provided the condom is replaced when used by a different partner. Some sex toys are made of porous materials, and pores retain viruses and bacteria, which makes it necessary to clean sex toys thoroughly, preferably with use of cleaners specifically for sex toys. Glass is non-porous and medical grade glass sex toys more easily sterilized between uses.
In cases in which one of the partners is treated for an STI, it is recommended that the couple not use sex toys until the treatment has proved to be effective.
All sex toys have to be properly cleaned after use. The way in which a sex toy is cleaned varies on the type of material it is made of. Some sex toys can be boiled or cleaned in a dishwasher. Most of the sex toys come with advice on the best way to clean and store them and these instructions should be carefully followed. A sex toy should be cleaned not only when it is shared with other individuals but also when it is used on different parts of the body (such as mouth, vagina or anus).
A sex toy should regularly be checked for scratches or breaks that can be breeding ground for bacteria. It is best if the damaged sex toy is replaced by a new undamaged one. Even more hygiene protection should be considered by pregnant women when using sex toys. Sharing any type of sex toy that may draw blood, like whips or needles, is not recommended, and is not safe.
When using sex toys in the anus, sex toys "...can easily get lost" as "rectal muscles contract and can suck an object up and up, potentially obstructing the colon"; to prevent this serious problem, sex toy users are advised to use sex "...toys with a flared base or a string".
Sexual abstinence reduces STIs and pregnancy risks associated with sexual contact, but STIs may also be transmitted through non-sexual means, or by rape. HIV may be transmitted through contaminated needles used in tattooing, body piercing, or injections. Medical or dental procedures using contaminated instruments can also spread HIV, while some health-care workers have acquired HIV through occupational exposure to accidental injuries with needles. Evidence does not support the use of abstinence-only sex education. Abstinence-only sex education programs have been found to be ineffective in decreasing rates of HIV infection in the developed world and unplanned pregnancy. Abstinence-only sex education primarily relies on the consequences of character and morality while health care professionals are concerned about matters regarding health outcomes and behaviors. Though abstinence is the best course to prevent pregnancy and STIs, in reality, it is unrealistic so intentions to abstain from sexual activity are often unsuccessful. It leaves young people without the information and skills they need to avoid unwanted pregnancies and STIs.
| 28845 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28845 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Spyware
Spyware is a type of malware that aims to gather information about a person or organization, without their knowledge, and send such information to hack another entity without the consumer's consent. Furthermore, spyware asserts control over a device without the consumer's knowledge, sending confidential information to another entity with the consumer's consent, through cookies.
Spyware is mostly classified into four types: adware, system monitors, tracking cookies, and trojans; examples of other notorious types include digital rights management capabilities that "phone home", keyloggers, rootkits, and web beacons.
Spyware is mostly used for the stealing information and storing Internet users' movements on the Web and serving up pop-up ads to Internet users. Whenever spyware is used for malicious purposes, its presence is typically hidden from the user and can be difficult to detect. Some spyware, such as keyloggers, may be installed by the owner of a shared, corporate, or public computer intentionally in order to monitor users.
While the term "spyware" suggests software that monitors a user's computing, the functions of spyware can extend beyond simple monitoring. Spyware can collect almost any type of data, including personal information like internet surfing habits, user logins, and bank or credit account information. Spyware can also interfere with a user's control of a computer by installing additional software or redirecting web browsers. Some spyware can change computer settings, which can result in slow Internet connection speeds, un-authorized changes in browser settings, or changes to software settings.
Sometimes, spyware is included along with genuine software, and may come from a malicious website or may have been added to the intentional functionality of genuine software (see the paragraph about Facebook, below). In response to the emergence of spyware, a small industry has sprung up dealing in anti-spyware software. Running anti-spyware software has become a widely recognized element of computer security practices, especially for computers running Microsoft Windows. A number of jurisdictions have passed anti-spyware laws, which usually target any software that is surreptitiously installed to control a user's computer.
In German-speaking countries, spyware used or made by the government is called "govware" by computer experts (in common parlance: "Regierungstrojaner", literally "Government Trojan"). Govware is typically a trojan horse software used to intercept communications from the target computer. Some countries, like Switzerland and Germany, have a legal framework governing the use of such software. In the US, the term "policeware" has been used for similar purposes.
Use of the term "spyware" has eventually declined as the practice of tracking users has been pushed ever further into the mainstream by major websites and data mining companies; these generally break no known laws and compel users to be tracked, not by fraudulent practices "per se", but by the default settings created for users and the language of terms-of-service agreements. In one documented example, on CBS/CNet News reported, on March 7, 2011, on a "Wall Street Journal" analysis revealing the practice of Facebook and other websites of tracking users' browsing activity, linked to their identity, far beyond users' visits and activity within the Facebook site itself. The report stated: "Here's how it works. You go to Facebook, you log in, you spend some time there, and then ... you move on without logging out. Let's say the next site you go to is "New York Times". Those buttons, without you clicking on them, have just reported back to Facebook and Twitter that you went there and also your identity within those accounts. Let's say you moved on to something like a site about depression. This one also has a tweet button, a Google widget, and those, too, can report back who you are and that you went there." The" WSJ" analysis was researched by Brian Kennish, founder of Disconnect, Inc.
Spyware does not necessarily spread in the same way as a virus or worm because infected systems generally do not attempt to transmit or copy the software to other computers. Instead, spyware installs itself on a system by deceiving the user or by exploiting software vulnerabilities.
Most spyware is installed without knowledge, or by using deceptive tactics. Spyware may try to deceive users by bundling itself with desirable software. Other common tactics are using a Trojan horse, spy gadgets that look like normal devices but turn out to be something else, such as a USB Keylogger. These devices actually are connected to the device as memory units but are capable of recording each stroke made on the keyboard. Some spyware authors infect a system through security holes in the Web browser or in other software. When the user navigates to a Web page controlled by the spyware author, the page contains code which attacks the browser and forces the download and installation of spyware.
The installation of spyware frequently involves Internet Explorer. Its popularity and history of security issues have made it a frequent target. Its deep integration with the Windows environment make it susceptible to attack into the Windows operating system. Internet Explorer also serves as a point of attachment for spyware in the form of Browser Helper Objects, which modify the browser's behaviour.
A spyware rarely operates alone on a computer; an affected machine usually has multiple infections. Users frequently notice unwanted behavior and degradation of system performance. A spyware infestation can create significant unwanted CPU activity, disk usage, and network traffic. Stability issues, such as applications freezing, failure to boot, and system-wide crashes are also common. Spyware, which interferes with networking software commonly causes difficulty connecting to the Internet.
In some infections, the spyware is not even evident. Users assume in those situations that the performance issues relate to faulty hardware, Windows installation problems, or another malware infection. Some owners of badly infected systems resort to contacting technical support experts, or even buying a new computer because the existing system "has become too slow". Badly infected systems may require a clean reinstallation of all their software in order to return to full functionality.
Moreover, some types of spyware disable software firewalls and antivirus software, and/or reduce browser security settings, which opens the system to further opportunistic infections. Some spyware disables or even removes competing spyware programs, on the grounds that more spyware-related annoyances increase the likelihood that users will take action to remove the programs.
Keyloggers are sometimes part of malware packages downloaded onto computers without the owners' knowledge. Some keylogger software is freely available on the internet, while others are commercial or private applications. Most keyloggers allow not only keyboard keystrokes to be captured, they also are often capable of collecting screen captures from the computer.
A typical Windows user has administrative privileges, mostly for convenience. Because of this, any program the user runs has unrestricted access to the system. As with other operating systems, Windows users are able to follow the principle of least privilege and use non-administrator accounts. Alternatively, they can reduce the privileges of specific vulnerable Internet-facing processes, such as Internet Explorer.
Since Windows Vista is, by default, a computer administrator that runs everything under limited user privileges, when a program requires administrative privileges, a User Account Control pop-up will prompt the user to allow or deny the action. This improves on the design used by previous versions of Windows.
As the spyware threat has evolved, a number of techniques have emerged to counteract it. These include programs designed to remove or block spyware, as well as various user practices which reduce the chance of getting spyware on a system.
Nonetheless, spyware remains a costly problem. When a large number of pieces of spyware have infected a Windows computer, the only remedy may involve backing up user data, and fully reinstalling the operating system. For instance, some spyware cannot be completely removed by Symantec, Microsoft, PC Tools.
Many programmers and some commercial firms have released products dedicated to remove or block spyware. Programs such as PC Tools' Spyware Doctor, Lavasoft's "Ad-Aware SE" and Patrick Kolla's "Spybot - Search & Destroy" rapidly gained popularity as tools to remove, and in some cases intercept, spyware programs. On December 16, 2004, Microsoft acquired the "GIANT AntiSpyware" software, rebranding it as "Windows AntiSpyware beta" and releasing it as a free download for Genuine Windows XP and Windows 2003 users. (In 2006 it was renamed Windows Defender).
Major anti-virus firms such as Symantec, PC Tools, McAfee and Sophos have also added anti-spyware features to their existing anti-virus products. Early on, anti-virus firms expressed reluctance to add anti-spyware functions, citing lawsuits brought by spyware authors against the authors of web sites and programs which described their products as "spyware". However, recent versions of these major firms home and business anti-virus products do include anti-spyware functions, albeit treated differently from viruses. Symantec Anti-Virus, for instance, categorizes spyware programs as "extended threats" and now offers real-time protection against these threats.
Anti-spyware programs can combat spyware in two ways:
Such programs inspect the contents of the Windows registry, operating system files, and installed programs, and remove files and entries which match a list of known spyware. Real-time protection from spyware works identically to real-time anti-virus protection: the software scans disk files at download time, and blocks the activity of components known to represent spyware.
In some cases, it may also intercept attempts to install start-up items or to modify browser settings. Earlier versions of anti-spyware programs focused chiefly on detection and removal. Javacool Software's SpywareBlaster, one of the first to offer real-time protection, blocked the installation of ActiveX-based spyware.
Like most anti-virus software, many anti-spyware/adware tools require a frequently updated database of threats. As new spyware programs are released, anti-spyware developers discover and evaluate them, adding to the list of known spyware, which allows the software to detect and remove new spyware. As a result, anti-spyware software is of limited usefulness without regular updates. Updates may be installed automatically or manually.
A popular generic spyware removal tool used by those that requires a certain degree of expertise is HijackThis, which scans certain areas of the Windows OS where spyware often resides and presents a list with items to delete manually. As most of the items are legitimate windows files/registry entries it is advised for those who are less knowledgeable on this subject to post a HijackThis log on the numerous antispyware sites and let the experts decide what to delete.
If a spyware program is not blocked and manages to get itself installed, it may resist attempts to terminate or uninstall it. Some programs work in pairs: when an anti-spyware scanner (or the user) terminates one running process, the other one respawns the killed program. Likewise, some spyware will detect attempts to remove registry keys and immediately add them again. Usually, booting the infected computer in safe mode allows an anti-spyware program a better chance of removing persistent spyware. Killing the process tree may also work.
To detect spyware, computer users have found several practices useful in addition to installing anti-spyware programs. Many users have installed a web browser other than Internet Explorer, such as Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome. Though no browser is completely safe, Internet Explorer was once at a greater risk for spyware infection due to its large user base as well as vulnerabilities such as ActiveX but these three major browsers are now close to equivalent when it comes to security.
Some ISPs—particularly colleges and universities—have taken a different approach to blocking spyware: they use their network firewalls and web proxies to block access to Web sites known to install spyware. On March 31, 2005, Cornell University's Information Technology department released a report detailing the behavior of one particular piece of proxy-based spyware, "Marketscore", and the steps the university took to intercept it. Many other educational institutions have taken similar steps.
Individual users can also install firewalls from a variety of companies. These monitor the flow of information going to and from a networked computer and provide protection against spyware and malware. Some users install a large hosts file which prevents the user's computer from connecting to known spyware-related web addresses. Spyware may get installed via certain shareware programs offered for download. Downloading programs only from reputable sources can provide some protection from this source of attack.
Individual users can use cellphone / computer with physical (electric) switch, or isolated electronic switch that disconnects microphone, camera without bypass and keep it in disconnected position where not in use, that limits information that spyware can collect. (Policy recommended by NIST Guidelines for Managing the Security of Mobile Devices, 2013).
A few spyware vendors, notably 180 Solutions, have written what the "New York Times" has dubbed "stealware", and what spyware researcher Ben Edelman terms "affiliate fraud", a form of click fraud. Stealware diverts the payment of affiliate marketing revenues from the legitimate affiliate to the spyware vendor.
Spyware which attacks affiliate networks places the spyware operator's affiliate tag on the user's activity – replacing any other tag, if there is one. The spyware operator is the only party that gains from this. The user has their choices thwarted, a legitimate affiliate loses revenue, networks' reputations are injured, and vendors are harmed by having to pay out affiliate revenues to an "affiliate" who is not party to a contract. Affiliate fraud is a violation of the terms of service of most affiliate marketing networks. As a result, spyware operators such as 180 Solutions have been terminated from affiliate networks including LinkShare and ShareSale. Mobile devices can also be vulnerable to chargeware, which manipulates users into illegitimate mobile charges.
In one case, spyware has been closely associated with identity theft. In August 2005, researchers from security software firm Sunbelt Software suspected the creators of the common CoolWebSearch spyware had used it to transmit "chat sessions, user names, passwords, bank information, etc."; however it turned out that "it actually (was) its own sophisticated criminal little trojan that's independent of CWS." This case is currently under investigation by the FBI.
The Federal Trade Commission estimates that 27.3 million Americans have been victims of identity theft, and that financial losses from identity theft totaled nearly $48 billion for businesses and financial institutions and at least $5 billion in out-of-pocket expenses for individuals.
Some copy-protection technologies have borrowed from spyware. In 2005, Sony BMG Music Entertainment was found to be using rootkits in its XCP digital rights management technology Like spyware, not only was it difficult to detect and uninstall, it was so poorly written that most efforts to remove it could have rendered computers unable to function.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed suit, and three separate class-action suits were filed. Sony BMG later provided a workaround on its website to help users remove it.
Beginning on April 25, 2006, Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications application was installed on most Windows PCs as a "critical security update". While the main purpose of this deliberately uninstallable application is to ensure the copy of Windows on the machine was lawfully purchased and installed, it also installs software that has been accused of "phoning home" on a daily basis, like spyware. It can be removed with the RemoveWGA tool.
Stalkerware is spyware that has been used to monitor electronic activities of partners in intimate relationships. At least one software package, Loverspy, was specifically marketed for this purpose. Depending on local laws regarding communal/marital property, observing a partner's online activity without their consent may be illegal; the author of Loverspy and several users of the product were indicted in California in 2005 on charges of wiretapping and various computer crimes.
Anti-spyware programs often report Web advertisers' HTTP cookies, the small text files that track browsing activity, as spyware. While they are not always inherently malicious, many users object to third parties using space on their personal computers for their business purposes, and many anti-spyware programs offer to remove them.
These common spyware programs illustrate the diversity of behaviors found in these attacks. Note that as with computer viruses, researchers give names to spyware programs which may not be used by their creators. Programs may be grouped into "families" based not on shared program code, but on common behaviors, or by "following the money" of apparent financial or business connections. For instance, a number of the spyware programs distributed by Claria are collectively known as "Gator". Likewise, programs that are frequently installed together may be described as parts of the same spyware package, even if they function separately.
The first recorded use of the term spyware occurred on October 16, 1995 in a Usenet post that poked fun at Microsoft's business model. "Spyware" at first denoted "software" meant for espionage purposes. However, in early 2000 the founder of Zone Labs, Gregor Freund, used the term in a press release for the ZoneAlarm Personal Firewall. Later in 2000, a parent using ZoneAlarm was alerted to the fact that "Reader Rabbit," educational software marketed to children by the Mattel toy company, was surreptitiously sending data back to Mattel. Since then, "spyware" has taken on its present sense.
According to a 2005 study by AOL and the National Cyber-Security Alliance, 61 percent of surveyed users' computers were infected with form of spyware. 92 percent of surveyed users with spyware reported that they did not know of its presence, and 91 percent reported that they had not given permission for the installation of the spyware.
, spyware has become one of the preeminent security threats to computer systems running Microsoft Windows operating systems. Computers on which Internet Explorer (IE) is the primary browser are particularly vulnerable to such attacks, not only because IE is the most widely used, but because its tight integration with Windows allows spyware access to crucial parts of the operating system.
Before Internet Explorer 6 SP2 was released as part of Windows XP Service Pack 2, the browser would automatically display an installation window for any ActiveX component that a website wanted to install. The combination of user ignorance about these changes, and the assumption by Internet Explorer that all ActiveX components are benign, helped to spread spyware significantly. Many spyware components would also make use of exploits in JavaScript, Internet Explorer and Windows to install without user knowledge or permission.
The Windows Registry contains multiple sections where modification of key values allows software to be executed automatically when the operating system boots. Spyware can exploit this design to circumvent attempts at removal. The spyware typically will link itself from each location in the registry that allows execution. Once running, the spyware will periodically check if any of these links are removed. If so, they will be automatically restored. This ensures that the spyware will execute when the operating system is booted, even if some (or most) of the registry links are removed.
Malicious programmers have released a large number of rogue (fake) anti-spyware programs, and widely distributed Web banner ads can warn users that their computers have been infected with spyware, directing them to purchase programs which do not actually remove spyware—or else, may add more spyware of their own.
The proliferation of fake or spoofed antivirus products that bill themselves as antispyware can be troublesome. Users may receive popups prompting them to install them to protect their computer, when it will in fact add spyware. This software is called rogue software. It is recommended that users do not install any freeware claiming to be anti-spyware unless it is verified to be legitimate. Some known offenders include:
Fake antivirus products constitute 15 percent of all malware.
On January 26, 2006, Microsoft and the Washington state attorney general filed suit against Secure Computer for its Spyware Cleaner product.
Unauthorized access to a computer is illegal under computer crime laws, such as the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the U.K.'s Computer Misuse Act, and similar laws in other countries. Since owners of computers infected with spyware generally claim that they never authorized the installation, a "prima facie" reading would suggest that the promulgation of spyware would count as a criminal act. Law enforcement has often pursued the authors of other malware, particularly viruses. However, few spyware developers have been prosecuted, and many operate openly as strictly legitimate businesses, though some have faced lawsuits.
Spyware producers argue that, contrary to the users' claims, users do in fact give consent to installations. Spyware that comes bundled with shareware applications may be described in the legalese text of an end-user license agreement (EULA). Many users habitually ignore these purported contracts, but spyware companies such as Claria say these demonstrate that users have consented.
Despite the ubiquity of EULAs agreements, under which a single click can be taken as consent to the entire text, relatively little caselaw has resulted from their use. It has been established in most common law jurisdictions that this type of agreement can be a binding contract "in certain circumstances." This does not, however, mean that every such agreement is a contract, or that every term in one is enforceable.
Some jurisdictions, including the U.S. states of Iowa and Washington, have passed laws criminalizing some forms of spyware. Such laws make it illegal for anyone other than the owner or operator of a computer to install software that alters Web-browser settings, monitors keystrokes, or disables computer-security software.
In the United States, lawmakers introduced a bill in 2005 entitled the Internet Spyware Prevention Act, which would imprison creators of spyware.
The US Federal Trade Commission has sued Internet marketing organizations under the "unfairness doctrine" to make them stop infecting consumers' PCs with spyware. In one case, that against Seismic Entertainment Productions, the FTC accused the defendants of developing a program that seized control of PCs nationwide, infected them with spyware and other malicious software, bombarded them with a barrage of pop-up advertising for Seismic's clients, exposed the PCs to security risks, and caused them to malfunction. Seismic then offered to sell the victims an "antispyware" program to fix the computers, and stop the popups and other problems that Seismic had caused. On November 21, 2006, a settlement was entered in federal court under which a $1.75 million judgment was imposed in one case and $1.86 million in another, but the defendants were insolvent
In a second case, brought against CyberSpy Software LLC, the FTC charged that CyberSpy marketed and sold "RemoteSpy" keylogger spyware to clients who would then secretly monitor unsuspecting consumers' computers. According to the FTC, Cyberspy touted RemoteSpy as a "100% undetectable" way to "Spy on Anyone. From Anywhere." The FTC has obtained a temporary order prohibiting the defendants from selling the software and disconnecting from the Internet any of their servers that collect, store, or provide access to information that this software has gathered. The case is still in its preliminary stages. A complaint filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) brought the RemoteSpy software to the FTC's attention.
An administrative fine, the first of its kind in Europe, has been issued by the Independent Authority of Posts and Telecommunications (OPTA) from the Netherlands. It applied fines in total value of Euro 1,000,000 for infecting 22 million computers. The spyware concerned is called DollarRevenue. The law articles that have been violated are art. 4.1 of the Decision on universal service providers and on the interests of end users; the fines have been issued based on art. 15.4 taken together with art. 15.10 of the Dutch telecommunications law.
Former New York State Attorney General and former Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer has pursued spyware companies for fraudulent installation of software. In a suit brought in 2005 by Spitzer, the California firm Intermix Media, Inc. ended up settling, by agreeing to pay US$7.5 million and to stop distributing spyware.
The hijacking of Web advertisements has also led to litigation. In June 2002, a number of large Web publishers sued Claria for replacing advertisements, but settled out of court.
Courts have not yet had to decide whether advertisers can be held liable for spyware that displays their ads. In many cases, the companies whose advertisements appear in spyware pop-ups do not directly do business with the spyware firm. Rather, they have contracted with an advertising agency, which in turn contracts with an online subcontractor who gets paid by the number of "impressions" or appearances of the advertisement. Some major firms such as Dell Computer and Mercedes-Benz have sacked advertising agencies that have run their ads in spyware.
Litigation has gone both ways. Since "spyware" has become a common pejorative, some makers have filed libel and defamation actions when their products have been so described. In 2003, Gator (now known as Claria) filed suit against the website PC Pitstop for describing its program as "spyware". PC Pitstop settled, agreeing not to use the word "spyware", but continues to describe harm caused by the Gator/Claria software. As a result, other anti-spyware and anti-virus companies have also used other terms such as "potentially unwanted programs" or greyware to denote these products.
In the 2010 WebcamGate case, plaintiffs charged two suburban Philadelphia high schools secretly spied on students by surreptitiously and remotely activating webcams embedded in school-issued laptops the students were using at home, and therefore infringed on their privacy rights. The school loaded each student's computer with LANrev's remote activation tracking software. This included the now-discontinued "TheftTrack". While TheftTrack was not enabled by default on the software, the program allowed the school district to elect to activate it, and to choose which of the TheftTrack surveillance options the school wanted to enable.
TheftTrack allowed school district employees to secretly remotely activate the webcam embedded in the student's laptop, above the laptop's screen. That allowed school officials to secretly take photos through the webcam, of whatever was in front of it and in its line of sight, and send the photos to the school's server. The LANrev software disabled the webcams for all other uses ("e.g.", students were unable to use Photo Booth or video chat), so most students mistakenly believed their webcams did not work at all. In addition to webcam surveillance, TheftTrack allowed school officials to take screenshots, and send them to the school's server. In addition, LANrev allowed school officials to take snapshots of instant messages, web browsing, music playlists, and written compositions. The schools admitted to secretly snapping over 66,000 webshots and screenshots, including webcam shots of students in their bedrooms.
| 28951 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28951 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Speciesism
Speciesism () or specism denotes discrimination based on species membership. Such discrimination involves treating members of one species as morally more important than members of other species even when their interests are equivalent. More precisely, speciesism is the failure to consider interests of equal strength to an equal extent because of the species of which the individuals have been classified as belonging to.
The term is often used by philosophers as well as advocates for the fair treatment of animals. Speciesism is a prejudice similar to racism or sexism, in that the treatment of individuals is predicated on group membership and morally irrelevant physical differences. Speciesism plays a role in the forms of factory farming, the use of animals for entertainment such as in bullfighting and rodeos, the taking of animals' fur and skin, experimentation on animals, and the refusal to aid wild animals that suffer due to natural processes.
An example of a speciesist belief would be the following: Suppose that both a dog and a cow need their tails removed for medical reasons. Suppose someone believes that the dog and the cow have equivalent interests, but insists that the dog receive pain relief for the operation, yet is fine with the cow's tail being docked without pain relief, remarking, "it's just a cow." This belief is speciesist because it disregards her interest in not suffering intense pain due to her species membership.
It is possible to give more consideration to members of one species than to members of another species without being speciesist. For example, consider the belief that a typical human has an interest in voting but that a typical gorilla does not. This belief can involve starting with a premise that a certain feature of a being—such as being able to understand and participate in a political system in which one has a political representative—is relevant no matter the being's species. For someone holding this belief, a test for whether the belief is speciesist would be whether they would believe a gorilla who could understand and participate in a political system in which she had a political representative would have an interest in voting.
There are a few common speciesist paradigms.
Philosophers continue to debate the ethics, morality and concept of speciesism.
The term "speciesism", and the argument that it is simply a prejudice, first appeared in 1970 in a privately printed pamphlet written by British psychologist Richard D. Ryder. Ryder was a member of a group of academics in Oxford, England, the nascent animal rights community, now known as the Oxford Group. One of the group's activities was distributing pamphlets about areas of concern; the pamphlet titled "Speciesism" was written to protest against animal experimentation.
Ryder stated in the pamphlet that "[s]ince Darwin, scientists have agreed that there is no 'magical' essential difference between humans and other animals, biologically-speaking. Why then do we make an almost total distinction morally? If all organisms are on one physical continuum, then we should also be on the same moral continuum." He wrote that, at that time in the UK, 5,000,000 animals were being used each year in experiments, and that attempting to gain benefits for our own species through the mistreatment of others was "just 'speciesism' and as such it is a selfish emotional argument rather than a reasoned one". Ryder used the term again in an essay, "Experiments on Animals", in "Animals, Men and Morals" (1971), a collection of essays on animal rights edited by philosophy graduate students Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch and John Harris, who were also members of the Oxford Group. Ryder wrote:
In as much as both "race" and "species" are vague terms used in the classification of living creatures according, largely, to physical appearance, an analogy can be made between them. Discrimination on grounds of race, although most universally condoned two centuries ago, is now widely condemned. Similarly, it may come to pass that enlightened minds may one day abhor "speciesism" as much as they now detest "racism." The illogicality in both forms of prejudice is of an identical sort. If it is accepted as morally wrong to deliberately inflict suffering upon innocent human creatures, then it is only logical to also regard it as wrong to inflict suffering on innocent individuals of other species. ... The time has come to act upon this logic.
Those who claim that speciesism is unfair to individuals of nonhuman species have often invoked mammals and chickens in the context of research or farming. There is not yet a clear definition or line agreed upon by a significant segment of the movement as to which species are to be treated equally with humans or in some ways additionally protected: mammals, birds, reptiles, arthropods, insects, bacteria, etc. This question is all the more complex since a study by Miralles et al. (2019) has brought to light the evolutionary component of human empathic and compassionate reactions and the influence of anthropomorphic mechanisms in our affective relationship with the living world as a whole: the more an organism is evolutionarily distant from us, the less we recognize ourselves in it and the less we are moved by its fate.
The term was popularized by the Australian philosopher Peter Singer in his book "Animal Liberation" (1975). Singer had known Ryder from his own time as a graduate philosophy student at Oxford. He credited Ryder with having coined the term and used it in the title of his book's fifth chapter: "Man's Dominion ... "a short history of speciesism"", defining it as "a prejudice or attitude of bias in favour of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species":
Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favouring the interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case.
Singer stated from a preference-utilitarian perspective, writing that speciesism violates the principle of equal consideration of interests, the idea based on Jeremy Bentham's principle: "each to count for one, and none for more than one." Singer stated that, although there may be differences between humans and nonhumans, they share the capacity to suffer, and we must give equal consideration to that suffering. Any position that allows similar cases to be treated in a dissimilar fashion fails to qualify as an acceptable moral theory. The term caught on; Singer wrote that it was an awkward word but that he could not think of a better one. It became an entry in the "Oxford English Dictionary" in 1985, defined as "discrimination against or exploitation of animal species by human beings, based on an assumption of mankind's superiority." In 1994 the "Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy" offered a wider definition: "By analogy with racism and sexism, the improper stance of refusing respect to the lives, dignity, or needs of animals of other than the human species."
More recently, animal rights groups such as Farm Animal Rights Movement and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have attempted to popularize the concept by promoting a World Day Against Speciesism on June 5.
Paola Cavalieri writes that the current humanist paradigm is that only human beings are members of the moral community, and that all are worthy of equal protection. Species membership, she writes, is "ipso facto" moral membership. The paradigm has an inclusive side (all human beings deserve equal protection) and an exclusive one (only human beings have that status).
She writes that it is not only philosophers who have difficulty with this concept. Richard Rorty (1931–2007) stated that most human beings – those outside what he called our "Eurocentric human rights culture" – are unable to understand why membership of a species would in itself be sufficient for inclusion in the moral community: "Most people live in a world in which it would be just too risky – indeed, it would often be insanely dangerous – to let one's sense of moral community stretch beyond one's family, clan or tribe." Rorty wrote:
Such people are "morally" offended by the suggestion that they should treat someone who is not kin as if he were a brother, or a nigger as if he were white, or a queer as if he were normal, or an infidel as if she were a believer. They are offended by the suggestion that they treat people whom they do not think of as human as if they were human. When utilitarians tell them that all pleasures and pains felt by members of our biological species are equally relevant to moral deliberation, or when Kantians tell them that the ability to engage in such deliberation is sufficient for membership in the moral community, they are incredulous. They rejoin that these philosophers seem oblivious to blatantly obvious moral distinctions, distinctions that any decent person will draw.
Much of humanity is similarly offended by the suggestion that the moral community be extended to nonhumans. Nonhumans do possess some moral status in many societies, but it generally extends only to protection against what Cavalieri calls "wanton cruelty". Anti-speciesists state that the extension of moral membership to all humanity, regardless of individual properties such as intelligence, while denying it to nonhumans, also regardless of individual properties, is internally inconsistent. According to the argument from marginal cases, if infants, the senile, the comatose, and the cognitively disabled (marginal-case human beings) have a certain moral status, then nonhuman animals must be awarded that status too, since there is no morally relevant ability that the marginal-case humans have that nonhumans lack.
American legal scholar Steven M. Wise states that speciesism is a bias as arbitrary as any other. He cites the philosopher R.G. Frey (1941–2012), a leading animal rights critic, who wrote in 1983 that, if forced to choose between abandoning experiments on animals and allowing experiments on "marginal-case" humans, he would choose the latter, "not because I begin a monster and end up choosing the monstrous, but because I cannot think of anything at all compelling that cedes all human life of any quality greater value than animal life of any quality".
Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, stated against speciesism in "The Blind Watchmaker" (1986), "The Great Ape Project" (1993), and "The God Delusion" (2006), elucidating the connection with evolutionary theory. He compares former racist attitudes and assumptions to their present-day speciesist counterparts. In the chapter "The one true tree of life" in "The Blind Watchmaker", he states that it is not only zoological taxonomy that is saved from awkward ambiguity by the extinction of intermediate forms, but also human ethics and law. Dawkins states that what he calls the "discontinuous mind" is ubiquitous, dividing the world into units that reflect nothing but our use of language, and animals into discontinuous species:
The director of a zoo is entitled to "put down" a chimpanzee that is surplus to requirements, while any suggestion that he might "put down" a redundant keeper or ticket-seller would be greeted with howls of incredulous outrage. The chimpanzee is the property of the zoo. Humans are nowadays not supposed to be anybody's property, yet the rationale for discriminating against chimpanzees is seldom spelled out, and I doubt if there is a defensible rationale at all. Such is the breathtaking speciesism of our Christian-inspired attitudes, the abortion of a single human zygote (most of them are destined to be spontaneously aborted anyway) can arouse more moral solicitude and righteous indignation than the vivisection of any number of intelligent adult chimpanzees! ... The only reason we can be comfortable with such a double standard is that the intermediates between humans and chimps are all dead.
Dawkins elaborated in a discussion with Singer at The Center for Inquiry in 2007, when asked whether he continues to eat meat: "It's a little bit like the position which many people would have held a couple of hundred years ago over slavery. Where lots of people felt morally uneasy about slavery but went along with it because the whole economy of the South depended upon slavery."
David Sztybel states in his paper, "Can the Treatment of Animals Be Compared to the Holocaust?" (2006), that the racism of the Nazis is comparable to the speciesism inherent in eating meat or using animal by-products, particularly those produced on factory farms. Y. Michael Barilan, an Israeli physician, states that speciesism is not the same thing as Nazi racism, because the latter extolled the abuser and condemned the weaker and the abused. He describes speciesism as the recognition of rights on the basis of group membership, rather than solely on the basis of moral considerations.
"Libertarian extension" is the idea that the intrinsic value of nature can be extended beyond sentient beings. This seeks to apply the principle of individual rights not only to all animals but also to objects without a nervous system such as trees, plants, and rocks. Ryder rejects this argument, writing that "value cannot exist in the absence of consciousness or potential consciousness. Thus, rocks and rivers and houses have no interests and no rights of their own. This does not mean, of course, that they are not of value to us, and to many other painients, including those who need them as habitats and who would suffer without them."
A common theme in defending speciesism is the argument that humans have the right to exploit other species to defend their own. Philosopher Carl Cohen stated in 1986: "Speciesism is not merely plausible; it is essential for right conduct, because those who will not make the morally relevant distinctions among species are almost certain, in consequence, to misapprehend their true obligations." Cohen writes that racism and sexism are wrong because there are no relevant differences between the sexes or races. Between people and animals, he states, there are significant differences; his view is that animals do not qualify for Kantian personhood, and as such have no rights.
Nel Noddings, the American feminist, has criticized Singer's concept of speciesism for being simplistic, and for failing to take into account the context of species preference, as concepts of racism and sexism have taken into account the context of discrimination against humans. Peter Staudenmaier has stated that comparisons between speciesism and racism or sexism are trivializing:
The central analogy to the civil rights movement and the women's movement is trivializing and ahistorical. Both of those social movements were initiated and driven by members of the dispossessed and excluded groups themselves, not by benevolent men or white people acting on their behalf. Both movements were built precisely around the idea of reclaiming and reasserting a shared humanity in the face of a society that had deprived it and denied it. No civil rights activist or feminist ever argued, "We're sentient beings too!" They argued, "We're fully human too!" Animal liberation doctrine, far from extending this humanist impulse, directly undermines it.
A similar argument was made by Bernard Williams, who observed that a difference between speciesism versus racism and sexism is that racists and sexists deny any input from those of a different race or sex when it comes to questioning how they should be treated. Conversely, when it comes to how animals should be treated, Williams observed that it is only possible for humans to discuss that question. Williams observed that being a human being is often used as an argument against discrimination on the grounds of race or sex, whereas racism and sexism are seldom deployed to counter discrimination.
Williams also stated in favour of speciesism (which he termed 'humanism'), arguing that "Why are fancy properties which are grouped under the label of personhood "morally relevant" to issues of destroying a certain kind of animal, while the property of being a human being is not?" Williams states that to respond by arguing that it is because these are properties considered valuable by human beings does not undermine speciesism as humans also consider human beings to be valuable, thus justifying speciesism. Williams then states that the only way to resolve this would be by arguing that these properties are "simply better" but in that case one would need to justify why these properties are better if not because of human attachment to them. Christopher Grau supported Williams, arguing that if one used properties like rationality, sentience and moral agency as criteria for moral status as an alternative to species-based moral status, then it would need to be shown why these particular properties are to be used instead of others; there must be something that gives them special status. Grau states that to claim these are simply better properties would require the existence of an impartial observer, an "enchanted picture of the universe", to state them to be so. Thus Grau states that such properties have no greater justification as criteria for moral status than being a member of a species does. Grau also states that even if such an impartial perspective existed, it still wouldn't necessarily be against speciesism, since it is entirely possible that there could be reasons given by an impartial observer for humans to care about humanity. Grau then further observes that if an impartial observer existed and valued only minimalizing suffering, it would likely be overcome with horror at the suffering of all individuals and would rather have humanity annihilate the planet than allow it to continue. Grau thus concludes that those endorsing the idea of deriving values from an impartial observer do not seem to have seriously considered the conclusions of such an idea.
Another criticism of animal-type anti-speciesism is based on the distinction between demanding rights one wants and being put into those one may not want. Many people, who are now over 18 but remember their time as minors as a time when their alleged children's rights were legalized torture, doubt if animal rights do animals any good, especially since animals cannot even say what they consider to be horrible. A distinction is made between people who are extrinsically denied their possibility to say what they think by 18 year limits, psychiatric diagnoses based on domain-specific hypotheses, or other constructed laws on one hand, and marginal case humans intrinsically incapable of opining about their situation on the other. The former is considered comparable to racism and sexism, the latter is considered comparable to animals. This extends to questioning and rejecting the very definition of "wanton cruelty". One example that has been pointed out is that since we do not know whether or not animals are aware of death, all ethical considerations on putting animals down are benighted. Advocates of this way of partly accepting speciesism generally do not subscribe to arguments about alleged dehumanization or other legalistic type arguments, and have no problem with accepting possible future encounters with extraterrestrial intelligence or artificial intelligence as equals.
Ayn Rand's Objectivism holds that humans are the only beings who have what Rand called a conceptual consciousness, and the ability to reason and develop a moral system. She stated that humans are therefore the only species entitled to rights. Objectivist philosopher Leonard Peikoff stated: "By its nature and throughout the animal kingdom, life survives by feeding on life. To demand that man defer to the 'rights' of "other" species is to deprive man himself of the right to life. This is 'other-ism,' i.e. altruism, gone mad."
Douglas Maclean agreed that Singer raised important questions and challenges, particularly with his argument from marginal cases. However, Maclean questioned if different species can be fitted with human morality, observing that animals were generally held exempt from morality; if a man were to kidnap and try to kill a woman, most people would be outraged and anyone who intervened would be lauded as a hero, yet if a hawk captured and killed a marmot, most people would react in awe of nature and criticize anyone who tried to intervene. Maclean thus suggests that morality only makes sense under human relations, with the further one gets from it the less it can be applied. Maclean further stated that species membership is used to humanize other people and create concepts such as dignity, respect and the capacity to be treated as something more than creatures driven by survival and reproduction.
The British philosopher, Roger Scruton, regards the emergence of the animal rights and anti-speciesism movement as "the strangest cultural shift within the liberal worldview", because the idea of rights and responsibilities is, he states, distinctive to the human condition, and it makes no sense to spread them beyond our own species. Scruton states that if animals have rights, then they also have duties, which animals would routinely violate, with almost all of them being "habitual law-breakers" and predatory animals such as foxes, wolves and killer whales being "inveterate murderers" who "should be permanently locked up". He accuses anti-speciesism advocates of "pre-scientific" anthropomorphism, attributing traits to animals that are, he says, Beatrix Potter-like, where "only man is vile." It is, he states, a fantasy, a world of escape.
Thomas Wells, while agreeing that humans should have duties towards the natural world, stated that Peter Singer's arguments were incoherent. Wells states that Singer's call for ending animal suffering would justify simply exterminating every animal on the planet in order to prevent the numerous ways in which they suffer, as they could no longer feel any pain. Wells also stated that by focusing on the suffering humans inflict on animals and ignoring suffering animals inflict upon themselves or that inflicted by nature, Singer is creating a hierarchy where some suffering is more important than others, despite claiming to be committed to equality of suffering. Wells also states that the capacity to suffer, Singer's criteria for moral status, is one of degree rather than absolute categories; Wells observes that Singer denies moral status to plants on the grounds they cannot subjectively feel anything (even though they react to stimuli), yet Wells states there is no indication that animals feel pain and suffering the way humans do. Wells thus concludes "The inconvenient topography of sentience, and the hierarchy of interests it implies has to be flattened out, lest the reader conclude that something more sophisticated than hedonic utilitarianism is required."
The Rev. John Tuohey, founder of the Providence Center for Health Care Ethics, writes that the logic behind the anti-speciesism critique is flawed, and that, although the animal rights movement in the United States has been influential in slowing animal experimentation, and in some cases halting particular studies, no one has offered a compelling argument for species equality.
Some proponents of speciesism believe that animals exist so that humans may make use of them. They state that this special status conveys special rights, such as the right to life, and also unique responsibilities, such as stewardship of the environment. This belief in human exceptionalism is often rooted in the Abrahamic religions, such as the Book of Genesis 1:26: "Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." Animal rights advocates state that dominion refers to stewardship, not ownership. Jesus Christ taught that a person is worth more than many sparrows. But the Imago Dei may be personhood itself, although we humans have only achieved efficiencies in educating and otherwise acculturating humans. Proverbs 12:10 says that "Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel."
The first major statute addressing animal protection in the United States, titled "An Act for the More Effectual Prevention of Cruelty to Animals", was enacted in 1867. It provided the right to incriminate and enforce protection with regards to animal cruelty. The act, which has since been revised to suit modern cases state by state, originally addressed such things as animal neglect, abandonment, torture, fighting, transport, impound standards, and licensing standards. Although an animal rights movement had already started as early as the late 1800s, some of the laws that would shape the way animals would be treated as industry grew, were enacted around the same time that Richard Ryder was bringing the notion of Speciesism to the conversation. Legislation was being proposed and passed in the U.S. that would reshape animal welfare in industry and science. Bills such as Humane Slaughter Act, which was created to alleviate some of the suffering felt by livestock during slaughter, was passed in 1958. Later the Animal Welfare Act of 1966, passed by the 89th United States Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, was designed to put much stricter regulations and supervisions on the handling of animals used in laboratory experimentation and exhibition but has since been amended and expanded. These groundbreaking laws foreshadowed and influenced the shifting attitudes toward nonhuman animals in their rights to humane treatment which Richard D. Ryder and Peter Singer would later popularize in the 1970s and 1980s.
Great ape personhood is the idea that the attributes of nonhuman great apes are such that their sentience and personhood should be recognized by the law, rather than simply protecting them as a group under animal cruelty legislation. Awarding personhood to nonhuman primates would require that their individual interests be taken into account.
| 29045 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=29045 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Security through obscurity
Security through obscurity (or security by obscurity) is the reliance in security engineering on design or implementation secrecy as the main method of providing security to a system or component. Security experts have rejected this view as far back as 1851, and advise that obscurity should never be the only security mechanism.
An early opponent of security through obscurity was the locksmith Alfred Charles Hobbs, who in 1851 demonstrated to the public how state-of-the-art locks could be picked. In response to concerns that exposing security flaws in the design of locks could make them more vulnerable to criminals, he said: "Rogues are very keen in their profession, and know already much more than we can teach them".
There is scant formal literature on the issue of security through obscurity. Books on security engineering cite Kerckhoffs' doctrine from 1883, if they cite anything at all. For example, in a discussion about secrecy and openness in Nuclear Command and Control:
[T]he benefits of reducing the likelihood of an accidental war were considered to outweigh the possible benefits of secrecy. This is a modern reincarnation of Kerckhoffs' doctrine, first put forward in the nineteenth century, that the security of a system should depend on its key, not on its design remaining obscure.
In the field of legal academia, Peter Swire has written about the trade-off between the notion that "security through obscurity is an illusion" and the military notion that "loose lips sink ships" as well as how competition affects the incentives to disclose.
The principle of security through obscurity was more generally accepted in cryptographic work in the days when essentially all well-informed cryptographers were employed by national intelligence agencies, such as the National Security Agency. Now that cryptographers often work at universities, where researchers publish many or even all of their results, and publicly test others' designs, or in private industry, where results are more often controlled by patents and copyrights than by secrecy, the argument has lost some of its former popularity. An early example was PGP, whose source code is publicly available to anyone. The security technology in some of the best commercial browsers is also considered highly secure despite being open source.
There are conflicting stories about the origin of this term. Fans of MIT's Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS) say it was coined in opposition to Multics users down the hall, for whom security was far more an issue than on ITS. Within the ITS culture the term referred, self-mockingly, to the poor coverage of the documentation and obscurity of many commands, and to the attitude that by the time a tourist figured out how to make trouble he'd generally got over the urge to make it, because he felt part of the community. One instance of deliberate security through obscurity on ITS has been noted: the command to allow patching the running ITS system (altmode altmode control-R) echoed as $$^D. Typing Alt Alt Control-D set a flag that would prevent patching the system even if the user later got it right.
In January 2020, NPR reported that party officials in Iowa declined to share information regarding the security of its caucus app, to "make sure we are not relaying information that could be used against us." Cybersecurity experts replied that "to withhold the technical details of its app doesn't do much to protect the system."
Security by obscurity alone is discouraged and not recommended by standards bodies. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States sometimes recommends against this practice: "System security should not depend on the secrecy of the implementation or its components."
The technique stands in contrast with security by design and open security, although many real-world projects include elements of all strategies.
Knowledge of how the system is built differs from concealment and camouflage. The efficacy of obscurity in operations security depends by whether the obscurity lives on top of other good security practices, or if it is being used alone. When used as an independent layer, obscurity is considered a valid security tool.
In recent years, security through obscurity has gained support as a methodology in cybersecurity through Moving Target Defense and cyber deception. NIST's cyber resiliency framework, 800-160 Volume 2, recommends the usage of security through obscurity as a complementary part of a resilient and secure computing environment. The research firm Forrester recommends the usage of environment concealment to protect messages against Advanced Persistent Threats.
| 29087 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=29087 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Semantics
Semantics (from "sēmantikós", "significant") is the linguistic and philosophical study of meaning in language, programming languages, formal logics, and semiotics. It is concerned with the relationship between "signifiers"—like words, phrases, signs, and symbols—and what they stand for in reality, their denotation.
In International scientific vocabulary semantics is also called "semasiology". The word "semantics" was first used by Michel Bréal, a French philologist. It denotes a range of ideas—from the popular to the highly technical. It is often used in ordinary language for denoting a problem of understanding that comes down to word selection or connotation. This problem of understanding has been the subject of many formal enquiries, over a long period of time, especially in the field of formal semantics. In linguistics, it is the study of the interpretation of signs or symbols used in agents or communities within particular circumstances and contexts. Within this view, sounds, facial expressions, body language, and proxemics have semantic (meaningful) content, and each comprises several branches of study. In written language, things like paragraph structure and punctuation bear semantic content; other forms of language bear other semantic content.
The formal study of semantics intersects with many other fields of inquiry, including lexicology, syntax, pragmatics, etymology and others. Independently, semantics is also a well-defined field in its own right, often with synthetic properties. In the philosophy of language, semantics and reference are closely connected. Further related fields include philology, communication, and semiotics. The formal study of semantics can therefore be manifold and complex.
Semantics contrasts with syntax, the study of the combinatorics of units of a language (without reference to their meaning), and pragmatics, the study of the relationships between the symbols of a language, their meaning, and the users of the language. Semantics as a field of study also has significant ties to various representational theories of meaning including truth theories of meaning, coherence theories of meaning, and correspondence theories of meaning. Each of these is related to the general philosophical study of reality and the representation of meaning. In 1960s psychosemantic studies became popular after Osgood's massive cross-cultural studies using his semantic differential (SD) method that used thousands of nouns and adjective bipolar scales. A specific form of the SD, Projective Semantics method uses only most common and neutral nouns that correspond to the 7 groups (factors) of adjective-scales most consistently found in cross-cultural studies (Evaluation, Potency, Activity as found by Osgood, and Reality, Organization, Complexity, Limitation as found in other studies). In this method, seven groups of bipolar adjective scales corresponded to seven types of nouns so the method was thought to have the object-scale symmetry (OSS) between the scales and nouns for evaluation using these scales. For example, the nouns corresponding to the listed 7 factors would be: Beauty, Power, Motion, Life, Work, Chaos, Law. Beauty was expected to be assessed unequivocally as “very good” on adjectives of Evaluation-related scales, Life as “very real” on Reality-related scales, etc. However, deviations in this symmetric and very basic matrix might show underlying biases of two types: scales-related bias and objects-related bias. This OSS design meant to increase the sensitivity of the SD method to any semantic biases in responses of people within the same culture and educational background.
In linguistics, semantics is the subfield that is devoted to the study of meaning, as inherent at the levels of words, phrases, sentences, and larger units of discourse (termed "texts", or "narratives"). The study of semantics is also closely linked to the subjects of representation, reference and denotation. The basic study of semantics is oriented to the examination of the meaning of signs, and the study of relations between different linguistic units and compounds: homonymy, synonymy, antonymy, hypernymy, hyponymy, meronymy, metonymy, holonymy, paronyms. A key concern is how meaning attaches to larger chunks of text, possibly as a result of the composition from smaller units of meaning. Traditionally, semantics has included the study of "sense" and denotative "reference", truth conditions, argument structure, thematic roles, discourse analysis, and the linkage of all of these to syntax.
In the late 1960s, Richard Montague proposed a system for defining semantic entries in the lexicon in terms of the lambda calculus. In these terms, the syntactic parse of the sentence "John ate every bagel" would consist of a subject ("John") and a predicate ("ate every bagel"); Montague demonstrated that the meaning of the sentence altogether could be decomposed into the meanings of its parts and in relatively few rules of combination. The logical predicate thus obtained would be elaborated further, e.g. using truth theory models, which ultimately relate meanings to a set of Tarskian universals, which may lie outside the logic. The notion of such meaning atoms or primitives is basic to the language of thought hypothesis from the 1970s.
Despite its elegance, Montague grammar was limited by the context-dependent variability in word sense, and led to several attempts at incorporating context, such as:
Another set of concepts related to fuzziness in semantics is based on prototypes. The work of Eleanor Rosch in the 1970s led to a view that natural categories are not characterizable in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, but are graded (fuzzy at their boundaries) and inconsistent as to the status of their constituent members. One may compare it with Jung's archetype, though the concept of archetype sticks to static concept. Some post-structuralists are against the fixed or static meaning of the words. Derrida, following Nietzsche, talked about slippages in fixed meanings.
Systems of categories are not objectively "out there" in the world but are rooted in people's experience. These categories evolve as learned concepts of the world – meaning is not an objective truth, but a subjective construct, learned from experience, and language arises out of the "grounding of our conceptual systems in shared embodiment and bodily experience".
A corollary of this is that the conceptual categories (i.e. the lexicon) will not be identical for different cultures, or indeed, for every individual in the same culture. This leads to another debate (see the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis or Eskimo words for snow).
Originates from Montague's work (see above). A highly formalized theory of natural language semantics in which expressions are assigned denotations (meanings) such as individuals, truth values, or functions from one of these to another. The truth of a sentence, and its logical relation to other sentences, is then evaluated relative to a model.
Pioneered by the philosopher Donald Davidson, another formalized theory, which aims to associate each natural language sentence with a meta-language description of the conditions under which it is true, for example: 'Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white. The challenge is to arrive at the truth conditions for any sentences from fixed meanings assigned to the individual words and fixed rules for how to combine them. In practice, truth-conditional semantics is similar to model-theoretic semantics; conceptually, however, they differ in that truth-conditional semantics seeks to connect language with statements about the real world (in the form of meta-language statements), rather than with abstract models.
This theory is an effort to explain properties of argument structure. The assumption behind this theory is that syntactic properties of phrases reflect the meanings of the words that head them. With this theory, linguists can better deal with the fact that subtle differences in word meaning correlate with other differences in the syntactic structure that the word appears in. The way this is gone about is by looking at the internal structure of words. These small parts that make up the internal structure of words are termed "semantic primitives".
Cognitive semantics approaches meaning from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. In this framework, language is explained via general human cognitive abilities rather than a domain-specific language module. The techniques native to cognitive semantics are typically used in lexical studies such as those put forth by Leonard Talmy, George Lakoff, Dirk Geeraerts, and Bruce Wayne Hawkins. Some cognitive semantic frameworks, such as that developed by Talmy, take into account syntactic structures as well. Semantics, through modern researchers can be linked to the Wernicke's area of the brain and can be measured using the event-related potential (ERP). ERP is the rapid electrical response recorded with small disc electrodes which are placed on a persons scalp.
A linguistic theory that investigates word meaning. This theory understands that the meaning of a word is fully reflected by its context. Here, the meaning of a word is constituted by its contextual relations. Therefore, a distinction between degrees of participation as well as modes of participation are made. In order to accomplish this distinction any part of a sentence that bears a meaning and combines with the meanings of other constituents is labeled as a semantic constituent. Semantic constituents that cannot be broken down into more elementary constituents are labeled minimal semantic constituents.
Various fields or disciplines have long been contributing to cross-cultural semantics. Are words like "love", "truth", and "hate" universals? Is even the word "sense" – so central to semantics – a universal, or a concept entrenched in a long-standing but culture-specific tradition? These are the kind of crucial questions that are discussed in cross-cultural semantics. Translation theory, ethnolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and cultural linguistics specialize in the field of comparing, contrasting, and translating words, terms and meanings from one language to another (see Herder, W. von Humboldt, Boas, Sapir, and Whorf). But philosophy, sociology, and anthropology have long established traditions in contrasting the different nuances of the terms and concepts we use. And online encyclopaedias such as the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu, and more and more Wikipedia itself have greatly facilitated the possibilities of comparing the background and usages of key cultural terms. In recent years the question of whether key terms are translatable or untranslatable has increasingly come to the fore of global discussions, especially since the publication of Barbara Cassin's "Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon", in 2014.
Computational semantics is focused on the processing of linguistic meaning. In order to do this concrete algorithms and architectures are described. Within this framework the algorithms and architectures are also analyzed in terms of decidability, time/space complexity, data structures that they require and communication protocols.
In computer science, the term "semantics" refers to the meaning of language constructs, as opposed to their form (syntax). According to Euzenat, semantics "provides the rules for interpreting the syntax which do not provide the meaning directly but constrains the possible interpretations of what is declared."
The semantics of programming languages and other languages is an important issue and area of study in computer science. Like the syntax of a language, its semantics can be defined exactly.
For instance, the following statements use different syntaxes, but cause the same instructions to be executed, namely, perform an arithmetical addition of 'y' to 'x' and store the result in a variable called 'x':
Various ways have been developed to describe the semantics of programming languages formally, building on mathematical logic:
The Semantic Web refers to the extension of the World Wide Web via embedding added semantic metadata, using semantic data modeling techniques such as Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Web Ontology Language (OWL).
On the Semantic Web, terms such as "semantic network" and "semantic data model" are used to describe particular types of data model characterized by the use of directed graphs in which the vertices denote concepts or entities in the world and their properties, and the arcs denote relationships between them. These can formally be described as description logic concepts and roles, which correspond to OWL classes and properties.
In psychology, "semantic memory" is memory for meaning – in other words, the aspect of memory that preserves only the "gist", the general significance, of remembered experience – while episodic memory is memory for the ephemeral details – the individual features, or the unique particulars of experience. The term 'episodic memory' was introduced by Tulving and Schacter in the context of 'declarative memory' which involved simple association of factual or objective information concerning its object. Word meaning is measured by the company they keep, i.e. the relationships among words themselves in a semantic network. The memories may be transferred intergenerationally or isolated in one generation due to a cultural disruption. Different generations may have different experiences at similar points in their own time-lines. This may then create a vertically heterogeneous semantic net for certain words in an otherwise homogeneous culture. In a network created by people analyzing their understanding of the word (such as Wordnet) the links and decomposition structures of the network are few in number and kind, and include "part of", "kind of", and similar links. In automated ontologies the links are computed vectors without explicit meaning. Various automated technologies are being developed to compute the meaning of words: latent semantic indexing and support vector machines as well as natural language processing, artificial neural networks and predicate calculus techniques.
Ideasthesia is a psychological phenomenon in which activation of concepts evokes sensory experiences. For example, in synesthesia, activation of a concept of a letter (e.g., that of the letter "A") evokes sensory-like experiences (e.g., of red color).
| 29107 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=29107 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He also shared volumes and collaborated with Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, and Charles Lloyd. He wrote the poems "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan", as well as the major prose work "Biographia Literaria". His critical work, especially on William Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases, including suspension of disbelief. He had a major influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and American transcendentalism.
Throughout his adult life Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been speculated that he had bipolar disorder, which had not been defined during his lifetime. He was physically unhealthy, which may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for these conditions with laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction.
Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in the Town of Ottery St Mary in Devon, England. Samuel's father was the Reverend John Coleridge (1718–1781), the well-respected vicar of St Mary's Church, Ottery St Mary and was headmaster of the King's School, a free grammar school established by King Henry VIII (1509–1547) in the town. He had previously been master of Hugh Squier's School in South Molton, Devon, and lecturer of nearby Molland.
John Coleridge had three children by his first wife. Samuel was the youngest of ten by the Reverend Mr. Coleridge's second wife, Anne Bowden (1726–1809), probably the daughter of John Bowden, Mayor of South Molton, Devon, in 1726. Coleridge suggests that he "took no pleasure in boyish sports" but instead read "incessantly" and played by himself. After John Coleridge died in 1781, 8-year-old Samuel was sent to Christ's Hospital, a charity school which was founded in the 16th century in Greyfriars, London, where he remained throughout his childhood, studying and writing poetry. At that school Coleridge became friends with Charles Lamb, a schoolmate, and studied the works of Virgil and William Lisle Bowles.
In one of a series of autobiographical letters written to Thomas Poole, Coleridge wrote: "At six years old I remember to have read "Belisarius", "Robinson Crusoe", and "Philip Quarll" – and then I found the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments" – one tale of which (the tale of a man who was compelled to seek for a pure virgin) made so deep an impression on me (I had read it in the evening while my mother was mending stockings) that I was haunted by spectres whenever I was in the dark – and I distinctly remember the anxious and fearful eagerness with which I used to watch the window in which the books lay – and whenever the sun lay upon them, I would seize it, carry it by the wall, and bask, and read."
Coleridge seems to have appreciated his teacher, as he wrote in recollections of his school days in "Biographia Literaria":
I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time, a very severe master [...] At the same time that we were studying the Greek Tragic Poets, he made us read Shakespeare and Milton as lessons: and they were the lessons too, which required most time and trouble to bring up, so as to escape his censure. I learnt from him, that Poetry, even that of the loftiest, and, seemingly, that of the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more, and more fugitive causes. [...] In our own English compositions (at least for the last three years of our school education) he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where the same sense might have been conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer words... In fancy I can almost hear him now, exclaiming "Harp? Harp? Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, Muse? your Nurse's daughter, you mean! Pierian spring? Oh aye! the cloister-pump, I suppose!" [...] Be this as it may, there was one custom of our master's, which I cannot pass over in silence, because I think it ... worthy of imitation. He would often permit our theme exercises, ... to accumulate, till each lad had four or five to be looked over. Then placing the whole number abreast on his desk, he would ask the writer, why this or that sentence might not have found as appropriate a place under this or that other thesis: and if no satisfying answer could be returned, and two faults of the same kind were found in one exercise, the irrevocable verdict followed, the exercise was torn up, and another on the same subject to be produced, in addition to the tasks of the day.
He later wrote of his loneliness at school in the poem "Frost at Midnight":
"With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt/Of my sweet birthplace."
From 1791 until 1794, Coleridge attended Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1792, he won the Browne Gold Medal for an ode that he wrote on the slave trade. In December 1793, he left the college and enlisted in the 15th (The King's) Light Dragoons using the false name "Silas Tomkyn Comberbache", perhaps because of debt or because the girl that he loved, Mary Evans, had rejected him. His brothers arranged for his discharge a few months later under the reason of "insanity" and he was readmitted to Jesus College, though he would never receive a degree from the university.
At Jesus College, Coleridge was introduced to political and theological ideas then considered radical, including those of the poet Robert Southey with whom he collaborated on the play "The Fall of Robespierre". Coleridge joined Southey in a plan, later abandoned, to found a utopian commune-like society, called Pantisocracy, in the wilderness of Pennsylvania. In 1795, the two friends married sisters Sara and Edith Fricker, in St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, but Coleridge's marriage with Sara proved unhappy. He grew to detest his wife, whom he married mainly because of social constraints. Following the birth of their fourth child, he eventually separated from her.
A third sister, Mary, had already married a third poet Robert Lovell and both became partners in Pantisocracy. Lovell also introduced Coleridge and Southey to their future patron Joseph Cottle but died of a fever in April 1796. Coleridge was with him at his death.
In 1796 he released his first volume of poems entitled "Poems on various subjects", which also included four poems by Charles Lamb as well as a collaboration with Robert Southey and a work suggested by his and Lamb's schoolfriend Robert Favell. Among the poems were "Religious Musings", "Monody on the Death of Chatterton" and an early version of "The Eolian Harp" entitled "Effusion 35". A second edition was printed in 1797, this time including an appendix of works by Lamb and Charles Lloyd, a young poet to whom Coleridge had become a private tutor.
In 1796 he also privately printed "Sonnets from Various Authors", including sonnets by Lamb, Lloyd, Southey and himself as well as older poets such as William Lisle Bowles.
Coleridge made plans to establish a journal, "The Watchman", to be printed every eight days to avoid a weekly newspaper tax. The first issue of the short-lived journal was published in March 1796. It had ceased publication by May of that year.
The years 1797 and 1798, during which he lived in what is now known as Coleridge Cottage, in Nether Stowey, Somerset, were among the most fruitful of Coleridge's life. In 1795, Coleridge met poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. (Wordsworth, having visited him and being enchanted by the surroundings, rented Alfoxton Park, a little over three miles [5 km] away.) Besides "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", Coleridge composed the symbolic poem "Kubla Khan", written—Coleridge himself claimed—as a result of an opium dream, in "a kind of a reverie"; and the first part of the narrative poem "Christabel". The writing of "Kubla Khan", written about the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan and his legendary palace at Xanadu, was said to have been interrupted by the arrival of a "Person from Porlock" – an event that has been embellished upon in such varied contexts as science fiction and Nabokov's "Lolita". During this period, he also produced his much-praised "conversation poems" "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison", "Frost at Midnight", and "".
In 1798, Coleridge and Wordsworth published a joint volume of poetry, "Lyrical Ballads", which proved to be the starting point for the English romantic age. Wordsworth may have contributed more poems, but the real star of the collection was Coleridge's first version of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". It was the longest work and drew more praise and attention than anything else in the volume. In the spring Coleridge temporarily took over for Rev. Joshua Toulmin at Taunton's Mary Street Unitarian Chapel while Rev. Toulmin grieved over the drowning death of his daughter Jane. Poetically commenting on Toulmin's strength, Coleridge wrote in a 1798 letter to John Prior Estlin, "I walked into Taunton (eleven miles) and back again, and performed the divine services for Dr. Toulmin. I suppose you must have heard that his daughter, (Jane, on 15 April 1798) in a melancholy derangement, suffered herself to be swallowed up by the tide on the sea-coast between Sidmouth and Bere (Beer). These events cut cruelly into the hearts of old men: but the good Dr. Toulmin bears it like the true practical Christian, – there is indeed a tear in his eye, but that eye is lifted up to the Heavenly Father."
Coleridge also worked briefly in Shropshire, where he came in December 1797 as locum to its local Unitarian minister, Dr Rowe, in their church in the High Street at Shrewsbury. He is said to have read his "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" at a literary evening in Mardol. He was then contemplating a career in the ministry, and gave a probationary sermon in High Street church on Sunday, 14 January 1798. William Hazlitt, a Unitarian minister's son, was in the congregation, having walked from Wem to hear him. Coleridge later visited Hazlitt and his father at Wem but within a day or two of preaching he received a letter from Josiah Wedgwood II, who had offered to help him out of financial difficulties with an annuity of £150 (approximately £13,000 in today's money) per year on condition he give up his ministerial career. Coleridge accepted this, to the disappointment of Hazlitt who hoped to have him as a neighbour in Shropshire.
From 16 September 1798, Coleridge and the Wordsworths left for a stay in Germany; Coleridge soon went his own way and spent much of his time in university towns. In February 1799 he enrolled at the University of Göttingen, where he attended lectures by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and Johann Gottfried Eichhorn. During this period, he became interested in German philosophy, especially the transcendental idealism and critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and in the literary criticism of the 18th-century dramatist Gotthold Lessing. Coleridge studied German and, after his return to England, translated the dramatic trilogy "Wallenstein" by the German Classical poet Friedrich Schiller into English. He continued to pioneer these ideas through his own critical writings for the rest of his life (sometimes without attribution), although they were unfamiliar and difficult for a culture dominated by empiricism.
In 1799, Coleridge and the Wordsworths stayed at Thomas Hutchinson's farm on the River Tees at Sockburn, near Darlington.
It was at Sockburn that Coleridge wrote his ballad-poem "Love", addressed to Sara Hutchinson. The knight mentioned is the mailed figure on the Conyers tomb in ruined Sockburn church. The figure has a wyvern at his feet, a reference to the Sockburn Worm slain by Sir John Conyers (and a possible source for Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky"). The worm was supposedly buried under the rock in the nearby pasture; this was the 'greystone' of Coleridge's first draft, later transformed into a 'mount'. The poem was a direct inspiration for John Keats' famous poem "La Belle Dame Sans Merci".
Coleridge's early intellectual debts, besides German idealists like Kant and critics like Lessing, were first to William Godwin's "Political Justice", especially during his Pantisocratic period, and to David Hartley's "Observations on Man", which is the source of the psychology which is found in "Frost at Midnight". Hartley argued that one becomes aware of sensory events as impressions, and that "ideas" are derived by noticing similarities and differences between impressions and then by naming them. Connections resulting from the coincidence of impressions create linkages, so that the occurrence of one impression triggers those links and calls up the memory of those ideas with which it is associated (See Dorothy Emmet, "Coleridge and Philosophy").
Coleridge was critical of the literary taste of his contemporaries, and a literary conservative insofar as he was afraid that the lack of taste in the ever growing masses of literate people would mean a continued desecration of literature itself.
In 1800, he returned to England and shortly thereafter settled with his family and friends in Greta Hall at Keswick in the Lake District of Cumberland to be near Grasmere, where Wordsworth had moved. He was a houseguest of the Wordsworths' for eighteen months, but was a difficult houseguest, as his dependency on laudanum grew and his frequent nightmares would wake the children. He was also a fussy eater, to Dorothy Wordsworth's frustration, who had to cook. For example, not content with salt, Coleridge sprinkled cayenne pepper on his eggs, which he ate from a teacup. His marital problems, nightmares, illnesses, increased opium dependency, tensions with Wordsworth, and a lack of confidence in his poetic powers fuelled the composition of "Dejection: An Ode" and an intensification of his philosophical studies.
In 1802, Coleridge took a nine-day walking holiday in the fells of the Lake District. Coleridge is credited with the first recorded descent of Scafell to Mickledore via Broad Stand, although this was more due to his getting lost than a keenness for mountaineering.
In 1804, he travelled to Sicily and Malta, working for a time as Acting Public Secretary of Malta under the Civil Commissioner, Alexander Ball, a task he performed quite successfully. He lived in San Anton Palace in the village of Attard. He gave this up and returned to England in 1806. Dorothy Wordsworth was shocked at his condition upon his return. From 1807 to 1808, Coleridge returned to Malta and then travelled in Sicily and Italy, in the hope that leaving Britain's damp climate would improve his health and thus enable him to reduce his consumption of opium. Thomas De Quincey alleges in his "Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets" that it was during this period that Coleridge became a full-blown opium addict, using the drug as a substitute for the lost vigour and creativity of his youth. It has been suggested that this reflects De Quincey's own experiences more than Coleridge's.
His opium addiction (he was using as much as two quarts of laudanum a week) now began to take over his life: he separated from his wife Sara in 1808, quarrelled with Wordsworth in 1810, lost part of his annuity in 1811, and put himself under the care of Dr. Daniel in 1814. His addiction caused severe constipation, which required regular and humiliating enemas.
In 1809, Coleridge made his second attempt to become a newspaper publisher with the publication of the journal entitled "The Friend". It was a weekly publication that, in Coleridge's typically ambitious style, was written, edited, and published almost entirely single-handedly. Given that Coleridge tended to be highly disorganised and had no head for business, the publication was probably doomed from the start. Coleridge financed the journal by selling over five hundred subscriptions, over two dozen of which were sold to members of Parliament, but in late 1809, publication was crippled by a financial crisis and Coleridge was obliged to approach "Conversation Sharp", Tom Poole and one or two other wealthy friends for an emergency loan to continue. "The Friend" was an eclectic publication that drew upon every corner of Coleridge's remarkably diverse knowledge of law, philosophy, morals, politics, history, and literary criticism. Although it was often turgid, rambling, and inaccessible to most readers, it ran for 25 issues and was republished in book form a number of times. Years after its initial publication, "The Friend" became a highly influential work and its effect was felt on writers and philosophers from John Stuart Mill to Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Between 1810 and 1820, Coleridge gave a series of lectures in London and Bristol – those on Shakespeare renewed interest in the playwright as a model for contemporary writers. Much of Coleridge's reputation as a literary critic is founded on the lectures that he undertook in the winter of 1810–11, which were sponsored by the Philosophical Institution and given at Scot's Corporation Hall off Fetter Lane, Fleet Street. These lectures were heralded in the prospectus as "A Course of Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, in Illustration of the Principles of Poetry." Coleridge's ill-health, opium-addiction problems, and somewhat unstable personality meant that all his lectures were plagued with problems of delays and a general irregularity of quality from one lecture to the next. As a result of these factors, Coleridge often failed to prepare anything but the loosest set of notes for his lectures and regularly entered into extremely long digressions which his audiences found difficult to follow. However, it was the lecture on "Hamlet" given on 2 January 1812 that was considered the best and has influenced "Hamlet" studies ever since. Before Coleridge, "Hamlet" was often denigrated and belittled by critics from Voltaire to Dr. Johnson. Coleridge rescued the play's reputation, and his thoughts on it are often still published as supplements to the text.
In 1812 he allowed Robert Southey to make use of extracts from his vast number of private notebooks in their collaboration "Omniana; Or, Horae Otiosiores".
In August 1814, Coleridge was approached by Lord Byron's publisher, John Murray, about the possibility of translating Goethe's classic "Faust" (1808). Coleridge was regarded by many as the greatest living writer on the demonic and he accepted the commission, only to abandon work on it after six weeks. Until recently, scholars were in agreement that Coleridge never returned to the project, despite Goethe's own belief in the 1820s that he had in fact completed a long translation of the work. In September 2007, Oxford University Press sparked a heated scholarly controversy by publishing an English translation of Goethe's work that purported to be Coleridge's long-lost masterpiece (the text in question first appeared anonymously in 1821).
Between 1814 and 1816, Coleridge lived in Calne, Wiltshire and seemed able to focus on his work and manage his addiction, drafting "Biographia Literaria". He rented rooms from a local surgeon, Mr Page, on Church Street, just opposite the entrance to the churchyard. A blue plaque marks the property today.
In April 1816, Coleridge, with his addiction worsening, his spirits depressed, and his family alienated, took residence in the Highgate homes, then just north of London, of the physician James Gillman, first at South Grove and later at the nearby 3 The Grove. It is unclear whether his growing use of opium (and the brandy in which it was dissolved) was a symptom or a cause of his growing depression. Gillman was partially successful in controlling the poet's addiction. Coleridge remained in Highgate for the rest of his life, and the house became a place of literary pilgrimage for writers including Carlyle and Emerson.
In Gillman's home, Coleridge finished his major prose work, the "Biographia Literaria" (mostly drafted in 1815, and finished in 1817), a volume composed of 23 chapters of autobiographical notes and dissertations on various subjects, including some incisive literary theory and criticism. He composed a considerable amount of poetry, of variable quality. He published other writings while he was living at the Gillman homes, notably the "Lay Sermons" of 1816 and 1817, "Sibylline Leaves" (1817), "Hush" (1820), "Aids to Reflection" (1825), and "On the Constitution of the Church and State" (1830). He also produced essays published shortly after his death, such as "Essay on Faith" (1838) and "Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit" (1840). A number of his followers were central to the Oxford Movement, and his religious writings profoundly shaped Anglicanism in the mid-nineteenth century.
Coleridge also worked extensively on the various manuscripts which form his "Opus Maximum", a work which was in part intended as a post-Kantian work of philosophical synthesis. The work was never published in his lifetime, and has frequently been seen as evidence for his tendency to conceive grand projects which he then had difficulty in carrying through to completion. But while he frequently berated himself for his "indolence", the long list of his published works calls this myth into question. Critics are divided on whether the "Opus Maximum", first published in 2002, successfully resolved the philosophical issues he had been exploring for most of his adult life.
Coleridge died in Highgate, London on 25 July 1834 as a result of heart failure compounded by an unknown lung disorder, possibly linked to his use of opium. Coleridge had spent 18 years under the roof of the Gillman family, who built an addition onto their home to accommodate the poet.Faith may be defined as fidelity to our own being, so far as such being is not and cannot become an object of the senses; and hence, by clear inference or implication to being generally, as far as the same is not the object of the senses; and again to whatever is affirmed or understood as the condition, or concomitant, or consequence of the same. This will be best explained by an instance or example. That I am conscious of something within me peremptorily commanding me to do unto others as I would they should do unto me; in other words a categorical (that is, primary and unconditional) imperative; that the maxim ("regula maxima", or supreme rule) of my actions, both inward and outward, should be such as I could, without any contradiction arising therefrom, will to be the law of all moral and rational beings. "Essay on Faith"
Carlyle described him at Highgate: "Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill, in those years, looking down on London and its smoke-tumult, like a sage escaped from the inanity of life's battle ... The practical intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer: but to the rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime character; and sat there as a kind of "Magus", girt in mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr. Gilman's house at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain whether oracles or jargon."
Coleridge is buried in the aisle of St. Michael's Parish Church in Highgate, London. He was originally buried at Old Highgate Chapel but was re-interred in St. Michael's in 1961. Coleridge could see the red door of the then new church from his last residence across the green, where he lived with a doctor he had hoped might cure him (in a house owned today by Kate Moss). When it was discovered Coleridge's vault had become derelict, the coffins – Coleridge's and those of his wife, daughter, son-in-law, and grandson – were moved to St. Michael's after an international fundraising appeal.
Drew Clode, a member of St. Michael's stewardship committee states, "they put the coffins in a convenient space which was dry and secure, and quite suitable, bricked them up and forgot about them". A recent excavation revealed the coffins were not in the location most believed, the far corner of the crypt, but actually below a memorial slab in the nave inscribed with: “Beneath this stone lies the body of Samuel Taylor Coleridge”.
St. Michael's plans to restore the crypt and allow public access. Says vicar Kunle Ayodeji of the plans: “. . we hope that the whole crypt can be cleared as a space for meetings and other uses, which would also allow access to Coleridge’s cellar.”
Coleridge is one of the most important figures in English poetry. His poems directly and deeply influenced all the major poets of the age. He was known by his contemporaries as a meticulous craftsman who was more rigorous in his careful reworking of his poems than any other poet, and Southey and Wordsworth were dependent on his professional advice. His influence on Wordsworth is particularly important because many critics have credited Coleridge with the very idea of "Conversational Poetry". The idea of utilising common, everyday language to express profound poetic images and ideas for which Wordsworth became so famous may have originated almost entirely in Coleridge’s mind. It is difficult to imagine Wordsworth’s great poems, "The Excursion" or "The Prelude", ever having been written without the direct influence of Coleridge’s originality.
As important as Coleridge was to poetry as a poet, he was equally important to poetry as a critic. His philosophy of poetry, which he developed over many years, has been deeply influential in the field of literary criticism. This influence can be seen in such critics as A. O. Lovejoy and I. A. Richards.
Coleridge is arguably best known for his longer poems, particuarly "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Christabel". Even those who have never read the "Rime" have come under its influence: its words have given the English language the metaphor of an albatross around one's neck, the quotation of "water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink" (almost always rendered as "but not a drop to drink"), and the phrase "a sadder and a wiser man" (usually rendered as "a sadder but wiser man"). The phrase "All creatures great and small" may have been inspired by "The Rime": "He prayeth best, who loveth best;/ All things both great and small;/ For the dear God who loveth us;/ He made and loveth all." "Christabel" is known for its musical rhythm, language, and its Gothic tale.
"Kubla Khan", or, "A Vision in a Dream, A Fragment", although shorter, is also widely known. Both "Kubla Khan" and "Christabel" have an additional "Romantic" aura because they were never finished. Stopford Brooke characterised both poems as having no rival due to their "exquisite metrical movement" and "imaginative phrasing."
The eight of Coleridge's poems listed above are now often discussed as a group entitled "Conversation poems". The term itself was coined in 1928 by George McLean Harper, who borrowed the subtitle of "The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem" (1798) to describe the seven other poems as well. The poems are considered by many critics to be among Coleridge's finest verses; thus Harold Bloom has written, "With "Dejection", "The Ancient Mariner", and "Kubla Khan", "Frost at Midnight" shows Coleridge at his most impressive." They are also among his most influential poems, as discussed further below.
Harper himself considered that the eight poems represented a form of blank verse that is "...more fluent and easy than Milton's, or any that had been written since Milton". In 2006 Robert Koelzer wrote about another aspect of this apparent "easiness", noting that Conversation poems such as "... Coleridge's "The Eolian Harp" and "The Nightingale" maintain a middle register of speech, employing an idiomatic language that is capable of being construed as un-symbolic and un-musical: language that lets itself be taken as 'merely talk' rather than rapturous 'song'."
The last ten lines of "Frost at Midnight" were chosen by Harper as the "best example of the peculiar kind of blank verse Coleridge had evolved, as natural-seeming as prose, but as exquisitely artistic as the most complicated sonnet." The speaker of the poem is addressing his infant son, asleep by his side:
<poem>
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
</poem>
In 1965, M. H. Abrams wrote a broad description that applies to the Conversation poems: "The speaker begins with a description of the landscape; an aspect or change of aspect in the landscape evokes a varied by integral process of memory, thought, anticipation, and feeling which remains closely intervolved with the outer scene. In the course of this meditation the lyric speaker achieves an insight, faces up to a tragic loss, comes to a moral decision, or resolves an emotional problem. Often the poem rounds itself to end where it began, at the outer scene, but with an altered mood and deepened understanding which is the result of the intervening meditation." In fact, Abrams was describing both the Conversation poems and later poems influenced by them. Abrams' essay has been called a "touchstone of literary criticism". As Paul Magnuson described it in 2002, "Abrams credited Coleridge with originating what Abrams called the 'greater Romantic lyric', a genre that began with Coleridge's 'Conversation' poems, and included Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey", Shelley's "Stanzas Written in Dejection" and Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale", and was a major influence on more modern lyrics by Matthew Arnold, Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, and W. H. Auden."
In addition to his poetry, Coleridge also wrote influential pieces of literary criticism including "Biographia Literaria", a collection of his thoughts and opinions on literature which he published in 1817. The work delivered both biographical explanations of the author's life as well as his impressions on literature. The collection also contained an analysis of a broad range of philosophical principles of literature ranging from Aristotle to Immanuel Kant and Schelling and applied them to the poetry of peers such as William Wordsworth. Coleridge's explanation of metaphysical principles were popular topics of discourse in academic communities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and T.S. Eliot stated that he believed that Coleridge was "perhaps the greatest of English critics, and in a sense the last." Eliot suggests that Coleridge displayed "natural abilities" far greater than his contemporaries, dissecting literature and applying philosophical principles of metaphysics in a way that brought the subject of his criticisms away from the text and into a world of logical analysis that mixed logical analysis and emotion. However, Eliot also criticises Coleridge for allowing his emotion to play a role in the metaphysical process, believing that critics should not have emotions that are not provoked by the work being studied. Hugh Kenner in "Historical Fictions", discusses Norman Fruman's "Coleridge, the Damaged Archangel" and suggests that the term "criticism" is too often applied to "Biographia Literaria", which both he and Fruman describe as having failed to explain or help the reader understand works of art. To Kenner, Coleridge's attempt to discuss complex philosophical concepts without describing the rational process behind them displays a lack of critical thinking that makes the volume more of a biography than a work of criticism.
In "Biographia Literaria" and his poetry, symbols are not merely "objective correlatives" to Coleridge, but instruments for making the universe and personal experience intelligible and spiritually covalent. To Coleridge, the "cinque spotted spider," making its way upstream "by fits and starts," [Biographia Literaria] is not merely a comment on the intermittent nature of creativity, imagination, or spiritual progress, but the journey and destination of his life. The spider's five legs represent the central problem that Coleridge lived to resolve, the conflict between Aristotelian logic and Christian philosophy. Two legs of the spider represent the "me-not me" of thesis and antithesis, the idea that a thing cannot be itself and its opposite simultaneously, the basis of the clockwork Newtonian world view that Coleridge rejected. The remaining three legs—exothesis, mesothesis and synthesis or the Holy trinity—represent the idea that things can diverge without being contradictory. Taken together, the five legs—with synthesis in the center, form the Holy Cross of Ramist logic. The cinque-spotted spider is Coleridge's emblem of holism, the quest and substance of Coleridge's thought and spiritual life.
Coleridge wrote reviews of Ann Radcliffe's books and "The Mad Monk", among others. He comments in his reviews: "Situations of torment, and images of naked horror, are easily conceived; and a writer in whose works they abound, deserves our gratitude almost equally with him who should drag us by way of sport through a military hospital, or force us to sit at the dissecting-table of a natural philosopher. To trace the nice boundaries, beyond which terror and sympathy are deserted by the pleasurable emotions, – to reach those limits, yet never to pass them, hic labor, hic opus est." and "The horrible and the preternatural have usually seized on the popular taste, at the rise and decline of literature. Most powerful stimulants, they can never be required except by the torpor of an unawakened, or the languor of an exhausted, appetite... We trust, however, that satiety will banish what good sense should have prevented; and that, wearied with fiends, incomprehensible characters, with shrieks, murders, and subterraneous dungeons, the public will learn, by the multitude of the manufacturers, with how little expense of thought or imagination this species of composition is manufactured."
However, Coleridge used these elements in poems such as "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1798), "Christabel" and "Kubla Khan" (published in 1816, but known in manuscript form before then) and certainly influenced other poets and writers of the time. Poems like these both drew inspiration from and helped to inflame the craze for Gothic romance. Coleridge also made considerable use of Gothic elements in his commercially successful play "Remorse".
Mary Shelley, who knew Coleridge well, mentions "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" twice directly in "Frankenstein", and some of the descriptions in the novel echo it indirectly. Although William Godwin, her father, disagreed with Coleridge on some important issues, he respected his opinions and Coleridge often visited the Godwins. Mary Shelley later recalled hiding behind the sofa and hearing his voice chanting "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".
C. S. Lewis also makes mention of his name in "The Screwtape Letters" (as a poor example of prayer, in which the devils should encourage).
Although his father was an Anglican vicar, Coleridge worked as a Unitarian preacher between 1796 and 1797. He eventually returned to the Church of England in 1814. His most noteworthy writings on religion are "Lay Sermons" (1817), "Aids to Reflection" (1825) and "The Constitution of Church and State" (1830).
Despite being mostly remembered today for his poetry and literary criticism, Coleridge was also (perhaps in his own eyes primarily) a theologian. His writings include discussions of the status of scripture, the doctrines of the Fall, justification and sanctification, and the personality and infinity of God. A key figure in the Anglican theology of his day, his writings are still regularly referred to by contemporary Anglican theologians. F. D. Maurice, F. J. A. Hort, F. W. Robertson, B. F. Westcott, John Oman and Thomas Erskine (once called the "Scottish Coleridge") were all influenced by him.
Coleridge was also a profound political thinker. While he began his life as a political radical, and an enthusiast for the French Revolution; over the years Coleridge developed a more conservative view of society, somewhat in the manner of Burke. Although seen as cowardly treachery by the next generation of Romantic poets, Coleridge's later thought became a fruitful source for the evolving radicalism of J. S. Mill. Mill found three aspects of Coleridge's thought especially illuminating:
The current standard edition is "The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge," edited by Kathleen Coburn and many others from 1969 to 2002. This collection appeared across 16 volumes as Bollingen Series 75, published variously by Princeton University Press and Routledge & Kegan Paul. The set is broken down as follows into further parts, resulting in a total of 34 separate printed volumes:
In addition, Coleridge's letters are available in: "The Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge" (1956–71), ed. Earl Leslie Griggs, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
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Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes (; 5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679), in some older texts Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book "Leviathan", which expounded an influential formulation of social contract theory. In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes also contributed to a diverse array of other fields, including history, jurisprudence, geometry, the physics of gases, theology, ethics, and general philosophy.
Thomas Hobbes was born in Westport, now part of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England, on 5 April 1588. Born prematurely when his mother heard of the coming invasion of the Spanish Armada, Hobbes later reported that "my mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear." His childhood is almost completely unknown, and his mother's name is unknown. His father, Thomas Sr., was the vicar of Charlton and Westport. Thomas Hobbes, the younger, had a brother Edmund, about two years older, and a sister. Hobbes' father, according to John Aubrey, Hobbes' biographer, was uneducated and "disesteemed learning". Thomas Sr. was involved in a fight with the local clergy outside his church, forcing him to leave London. The family was left in the care of Thomas Sr.'s older brother, Francis, a wealthy glove manufacturer with no family. Hobbes Jr. was educated at Westport church from age four, passed to the Malmesbury school, and then to a private school kept by a young man named Robert Latimer, a graduate of the University of Oxford. Hobbes was a good pupil, and between 1601 and 1602 he went up to Magdalen Hall, the predecessor college to Hertford College, Oxford, where he was taught scholastic logic and physics. The principal John Wilkinson was a Puritan, and he had some influence on Hobbes. Before going up to Oxford, Hobbes translated Euripides' "Medea" from Greek into Latin verse.
At university, Hobbes appears to have followed his own curriculum; he was "little attracted by the scholastic learning." Leaving Oxford, Hobbes completed his B.A. degree by incorporation at St John's College, University of Cambridge in 1608. He was recommended by Sir James Hussey, his master at Magdalen, as tutor to William, the son of William Cavendish, Baron of Hardwick (and later Earl of Devonshire), and began a lifelong connection with that family. William Cavendish was elevated to the peerage on his father's death in 1626, holding it for two years before his death in 1628, and his son, also William, became the 3rd Earl of Devonshire. Hobbes served as a tutor and secretary to both men. The 1st Earl's younger brother, Charles Cavendish, had two sons who were patrons of Hobbes. The elder son, William Cavendish, later 1st Duke of Newcastle, was a leading supporter of Charles I during the civil war personally financing an army for the king, having been governor to the Prince of Wales, Charles James, Duke of Cornwall. It was to this William Cavendish that Hobbes dedicated his "Elements of Law".
Hobbes became a companion to the younger William and they both took part in a grand tour of Europe between 1610 and 1615. Hobbes was exposed to European scientific and critical methods during the tour, in contrast to the scholastic philosophy that he had learned in Oxford. In Venice, Hobbes made the acquaintance of Fulgenzio Micanzio, an associate of Paolo Sarpi, a Venetian scholar and statesman. His scholarly efforts at the time were aimed at a careful study of classic Greek and Latin authors, the outcome of which was, in 1628, his great translation of Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War", the first translation of that work into English from a Greek manuscript. It has been argued that three of the discourses in the 1620 publication known as "Horea Subsecivae: Observations and Discourses" also represent the work of Hobbes from this period.
Although he associated with literary figures like Ben Jonson and briefly worked as Francis Bacon's amanuensis, translating several of his "Essays" into Latin, he did not extend his efforts into philosophy until after 1629. In June 1628, his employer Cavendish, then the Earl of Devonshire, died of the plague, and his widow, the countess Christian, dismissed Hobbes.
Hobbes soon found work as a tutor to Gervase Clifton, the son of Sir Gervase Clifton, 1st Baronet mostly spent in Paris until 1631. Thereafter, he again found work with the Cavendish family, tutoring William Cavendish, 3rd Earl of Devonshire, the eldest son of his previous pupil. Over the next seven years, as well as tutoring, he expanded his own knowledge of philosophy, awakening in him curiosity over key philosophic debates. He visited Galileo Galilei in Florence while he was under house arrest upon condemnation, in 1636, and was later a regular debater in philosophic groups in Paris, held together by Marin Mersenne.
Hobbes's first area of study was an interest in the physical doctrine of motion and physical momentum. Despite his interest in this phenomenon, he disdained experimental work as in physics. He went on to conceive the system of thought to the elaboration of which he would devote his life. His scheme was first to work out, in a separate treatise, a systematic doctrine of body, showing how physical phenomena were universally explicable in terms of motion, at least as motion or mechanical action was then understood. He then singled out Man from the realm of Nature and plants. Then, in another treatise, he showed what specific bodily motions were involved in the production of the peculiar phenomena of sensation, knowledge, affections and passions whereby Man came into relation with Man. Finally, he considered, in his crowning treatise, how Men were moved to enter into society, and argued how this must be regulated if people were not to fall back into "brutishness and misery". Thus he proposed to unite the separate phenomena of Body, Man, and the State.
Hobbes came home, in 1637, to a country riven with discontent, which disrupted him from the orderly execution of his philosophic plan. However, by the end of the Short Parliament in 1640, he had written a short treatise called "The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic". It was not published and only circulated as a manuscript among his acquaintances. A pirated version, however, was published about ten years later. Although it seems that much of "The Elements of Law" was composed before the sitting of the Short Parliament, there are polemical pieces of the work that clearly mark the influences of the rising political crisis. Nevertheless, many (though not all) elements of Hobbes's political thought were unchanged between "The Elements of Law" and "Leviathan," which demonstrates that the events of the English Civil War had little effect on his contractarian methodology. However, the arguments in "Leviathan" were modified from "The Elements of Law" when it came to the necessity of consent in creating political obligation. Namely, Hobbes wrote in "The Elements of Law" that Patrimonial kingdoms were not necessarily formed by the consent of the governed, while in "Leviathan" he argued that they were. This was perhaps a reflection either of Hobbes's thoughts about the engagement controversy or of his reaction to treatises published by Patriarchalists, such as Sir Robert Filmer, between 1640 and 1651.
When in November 1640 the Long Parliament succeeded the Short, Hobbes felt that he was in disfavour due to the circulation of his treatise and fled to Paris. He did not return for 11 years. In Paris, he rejoined the coterie around Mersenne and wrote a critique of the "Meditations on First Philosophy" of Descartes, which was printed as third among the sets of "Objections" appended, with "Replies" from Descartes, in 1641. A different set of remarks on other works by Descartes succeeded only in ending all correspondence between the two.
Hobbes also extended his own works in a way, working on the third section, "De Cive", which was finished in November 1641. Although it was initially only circulated privately, it was well received, and included lines of argumentation that were repeated a decade later in "Leviathan". He then returned to hard work on the first two sections of his work and published little except a short treatise on optics ("Tractatus opticus") included in the collection of scientific tracts published by Mersenne as "Cogitata physico-mathematica" in 1644. He built a good reputation in philosophic circles and in 1645 was chosen with Descartes, Gilles de Roberval and others to referee the controversy between John Pell and Longomontanus over the problem of squaring the circle.
The English Civil War began in 1642, and when the royalist cause began to decline in mid-1644, some of the king's supporters fled to Europe. Many came to Paris and were known to Hobbes. This revitalised Hobbes's political interests and the "De Cive" was republished and more widely distributed. The printing began in 1646 by Samuel de Sorbiere through the Elsevier press in Amsterdam with a new preface and some new notes in reply to objections.
In 1647, Hobbes took up a position as mathematical instructor to the young Charles, Prince of Wales, who had come to Paris from Jersey around July. This engagement lasted until 1648 when Charles went to Holland.
The company of the exiled royalists led Hobbes to produce "Leviathan", which set forth his theory of civil government in relation to the political crisis resulting from the war. Hobbes compared the State to a monster (leviathan) composed of men, created under pressure of human needs and dissolved by civil strife due to human passions. The work closed with a general "Review and Conclusion", in response to the war, which answered the question: Does a subject have the right to change allegiance when a former sovereign's power to protect is irrevocably lost?
During the years of composing "Leviathan", Hobbes remained in or near Paris. In 1647, a serious illness that nearly killed him disabled him for six months. On recovering, he resumed his literary task and completed it by 1650. Meanwhile, a translation of "De Cive" was being produced; scholars disagree about whether it was Hobbes who translated it.
In 1650, a pirated edition of "The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic" was published. It was divided into two small volumes ("Human Nature, or the Fundamental Elements of Policie" and "De corpore politico, or the Elements of Law, Moral and Politick").
In 1651, the translation of "De Cive" was published under the title "Philosophicall Rudiments concerning Government and Society". Also, the printing of the greater work proceeded, and finally appeared in mid-1651, titled "Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common Wealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civil." It had a famous title-page engraving depicting a crowned giant above the waist towering above hills overlooking a landscape, holding a sword and a crozier and made up of tiny human figures. The work had immediate impact. Soon, Hobbes was more lauded and decried than any other thinker of his time. The first effect of its publication was to sever his link with the exiled royalists, who might well have killed him. The secularist spirit of his book greatly angered both Anglicans and French Catholics. Hobbes appealed to the revolutionary English government for protection and fled back to London in winter 1651. After his submission to the Council of State, he was allowed to subside into private life in Fetter Lane.
In 1658, Hobbes published the final section of his philosophical system, completing the scheme he had planned more than 20 years before. "De Homine" consisted for the most part of an elaborate theory of vision. The remainder of the treatise dealt cursorily with some of the topics more fully treated in the "Human Nature" and the "Leviathan". In addition to publishing some controversial writings on mathematics and physics, Hobbes also continued to produce philosophical works. From the time of the Restoration, he acquired a new prominence; "Hobbism" became a byword for all that respectable society ought to denounce. The young king, Hobbes' former pupil, now Charles II, remembered Hobbes and called him to the court to grant him a pension of £100.
The king was important in protecting Hobbes when, in 1666, the House of Commons introduced a bill against atheism and profaneness. That same year, on 17 October 1666, it was ordered that the committee to which the bill was referred "should be empowered to receive information touching such books as tend to atheism, blasphemy and profaneness... in particular... the book of Mr. Hobbes called the "Leviathan"". Hobbes was terrified at the prospect of being labelled a heretic, and proceeded to burn some of his compromising papers. At the same time, he examined the actual state of the law of heresy. The results of his investigation were first announced in three short Dialogues added as an "Appendix" to his "Latin translation of Leviathan", published in Amsterdam in 1668. In this appendix, Hobbes aimed to show that, since the High Court of Commission had been put down, there remained no court of heresy at all to which he was amenable, and that nothing could be heresy except opposing the Nicene Creed, which, he maintained, "Leviathan" did not do.
The only consequence that came of the bill was that Hobbes could never thereafter publish anything in England on subjects relating to human conduct. The 1668 edition of his works was printed in Amsterdam because he could not obtain the censor's licence for its publication in England. Other writings were not made public until after his death, including "Behemoth: the History of the Causes of the Civil Wars of England and of the Counsels and Artifices by which they were carried on from the year 1640 to the year 1662". For some time, Hobbes was not even allowed to respond, whatever his enemies tried. Despite this, his reputation abroad was formidable.
His final works were an autobiography in Latin verse in 1672, and a translation of four books of the "Odyssey" into "rugged" English rhymes that in 1673 led to a complete translation of both "Iliad" and "Odyssey" in 1675.
In October 1679 Hobbes suffered a bladder disorder, and then a paralytic stroke, from which he died on 4 December 1679, aged 91. His last words were said to have been "A great leap in the dark", uttered in his final conscious moments. His body was interred in St John the Baptist's Church, Ault Hucknall, in Derbyshire.
Hobbes, influenced by contemporary scientific ideas, had intended for his political theory to be a quasi-geometrical system, in which the conclusions followed inevitably from the premises. The main practical conclusion of Hobbes' political theory is that state or society can not be secure unless at the disposal of an absolute sovereign. From this follows the view that no individual can hold rights of property against the sovereign, and that the sovereign may therefore take the goods of its subjects without their consent. This particular view owes its significance to it being first developed in the 1630s when Charles I had sought to raise revenues without the consent of Parliament, and therefore of his subjects.
In "Leviathan", Hobbes set out his doctrine of the foundation of states and legitimate governments and creating an objective science of morality. Much of the book is occupied with demonstrating the necessity of a strong central authority to avoid the evil of discord and civil war.
Beginning from a mechanistic understanding of human beings and their passions, Hobbes postulates what life would be like without government, a condition which he calls the state of nature. In that state, each person would have a right, or license, to everything in the world. This, Hobbes argues, would lead to a "war of all against all" ("bellum omnium contra omnes"). The description contains what has been called one of the best-known passages in English philosophy, which describes the natural state humankind would be in, were it not for political community:
In such a state, people fear death and lack both the things necessary to commodious living, and the hope of being able to obtain them. So, in order to avoid it, people accede to a social contract and establish a civil society. According to Hobbes, society is a population and a sovereign authority, to whom all individuals in that society cede some right for the sake of protection. Power exercised by this authority cannot be resisted, because the protector's sovereign power derives from individuals' surrendering their own sovereign power for protection. The individuals are thereby the authors of all decisions made by the sovereign, "he that complaineth of injury from his sovereign complaineth that whereof he himself is the author, and therefore ought not to accuse any man but himself, no nor himself of injury because to do injury to one's self is impossible". There is no doctrine of separation of powers in Hobbes's discussion. According to Hobbes, the sovereign must control civil, military, judicial and ecclesiastical powers, even the words.
In 1654 a small treatise, "Of Liberty and Necessity", directed at Hobbes, was published by Bishop John Bramhall. Bramhall, a strong Arminian, had met and debated with Hobbes and afterwards wrote down his views and sent them privately to be answered in this form by Hobbes. Hobbes duly replied, but not for publication. However, a French acquaintance took a copy of the reply and published it with "an extravagantly laudatory epistle". Bramhall countered in 1655, when he printed everything that had passed between them (under the title of "A Defence of the True Liberty of Human Actions from Antecedent or Extrinsic Necessity"). In 1656, Hobbes was ready with "The Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance", in which he replied "with astonishing force" to the bishop. As perhaps the first clear exposition of the psychological doctrine of determinism, Hobbes's own two pieces were important in the history of the free-will controversy. The bishop returned to the charge in 1658 with "Castigations of Mr Hobbes's Animadversions", and also included a bulky appendix entitled "The Catching of Leviathan the Great Whale".
Hobbes opposed the existing academic arrangements, and assailed the system of the original universities in "Leviathan". He went on to publish "De Corpore", which contained not only tendentious views on mathematics but also an erroneous proof of the squaring of the circle. This all led mathematicians to target him for polemics and sparked John Wallis to become one of his most persistent opponents. From 1655, the publishing date of "De Corpore", Hobbes and Wallis went round after round trying to disprove each other's positions. After years of debate, the spat over proving the squaring of the circle gained such notoriety that it has become one of the most infamous feuds in mathematical history.
Hobbes was accused of atheism by several contemporaries; Bramhall accused him of teachings that could lead to atheism. This was an important accusation, and Hobbes himself wrote, in his answer to Bramhall's "The Catching of Leviathan", that "atheism, impiety, and the like are words of the greatest defamation possible". Hobbes always defended himself from such accusations. In more recent times also, much has been made of his religious views by scholars such as Richard Tuck and J. G. A. Pocock, but there is still widespread disagreement about the exact significance of Hobbes's unusual views on religion.
As Martinich has pointed out, in Hobbes's time the term "atheist" was often applied to people who believed in God but not in divine providence, or to people who believed in God but also maintained other beliefs that were inconsistent with such belief. He says that this "sort of discrepancy has led to many errors in determining who was an atheist in the early modern period". In this extended early modern sense of atheism, Hobbes did take positions that strongly disagreed with church teachings of his time. For example, he argued repeatedly that there are no incorporeal substances, and that all things, including human thoughts, and even God, heaven, and hell are corporeal, matter in motion. He argued that "though Scripture acknowledge spirits, yet doth it nowhere say, that they are incorporeal, meaning thereby without dimensions and quantity". (In this view, Hobbes claimed to be following Tertullian.) Like John Locke, he also stated that true revelation can never disagree with human reason and experience, although he also argued that people should accept revelation and its interpretations for the reason that they should accept the commands of their sovereign, in order to avoid war.
While in Venice on tour, Hobbes made the acquaintance of Fulgenzio Micanzio, a close associate of Paolo Sarpi, who had written against the pretensions of the papacy to temporal power in response to the Interdict of Pope Paul V against Venice, which refused to recognise papal prerogatives. James I had invited both men to England in 1612. Micanzio and Sarpi had argued that God willed human nature, and that human nature indicated the autonomy of the state in temporal affairs. When he returned to England in 1615, William Cavendish maintained correspondence with Micanzio and Sarpi, and Hobbes translated the latter's letters from Italian, which were circulated among the Duke's circle.
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Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Truth
Truth is most often used to mean being in accord with fact or reality, or fidelity to an original or standard. Truth is also sometimes defined in modern contexts as an idea of "truth to self", or authenticity.
Truth is usually held to be opposite to falsehood, which, correspondingly, can also suggest a logical, factual, or ethical meaning. The concept of truth is discussed and debated in several contexts, including philosophy, art, theology, and science. Most human activities depend upon the concept, where its nature as a concept is assumed rather than being a subject of discussion; these include most of the sciences, law, journalism, and everyday life. Some philosophers view the concept of truth as basic, and unable to be explained in any terms that are more easily understood than the concept of truth itself. To some, truth is viewed as the correspondence of language or thought to an independent reality, in what is sometimes called the correspondence theory of truth.
Various theories and views of truth continue to be debated among scholars, philosophers, and theologians. Language is a means by which humans convey information to one another. The method used to determine whether something is a truth is termed a criterion of truth. There are varying stances on such questions as what constitutes truth: what things are truthbearers capable of being true or false; how to define, identify, and distinguish truth; what roles do faith and empirical knowledge play; and whether truth can be subjective or if it is objective (in other words, relative truth versus absolute truth).
The English word "truth" is derived from Old English "tríewþ, tréowþ, trýwþ", Middle English "trewþe", cognate to Old High German "triuwida", Old Norse "tryggð". Like "troth", it is a "-th" nominalisation of the adjective "true" (Old English "tréowe").
The English word "true" is from Old English (West Saxon) "(ge)tríewe, tréowe", cognate to Old Saxon "(gi)trûui", Old High German "(ga)triuwu" (Modern German "treu" "faithful"), Old Norse "tryggr", Gothic "triggws", all from a Proto-Germanic "*trewwj-" "having good faith", perhaps ultimately from PIE *dru- "tree", on the notion of "steadfast as an oak" (e.g., Sanskrit "taru" tree).
Old Norse ', "faith, word of honour; religious faith, belief" (archaic English "troth" "loyalty, honesty, good faith", compare ').
Thus, 'truth' involves both the quality of "faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty, sincerity, veracity", and that of "agreement with fact or reality", in Anglo-Saxon expressed by "sōþ" (Modern English "sooth").
All Germanic languages besides English have introduced a terminological distinction between truth "fidelity" and truth "factuality". To express "factuality", North Germanic opted for nouns derived from "sanna" "to assert, affirm", while continental West Germanic (German and Dutch) opted for continuations of "wâra" "faith, trust, pact" (cognate to Slavic "věra" "(religious) faith", but influenced by Latin "verus"). Romance languages use terms following the Latin "veritas", while the Greek "aletheia", Russian "pravda", South Slavic "istina" and Sanskrit "sat" have separate etymological origins.
The question of what is a proper basis for deciding how words, symbols, ideas and beliefs may properly be considered true, whether by a single person or an entire society, is dealt with by the five most prevalent substantive theories of truth listed below. Each presents perspectives that are widely shared by published scholars.
Theories other than the most prevalent substantive theories are also discussed. More recently developed "deflationary" or "minimalist" theories of truth have emerged as possible alternatives to the most prevalent substantive theories. Minimalist reasoning centres around the notion that the application of a term like "true" to a statement does not assert anything significant about it, for instance, anything about its "nature". Minimalist reasoning realises "truth" as a label utilised in general discourse to express agreement, to stress claims, or to form general assumptions.
Correspondence theories emphasise that true beliefs and true statements correspond to the actual state of affairs. This type of theory stresses a relationship between thoughts or statements on one hand, and things or objects on the other. It is a traditional model tracing its origins to ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. This class of theories holds that the truth or the falsity of a representation is determined in principle entirely by how it relates to "things" by whether it accurately describes those "things". A classic example of correspondence theory is the statement by the thirteenth century philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas: "Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus" ("Truth is the adequation of things and intellect"), which Aquinas attributed to the ninth century Neoplatonist Isaac Israeli. Aquinas also restated the theory as: "A judgment is said to be true when it conforms to the external reality".
Correspondence theory centres heavily around the assumption that truth is a matter of accurately copying what is known as "objective reality" and then representing it in thoughts, words and other symbols. Many modern theorists have stated that this ideal cannot be achieved without analysing additional factors. For example, language plays a role in that all languages have words to represent concepts that are virtually undefined in other languages. The German word "Zeitgeist" is one such example: one who speaks or understands the language may "know" what it means, but any translation of the word apparently fails to accurately capture its full meaning (this is a problem with many abstract words, especially those derived in agglutinative languages). Thus, some words add an additional parameter to the construction of an accurate truth predicate. Among the philosophers who grappled with this problem is Alfred Tarski, whose semantic theory is summarized further below in this article.
Proponents of several of the theories below have gone further to assert that there are yet other issues necessary to the analysis, such as interpersonal power struggles, community interactions, personal biases and other factors involved in deciding what is seen as truth.
For coherence theories in general, truth requires a proper fit of elements within a whole system. Very often, though, coherence is taken to imply something more than simple logical consistency; often there is a demand that the propositions in a coherent system lend mutual inferential support to each other. So, for example, the completeness and comprehensiveness of the underlying set of concepts is a critical factor in judging the validity and usefulness of a coherent system. A pervasive tenet of coherence theories is the idea that truth is primarily a property of whole systems of propositions, and can be ascribed to individual propositions only according to their coherence with the whole. Among the assortment of perspectives commonly regarded as coherence theory, theorists differ on the question of whether coherence entails many possible true systems of thought or only a single absolute system.
Some variants of coherence theory are claimed to describe the essential and intrinsic properties of formal systems in logic and mathematics. However, formal reasoners are content to contemplate axiomatically independent and sometimes mutually contradictory systems side by side, for example, the various alternative geometries. On the whole, coherence theories have been rejected for lacking justification in their application to other areas of truth, especially with respect to assertions about the natural world, empirical data in general, assertions about practical matters of psychology and society, especially when used without support from the other major theories of truth.
Coherence theories distinguish the thought of rationalist philosophers, particularly of Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, along with the British philosopher F. H. Bradley. They have found a resurgence also among several proponents of logical positivism, notably Otto Neurath and Carl Hempel.
The three most influential forms of the "pragmatic theory of truth" were introduced around the turn of the 20th century by Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Although there are wide differences in viewpoint among these and other proponents of pragmatic theory, they hold in common that truth is verified and confirmed by the results of putting one's concepts into practice.
Peirce defines truth as follows: "Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief, which concordance the abstract statement may possess by virtue of the confession of its inaccuracy and one-sidedness, and this confession is an essential ingredient of truth." This statement stresses Peirce's view that ideas of approximation, incompleteness, and partiality, what he describes elsewhere as "fallibilism" and "reference to the future", are essential to a proper conception of truth. Although Peirce uses words like "concordance" and "correspondence" to describe one aspect of the pragmatic sign relation, he is also quite explicit in saying that definitions of truth based on mere correspondence are no more than "nominal" definitions, which he accords a lower status than "real" definitions.
William James's version of pragmatic theory, while complex, is often summarized by his statement that "the 'true' is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the 'right' is only the expedient in our way of behaving." By this, James meant that truth is a "quality", the value of which is confirmed by its effectiveness when applying concepts to practice (thus, "pragmatic").
John Dewey, less broadly than James but more broadly than Peirce, held that inquiry, whether scientific, technical, sociological, philosophical or cultural, is self-corrective over time "if" openly submitted for testing by a community of inquirers in order to clarify, justify, refine and/or refute proposed truths.
Though not widely known, a new variation of the pragmatic theory was defined and wielded successfully from the 20th century forward. Defined and named by William Ernest Hocking, this variation is known as "negative pragmatism". Essentially, what works may or may not be true, but what fails cannot be true because the truth always works. Richard Feynman also ascribed to it: "We never are definitely right, we can only be sure we are wrong." This approach incorporates many of the ideas from Peirce, James, and Dewey. For Peirce, the idea of "... endless investigation would tend to bring about scientific belief ..." fits negative pragmatism in that a negative pragmatist would never stop testing. As Feynman noted, an idea or theory "... could never be proved right, because tomorrow's experiment might succeed in proving wrong what you thought was right." Similarly, James and Dewey's ideas also ascribe truth to repeated testing which is "self-corrective" over time.
Pragmatism and negative pragmatism are also closely aligned with the coherence theory of truth in that any testing should not be isolated but rather incorporate knowledge from all human endeavors and experience. The universe is a whole and integrated system, and testing should acknowledge and account for its diversity. As Feynman said, "... if it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong."
Social constructivism holds that truth is constructed by social processes, is historically and culturally specific, and that it is in part shaped through the power struggles within a community. Constructivism views all of our knowledge as "constructed," because it does not reflect any external "transcendent" realities (as a pure correspondence theory might hold). Rather, perceptions of truth are viewed as contingent on convention, human perception, and social experience. It is believed by constructivists that representations of physical and biological reality, including race, sexuality, and gender, are socially constructed.
Giambattista Vico was among the first to claim that history and culture were man-made. Vico's epistemological orientation gathers the most diverse rays and unfolds in one axiom—"verum ipsum factum"—"truth itself is constructed". Hegel and Marx were among the other early proponents of the premise that truth is, or can be, socially constructed. Marx, like many critical theorists who followed, did not reject the existence of objective truth but rather distinguished between true knowledge and knowledge that has been distorted through power or ideology. For Marx, scientific and true knowledge is "in accordance with the dialectical understanding of history" and ideological knowledge is "an epiphenomenal expression of the relation of material forces in a given economic arrangement".
Consensus theory holds that truth is whatever is agreed upon, or in some versions, might come to be agreed upon, by some specified group. Such a group might include all human beings, or a subset thereof consisting of more than one person.
Among the current advocates of consensus theory as a useful accounting of the concept of "truth" is the philosopher Jürgen Habermas. Habermas maintains that truth is what would be agreed upon in an ideal speech situation. Among the current strong critics of consensus theory is the philosopher Nicholas Rescher.
In the Islamic tradition, this principle is exemplified by the hadith in which Muhammad states, "My community will never agree upon an error"
Modern developments in the field of philosophy, starting with the relatively modern notion that a theory being old does not necessarily imply that it is completely flawless, have resulted in the rise of a new thesis: that the term "truth" does not denote a real property of sentences or propositions. This thesis is in part a response to the common use of "truth predicates" (e.g., that some particular thing "...is true") which was particularly prevalent in philosophical discourse on truth in the first half of the 20th century. From this point of view, to assert that "'2 + 2 = 4' is true" is logically equivalent to asserting that "2 + 2 = 4", and the phrase "is true" is completely dispensable in this and every other context. In common parlance, truth predicates are not commonly heard, and it would be interpreted as an unusual occurrence were someone to utilise a truth predicate in an everyday conversation when asserting that something is true. Newer perspectives that take this discrepancy into account and work with sentence structures that are actually employed in common discourse can be broadly described:
Whichever term is used, deflationary theories can be said to hold in common that "[t]he predicate 'true' is an expressive convenience, not the name of a property requiring deep analysis." Once we have identified the truth predicate's formal features and utility, deflationists argue, we have said all there is to be said about truth. Among the theoretical concerns of these views is to explain away those special cases where it "does" appear that the concept of truth has peculiar and interesting properties. (See, e.g., Semantic paradoxes, and below.)
In addition to highlighting such formal aspects of the predicate "is true", some deflationists point out that the concept enables us to express things that might otherwise require infinitely long sentences. For example, one cannot express confidence in Michael's accuracy by asserting the endless sentence:
This assertion can also be succinctly expressed by saying: "What Michael says is true".
Attributed to P. F. Strawson is the performative theory of truth which holds that to say "'Snow is white' is true" is to perform the speech act of signaling one's agreement with the claim that snow is white (much like nodding one's head in agreement). The idea that some statements are more actions than communicative statements is not as odd as it may seem. Consider, for example, that when the wedding couple say "I do" at the appropriate time in a wedding, they are performing the act of taking the other to be their lawful wedded spouse. They are not "describing" themselves as taking the other, but actually "doing" so (perhaps the most thorough analysis of such "illocutionary acts" is J. L. Austin, "How to Do Things With Words").
Strawson holds that a similar analysis is applicable to all speech acts, not just illocutionary ones: "To say a statement is true is not to make a statement about a statement, but rather to perform the act of agreeing with, accepting, or endorsing a statement. When one says 'It's true that it's raining,' one asserts no more than 'It's raining.' The function of [the statement] 'It's true that...' is to agree with, accept, or endorse the statement that 'it's raining.'"
According to the redundancy theory of truth, asserting that a statement is true is completely equivalent to asserting the statement itself. For example, making the assertion that " 'Snow is white' is true" is equivalent to asserting "Snow is white". Redundancy theorists infer from this premise that truth is a redundant concept; that is, it is merely a word that is traditionally used in conversation or writing, generally for emphasis, but not a word that actually equates to anything in reality. This theory is commonly attributed to Frank P. Ramsey, who held that the use of words like "fact" and "truth" was nothing but a roundabout way of asserting a proposition, and that treating these words as separate problems in isolation from judgment was merely a "linguistic muddle".
A variant of redundancy theory is the disquotational theory which uses a modified form of Tarski's schema: To say that '"P" is true' is to say that P. A version of this theory was defended by C. J. F. Williams in his book "What is Truth?" Yet another version of deflationism is the prosentential theory of truth, first developed by Dorothy Grover, Joseph Camp, and Nuel Belnap as an elaboration of Ramsey's claims. They argue that sentences like "That's true", when said in response to "It's raining", are prosentences, expressions that merely repeat the content of other expressions. In the same way that "it" means the same as "my dog" in the sentence "My dog was hungry, so I fed it", "That's true" is supposed to mean the same as "It's raining"—if you say the latter and I then say the former. These variations do not necessarily follow Ramsey in asserting that truth is "not" a property, but rather can be understood to say that, for instance, the assertion "P" may well involve a substantial truth, and the theorists in this case are minimizing only the redundancy or prosentence involved in the statement such as "that's true."
Deflationary principles do not apply to representations that are not analogous to sentences, and also do not apply to many other things that are commonly judged to be true or otherwise. Consider the analogy between the sentence "Snow is white" and the character named Snow White, both of which can be true in some sense. To a minimalist, saying "Snow is white is true" is the same as saying "Snow is white," but to say "Snow White is true" is "not" the same as saying "Snow White."
Philosophical skepticism is generally any questioning attitude or doubt towards one or more items of knowledge or belief which ascribe truth to their assertions and propositions. The primary target of philosophical skepticism is epistemology, but it can be applied to any domain, such as the supernatural, morality (moral skepticism), and religion (skepticism about the existence of God).
Philosophical skepticism comes in various forms. Radical forms of skepticism deny that knowledge or rational belief is possible and urge us to suspend judgment regarding ascription of truth on many or all controversial matters. More moderate forms of skepticism claim only that nothing can be known with certainty, or that we can know little or nothing about the "big questions" in life, such as whether God exists or whether there is an afterlife. Religious skepticism is "doubt concerning basic religious principles (such as immortality, providence, and revelation)". Scientific skepticism concerns testing beliefs for reliability, by subjecting them to systematic investigation using the scientific method, to discover empirical evidence for them.
Several of the major theories of truth hold that there is a particular property the having of which makes a belief or proposition true. Pluralist theories of truth assert that there may be more than one property that makes propositions true: ethical propositions might be true by virtue of coherence. Propositions about the physical world might be true by corresponding to the objects and properties they are about.
Some of the pragmatic theories, such as those by Charles Peirce and William James, included aspects of correspondence, coherence and constructivist theories. Crispin Wright argued in his 1992 book "Truth and Objectivity" that any predicate which satisfied certain platitudes about truth qualified as a truth predicate. In some discourses, Wright argued, the role of the truth predicate might be played by the notion of superassertibility. Michael Lynch, in a 2009 book "Truth as One and Many", argued that we should see truth as a functional property capable of being multiply manifested in distinct properties like correspondence or coherence.
According to a survey of professional philosophers and others on their philosophical views which was carried out in November 2009 (taken by 3226 respondents, including 1803 philosophy faculty members and/or PhDs and 829 philosophy graduate students) 45% of respondents accept or lean towards correspondence theories, 21% accept or lean towards deflationary theories and 14% epistemic theories.
Logic is concerned with the patterns in reason that can help tell us if a proposition is true or not. Logicians use formal languages to express the truths which they are concerned with, and as such there is only truth under some interpretation or truth within some logical system.
A logical truth (also called an analytic truth or a necessary truth) is a statement which is true in all possible worlds or under all possible interpretations, as contrasted to a "fact" (also called a "synthetic claim" or a "contingency") which is only true in this world as it has historically unfolded. A proposition such as "If p and q, then p" is considered to be a logical truth because of the meaning of the symbols and words in it and not because of any fact of any particular world. They are such that they could not be untrue.
Degrees of truth in logic may be represented using two or more discrete values, as with bivalent logic (or binary logic), three-valued logic, and other forms of finite-valued logic. Truth in logic can be represented using numbers comprising a continuous range, typically between 0 and 1, as with fuzzy logic and other forms of infinite-valued logic. In general, the concept of representing truth using more than two values is known as many-valued logic.
There are two main approaches to truth in mathematics. They are the "model theory of truth" and the "proof theory of truth".
Historically, with the nineteenth century development of Boolean algebra mathematical models of logic began to treat "truth", also represented as "T" or "1", as an arbitrary constant. "Falsity" is also an arbitrary constant, which can be represented as "F" or "0". In propositional logic, these symbols can be manipulated according to a set of axioms and rules of inference, often given in the form of truth tables.
In addition, from at least the time of Hilbert's program at the turn of the twentieth century to the proof of Gödel's incompleteness theorems and the development of the Church–Turing thesis in the early part of that century, true statements in mathematics were generally assumed to be those statements that are provable in a formal axiomatic system.
The works of Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing, and others shook this assumption, with the development of statements that are true but cannot be proven within the system. Two examples of the latter can be found in Hilbert's problems. Work on Hilbert's 10th problem led in the late twentieth century to the construction of specific Diophantine equations for which it is undecidable whether they have a solution, or even if they do, whether they have a finite or infinite number of solutions. More fundamentally, Hilbert's first problem was on the continuum hypothesis. Gödel and Paul Cohen showed that this hypothesis cannot be proved or disproved using the standard axioms of set theory. In the view of some, then, it is equally reasonable to take either the continuum hypothesis or its negation as a new axiom.
Reconsidered assumptions about the essence of truth arose in the wake of Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Martin Heidegger pointed out that truth may be essentially a matter of letting beings (entities of any kind, which can include logical propositions) be free to reveal themselves as they are, and stated:
Gödel agreed that the ability to perceive the truth of a mathematical or logical proposition is a matter of intuition, an ability he admitted could be ultimately beyond the scope of a formal theory of logic or mathematics and perhaps best considered in the realm of human comprehension and communication, but commented:
The semantic theory of truth has as its general case for a given language:
where 'P' refers to the sentence (the sentence's name), and P is just the sentence itself.
Tarski's theory of truth (named after Alfred Tarski) was developed for formal languages, such as formal logic. Here he restricted it in this way: no language could contain its own truth predicate, that is, the expression "is true" could only apply to sentences in some other language. The latter he called an "object language", the language being talked about. (It may, in turn, have a truth predicate that can be applied to sentences in still another language.) The reason for his restriction was that languages that contain their own truth predicate will contain paradoxical sentences such as, "This sentence is not true". As a result, Tarski held that the semantic theory could not be applied to any natural language, such as English, because they contain their own truth predicates. Donald Davidson used it as the foundation of his truth-conditional semantics and linked it to radical interpretation in a form of coherentism.
Bertrand Russell is credited with noticing the existence of such paradoxes even in the best symbolic formations of mathematics in his day, in particular the paradox that came to be named after him, Russell's paradox. Russell and Whitehead attempted to solve these problems in "Principia Mathematica" by putting statements into a hierarchy of types, wherein a statement cannot refer to itself, but only to statements lower in the hierarchy. This in turn led to new orders of difficulty regarding the precise natures of types and the structures of conceptually possible type systems that have yet to be resolved to this day.
Kripke's theory of truth (named after Saul Kripke) contends that a natural language can in fact contain its own truth predicate without giving rise to contradiction. He showed how to construct one as follows:
Notice that truth never gets defined for sentences like "This sentence is false", since it was not in the original subset and does not predicate truth of any sentence in the original or any subsequent set. In Kripke's terms, these are "ungrounded." Since these sentences are never assigned either truth or falsehood even if the process is carried out infinitely, Kripke's theory implies that some sentences are neither true nor false. This contradicts the principle of bivalence: every sentence must be either true or false. Since this principle is a key premise in deriving the liar paradox, the paradox is dissolved.
However, it has been shown by Gödel that self-reference cannot be avoided naively, since propositions about seemingly unrelated objects can have an informal self-referential meaning; in Gödel's work, these objects are integer numbers, and they have an informal meaning regarding propositions. In fact, this idea—manifested by the diagonal lemma—is the basis for Tarski's theorem that truth cannot be consistently defined.
It has thus been claimed that Kripke's system indeed leads to contradiction: while its truth predicate is only partial, it does give truth value (true/false) to propositions such as the one built in Tarski's proof, and is therefore inconsistent. While there is still a debate on whether Tarski's proof can be implemented to every similar partial truth system, none have been shown to be consistent by acceptable methods used in mathematical logic.
The truth predicate ""P" is true" has great practical value in human language, allowing us to "efficiently" endorse or impeach claims made by others, to emphasize the truth or falsity of a statement, or to enable various indirect (Gricean) conversational implications. Individuals or societies will sometime punish "false" statements to deter falsehoods; the oldest surviving law text, the Code of Ur-Nammu, lists penalties for false accusations of sorcery or adultery, as well as for committing perjury in court. Even four-year-old children can pass simple "false belief" tests and successfully assess that another individual's belief diverges from reality in a specific way; by adulthood we have strong implicit intuitions about "truth" that form a "folk theory" of truth. These intuitions include:
Like many folk theories, our folk theory of truth is useful in everyday life but, upon deep analysis, turns out to be technically self-contradictory; in particular, any formal system that fully obeys Capture and Release semantics for truth (also known as the "T-schema"), and that also respects classical logic, is provably inconsistent and succumbs to the liar paradox or to a similar contradiction.
Socrates', Plato's and Aristotle's ideas about truth are seen by some as consistent with correspondence theory. In his "Metaphysics", Aristotle stated: "To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy proceeds to say of Aristotle:
[...] Aristotle sounds much more like a genuine correspondence theorist in the "Categories" (12b11, 14b14), where he talks of "underlying things" that make statements true and implies that these "things" (pragmata) are logically structured situations or facts (viz., his sitting, his not sitting). Most influential is his claim in "De Interpretatione" (16a3) that thoughts are "likenesses" (homoiosis) of things. Although he nowhere defines truth in terms of a thought's likeness to a thing or fact, it is clear that such a definition would fit well into his overall philosophy of mind. [...]
Similar statements can also be found in Plato's dialogs ("Cratylus" 385b2, "Sophist" 263b).
In Hinduism, Truth is defined as "unchangeable", "that which has no distortion", "that which is beyond distinctions of time, space, and person", "that which pervades the universe in all its constancy". The human body, therefore is not completely true as it changes with time, for example. There are many references, properties and explanations of truth by Hindu sages that explain varied facets of truth, such as the national motto of India: "Satyameva Jayate" (Truth alone wins), as well as "Satyam muktaye" (Truth liberates), "Satya' is 'Parahit'artham' va'unmanaso yatha'rthatvam' satyam" (Satya is the benevolent use of words and the mind for the welfare of others or in other words responsibilities is truth too), "When one is firmly established in speaking truth, the fruits of action become subservient to him (patanjali yogasutras, sutra number 2.36), "The face of truth is covered by a golden bowl. "Unveil it, O Pusan (Sun), so that I who have truth as my duty (satyadharma) may see it!"" (Brhadaranyaka V 15 1–4 and the brief IIsa Upanisad 15–18), Truth is superior to silence (Manusmriti), etc. Combined with other words, satya acts as modifier, like "ultra" or "highest," or more literally "truest," connoting purity and excellence. For example, satyaloka is the "highest heaven' and Satya Yuga is the "golden age" or best of the four cyclical cosmic ages in Hinduism, and so on.
In Buddhism, particularly in the Mahayana tradition, the notion of truth is often divided into the Two Truths Doctrine, which consists of relative or conventional truth and ultimate truth. The former refers to truth that is based on common understanding among ordinary people and is accepted as a practical basis for communication of higher truths. Ultimate truth necessarily transcends logic in the sphere of ordinary experience, and recognizes such phenomena as illusory. Mādhyamaka philosophy asserts that any doctrine can be analyzed with both divisions of truth. Affirmation and negation belong to relative and absolute truth respectively. Political law is regarded as relative, while religious law is absolute.
Christianity has a soteriological view of truth. According to the Bible in , Jesus is quoted as having said "I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me".
In early Islamic philosophy, Avicenna (Ibn Sina) defined truth in his work Kitab Al-Shifa "The Book of Healing", Book I, Chapter 8, as:
Avicenna elaborated on his definition of truth later in Book VIII, Chapter 6:
However, this definition is merely a rendering of the medieval Latin translation of the work by Simone van Riet. A modern translation of the original Arabic text states:
Reevaluating Avicenna, and also Augustine and Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas stated in his "Disputed Questions on Truth":
Thus, for Aquinas, the truth of the human intellect (logical truth) is based on the truth in things (ontological truth). Following this, he wrote an elegant re-statement of Aristotle's view in his Summa I.16.1:
Richard Firth Green examined the concept of truth in the later Middle Ages in his "A Crisis of Truth", and concludes that roughly during the reign of Richard II of England the very meaning of the concept changes. The idea of the oath, which was so much part and parcel of for instance Romance literature, changes from a subjective concept to a more objective one (in Derek Pearsall's summary). Whereas truth (the "trouthe" of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight") was first "an ethical truth in which truth is understood to reside in persons", in Ricardian England it "transforms...into a political truth in which truth is understood to reside in documents".
Immanuel Kant endorses a definition of truth along the lines of the correspondence theory of truth. Kant writes in the "Critique of Pure Reason": "The nominal definition of truth, namely that it is the agreement of cognition with its object, is here granted and presupposed". However, Kant denies that this correspondence definition of truth provides us with a test or criterion to establish which judgements are true. Kant states in his logic lectures:
[...] Truth, it is said, consists in the agreement of cognition with its object. In consequence of this mere nominal definition, my cognition, to count as true, is supposed to agree with its object. Now I can compare the object with my cognition, however, only "by cognizing it". Hence my cognition is supposed to confirm itself, which is far short of being sufficient for truth. For since the object is outside me, the cognition in me, all I can ever pass judgement on is whether my cognition of the object agrees with my cognition of the object.
The ancients called such a circle in explanation a "diallelon". And actually the logicians were always reproached with this mistake by the sceptics, who observed that with this definition of truth it is just as when someone makes a statement before a court and in doing so appeals to a witness with whom no one is acquainted, but who wants to establish his credibility by maintaining that the one who called him as witness is an honest man. The accusation was grounded, too. Only the solution of the indicated problem is impossible without qualification and for every man. [...]
This passage makes use of his distinction between nominal and real definitions. A nominal definition explains the meaning of a linguistic expression. A real definition describes the essence of certain objects and enables us to determine whether any given item falls within the definition. Kant holds that the definition of truth is merely nominal and, therefore, we cannot employ it to establish which judgements are true. According to Kant, the ancient skeptics were critical of the logicians for holding that, by means of a merely nominal definition of truth, they can establish which judgements are true. They were trying to do something that is "impossible without qualification and for every man".
Georg Hegel distanced his philosophy from psychology by presenting truth as being an external self-moving object instead of being related to inner, subjective thoughts. Hegel's truth is analogous to the mechanics of a material body in motion under the influence of its own inner force. "Truth is its own self-movement within itself." Teleological truth moves itself in the three-step form of dialectical triplicity toward the final goal of perfect, final, absolute truth. According to Hegel, the progression of philosophical truth is a resolution of past oppositions into increasingly more accurate approximations of absolute truth. Chalybäus used the terms "thesis", "antithesis", and "synthesis" to describe Hegel's dialectical triplicity. The "thesis" consists of an incomplete historical movement. To resolve the incompletion, an "antithesis" occurs which opposes the "thesis." In turn, the "synthesis" appears when the "thesis" and "antithesis" become reconciled and a higher level of truth is obtained. This "synthesis" thereby becomes a "thesis," which will again necessitate an "antithesis," requiring a new "synthesis" until a final state is reached as the result of reason's historical movement. History is the Absolute Spirit moving toward a goal. This historical progression will finally conclude itself when the Absolute Spirit understands its own infinite self at the very end of history. Absolute Spirit will then be the complete expression of an infinite God.
For Arthur Schopenhauer, a judgment is a combination or separation of two or more concepts. If a judgment is to be an expression of knowledge, it must have a sufficient reason or ground by which the judgment could be called true. "Truth is the reference of a judgment to something different from itself which is its sufficient reason (ground)". Judgments can have material, formal, transcendental, or metalogical truth. A judgment has "material" truth if its concepts are based on intuitive perceptions that are generated from sensations. If a judgment has its reason (ground) in another judgment, its truth is called logical or "formal". If a judgment, of, for example, pure mathematics or pure science, is based on the forms (space, time, causality) of intuitive, empirical knowledge, then the judgment has "transcendental" truth.
When Søren Kierkegaard, as his character "Johannes Climacus", ends his writings: "My thesis was, subjectivity, heartfelt is the truth", he does not advocate for subjectivism in its extreme form (the theory that something is true simply because one believes it to be so), but rather that the objective approach to matters of personal truth cannot shed any light upon that which is most essential to a person's life. Objective truths are concerned with the facts of a person's being, while subjective truths are concerned with a person's way of being. Kierkegaard agrees that objective truths for the study of subjects like mathematics, science, and history are relevant and necessary, but argues that objective truths do not shed any light on a person's inner relationship to existence. At best, these truths can only provide a severely narrowed perspective that has little to do with one's actual experience of life.
While objective truths are final and static, subjective truths are continuing and dynamic. The truth of one's existence is a living, inward, and subjective experience that is always in the process of becoming. The values, morals, and spiritual approaches a person adopts, while not denying the existence of objective truths of those beliefs, can only become truly known when they have been inwardly appropriated through subjective experience. Thus, Kierkegaard criticizes all systematic philosophies which attempt to know life or the truth of existence via theories and objective knowledge about reality. As Kierkegaard claims, human truth is something that is continually occurring, and a human being cannot find truth separate from the subjective experience of one's own existing, defined by the values and fundamental essence that consist of one's way of life.
Friedrich Nietzsche believed the search for truth, or 'the will to truth', was a consequence of the "will to power" of philosophers. He thought that truth should be used as long as it promoted life and the "will to power", and he thought untruth was better than truth if it had this life enhancement as a consequence. As he wrote in "Beyond Good and Evil", "The falseness of a judgment is to us not necessarily an objection to a judgment... The question is to what extent it is life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding..." (aphorism 4). He proposed the "will to power" as a truth only because, according to him, it was the most life-affirming and sincere perspective one could have.
Robert Wicks discusses Nietzsche's basic view of truth as follows:
[...] Some scholars regard Nietzsche's 1873 unpublished essay, "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" ("Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinn") as a keystone in his thought. In this essay, Nietzsche rejects the idea of universal constants, and claims that what we call "truth" is only "a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms." His view at this time is that arbitrariness completely prevails within human experience: concepts originate via the very artistic transference of nerve stimuli into images; "truth" is nothing more than the invention of fixed conventions for merely practical purposes, especially those of repose, security and consistence. [...]
Separately Nietzsche suggested that an ancient, metaphysical belief in the divinity of Truth lies at the heart of and has served as the foundation for the entire subsequent Western intellectual tradition: "But you will have gathered what I am getting at, namely, that it is still a metaphysical faith on which our faith in science rests—that even we knowers of today, we godless anti-metaphysicians still take "our" fire too, from the flame lit by the thousand-year old faith, the Christian faith which was also Plato's faith, that God is Truth; that Truth is 'Divine'..."
Other philosophers take this common meaning to be secondary and derivative. According to Martin Heidegger, the original meaning and essence of truth in Ancient Greece was unconcealment, or the revealing or bringing of what was previously hidden into the open, as indicated by the original Greek term for truth, "aletheia". On this view, the conception of truth as correctness is a later derivation from the concept's original essence, a development Heidegger traces to the Latin term "veritas".
Alfred North Whitehead, a British mathematician who became an American philosopher, said: "There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil".
The logical progression or connection of this line of thought is to conclude that truth can lie, since half-truths are deceptive and may lead to a false conclusion.
Pragmatists like C. S. Peirce take truth to have some manner of essential relation to human practices for inquiring into and discovering truth, with Peirce himself holding that truth is what human inquiry would find out on a matter, if our practice of inquiry were taken as far as it could profitably go: "The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth..."
According to Kitaro Nishida, "knowledge of things in the world begins with the differentiation of unitary consciousness into knower and known and ends with self and things becoming one again. Such unification takes form not only in knowing but in the valuing (of truth) that directs knowing, the willing that directs action, and the feeling or emotive reach that directs sensing."
Erich Fromm finds that trying to discuss truth as "absolute truth" is sterile and that emphasis ought to be placed on "optimal truth". He considers truth as stemming from the survival imperative of grasping one's environment physically and intellectually, whereby young children instinctively seek truth so as to orient themselves in "a strange and powerful world". The accuracy of their perceived approximation of the truth will therefore have direct consequences on their ability to deal with their environment. Fromm can be understood to define truth as a functional approximation of reality. His vision of optimal truth is described partly in "Man from Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics" (1947), from which excerpts are included below.
Truth, says Michel Foucault, is problematic when any attempt is made to see truth as an "objective" quality. He prefers not to use the term truth itself but "Regimes of Truth". In his historical investigations he found truth to be something that was itself a part of, or embedded within, a given power structure. Thus Foucault's view shares much in common with the concepts of Nietzsche. Truth for Foucault is also something that shifts through various episteme throughout history.
Jean Baudrillard considered truth to be largely simulated, that is pretending to have something, as opposed to dissimulation, pretending to not have something. He took his cue from iconoclasts who he claims knew that images of God demonstrated that God did not exist. Baudrillard wrote in "Precession of the Simulacra":
Some examples of simulacra that Baudrillard cited were: that prisons simulate the "truth" that society is free; scandals (e.g., Watergate) simulate that corruption is corrected; Disney simulates that the U.S. itself is an adult place. One must remember that though such examples seem extreme, such extremity is an important part of Baudrillard's theory. For a less extreme example, consider how movies usually end with the bad being punished, humiliated, or otherwise failing, thus affirming for viewers the concept that the good end happily and the bad unhappily, a narrative which implies that the status quo and established power structures are largely legitimate.
There is controversy as to the truth value of a proposition made in bad faith self-deception, such as when a hypochondriac has a complaint with no physical symptom.
Reference works
| 29920 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=29920 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Trade secret
Trade secrets are a type of intellectual property that comprise formulas, practices, processes, designs, instruments, patterns, or compilations of information that have inherent economic value because they are not generally known or readily ascertainable by others, and which the owner takes reasonable measures to keep secret. In some jurisdictions, such secrets are referred to as "confidential information".
The precise language by which a trade secret is defined varies by jurisdiction, as do the particular types of information that are subject to trade secret protection. Three factors are common to all such definitions:
A trade secret is information that
In international law, these three factors define a trade secret under article 39 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, commonly referred to as the TRIPS Agreement.
Similarly, in the United States Economic Espionage Act of 1996, "A trade secret, as defined under (3)(A),(B) (1996), has three parts: (1) information; (2) reasonable measures taken to protect the information; and (3) which derives independent economic value from not being publicly known."
Trade secrets are an important, but invisible component of a company's intellectual property (IP). Their contribution to a company's value, measured as its market capitalization, can be major. Being invisible, that contribution is hard to measure. Patents are a visible contribution, but delayed, and unsuitable for internal innovations. Having an internal scoreboard provides insight into the cost of risks of employees leaving to serve or start competing ventures.
In contrast to registered intellectual property, trade secrets are, by definition, not disclosed to the world at large. Instead, owners of trade secrets seek to protect trade secret information from competitors by instituting special procedures for handling it, as well as technological and legal security measures. Legal protections include non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), and work-for-hire and non-compete clauses. In other words, in exchange for an opportunity to be employed by the holder of secrets, an employee may sign agreements to not reveal their prospective employer's proprietary information, to surrender or assign to their employer ownership rights to intellectual work and work-products produced during the course (or as a condition) of employment, and to not work for a competitor for a given period of time (sometimes within a given geographic region). Violation of the agreement generally carries the possibility of heavy financial penalties which operate as a disincentive to reveal trade secrets. However, proving a breach of an NDA by a former stakeholder who is legally working for a competitor or prevailing in a lawsuit for breaching a non-compete clause can be very difficult. A holder of a trade secret may also require similar agreements from other parties he or she deals with, such as vendors, licensees, and board members.
As a company can protect its confidential information through NDA, work-for-hire, and non-compete contracts with its stakeholders (within the constraints of employment law, including only restraint that is reasonable in geographic- and time-scope), these protective contractual measures effectively create a perpetual monopoly on secret information that does not expire as would a patent or copyright. The lack of formal protection associated with registered intellectual property rights, however, means that a third party not bound by a signed agreement is not prevented from independently duplicating and using the secret information once it is discovered, such as through reverse engineering.
Therefore, trade secrets such as secret formulae are often protected by restricting the key information to a few trusted individuals. Famous examples of products protected by trade secrets are Chartreuse liqueur and Coca-Cola.
Because protection of trade secrets can, in principle, extend indefinitely, it therefore may provide an advantage over patent protection and other registered intellectual property rights, which last only for a specific duration. The Coca-Cola company, for example, has no patent for the formula of Coca-Cola and has been effective in protecting it for many more years than the 20 years of protection that a patent would have provided. In fact, Coca-Cola refused to reveal its trade secret under at least two judges' orders.
Companies often try to discover one another's trade secrets through lawful methods of reverse engineering or employee poaching on one hand, and potentially unlawful methods including industrial espionage on the other. Acts of industrial espionage are generally illegal in their own right under the relevant governing laws, and penalties can be harsh. The importance of that illegality to trade secret law is: if a trade secret is acquired by improper means (a somewhat wider concept than "illegal means" but inclusive of such means), then the secret is generally deemed to have been "misappropriated". Thus, if a trade secret has been acquired via industrial espionage, its acquirer will probably be subject to legal liability for having acquired it improperly — this notwithstanding, the holder of the trade secret is nevertheless obliged to protect against such espionage to some degree in order to safeguard the secret, as under most trade secret regimes, a trade secret is not deemed to exist unless its purported holder takes reasonable steps to maintain its secrecy.
Commentators starting with A. Arthur Schiller assert that trade secrets were protected under Roman law by a claim known as , interpreted as an "action for making a slave worse" (or an action for corrupting a servant). The Roman law is described as follows:
[T]he Roman owner of a mark or firm name was legally protected against unfair usage by a competitor through the "actio servi corrupti" ... which the Roman jurists used to grant commercial relief under the guise of private law actions. "If, as the writer believes [writes Schiller], various private cases of action were available in satisfying commercial needs, the state was acting in exactly the same fashion as it does at the present day."
The suggestion that trade secret law has its roots in Roman law was introduced in 1929 in a "Columbia Law Review" article called "Trade Secrets and the Roman Law: The "Actio Servi Corrupti"", which has been reproduced in Schiller's, "An American Experience in Roman Law" 1 (1971). See "Trade Secrets and Roman Law: The Myth Exploded", at 19. However, the University of Georgia Law School professor Alan Watson argued in "Trade Secrets and Roman Law: The Myth Exploded "that the "actio servi corrupti" was not used to protect trade secrets p. 19. Rather, he explained:
Schiller is sadly mistaken as to what was going on. ... The "actio servi corrupti" presumably or possibly could be used to protect trade secrets and other similar commercial interests. That was not its purpose and was, at most, an incidental spin-off. But there is not the slightest evidence that the action was ever so used. In this regard the "actio servi corrupti" is not unique.
Exactly the same can be said of many private law actions including those for theft, damage to property, deposit, and production of property. All of these could, I suppose, be used to protect trade secrets, etc., but there is no evidence they were. It is bizarre to see any degree the Roman actio servi corrupti as the counterpart of modern law for the protection of trade secrets and other such commercial interests.
Trade secret law as known today made its first appearance in England in 1817 in "Newbery v. James", and in the United States in 1837 in "Vickery v. Welch". While those cases involved the first known common law causes of action based on a modern concept of trade secret laws, neither involved injunctive relief; rather, they involved damages only. In England, the first case involving injunctive relief came in 1820 in "Yovatt v Winyard", while in the United States, it took until the 1866 case "Taylor v. Blanchard".
Trade secrets law continued to evolve throughout the United States as a hodgepodge of state laws. In 1939, the American Law Institute issued the Restatement of Torts, containing a summary of trade secret laws across states, which served as the primary resource until the latter part of the century. As of 2013, however, only four states—Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Texas—still rely on the Restatement as their primary source of guidance (other than their body of state case law). It has also been recently theorized that the doctrine of trade secrets should protect competitively valuable, personal information of company executives, in a concept known as "executive trade secrets".
In Commonwealth common law jurisdictions, confidentiality and trade secrets are regarded as an equitable right rather than a property right.
The Court of Appeal of England and Wales in the case of "Saltman Engineering Co Ltd v. Campbell Engineering Ltd" held that the action for breach of confidence is based on a principle of preserving "good faith".
The test for a cause of action for breach of confidence in the common law world is set out in the case of "Coco v. A.N. Clark (Engineers) Ltd":
The "quality of confidence" highlights that trade secrets are a legal concept. With sufficient effort or through illegal acts (such as breaking and entering), competitors can usually obtain trade secrets. However, so long as the owner of the trade secret can prove that reasonable efforts have been made to keep the information confidential, the information remains a trade secret and generally remains legally protected. Conversely, trade secret owners who cannot evidence reasonable efforts at protecting confidential information risk losing the trade secret, even if the information is obtained by competitors illegally. It is for this reason that trade secret owners shred documents and do not simply recycle them.
A successful plaintiff is entitled to various forms of judicial relief, including:
Hong Kong does not follow the traditional commonwealth approach, instead recognizing trade secrets where a judgment of the High Court indicates that confidential information may be a property right.
The EU adopted a Directive on the Protection of Trade Secrets on 27 May 2016. The goal of the directive is to harmonize the definition of trade secrets in accordance with existing international standards, and the means of obtaining protection of trade secrets within the EU.
Within the U.S., trade secrets generally encompass a company's proprietary information that is not generally known to its competitors, and which provides the company with a competitive advantage.
Although trade secrets law evolved under state common law, prior to 1974, the question of whether patent law preempted state trade secrets law had been unanswered. In 1974, the United States Supreme Court issued the landmark decision, "Kewanee Oil Co. v. Bicron Corp.," which resolved the question in favor of allowing the states to freely develop their own trade secret laws.
In 1979 several U.S. states adopted the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA), which was further amended in 1985, with approximately 47 states having adopted some variation of it as the basis for trade secret law. Another significant development is the Economic Espionage Act (EEA) of 1996 (), which makes the theft or misappropriation of a trade secret a federal crime.
This law contains two provisions criminalizing two sorts of activity.
The statutory penalties are different for the two offenses. The EEA was extended in 2016 to allow companies to file civil suits in federal court.
On May 11, 2016, President Obama signed the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), 18 U.S.C.§§1839 et seq., which for the first time created a federal cause of action for misappropriating trade secrets. The DTSA provides for both a private right of action for damages and injunction and a civil action for injunction brought by the Attorney General.
The statute followed state laws on liability in significant part, defining trade secrets in the same way as the Uniform Trade Secrets Act as,
However, the law contains several important differences from prior law.
The DTSA also clarifies that a United States resident (including a company) can be liable for misappropriation that takes place outside the United States, and any person can be liable as long as an act in furtherance of the misappropriation takes place in the United States, 18 U.S.C. §1837. The DTSA provides the courts with broad injunctive powers. 18 U.S.C. §1836(b)(3).
The DTSA does not preempt or supplant state laws, but provides an additional cause of action. Because states vary significantly in their approach to the "inevitable disclosure" doctrine, its use has limited, if any, application under the DTSA, 18 U.S.C.§1836(b)(3)(A).
In the United States, trade secrets are not protected by law in the same manner as patents or trademarks. Historically, trademarks and patents are protected under federal statutes, the Lanham Act and Patent Act, respectively, while trade secrets are usually protected under state laws, and most states have enacted the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA), except for Massachusetts, New York, and North Carolina. However, since 2016 this situation changed with the enactment of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), making trade secrets also protectable under a federal law. One of the differences between patents and trademarks, on the one hand, and trade secrets, on the other, is that a trade secret is protected only when the owner has taken reasonable measures to protect the information as a secret (see (3)(A)).
Nations have different trademark policies. Assuming the mark in question meets certain other standards of protectibility, trademarks are generally protected from infringement on the grounds that other uses might confuse consumers as to the origin or nature of the goods once the mark has been associated with a particular supplier. Similar considerations apply to service marks and trade dress.
By definition, a trademark enjoys no protection ("qua" trademark) until and unless it is "disclosed" to consumers, for only then are consumers able to associate it with a supplier or source in the requisite manner. (That a company plans to "use" a certain trademark might itself be protectable as a trade secret, however, until the mark is actually made public.)
To acquire a trademark rights under U.S. law, one must simply use the mark "in commerce". It is possible to register a trademark in the United States, both at the federal and state levels. Registration of trademarks confers some advantages, including stronger protection in certain respects, but registration is not required in order to get protection. Registration may be required in order to file a lawsuit for trademark infringement.
To acquire a patent, full information about the method or product has to be supplied to the patent office and upon publication or issuance, will then be available to all. After expiration of the patent, competitors can copy the method or product legally. The temporary monopoly on the subject matter of the patent is regarded as a tradeoff for thus disclosing the information to the public.
It may be possible to obtain patent protection for a trade secret. In order to obtain a patent, the inventor must disclose the invention, so that others will be able to both make and use the invention. To obtain a patent in the United States, any preference for the mode of practicing the invention must be disclosed. Often, an invention will be improved after filing of the patent application, and additional information will be learned. None of that additional information must be disclosed through the patent application process, and it may thus be kept as a trade secret. That nondisclosed information will often increase the commercial viability of the patent. Most patent licenses include clauses that require the inventor to disclose any trade secrets they have, and patent licensors must be careful to maintain their trade secrets while licensing a patent through such means as the use of a non-disclosure agreement.
Compared to patents, the advantages of trade secrets are that a trade secret is not limited in time (it "continues indefinitely as long as the secret is not revealed to the public", whereas a patent is only in force for a specified time, after which others may freely copy the invention), a trade secret does not imply any registration costs, has an immediate effect, does not require compliance with any formalities, and does not imply any disclosure of the invention to the public. The disadvantages of trade secrets include that "others may be able to legally discover the secret and be thereafter entitled to use it", "others may obtain patent protection for legally discovered secrets", and a trade secret is more difficult to enforce than a patent.
Trade secret regulations that mask the composition of chemical agents in consumer products have been criticized for allowing the trade secret holders to hide the presence of potentially harmful and toxic substances. It has been argued that the public is being denied a clear picture of such products' safety, whereas competitors are well positioned to analyze its chemical composition. In 2004, the National Environmental Trust tested 40 common consumer products; in more than half of them they found toxic substances not listed on the product label.
| 29960 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=29960 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Tradition
A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of folklore, common examples include holidays or impractical but socially meaningful clothes (like lawyers' wigs or military officers' spurs), but the idea has also been applied to social norms such as greetings. Traditions can persist and evolve for thousands of years—the word "tradition" itself derives from the Latin "tradere" literally meaning to transmit, to hand over, to give for safekeeping. While it is commonly assumed that traditions have ancient history, many traditions have been invented on purpose, whether that be political or cultural, over short periods of time. Various academic disciplines also use the word in a variety of ways.
The phrase "according to tradition", or "by tradition", usually means that whatever information follows is known only by oral tradition, but is not supported (and perhaps may be refuted) by physical documentation, by a physical artifact, or other quality evidence. "Tradition" is used to indicate the quality of a piece of information being discussed. For example, "According to tradition, Homer was born on Chios, but many other locales have historically claimed him as theirs." This tradition may never be proven or disproven. In another example, "King Arthur, by tradition a true British king, has inspired many well loved stories." Whether they are documented fact or not does not decrease their value as cultural history and literature.
Traditions are a subject of study in several academic fields, especially in social sciences such as folklore studies, anthropology, archaeology, and biology.
The concept of tradition, as the notion of holding on to a previous time, is also found in political and philosophical discourse. For example, it is the basis of the political concept of traditionalism, and also strands of many world religions including traditional Catholicism. In artistic contexts, tradition is used to decide the correct display of an art form. For example, in the performance of traditional genres (such as traditional dance), adherence to guidelines dictating how an art form should be composed are given greater importance than the performer's own preferences. A number of factors can exacerbate the loss of tradition, including industrialization, globalization, and the assimilation or marginalization of specific cultural groups. In response to this, tradition-preservation attempts have now been started in many countries around the world, focusing on aspects such as traditional languages. Tradition is usually contrasted with the goal of modernity and should be differentiated from customs, conventions, laws, norms, routines, rules and similar concepts.
The English word "tradition" comes from the Latin "traditio" via French, the noun from the verb "tradere" (to transmit, to hand over, to give for safekeeping); it was originally used in Roman law to refer to the concept of legal transfers and inheritance. According to Anthony Giddens and others, the modern meaning of tradition evolved during the Enlightenment period, in opposition to modernity and progress.
As with many other generic terms, there are many definitions of tradition. The concept includes a number of interrelated ideas; the unifying one is that tradition refers to beliefs, objects or customs performed or believed in the past, originating in it, transmitted through time by being taught by one generation to the next, and are performed or believed in the present.
Tradition can also refer to beliefs or customs that are Prehistoric, with lost or arcane origins, existing from "time immemorial". Originally, traditions were passed orally, without the need for a writing system. Tools to aid this process include poetic devices such as rhyme and alliteration. The stories thus preserved are also referred to as tradition, or as part of an oral tradition. Even such traditions, however, are presumed to have originated (been "invented" by humans) at some point. Traditions are often presumed to be ancient, unalterable, and deeply important, though they may sometimes be much less "natural" than is presumed. It is presumed that at least two transmissions over three generations are required for a practice, belief or object to be seen as traditional. Some traditions were deliberately invented for one reason or another, often to highlight or enhance the importance of a certain institution. Traditions may also be adapted to suit the needs of the day, and the changes can become accepted as a part of the ancient tradition. Tradition changes slowly, with changes from one generation to the next being seen as significant. Thus, those carrying out the traditions will not be consciously aware of the change, and even if a tradition undergoes major changes over many generations, it will be seen as unchanged.
There are various origins and fields of tradition; they can refer to:
Many objects, beliefs and customs can be traditional. Rituals of social interaction can be traditional, with phrases and gestures such as saying "thank you", sending birth announcements, greeting cards, etc. Tradition can also refer to larger concepts practiced by groups (family traditions at Christmas), organizations (company's picnic) or societies, such as the practice of national and public holidays. Some of the oldest traditions include monotheism (three millennia) and citizenship (two millennia). It can also include material objects, such as buildings, works of art or tools.
Tradition is often used as an adjective, in contexts such as traditional music, traditional medicine, traditional values and others. In such constructions tradition refers to specific values and materials particular to the discussed context, passed through generations.
The term "invention of tradition", introduced by E. J. Hobsbawm, refers to situations when a new practice or object is introduced in a manner that implies a connection with the past that is not necessarily present. A tradition may be deliberately created and promulgated for personal, commercial, political, or national self-interest, as was done in colonial Africa; or it may be adopted rapidly based on a single highly publicized event, rather than developing and spreading organically in a population, as in the case of the white wedding dress, which only became popular after Queen Victoria wore a white gown at her wedding to Albert of Saxe-Coburg.
An example of an invention of tradition is the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster (location of the British Parliament) in the Gothic style. Similarly, most of the traditions associated with monarchy of the United Kingdom, seen as rooted deep in history, actually date to 19th century. Other examples include the invention of tradition in Africa and other colonial holdings by the occupying forces. Requiring legitimacy, the colonial power would often invent a "tradition" which they could use to legitimize their own position. For example, a certain succession to a chiefdom might be recognized by a colonial power as traditional in order to favour their own candidates for the job. Often these inventions were based in some form of tradition, but were exaggerated, distorted, or biased toward a particular interpretation.
Invented traditions are a central component of modern national cultures, providing a commonality of experience and promoting the unified national identity espoused by nationalism. Common examples include public holidays (particularly those unique to a particular nation), the singing of national anthems, and traditional national cuisine (see national dish). Expatriate and immigrant communities may continue to practice the national traditions of their home nation.
In science, tradition is often used in the literature in order to define the relationship of an author's thoughts to that of his or her field. In 1948, philosopher of science Karl Popper suggested that there should be a "rational theory of tradition" applied to science which was fundamentally sociological. For Popper, each scientist who embarks on a certain research trend inherits the tradition of the scientists before them as he or she inherits their studies and any conclusions that superseded it. Unlike myth, which is a means of explaining the natural world through means other than logical criticism, scientific tradition was inherited from Socrates, who proposed critical discussion, according to Popper. For Thomas Kuhn, who presented his thoughts in a paper presented in 1977, a sense of such a critical inheritance of tradition is, historically, what sets apart the best scientists who change their fields is an embracement of tradition.
Traditions are a subject of study in several academic fields in social sciences—chiefly anthropology, archaeology, and biology—with somewhat different meanings in different fields. It is also used in varying contexts in other fields, such as history, psychology and sociology. Social scientists and others have worked to refine the commonsense concept of tradition to make it into a useful concept for scholarly analysis. In the 1970s and 1980s, Edward Shils explored the concept in detail. Since then, a wide variety of social scientists have criticized traditional ideas about tradition; meanwhile, "tradition" has come into usage in biology as applied to nonhuman animals.
Tradition as a concept variously defined in different disciplines should not be confused with various traditions (perspectives, approaches) in those disciplines.
Tradition is one of the key concepts in anthropology; it can be said that anthropology is the study of "tradition in traditional societies". There is however no "theory of tradition", as for most anthropologists the need to discuss what tradition is seems unnecessary, as defining tradition is both unnecessary (everyone can be expected to know what it is) and unimportant (as small differences in definition would be just technical). There are however dissenting views; scholars such as Pascal Boyer argue that defining tradition and developing theories about it are important to the discipline.
In archaeology, the term "tradition" is a set of cultures or industries which appear to develop on from one another over a period of time. The term is especially common in the study of American archaeology.
Biologists, when examining groups of non-humans, have observed repeated behaviors which are taught within communities from one generation to the next. Tradition is defined in biology as "a behavioral practice that is relatively enduring (i.e., is performed repeatedly over a period of time), that is shared among two or more members of a group, that depends in part on socially aided learning for its generation in new practitioners", and has been called a precursor to "culture" in the anthropological sense.
Behavioral traditions have been observed in groups of fish, birds, and mammals. Groups of orangutans and chimpanzees, in particular, may display large numbers of behavioral traditions, and in chimpanzees, transfer of traditional behavior from one group to another (not just within a group) has been observed. Such behavioral traditions may have evolutionary significance, allowing adaptation at a faster rate than genetic change.
In the field of musicology and ethnomusicology tradition refers to the belief systems, repertoire, techniques, style and culture that is passed down through subsequent generations. Tradition in music suggests a historical context with which one can perceive distinguishable patterns. Along with a sense of history, traditions have a fluidity that cause them to evolve and adapt over time.
While both musicology and ethnomusicology are defined by being 'the scholarly study of music' they differ in their methodology and subject of research. 'Tradition, or traditions, can be presented as a context in which to study the work of a specific composer or as a part of a wide-ranging historical perspective.'
The concept of tradition, in early sociological research (around the turn of the 19th and 20th century), referred to that of the traditional society, as contrasted by the more modern industrial society. This approach was most notably portrayed in Max Weber's concepts of traditional authority and modern rational-legal authority. In more modern works, One hundred years later, sociology sees tradition as a social construct used to contrast past with the present and as a form of rationality used to justify certain course of action.
Traditional society is characterized by lack of distinction between family and business, division of labor influenced primarily by age, gender, and status, high position of custom in the system of values, self-sufficiency, preference to saving and accumulation of capital instead of productive investment, relative autarky. Early theories positing the simple, unilineal evolution of societies from traditional to industrial model are now seen as too simplistic.
In 1981 Edward Shils in his book "Tradition" put forward a definition of tradition that became universally accepted. According to Shils, tradition is anything which is transmitted or handed down from the past to the present.
Another important sociological aspect of tradition is the one that relates to rationality. It is also related to the works of Max Weber (see theories of rationality), and were popularized and redefined in 1992 by Raymond Boudon in his book "Action". In this context tradition refers to the mode of thinking and action justified as "it has always been that way". This line of reasoning forms the basis of the logical flaw of the appeal to tradition (or "argumentum ad antiquitatem"), which takes the form "this is right because we've always done it this way." In most cases such an appeal can be refuted on the grounds that the "tradition" being advocated may no longer be desirable, or, indeed, may never have been despite its previous popularity.
The idea of tradition is important in philosophy. Twentieth century philosophy is often divided between an 'analytic' tradition, dominant in Anglophone and Scandinavian countries, and a 'continental' tradition, dominant in German and Romance speaking Europe. Increasingly central to continental philosophy is the project of deconstructing what its proponents, following Martin Heidegger, call 'the tradition', which began with Plato and Aristotle. In contrast, some continental philosophers - most notably, Hans-Georg Gadamer - have attempted to rehabilitate the tradition of Aristotelianism. This move has been replicated within analytic philosophy by Alasdair MacIntyre. However, MacIntyre has himself deconstructed the idea of 'the tradition', instead posing Aristotelianism as one philosophical tradition in rivalry with others.
The concepts of tradition and traditional values are frequently used in political and religious discourse to establish the legitimacy of a particular set of values. In the United States in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the concept of tradition has been used to argue for the centrality and legitimacy of conservative religious values. Similarly, strands of orthodox theological thought from a number of world religions openly identify themselves as wanting a return to tradition. For example, the term "traditionalist Catholic" refers to those, such as Archbishop Lefebvre, who want the worship and practices of the church to be as they were before the Second Vatican Council of 1962–65. Likewise, Sunni Muslims are referred to as "Ahlus Sunnah wa Al-Jamā‘ah" (), literally "people of the tradition [of Muhammad] and the community", emphasizing their attachment to religious and cultural tradition.
More generally, tradition has been used as a way of determining the political spectrum, with right-wing parties having a stronger affinity to the ways of the past than left-wing ones. Here, the concept of adherence tradition is embodied by the political philosophy of traditionalist conservatism (or simply "traditionalism"), which emphasizes the need for the principles of natural law and transcendent moral order, hierarchy and organic unity, agrarianism, classicism and high culture, and the intersecting spheres of loyalty. Traditionalists would therefore reject the notions of individualism, liberalism, modernity, and social progress, but promote cultural and educational renewal, and revive interest in the church, the family, the state and local community. This view has been criticised for including in its notion of tradition practices which are no longer considered to be desirable, for example, stereotypical views of the place of women in domestic affairs.
In other societies, especially ones experiencing rapid social change, the idea of what is "traditional" may be widely contested, with different groups striving to establish their own values as the legitimate traditional ones. Defining and enacting traditions in some cases can be a means of building unity between subgroups in a diverse society; in other cases, tradition is a means of othering and keeping groups distinct from one another.
In artistic contexts, in the performance of traditional genres (such as traditional dance), adherence to traditional guidelines is of greater importance than performer's preferences. It is often the unchanging form of certain arts that leads to their perception as traditional. For artistic endeavors, tradition has been used as a contrast to "creativity", with traditional and folk art associated with unoriginal imitation or repetition, in contrast to fine art, which is valued for being original and unique. More recent philosophy of art, however, considers interaction with tradition as integral to the development of new artistic expression.
In the social sciences, "tradition" is often contrasted with "modernity", particularly in terms of whole societies. This dichotomy is generally associated with a linear model of social change, in which societies progress from being traditional to being modern. Tradition-oriented societies have been characterized as valuing filial piety, harmony and group welfare, stability, and interdependence, while a society exhibiting modernity would value "individualism (with free will and choice), mobility, and progress." Another author discussing tradition in relationship to modernity, Anthony Giddens, sees tradition as something bound to ritual, where ritual guarantees the continuation of tradition. Gusfield and others, though, criticize this dichotomy as oversimplified, arguing that tradition is dynamic, heterogeneous, and coexists successfully with modernity even within individuals.
Tradition should be differentiated from "customs, conventions, laws, norms, routines, rules" and similar concepts. Whereas tradition is supposed to be invariable, they are seen as more flexible and subject to innovation and change. Whereas justification for tradition is ideological, the justification for other similar concepts is more practical or technical. Over time, customs, routines, conventions, rules and such can evolve into traditions, but that usually requires that they stop having (primarily) a practical purpose. For example, wigs worn by lawyers were at first common and fashionable; spurs worn by military officials were at first practical but now are both impractical and traditional.
The legal protection of tradition includes a number of international agreements and national laws. In addition to the fundamental protection of cultural property, there is also cooperation between the United Nations, UNESCO and Blue Shield International in the protection or recording of traditions and customs. The protection of culture and traditions is becoming increasingly important nationally and internationally. It is also about preserving the cultural heritage of mankind, especially in the event of war and armed conflict. According to Karl von Habsburg, President Blue Shield International, the destruction of cultural assets, traditions and languages is also part of psychological warfare. The target of the attack is the opponent's identity. It is also intended to address the particularly sensitive cultural memory, the growing cultural diversity and the economic basis (such as tourism) of a state, a region or a municipality.
In many countries, concerted attempts are being made to preserve traditions that are at risk of being lost. A number of factors can exacerbate the loss of tradition, including industrialization, globalization, and the assimilation or marginalization of specific cultural groups. Customary celebrations and lifestyles are among the traditions that are sought to be preserved. Likewise, the concept of tradition has been used to defend the preservation and reintroduction of minority languages such as Cornish under the auspices of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Specifically, the charter holds that these languages "contribute to the maintenance and development of Europe's cultural wealth and traditions". The Charter goes on to call for "the use or adoption... of traditional and correct forms of place-names in regional or minority languages". Similarly, UNESCO includes both "oral tradition" and "traditional manifestations" in its definition of a country's cultural properties and heritage. It therefore works to preserve tradition in countries such as Brazil.
In Japan, certain artworks, structures, craft techniques and performing arts are considered by the Japanese government to be a precious legacy of the Japanese people, and are protected under the Japanese Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties. This law also identifies people skilled at traditional arts as "National Living Treasures", and encourages the preservation of their craft.
For native peoples like the Māori in New Zealand, there is conflict between the fluid identity assumed as part of modern society and the traditional identity with the obligations that accompany it; the loss of language heightens the feeling of isolation and damages the ability to perpetuate tradition.
The phrase "traditional cultural expressions" is used by the World Intellectual Property Organization to refer to "any form of artistic and literary expression in which traditional culture and knowledge are embodied. They are transmitted from one generation to the next, and include handmade textiles, paintings, stories, legends, ceremonies, music, songs, rhythms and dance."
| 30067 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30067 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus (; , "Thalēs", or ; 624/623 – c. 548/545 BC) was a Greek mathematician, astronomer and pre-Socratic philosopher from Miletus in Ionia, Asia Minor. He was one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regarded him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition, and he is otherwise historically recognized as the first individual in Western civilization known to have entertained and engaged in scientific philosophy.
Thales is recognized for breaking from the use of mythology to explain the world and the universe, and instead explaining natural objects and phenomena by theories and hypotheses, in a precursor to modern science. Almost all the other pre-Socratic philosophers followed him in explaining nature as deriving from a unity of everything based on the existence of a single ultimate substance, instead of using mythological explanations. Aristotle regarded him as the founder of the Ionian School and reported Thales' hypothesis that the originating principle of nature and the nature of matter was a single material substance: water.
In mathematics, Thales used geometry to calculate the heights of pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore. He is the first known individual to use deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to Thales' theorem. He is the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed.
The dates of Thales' life are not exactly known, but are roughly established by a few datable events mentioned in the sources. According to Herodotus, Thales predicted the solar eclipse of May 28, 585 BC. Diogenes Laërtius quotes the chronicle of Apollodorus of Athens as saying that Thales died at the age of 78 during the 58th Olympiad (548–545 BC) and attributes his death to heat stroke while watching the games.
Thales was probably born in the city of Miletus around the mid-620s BC. The ancient writer Apollodorus of Athens writing during the 2nd century BC, thought Thales was born about the year 625 BC. Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC, described Thales as "a Phoenician by remote descent". Tim Whitmarsh noted that Thales regarded water as the primal matter, and because "thal" is the Phoenician word for moisture, his name may have derived from this circumstance."
According to the later historian Diogenes Laërtius, in his third century AD "Lives of the Philosophers", references Herodotus, Duris, and Democritus, who all agree "that Thales was the son of Examyas and Cleobulina, and belonged to the Thelidae who are Phoenicians." Their names are indigenous Carian and Greek, respectively. Diogenes then states that "Most writers, however, represent him as a native of Miletus and of a distinguished family." However, his supposed mother Cleobulina has also been described as his companion. Diogenes then delivers more conflicting reports: one that Thales married and either fathered a son (Cybisthus or Cybisthon) or adopted his nephew of the same name; the second that he never married, telling his mother as a young man that it was too early to marry, and as an older man that it was too late. Plutarch had earlier told this version: Solon visited Thales and asked him why he remained single; Thales answered that he did not like the idea of having to worry about children. Nevertheless, several years later, anxious for family, he adopted his nephew Cybisthus.
It has been claimed that he was roughly the professional equivalent of a contemporary option trader.
It is assumed that Thales at one point in his life visited Egypt, where he learned about geometry. Diogenes Laërtius wrote that Thales identifies the Milesians as Athenian colonists.
Thales (who died around 30 years before the time of Pythagoras and 300 years before Euclid, Eudoxus of Cnidus, and Eudemus of Rhodes) is often hailed as "the first Greek mathematician". While some historians, such as Colin R. Fletcher, point out that there could have been a predecessor to Thales who would have been named in Eudemus' lost book "History of Geometry", it is admitted that without the work "the question becomes mere speculation." Fletcher holds that as there is no viable predecessor to the title of first Greek mathematician, the only question is whether Thales qualifies as a practitioner in that field; he holds that "Thales had at his command the techniques of observation, experimentation, superposition and deduction…he has proved himself mathematician."
Aristotle wrote in Metaphysics, "Thales, the founder of this school of philosophy, says the permanent entity is water (which is why he also propounded that the earth floats on water). Presumably he derived this assumption from seeing that the nutriment of everything is moist, and that heat itself is generated from moisture and depends upon it for its existence (and that from which a thing is generated is always its first principle). He derived his assumption from this; and also from the fact that the seeds of everything have a moist nature, whereas water is the first principle of the nature of moist things."
Thales involved himself in many activities, including engineering. Some say that he left no writings. Others say that he wrote "On the Solstice" and "On the Equinox". The "Nautical Star-guide" has been attributed to him, but this was disputed in ancient times. No writing attributed to him has survived. Diogenes Laërtius quotes two letters from Thales: one to Pherecydes of Syros, offering to review his book on religion, and one to Solon, offering to keep him company on his sojourn from Athens.
A story, with different versions, recounts how Thales achieved riches from an olive harvest by prediction of the weather. In one version, he bought all the in Miletus after predicting the weather and a good harvest for a particular year. Another version of the story has Aristotle explain that Thales had reserved presses in advance, at a discount, and could rent them out at a high price when demand peaked, following his prediction of a particularly good harvest. This first version of the story would constitute the first historically known creation and use of futures, whereas the second version would be the first historically known creation and use of options.
Aristotle explains that Thales' objective in doing this was not to enrich himself but to prove to his fellow Milesians that philosophy could be useful, contrary to what they thought, or alternatively, Thales had made his foray into enterprise because of a personal challenge put to him by an individual who had asked why, if Thales was an intelligent famous philosopher, he had yet to attain wealth.
Diogenes Laërtius tells us that Thales gained fame as a counselor when he advised the Milesians not to engage in a symmachia, a "fighting together", with the Lydians. This has sometimes been interpreted as an alliance. Another story by Herodotus is that Croesus sent his army to the Persian territory. He was stopped by the river Halys, then unbridged. Thales then got the army across the river by digging a diversion upstream so as to reduce the flow, making it possible to cross the river. While Herodotus reported that most of his fellow Greeks believe that Thales did divert the river Halys to assist King Croesus' military endeavors, he himself finds it doubtful.
Croesus was defeated before the city of Sardis by Cyrus, who subsequently spared Miletus because it had taken no action. Cyrus was so impressed by Croesus’ wisdom and his connection with the sages that he spared him and took his advice on various matters. The Ionian cities should be demoi, or "districts".
Miletus, however, received favorable terms from Cyrus. The others remained in an Ionian League of twelve cities (excluding Miletus), and were subjugated by the Persians.
According to Herodotus, Thales predicted the solar eclipse of May 28, 585 BC. Thales also described the position of Ursa Minor, and he thought the constellation might be useful as a guide for navigation at sea. He calculated the duration of the year and the timings of the equinoxes and solstices. He is additionally attributed with the first observation of the Hyades and with calculating the position of the Pleiades. Plutarch indicates that in his day (c. AD 100) there was an extant work, the "Astronomy", composed in verse and attributed to Thales.
Herodotus writes that in the sixth year of the war, the Lydians under King Alyattes and the Medes under Cyaxares were engaged in an indecisive battle when suddenly day turned into night, leading to both parties halting the fighting and negotiating a peace agreement. Herodotus also mentions that the loss of daylight had been predicted by Thales. He does not, however, mention the location of the battle.
However, based on the list of Medean kings and the duration of their reign reported elsewhere by Herodotus, Cyaxares died 10 years before the eclipse.
Diogenes Laërtius tells us that the Seven Sages were created in the archonship of Damasius at Athens about 582 BC and that Thales was the first sage. The same story, however, asserts that Thales emigrated to Miletus. There is also a report that he did not become a student of nature until after his political career. Much as we would like to have a date on the seven sages, we must reject these stories and the tempting date if we are to believe that Thales was a native of Miletus, predicted the eclipse, and was with Croesus in the campaign against Cyrus.
Thales received instruction from an Egyptian priest. It was fairly certain that he came from a wealthy, established family, in a class which customarily provided higher education for their children. Moreover, the ordinary citizen, unless he was a seafaring man or a merchant, could not afford the grand tour in Egypt, and did not consort with noble lawmakers such as Solon.
In Diogenes Laërtius' "Lives of Eminent Philosophers" Chapter 1.39, Laërtius relates the several stories of an expensive object that is to go to the most wise. In one version (that Laërtius credits to Callimachus in his "Iambics") Bathycles of Arcadia states in his will that an expensive bowl "'should be given to him who had done most good by his wisdom.' So it was given to Thales, went the round of all the sages, and came back to Thales again. And he sent it to Apollo at Didyma, with this dedication...'Thales the Milesian, son of Examyas [dedicates this] to Delphinian Apollo after twice winning the prize from all the Greeks.'"
Early Greeks, and other civilizations before them, often invoked idiosyncratic explanations of natural phenomena with reference to the will of anthropomorphic gods and heroes. Instead, Thales aimed to explain natural phenomena via rational hypotheses that referenced natural processes themselves. For example, rather than assuming that earthquakes were the result of supernatural whims, Thales explained them by hypothesizing that the Earth floats on water and that earthquakes occur when the Earth is rocked by waves.
Thales was a hylozoist (one who thinks that matter is alive, i.e. containing soul(s)). Aristotle wrote ("De Anima" 411 a7-8) of Thales: ..."Thales thought all things are full of gods". Aristotle posits the origin of Thales thought on matter generally containing souls, to Thales thinking initially on the fact of, because magnets move iron, the presence of movement of matter indicated this matter contained life.
Thales, according to Aristotle, asked what was the nature (Greek "arche") of the object so that it would behave in its characteristic way. Physis () comes from phyein (), "to grow", related to our word "be". "(G)natura" is the way a thing is "born", again with the stamp of what it is in itself.
Aristotle characterizes most of the philosophers "at first" () as thinking that the "principles in the form of matter were the only principles of all things", where "principle" is arche, "matter" is hyle ("wood" or "matter", "material") and "form" is eidos.
"Arche" is translated as "principle", but the two words do not have precisely the same meaning. A principle of something is merely prior (related to pro-) to it either chronologically or logically. An arche (from , "to rule") dominates an object in some way. If the arche is taken to be an origin, then specific causality is implied; that is, B is supposed to be characteristically B just because it comes from A, which dominates it.
The archai that Aristotle had in mind in his well-known passage on the first Greek scientists are not necessarily chronologically prior to their objects, but are constituents of it. For example, in pluralism objects are composed of earth, air, fire and water, but those elements do not disappear with the production of the object. They remain as archai within it, as do the atoms of the atomists.
What Aristotle is really saying is that the first philosophers were trying to define the substance(s) of which all material objects are composed. As a matter of fact, that is exactly what modern scientists are attempting to accomplish in nuclear physics, which is a second reason why Thales is described as the first western scientist, but some contemporary scholars reject this interpretation.
Thales was known for his innovative use of geometry. His understanding was theoretical as well as practical. For example, he said:
Topos is in Newtonian-style space, since the verb, chorei, has the connotation of yielding before things, or spreading out to make room for them, which is extension. Within this extension, things have a position. Points, lines, planes and solids related by distances and angles follow from this presumption.
Thales understood similar triangles and right triangles, and what is more, used that knowledge in practical ways. The story is told in Diogenes Laërtius (loc. cit.) that he measured the height of the pyramids by their shadows at the moment when his own shadow was equal to his height. A right triangle with two equal legs is a 45-degree right triangle, all of which are similar. The length of the pyramid's shadow measured from the center of the pyramid at that moment must have been equal to its height.
This story indicates that he was familiar with the Egyptian "seked", or "seqed", the ratio of the run to the rise of a slope (cotangent). The "seked" is at the base of problems 56, 57, 58, 59 and 60 of the Rhind papyrus — an ancient Egyptian mathematical document.
More practically Thales used the same method to measure the distances of ships at sea, said Eudemus as reported by Proclus ("in Euclidem"). According to Kirk & Raven (reference cited below), all you need for this feat is three straight sticks pinned at one end and knowledge of your altitude. One stick goes vertically into the ground. A second is made level. With the third you sight the ship and calculate the "seked" from the height of the stick and its distance from the point of insertion to the line of sight (Proclus, "In Euclidem", 352).
There are two theorems of Thales in elementary geometry, one known as Thales' theorem having to do with a triangle inscribed in a circle and having the circle's diameter as one leg, the other theorem being also called the intercept theorem. In addition Eudemus attributed to him the discovery that a circle is bisected by its diameter, that the base angles of an isosceles triangle are equal and that vertical angles are equal. According to a historical Note, when Thales visited Egypt, he observed that whenever the Egyptians drew two intersecting lines, they would measure the vertical angles to make sure that they were equal. Thales concluded that one could prove that all vertical angles are equal if one accepted some general notions such as: all straight angles are equal, equals added to equals are equal, and equals subtracted from equals are equal.
The evidence for the primacy of Thales comes to us from a book by Proclus who wrote a thousand years after Thales but is believed to have had a copy of Eudemus' book. Proclus wrote "Thales was the first to go to Egypt and bring back to Greece this study." He goes on to tell us that in addition to applying the knowledge he gained in Egypt "He himself discovered many propositions and disclosed the underlying principles of many others to his successors, in some case his method being more general, in others more empirical."
Other quotes from Proclus list more of Thales' mathematical achievements:
In addition to Proclus, Hieronymus of Rhodes also cites Thales as the first Greek mathematician. Hieronymus held that Thales was able to measure the height of the pyramids by using a theorem of geometry now known as the intercept theorem, (after gathering data by using his walking-stick and comparing its shadow to those cast by the pyramids). We receive variations of Hieronymus' story through Diogenes Laërtius, Pliny the Elder, and Plutarch. According to Hieronymus, historically quoted by Diogenes Laërtius, Thales found the height of pyramids by comparison between the lengths of the shadows cast by a person and by the pyramids.
Due to the variations among testimonies, such as the "story of the sacrifice of an ox on the occasion of the discovery that the angle on a diameter of a circle is a right angle" in the version told by Diogenes Laërtius being accredited to Pythagoras rather than Thales, some historians (such as D. R. Dicks) question whether such anecdotes have any historical worth whatsoever.
Thales' most famous philosophical position was his cosmological thesis, which comes down to us through a passage from Aristotle's "Metaphysics". In the work Aristotle unequivocally reported Thales' hypothesis about the nature of all matter – that the originating principle of nature was a single material substance: water. Aristotle then proceeded to proffer a number of conjectures based on his own observations to lend some credence to why Thales may have advanced this idea (though Aristotle did not hold it himself).
Aristotle laid out his own thinking about matter and form which may shed some light on the ideas of Thales, in "Metaphysics" 983 b6 8–11, 17–21. (The passage contains words that were later adopted by science with quite different meanings.)
In this quote we see Aristotle's depiction of the problem of change and the definition of substance. He asked if an object changes, is it the same or different? In either case how can there be a change from one to the other? The answer is that the substance "is saved", but acquires or loses different qualities (, the things you "experience").
Aristotle conjectured that Thales reached his conclusion by contemplating that the "nourishment of all things is moist and that even the hot is created from the wet and lives by it." While Aristotle's conjecture on why Thales held water as the originating principle of matter is his own thinking, his statement that Thales held it as water is generally accepted as genuinely originating with Thales and he is seen as an incipient matter-and-formist.
Thales thought the Earth must be a flat disk which is floating in an expanse of water.
Heraclitus Homericus states that Thales drew his conclusion from seeing moist substance turn into air, slime and earth. It seems likely that Thales viewed the Earth as solidifying from the water on which it floated and the oceans that surround it.
Writing centuries later, Diogenes Laërtius also states that Thales taught "Water constituted (, 'stood under') the principle of all things."
Aristotle considered Thales’ position to be roughly the equivalent to the later ideas of Anaximenes, who held that everything was composed of air.
The 1870 book "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology" noted:
According to Aristotle, Thales thought lodestones had souls, because iron is attracted to them (by the force of magnetism).
Aristotle defined the soul as the principle of life, that which imbues the matter and makes it live, giving it the animation, or power to act. The idea did not originate with him, as the Greeks in general believed in the distinction between mind and matter, which was ultimately to lead to a distinction not only between body and soul but also between matter and energy. If things were alive, they must have souls. This belief was no innovation, as the ordinary ancient populations of the Mediterranean did believe that natural actions were caused by divinities. Accordingly, Aristotle and other ancient writers state that Thales believed that "all things were full of gods." In their zeal to make him the first in everything some said he was the first to hold the belief, which must have been widely known to be false. However, Thales was looking for something more general, a universal substance of mind. That also was in the polytheism of the times. Zeus was the very personification of supreme mind, dominating all the subordinate manifestations. From Thales on, however, philosophers had a tendency to depersonify or objectify mind, as though it were the substance of animation per se and not actually a god like the other gods. The end result was a total removal of mind from substance, opening the door to a non-divine principle of action.
Classical thought, however, had proceeded only a little way along that path. Instead of referring to the person, Zeus, they talked about the great mind:
The universal mind appears as a Roman belief in Virgil as well:
According to Henry Fielding (1775), Diogenes Laërtius (1.35) affirmed that Thales posed "the independent pre-existence of God from all eternity, stating "that God was the oldest of all beings, for he existed without a previous cause even in the way of generation; that the world was the most beautiful of all things; for it was created by God."
Due to the scarcity of sources concerning Thales and the discrepancies between the accounts given in the sources that have survived, there is a scholarly debate over possible influences on Thales and the Greek mathematicians that came after him.
Historian Roger L. Cooke points out that Proclus does not make any mention of Mesopotamian influence on Thales or Greek geometry, but "is shown clearly in Greek astronomy, in the use of sexagesimal system of measuring angles and in Ptolemy's explicit use of Mesopotamian astronomical observations." Cooke notes that it may possibly also appear in the second book of Euclid's Elements, "which contains geometric constructions equivalent to certain algebraic relations that are frequently encountered in the cuneiform tablets." Cooke notes "This relation however, is controversial."
Historian B.L. Van der Waerden is among those advocating the idea of Mesopotamian influence, writing "It follows that we have to abandon the traditional belief that the oldest Greek mathematicians discovered geometry entirely by themselves…a belief that was tenable only as long as nothing was known about Babylonian mathematics. This in no way diminishes the stature of Thales; on the contrary, his genius receives only now the honour that is due to it, the honour of having developed a logical structure for geometry, of having introduced proof into geometry."
Some historians, such as D. R. Dicks takes issue with the idea that we can determine from the questionable sources we have, just how influenced Thales was by Babylonian sources. He points out that while Thales is held to have been able to calculate an eclipse using a cycle called the "Saros" held to have been "borrowed from the Babylonians", "The Babylonians, however, did not use cycles to predict solar eclipses, but computed them from observations of the latitude of the moon made shortly before the expected syzygy." Dicks cites historian O. Neugebauer who relates that "No Babylonian theory for predicting solar eclipse existed at 600 B.C., as one can see from the very unsatisfactory situation 400 years later; nor did the Babylonians ever develop any theory which took the influence of geographical latitude into account." Dicks examines the cycle referred to as 'Saros' – which Thales is held to have used and which is believed to stem from the Babylonians. He points out that Ptolemy makes use of this and another cycle in his book "Mathematical Syntaxis" but attributes it to Greek astronomers earlier than Hipparchus and not to Babylonians. Dicks notes Herodotus does relate that Thales made use of a cycle to predict the eclipse, but maintains that "if so, the fulfillment of the 'prediction' was a stroke of pure luck not science". He goes further joining with other historians (F. Martini, J.L. E. Dreyer, O. Neugebauer) in rejecting the historicity of the eclipse story altogether. Dicks links the story of Thales discovering the cause for a solar eclipse with Herodotus' claim that Thales discovered the cycle of the sun with relation to the solstices, and concludes "he could not possibly have possessed this knowledge which neither the Egyptians nor the Babylonians nor his immediate successors possessed." Josephus is the only ancient historian that claims Thales visited Babylonia.
Herodotus wrote that the Greeks learnt the practice of dividing the day into 12 parts, about the "polos", and the gnomon from the Babylonians. (The exact meaning of his use of the word "polos" is unknown, current theories include: "the heavenly dome", "the tip of the axis of the celestial sphere", or a spherical concave sundial.) Yet even Herodotus' claims on Babylonian influence are contested by some modern historians, such as L. Zhmud, who points out that the division of the day into twelve parts (and by analogy the year) was known to the Egyptians already in the second millennium, the gnomon was known to both Egyptians and Babylonians, and the idea of the "heavenly sphere" was not used outside of Greece at this time.
Less controversial than the position that Thales learnt Babylonian mathematics is the claim he was influenced by Egyptians. Pointedly historian S. N. Bychkov holds that the idea that the base angles of an isosceles triangle are equal likely came from Egypt. This is because, when building a roof for a home – having a cross section be exactly an isosceles triangle isn't crucial (as it's the ridge of the roof that must fit precisely), in contrast a symmetric square pyramid cannot have errors in the base angles of the faces or they will not fit together tightly.
Historian D.R. Dicks agrees that compared to the Greeks in the era of Thales, there was a more advanced state of mathematics among the Babylonians and especially the Egyptians – "both cultures knew the correct formulae for determining the areas and volumes of simple geometrical figures such as triangles, rectangles, trapezoids, etc.; the Egyptians could also calculate correctly the volume of the frustum of a pyramid with a square base (the Babylonians used an incorrect formula for this), and used a formula for the area of a circle...which gives a value for π of 3.1605—a good approximation." Dicks also agrees that this would have had an effect on Thales (whom the most ancient sources agree was interested in mathematics and astronomy) but he holds that tales of Thales' travels in these lands are pure myth.
The ancient civilization and massive monuments of Egypt had "a profound and ineradicable impression on the Greeks". They attributed to Egyptians "an immemorial knowledge of certain subjects" (including geometry) and would claim Egyptian origin for some of their own ideas to try and lend them "a respectable antiquity" (such as the "Hermetic" literature of the Alexandrian period).
Dicks holds that since Thales was a prominent figure in Greek history by the time of Eudemus but "nothing certain was known except that he lived in Miletus". A tradition developed that as "Milesians were in a position to be able to travel widely" Thales must have gone to Egypt. As Herodotus says Egypt was the birthplace of geometry he must have learnt that while there. Since he had to have been there, surely one of the theories on Nile Flooding laid out by Herodotus must have come from Thales. Likewise as he must have been in Egypt he had to have done something with the Pyramids – thus the tale of measuring them. Similar apocryphal stories exist of Pythagoras and Plato traveling to Egypt with no corroborating evidence.
As the Egyptian and Babylonian geometry at the time was "essentially arithmetical", they used actual numbers and "the procedure is then described with explicit instructions as to what to do with these numbers" there was no mention of how the rules of procedure were made, and nothing toward a logically arranged corpus of generalized geometrical knowledge with analytical 'proofs' such as we find in the words of Euclid, Archimedes, and Apollonius." So even had Thales traveled there he could not have learnt anything about the theorems he is held to have picked up there (especially because there is no evidence that any Greeks of this age could use Egyptian hieroglyphics).
Likewise until around the second century BC and the time of Hipparchus (c. 190–120 BC) the Babylonian general division of the circle into 360 degrees and their sexagesimal system was unknown. Herodotus says almost nothing about Babylonian literature and science, and very little about their history. Some historians, like P. Schnabel, hold that the Greeks only learned more about Babylonian culture from Berossus, a Babylonian priest who is said to have set up a school in Cos around 270 BC (but to what extent this had in the field of geometry is contested).
Dicks points out that the primitive state of Greek mathematics and astronomical ideas exhibited by the peculiar notions of Thales' successors (such as Anaximander, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, and Heraclitus), which historian J. L. Heiberg calls "a mixture of brilliant intuition and childlike analogies", argues against the assertions from writers in late antiquity that Thales discovered and taught advanced concepts in these fields.
John Burnet (1892) noted
In the long sojourn of philosophy, there has existed hardly a philosopher or historian of philosophy who did not mention Thales and try to characterize him in some way. He is generally recognized as having brought something new to human thought. Mathematics, astronomy, and medicine already existed. Thales added something to these different collections of knowledge to produce a universality, which, as far as writing tells us, was not in tradition before, but resulted in a new field.
Ever since, interested persons have been asking what that new something is. Answers fall into (at least) two categories, the theory and the method. Once an answer has been arrived at, the next logical step is to ask how Thales compares to other philosophers, which leads to his classification (rightly or wrongly).
The most natural epithets of Thales are "materialist" and "naturalist", which are based on ousia and physis. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that Aristotle called him a physiologist, with the meaning "student of nature." On the other hand, he would have qualified as an early physicist, as did Aristotle. They studied corpora, "bodies", the medieval descendants of substances.
Most agree that Thales' stamp on thought is the unity of substance, hence Bertrand Russell:
Russell was only reflecting an established tradition; for example: Nietzsche, in his "Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks", wrote:
This sort of materialism, however, should not be confused with deterministic materialism. Thales was only trying to explain the unity observed in the free play of the qualities. The arrival of uncertainty in the modern world made possible a return to Thales; for example, John Elof Boodin writes ("God and Creation"):
Boodin defines an "emergent" materialism, in which the objects of sense emerge uncertainly from the substrate. Thales is the innovator of this sort of materialism.
Later scholastic thinkers would maintain that in his choice of water Thales was influenced by Babylonian or Chaldean religion, that held that a god had begun creation by acting upon the pre-existing water. Historian Abraham Feldman holds this does not stand up under closer examination. In Babylonian religion the water is lifeless and sterile until a god acts upon it, but for Thales water itself was divine and creative. He maintained that "All things are full of gods", and to understand the nature of things was to discover the secrets of the deities, and through this knowledge open the possibility that one could be greater than the grandest Olympian.
Feldman points out that while other thinkers recognized the wetness of the world "none of them was inspired to conclude that everything was ultimately aquatic." He further points out that Thales was "a wealthy citizen of the fabulously rich Oriental port of Miletus...a dealer in the staples of antiquity, wine and oil...He certainly handled the shell-fish of the Phoenicians that secreted the dye of imperial purple." Feldman recalls the stories of Thales measuring the distance of boats in the harbor, creating mechanical improvements for ship navigation, giving an explanation for the flooding of the Nile (vital to Egyptian agriculture and Greek trade), and changing the course of the river Halys so an army could ford it. Rather than seeing water as a barrier Thales contemplated the Ionian yearly religious gathering for athletic ritual (held on the promontory of Mycale and believed to be ordained by the ancestral kindred of Poseidon, the god of the sea). He called for the Ionian mercantile states participating in this ritual to convert it into a democratic federation under the protection of Poseidon that would hold off the forces of pastoral Persia. Feldman concludes that Thales saw "that water was a revolutionary leveler and the elemental factor determining the subsistence and business of the world" and "the common channel of states."
Feldman considers Thales' environment and holds that Thales would have seen tears, sweat, and blood as granting value to a person's work and the means how life giving commodities travelled (whether on bodies of water or through the sweat of slaves and pack-animals). He would have seen that minerals could be processed from water such as life-sustaining salt and gold taken from rivers. He would’ve seen fish and other food stuffs gathered from it. Feldman points out that Thales held that the lodestone was alive as it drew metals to itself. He holds that Thales "living ever in sight of his beloved sea" would see water seem to draw all "traffic in wine and oil, milk and honey, juices and dyes" to itself, leading him to "a vision of the universe melting into a single substance that was valueless in itself and still the source of wealth." Feldman concludes that for Thales "...water united all things. The social significance of water in the time of Thales induced him to discern through hardware and dry-goods, through soil and sperm, blood, sweat and tears, one fundamental fluid stuff...water, the most commonplace and powerful material known to him." This combined with his contemporary's idea of "spontaneous generation" allow us to see how Thales could hold that water could be divine and creative.
Feldman points to the lasting association of the theory that "all whatness is wetness" with Thales himself, pointing out that Diogenes Laërtius speaks of a poem, probably a satire, where Thales is snatched to heaven by the sun.
In the West, Thales represents a new kind of inquiring community as well. Edmund Husserl attempts to capture the new movement as follows. Philosophical man is a "new cultural configuration" based in stepping back from "pregiven tradition" and taking up a rational "inquiry into what is true in itself;" that is, an ideal of truth. It begins with isolated individuals such as Thales, but they are supported and cooperated with as time goes on. Finally the ideal transforms the norms of society, leaping across national borders.
The term "Pre-Socratic" derives ultimately from the philosopher Aristotle, who distinguished the early philosophers as concerning themselves with substance.
Diogenes Laërtius on the other hand took a strictly geographic and ethnic approach. Philosophers were either Ionian or Italian. He used "Ionian" in a broader sense, including also the Athenian academics, who were not Pre-Socratics. From a philosophic point of view, any grouping at all would have been just as effective. There is no basis for an Ionian or Italian unity. Some scholars, however, concede to Diogenes' scheme as far as referring to an "Ionian" school. There was no such school in any sense.
The most popular approach refers to a Milesian school, which is more justifiable socially and philosophically. They sought for the substance of phenomena and may have studied with each other. Some ancient writers qualify them as Milesioi, "of Miletus."
Thales had a profound influence on other Greek thinkers and therefore on Western history. Some believe Anaximander was a pupil of Thales. Early sources report that one of Anaximander's more famous pupils, Pythagoras, visited Thales as a young man, and that Thales advised him to travel to Egypt to further his philosophical and mathematical studies.
Many philosophers followed Thales' lead in searching for explanations in nature rather than in the supernatural; others returned to supernatural explanations, but couched them in the language of philosophy rather than of myth or of religion.
Looking specifically at Thales' influence during the pre-Socratic era, it is clear that he stood out as one of the first thinkers who thought more in the way of "logos" than "mythos". The difference between these two more profound ways of seeing the world is that "mythos" is concentrated around the stories of holy origin, while "logos" is concentrated around the argumentation. When the mythical man wants to explain the world the way he sees it, he explains it based on gods and powers. Mythical thought does not differentiate between things and persons and furthermore it does not differentiate between nature and culture. The way a "logos" thinker would present a world view is radically different from the way of the mythical thinker. In its concrete form, "logos" is a way of thinking not only about individualism, but also the abstract. Furthermore, it focuses on sensible and continuous argumentation. This lays the foundation of philosophy and its way of explaining the world in terms of abstract argumentation, and not in the way of gods and mythical stories.
Because of Thales' elevated status in Greek culture an intense interest and admiration followed his reputation. Due to this following, the oral stories about his life were open to amplification and historical fabrication, even before they were written down generations later. Most modern dissension comes from trying to interpret what we know, in particular, distinguishing legend from fact.
Historian D.R. Dicks and other historians divide the ancient sources about Thales into those before 320 BC and those after that year (some such as Proclus writing in the 5th century C.E. and Simplicius of Cilicia in the 6th century C.E. writing nearly a millennium after his era). The first category includes Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Aristophanes, and Theophrastus among others. The second category includes Plautus, Aetius, Eusebius, Plutarch, Josephus, Iamblichus, Diogenes Laërtius, Theon of Smyrna, Apuleius, Clement of Alexandria, Pliny the Elder, and John Tzetzes among others.
The earliest sources on Thales (living before 320 BC) are often the same for the other Milesian philosophers (Anaximander, and Anaximenes). These sources were either roughly contemporaneous (such as Herodotus) or lived within a few hundred years of his passing. Moreover, they were writing from an oral tradition that was widespread and well known in the Greece of their day.
The latter sources on Thales are several "ascriptions of commentators and compilers who lived anything from 700 to 1,000 years after his death" which include "anecdotes of varying degrees of plausibility" and in the opinion of some historians (such as D. R. Dicks) of "no historical worth whatsoever". Dicks points out that there is no agreement "among the 'authorities' even on the most fundamental facts of his life—e.g. whether he was a Milesian or a Phoenician, whether he left any writings or not, whether he was married or single-much less on the actual ideas and achievements with which he is credited."
Contrasting the work of the more ancient writers with those of the later, Dicks points out that in the works of the early writers Thales and the other men who would be hailed as "the Seven Sages of Greece" had a different reputation than that which would be assigned to them by later authors. Closer to their own era, Thales, Solon, Bias of Priene, Pittacus of Mytilene and others were hailed as "essentially practical men who played leading roles in the affairs of their respective states, and were far better known to the earlier Greeks as lawgivers and statesmen than as profound thinkers and philosophers." For example, Plato praises him (coupled with Anacharsis) for being the originator of the potter's wheel and the anchor.
Only in the writings of the second group of writers (working after 320 BC) do "we obtain the picture of Thales as the pioneer in Greek scientific thinking, particularly in regard to mathematics and astronomy which he is supposed to have learnt about in Babylonia and Egypt." Rather than "the earlier tradition [where] he is a favourite example of the intelligent man who possesses some technical 'know how'...the later doxographers [such as Dicaearchus in the latter half of the fourth century BC] foist on to him any number of discoveries and achievements, in order to build him up as a figure of superhuman wisdom."
Dicks points out a further problem arises in the surviving information on Thales, for rather than using ancient sources closer to the era of Thales, the authors in later antiquity ("epitomators, excerptors, and compilers") actually "preferred to use one or more intermediaries, so that what we actually read in them comes to us not even at second, but at third or fourth or fifth hand. ...Obviously this use of intermediate sources, copied and recopied from century to century, with each writer adding additional pieces of information of greater or less plausibility from his own knowledge, provided a fertile field for errors in transmission, wrong ascriptions, and fictitious attributions". Dicks points out that "certain doctrines that later commentators invented for Thales...were then accepted into the biographical tradition" being copied by subsequent writers who were then cited by those coming after them "and thus, because they may be repeated by different authors relying on different sources, may produce an illusory impression of genuineness."
Doubts even exist when considering the philosophical positions held to originate in Thales "in reality these stem directly from Aristotle's own interpretations which then became incorporated in the doxographical tradition as erroneous ascriptions to Thales". (The same treatment was given by Aristotle to Anaxagoras.)
Most philosophic analyses of the philosophy of Thales come from Aristotle, a professional philosopher, tutor of Alexander the Great, who wrote 200 years after Thales' death. Aristotle, judging from his surviving books, does not seem to have access to any works by Thales, although he probably had access to works of other authors about Thales, such as Herodotus, Hecataeus, Plato etc., as well as others whose work is now extinct. It was Aristotle's express goal to present Thales' work not because it was significant in itself, but as a prelude to his own work in natural philosophy. Geoffrey Kirk and John Raven, English compilers of the fragments of the Pre-Socratics, assert that Aristotle's "judgments are often distorted by his view of earlier philosophy as a stumbling progress toward the truth that Aristotle himself revealed in his physical doctrines." There was also an extensive oral tradition. Both the oral and the written were commonly read or known by all educated men in the region.
Aristotle's philosophy had a distinct stamp: it professed the theory of matter and form, which modern scholastics have dubbed hylomorphism. Though once very widespread, it was not generally adopted by rationalist and modern science, as it mainly is useful in metaphysical analyses, but does not lend itself to the detail that is of interest to modern science. It is not clear that the theory of matter and form existed as early as Thales, and if it did, whether Thales espoused it.
While some historians, like B. Snell, maintain that Aristotle was relying on a pre-Platonic written record by Hippias rather than oral tradition, this is a controversial position. Representing the scholarly consensus Dicks states that "the tradition about him even as early as the fifth century B.C., was evidently based entirely on hearsay...It would seem that already by Aristotle's time the early Ionians were largely names only to which popular tradition attached various ideas or achievements with greater or less plausibility". He points out that works confirmed to have existed in the sixth century BC by Anaximander and Xenophanes had already disappeared by the fourth century BC, so the chances of Pre-Socratic material surviving to the age of Aristotle is almost nil (even less likely for Aristotle's pupils Theophrastus and Eudemus and less likely still for those following after them).
The main secondary source concerning the details of Thales' life and career is Diogenes Laërtius, ""Lives of Eminent Philosophers"". This is primarily a biographical work, as the name indicates. Compared to Aristotle, Diogenes is not much of a philosopher. He is the one who, in the Prologue to that work, is responsible for the division of the early philosophers into "Ionian" and "Italian", but he places the Academics in the Ionian school and otherwise evidences considerable disarray and contradiction, especially in the long section on forerunners of the "Ionian School". Diogenes quotes two letters attributed to Thales, but Diogenes wrote some eight centuries after Thales' death and that his sources often contained "unreliable or even fabricated information", hence the concern for separating fact from legend in accounts of Thales.
It is due to this use of hearsay and a lack of citing original sources that leads some historians, like Dicks and Werner Jaeger, to look at the late origin of the traditional picture of Pre-Socratic philosophy and view the whole idea as a construct from a later age, "the whole picture that has come down to us of the history of early philosophy was fashioned during the two or three generations from Plato to the immediate pupils of Aristotle".
| 30072 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=30072 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Transhumanism
Transhumanism is a philosophical movement that advocates for the transformation of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies to greatly enhance human intellect and physiology.
Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations as well as the ethical limitations of using such technologies. The most common transhumanist thesis is that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into different beings with abilities so greatly expanded from the current condition as to merit the label of posthuman beings.
The contemporary meaning of the term "transhumanism" was foreshadowed by one of the first professors of futurology, FM-2030, who taught "new concepts of the human" at The New School in the 1960s, when he began to identify people who adopt technologies, lifestyles and worldviews "transitional" to posthumanity as "transhuman". The assertion would lay the intellectual groundwork for the British philosopher Max More to begin articulating the principles of transhumanism as a futurist philosophy in 1990, and organizing in California an intelligentsia that has since grown into the worldwide transhumanist movement.
Influenced by seminal works of science fiction, the transhumanist vision of a transformed future humanity has attracted many supporters and detractors from a wide range of perspectives, including philosophy and religion.
In 2017, Penn State University Press in cooperation with Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and James Hughes established the "Journal of Posthuman Studies" which is the first academic journal explicitly dedicated to the posthuman which has the goal of clarifying the notions of posthumanism and transhumanism, as well as comparing and contrasting both.
According to Nick Bostrom, transcendentalist impulses have been expressed at least as far back as the quest for immortality in the "Epic of Gilgamesh", as well as in historical quests for the Fountain of Youth, the Elixir of Life, and other efforts to stave off aging and death.
In his first edition of "Political Justice" (1793), William Godwin included arguments favoring the possibility of "earthly immortality" (what would now be called physical immortality). Godwin explored the themes of life extension and immortality in his gothic novel "St. Leon", which became popular (and notorious) at the time of its publication in 1799, but is now mostly forgotten. "St. Leon" may have provided inspiration for his daughter Mary Shelley's novel "Frankenstein".
There is debate about whether the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche can be considered an influence on transhumanism, despite its exaltation of the "Übermensch" (overman or superman), due to its emphasis on self-actualization rather than technological transformation. The transhumanist philosophies of Max More and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner have been influenced strongly by Nietzschean thinking. By way of contrast, The Transhumanist Declaration ""...advocates the well-being of all sentience (whether in artificial intellects, humans, posthumans, or non-human animals)".
The late 19th to early 20th century movement known as Russian cosmism also incorporated some ideas which later developed into the core of the transhumanist movement in particular by early protagonist Russian philosopher N. F. Fyodorov.
Fundamental ideas of transhumanism were first advanced in 1923 by the British geneticist J. B. S. Haldane in his essay "Daedalus: Science and the Future", which predicted that great benefits would come from the application of advanced sciences to human biology—and that every such advance would first appear to someone as blasphemy or perversion, "indecent and unnatural". In particular, he was interested in the development of the science of eugenics, ectogenesis (creating and sustaining life in an artificial environment), and the application of genetics to improve human characteristics, such as health and intelligence.
His article inspired academic and popular interest. J. D. Bernal, a crystallographer at Cambridge, wrote "The World, the Flesh and the Devil" in 1929, in which he speculated on the prospects of space colonization and radical changes to human bodies and intelligence through bionic implants and cognitive enhancement. These ideas have been common transhumanist themes ever since.
The biologist Julian Huxley is generally regarded as the founder of transhumanism after using the term for the title of an influential 1957 article. The term itself, however, derives from an earlier 1940 paper by the Canadian philosopher W. D. Lighthall. Huxley describes transhumanism in these terms:
Huxley's definition differs, albeit not substantially, from the one commonly in use since the 1980s. The ideas raised by these thinkers were explored in the science fiction of the 1960s, notably in Arthur C. Clarke's "", in which an alien artifact grants transcendent power to its wielder.
Japanese Metabolist architects produced a manifesto in 1960 which outlined goals to "encourage active metabolic development of our society" through design and technology. In the Material and Man section of the manifesto, Noboru Kawazoe suggests that:After several decades, with the rapid progress of communication technology, every one will have a "brain wave receiver" in his ear, which conveys directly and exactly what other people think about him and vice versa. What I think will be known by all the people. There is no more individual consciousness, only the will of mankind as a whole.
The concept of the technological singularity, or the ultra-rapid advent of superhuman intelligence, was first proposed by the British cryptologist I. J. Good in 1965:
Computer scientist Marvin Minsky wrote on relationships between human and artificial intelligence beginning in the 1960s. Over the succeeding decades, this field continued to generate influential thinkers such as Hans Moravec and Raymond Kurzweil, who oscillated between the technical arena and futuristic speculations in the transhumanist vein. The coalescence of an identifiable transhumanist movement began in the last decades of the 20th century. In 1966, FM-2030 (formerly F. M. Esfandiary), a futurist who taught "new concepts of the human" at The New School, in New York City, began to identify people who adopt technologies, lifestyles and world views transitional to posthumanity as "transhuman". In 1972, Robert Ettinger, whose 1964 "Prospect of Immortality" founded the cryonics movement, contributed to the conceptualization of "transhumanity" with his 1972 "Man into Superman." FM-2030 published the "Upwingers Manifesto" in 1973.
The first self-described transhumanists met formally in the early 1980s at the University of California, Los Angeles, which became the main center of transhumanist thought. Here, FM-2030 lectured on his "Third Way" futurist ideology. At the EZTV Media venue, frequented by transhumanists and other futurists, Natasha Vita-More presented "Breaking Away", her 1980 experimental film with the theme of humans breaking away from their biological limitations and the Earth's gravity as they head into space. FM-2030 and Vita-More soon began holding gatherings for transhumanists in Los Angeles, which included students from FM-2030's courses and audiences from Vita-More's artistic productions. In 1982, Vita-More authored the "Transhumanist Arts Statement" and, six years later, produced the cable TV show "TransCentury Update "on transhumanity, a program which reached over 100,000 viewers.
In 1986, Eric Drexler published "Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology," which discussed the prospects for nanotechnology and molecular assemblers, and founded the Foresight Institute. As the first non-profit organization to research, advocate for, and perform cryonics, the Southern California offices of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation became a center for futurists. In 1988, the first issue of "Extropy Magazine" was published by Max More and Tom Morrow. In 1990, More, a strategic philosopher, created his own particular transhumanist doctrine, which took the form of the "Principles of Extropy," and laid the foundation of modern transhumanism by giving it a new definition:
In 1992, More and Morrow founded the Extropy Institute, a catalyst for networking futurists and brainstorming new memeplexes by organizing a series of conferences and, more importantly, providing a mailing list, which exposed many to transhumanist views for the first time during the rise of cyberculture and the cyberdelic counterculture. In 1998, philosophers Nick Bostrom and David Pearce founded the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), an international non-governmental organization working toward the recognition of transhumanism as a legitimate subject of scientific inquiry and public policy. In 2002, the WTA modified and adopted "The Transhumanist Declaration." "The Transhumanist FAQ", prepared by the WTA (later Humanity+), gave two formal definitions for transhumanism:
In possible contrast with other transhumanist organizations, WTA officials considered that social forces could undermine their futurist visions and needed to be addressed. A particular concern is the equal access to human enhancement technologies across classes and borders. In 2006, a political struggle within the transhumanist movement between the libertarian right and the liberal left resulted in a more centre-leftward positioning of the WTA under its former executive director James Hughes. In 2006, the board of directors of the Extropy Institute ceased operations of the organization, stating that its mission was "essentially completed". This left the World Transhumanist Association as the leading international transhumanist organization. In 2008, as part of a rebranding effort, the WTA changed its name to "Humanity+". In 2012, the transhumanist Longevity Party had been initiated as an international union of people who promote the development of scientific and technological means to significant life extension, that for now has more than 30 national organisations throughout the world.
The Mormon Transhumanist Association was founded in 2006. By 2012, it consisted of hundreds of members.
The first transhumanist elected member of a Parliament has been Giuseppe Vatinno, in Italy.
It is a matter of debate whether transhumanism is a branch of posthumanism and how this philosophical movement should be conceptualised with regard to transhumanism. The latter is often referred to as a variant or activist form of posthumanism by its conservative, Christian and progressive critics.
A common feature of transhumanism and philosophical posthumanism is the future vision of a new intelligent species, into which humanity will evolve and eventually will supplement or supersede it. Transhumanism stresses the evolutionary perspective, including sometimes the creation of a highly intelligent animal species by way of cognitive enhancement (i.e. biological uplift), but clings to a "posthuman future" as the final goal of participant evolution.
Nevertheless, the idea of creating intelligent artificial beings (proposed, for example, by roboticist Hans Moravec) has influenced transhumanism. Moravec's ideas and transhumanism have also been characterised as a "complacent" or "apocalyptic" variant of posthumanism and contrasted with "cultural posthumanism" in humanities and the arts. While such a "cultural posthumanism" would offer resources for rethinking the relationships between humans and increasingly sophisticated machines, transhumanism and similar posthumanisms are, in this view, not abandoning obsolete concepts of the "autonomous liberal subject", but are expanding its "prerogatives" into the realm of the posthuman. Transhumanist self-characterisations as a continuation of humanism and Enlightenment thinking correspond with this view.
Some secular humanists conceive transhumanism as an offspring of the humanist freethought movement and argue that transhumanists differ from the humanist mainstream by having a specific focus on technological approaches to resolving human concerns (i.e. technocentrism) and on the issue of mortality. However, other progressives have argued that posthumanism, whether it be its philosophical or activist forms, amounts to a shift away from concerns about social justice, from the reform of human institutions and from other Enlightenment preoccupations, toward narcissistic longings for a transcendence of the human body in quest of more exquisite ways of being.
As an alternative, humanist philosopher Dwight Gilbert Jones has proposed a renewed Renaissance humanism through DNA and genome repositories, with each individual genotype (DNA) being instantiated as successive phenotypes (bodies or lives via cloning, "Church of Man", 1978). In his view, native molecular DNA "continuity" is required for retaining the "self" and no amount of computing power or memory aggregation can replace the essential "stink" of our true genetic identity, which he terms "genity". Instead, DNA/genome stewardship by an institution analogous to the Jesuits' 400 year vigil is a suggested model for enabling humanism to become our species' common credo, a project he proposed in his speculative novel "The Humanist – 1000 Summers" (2011), wherein humanity dedicates these coming centuries to harmonizing our planet and peoples.
The philosophy of transhumanism is closely related to technoself studies, an interdisciplinary domain of scholarly research dealing with all aspects of human identity in a technological society and focusing on the changing nature of relationships between humans and technology.
While many transhumanist theorists and advocates seek to apply reason, science and technology for the purposes of reducing poverty, disease, disability and malnutrition around the globe, transhumanism is distinctive in its particular focus on the applications of technologies to the improvement of human bodies at the individual level. Many transhumanists actively assess the potential for future technologies and innovative social systems to improve the quality of all life, while seeking to make the material reality of the human condition fulfill the promise of legal and political equality by eliminating congenital mental and physical barriers.
Transhumanist philosophers argue that there not only exists a perfectionist ethical imperative for humans to strive for progress and improvement of the human condition, but that it is possible and desirable for humanity to enter a transhuman phase of existence in which humans enhance themselves beyond what is naturally human. In such a phase, natural evolution would be replaced with deliberate participatory or directed evolution.
Some theorists such as Ray Kurzweil think that the pace of technological innovation is accelerating and that the next 50 years may yield not only radical technological advances, but possibly a technological singularity, which may fundamentally change the nature of human beings. Transhumanists who foresee this massive technological change generally maintain that it is desirable. However, some are also concerned with the possible dangers of extremely rapid technological change and propose options for ensuring that advanced technology is used responsibly. For example, Bostrom has written extensively on existential risks to humanity's future welfare, including ones that could be created by emerging technologies. In contrast, some proponents of transhumanism view it as essential to humanity's survival. For instance, Stephen Hawking points out that the "external transmission" phase of human evolution, where knowledge production and knowledge management is more important than transmission of information via evolution, may be the point at which human civilization becomes unstable and self-destructs, one of Hawking's explanations for the Fermi paradox. To counter this, Hawking emphasizes either self-design of the human genome or mechanical enhancement (e.g., brain-computer interface) to enhance human intelligence and reduce aggression, without which he implies human civilization may be too stupid collectively to survive an increasingly unstable system, resulting in societal collapse.
While many people believe that all transhumanists are striving for immortality, it is not necessarily true. Hank Pellissier, managing director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (2011–2012), surveyed transhumanists. He found that, of the 818 respondents, 23.8% did not want immortality. Some of the reasons argued were boredom, Earth's overpopulation and the desire "to go to an afterlife".
Certain transhumanist philosophers hold that since all assumptions about what others experience are fallible, and that therefore all attempts to help or protect beings that are not capable of correcting what others assume about them no matter how well-intentioned are in danger of actually hurting them, all sentient beings deserve to be sapient. These thinkers argue that the ability to discuss in a falsification-based way constitutes a threshold that is not arbitrary at which it becomes possible for an individual to speak for themselves in a way that is not dependent on exterior assumptions. They also argue that all beings capable of experiencing something deserve to be elevated to this threshold if they are not at it, typically stating that the underlying change that leads to the threshold is an increase in the preciseness of the brain's ability to discriminate. This includes increasing the neuron count and connectivity in animals as well as accelerating the development of connectivity in order to shorten or ideally skip non-sapient childhood incapable of independently deciding for oneself. Transhumanists of this description stress that the genetic engineering that they advocate is general insertion into both the somatic cells of living beings and in germ cells, and not purging of individuals without the modifications, deeming the latter not only unethical but also unnecessary due to the possibilities of efficient genetic engineering.
Transhumanists engage in interdisciplinary approaches to understand and evaluate possibilities for overcoming biological limitations by drawing on futurology and various fields of ethics. Unlike many philosophers, social critics and activists who place a moral value on preservation of natural systems, transhumanists see the very concept of the specifically natural as problematically nebulous at best and an obstacle to progress at worst. In keeping with this, many prominent transhumanist advocates, such as Dan Agin, refer to transhumanism's critics, on the political right and left jointly, as "bioconservatives" or "bioluddites", the latter term alluding to the 19th century anti-industrialisation social movement that opposed the replacement of human manual labourers by machines.
A belief of counter-transhumanism is that transhumanism can cause unfair human enhancement in many areas of life, but specifically on the social plane. This can be compared to steroid use, where athletes who use steroids in sports have an advantage over those who do not. The same scenario happens when people have certain neural implants that give them an advantage in the work place and in educational aspects. Additionally, there are many, according M.J. McNamee and S.D. Edwards, who fear that the improvements afforded by a specific, privileged section of society will lead to a division of the human species into two different and distinct species. The idea of two human species, one being at a great physical and economic advantage in comparison with the other, is a troublesome one at best. One may be incapable of breeding with the other, and may by consequence of lower physical health and ability, be considered of a lower moral standing than the other.
There is a variety of opinions within transhumanist thought. Many of the leading transhumanist thinkers hold views that are under constant revision and development. Some distinctive currents of transhumanism are identified and listed here in alphabetical order:
Although many transhumanists are atheists, agnostics, and/or secular humanists, some have religious or spiritual views. Despite the prevailing secular attitude, some transhumanists pursue hopes traditionally espoused by religions, such as immortality, while several controversial new religious movements from the late 20th century have explicitly embraced transhumanist goals of transforming the human condition by applying technology to the alteration of the mind and body, such as Raëlism. However, most thinkers associated with the transhumanist movement focus on the practical goals of using technology to help achieve longer and healthier lives, while speculating that future understanding of neurotheology and the application of neurotechnology will enable humans to gain greater control of altered states of consciousness, which were commonly interpreted as spiritual experiences, and thus achieve more profound self-knowledge. Transhumanist Buddhists have sought to explore areas of agreement between various types of Buddhism and Buddhist-derived meditation and mind-expanding neurotechnologies. However, they have been criticised for appropriating mindfulness as a tool for transcending humanness.
Some transhumanists believe in the compatibility between the human mind and computer hardware, with the theoretical implication that human consciousness may someday be transferred to alternative media (a speculative technique commonly known as mind uploading). One extreme formulation of this idea, which some transhumanists are interested in, is the proposal of the Omega Point by Christian cosmologist Frank Tipler. Drawing upon ideas in digitalism, Tipler has advanced the notion that the collapse of the Universe billions of years hence could create the conditions for the perpetuation of humanity in a simulated reality within a megacomputer and thus achieve a form of "posthuman godhood". Before Tipler, the term Omega Point was used by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a paleontologist and Jesuit theologian who saw an evolutionary telos in the development of an encompassing noosphere, a global consciousness.
Viewed from the perspective of some Christian thinkers, the idea of mind uploading is asserted to represent a denigration of the human body, characteristic of gnostic manichaean belief. Transhumanism and its presumed intellectual progenitors have also been described as neo-gnostic by non-Christian and secular commentators.
The first dialogue between transhumanism and faith was a one-day conference held at the University of Toronto in 2004. Religious critics alone faulted the philosophy of transhumanism as offering no eternal truths nor a relationship with the divine. They commented that a philosophy bereft of these beliefs leaves humanity adrift in a foggy sea of postmodern cynicism and anomie. Transhumanists responded that such criticisms reflect a failure to look at the actual content of the transhumanist philosophy, which, far from being cynical, is rooted in optimistic, idealistic attitudes that trace back to the Enlightenment. Following this dialogue, William Sims Bainbridge, a sociologist of religion, conducted a pilot study, published in the Journal of Evolution and Technology, suggesting that religious attitudes were negatively correlated with acceptance of transhumanist ideas and indicating that individuals with highly religious worldviews tended to perceive transhumanism as being a direct, competitive (though ultimately futile) affront to their spiritual beliefs.
Since 2006, the Mormon Transhumanist Association sponsors conferences and lectures on the intersection of technology and religion. The Christian Transhumanist Association was established in 2014.
Since 2009, the American Academy of Religion holds a "Transhumanism and Religion" consultation during its annual meeting, where scholars in the field of religious studies seek to identify and critically evaluate any implicit religious beliefs that might underlie key transhumanist claims and assumptions; consider how transhumanism challenges religious traditions to develop their own ideas of the human future, in particular the prospect of human transformation, whether by technological or other means; and provide critical and constructive assessments of an envisioned future that place greater confidence in nanotechnology, robotics and information technology to achieve virtual immortality and create a superior posthuman species.
The physicist and transhumanist thinker Giulio Prisco states that "cosmist religions based on science, might be our best protection from reckless pursuit of superintelligence and other risky technologies." Prisco also recognizes the importance of spiritual ideas, such as the ones of Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov, to the origins of the transhumanism movement.
While some transhumanists take an abstract and theoretical approach to the perceived benefits of emerging technologies, others have offered specific proposals for modifications to the human body, including heritable ones. Transhumanists are often concerned with methods of enhancing the human nervous system. Though some, such as Kevin Warwick, propose modification of the peripheral nervous system, the brain is considered the common denominator of personhood and is thus a primary focus of transhumanist ambitions.
In fact, Warwick has gone a lot further than merely making a proposal. In 2002 he had a 100 electrode array surgically implanted into the median nerves of his left arm in order to link his nervous system directly with a computer and thus to also connect with the internet. As a consequence, he carried out a series of experiments. He was able to directly control a robot hand using his neural signals and to feel the force applied by the hand through feedback from the fingertips. He also experienced a form of ultrasonic sensory input and conducted the first purely electronic communication between his own nervous system and that of his wife who also had electrodes implanted.<ref name="doi10.1001/archneur.60.10.1369|noedit"></ref>
As proponents of self-improvement and body modification, transhumanists tend to use existing technologies and techniques that supposedly improve cognitive and physical performance, while engaging in routines and lifestyles designed to improve health and longevity. Depending on their age, some transhumanists express concern that they will not live to reap the benefits of future technologies. However, many have a great interest in life extension strategies and in funding research in cryonics in order to make the latter a viable option of last resort, rather than remaining an unproven method. Regional and global transhumanist networks and communities with a range of objectives exist to provide support and forums for discussion and collaborative projects.
While most transhumanist theory focuses on future technologies and the changes they may bring, many today are already involved in the practice on a very basic level. It is not uncommon for many to receive cosmetic changes to their physical form via cosmetic surgery, even if it is not required for health reasons. Human growth hormones attempt to alter the natural development of shorter children or those who have been born with a physical deficiency. Doctors prescribe medicines such as Ritalin and Adderall to improve cognitive focus, and many people take "lifestyle" drugs such as Viagra, Propecia, and Botox to restore aspects of youthfulness that have been lost in maturity.
Other transhumanists, such as cyborg artist Neil Harbisson, use technologies and techniques to improve their senses and perception of reality. Harbisson's antenna, which is permanently implanted in his skull, allows him to sense colours beyond human perception such as infrareds and ultraviolets.
Transhumanists support the emergence and convergence of technologies including nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science (NBIC), as well as hypothetical future technologies like simulated reality, artificial intelligence, superintelligence, 3D bioprinting, mind uploading, chemical brain preservation and cryonics. They believe that humans can and should use these technologies to become more than human. Therefore, they support the recognition and/or protection of cognitive liberty, morphological freedom and procreative liberty as civil liberties, so as to guarantee individuals the choice of using human enhancement technologies on themselves and their children. Some speculate that human enhancement techniques and other emerging technologies may facilitate more radical human enhancement no later than at the midpoint of the 21st century. Kurzweil's book "The Singularity is Near" and Michio Kaku's book "Physics of the Future" outline various human enhancement technologies and give insight on how these technologies may impact the human race.
Some reports on the converging technologies and NBIC concepts have criticised their transhumanist orientation and alleged science fictional character. At the same time, research on brain and body alteration technologies has been accelerated under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Defense, which is interested in the battlefield advantages they would provide to the supersoldiers of the United States and its allies. There has already been a brain research program to "extend the ability to manage information", while military scientists are now looking at stretching the human capacity for combat to a maximum 168 hours without sleep.
Neuroscientist Anders Sandberg has been practicing on the method of scanning ultra-thin sections of the brain. This method is being used to help better understand the architecture of the brain. As of now, this method is currently being used on mice. This is the first step towards hypothetically uploading contents of the human brain, including memories and emotions, onto a computer.
The very notion and prospect of human enhancement and related issues arouse public controversy. Criticisms of transhumanism and its proposals take two main forms: those objecting to the likelihood of transhumanist goals being achieved (practical criticisms) and those objecting to the moral principles or worldview sustaining transhumanist proposals or underlying transhumanism itself (ethical criticisms). Critics and opponents often see transhumanists' goals as posing threats to human values.
Some of the most widely known critiques of the transhumanist program are novels and fictional films. These works of art, despite presenting imagined worlds rather than philosophical analyses, are used as touchstones for some of the more formal arguments. Various arguments have been made to the effect that a society that adopts human enhancement technologies may come to resemble the dystopia depicted in the 1932 novel "Brave New World, "by Aldous Huxley.
On another front, some authors consider that humanity is already transhuman, because medical advances in recent centuries have significantly altered our species. However, it is not in a conscious and therefore transhumanistic way. From such perspective, transhumanism is perpetually aspirational: as new technologies become mainstream, the adoption of new yet-unadopted technologies becomes a new shifting goal.
In a 1992 book, sociologist Max Dublin pointed to many past failed predictions of technological progress and argued that modern futurist predictions would prove similarly inaccurate. He also objected to what he saw as scientism, fanaticism and nihilism by a few in advancing transhumanist causes. Dublin also said that historical parallels existed between Millenarian religions and Communist doctrines.
Although generally sympathetic to transhumanism, public health professor Gregory Stock is skeptical of the technical feasibility and mass appeal of the cyborgization of humanity predicted by Raymond Kurzweil, Hans Moravec and Kevin Warwick. He said that, throughout the 21st century, many humans would find themselves deeply integrated into systems of machines, but would remain biological. Primary changes to their own form and character would arise not from cyberware, but from the direct manipulation of their genetics, metabolism and biochemistry.
In her 1992 book "Science as Salvation", philosopher Mary Midgley traces the notion of achieving immortality by transcendence of the material human body (echoed in the transhumanist tenet of mind uploading) to a group of male scientific thinkers of the early 20th century, including J. B. S. Haldane and members of his circle. She characterizes these ideas as "quasi-scientific dreams and prophesies" involving visions of escape from the body coupled with "self-indulgent, uncontrolled power-fantasies". Her argument focuses on what she perceives as the pseudoscientific speculations and irrational, fear-of-death-driven fantasies of these thinkers, their disregard for laymen and the remoteness of their eschatological visions.
Another critique is aimed mainly at "algeny" (a portmanteau of "alchemy" and "genetics"), which Jeremy Rifkin defined as "the upgrading of existing organisms and the design of wholly new ones with the intent of 'perfecting' their performance". It emphasizes the issue of biocomplexity and the unpredictability of attempts to guide the development of products of biological evolution. This argument, elaborated in particular by the biologist Stuart Newman, is based on the recognition that cloning and germline genetic engineering of animals are error-prone and inherently disruptive of embryonic development. Accordingly, so it is argued, it would create unacceptable risks to use such methods on human embryos. Performing experiments, particularly ones with permanent biological consequences, on developing humans would thus be in violation of accepted principles governing research on human subjects (see the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki). Moreover, because improvements in experimental outcomes in one species are not automatically transferable to a new species without further experimentation, it is claimed that there is no ethical route to genetic manipulation of humans at early developmental stages.
As a practical matter, however, international protocols on human subject research may not present a legal obstacle to attempts by transhumanists and others to improve their offspring by germinal choice technology. According to legal scholar Kirsten Rabe Smolensky, existing laws would protect parents who choose to enhance their child's genome from future liability arising from adverse outcomes of the procedure.
Transhumanists and other supporters of human genetic engineering do not dismiss practical concerns out of hand, insofar as there is a high degree of uncertainty about the timelines and likely outcomes of genetic modification experiments in humans. However, bioethicist James Hughes suggests that one possible ethical route to the genetic manipulation of humans at early developmental stages is the building of computer models of the human genome, the proteins it specifies and the tissue engineering he argues that it also codes for. With the exponential progress in bioinformatics, Hughes believes that a virtual model of genetic expression in the human body will not be far behind and that it will soon be possible to accelerate approval of genetic modifications by simulating their effects on virtual humans. Public health professor Gregory Stock points to artificial chromosomes as an alleged safer alternative to existing genetic engineering techniques.
Thinkers who defend the likelihood of accelerating change point to a past pattern of exponential increases in humanity's technological capacities. Kurzweil developed this position in his 2005 book "The Singularity Is Near".
It has been argued that, in transhumanist thought, humans attempt to substitute themselves for God. The 2002 Vatican statement "Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God," stated that "changing the genetic identity of man as a human person through the production of an infrahuman being is radically immoral", implying, that "man has full right of disposal over his own biological nature". The statement also argues that creation of a superhuman or spiritually superior being is "unthinkable", since true improvement can come only through religious experience and "realizing more fully the image of God". Christian theologians and lay activists of several churches and denominations have expressed similar objections to transhumanism and claimed that Christians attain in the afterlife what radical transhumanism promises, such as indefinite life extension or the abolition of suffering. In this view, transhumanism is just another representative of the long line of utopian movements which seek to create "heaven on earth". On the other hand, religious thinkers allied with transhumanist goals such as the theologians Ronald Cole-Turner and Ted Peters hold that the doctrine of "co-creation" provides an obligation to use genetic engineering to improve human biology.
Other critics target what they claim to be an instrumental conception of the human body in the writings of Marvin Minsky, Hans Moravec and some other transhumanists. Reflecting a strain of feminist criticism of the transhumanist program, philosopher Susan Bordo points to "contemporary obsessions with slenderness, youth and physical perfection", which she sees as affecting both men and women, but in distinct ways, as "the logical (if extreme) manifestations of anxieties and fantasies fostered by our culture." Some critics question other social implications of the movement's focus on body modification. Political scientist Klaus-Gerd Giesen, in particular, has asserted that transhumanism's concentration on altering the human body represents the logical yet tragic consequence of atomized individualism and body commodification within a consumer culture.
Nick Bostrom responds that the desire to regain youth, specifically, and transcend the natural limitations of the human body, in general, is pan-cultural and pan-historical, and is therefore not uniquely tied to the culture of the 20th century. He argues that the transhumanist program is an attempt to channel that desire into a scientific project on par with the Human Genome Project and achieve humanity's oldest hope, rather than a puerile fantasy or social trend.
In his 2003 book "Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age", environmental ethicist Bill McKibben argued at length against many of the technologies that are postulated or supported by transhumanists, including germinal choice technology, nanomedicine and life extension strategies. He claims that it would be morally wrong for humans to tamper with fundamental aspects of themselves (or their children) in an attempt to overcome universal human limitations, such as vulnerability to aging, maximum life span and biological constraints on physical and cognitive ability. Attempts to "improve" themselves through such manipulation would remove limitations that provide a necessary context for the experience of meaningful human choice. He claims that human lives would no longer seem meaningful in a world where such limitations could be overcome technologically. Even the goal of using germinal choice technology for clearly therapeutic purposes should be relinquished, since it would inevitably produce temptations to tamper with such things as cognitive capacities. He argues that it is possible for societies to benefit from renouncing particular technologies, using as examples Ming China, Tokugawa Japan and the contemporary Amish.
Biopolitical activist Jeremy Rifkin and biologist Stuart Newman accept that biotechnology has the power to make profound changes in organismal identity. They argue against the genetic engineering of human beings because they fear the blurring of the boundary between human and artifact. Philosopher Keekok Lee sees such developments as part of an accelerating trend in modernization in which technology has been used to transform the "natural" into the "artefactual". In the extreme, this could lead to the manufacturing and enslavement of "monsters" such as human clones, human-animal chimeras, or bioroids, but even lesser dislocations of humans and non-humans from social and ecological systems are seen as problematic. The film "Blade Runner" (1982) and the novels "The Boys From Brazil" (1976) and "The Island of Doctor Moreau" (1896) depict elements of such scenarios, but Mary Shelley's 1818 novel "Frankenstein" is most often alluded to by critics who suggest that biotechnologies could create objectified and socially unmoored people as well as subhumans. Such critics propose that strict measures be implemented to prevent what they portray as dehumanizing possibilities from ever happening, usually in the form of an international ban on human genetic engineering.
Science journalist Ronald Bailey claims that McKibben's historical examples are flawed and support different conclusions when studied more closely. For example, few groups are more cautious than the Amish about embracing new technologies, but, though they shun television and use horses and buggies, some are welcoming the possibilities of gene therapy since inbreeding has afflicted them with a number of rare genetic diseases. Bailey and other supporters of technological alteration of human biology also reject the claim that life would be experienced as meaningless if some human limitations are overcome with enhancement technologies as extremely subjective.
Writing in "Reason" magazine, Bailey has accused opponents of research involving the modification of animals as indulging in alarmism when they speculate about the creation of subhuman creatures with human-like intelligence and brains resembling those of "Homo sapiens". Bailey insists that the aim of conducting research on animals is simply to produce human health care benefits.
A different response comes from transhumanist personhood theorists who object to what they characterize as the anthropomorphobia fueling some criticisms of this research, which science fiction writer Isaac Asimov termed the "Frankenstein complex". For example, Woody Evans argues that, provided they are self-aware, human clones, human-animal chimeras and uplifted animals would all be unique persons deserving of respect, dignity, rights, responsibilities, and citizenship. They conclude that the coming ethical issue is not the creation of so-called monsters, but what they characterize as the "yuck factor" and "human-racism", that would judge and treat these creations as monstrous.
At least one public interest organization, the U.S.-based Center for Genetics and Society, was formed, in 2001, with the specific goal of opposing transhumanist agendas that involve transgenerational modification of human biology, such as full-term human cloning and germinal choice technology. The Institute on Biotechnology and the Human Future of the Chicago-Kent College of Law critically scrutinizes proposed applications of genetic and nanotechnologies to human biology in an academic setting.
Some critics of libertarian transhumanism have focused on the likely socioeconomic consequences in societies in which divisions between rich and poor are on the rise. Bill McKibben, for example, suggests that emerging human enhancement technologies would be disproportionately available to those with greater financial resources, thereby exacerbating the gap between rich and poor and creating a "genetic divide". Even Lee M. Silver, the biologist and science writer who coined the term "reprogenetics" and supports its applications, has expressed concern that these methods could create a two-tiered society of genetically engineered "haves" and "have nots" if social democratic reforms lag behind implementation of enhancement technologies. The 1997 film "Gattaca" depicts a dystopian society in which one's social class depends entirely on genetic modifications and is often cited by critics in support of these views.
These criticisms are also voiced by non-libertarian transhumanist advocates, especially self-described democratic transhumanists, who believe that the majority of current or future social and environmental issues (such as unemployment and resource depletion) need to be addressed by a combination of political and technological solutions (like a guaranteed minimum income and alternative technology). Therefore, on the specific issue of an emerging genetic divide due to unequal access to human enhancement technologies, bioethicist James Hughes, in his 2004 book "Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future", argues that progressives or, more precisely, techno-progressives must articulate and implement public policies (i.e., a universal health care voucher system that covers human enhancement technologies) in order to attenuate this problem as much as possible, rather than trying to ban human enhancement technologies. The latter, he argues, might actually worsen the problem by making these technologies unsafe or available only to the wealthy on the local black market or in countries where such a ban is not enforced.
Sometimes, as in the writings of Leon Kass, the fear is that various institutions and practices judged as fundamental to civilized society would be damaged or destroyed. In his 2002 book "Our Posthuman Future" and in a 2004 "Foreign Policy" magazine article, political economist and philosopher Francis Fukuyama designates transhumanism as the world's most dangerous idea because he believes that it may undermine the egalitarian ideals of democracy (in general) and liberal democracy (in particular) through a fundamental alteration of "human nature". Social philosopher Jürgen Habermas makes a similar argument in his 2003 book "The Future of Human Nature", in which he asserts that moral autonomy depends on not being subject to another's unilaterally imposed specifications. Habermas thus suggests that the human "species ethic" would be undermined by embryo-stage genetic alteration. Critics such as Kass, Fukuyama and a variety of authors hold that attempts to significantly alter human biology are not only inherently immoral, but also threaten the social order. Alternatively, they argue that implementation of such technologies would likely lead to the "naturalizing" of social hierarchies or place new means of control in the hands of totalitarian regimes. AI pioneer Joseph Weizenbaum criticizes what he sees as misanthropic tendencies in the language and ideas of some of his colleagues, in particular Marvin Minsky and Hans Moravec, which, by devaluing the human organism per se, promotes a discourse that enables divisive and undemocratic social policies.
In a 2004 article in the libertarian monthly "Reason," science journalist Ronald Bailey contested the assertions of Fukuyama by arguing that political equality has never rested on the facts of human biology. He asserts that liberalism was founded not on the proposition of effective equality of human beings, or "de facto" equality, but on the assertion of an equality in political rights and before the law, or "de jure" equality. Bailey asserts that the products of genetic engineering may well ameliorate rather than exacerbate human inequality, giving to the many what were once the privileges of the few. Moreover, he argues, "the crowning achievement of the Enlightenment is the principle of tolerance". In fact, he says, political liberalism is already the solution to the issue of human and posthuman rights since in liberal societies the law is meant to apply equally to all, no matter how rich or poor, powerful or powerless, educated or ignorant, enhanced or unenhanced. Other thinkers who are sympathetic to transhumanist ideas, such as philosopher Russell Blackford, have also objected to the appeal to tradition and what they see as alarmism involved in "Brave New World"-type arguments.
In addition to the socio-economic risks and implications of transhumanism, there are indeed implications and possible consequences in regard to cultural aesthetics. Currently, there are a number of ways in which people choose to represent themselves in society. The way in which a person dresses, hair styles, and body alteration all serve to identify the way a person presents themselves and is perceived by society. According to Foucault, society already governs and controls bodies by making them feel watched. This "surveillance" of society dictates how the majority of individuals choose to express themselves aesthetically.
One of the risks outlined in a 2004 article by Jerold Abrams is the elimination of differences in favor of universality. This, he argues, will eliminate the ability of individuals to subvert the possibly oppressive, dominant structure of society by way of uniquely expressing themselves externally. Such control over a population would have dangerous implications of tyranny. Yet another consequence of enhancing the human form not only cognitively, but physically, will be the reinforcement of "desirable" traits which are perpetuated by the dominant social structure. Physical traits which are seen as "ugly" or "undesirable" and thus deemed less-than, will be summarily cut out by those who can afford to do it, while those who cannot will be forced into a relative caste of undesirable people. Even if these physical "improvements" are made completely universal, they will indeed eliminate what makes each individual uniquely human in their own way.
Some critics of transhumanism see the old eugenics, social Darwinist, and master race ideologies and programs of the past as warnings of what the promotion of eugenic enhancement technologies might unintentionally encourage. Some fear future "eugenics wars" as the worst-case scenario: the return of coercive state-sponsored genetic discrimination and human rights violations such as compulsory sterilization of persons with genetic defects, the killing of the institutionalized and, specifically, segregation and genocide of "races"" "perceived as inferior. Health law professor George Annas and technology law professor Lori Andrews are prominent advocates of the position that the use of these technologies could lead to such human-posthuman caste warfare.
The major transhumanist organizations strongly condemn the coercion involved in such policies and reject the racist and classist assumptions on which they were based, along with the pseudoscientific notions that eugenic improvements could be accomplished in a practically meaningful time frame through selective human breeding. Instead, most transhumanist thinkers advocate a "new eugenics", a form of egalitarian liberal eugenics. In their 2000 book "From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice", non-transhumanist bioethicists Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, Norman Daniels and Daniel Wikler have argued that liberal societies have an obligation to encourage as wide an adoption of eugenic enhancement technologies as possible (so long as such policies do not infringe on individuals' reproductive rights or exert undue pressures on prospective parents to use these technologies) in order to maximize public health and minimize the inequalities that may result from both natural genetic endowments and unequal access to genetic enhancements. Most transhumanists holding similar views nonetheless distance themselves from the term "eugenics" (preferring "germinal choice" or "reprogenetics") to avoid having their position confused with the discredited theories and practices of early-20th-century eugenic movements.
In his 2003 book "Our Final Hour", British Astronomer Royal Martin Rees argues that advanced science and technology bring as much risk of disaster as opportunity for progress. However, Rees does not advocate a halt to scientific activity. Instead, he calls for tighter security and perhaps an end to traditional scientific openness. Advocates of the precautionary principle, such as many in the environmental movement, also favor slow, careful progress or a halt in potentially dangerous areas. Some precautionists believe that artificial intelligence and robotics present possibilities of alternative forms of cognition that may threaten human life.
Transhumanists do not necessarily rule out specific restrictions on emerging technologies so as to lessen the prospect of existential risk. Generally, however, they counter that proposals based on the precautionary principle are often unrealistic and sometimes even counter-productive as opposed to the technogaian current of transhumanism, which they claim is both realistic and productive. In his television series "Connections", science historian James Burke dissects several views on technological change, including precautionism and the restriction of open inquiry. Burke questions the practicality of some of these views, but concludes that maintaining the "status quo" of inquiry and development poses hazards of its own, such as a disorienting rate of change and the depletion of our planet's resources. The common transhumanist position is a pragmatic one where society takes deliberate action to ensure the early arrival of the benefits of safe, clean, alternative technology, rather than fostering what it considers to be anti-scientific views and technophobia.
Nick Bostrom argues that even barring the occurrence of a singular global catastrophic event, basic Malthusian and evolutionary forces facilitated by technological progress threaten to eliminate the positive aspects of human society.
One transhumanist solution proposed by Bostrom to counter existential risks is control of differential technological development, a series of attempts to influence the sequence in which technologies are developed. In this approach, planners would strive to retard the development of possibly harmful technologies and their applications, while accelerating the development of likely beneficial technologies, especially those that offer protection against the harmful effects of others.
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Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno (; ; born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; September 11, 1903 – August 6, 1969) was a German philosopher, sociologist, psychologist, musicologist, and composer known for his critical theory of society.
He was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, whose work has come to be associated with thinkers such as Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse, for whom the works of Freud, Marx, and Hegel were essential to a critique of modern society. He is regarded as one of the 20th century's foremost thinkers on aesthetics and philosophy, as well as one of its preeminent essayists. As a critic of both fascism and what he called the culture industry, his writings—such as "Dialectic of Enlightenment" (1947), "Minima Moralia" (1951) and "Negative Dialectics" (1966)—strongly influenced the European New Left.
Amidst the vogue enjoyed by existentialism and positivism in early 20th-century Europe, Adorno advanced a dialectical conception of natural history that critiqued the twin temptations of ontology and empiricism through studies of Kierkegaard and Husserl. As a classically trained pianist whose sympathies with the twelve-tone technique of Arnold Schoenberg resulted in his studying composition with Alban Berg of the Second Viennese School, Adorno's commitment to avant-garde music formed the backdrop of his subsequent writings and led to his collaboration with Thomas Mann on the latter's novel "Doctor Faustus", while the two men lived in California as exiles during the Second World War. The reputation of his work on music, however, has sharply declined over time. Working for the newly relocated Institute for Social Research, Adorno collaborated on influential studies of authoritarianism, antisemitism and propaganda that would later serve as models for sociological studies the Institute carried out in post-war Germany.
Upon his return to Frankfurt, Adorno was involved with the reconstitution of German intellectual life through debates with Karl Popper on the limitations of positivist science, critiques of Heidegger's language of authenticity, writings on German responsibility for the Holocaust, and continued interventions into matters of public policy. As a writer of polemics in the tradition of Nietzsche and Karl Kraus, Adorno delivered scathing critiques of contemporary Western culture. Adorno's posthumously published "Aesthetic Theory", which he planned to dedicate to Samuel Beckett, is the culmination of a lifelong commitment to modern art which attempts to revoke the "fatal separation" of feeling and understanding long demanded by the history of philosophy and explode the privilege aesthetics accords to content over form and contemplation over immersion.
Theodor W. Adorno (alias: Theodor Adorno-Wiesengrund) was born as Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund in Frankfurt am Main on September 11, 1903, the only child of Oscar Alexander Wiesengrund (1870–1946) and Maria Calvelli-Adorno della Piana (1865–1952). His mother, a devout Catholic from Corsica, was once a professional singer, while his father, an assimilated Jew who had converted to Protestantism, ran a successful wine-export business. Proud of her origins, Maria wanted her son's paternal surname to be supplemented by the addition of her own name, Adorno. Thus his earliest publications carried the name Theodor Wiesengrund-Adorno; upon his application for US citizenship, his name was modified to Theodor W. Adorno.
His childhood was marked by the musical life provided by his mother and aunt: Maria was a singer who could boast of having performed in Vienna at the Imperial Court, while her sister, Agathe, who lived with them, had made a name for herself as both a singer and pianist. He was not only a precocious child but, as he recalled later in life, a child prodigy who could play pieces by Beethoven on the piano by the time he was twelve.
At the age of six, he attended the Deutschherren middle school, before transferring to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gymnasium, where he studied from 1913 to 1921. Prior to his graduation at the top of his class, Adorno was already swept up by the revolutionary mood of the time, as is evidenced by his reading of Georg Lukács's "The Theory of the Novel" that year, as well as by his fascination with Ernst Bloch's "The Spirit of Utopia", of which he would later write:
Adorno's intellectual nonconformism was also shaped by the repugnance he felt towards the nationalism which swept through the Reich during the First World War. Along with future collaborators Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer and Bloch, Adorno was profoundly disillusioned by the ease with which Germany's intellectual and spiritual leaders—among them Max Weber, Max Scheler, Georg Simmel, as well as his friend Siegfried Kracauer—came out in support of the war. The younger generation's distrust for traditional knowledge arose from the way in which this tradition had discredited itself. Over time, Oscar Wiesengrund's firm established close professional and personal ties with the factory of Karplus & Herzberger in Berlin. The eldest daughter of the Karplus family, Margarete, or Gretel, moved in the intellectual circles of Berlin, where she was acquainted with Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht and Bloch, each of whom Adorno would become familiar with during the mid-1920s; after fourteen years, Gretel Karplus and Adorno were married in 1937.
At the end of his schooldays, Adorno not only benefited from the rich concert offerings of Frankfurt—where one could hear performances of works by Schoenberg, Schreker, Stravinsky, Bartók, Busoni, Delius and Hindemith—but also began studying music composition at the Hoch Conservatory while taking private lessons with well-respected composers Bernhard Sekles and Eduard Jung. At around the same time, he befriended Siegfried Kracauer, the "Frankfurter Zeitung"s literary editor, of whom he would later write:
Leaving gymnasium to study philosophy, psychology and sociology at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Adorno continued his readings with Kracauer, turning now to Hegel and Kierkegaard, and began publishing concert reviews and pieces of music for distinguished journals like the "Zeitschrift für Musik", the "Neue Blätter für Kunst und Literatur" and later for the "Musikblätter des Anbruch". In these articles Adorno championed avant-garde music at the same time as he critiqued the failings of musical modernity, as in the case of Stravinsky's "The Soldier's Tale", which in 1923 he called a "dismal Bohemian prank". In these early writings he was unequivocal in his condemnation of performances that either sought or pretended to achieve a transcendence that Adorno, in line with many intellectuals of the time, regarded as impossible: "No cathedral", he wrote, "can be built if no community desires one." In the summer of 1924 Adorno received his doctorate with a study of Edmund Husserl under the direction of the unorthodox neo-Kantian Hans Cornelius. Before his graduation Adorno had already met his most important intellectual collaborators, Horkheimer and Benjamin. Through Cornelius's seminars, Adorno met Horkheimer, through whom he was then introduced to Friedrich Pollock.
During the summer of 1924, the Viennese composer Alban Berg's "Three Fragments from Wozzeck", op. 7, premiered in Frankfurt, at which time Adorno introduced himself to Berg and both agreed the young philosopher and composer would study with Berg in Vienna. Upon moving to Vienna in February 1925, Adorno immersed himself in the musical culture that had grown up around Schoenberg: in addition to his twice-weekly sessions with Berg, Adorno continued his studies on piano with Eduard Steuermann and befriended the violinist Rudolf Kolisch. In Vienna he and Berg attended public lectures by the satirist Karl Kraus, and he met Lukács, who had been living in Vienna after the failure of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Berg, whom Adorno called "my master and teacher", was among the most prescient of his young pupil's early friends:
After leaving Vienna, Adorno traveled through Italy, where he met with Kracauer, Benjamin, and the economist Alfred Sohn-Rethel, with whom he developed a lasting friendship, before returning to Frankfurt. In December 1926 Adorno's "Two Pieces for String Quartet", op. 2, were performed in Vienna, which provided a welcome interruption from his preparations for the habilitation. After writing the "Piano Pieces in strict twelve-tone technique", as well as songs later integrated into the "Six Bagatelles for Voice and Piano", op. 6, Adorno presented his habilitation manuscript, "The Concept of the Unconscious in the Transcendental Theory of the Psyche" ("Der Begriff des Unbewußten in der transzendentalen Seelenlehre"), to Cornelius in November 1927. Cornelius advised Adorno to withdraw his application on the grounds that the manuscript was too close to his own way of thinking. In the manuscript Adorno attempted to underline the epistemological status of the unconscious as it emerged from Freud's early writings. Against the function of the unconscious in both Nietzsche and Spengler, Adorno argued that Freud's notion of the unconscious serves as a "sharp weapon ... against every attempt to create a metaphysics of the instincts and to deify full, organic nature." Undaunted by his academic prospects, Adorno threw himself once again into composition. In addition to publishing numerous reviews of opera performances and concerts, Adorno's "Four Songs for Medium Voice and Piano", op. 3, were performed in Berlin in January 1929. Between 1928 and 1930 Adorno took on a greater role within the editorial committee of the "Musikblätter des Anbruch". In a proposal for transforming the journal, he sought to use "Anbruch" for championing radical modern music against what he called the "stabilized music" of Pfitzner, the later Richard Strauss, as well as the neoclassicism of Stravinsky and Hindemith. During this period he published the essays "Night Music", "On Twelve-Tone Technique" and "Reaction and Progress". Yet his reservations about twelve-tone orthodoxy became steadily more pronounced. According to Adorno, twelve-tone technique's use of atonality can no more be regarded as an authoritative canon than can tonality be relied on to provide instructions for the composer.
At this time Adorno struck up a correspondence with the composer Ernst Krenek, discussing problems of atonality and twelve-tone technique. In a 1934 letter he sounded a related criticism of Schoenberg:
At this point Adorno reversed his earlier priorities: now his musical activities came second to the development of a philosophical theory of aesthetics. Thus, in the middle of 1929 he accepted Paul Tillich's offer to present an habilitation on Kierkegaard, which Adorno eventually submitted under the title "The Construction of the Aesthetic". At the time, Kierkegaard's philosophy exerted a strong influence, chiefly through its claim to pose an alternative to Idealism and Hegel's philosophy of history. Yet when Adorno turned his attention to Kierkegaard, watchwords like "anxiety," "inwardness" and "leap"—instructive for existentialist philosophy—were detached from their theological origins and posed, instead, as problems for aesthetics. As the work proceeded—and Kierkegaard's overcoming of Hegel's idealism was revealed to be a mere interiorization—Adorno excitedly remarked in a letter to Berg that he was writing without looking over his shoulder at the faculty who would soon evaluate his work. Receiving favourable reports from Professors Tillich and Horkheimer, as well as Benjamin and Kracauer, the University conferred on Adorno the "venia legendi" in February 1931; on the very day his revised study was published, 23 March 1933, Hitler seized dictatorial powers.
Several months after qualifying as a lecturer in philosophy, Adorno delivered an inaugural lecture at the Institute for Social Research, an independent organization that had recently appointed Horkheimer as its director and, with the arrival of the literary scholar Leo Lowenthal, social psychologist Erich Fromm and philosopher Herbert Marcuse, sought to exploit recent theoretical and methodological advances in the social sciences. His lecture, "The Actuality of Philosophy," created a scandal. In it Adorno not only deviated from the theoretical program Horkheimer had laid out a year earlier but challenged philosophy's very capacity for comprehending reality as such: "For the mind," Adorno announced, "is indeed not capable of producing or grasping the totality of the real, but it may be possible to penetrate the detail, to explode in miniature the mass of merely existing reality." In line with Benjamin's "The Origin of German Tragic Drama" and preliminary sketches of the Arcades Project, Adorno likened philosophical interpretation to experiments that should be conducted "until they arrive at figurations in which the answers are legible, while the questions themselves vanish." Having lost its position as the Queen of the Sciences, philosophy must now radically transform its approach to objects so that it might "construct keys before which reality springs open."
Following Horkheimer's taking up the directorship of the Institute, a new journal, "Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung", was produced to publish the research of Institute members both before and after its relocation to the United States. Though Adorno was not an Institute member, the journal published many of his essays, including "The Social Situation of Music" (1932), "On Jazz" (1936), "On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening" (1938) and "Fragments on Wagner" (1938). In his new role as social theorist, Adorno's philosophical analysis of cultural phenomena heavily relied on the language of historical materialism, as concepts like reification, false consciousness and ideology came to play an ever more prominent role in his work. At the same time, however, and owing to both the presence of another prominent sociologist at the Institute, Karl Mannheim, as well as the methodological problem posed by treating objects—like "musical material"—as ciphers of social contradictions, Adorno was compelled to abandon any notion of "value-free" sociology in favour of a form of ideology critique that held on to an idea of truth. Before his emigration in autumn 1934, Adorno began work on a "Singspiel" based on Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" titled "The Treasure of Indian Joe", which he never completed; by the time he fled Hitler's Germany Adorno had already written over 100 opera or concert reviews and 50 critiques of music composition.
As the Nazi party became the largest party in the Reichstag, Horkheimer's 1932 observation proved typical for his milieu: "Only one thing is certain", he wrote, "the irrationality of society has reached a point where only the gloomiest predictions have any plausibility." In September Adorno's right to teach was revoked; in March, as the swastika was run up the flagpole of town hall, the Frankfurt criminal police searched the institute's offices. Adorno's house on Seeheimer Strasse was similarly searched in July and his application for membership in the Reich Chamber of Literature denied on the grounds that membership was limited to "persons who belong to the German nation by profound ties of character and blood. As a non-Aryan," he was informed, "you are unable to feel and appreciate such an obligation." Soon afterwards Adorno was forced into 15 years of exile.
After the possibility of transferring his habilitation to the University of Vienna came to nothing, Adorno considered relocating to Britain upon his father's suggestion. With the help of the Academic Assistance Council, Adorno registered as an advanced student at Merton College, Oxford, in June 1934. During the next four years at Oxford, Adorno made repeated trips to Germany to see both his parents and Gretel, who was still working in Berlin. Under the direction of Gilbert Ryle, Adorno worked on a dialectical critique of Husserl's epistemology. By this time, the Institute for Social Research had relocated to New York City and begun making overtures to Adorno. After months of strained relations, Horkheimer and Adorno reestablished their essential theoretical alliance during meetings in Paris. Adorno continued writing on music, publishing "The Form of the Phonograph Record" and "Crisis of Music Criticism" with the Viennese musical journal "23", "On Jazz" in the Institute's "Zeitschrift", "Farewell to Jazz" in "Europäische Revue". But Adorno's attempts to break out of the sociology of music were twice thwarted: neither the study of Mannheim he had been working on for years nor extracts from his study of Husserl were accepted by the "Zeitschrift". Impressed by Horkheimer's book of aphorisms, "Dawn and Decline", Adorno began working on his own book of aphorisms, what later became "Minima Moralia". While at Oxford, Adorno suffered two great losses: his Aunt Agathe died in June 1935, and Berg died in December of the same year. To the end of his life, Adorno never abandoned the hope of completing Berg's unfinished opera Lulu.
At this time Adorno was in intense correspondence with Walter Benjamin about the latter's "Arcades Project". After receiving an invitation from Horkheimer to visit the Institute in New York, Adorno sailed for New York on June 9, 1937, and stayed for two weeks. While he was in New York, Horkheimer's essays "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" and "Traditional and Critical Theory," which would soon become instructive for the Institute's self-understanding, were the subject of intense discussion. Soon after his return to Europe, Gretel moved to Britain, where she and Adorno were married on September 8, 1937; a little over a month later, Horkheimer telegrammed from New York with news of a position Adorno could take with the Princeton Radio Project, then under the directorship of the Austrian sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld. Yet Adorno's work continued with studies of Beethoven and Richard Wagner (published in 1939 as "Fragments on Wagner"), drafts of which he read to Benjamin during their final meeting, in December on the Italian Riviera. According to Benjamin, these drafts were astonishing for "the precision of their materialist deciphering" as well as the way in which "musical facts ... had been made socially transparent in a way that was completely new to me." In his Wagner study, the thesis later to characterize "Dialectic of Enlightenment"—man's domination of nature—first emerges. Adorno sailed for New York on February 16, 1938. Soon after settling into his new home on Riverside Drive, Adorno met with Lazarsfeld in Newark, New Jersey, to discuss the Project's plans for investigating the impact of broadcast music.
Although he was expected to embed the Project's research within a wider theoretical context, it soon became apparent that the Project was primarily concerned with data collection to be used by administrators for establishing whether groups of listeners could be targeted by broadcasts specifically aimed at them. Expected to make use of devices with which listeners could press a button to indicate whether they liked or disliked a particular piece of music, Adorno bristled with distaste and astonishment: "I reflected that culture was simply the condition that precluded a mentality that tried to measure it." Thus Adorno suggested using individual interviews to determine listener reactions and, only three months after meeting Lazarsfeld, completed a 160-page memorandum on the Project's topic, "Music in Radio." Adorno was primarily interested in how the musical material was affected by its distribution through the medium of radio and thought it imperative to understand how music was affected by its becoming part of daily life. "The meaning of a Beethoven symphony," he wrote, "heard while the listener is walking around or lying in bed is very likely to differ from its effect in a concert-hall where people sit as if they were in church." In essays published by the Institute's "Zeitschrift", Adorno dealt with the atrophy of musical culture that had become instrumental in accelerating tendencies—toward conformism, trivialization and standardization—already present in the larger culture. Unsurprisingly, Adorno's studies found little resonance among members of the project. At the end of 1939, when Lazarsfeld submitted a second application for funding, the musical section of the study was left out. Yet during the two years during which he worked on the Project, Adorno was prolific, publishing "The Radio Symphony", "A Social Critique of Radio Music", and "On Popular Music", texts that, along with the draft memorandum and other unpublished writings, are found in Robert Hullot-Kentor's translation, "Current of Music". In light of this situation, Horkheimer soon found a permanent post for Adorno at the Institute.
In addition to helping with the "Zeitschrift", Adorno was expected to be the Institute's liaison with Benjamin, who soon passed on to New York the study of Charles Baudelaire he hoped would serve as a model of the larger "Arcades Project". In correspondence, the two men discussed the difference in their conceptions of the relationship between critique and artworks that had become manifest through Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility". At around the same time Adorno and Horkheimer began planning for a joint work on "dialectical logic", which would later become "Dialectic of Enlightenment". Alarmed by reports from Europe, where Adorno's parents suffered increasing discrimination and Benjamin was interned in Colombes, they entertained few delusions about their work's practical effects. "In view of what is now threatening to engulf Europe," Horkheimer wrote, "our present work is essentially destined to pass things down through the night that is approaching: a kind of message in a bottle." As Adorno continued his work in New York with radio talks on music and a lecture on Kierkegaard's doctrine of love, Benjamin fled Paris and attempted to make an illegal border crossing. After learning that his Spanish visa was invalid and fearing deportation back to France, Benjamin took an overdose of morphine tablets. In light of recent events, the Institute set about formulating a theory of antisemitism and fascism. On one side were those who supported Franz Leopold Neumann's thesis according to which National Socialism was a form of "monopoly capitalism"; on the other were those who supported Friedrich Pollock's "state capitalist theory." Horkheimer's contributions to this debate, in the form of the essays "The Authoritarian State", "The End of Reason", and "The Jews and Europe", served as a foundation for what he and Adorno planned to do in their book on dialectical logic.
In November 1941 Adorno followed Horkheimer to what Thomas Mann called "German California", setting up house in a Pacific Palisades neighborhood of German émigrés that included Bertolt Brecht and Schoenberg. Adorno arrived with a draft of his "Philosophy of New Music", a dialectical critique of twelve-tone music that Adorno felt, while writing it, was a departure from the theory of art he had spent the previous decades elaborating. Horkheimer's reaction to the manuscript was wholly positive: "If I have ever in the whole of my life felt enthusiasm about anything, then I did on this occasion," he wrote after reading the manuscript. The two set about completing their joint work, which transformed from a book on dialectical logic to a rewriting of the history of rationality and the Enlightenment. First published in a small mimeographed edition in May 1944 as "Philosophical Fragments", the text waited another three years before achieving book form when it was published with its definitive title, "Dialectic of Enlightenment", by the Amsterdam publisher Querido Verlag. This "reflection on the destructive aspect of progress" proceeded through the chapters that treated rationality as both the liberation from and further domination of nature, interpretations of both Homer's "Odyssey" and the Marquis de Sade, as well as analyses of the culture industry and antisemitism.
With their joint work completed, the two turned their attention to studies on antisemitism and authoritarianism in collaboration with the Nevitt Sanford-led Public Opinion Study Group and the American Jewish Committee. In line with these studies, Adorno produced an analysis of the Californian radio preacher Martin Luther Thomas. Fascist propaganda of this sort, Adorno wrote, "simply takes people for what they are: genuine children of today's standardized mass culture who have been robbed to a great extent of their autonomy and spontaneity". The result of these labors, the 1950 study "The Authoritarian Personality", was pioneering in its combination of quantitative and qualitative methods of collecting and evaluating data as well as its development of the F-scale personality test.
After the USA entered the war in 1941, the situation of the émigrés, now classed "enemy aliens", became increasingly restricted. Forbidden from leaving their homes between 8pm and 6am and from going more than five miles from their houses, émigrés like Adorno, who was not naturalized until November 1943, were severely restricted in their movements.
In addition to the aphorisms that conclude "Dialectic of Enlightenment", Adorno put together a collection of aphorisms in honor of Horkheimer's 50th birthday that were later published as "Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life". These fragmentary writings, inspired by a renewed reading of Nietzsche, treated issues like emigration, totalitarianism, and individuality, as well as everyday matters such as giving presents, dwelling and the impossibility of love. In California Adorno made the acquaintance of Charlie Chaplin and became friends with Fritz Lang and Hanns Eisler, with whom he completed a study of film music in 1944. In this study the authors pushed for the greater usage of avant-garde music in film, urging that music be used to supplement, not simply accompany, films' visual aspect. Adorno also assisted Thomas Mann with his novel "Doktor Faustus" after the latter asked for his help. "Would you be willing," Mann wrote, "to think through with me how the work—I mean Leverkühn's work—might look; how you would do it if you were in league with the Devil?"
At the end of October 1949, Adorno left America for Europe just as "The Authoritarian Personality" was being published. Before his return, Adorno had reached an agreement with a Tübingen publisher to print an expanded version of "Philosophy of New Music" and completed two compositions: "Four Songs for Voice and Piano by Stefan George, op.7", and "Three Choruses for Female Voices from the Poems of Theodor Däubler, op. 8".
Upon his return, Adorno helped shape the political culture of West Germany. Until his death in 1969, twenty years after his return, Adorno contributed to the intellectual foundations of the Federal Republic, as a professor at Frankfurt University, critic of the vogue enjoyed by Heideggerian philosophy, partisan of critical sociology, and teacher of music at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music. Adorno resumed his teaching duties at the university soon after his arrival, with seminars on "Kant's Transcendental Dialectic", aesthetics, Hegel, "Contemporary Problems in the Theory of Knowledge", and "The Concept of Knowledge". Adorno's surprise at his students' passionate interest in intellectual matters did not, however, blind him to continuing problems within Germany: The literary climate was dominated by writers who had remained in Germany during Hitler's rule, the government re-employed people who had been active in the Nazi apparatus and people were generally loath to own up to their own collaboration or the guilt they thus incurred. Instead, the ruined city of Frankfurt continued as if nothing had happened, holding on to ideas of the true, the beautiful, and the good despite the atrocities, hanging on to a culture that had itself been lost in rubble or killed off in the concentration camps. All the enthusiasm Adorno's students showed for intellectual matters could not erase the suspicion that, in the words of Max Frisch, culture had become an "alibi" for the absence of political consciousness. Yet the foundations for what would come to be known as "The Frankfurt School" were soon laid: Horkheimer resumed his chair in social philosophy and the Institute for Social Research, rebuilt, became a lightning rod for critical thought.
Starting with his 1947 essay "Wagner, Nietzsche and Hitler", Adorno produced a series of influential works to describe psychological fascist traits. One of these works was "The Authoritarian Personality" (1950), published as a contribution to the "Studies in Prejudice" performed by multiple research institutes in the US, and consisting of a 'qualitative interpretations' that uncovered the authoritarian character of test persons through indirect questions. The books have had a major influence on sociology and remain highly discussed and debated. In 1951 he continued on the topic with his essay "Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda", in which he said that "Psychological dispositions do not actually cause fascism; rather, fascism defines a psychological area which can be successfully exploited by the forces which promote it for entirely non-psychological reasons of self-interest."
In 1952 Adorno participated in a group experiment, revealing residual National Socialist attitudes among the recently democratized Germans. He then published two influential essays, "The Meaning of Working Through the Past" (1959), and "Education after Auschwitz" (1966), in which he argued on the survival of the uneradicated National Socialism in the mind-sets and institutions of the post-1945 Germany, and that there is still a real risk that it could rise again. Later on, however, Jean Améry—who had been tortured at Auschwitz—would sharply object that Adorno, rather than addressing such political concerns, was exploiting Auschwitz for his metaphysical phantom "absolute negativity" ("absolute Negativität"), using a language intoxicated by itself ("von sich selber bis zur Selbstblendung entzückte Sprache").
In September 1951 Adorno returned to the United States for a six-week visit, during which he attended the opening of the Hacker Psychiatry Foundation in Beverly Hills, met Leo Lowenthal and Herbert Marcuse in New York and saw his mother for the last time. After stopping in Paris, where he met Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Michel Leiris and René Leibowitz, Adorno delivered a lecture entitled "The Present State of Empirical Social Research in Germany" at a conference on opinion research. Here he emphasized the importance of data collection and statistical evaluation while asserting that such empirical methods have only an auxiliary function and must lead to the formation of theories which would "raise the harsh facts to the level of consciousness."
With Horkheimer as dean of the Arts Faculty, then rector of the university, responsibilities for the Institute's work fell upon Adorno. At the same time, however, Adorno renewed his musical work: with talks at the Kranichsteiner Musikgesellschaft, another in connection with a production of Ernst Krenek's opera "Leben des Orest", and a seminar on "Criteria of New Music" at the Fifth International Summer Course for New Music at Kranichstein. Adorno also became increasingly involved with the publishing house of Peter Suhrkamp, inducing the latter to publish Benjamin's "Berlin Childhood Around 1900", Kracauer's writings and a two-volume edition of Benjamin's writings. Adorno's own recently published "Minima Moralia" was not only well received in the press, but also met with great admiration from Thomas Mann, who wrote to Adorno from America in 1952:
Yet Adorno was no less moved by other public events: protesting the publication of Heinrich Mann's novel "Professor Unrat" with its film title, "The Blue Angel"; declaring his sympathy with those who protested the scandal of big-game hunting and penning a defense of prostitutes.
Because Adorno's American citizenship would have been forfeited by the middle of 1952 had he continued to stay outside the country, he returned once again to Santa Monica to survey his prospects at the Hacker Foundation. While there he wrote a content analysis of newspaper horoscopes (now collected in "The Stars Down to Earth"), and the essays "Television as Ideology" and "Prologue to Television"; even so, he was pleased when, at the end of ten months, he was enjoined to return as co-director of the Institute.
Back in Frankfurt, he renewed his academic duties and, from 1952 to 1954, completed three essays: "Notes on Kafka", "Valéry Proust Museum", and an essay on Schoenberg following the composer's death, all of which were included in the 1955 essay collection "Prisms". In response to the publication of Thomas Mann's "The Black Swan", Adorno penned a long letter to the author, who then approved its publication in the literary journal "Akzente". A second collection of essays, "Notes to Literature", appeared in 1958. After meeting Samuel Beckett while delivering a series of lectures in Paris the same year, Adorno set to work on "Trying to Understand Endgame," which, along with studies of Proust, Valéry, and Balzac, formed the central texts of the 1961 publication of the second volume of his "Notes to Literature". Adorno's entrance into literary discussions continued in his June 1963 lecture at the annual conference of the Hölderlin Society. At the Philosophers' Conference of October 1962 in Münster, at which Habermas wrote that Adorno was "A writer among bureaucrats", Adorno presented "Progress".
Although the "Zeitschrift" was never revived, the Institute nevertheless published a series of important sociological books, including "Sociologica" (1955), a collection of essays, "Gruppenexperiment" (1955), "Betriebsklima", a study of work satisfaction among workers in Mannesmann, and "Soziologische Exkurse", a textbook-like anthology intended as an introductory work about the discipline.
Throughout the fifties and sixties, Adorno became a public figure, not simply through his books and essays, but also through his appearances in radio and newspapers. In talks, interviews and round-table discussions broadcast on Hessen Radio, South-West Radio and Radio Bremen, Adorno discussed topics as diverse as "The Administered World" (September 1950), "What is the Meaning of 'Working Through the Past?"' (February 1960) to "The Teaching Profession and its Taboos" (August 1965). Additionally, he frequently wrote for "Frankfurter Allgemeine", "Frankfurter Rundschau" and the weekly "Die Zeit".
At the invitation of Wolfgang Steinecke, Adorno took part in the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music in Kranichstein from 1951 to 1958. Yet conflicts between the so-called Darmstadt school, which included composers like Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, Karel Goeyvaerts, Luciano Berio and Gottfried Michael Koenig, soon arose, receiving explicit expression in Adorno's 1954 lecture, "The Aging of the New Music", where he argued that atonality's freedom was being restricted to serialism in much the same way as it was once restricted by twelve-tone technique. With his friend Eduard Steuermann, Adorno feared that music was being sacrificed to stubborn rationalization. During this time Adorno not only produced a significant series of notes on Beethoven (which was never completed and only published posthumously), but also published "Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy" in 1960. In his 1961 return to Kranichstein, Adorno called for what he termed a "musique informelle", which would possess the ability "really and truly to be what it is, without the ideological pretense of being something else. Or rather, to admit frankly the fact of non-identity and to follow through its logic to the end."
At the same time Adorno struck up relationships with contemporary German-language poets such as Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann. Adorno's 1949 dictum—"To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric"—posed the question of what German culture could mean after Auschwitz; his own continual revision of this dictum—in "Negative Dialectics", for example, he wrote that "Perennial suffering has as much right to expression as a tortured man has to scream"; while in "Commitment," he wrote in 1962 that the dictum "expresses in negative form the impulse which inspires committed literature"—was part of post-war Germany's struggle with history and culture. Adorno additionally befriended the writer and poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger as well as the film-maker Alexander Kluge.
In 1963, Adorno was elected to the post of chairman of the German Sociological Society, where he presided over two important conferences: in 1964, on "Max Weber and Sociology" and in 1968 on "Late Capitalism or Industrial Society". A debate launched in 1961 by Adorno and Karl Popper, later published as the "Positivist Dispute in German Sociology", arose out of disagreements at the 1959 14th German Sociology Conference in Berlin.
Adorno's critique of the dominant climate of post-war Germany was also directed against the pathos that had grown up around Heideggerianism, as practiced by writers like Karl Jaspers and Otto Friedrich Bollnow, and which had subsequently seeped into public discourse. His 1964 publication of "The Jargon of Authenticity" took aim at the halo such writers had attached to words like "angst", "decision" and "leap". After seven years of work, Adorno completed "Negative Dialectics" in 1966, after which, during the summer semester of 1967 and the winter semester of 1967–68, he offered regular philosophy seminars to discuss the book chapter by chapter. Among the students at these seminars were the Americans Angela Davis and Irving Wohlfarth. One objection which would soon take on ever greater importance, was that critical thought must adopt the standpoint of the oppressed, to which Adorno replied that negative dialectics was concerned "with the dissolution of standpoint thinking itself."
At the time of "Negative Dialectics" publication, the fragility of West German democracy led to increasing student protests. Monopolistic trends in the media, an educational crisis in the universities, the Shah of Iran's 1967 state visit, German support for the war in Vietnam and the emergency laws combined to create a highly unstable situation. Like many of his students, Adorno too opposed the emergency laws, as well as the war in Vietnam, which, he said, proved the continued existence of the "world of torture that had begun in Auschwitz". The situation only deteriorated with the police shooting of Benno Ohnesorg at a protest against the Shah's visit. This death, as well as the subsequent acquittal of the responsible officer, were both commented upon in Adorno's lectures. As politicization increased, rifts developed within both the Institute's relationship with its students as well as within the Institute itself. Soon Adorno himself would become an object of the students' ire. At the invitation of Peter Szondi, Adorno was invited to the Free University of Berlin to give a lecture on Goethe's "Iphigenie in Tauris". After a group of students marched to the lectern, unfurling a banner that read "Berlin's left-wing fascists greet Teddy the Classicist," a number of those present left the lecture in protest after Adorno refused to abandon his talk in favour of discussing his attitude on the current political situation. Adorno shortly thereafter participated in a meeting with the Berlin Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS) and discussed "Student Unrest" with Szondi on West German Radio. But as 1968 progressed, Adorno became increasingly critical of the students' disruptions to university life. His isolation was only compounded by articles published in the magazine "alternative", which, following the lead of Hannah Arendt's articles in "Merkur", claimed Adorno had subjected Benjamin to pressure during his years of exile in Berlin and compiled Benjamin's "Writings" and "Letters" with a great deal of bias. In response, Benjamin's longtime friend Gershom Scholem, wrote to the editor of "Merkur" to express his disapproval of the "in part, shameful, not to say disgraceful" remarks by Arendt.
Relations between students and the West German state continued deteriorating. In spring 1968, a prominent SDS spokesman, Rudi Dutschke, was gunned down in the streets; in response, massive demonstrations took place, directed in particular against the Springer Press, which had led a campaign to vilify the students. An open appeal published in "Die Zeit", signed by Adorno, called for an inquiry into the social reasons that gave rise to this assassination attempt as well as an investigation into the Springer Press' manipulation of public opinion. At the same time, however, Adorno protested against disruptions of his own lectures and refused to express his solidarity with their political goals, maintaining instead his autonomy as a theoretician. Adorno rejected the so-called unity of theory and praxis advocated by the students and argued that the students' actions were premised upon a mistaken analysis of the situation. The building of barricades, he wrote to Marcuse, is "ridiculous against those who administer the bomb."
In September 1968 Adorno went to Vienna for the publication of "Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link". Upon his return to Frankfurt, events prevented his concentrating upon the book on aesthetics he wished to write: "Valid student claims and dubious actions," he wrote to Marcuse, "are all so mixed up together that all productive work and even sensible thought are scarcely possible any more." After striking students threatened to strip the Institute's sociology seminar rooms of their furnishings and equipment, the police were brought in to close the building.
Adorno began writing an introduction to a collection of poetry by Rudolf Borchardt, which was connected with a talk entitled "Charmed Language," delivered in Zurich, followed by a talk on aesthetics in Paris where he met Beckett again. Beginning in October 1966, Adorno took up work on "Aesthetic Theory". In June 1969 he completed "Catchwords: Critical Models". During the winter semester of 1968–69 Adorno was on sabbatical leave from the university and thus able to dedicate himself to the completion of his book of aesthetics.
For the summer semester Adorno planned a lecture course entitled "An Introduction to Dialectical Thinking," as well as a seminar on the dialectics of subject and object. But at the first lecture Adorno's attempt to open up the lecture and invite questions whenever they arose degenerated into a disruption from which he quickly fled: after a student wrote on the blackboard "If Adorno is left in peace, capitalism will never cease," three women students approached the lectern, bared their breasts and scattered flower petals over his head. Yet Adorno continued to resist blanket condemnations of the protest movement which would have only strengthened the conservative thesis according to which political irrationalism was the result of Adorno's teaching. After further disruptions to his lectures, Adorno canceled the lectures for the rest of the seminar, continuing only with his philosophy seminar. In the summer of 1969, weary from these activities, Adorno returned once again to Zermatt, Switzerland, at the foot of Matterhorn to restore his strength. On August 6 he died of a heart attack.
Like most theorists of the Frankfurt School, Adorno was influenced by the works of Hegel, Marx and Freud. Their major theories fascinated many left-wing intellectuals in the first half of the 20th century. Lorenz Jäger speaks critically of Adorno's "Achilles' heel" in his political biography: that Adorno placed "almost unlimited trust in finished teachings, in Marxism, psychoanalysis, and the teachings of the Second Viennese School."
Adorno's adoption of Hegelian philosophy can be traced back to his inaugural lecture in 1931, in which he postulated: "only dialectically does philosophical interpretation seem possible to me" ("Gesammelte Schriften" 1: 338). Hegel rejected the idea of separating methods and content, because thinking is always thinking of something; dialectics for him is "the comprehended movement of the object itself." Like Gerhard Schweppenhäuser, Adorno adopted this claim as his own, and based his thinking on one of the Hegelian basic categories, the determinate negation, according to which something is not abstractly negated and dissolved into zero, but is preserved in a new, richer concept through its opposite.
Adorno understood his "Three Studies of Hegel" as "preparation of a changed definition of dialectics" and that they stop "where the start should be" ("Gesammelte Schriften" 5: 249 f.). Adorno dedicated himself to this task in one of his later major works, the "Negative Dialectics" (1966). The title expresses "tradition and rebellion in equal measure." Drawing from Hegelian reason's speculative dialectic, Adorno developed his own "negative" dialectic of the "non-identical."
Marx's "Critique of Political Economy" clearly shaped Adorno's thinking. As described by Jürgen Habermas, Marxist critique is, for Adorno, a "silent orthodoxy, whose categories [are revealed] in Adorno's cultural critique, although their influence is not explicitly named." Marx's influence on Adorno first came by way of György Lukács's "History and Class Consciousness" ("Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein"); from this text, Adorno took the Marxist categories of commodity fetishism and reification. These are closely related to Adorno's concept of trade, which stands in the center of his philosophy, not exclusively restricted to economic theory. Adorno's "exchange society" "(Tauschgesellschaft"), with its "insatiable and destructive appetite for expansion," is easily decoded as a description of capitalism. Furthermore, the Marxist concept of ideology is central for Adorno.
Class theory, which appears less frequently in Adorno's work, also has its origins in Marxist thinking. Adorno made explicit reference to class in two of his texts: the first, the subchapter "Classes and Strata" ("Klassen und Schichten"), from his "Introduction to the Sociology of Music"; the second, an unpublished 1942 essay, """Reflections on Class Theory""," published postmortem in his "Collected Works".
Psychoanalysis is a constitutive element of critical theory. Adorno read Sigmund Freud’s work early on, although, unlike Horkheimer, he had never experienced psychoanalysis in practice. He first read Freud while working on his initial (withdrawn) habilitation thesis, "The Concept of the Unconscious in the Transcendental Theory of Mind" (1927). In it Adorno argued that "the healing of all neuroses is synonymous with the complete understanding of the meaning of their symptoms by the patient". In his essay "On the Relationship between Sociology and Psychology" (1955), he justified the need to "supplement the theory of society with psychology, especially analytically oriented social psychology" in the face of fascism. Adorno emphasized the necessity of researching prevailing psychological drives in order to explain the cohesion of a repressive society acting against fundamental human interests.
Adorno always remained a supporter and defender of Freudian orthodox doctrine, “psychoanalysis in its strict form”. From this position, he attacked Erich Fromm and later Karen Horney because of their revisionism. He expressed reservations about sociologized psychoanalysis as well as about its reduction to a therapeutic procedure.
Adorno's work sets out from a central insight he shares with all early 20th century avant-garde art: the recognition of what is primitive in ourselves and the world itself. Neither Picasso's fascination with African sculpture nor Mondrian's reduction of painting to its most elementary component—the line—is comprehensible outside this concern with primitivism Adorno shared with the century's most radical art. At that time, the Western world, beset by world-wars, colonialist consolidation and accelerating commodification, sank into the very barbarism civilization had prided itself in overcoming. According to Adorno, society's self-preservation had become indistinguishable from societally sanctioned self-sacrifice: of "primitive" peoples, primitive aspects of the ego and those primitive, mimetic desires found in imitation and sympathy. Adorno's theory proceeds from an understanding of this primitive quality of reality which seeks to counteract whatever aims either to repress this primitive aspect or to further those systems of domination set in place by this return to barbarism. From this perspective, Adorno's writings on politics, philosophy, music and literature are a lifelong critique of the ways in which each tries to justify self-mutilation as the necessary price of self-preservation. According to Adorno's translator Robert Hullot-Kentor, the central motive of Adorno's work thus consists in determining "how life could be more than the struggle for self-preservation". In this sense, the principle of self-preservation, Adorno writes in "Negative Dialectics", is nothing but "the law of doom thus far obeyed by history." At its most basic, Adorno's thought is motivated by a fundamental critique of this law.
Adorno was chiefly influenced by Max Weber's critique of disenchantment, Georg Lukács's Hegelian interpretation of Marxism, as well as Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history. Adorno, along with the other major Frankfurt School theorists Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, argued that advanced capitalism had managed to contain or liquidate the forces that would bring about its collapse and that the revolutionary moment, when it would have been possible to transform it into socialism, had passed. As he put it at the beginning of his "Negative Dialectics" (1966), philosophy is still necessary because the time to realise it was missed. Adorno argued that capitalism had become more entrenched through its attack on the objective basis of revolutionary consciousness and through liquidation of the individualism that had been the basis of critical consciousness. Adorno, as well as Horkheimer, critiqued all forms of positivism as responsible for technocracy and disenchantment and sought to produce a theory that both rejected positivism and avoided reinstating traditional metaphysics. Adorno and Horkheimer have been criticized for over-applying the term "positivism," especially in their interpretations of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper as positivists.
Adorno criticized jazz and popular music, viewing it as part of the culture industry, that contributes to the present sustainability of capitalism by rendering it "aesthetically pleasing" and "agreeable".
In his early essays for the Vienna-based journal "Anbruch", Adorno claimed that musical progress is proportional to the composer's ability to constructively deal with the possibilities and limitations contained within what he called the "musical material." For Adorno, twelve-tone serialism constitutes a decisive, historically developed method of composition. The objective validity of composition, according to him, rests with neither the composer's genius nor the work's conformity with prior standards, but with the way in which the work coherently expresses the dialectic of the material. In this sense, the contemporary absence of composers of the status of Bach or Beethoven is not the sign of musical regression; instead, new music is to be credited with laying bare aspects of the musical material previously repressed: The musical material's liberation from number, the harmonic series and tonal harmony. Thus, historical progress is achieved only by the composer who "submits to the work and seemingly does not undertake anything active except to follow where it leads." Because historical experience and social relations are embedded within this musical material, it is to the analysis of such material that the critic must turn. In the face of this radical liberation of the musical material, Adorno came to criticize those who, like Stravinsky, withdrew from this freedom by taking recourse to forms of the past as well as those who turned twelve-tone composition into a technique which dictated the rules of composition.
Adorno saw the culture industry as an arena in which critical tendencies or potentialities were eliminated. He argued that the culture industry, which produced and circulated cultural commodities through the mass media, manipulated the population. Popular culture was identified as a reason why people become passive; the easy pleasures available through consumption of popular culture made people docile and content, no matter how terrible their economic circumstances. "Capitalist production so confines them, body and soul, that they fall helpless victims to what is offered them." The differences among cultural goods make them appear different, but they are in fact just variations on the same theme. He wrote that "the same thing is offered to everybody by the standardized production of consumption goods" but this is concealed under "the manipulation of taste and the official culture's pretense of individualism". By doing so, the culture industry appeals to every single consumer in a unique and personalized way, all while maintaining minimal costs and effort on their behalf. Consumers purchase the illusion that every commodity or product is tailored to the individual's personal preference, by incorporating subtle modifications or inexpensive "add-ons" in order to keep the consumer returning for new purchases, and therefore more revenue for the corporation system. Adorno conceptualized this phenomenon as "pseudo-individualisation" and the "always-the-same".
Adorno's analysis allowed for a critique of mass culture from the left which balanced the critique of popular culture from the right. From both perspectives—left and right—the nature of cultural production was felt to be at the root of social and moral problems resulting from the consumption of culture. However, while the critique from the right emphasized moral degeneracy ascribed to sexual and racial influences within popular culture, Adorno located the problem not with the content, but with the objective realities of the production of mass culture and its effects, e.g. as a form of reverse psychology. Thinkers influenced by Adorno believe that today's society has evolved in a direction foreseen by him, especially in regard to the past (Auschwitz), morals, or the Culture Industry. The latter has become a particularly productive, yet highly contested term in cultural studies. Many of Adorno's reflections on aesthetics and music have only just begun to be debated, as a collection of essays on the subject, many of which had not previously been translated into English, has only recently been collected and published as "Essays on Music".
Adorno's work in the years before his death was shaped by the idea of "negative dialectics", set out especially in his book of that title. A key notion in the work of the Frankfurt School since "Dialectic of Enlightenment" had been the idea of thought becoming an instrument of domination that subsumes all objects under the control of the (dominant) subject, especially through the notion of identity, i.e. of identifying as real in nature and society only that which harmonized or fit with dominant concepts, and regarding as unreal or non-existent everything that did not. Adorno's "negative dialectics" was an attempt to articulate a non-dominating thought that would recognize its limitations and accept the non-identity and reality of that which could not be subsumed under the subject's concepts. Indeed, Adorno sought to ground the critical bite of his sociological work in his critique of identity, which he took to be a reification in thought of the commodity form or exchange relation which always presumes a false identity between different things. The potential to criticise arises from the gap between the concept and the object, which can never go into the former without remainder. This gap, this non-identity in identity, was the secret to a critique of both material life and conceptual reflection.
Adorno's reputation as a musicologist has been in steady decline since his death. His sweeping criticisms of jazz and championing of the Second Viennese School in opposition to Stravinsky have caused him to fall out of favour. The distinguished American scholar Richard Taruskin declared Adorno to be "preposterously over-rated." The eminent pianist and critic Charles Rosen saw Adorno's book "The Philosophy of New Music" as "largely a fraudulent presentation, a work of polemic that pretends to be an objective study." Even a fellow Marxist such as the historian and jazz critic Eric Hobsbawm saw Adorno's writings as containing "some of the stupidest pages ever written about jazz". The British philosopher Roger Scruton saw Adorno as producing "reams of turgid nonsense devoted to showing that the American people are just as alienated as Marxism requires them to be, and that their cheerful life-affirming music is a ‘fetishized’ commodity, expressive of their deep spiritual enslavement to the capitalist machine." Irritation with Adorno's tunnel vision started even while he was alive. He may have championed Schoenberg, but the composer notably failed to return the compliment: "I have never been able to bear the fellow [...] It is disgusting, by the way, how he treats Stravinsky." On the other hand, the scholar Slavoj Žižek has written a foreword to Adorno's "In Search of Wagner", where Žižek attributes an "emancipatory impulse" to the same book, although Žižek suggests that fidelity to this impulse demands "a betrayal of the explicit theses of Adorno's Wagner study."
Adorno states that a start to understand the recognition in respect of any particular song hit may be made by drafting a scheme which divides the experience of recognition into its different components. All the factors people enumerate are interwoven to a degree that would be impossible to separate from one another in reality. Adorno's scheme is directed towards the different objective elements involved in the experience of recognition, than the actual experience felt for the individual.
Adorno posits social totality as an automatic system. According to Horst Müller's "Kritik der kritischen Theorie" ("Critique of Critical Theory"), this assumption is consistent with Adorno's idea of society as a self-regulating system, from which one must escape (but from which nobody "can" escape). For him it was existent, but inhuman. Müller argues against the existence of such a system and claims that critical theory provides no practical solution for societal change. He concludes that Jürgen Habermas, in particular, and the Frankfurt School in general, misconstrue Marx.
The phenomenon of standardization is "a concept used to characterize the formulaic products of capitalist-driven mass media and mass culture that appeal to the lowest common denominator in pursuit of maximum profit". According to Adorno we inhabit a media culture driven society which has product consumption as one of its main characteristics. Mass media is employed to deliver messages about products and services to consumers in order to convince these individuals to purchase the commodity they are advertising. Standardization consists of the production of large amounts of commodities to then pursue consumers in order to gain the maximum profit possible.
They do this, as mentioned above, by individualizing products to give the illusion to consumers that they are in fact purchasing a product or service that was specifically designed for them. Adorno highlights the issues created with the construction of popular music, where different samples of music used in the creation of today's chart-topping songs are put together in order to create, re-create, and modify numerous tracks by using the same variety of samples from one song to another. He makes a distinction between "Apologetic music" and "Critical music". Apologetic music is defined as the highly produced and promoted music of the "pop music" industry: music that is composed of variable parts and interchanged to create several different songs. "The social and psychological functions of popular music [are that it] acts like a social cement" "to keep people obedient and subservient to the status quo of existing power structures."
Serious music, according to Adorno, achieves excellence when its whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The example he gives is that of Beethoven's symphonies: "[his] greatness shows itself in the complete subordination of the accidentally private melodic elements to the form as a whole."
Standardization not only refers to the products of the culture industry but to the consumers as well: many times every day consumers are bombarded by media advertising. Consumers are pushed and shoved into consuming products and services presented to them by the media system. The masses have become conditioned by the culture industry, which makes the impact of standardization much more important. By not realizing the impact of social media and commercial advertising, the individual is caught in a situation where conformity is the norm. "During consumption the masses become characterized by the commodities which they use and exchange among themselves."
As a pioneer of a self-reflexive sociology who prefigured Bourdieu's ability to factor in the effect of reflection on the societal object, Adorno realized that some criticism (including deliberate disruption of his classes in the 1960s) could never be answered in a dialogue between equals if, as he seems to have believed, what the naive ethnographer or sociologist thinks of a human essence is always changing over time.
As Adorno believed that sociology needs to be self-reflective and self-critical, he also believed that the language the sociologist uses, like the language of the ordinary person, is a political construct in large measure that uses, often unreflectingly, concepts installed by dominant classes and social structures (such as our notion of "deviance" which includes both genuinely deviant individuals and "hustlers" operating below social norms because they lack the capital to operate above: for an analysis of this phenomenon, cf. Pierre Bourdieu's book "The Weight of the World"). He felt that those at the top of the Institute needed to be the source primarily of theories for evaluation and empirical testing, as well as people who would process the "facts" discovered...including revising theories that were found to be false. For example, in an essay published in Germany on Adorno's return from the US, and reprinted in the "Critical Models" essays collection (), Adorno praised the egalitarianism and openness of US society based on his sojourn in New York and the Los Angeles area between 1935 and 1955: "Characteristic for the life in America [...]is a moment of peacefulness, kindness and generosity". ("Dem amerikanischen Leben eignet [...] ein Moment von Friedlichkeit, Gutartigkeit und Großzügigkeit".)
One example of the clash of intellectual culture and Adorno's methods can be found in Paul Lazarsfeld, the American sociologist for whom Adorno worked in the late 1930s after fleeing Hitler. As Rolf Wiggershaus recounts in "The Frankfurt School, Its History, Theories and Political Significance" (MIT 1995), Lazarsfeld was the director of a project, funded and inspired by David Sarnoff (the head of RCA), to discover both the sort of music that listeners of radio liked and ways to improve their "taste", so that RCA could profitably air more classical music. Lazarsfeld, however, had trouble both with the prose style of the work Adorno handed in and what Lazarsfeld thought was Adorno's "lack of discipline in ... presentation".
Adorno himself provided the following personal anecdote:
While even German readers can find Adorno's work difficult to understand, an additional problem for English readers is that his German idiom is particularly difficult to translate into English. A similar difficulty of translation is true of Hegel, Heidegger, and a number of other German philosophers and poets. As a result, some early translators tended toward over-literalness. In recent years, Edmund Jephcott and Stanford University Press have published new translations of some of Adorno's lectures and books, including "Introduction to Sociology", "Problems of Moral Philosophy" and his transcribed lectures on Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" and Aristotle's "Metaphysics", and a new translation of the "Dialectic of Enlightenment". Professor Henry Pickford, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, has translated many of Adorno's works such as "The Meaning of Working Through the Past." A new translation has also appeared of "Aesthetic Theory" and the "Philosophy of New Music" by Robert Hullot-Kentor, from the University of Minnesota Press. Hullot-Kentor is also currently working on a new translation of "Negative Dialectics". Adorno's correspondence with Alban Berg, "Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction", and the letters to Adorno's parents, have been translated by Wieland Hoban and published by Polity Press. These fresh translations are slightly less literal in their rendering of German sentences and words, and are more accessible to English readers. The Group Experiment, which had been unavailable to English readers, is now available in an accessible translation by Jeffrey K. Olick and Andrew J. Perrin on Harvard University Press, along with introductory material explaining its relation to the rest of Adorno's work and 20th-century public opinion research.
Online works by Adorno
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Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Trivium
The trivium is the lower division of the seven liberal arts and comprises grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
The trivium is implicit in "De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii" ("On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury") by Martianus Capella, but the term was not used until the Carolingian Renaissance, when it was coined in imitation of the earlier quadrivium. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric were essential to a classical education, as explained in Plato's dialogues. The three subjects together were denoted by the word "trivium" during the Middle Ages, but the tradition of first learning those three subjects was established in ancient Greece. Contemporary iterations have taken various forms, including those found in certain British and American universities (some being part of the Classical education movement) and at the independent Oundle School in the United Kingdom.
Etymologically, the Latin word trivium means "the place where three roads meet" (tri + via); hence, the subjects of the trivium are the foundation for the quadrivium, the upper division of the medieval education in the liberal arts, which comprised arithmetic (numbers as abstract concepts), geometry (numbers in space), music (numbers in time), and astronomy (numbers in space and time). Educationally, the trivium and the quadrivium imparted to the student the seven liberal arts of classical antiquity.
Grammar teaches the mechanics of language to the student. This is the step where the student "comes to terms," defining the objects and information perceived by the five senses. Hence, the Law of Identity: "a tree is a tree, and not a cat".
Logic (also dialectic) is the "mechanics" of thought and of analysis, the process of identifying fallacious arguments and statements and so systematically removing contradictions, thereby producing factual knowledge that can be trusted.
Rhetoric is the application of language in order to instruct and to persuade the listener and the reader. It is the knowledge (grammar) now understood (logic) and being transmitted outwards as wisdom (rhetoric).
Sister Miriam Joseph, in "The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric" (2002), described the trivium as follows:
Grammar is the art of inventing symbols and combining them to express thought; logic is the art of thinking; and rhetoric is the art of communicating thought from one mind to another, the adaptation of language to circumstance.
Grammar is concerned with the thing as-it-is-symbolized. Logic is concerned with the thing as-it-is-known. Rhetoric is concerned with the thing as-it-is-communicated.
John Ayto wrote in the "Dictionary of Word Origins" (1990) that study of the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) was requisite preparation for study of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). For the medieval student, the trivium was the curricular beginning of the acquisition of the seven liberal arts; as such, it was the principal undergraduate course of study. The word "trivial" arose from the contrast between the simpler trivium and the more difficult quadrivium.
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Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Reason or simply the Enlightenment) was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 17th to 19th centuries.
The Enlightenment emerged out of a European intellectual and scholarly movement known as Renaissance humanism. Some consider the publication of Isaac Newton's "Principia Mathematica" in 1687 as the first major enlightenment work. French historians traditionally date the Enlightenment from 1715 to 1789, from the death of Louis XIV of France until the outbreak of the French Revolution that ended the Ancien Regime. Most end it with the beginning of the 19th century. Philosophers and scientists of the period widely circulated their ideas through meetings at scientific academies, Masonic lodges, literary salons, coffeehouses and in printed books, journals, and pamphlets. The ideas of the Enlightenment undermined the authority of the monarchy and the Church and paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. A variety of 19th-century movements, including liberalism and neoclassicism, trace their intellectual heritage to the Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the sovereignty of reason and the evidence of the senses as the primary sources of knowledge and advanced ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government and separation of church and state. In France, the central doctrines of the Enlightenment philosophers were individual liberty and religious tolerance, in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Catholic Church. The Enlightenment was marked by an emphasis on the scientific method and reductionism, along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy—an attitude captured by Immanuel Kant's essay "," where the phrase "Sapere aude" (Dare to know) can be found.
The Age of Enlightenment was preceded by and closely associated with the scientific revolution. Earlier philosophers whose work influenced the Enlightenment included Bacon and Descartes. The major figures of the Enlightenment included Beccaria, Baruch Spinoza, Diderot, Kant, Hume, Rousseau and Adam Smith. Some European rulers, including Catherine II of Russia, Joseph II of Austria and Frederick II of Prussia, tried to apply Enlightenment thought on religious and political tolerance, which became known as enlightened absolutism.
Many of the main political and intellectual figures behind the American Revolution associated themselves closely with the Enlightenment: Benjamin Franklin visited Europe repeatedly and contributed actively to the scientific and political debates there and brought the newest ideas back to Philadelphia; Thomas Jefferson closely followed European ideas and later incorporated some of the ideals of the Enlightenment into the Declaration of Independence; and James Madison incorporated these ideals into the United States Constitution during its framing in 1787.
The most influential publication of the Enlightenment was the "" ("Encyclopaedia"). Published between 1751 and 1772 in thirty-five volumes, it was compiled by Diderot, d'Alembert (until 1759) and a team of 150 scientists and philosophers. It helped spread the ideas of the Enlightenment across Europe and beyond. Other landmark publications were Voltaire's "Dictionnaire philosophique" ("Philosophical Dictionary"; 1764) and "Letters on the English" (1733); Rousseau's "Discourse on Inequality" (1754) and "The Social Contract" (1762); Adam Smith's "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" (1759) and "The Wealth of Nations" (1776); and Montesquieu's "The Spirit of the Laws" (1748). The ideas of the Enlightenment played a major role in inspiring the French Revolution, which began in 1789. After the Revolution, the Enlightenment was followed by the intellectual movement known as Romanticism.
René Descartes' rationalist philosophy laid the foundation for enlightenment thinking. His attempt to construct the sciences on a secure metaphysical foundation was not as successful as his method of doubt applied in philosophic areas leading to a dualistic doctrine of mind and matter. His skepticism was refined by John Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" (1690) and David Hume's writings in the 1740s. His dualism was challenged by Spinoza's uncompromising assertion of the unity of matter in his "Tractatus" (1670) and "Ethics" (1677).
According to Jonathan Israel, these laid down two distinct lines of Enlightenment thought: first, the moderate variety, following Descartes, Locke and Christian Wolff, which sought accommodation between reform and the traditional systems of power and faith, and second, the radical enlightenment, inspired by the philosophy of Spinoza, advocating democracy, individual liberty, freedom of expression and eradication of religious authority. The moderate variety tended to be deistic, whereas the radical tendency separated the basis of morality entirely from theology. Both lines of thought were eventually opposed by a conservative Counter-Enlightenment, which sought a return to faith.
In the mid-18th century, Paris became the center of an explosion of philosophic and scientific activity challenging traditional doctrines and dogmas. The philosophical movement was led by Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued for a society based upon reason as in ancient Greece rather than faith and Catholic doctrine, for a new civil order based on natural law, and for science based on experiments and observation. The political philosopher Montesquieu introduced the idea of a separation of powers in a government, a concept which was enthusiastically adopted by the authors of the United States Constitution. While the "Philosophes" of the French Enlightenment were not revolutionaries and many were members of the nobility, their ideas played an important part in undermining the legitimacy of the Old Regime and shaping the French Revolution.
Francis Hutcheson, a moral philosopher, described the utilitarian and consequentialist principle that virtue is that which provides, in his words, "the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers". Much of what is incorporated in the scientific method (the nature of knowledge, evidence, experience and causation) and some modern attitudes towards the relationship between science and religion were developed by his protégés David Hume and Adam Smith. Hume became a major figure in the skeptical philosophical and empiricist traditions of philosophy.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) tried to reconcile rationalism and religious belief, individual freedom and political authority, as well as map out a view of the public sphere through private and public reason. Kant's work continued to shape German thought and indeed all of European philosophy, well into the 20th century.
Mary Wollstonecraft was one of England's earliest feminist philosophers. She argued for a society based on reason and that women as well as men should be treated as rational beings. She is best known for her work "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1791).
Science played an important role in Enlightenment discourse and thought. Many Enlightenment writers and thinkers had backgrounds in the sciences and associated scientific advancement with the overthrow of religion and traditional authority in favour of the development of free speech and thought. Scientific progress during the Enlightenment included the discovery of carbon dioxide (fixed air) by the chemist Joseph Black, the argument for deep time by the geologist James Hutton and the invention of the condensing steam engine by James Watt. The experiments of Lavoisier were used to create the first modern chemical plants in Paris and the experiments of the Montgolfier Brothers enabled them to launch the first manned flight in a hot-air balloon on 21 November 1783 from the Château de la Muette, near the Bois de Boulogne.
Broadly speaking, Enlightenment science greatly valued empiricism and rational thought and was embedded with the Enlightenment ideal of advancement and progress. The study of science, under the heading of natural philosophy, was divided into physics and a conglomerate grouping of chemistry and natural history, which included anatomy, biology, geology, mineralogy and zoology. As with most Enlightenment views, the benefits of science were not seen universally: Rousseau criticized the sciences for distancing man from nature and not operating to make people happier. Science during the Enlightenment was dominated by scientific societies and academies, which had largely replaced universities as centres of scientific research and development. Societies and academies were also the backbone of the maturation of the scientific profession. Another important development was the popularization of science among an increasingly literate population. Philosophes introduced the public to many scientific theories, most notably through the "Encyclopédie" and the popularization of Newtonianism by Voltaire and Émilie du Châtelet. Some historians have marked the 18th century as a drab period in the history of science. However, the century saw significant advancements in the practice of medicine, mathematics and physics; the development of biological taxonomy; a new understanding of magnetism and electricity; and the maturation of chemistry as a discipline, which established the foundations of modern chemistry.
Scientific academies and societies grew out of the Scientific Revolution as the creators of scientific knowledge in contrast to the scholasticism of the university. During the Enlightenment, some societies created or retained links to universities, but contemporary sources distinguished universities from scientific societies by claiming that the university's utility was in the transmission of knowledge while societies functioned to create knowledge. As the role of universities in institutionalized science began to diminish, learned societies became the cornerstone of organized science. Official scientific societies were chartered by the state in order to provide technical expertise. Most societies were granted permission to oversee their own publications, control the election of new members and the administration of the society. After 1700, a tremendous number of official academies and societies were founded in Europe and by 1789 there were over seventy official scientific societies. In reference to this growth, Bernard de Fontenelle coined the term "the Age of Academies" to describe the 18th century.
The influence of science also began appearing more commonly in poetry and literature during the Enlightenment. Some poetry became infused with scientific metaphor and imagery, while other poems were written directly about scientific topics. Sir Richard Blackmore committed the Newtonian system to verse in "Creation, a Philosophical Poem in Seven Books" (1712). After Newton's death in 1727, poems were composed in his honour for decades. James Thomson (1700–1748) penned his "Poem to the Memory of Newton", which mourned the loss of Newton, but also praised his science and legacy.
Hume and other Scottish Enlightenment thinkers developed a "science of man", which was expressed historically in works by authors including James Burnett, Adam Ferguson, John Millar and William Robertson, all of whom merged a scientific study of how humans behaved in ancient and primitive cultures with a strong awareness of the determining forces of modernity. Modern sociology largely originated from this movement and Hume's philosophical concepts that directly influenced James Madison (and thus the U.S. Constitution) and as popularised by Dugald Stewart, would be the basis of classical liberalism.
In 1776, Adam Smith published "The Wealth of Nations", often considered the first work on modern economics as it had an immediate impact on British economic policy that continues into the 21st century. It was immediately preceded and influenced by Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune drafts of "Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth" (Paris, 1766). Smith acknowledged indebtedness and possibly was the original English translator.
Cesare Beccaria, a jurist, criminologist, philosopher and politician and one of the great Enlightenment writers, became famous for his masterpiece "Of Crimes and Punishments" (1764), later translated into 22 languages, which condemned torture and the death penalty and was a founding work in the field of penology and the Classical School of criminology by promoting criminal justice. Another prominent intellectual was Francesco Mario Pagano, who wrote important studies such as "Saggi Politici" (Political Essays, 1783), one of the major works of the Enlightenment in Naples; and "Considerazioni sul processo criminale" (Considerations on the criminal trial, 1787), which established him as an international authority on criminal law.
The Enlightenment has long been hailed as the foundation of modern Western political and intellectual culture. The Enlightenment brought political modernization to the West, in terms of introducing democratic values and institutions and the creation of modern, liberal democracies. This thesis has been widely accepted by Anglophone scholars and has been reinforced by the large-scale studies by Robert Darnton, Roy Porter and most recently by Jonathan Israel.
John Locke, one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers, based his governance philosophy in social contract theory, a subject that permeated Enlightenment political thought. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes ushered in this new debate with his work "Leviathan" in 1651. Hobbes also developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual; the natural equality of all men; the artificial character of the political order (which led to the later distinction between civil society and the state); the view that all legitimate political power must be "representative" and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law which leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid.
Both Locke and Rousseau developed social contract theories in "Two Treatises of Government" and "Discourse on Inequality", respectively. While quite different works, Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau agreed that a social contract, in which the government's authority lies in the consent of the governed, is necessary for man to live in civil society. Locke defines the state of nature as a condition in which humans are rational and follow natural law, in which all men are born equal and with the right to life, liberty and property. However, when one citizen breaks the Law of Nature both the transgressor and the victim enter into a state of war, from which it is virtually impossible to break free. Therefore, Locke said that individuals enter into civil society to protect their natural rights via an "unbiased judge" or common authority, such as courts, to appeal to. Contrastingly, Rousseau's conception relies on the supposition that "civil man" is corrupted, while "natural man" has no want he cannot fulfill himself. Natural man is only taken out of the state of nature when the inequality associated with private property is established. Rousseau said that people join into civil society via the social contract to achieve unity while preserving individual freedom. This is embodied in the sovereignty of the general will, the moral and collective legislative body constituted by citizens.
Locke is known for his statement that individuals have a right to "Life, Liberty and Property" and his belief that the natural right to property is derived from labor. Tutored by Locke, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury wrote in 1706: "There is a mighty Light which spreads its self over the world especially in those two free Nations of England and Holland; on whom the Affairs of Europe now turn". Locke's theory of natural rights has influenced many political documents, including the United States Declaration of Independence and the French National Constituent Assembly's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
The "philosophes" argued that the establishment of a contractual basis of rights would lead to the market mechanism and capitalism, the scientific method, religious tolerance and the organization of states into self-governing republics through democratic means. In this view, the tendency of the "philosophes" in particular to apply rationality to every problem is considered the essential change.
Although much of Enlightenment political thought was dominated by social contract theorists, both David Hume and Adam Ferguson criticized this camp. Hume's essay "Of the Original Contract" argues that governments derived from consent are rarely seen and civil government is grounded in a ruler's habitual authority and force. It is precisely because of the ruler's authority over-and-against the subject, that the subject tacitly consents and Hume says that the subjects would "never imagine that their consent made him sovereign", rather the authority did so. Similarly, Ferguson did not believe citizens built the state, rather polities grew out of social development. In his 1767 "An Essay on the History of Civil Society", Ferguson uses the four stages of progress, a theory that was very popular in Scotland at the time, to explain how humans advance from a hunting and gathering society to a commercial and civil society without "signing" a social contract.
Both Rousseau's and Locke's social contract theories rest on the presupposition of natural rights, which are not a result of law or custom, but are things that all men have in pre-political societies and are therefore universal and inalienable. The most famous natural right formulation comes from John Locke in his "Second Treatise", when he introduces the state of nature. For Locke, the law of nature is grounded on mutual security or the idea that one cannot infringe on another's natural rights, as every man is equal and has the same inalienable rights. These natural rights include perfect equality and freedom, as well as the right to preserve life and property. Locke also argued against slavery on the basis that enslaving oneself goes against the law of nature because one cannot surrender one's own rights: one's freedom is absolute and no-one can take it away. Additionally, Locke argues that one person cannot enslave another because it is morally reprehensible, although he introduces a caveat by saying that enslavement of a lawful captive in time of war would not go against one's natural rights.
As a spill-over of the Enlightenment, nonsecular beliefs expressed first by Quakers and then by Protestant evangelicals in Britain and the United States emerged. To these groups, slavery became "repugnant to our religion" and a "crime in the sight of God." These ideas added to those expressed by Enlightenment thinkers, leading many in Britain to believe that slavery was "not only morally wrong and economically inefficient, but also politically unwise." As these notions gained more adherents, Britain was forced to end its participation in the slave trade.
The leaders of the Enlightenment were not especially democratic, as they more often look to absolute monarchs as the key to imposing reforms designed by the intellectuals. Voltaire despised democracy and said the absolute monarch must be enlightened and must act as dictated by reason and justice – in other words, be a "philosopher-king".
In several nations, rulers welcomed leaders of the Enlightenment at court and asked them to help design laws and programs to reform the system, typically to build stronger states. These rulers are called "enlightened despots" by historians. They included Frederick the Great of Prussia, Catherine the Great of Russia, Leopold II of Tuscany and Joseph II of Austria. Joseph was over-enthusiastic, announcing many reforms that had little support so that revolts broke out and his regime became a comedy of errors and nearly all his programs were reversed. Senior ministers Pombal in Portugal and Johann Friedrich Struensee in Denmark also governed according to Enlightenment ideals. In Poland, the model constitution of 1791 expressed Enlightenment ideals, but was in effect for only one year before the nation was partitioned among its neighbors. More enduring were the cultural achievements, which created a nationalist spirit in Poland.
Frederick the Great, the king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786, saw himself as a leader of the Enlightenment and patronized philosophers and scientists at his court in Berlin. Voltaire, who had been imprisoned and maltreated by the French government, was eager to accept Frederick's invitation to live at his palace. Frederick explained: "My principal occupation is to combat ignorance and prejudice ... to enlighten minds, cultivate morality, and to make people as happy as it suits human nature, and as the means at my disposal permit".
The Enlightenment has been frequently linked to the French Revolution of 1789. One view of the political changes that occurred during the Enlightenment is that the "consent of the governed" philosophy as delineated by Locke in "Two Treatises of Government" (1689) represented a paradigm shift from the old governance paradigm under feudalism known as the "divine right of kings". In this view, the revolutions of the late 1700s and early 1800s were caused by the fact that this governance paradigm shift often could not be resolved peacefully and therefore violent revolution was the result. Clearly a governance philosophy where the king was never wrong was in direct conflict with one whereby citizens by natural law had to consent to the acts and rulings of their government.
Alexis de Tocqueville proposed the French Revolution as the inevitable result of the radical opposition created in the 18th century between the monarchy and the men of letters of the Enlightenment. These men of letters constituted a sort of "substitute aristocracy that was both all-powerful and without real power". This illusory power came from the rise of "public opinion", born when absolutist centralization removed the nobility and the bourgeoisie from the political sphere. The "literary politics" that resulted promoted a discourse of equality and was hence in fundamental opposition to the monarchical regime. De Tocqueville "clearly designates ... the cultural effects of transformation in the forms of the exercise of power".
Enlightenment era religious commentary was a response to the preceding century of religious conflict in Europe, especially the Thirty Years' War. Theologians of the Enlightenment wanted to reform their faith to its generally non-confrontational roots and to limit the capacity for religious controversy to spill over into politics and warfare while still maintaining a true faith in God. For moderate Christians, this meant a return to simple Scripture. John Locke abandoned the corpus of theological commentary in favor of an "unprejudiced examination" of the Word of God alone. He determined the essence of Christianity to be a belief in Christ the redeemer and recommended avoiding more detailed debate. In the "Jefferson Bible", Thomas Jefferson went further and dropped any passages dealing with miracles, visitations of angels and the resurrection of Jesus after his death, as he tried to extract the practical Christian moral code of the New Testament.
Enlightenment scholars sought to curtail the political power of organized religion and thereby prevent another age of intolerant religious war. Spinoza determined to remove politics from contemporary and historical theology (e.g., disregarding Judaic law). Moses Mendelssohn advised affording no political weight to any organized religion, but instead recommended that each person follow what they found most convincing. They believed a good religion based in instinctive morals and a belief in God should not theoretically need force to maintain order in its believers, and both Mendelssohn and Spinoza judged religion on its moral fruits, not the logic of its theology.
A number of novel ideas about religion developed with the Enlightenment, including deism and talk of atheism. According to Thomas Paine, deism is the simple belief in God the Creator, with no reference to the Bible or any other miraculous source. Instead, the deist relies solely on personal reason to guide his creed, which was eminently agreeable to many thinkers of the time. Atheism was much discussed, but there were few proponents. Wilson and Reill note: "In fact, very few enlightened intellectuals, even when they were vocal critics of Christianity, were true atheists. Rather, they were critics of orthodox belief, wedded rather to skepticism, deism, vitalism, or perhaps pantheism". Some followed Pierre Bayle and argued that atheists could indeed be moral men. Many others like Voltaire held that without belief in a God who punishes evil, the moral order of society was undermined. That is, since atheists gave themselves to no Supreme Authority and no law and had no fear of eternal consequences, they were far more likely to disrupt society. Bayle (1647–1706) observed that, in his day, "prudent persons will always maintain an appearance of [religion]," and he believed that even atheists could hold concepts of honor and go beyond their own self-interest to create and interact in society. Locke said that if there were no God and no divine law, the result would be moral anarchy: every individual "could have no law but his own will, no end but himself. He would be a god to himself, and the satisfaction of his own will the sole measure and end of all his actions."
The "Radical Enlightenment" promoted the concept of separating church and state, an idea that is often credited to English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704). According to his principle of the social contract, Locke said that the government lacked authority in the realm of individual conscience, as this was something rational people could not cede to the government for it or others to control. For Locke, this created a natural right in the liberty of conscience, which he said must therefore remain protected from any government authority.
These views on religious tolerance and the importance of individual conscience, along with the social contract, became particularly influential in the American colonies and the drafting of the United States Constitution. Thomas Jefferson called for a "wall of separation between church and state" at the federal level. He previously had supported successful efforts to disestablish the Church of England in Virginia and authored the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Jefferson's political ideals were greatly influenced by the writings of John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton, whom he considered the three greatest men that ever lived.
The Enlightenment took hold in most European countries, often with a specific local emphasis. For example, in France it became associated with anti-government and anti-Church radicalism, while in Germany it reached deep into the middle classes, where it expressed a spiritualistic and nationalistic tone without threatening governments or established churches. Government responses varied widely. In France, the government was hostile, and the "philosophes" fought against its censorship, sometimes being imprisoned or hounded into exile. The British government, for the most part, ignored the Enlightenment's leaders in England and Scotland, although it did give Isaac Newton a knighthood and a very lucrative government office. A common theme among most countries which derived enlightenment ideas from Europe was the intentional non-inclusion of enlightenment philosophies pertaining to slavery. Originally during the French Revolution, a revolution deeply inspired by enlightenment philosophy, "France's revolutionary government had denounced slavery, but the property-holding 'revolutionaries' then remembered their bank accounts." Slavery often showed the limitations of the enlightenment as it pertained to European countries since many European countries held colonies supported by slavery. For instance, during the Haitian Revolution England and the United States supported France "rather than giving aid to Saint-Domingue's anti-colonial struggle."
The very existence of an English Enlightenment has been hotly debated by scholars. The majority of textbooks on British history make little or no mention of an English Enlightenment. Some surveys of the entire Enlightenment include England and others ignore it, although they do include coverage of such major intellectuals as Joseph Addison, Edward Gibbon, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Alexander Pope, Joshua Reynolds and Jonathan Swift. Roy Porter argues that the reasons for this neglect were the assumptions that the movement was primarily French-inspired, that it was largely a-religious or anti-clerical, and that it stood in outspoken defiance to the established order. Porter admits that, after the 1720s, England could claim thinkers to equal Diderot, Voltaire or Rousseau. However, its leading intellectuals such as Edward Gibbon, Edmund Burke and Samuel Johnson were all quite conservative and supportive of the standing order. Porter says the reason was that Enlightenment had come early to England and had succeeded so that the culture had accepted political liberalism, philosophical empiricism, and religious toleration of the sort that intellectuals on the continent had to fight for against powerful odds. Furthermore, England rejected the collectivism of the continent and emphasized the improvement of individuals as the main goal of enlightenment.
In the Scottish Enlightenment, Scotland's major cities created an intellectual infrastructure of mutually supporting institutions such as universities, reading societies, libraries, periodicals, museums and masonic lodges. The Scottish network was "predominantly liberal Calvinist, Newtonian, and 'design' oriented in character which played a major role in the further development of the transatlantic Enlightenment". In France, Voltaire said that "we look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilization". The focus of the Scottish Enlightenment ranged from intellectual and economic matters to the specifically scientific as in the work of William Cullen, physician and chemist; James Anderson, an agronomist; Joseph Black, physicist and chemist; and James Hutton, the first modern geologist.
Several Americans, especially Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, played a major role in bringing Enlightenment ideas to the New World and in influencing British and French thinkers. Franklin was influential for his political activism and for his advances in physics. The cultural exchange during the Age of Enlightenment ran in both directions across the Atlantic. Thinkers such as Paine, Locke and Rousseau all take Native American cultural practices as examples of natural freedom. The Americans closely followed English and Scottish political ideas, as well as some French thinkers such as Montesquieu. As deists, they were influenced by ideas of John Toland (1670–1722) and Matthew Tindal (1656–1733). During the Enlightenment there was a great emphasis upon liberty, republicanism and religious tolerance. There was no respect for monarchy or inherited political power. Deists reconciled science and religion by rejecting prophecies, miracles and Biblical theology. Leading deists included Thomas Paine in "The Age of Reason" and by Thomas Jefferson in his short "Jefferson Bible" – from which all supernatural aspects were removed.
Prussia took the lead among the German states in sponsoring the political reforms that Enlightenment thinkers urged absolute rulers to adopt. There were important movements as well in the smaller states of Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover and the Palatinate. In each case, Enlightenment values became accepted and led to significant political and administrative reforms that laid the groundwork for the creation of modern states. The princes of Saxony, for example, carried out an impressive series of fundamental fiscal, administrative, judicial, educational, cultural and general economic reforms. The reforms were aided by the country's strong urban structure and influential commercial groups and modernized pre-1789 Saxony along the lines of classic Enlightenment principles.
Before 1750, the German upper classes looked to France for intellectual, cultural and architectural leadership, as French was the language of high society. By the mid-18th century, the "Aufklärung" (The Enlightenment) had transformed German high culture in music, philosophy, science and literature. Christian Wolff (1679–1754) was the pioneer as a writer who expounded the Enlightenment to German readers and legitimized German as a philosophic language.
Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803) broke new ground in philosophy and poetry, as a leader of the Sturm und Drang movement of proto-Romanticism. Weimar Classicism ("Weimarer Klassik") was a cultural and literary movement based in Weimar that sought to establish a new humanism by synthesizing Romantic, classical and Enlightenment ideas. The movement (from 1772 until 1805) involved Herder as well as polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), a poet and historian. Herder argued that every folk had its own particular identity, which was expressed in its language and culture. This legitimized the promotion of German language and culture and helped shape the development of German nationalism. Schiller's plays expressed the restless spirit of his generation, depicting the hero's struggle against social pressures and the force of destiny.
German music, sponsored by the upper classes, came of age under composers Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791).
In remote Königsberg, philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) tried to reconcile rationalism and religious belief, individual freedom and political authority. Kant's work contained basic tensions that would continue to shape German thought – and indeed all of European philosophy – well into the 20th century.
The German Enlightenment won the support of princes, aristocrats and the middle classes and it permanently reshaped the culture. However, there was a conservatism among the elites that warned against going too far.
In the 1780s, Lutheran ministers Johann Heinrich Schulz and Karl Wilhelm Brumbey got in trouble with their preaching as they were attacked and ridiculed by Immanuel Kant, Wilhelm Abraham Teller and others. In 1788, Prussia issued an "Edict on Religion" that forbade preaching any sermon that undermined popular belief in the Holy Trinity and the Bible. The goal was to avoid skepticism, deism and theological disputes that might impinge on domestic tranquility. Men who doubted the value of Enlightenment favoured the measure, but so too did many supporters. German universities had created a closed elite that could debate controversial issues among themselves, but spreading them to the public was seen as too risky. This intellectual elite was favoured by the state, but that might be reversed if the process of the Enlightenment proved politically or socially destabilizing.
The Enlightenment played a distinctive, if small, role in the history of Italy. Although most of Italy was controlled by conservative Habsburgs or the pope, Tuscany had some opportunities for reform. Leopold II of Tuscany abolished the death penalty in Tuscany and reduced censorship. From Naples, Antonio Genovesi (1713–1769) influenced a generation of southern Italian intellectuals and university students. His textbook "Diceosina, o Sia della Filosofia del Giusto e dell'Onesto" (1766) was a controversial attempt to mediate between the history of moral philosophy on the one hand and the specific problems encountered by 18th-century commercial society on the other. It contained the greater part of Genovesi's political, philosophical and economic thought – guidebook for Neapolitan economic and social development. Science flourished as Alessandro Volta and Luigi Galvani made break-through discoveries in electricity. Pietro Verri was a leading economist in Lombardy. Historian Joseph Schumpeter states he was "the most important pre-Smithian authority on Cheapness-and-Plenty". The most influential scholar on the Italian Enlightenment has been Franco Venturi. Italy also produced some of the Enlightenment's greatest legal theorists, including Cesare Beccaria, Giambattista Vico and Francesco Mario Pagano. Beccaria in particular is now considered one of the fathers of classical criminal theory as well as modern penology. Beccaria is famous for his masterpiece "On Crimes and Punishments" (1764), a treatise (later translated into 22 languages) that served as one of the earliest prominent condemnations of torture and the death penalty and thus a landmark work in anti-death penalty philosophy.
In Russia, the government began to actively encourage the proliferation of arts and sciences in the mid-18th century. This era produced the first Russian university, library, theatre, public museum and independent press. Like other enlightened despots, Catherine the Great played a key role in fostering the arts, sciences and education. She used her own interpretation of Enlightenment ideals, assisted by notable international experts such as Voltaire (by correspondence) and in residence world class scientists such as Leonhard Euler and Peter Simon Pallas. The national Enlightenment differed from its Western European counterpart in that it promoted further modernization of all aspects of Russian life and was concerned with attacking the institution of serfdom in Russia. The Russian enlightenment centered on the individual instead of societal enlightenment and encouraged the living of an enlightened life. A powerful element was "prosveshchenie" which combined religious piety, erudition and commitment to the spread of learning. However, it lacked the skeptical and critical spirit of the Western European Enlightenment.
The enlightenment in Portugal ("iluminismo") was marked by the rule of the Prime Minister Marquis of Pombal under King Joseph I of Portugal from 1756 to 1777. Following the 1755 Lisbon earthquake which destroyed great part of Lisbon, the Marquis of Pombal implemented important economic policies to regulate commercial activity (in particular with Brazil and England), and to standardise quality throughout the country (for example by introducing the first integrated industries in Portugal). His reconstruction of Lisbon's riverside district in straight and perpendicular streets, methodically organized to facilitate commerce and exchange (for example by assigning to each street a different product or service), can be seen as a direct application of the Enlightenment ideas to governance and urbanism. His urbanistic ideas, also being the first large-scale example of earthquake engineering, became collectively known as Pombaline style, and were implemented throughout the kingdom during his stay in office. His governance was as enlightened as ruthless, see for example the Távora affair.
In literature, the first Enlightenment ideas in Portugal can be traced back to the diplomat, philosopher, and writer António Vieira (1608-1697), who spent a considerable amount of his life in colonial Brazil denouncing discriminations against New Christians and the Indigenous peoples in Brazil. His works remain today as one of the best pieces of Portuguese literature. During the 18th century, enlightened literary movements such as the Arcádia Lusitana (lasting from 1756 until 1776, then replaced by the Nova Arcádia in 1790 until 1794) surfaced in the academic medium, in particular involving former students of the University of Coimbra. A distinct member of this group was the poet Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage.
The ideas of the enlightenment also influenced various economists and anti-colonial intellectuals throughout the Portuguese Empire, such as José de Azeredo Coutinho, José da Silva Lisboa, Cláudio Manoel da Costa, and Tomás de Antônio Gonzaga.
Enlightenment ideas ("oświecenie") emerged late in Poland, as the Polish middle class was weaker and szlachta (nobility) culture (Sarmatism) together with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth political system (Golden Liberty) were in deep crisis. The political system was built on republicanism, but was unable to defend itself against powerful neighbors Russia, Prussia and Austria as they repeatedly sliced off regions until nothing was left of independent Poland. The period of Polish Enlightenment began in the 1730s–1740s and especially in theatre and the arts peaked in the reign of King Stanisław August Poniatowski (second half of the 18th century). Warsaw was a main centre after 1750, with an expansion of schools and educational institutions and the arts patronage held at the Royal Castle. Leaders promoted tolerance and more education. They included King Stanislaw II Poniatowski and reformers Piotr Switkowski, Antoni Poplawski, Josef Niemcewicz and Jósef Pawlinkowski, as well as Baudouin de Cortenay, a Polonized dramatist. Opponents included Florian Jaroszewicz, Gracjan Piotrowski, Karol Wyrwicz and Wojciech Skarszewski.
The movement went into decline with the Third Partition of Poland (1795) – a national tragedy inspiring a short period of sentimental writing – and ended in 1822, replaced by Romanticism.
The Enlightenment has always been contested territory. According to Keith Thomas, its supporters "hail it as the source of everything that is progressive about the modern world. For them, it stands for freedom of thought, rational inquiry, critical thinking, religious tolerance, political liberty, scientific achievement, the pursuit of happiness, and hope for the future." Thomas adds that its detractors accuse it of shallow rationalism, naïve optimism, unrealistic universalism and moral darkness. From the start, conservative and clerical defenders of traditional religion attacked materialism and skepticism as evil forces that encouraged immorality. By 1794, they pointed to the Terror during the French Revolution as confirmation of their predictions. As the Enlightenment was ending, Romantic philosophers argued that excessive dependence on reason was a mistake perpetuated by the Enlightenment because it disregarded the bonds of history, myth, faith, and tradition that were necessary to hold society together.
The term "Enlightenment" emerged in English in the later part of the 19th century, with particular reference to French philosophy, as the equivalent of the French term "Lumières" (used first by Dubos in 1733 and already well established by 1751). From Immanuel Kant's 1784 essay "Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?" (""), the German term became "Aufklärun"g ("aufklären" = to illuminate; "sich aufklären" = to clear up). However, scholars have never agreed on a definition of the Enlightenment, or on its chronological or geographical extent. Terms like "les Lumières" (French), "illuminism"o (Italian), "ilustración" (Spanish) and "Aufklärung" (German) referred to partly overlapping movements. Not until the late nineteenth century did English scholars agree they were talking about "the Enlightenment".
Enlightenment historiography began in the period itself, from what Enlightenment figures said about their work. A dominant element was the intellectual angle they took. D'Alembert's "Preliminary Discourse of l'Encyclopédie" provides a history of the Enlightenment which comprises a chronological list of developments in the realm of knowledge – of which the "Encyclopédie" forms the pinnacle. In 1783, Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn referred to Enlightenment as a process by which man was educated in the use of reason. Immanuel Kant called Enlightenment "man's release from his self-incurred tutelage", tutelage being "man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another". "For Kant, Enlightenment was mankind's final coming of age, the emancipation of the human consciousness from an immature state of ignorance". The German scholar Ernst Cassirer called the Enlightenment "a part and a special phase of that whole intellectual development through which modern philosophic thought gained its characteristic self-confidence and self-consciousness". According to historian Roy Porter, the liberation of the human mind from a dogmatic state of ignorance, is the epitome of what the Age of Enlightenment was trying to capture.
Bertrand Russell saw the Enlightenment as a phase in a progressive development which began in antiquity and that reason and challenges to the established order were constant ideals throughout that time. Russell said that the Enlightenment was ultimately born out of the Protestant reaction against the Catholic counter-reformation and that philosophical views such as affinity for democracy against monarchy originated among 16th-century Protestants to justify their desire to break away from the Catholic Church. Although many of these philosophical ideals were picked up by Catholics, Russell argues that by the 18th century the Enlightenment was the principal manifestation of the schism that began with Martin Luther.
Jonathan Israel rejects the attempts of postmodern and Marxian historians to understand the revolutionary ideas of the period purely as by-products of social and economic transformations. He instead focuses on the history of ideas in the period from 1650 to the end of the 18th century and claims that it was the ideas themselves that caused the change that eventually led to the revolutions of the latter half of the 18th century and the early 19th century. Israel argues that until the 1650s Western civilization "was based on a largely shared core of faith, tradition and authority".
There is little consensus on the precise beginning of the Age of Enlightenment, though several historians and philosophers argue that it was marked by Descartes' 1637 philosophy of "Cogito, ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I Am"), which shifted the epistemological basis from external authority to internal certainty. In France, many cited the publication of Isaac Newton's "Principia Mathematica" (1687). The middle of the 17th century (1650) or the beginning of the 18th century (1701) are often used as epochs. French historians usually place the "Siècle des Lumières" ("Century of Enlightenments") between 1715 and 1789: from the beginning of the reign of Louis XV until the French Revolution. Most scholars use the last years of the century, often choosing the French Revolution of 1789 or the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars (1804–1815) as a convenient point in time with which to date the end of the Enlightenment.
In the 1947 book "Dialectic of Enlightenment", Frankfurt School philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno argued:
Extending Horkheimer and Adorno's argument, intellectual historian Jason Josephson-Storm has argued that any idea of the Age of Enlightenment as a clearly defined period that is separate from the earlier Renaissance and later Romanticism or Counter-Enlightenment constitutes a myth. Josephson-Storm points out that there are vastly different and mutually contradictory periodizations of the Enlightenment depending on nation, field of study, and school of thought; that the term and category of "Enlightenment" referring to the scientific revolution was actually applied after the fact; that the Enlightenment did not see an increase in disenchantment or the dominance of the mechanistic worldview; and that a blur in the early modern ideas of the Humanities and natural sciences makes it hard to circumscribe a Scientific Revolution. Josephson-Storm defends his categorization of the Enlightenment as "myth" by noting the regulative role ideas of a period of Enlightenment and disenchantment play in modern Western culture, such that belief in magic, spiritualism, and even religion appears somewhat taboo in intellectual strata.
In the 1970s, study of the Enlightenment expanded to include the ways Enlightenment ideas spread to European colonies and how they interacted with indigenous cultures and how the Enlightenment took place in formerly unstudied areas such as Italy, Greece, the Balkans, Poland, Hungary and Russia.
Intellectuals such as Robert Darnton and Jürgen Habermas have focused on the social conditions of the Enlightenment. Habermas described the creation of the "bourgeois public sphere" in 18th-century Europe, containing the new venues and modes of communication allowing for rational exchange. Habermas said that the public sphere was bourgeois, egalitarian, rational and independent from the state, making it the ideal venue for intellectuals to critically examine contemporary politics and society, away from the interference of established authority. While the public sphere is generally an integral component of the social study of the Enlightenment, other historians have questioned whether the public sphere had these characteristics.
In contrast to the intellectual historiographical approach of the Enlightenment, which examines the various currents or discourses of intellectual thought within the European context during the 17th and 18th centuries, the cultural (or social) approach examines the changes that occurred in European society and culture. This approach studies the process of changing sociabilities and cultural practices during the Enlightenment.
One of the primary elements of the culture of the Enlightenment was the rise of the public sphere, a "realm of communication marked by new arenas of debate, more open and accessible forms of urban public space and sociability, and an explosion of print culture", in the late 17th century and 18th century. Elements of the public sphere included that it was egalitarian, that it discussed the domain of "common concern," and that argument was founded on reason. Habermas uses the term "common concern" to describe those areas of political/social knowledge and discussion that were previously the exclusive territory of the state and religious authorities, now open to critical examination by the public sphere. The values of this bourgeois public sphere included holding reason to be supreme, considering everything to be open to criticism (the public sphere is critical), and the opposition of secrecy of all sorts.
The creation of the public sphere has been associated with two long-term historical trends: the rise of the modern nation state and the rise of capitalism. The modern nation state, in its consolidation of public power, created by counterpoint a private realm of society independent of the state, which allowed for the public sphere. Capitalism also increased society's autonomy and self-awareness, as well as an increasing need for the exchange of information. As the nascent public sphere expanded, it embraced a large variety of institutions and the most commonly cited were coffee houses and cafés, salons and the literary public sphere, figuratively localized in the Republic of Letters. In France, the creation of the public sphere was helped by the aristocracy's move from the King's palace at Versailles to Paris in about 1720, since their rich spending stimulated the trade in luxuries and artistic creations, especially fine paintings.
The context for the rise of the public sphere was the economic and social change commonly associated with the Industrial Revolution: "Economic expansion, increasing urbanization, rising population and improving communications in comparison to the stagnation of the previous century". Rising efficiency in production techniques and communication lowered the prices of consumer goods and increased the amount and variety of goods available to consumers (including the literature essential to the public sphere). Meanwhile, the colonial experience (most European states had colonial empires in the 18th century) began to expose European society to extremely heterogeneous cultures, leading to the breaking down of "barriers between cultural systems, religious divides, gender differences and geographical areas".
The word "public" implies the highest level of inclusivity – the public sphere by definition should be open to all. However, this sphere was only public to relative degrees. Enlightenment thinkers frequently contrasted their conception of the "public" with that of the people: Condorcet contrasted "opinion" with populace, Marmontel "the opinion of men of letters" with "the opinion of the multitude" and d'Alembert the "truly enlightened public" with "the blind and noisy multitude". Additionally, most institutions of the public sphere excluded both women and the lower classes. Cross-class influences occurred through noble and lower class participation in areas such as the coffeehouses and the Masonic lodges.
Because of the focus on reason over superstition, the Enlightenment cultivated the arts. Emphasis on learning, art and music became more widespread, especially with the growing middle class. Areas of study such as literature, philosophy, science, and the fine arts increasingly explored subject matter to which the general public, in addition to the previously more segregated professionals and patrons, could relate.
As musicians depended more and more on public support, public concerts became increasingly popular and helped supplement performers' and composers' incomes. The concerts also helped them to reach a wider audience. Handel, for example, epitomized this with his highly public musical activities in London. He gained considerable fame there with performances of his operas and oratorios. The music of Haydn and Mozart, with their Viennese Classical styles, are usually regarded as being the most in line with the Enlightenment ideals.
The desire to explore, record and systematize knowledge had a meaningful impact on music publications. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Dictionnaire de musique" (published 1767 in Geneva and 1768 in Paris) was a leading text in the late 18th century. This widely available dictionary gave short definitions of words like genius and taste and was clearly influenced by the Enlightenment movement. Another text influenced by Enlightenment values was Charles Burney's "A General History of Music: From the Earliest Ages to the Present Period" (1776), which was a historical survey and an attempt to rationalize elements in music systematically over time. Recently, musicologists have shown renewed interest in the ideas and consequences of the Enlightenment. For example, Rose Rosengard Subotnik's "Deconstructive Variations" (subtitled "Music and Reason in Western Society") compares Mozart's "Die Zauberflöte" (1791) using the Enlightenment and Romantic perspectives and concludes that the work is "an ideal musical representation of the Enlightenment".
As the economy and the middle class expanded, there was an increasing number of amateur musicians. One manifestation of this involved women, who became more involved with music on a social level. Women were already engaged in professional roles as singers and increased their presence in the amateur performers' scene, especially with keyboard music. Music publishers begin to print music that amateurs could understand and play. The majority of the works that were published were for keyboard, voice and keyboard and chamber ensemble. After these initial genres were popularized, from the mid-century on, amateur groups sang choral music, which then became a new trend for publishers to capitalize on. The increasing study of the fine arts, as well as access to amateur-friendly published works, led to more people becoming interested in reading and discussing music. Music magazines, reviews and critical works which suited amateurs as well as connoisseurs began to surface.
The "philosophes" spent a great deal of energy disseminating their ideas among educated men and women in cosmopolitan cities. They used many venues, some of them quite new.
The term "Republic of Letters" was coined in 1664 by Pierre Bayle in his journal "Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres". Towards the end of the 18th century, the editor of "Histoire de la République des Lettres en France", a literary survey, described the Republic of Letters as being:
The Republic of Letters was the sum of a number of Enlightenment ideals: an egalitarian realm governed by knowledge that could act across political boundaries and rival state power. It was a forum that supported "free public examination of questions regarding religion or legislation". Immanuel Kant considered written communication essential to his conception of the public sphere; once everyone was a part of the "reading public", then society could be said to be enlightened. The people who participated in the Republic of Letters, such as Diderot and Voltaire, are frequently known today as important Enlightenment figures. Indeed, the men who wrote Diderot's "Encyclopédie" arguably formed a microcosm of the larger "republic".
Many women played an essential part in the French Enlightenment, due to the role they played as "salonnières" in Parisian salons, as the contrast to the male "philosophes". The salon was the principal social institution of the republic and "became the civil working spaces of the project of Enlightenment". Women, as salonnières, were "the legitimate governors of [the] potentially unruly discourse" that took place within. While women were marginalized in the public culture of the Old Regime, the French Revolution destroyed the old cultural and economic restraints of patronage and corporatism (guilds), opening French society to female participation, particularly in the literary sphere.
In France, the established men of letters ("gens de lettres") had fused with the elites ("les grands") of French society by the mid-18th century. This led to the creation of an oppositional literary sphere, Grub Street, the domain of a "multitude of versifiers and would-be authors". These men came to London to become authors, only to discover that the literary market simply could not support large numbers of writers, who in any case were very poorly remunerated by the publishing-bookselling guilds.
The writers of Grub Street, the Grub Street Hacks, were left feeling bitter about the relative success of the men of letters and found an outlet for their literature which was typified by the "libelle". Written mostly in the form of pamphlets, the "libelles" "slandered the court, the Church, the aristocracy, the academies, the salons, everything elevated and respectable, including the monarchy itself". "Le Gazetier cuirassé" by Charles Théveneau de Morande was a prototype of the genre. It was Grub Street literature that was most read by the public during the Enlightenment. According to Darnton, more importantly the Grub Street hacks inherited the "revolutionary spirit" once displayed by the "philosophes" and paved the way for the French Revolution by desacralizing figures of political, moral and religious authority in France.
The increased consumption of reading materials of all sorts was one of the key features of the "social" Enlightenment. Developments in the Industrial Revolution allowed consumer goods to be produced in greater quantities at lower prices, encouraging the spread of books, pamphlets, newspapers and journals – "media of the transmission of ideas and attitudes". Commercial development likewise increased the demand for information, along with rising populations and increased urbanisation. However, demand for reading material extended outside of the realm of the commercial and outside the realm of the upper and middle classes, as evidenced by the Bibliothèque Bleue. Literacy rates are difficult to gauge, but in France the rates doubled over the course of the 18th century. Reflecting the decreasing influence of religion, the number of books about science and art published in Paris doubled from 1720 to 1780, while the number of books about religion dropped to just one-tenth of the total.
Reading underwent serious changes in the 18th century. In particular, Rolf Engelsing has argued for the existence of a "Reading Revolution". Until 1750, reading was done intensively: people tended to own a small number of books and read them repeatedly, often to small audience. After 1750, people began to read "extensively", finding as many books as they could, increasingly reading them alone. This is supported by increasing literacy rates, particularly among women.
The vast majority of the reading public could not afford to own a private library and while most of the state-run "universal libraries" set up in the 17th and 18th centuries were open to the public, they were not the only sources of reading material. On one end of the spectrum was the "Bibliothèque Bleue", a collection of cheaply produced books published in Troyes, France. Intended for a largely rural and semi-literate audience these books included almanacs, retellings of medieval romances and condensed versions of popular novels, among other things. While some historians have argued against the Enlightenment's penetration into the lower classes, the "Bibliothèque Bleue" represents at least a desire to participate in Enlightenment sociability. Moving up the classes, a variety of institutions offered readers access to material without needing to buy anything. Libraries that lent out their material for a small price started to appear and occasionally bookstores would offer a small lending library to their patrons. Coffee houses commonly offered books, journals and sometimes even popular novels to their customers. "The Tatler" and "The Spectator", two influential periodicals sold from 1709 to 1714, were closely associated with coffee house culture in London, being both read and produced in various establishments in the city. This is an example of the triple or even quadruple function of the coffee house: reading material was often obtained, read, discussed and even produced on the premises.
It is extremely difficult to determine what people actually read during the Enlightenment. For example, examining the catalogs of private libraries gives an image skewed in favor of the classes wealthy enough to afford libraries and also ignores censored works unlikely to be publicly acknowledged. For this reason, a study of publishing would be much more fruitful for discerning reading habits.
Across continental Europe, but in France especially, booksellers and publishers had to negotiate censorship laws of varying strictness. For example, the "Encyclopédie" narrowly escaped seizure and had to be saved by Malesherbes, the man in charge of the French censor. Indeed, many publishing companies were conveniently located outside France so as to avoid overzealous French censors. They would smuggle their merchandise across the border, where it would then be transported to clandestine booksellers or small-time peddlers. The records of clandestine booksellers may give a better representation of what literate Frenchmen might have truly read, since their clandestine nature provided a less restrictive product choice. In one case, political books were the most popular category, primarily libels and pamphlets. Readers were more interested in sensationalist stories about criminals and political corruption than they were in political theory itself. The second most popular category, "general works" (those books "that did not have a dominant motif and that contained something to offend almost everyone in authority"), demonstrated a high demand for generally low-brow subversive literature. However, these works never became part of literary canon and are largely forgotten today as a result.
A healthy, legal publishing industry existed throughout Europe, although established publishers and book sellers occasionally ran afoul of the law. For example, the "Encyclopédie" condemned not only by the King, but also by Clement XII, nevertheless found its way into print with the help of the aforementioned Malesherbes and creative use of French censorship law. However, many works were sold without running into any legal trouble at all. Borrowing records from libraries in England, Germany, and North America indicate that more than 70 percent of books borrowed were novels. Less than 1 percent of the books were of a religious nature, indicating the general trend of declining religiosity.
A genre that greatly rose in importance was that of scientific literature. Natural history in particular became increasingly popular among the upper classes. Works of natural history include René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur's "Histoire naturelle des insectes" and Jacques Gautier d'Agoty's "La Myologie complète, ou description de tous les muscles du corps humain" (1746). Outside ancien régime France, natural history was an important part of medicine and industry, encompassing the fields of botany, zoology, meteorology, hydrology and mineralogy. Students in Enlightenment universities and academies were taught these subjects to prepare them for careers as diverse as medicine and theology. As shown by Matthew Daniel Eddy, natural history in this context was a very middle class pursuit and operated as a fertile trading zone for the interdisciplinary exchange of diverse scientific ideas.
The target audience of natural history was French polite society, evidenced more by the specific discourse of the genre than by the generally high prices of its works. Naturalists catered to polite society's desire for erudition – many texts had an explicit instructive purpose. However, natural history was often a political affair. As Emma Spary writes, the classifications used by naturalists "slipped between the natural world and the social ... to establish not only the expertise of the naturalists over the natural, but also the dominance of the natural over the social". The idea of taste ("le goût") was a social indicator: to truly be able to categorize nature, one had to have the proper taste, an ability of discretion shared by all members of polite society. In this way natural history spread many of the scientific developments of the time, but also provided a new source of legitimacy for the dominant class. From this basis, naturalists could then develop their own social ideals based on their scientific works.
The first scientific and literary journals were established during the Enlightenment. The first journal, the Parisian "Journal des Sçavans", appeared in 1665. However, it was not until 1682 that periodicals began to be more widely produced. French and Latin were the dominant languages of publication, but there was also a steady demand for material in German and Dutch. There was generally low demand for English publications on the Continent, which was echoed by England's similar lack of desire for French works. Languages commanding less of an international market—such as Danish, Spanish and Portuguese—found journal success more difficult and more often than not a more international language was used instead. French slowly took over Latin's status as the "lingua franca" of learned circles. This in turn gave precedence to the publishing industry in Holland, where the vast majority of these French language periodicals were produced.
Jonathan Israel called the journals the most influential cultural innovation of European intellectual culture. They shifted the attention of the "cultivated public" away from established authorities to novelty and innovation and instead promoted the "enlightened" ideals of toleration and intellectual objectivity. Being a source of knowledge derived from science and reason, they were an implicit critique of existing notions of universal truth monopolized by monarchies, parliaments and religious authorities. They also advanced Christian enlightenment that upheld "the legitimacy of God-ordained authority"—the Bible—in which there had to be agreement between the biblical and natural theories.
Although the existence of dictionaries and encyclopedias spanned into ancient times, the texts changed from simply defining words in a long running list to far more detailed discussions of those words in 18th-century encyclopedic dictionaries. The works were part of an Enlightenment movement to systematize knowledge and provide education to a wider audience than the elite. As the 18th century progressed, the content of encyclopedias also changed according to readers' tastes. Volumes tended to focus more strongly on secular affairs, particularly science and technology, rather than matters of theology.
Along with secular matters, readers also favoured an alphabetical ordering scheme over cumbersome works arranged along thematic lines. Commenting on alphabetization, the historian Charles Porset has said that "as the zero degree of taxonomy, alphabetical order authorizes all reading strategies; in this respect it could be considered an emblem of the Enlightenment". For Porset, the avoidance of thematic and hierarchical systems thus allows free interpretation of the works and becomes an example of egalitarianism. Encyclopedias and dictionaries also became more popular during the Age of Enlightenment as the number of educated consumers who could afford such texts began to multiply. In the later half of the 18th century, the number of dictionaries and encyclopedias published by decade increased from 63 between 1760 and 1769 to approximately 148 in the decade proceeding the French Revolution (1780–1789). Along with growth in numbers, dictionaries and encyclopedias also grew in length, often having multiple print runs that sometimes included in supplemented editions.
The first technical dictionary was drafted by John Harris and entitled "Lexicon Technicum: Or, An Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences". Harris' book avoided theological and biographical entries and instead it concentrated on science and technology. Published in 1704, the "Lexicon technicum" was the first book to be written in English that took a methodical approach to describing mathematics and commercial arithmetic along with the physical sciences and navigation. Other technical dictionaries followed Harris' model, including Ephraim Chambers' "Cyclopaedia" (1728), which included five editions and was a substantially larger work than Harris'. The folio edition of the work even included foldout engravings. The "Cyclopaedia" emphasized Newtonian theories, Lockean philosophy and contained thorough examinations of technologies, such as engraving, brewing and dyeing. In Germany, practical reference works intended for the uneducated majority became popular in the 18th century. The "Marperger Curieuses Natur-, Kunst-, Berg-, Gewerkund Handlungs-Lexicon" (1712) explained terms that usefully described the trades and scientific and commercial education. "Jablonksi Allgemeines Lexicon" (1721) was better known than the "Handlungs-Lexicon" and underscored technical subjects rather than scientific theory. For example, over five columns of text were dedicated to wine while geometry and logic were allocated only twenty-two and seventeen lines, respectively. The first edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica" (1771) was modelled along the same lines as the German lexicons.
However, the prime example of reference works that systematized scientific knowledge in the age of Enlightenment were universal encyclopedias rather than technical dictionaries. It was the goal of universal encyclopedias to record all human knowledge in a comprehensive reference work. The most well-known of these works is Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert's "Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers". The work, which began publication in 1751, was composed of thirty-five volumes and over 71 000 separate entries. A great number of the entries were dedicated to describing the sciences and crafts in detail and provided intellectuals across Europe with a high-quality survey of human knowledge. In d'Alembert's "Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot", the work's goal to record the extent of human knowledge in the arts and sciences is outlined:
The massive work was arranged according to a "tree of knowledge". The tree reflected the marked division between the arts and sciences, which was largely a result of the rise of empiricism. Both areas of knowledge were united by philosophy, or the trunk of the tree of knowledge. The Enlightenment's desacrilization of religion was pronounced in the tree's design, particularly where theology accounted for a peripheral branch, with black magic as a close neighbour. As the "Encyclopédie" gained popularity, it was published in quarto and octavo editions after 1777. The quarto and octavo editions were much less expensive than previous editions, making the "Encyclopédie" more accessible to the non-elite. Robert Darnton estimates that there were approximately 25 000 copies of the "Encyclopédie" in circulation throughout France and Europe before the French Revolution. The extensive, yet affordable encyclopedia came to represent the transmission of Enlightenment and scientific education to an expanding audience.
One of the most important developments that the Enlightenment era brought to the discipline of science was its popularization. An increasingly literate population seeking knowledge and education in both the arts and the sciences drove the expansion of print culture and the dissemination of scientific learning. The new literate population was due to a high rise in the availability of food. This enabled many people to rise out of poverty, and instead of paying more for food, they had money for education. Popularization was generally part of an overarching Enlightenment ideal that endeavoured "to make information available to the greatest number of people". As public interest in natural philosophy grew during the 18th century, public lecture courses and the publication of popular texts opened up new roads to money and fame for amateurs and scientists who remained on the periphery of universities and academies. More formal works included explanations of scientific theories for individuals lacking the educational background to comprehend the original scientific text. Sir Isaac Newton's celebrated "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica" was published in Latin and remained inaccessible to readers without education in the classics until Enlightenment writers began to translate and analyze the text in the vernacular.
The first significant work that expressed scientific theory and knowledge expressly for the laity, in the vernacular and with the entertainment of readers in mind, was Bernard de Fontenelle's "Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds" (1686). The book was produced specifically for women with an interest in scientific writing and inspired a variety of similar works. These popular works were written in a discursive style, which was laid out much more clearly for the reader than the complicated articles, treatises and books published by the academies and scientists. Charles Leadbetter's "Astronomy" (1727) was advertised as "a Work entirely New" that would include "short and easie Rules and Astronomical Tables". The first French introduction to Newtonianism and the "Principia" was "Eléments de la philosophie de Newton", published by Voltaire in 1738. Émilie du Châtelet's translation of the "Principia", published after her death in 1756, also helped to spread Newton's theories beyond scientific academies and the university. Writing for a growing female audience, Francesco Algarotti published "Il Newtonianism per le dame", which was a tremendously popular work and was translated from Italian into English by Elizabeth Carter. A similar introduction to Newtonianism for women was produced by Henry Pemberton. His "A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy" was published by subscription. Extant records of subscribers show that women from a wide range of social standings purchased the book, indicating the growing number of scientifically inclined female readers among the middling class. During the Enlightenment, women also began producing popular scientific works themselves. Sarah Trimmer wrote a successful natural history textbook for children titled "The Easy Introduction to the Knowledge of Nature" (1782), which was published for many years after in eleven editions.
Most work on the Enlightenment emphasizes the ideals discussed by intellectuals, rather than the actual state of education at the time. Leading educational theorists like England's John Locke and Switzerland's Jean Jacques Rousseau both emphasized the importance of shaping young minds early. By the late Enlightenment, there was a rising demand for a more universal approach to education, particularly after the American and French Revolutions.
The predominant educational psychology from the 1750s onward, especially in northern European countries was associationism, the notion that the mind associates or dissociates ideas through repeated routines. In addition to being conducive to Enlightenment ideologies of liberty, self-determination and personal responsibility, it offered a practical theory of the mind that allowed teachers to transform longstanding forms of print and manuscript culture into effective graphic tools of learning for the lower and middle orders of society. Children were taught to memorize facts through oral and graphic methods that originated during the Renaissance.
Many of the leading universities associated with Enlightenment progressive principles were located in northern Europe, with the most renowned being the universities of Leiden, Göttingen, Halle, Montpellier, Uppsala and Edinburgh. These universities, especially Edinburgh, produced professors whose ideas had a significant impact on Britain's North American colonies and later the American Republic. Within the natural sciences, Edinburgh's medical school also led the way in chemistry, anatomy and pharmacology. In other parts of Europe, the universities and schools of France and most of Europe were bastions of traditionalism and were not hospitable to the Enlightenment. In France, the major exception was the medical university at Montpellier.
The history of Academies in France during the Enlightenment begins with the Academy of Science, founded in 1635 in Paris. It was closely tied to the French state, acting as an extension of a government seriously lacking in scientists. It helped promote and organize new disciplines and it trained new scientists. It also contributed to the enhancement of scientists' social status, considering them to be the "most useful of all citizens". Academies demonstrate the rising interest in science along with its increasing secularization, as evidenced by the small number of clerics who were members (13 percent). The presence of the French academies in the public sphere cannot be attributed to their membership, as although the majority of their members were bourgeois, the exclusive institution was only open to elite Parisian scholars. They perceived themselves as "interpreters of the sciences for the people". For example, it was with this in mind that academicians took it upon themselves to disprove the popular pseudo-science of mesmerism.
The strongest contribution of the French Academies to the public sphere comes from the "concours académiques" (roughly translated as "academic contests") they sponsored throughout France. These academic contests were perhaps the most public of any institution during the Enlightenment. The practice of contests dated back to the Middle Ages and was revived in the mid-17th century. The subject matter had previously been generally religious and/or monarchical, featuring essays, poetry and painting. However, by roughly 1725 this subject matter had radically expanded and diversified, including "royal propaganda, philosophical battles, and critical ruminations on the social and political institutions of the Old Regime". Topics of public controversy were also discussed such as the theories of Newton and Descartes, the slave trade, women's education and justice in France.
More importantly, the contests were open to all and the enforced anonymity of each submission guaranteed that neither gender nor social rank would determine the judging. Indeed, although the "vast majority" of participants belonged to the wealthier strata of society ("the liberal arts, the clergy, the judiciary and the medical profession"), there were some cases of the popular classes submitting essays and even winning. Similarly, a significant number of women participated—and won—the competitions. Of a total of 2,300 prize competitions offered in France, women won 49—perhaps a small number by modern standards, but very significant in an age in which most women did not have any academic training. Indeed, the majority of the winning entries were for poetry competitions, a genre commonly stressed in women's education.
In England, the Royal Society of London also played a significant role in the public sphere and the spread of Enlightenment ideas. It was founded by a group of independent scientists and given a royal charter in 1662. The Society played a large role in spreading Robert Boyle's experimental philosophy around Europe and acted as a clearinghouse for intellectual correspondence and exchange. Boyle was "a founder of the experimental world in which scientists now live and operate" and his method based knowledge on experimentation, which had to be witnessed to provide proper empirical legitimacy. This is where the Royal Society came into play: witnessing had to be a "collective act" and the Royal Society's assembly rooms were ideal locations for relatively public demonstrations. However, not just any witness was considered to be credible: "Oxford professors were accounted more reliable witnesses than Oxfordshire peasants". Two factors were taken into account: a witness's knowledge in the area and a witness's "moral constitution". In other words, only civil society were considered for Boyle's public.
It was the place in which philosophes got reunited and talked about old, actual or new ideas. Salons were the place where intellectual and enlightened ideas were built.
Coffeehouses were especially important to the spread of knowledge during the Enlightenment because they created a unique environment in which people from many different walks of life gathered and shared ideas. They were frequently criticized by nobles who feared the possibility of an environment in which class and its accompanying titles and privileges were disregarded. Such an environment was especially intimidating to monarchs who derived much of their power from the disparity between classes of people. If classes were to join together under the influence of Enlightenment thinking, they might recognize the all-encompassing oppression and abuses of their monarchs and because of their size might be able to carry out successful revolts. Monarchs also resented the idea of their subjects convening as one to discuss political matters, especially those concerning foreign affairs—rulers thought political affairs to be their business only, a result of their supposed divine right to rule.
Coffeehouses represent a turning point in history during which people discovered that they could have enjoyable social lives within their communities. Coffeeshops became homes away from home for many who sought, for the first time, to engage in discourse with their neighbors and discuss intriguing and thought-provoking matters, especially those regarding philosophy to politics. Coffeehouses were essential to the Enlightenment, for they were centers of free-thinking and self-discovery. Although many coffeehouse patrons were scholars, a great deal were not. Coffeehouses attracted a diverse set of people, including not only the educated wealthy but also members of the bourgeoisie and the lower class. While it may seem positive that patrons, being doctors, lawyers, merchants, etc. represented almost all classes, the coffeeshop environment sparked fear in those who sought to preserve class distinction. One of the most popular critiques of the coffeehouse claimed that it "allowed promiscuous association among people from different rungs of the social ladder, from the artisan to the aristocrat" and was therefore compared to Noah's Ark, receiving all types of animals, clean or unclean. This unique culture served as a catalyst for journalism when Joseph Addison and Richard Steele recognized its potential as an audience. Together, Steele and Addison published "The Spectator (1711)", a daily publication which aimed, through fictional narrator Mr. Spectator, both to entertain and to provoke discussion regarding serious philosophical matters.
The first English coffeehouse opened in Oxford in 1650. Brian Cowan said that Oxford coffeehouses developed into "penny universities", offering a locus of learning that was less formal than structured institutions. These penny universities occupied a significant position in Oxford academic life, as they were frequented by those consequently referred to as the "virtuosi", who conducted their research on some of the resulting premises. According to Cowan, "the coffeehouse was a place for like-minded scholars to congregate, to read, as well as learn from and to debate with each other, but was emphatically not a university institution, and the discourse there was of a far different order than any university tutorial".
The Café Procope was established in Paris in 1686 and by the 1720s there were around 400 cafés in the city. The Café Procope in particular became a center of Enlightenment, welcoming such celebrities as Voltaire and Rousseau. The Café Procope was where Diderot and D'Alembert decided to create the "Encyclopédie". The cafés were one of the various "nerve centers" for "bruits publics", public noise or rumour. These "bruits" were allegedly a much better source of information than were the actual newspapers available at the time.
The debating societies are an example of the public sphere during the Enlightenment. Their origins include:
In the late 1770s, popular debating societies began to move into more "genteel" rooms, a change which helped establish a new standard of sociability. The backdrop to these developments was "an explosion of interest in the theory and practice of public elocution". The debating societies were commercial enterprises that responded to this demand, sometimes very successfully. Some societies welcomed from 800 to 1,200 spectators a night.
The debating societies discussed an extremely wide range of topics. Before the Enlightenment, most intellectual debates revolved around "confessional" – that is, Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed (Calvinist) or Anglican issues and the main aim of these debates was to establish which bloc of faith ought to have the "monopoly of truth and a God-given title to authority". After this date, everything thus previously rooted in tradition was questioned and often replaced by new concepts in the light of philosophical reason. After the second half of the 17th century and during the 18th century, a "general process of rationalization and secularization set in" and confessional disputes were reduced to a secondary status in favor of the "escalating contest between faith and incredulity".
In addition to debates on religion, societies discussed issues such as politics and the role of women. However, it is important to note that the critical subject matter of these debates did not necessarily translate into opposition to the government. In other words, the results of the debate quite frequently upheld the "status quo". From a historical standpoint, one of the most important features of the debating society was their openness to the public, as women attended and even participated in almost every debating society, which were likewise open to all classes providing they could pay the entrance fee. Once inside, spectators were able to participate in a largely egalitarian form of sociability that helped spread Enlightenment ideas.
Historians have long debated the extent to which the secret network of Freemasonry was a main factor in the Enlightenment. The leaders of the Enlightenment included Freemasons such as Diderot, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Lessing, Pope, Horace Walpole, Sir Robert Walpole, Mozart, Goethe, Frederick the Great, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. Norman Davies said that Freemasonry was a powerful force on behalf of liberalism in Europe from about 1700 to the twentieth century. It expanded rapidly during the Age of Enlightenment, reaching practically every country in Europe. It was especially attractive to powerful aristocrats and politicians as well as intellectuals, artists and political activists.
During the Age of Enlightenment, Freemasons comprised an international network of like-minded men, often meeting in secret in ritualistic programs at their lodges. They promoted the ideals of the Enlightenment and helped diffuse these values across Britain and France and other places. Freemasonry as a systematic creed with its own myths, values and set of rituals originated in Scotland around 1600 and spread first to England and then across the Continent in the eighteenth century. They fostered new codes of conduct—including a communal understanding of liberty and equality inherited from guild sociability—"liberty, fraternity and equality". Scottish soldiers and Jacobite Scots brought to the Continent ideals of fraternity which reflected not the local system of Scottish customs but the institutions and ideals originating in the English Revolution against royal absolutism. Freemasonry was particularly prevalent in France—by 1789, there were perhaps as many as 100,000 French Masons, making Freemasonry the most popular of all Enlightenment associations. The Freemasons displayed a passion for secrecy and created new degrees and ceremonies. Similar societies, partially imitating Freemasonry, emerged in France, Germany, Sweden and Russia. One example was the Illuminati founded in Bavaria in 1776, which was copied after the Freemasons, but was never part of the movement. The Illuminati was an overtly political group, which most Masonic lodges decidedly were not.
Masonic lodges created a private model for public affairs. They "reconstituted the polity and established a constitutional form of self-government, complete with constitutions and laws, elections and representatives". In other words, the micro-society set up within the lodges constituted a normative model for society as a whole. This was especially true on the continent: when the first lodges began to appear in the 1730s, their embodiment of British values was often seen as threatening by state authorities. For example, the Parisian lodge that met in the mid 1720s was composed of English Jacobite exiles. Furthermore, freemasons all across Europe explicitly linked themselves to the Enlightenment as a whole. For example, in French lodges the line "As the means to be enlightened I search for the enlightened" was a part of their initiation rites. British lodges assigned themselves the duty to "initiate the unenlightened". This did not necessarily link lodges to the irreligious, but neither did this exclude them from the occasional heresy. In fact, many lodges praised the Grand Architect, the masonic terminology for the deistic divine being who created a scientifically ordered universe.
German historian Reinhart Koselleck claimed: "On the Continent there were two social structures that left a decisive imprint on the Age of Enlightenment: the Republic of Letters and the Masonic lodges". Scottish professor Thomas Munck argues that "although the Masons did promote international and cross-social contacts which were essentially non-religious and broadly in agreement with enlightened values, they can hardly be described as a major radical or reformist network in their own right". Many of the Masons values seemed to greatly appeal to Enlightenment values and thinkers. Diderot discusses the link between Freemason ideals and the enlightenment in D'Alembert's Dream, exploring masonry as a way of spreading enlightenment beliefs. Historian Margaret Jacob stresses the importance of the Masons in indirectly inspiring enlightened political thought. On the negative side, Daniel Roche contests claims that Masonry promoted egalitarianism and he argues that the lodges only attracted men of similar social backgrounds. The presence of noble women in the French "lodges of adoption" that formed in the 1780s was largely due to the close ties shared between these lodges and aristocratic society.
The major opponent of Freemasonry was the Roman Catholic Church so that in countries with a large Catholic element, such as France, Italy, Spain and Mexico, much of the ferocity of the political battles involve the confrontation between what Davies calls the reactionary Church and enlightened Freemasonry. Even in France, Masons did not act as a group. American historians, while noting that Benjamin Franklin and George Washington were indeed active Masons, have downplayed the importance of Freemasonry in causing the American Revolution because the Masonic order was non-political and included both Patriots and their enemy the Loyalists.
The art produced during the Enlightenment was about a search for morality that was absent from previous art. At the same time, the Classical art of Greece and Rome became interesting to people again, since archaeological teams discovered Pompeii and Herculaneum. People took inspiration from it and revived the classical art into neo-classical art. This can be especially seen in early American art, where, throughout their art and architecture, they used arches, goddesses, and other classical architectural designs.
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Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Lordship salvation controversy
The "lordship salvation" controversy (also "Lordship Controversy") is a theological dispute regarding key soteriological questions within Evangelical Christianity, involving some non-denominational and Evangelical churches in North America at least since the 1980s. The dispute spawned several books, pamphlets, and conferences. According to one website advocating Lordship Salvation, "the doctrine of Lordship salvation teaches that submitting to Christ as Lord goes hand-in-hand with trusting in Christ as Savior. Lordship salvation is the opposite of what is sometimes called easy-believism or the teaching that salvation comes through an acknowledgement of a certain set of facts." Another website critical of it, defines it similarly, however: "As defined by its own advocates, Lordship Salvation could more properly be called "Commitment Salvation," "Surrender Salvation," "Slaveship Salvation," "Servantship Salvation," or "Submission Salvation" since in actuality the debate is not over the Lordship of Christ, but the response of a person to the gospel and the conditions which must be met for salvation."
"By grace alone" and "through faith alone" are two of the five solae of the Protestant Reformation. Many Protestants affirm these phrases as distinctively Protestant, whereas the Lordship Salvation controversy concerns what grace and faith must include, and what they must exclude, for a person to "have salvation" in the evangelical Protestant sense. The language of what must be included permeates the whole debate and is often transferred from the meaning of the concepts to the status of someone's experience; thus, "As a part of his saving work, God will produce repentance, faith, sanctification, yieldedness, obedience, and ultimately glorification. Since he is not dependent on human effort in producing these elements, an experience that lacks any of them cannot be the saving work of God."
Related to the issue of what must be included or not, the debate also looks at conversion using language which refers to concepts on "accepting Christ as ..." This is how the term Lordship became associated with the debate, by discussions of various ways to accept Christ; sometimes "accepting Christ as Savior" or "accepting Christ as Lord" were distinguished, and a debate ensued. This is reflected in various modern translations, taking a cue from Colossians 2:6 in the Good News Bible, which has "accept" for what is to be done about Christ. In the New International Version of the same verse, the word "receive" is used. Thus, a common question was "do (or did) you accept (or receive) Christ as Lord?" The controversy became defined by the question of whether or not this part is included.
Given the accepting-as phraseology of the popular GNB of Colossians 2:6, and the receiving-as phraseology in the widely popular NIV of Colossians 2:6, an exegesis based on the NIV, for example, offered an explanation of what "manner" of receiving this was. John F. MacArthur Jr, in turn, taught that such a receiving was both non-passive toward Christ and actively submissive to Christ, offering this as a way of understanding the English idiom, of what receiving a person "as" Lord, really means.
Yet the "as Lord" language was not the only metaphor of the controversy. In 1959, Eternity Magazine featured a twin set of articles which ignited the debate and the use of the idiom from the titles: what Christ must "be." This asked what Christ must "be" to the one accepting Christ: must he "be Lord" in order to "be Savior," both, etc. Ten years later (1969), Charles Ryrie used this idiom in a chapter title, verbatim, quoting exactly the title of the articles in Eternity Magazine, September, 1959. This idiom, what Christ must "be", was used to derive and discuss the implications for salvation associated with what Christ is. One author, Arthur W. Pink (1886–1952), had already associated Christ's Lordship with surrendering to it as a sine qua non at the initial point. Therefore, the controversy dates back to before 1959, to at least before 1953 in the case of Pink, and shows the subject's connection to evangelism. Baptist theologian John Gill in his 18th-century work in exposition of Colossians 2:6 deals with an emphasis on Lordship.
In 1988, John F. MacArthur Jr published the first edition of "The Gospel According to Jesus". By defining salvation by what it produces and what salvation will not fail to produce, (not only glorification, but good works, repentance, faith, sanctification, yieldedness, and obedience) the book not only heavily spread the extent of the debate, but the debate expanded in scope, from questions about conversion issues, to questions about what is also necessary, and who it is who does what, throughout the Christian life. Using surrender language in the gospel became another issue.
Free Grace theology became an umbrella term for a variety of opposing or contrasting positions, sometimes arguing that Lordship salvation was legalistic, sometimes more opposed to it than that, for example, faulting it for not being specific about what degree, quality, and current visibility there must be to the necessary obedience. The controversy continues to be debated not only in discussions about all the gospels, but also in discussions about almost any of the Pauline epistles and the relationship of Paul the Apostle and Judaism, and the rest of the New Testament, as well as much material about salvation in topical studies, and in systematic theology.
Figures of the Reformed tradition and their historical dispute with Arminian Protestants over a person's participatory role in salvation, a debate which many Calvinists identify with the original sin issue Augustine wrote of in his polemics against the British monk Pelagius, gave Reformed scholars and church leaders an intellectual tradition from which to oppose what they considered a false gospel.
An early discussion about the initial conversion aspect of the Lordship salvation issue was in the 1948 systematic theology of Lewis Sperry Chafer, using (and criticizing) the phrase "believe and surrender to God". AW Pink (d. 1952), also used this language, but anticipated (and advocated) key terms in the later debate, speaking of both 'surrender' and 'Lordship'. Connection of the word "Lordship" and salvation existed in a Ph.D dissertation at Wheaton College in 1958. Therefore, the use of the term 'Lordship salvation' came before the first edition of MacArthur's 1988 book, possibly after the 1959 debate in "Eternity" magazine, Sep 1959, between Presbyterian Everett F. Harrison, a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, and John Stott, an Anglican theologian.
The controversy moved to the forefront of the evangelical world in the late 1980s when John F. MacArthur argued that the one-third of all Americans who claimed to be born again according to a 1980 Gallup poll reflected millions who are deceived, possessing a false, soul-destroying assurance.
There was lots of published response, particularly from seminary faculty. For example, an early review of the 1988 edition of "The Gospel According to Jesus" appeared in a Jan–Mar 1989 "Bibliotheca Sacra" article by Darrell L Bock. Also in 1989, Charles Ryrie published "So Great Salvation" and Zane C. Hodges published "Absolutely Free! A Biblical Reply to Lordship Salvation". The two 1989 book publications confined the direct debate largely to their authors' footnotes, but the Bock article, in addition to specifically giving points of disagreement and agreement with MacArthur's book, added definitional discussion of terms such as "disciple" and "Lordship," and introduced the consideration of rhetorical devices such as overstatement, into the discussion. However, the debate was on. Since both MacArthur's and Hodges' books were published by Zondervan, some bookstores displayed them together under the banner, "Which One is Right?".
Yet very soon on their heels, in 1992 before the revised edition of MacArthur's work, an anthology of responses from various faculty of reformed seminaries appeared on the subject and include criticisms of both MacArthur and Hodges, especially in Michael Horton's contribution, "Don't Judge a Book by its Cover."
MacArthur later published "Faith Works" (1993) and Hodges published the second edition of his earlier title, "The Gospel Under Siege", in 1992. Two ministries, The Grace Evangelical Society, founded in 1986, and the Free Grace Alliance, founded in 2004, arose with the purpose of advancing free grace soteriological views which opposed some concepts introduced by proponents of Lordship salvation. Each group contributed numerous books, journal articles and pamphlets detailing the problems of Lordship salvation or its alternatives.
"Free Grace" became the popular term for the opposing camp in the Lordship salvation debate, and for the ideas against Lordship salvation by authors such as Charles Ryrie, Chuck Swindoll, Charles Stanley, Norman Geisler, and Bill Bright. While free grace was traditionally largely affirmed in Protestantism, and the "Free Grace view" affirms good works are a proper response to salvation, the Free Grace view argues they should not be taken as the only or sine qua non evidence of one's salvation or righteous standing before God.
Proponents of Lordship salvation (Calvinists), on the other hand, criticize opponents as advocating an acquiescence in sin by allowing greatly sinful behavior to exist together with the same assurance of salvation as someone who does not currently allow greatly sinful behavior, but is to some degree subduing sin.
| 2475810 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2475810 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Barometer question
The barometer question is an example of an incorrectly designed examination question demonstrating functional fixedness that causes a moral dilemma for the examiner. In its classic form, popularized by American test designer professor Alexander Calandra (1911–2006), the question asked the student to "show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer." The examiner was confident that there was one, and only one, correct answer, which is by calculating the difference in pressure at the top and bottom of the building. Contrary to the examiner's expectations, the student responded with a series of completely different answers. These answers were also correct, yet none of them proved the student's competence in the specific academic field being tested.
The barometer question achieved the status of an urban legend; according to an internet meme, the question was asked at the University of Copenhagen and the student was Niels Bohr. The Kaplan, Inc. ACT preparation textbook describes it as an "MIT legend", and an early form is found in a 1958 American humor book. However, Calandra presented the incident as a real-life, first-person experience that occurred during the Sputnik crisis. Calandra's essay, "Angels on a Pin", was published in 1959 in "Pride", a magazine of the American College Public Relations Association. It was reprinted in "Current Science" in 1964, in "Saturday Review" in 1968 and included in the 1969 edition of Calandra's "The Teaching of Elementary Science and Mathematics". Calandra's essay became a subject of academic discussion. It was frequently reprinted since 1970, making its way into books on subjects ranging from teaching, writing skills, workplace counseling and investment in real estate to chemical industry, computer programming and integrated circuit design.
A colleague of Calandra posed the barometer question to a student, expecting the correct answer: "the height of the building can be estimated in proportion to the difference between the barometer readings at the bottom and at the top of the building". The student provided a different, and also correct answer: "Take the barometer to the top of the building. Attach a long rope to it, lower the barometer to the street, then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building."
The examiner and Calandra, who was called to advise on the case, faced a moral dilemma. According to the format of the exam, a correct answer deserved a full credit. But issuing a full credit would have violated academic standards by rewarding a student who had not demonstrated competence in the academic field that had been tested (physics). Neither of two available options (pass or fail) was morally acceptable.
Calandra asked the student the same question, and received a wealth of different answers including dropping the barometer from the top of the building and timing its fall with a stopwatch; trading the barometer to the building's superintendent in return for the information wanted; creating two small pendulums and measuring the variation of g from the ground to the top of the building; creating a pendulum as high as the building and measuring its period; and comparing the length of the shadows of the building and the barometer. The student admitted that he knew the expected "correct" answer, but was fed up with the professor's "teaching him how to think ... rather than teaching him the structure of the subject."
According to Snopes.com, more recent (1999 and 1988) versions identify the problem as a question in "a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen" and the student was Niels Bohr, and includes the following answers:
Professor of physics Mark Silverman used what he called "The Barometer-Story formula" precisely for explaining the subject of pressure and recommended it to physics teachers. Silverman called Calandra's story "a delightful essay that I habitually read to my class whenever we study fluids ... the essay is short, hilarious and satisfying (at least to me and my class)."
Financial advisor Robert G. Allen presented Calandra's essay to illustrate the process and role of creativity in finance. "Creativity is born when you have a problem to solve. And as you can see from this story ["Angels on a Pin"] there are many ways of solving a problem. Creativity is the art of looking for solutions that are out of the ordinary, different, unorthodox."
O'Meara used the barometer question to illustrate the art of steering students' activities to a desired outcome: "if the question is not aligned [with the desired learning outcome] then the problem becomes an exercise of problem solving for its own value." The teacher can steer the students either through careful design of the questions (this rules out "barometer questions"), or through guiding the students to the desired choices. In case of the original barometer question, the examiner may explicitly say that the problem has more than one solution, insist on applying the laws of physics, or give them the "ending point" of the solution: "How did I discover that the building was 410 feet in height with only a barometer?"
Herson used the Calandra account as an illustration of the difference between academic tests and assessment in education. Tests, even the ones designed for reliability and validity, are useful, but they are not sufficient in real-world education.
Sanders interpreted Calandra's story as a conflict between perfection and optimal solutions: "We struggle to determine a 'best' answer, when a simple call to a building superintendent (the resource man) would quickly provide adequate information."
| 2476993 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2476993 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Forced molting
Forced molting, sometimes known as induced molting, is the practice by some poultry industries of artificially provoking a flock to molt simultaneously, typically by withdrawing food for 7–14 days and sometimes also withdrawing water for an extended period. Forced molting is usually implemented when egg-production is naturally decreasing toward the end of the first egg-laying phase. During the forced molt, the birds cease producing eggs for at least two weeks, which allows the bird's reproductive tracts to regress and rejuvenate. After the molt, the hen's egg production rate usually peaks slightly lower than the previous peak, but egg quality is improved. The purpose of forced molting is therefore to increase egg production, egg quality, and profitability of flocks in their second or subsequent laying phases, by not allowing the hen's body the necessary time to rejuvenate during the natural cycle of feather replenishment.
The practice is controversial. While it is widespread in the US, it is prohibited in the EU.
Commercial hens usually begin laying eggs at 16–20 weeks of age, although production gradually declines soon after from approximately 25 weeks of age. This means that in many countries, by approximately 72 weeks of age, flocks are considered economically unviable and are slaughtered after approximately 12 months of egg production, although chickens will naturally live for 6 or more years. However, in some countries, rather than being slaughtered, the hens are force molted to re-invigorate egg-laying for a second, and sometimes subsequent, laying phase.
Forced molting simulates the natural process where chickens grow a new set of feathers in the Autumn, a process generally accompanied by a sharp reduction or cessation of egg production. Natural molting is stimulated by shortening day lengths combined with stress (of any kind). Before confinement housing with artificial lights was the norm, the Autumn molt caused a seasonal scarcity of eggs and high market prices. Farmers attempted to pamper their flocks to prevent the molt as long as possible, to take advantage of the high prices. Modern controlled-environment confinement housing has the opposite problem; the hens are not normally presented with sufficient stress or cues to go into molt naturally. However, after laying almost daily for nearly a year, their rate of egg production declines, as does the quality of the eggshell and the egg contents. In addition, the hens are overweight.
It is sometimes claimed that forced molting is an artifact of modern intensive farming, but the practice predates the vertical integration of the poultry industry by decades; former Head of the Poultry Science Department at the University of Maryland, Morley A. Jull prescribes a precise molting program in his 1938 book, "Poultry Husbandry".
For a complete recovery of the reproductive tract, the hen's body weight must drop by 30 to 35 percent during the forced molt. This is typically achieved by withdrawing the hen's feed for 7–14 days, sometimes up to 28 days. This induces the birds to lose their feathers, cease to lay eggs and lose body-weight. Some programs combine feed withdrawal with a period of water withdrawal. Most programs also restrict the amount of lighting to provide a daylight period that is too short to stimulate egg production, providing a simulated autumn, the natural time of molt and minimum egg production.
Forced molting programs sometimes follow other variations. Some do not eliminate feed altogether, but may induce a molt by providing a low-density diet (e.g. grape pomace, cotton seed meal, alfalfa meal) or dietary manipulation to create an imbalance of a particular nutrient(s). The most important among these include manipulation of minerals including sodium, calcium, iodine and zinc, with full or partially reduced dietary intakes. These alternative methods of forced molting have not been widely used by the egg industries.
In 2003, more than 75% of all flocks in the US were molted.
Some birds die during forced molting and it has been recommended that the flock must be managed so that mortality does not exceed 1.25% over the 1–2 weeks of (nearly complete) feed withdrawal, compared to a 0.5% to 1.0% monthly mortality in a well-managed flock under low-stress conditions. Alternative methods of forced molting which do not use total food withdrawal, e.g. creating a dietary mineral imbalance, generally result in lower mortality rates.
Temporary starvation of the hens is considered by many to be inhumane as well as a form of animal cruelty, and is the main objection of critics and opponents of the practice.
While forced molting is widespread in the US, it is prohibited in the EU. In the UK, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) states "In no circumstances may birds be induced to moult by withholding feed and water." Forced molting is not a common practice in Canada, where the animal welfare issues associated with it have rendered it basically obsolete.
Forced molting increases plasma corticosterone which, along with related hormones, decreases the levels of circulating lymphocytes and other leukocytes, thereby reducing the effectiveness of the bird's immune system. This means that birds being force molted become susceptible to disease, particularly "Salmonella" infections, and may produce contaminated eggs thereby compromising public health.
| 2478240 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2478240 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Gaslighting
Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment, often evoking in them cognitive dissonance and other changes such as low self-esteem. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction, and misinformation, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim's beliefs. Instances can range from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents occurred to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.
The term originated from the play "Gas Light" (1938, but originally performed as "Angel Street" in the United States) and its 1940 and 1944 film adaptations (both titled "Gaslight"). The term has been used in clinical psychological literature, as well as in political commentary and philosophy.
The term originates in the systematic psychological manipulation of a victim by her husband in the 1938 stage play "Gas Light", and the film adaptations released in 1940 and 1944. In the story, the husband attempts to convince his wife and others that she is insane by manipulating small elements of their environment and insisting that she is mistaken, remembering things incorrectly, or delusional when she points out these changes. The play's title alludes to how the abusive husband slowly dims the gas lights in their home, while pretending nothing has changed, in an effort to make his wife doubt her own perceptions. He further uses the lights in the sealed-off attic to secretly search for jewels belonging to a woman whom he has murdered. He makes loud noises as he searches, including talking to himself. The wife repeatedly asks her husband to confirm her perceptions about the dimming lights, noises and voices, but in defiance of reality, he keeps insisting that the lights are the same and instead it is she who is going insane. He intends on having her assessed and committed to a mental institution, after which he will be able to gain power of attorney over her and search more effectively.
The term "gaslighting" has been used colloquially since the 1960s to describe efforts to manipulate someone's perception of reality. The term has been used to describe such behaviour in psychoanalytic literature since the 1970s. In a 1980 book on child sexual abuse, Florence Rush summarized George Cukor's "Gaslight" (1944) based on the play and wrote, "even today the word [gaslighting] is used to describe an attempt to destroy another's perception of reality."
Gaslighting involves a person, or a group of persons, the "victimizer", and a second person, the "victim". It can be either conscious or unconscious, and is carried out covertly such that the resulting emotional abuse is not overtly abusive.
Gaslighting depends on "first convincing the victim that his thinking is distorted and secondly persuading him that the victimizer's ideas are the correct and true ones". Gaslighting induces cognitive dissonance in the victim, "often quite emotionally charged cognitive dissonance", and makes the victim question their own thinking, perception and reality testing, and thereby tends to evoke in them low self-esteem and disturbing ideas and affects, and may facilitate development of confusion, anxiety, depression and in some cases even psychosis. After the victim loses confidence in their mental capacities and develop a sense of learned helplessness, they become more susceptible to the victimizer's control. Victims tend to be people with less power and authority.
The role of either victimizer or victim can oscillate within a given relationship, and often each of the participants is convinced that they are the victim. When a group of people acts as the victimizer, gaslighting does its damage through the group members' "small, often invisible actions that have power through their accumulation and reinforcement". Gaslighting has been used by individuals and groups for "attaining interpersonal and social control over the psychic functioning of other individuals and groups".
The illusory truth effect, a phenomenon in which a listener comes to believe something primarily because it has been repeated so often, may occur to a victim during gaslighting.
In a 1981 article, psychoanalysts Victor Calef and Edward Weinshel argued that gaslighting involves the projection and introjection (the "transfer") of psychic contents from the victimizer to the victim. The psychic contents include affects, perceptions, impulses, resistances, fantasies, delusions, conflicts. The authors explored a variety of reasons why the victims may have "a tendency to incorporate and assimilate what others externalize and project onto them", and concluded that gaslighting may be "a very complex highly structured configuration which encompasses contributions from many elements of the psychic apparatus".
Later, psychiatrist Theodore Dorpat described this "transfer" of the victimizer's unconscious psychic contents as an example of projective identification. For projective identification to be most effective, the victim would be unaware of being gaslighted. It becomes destructive when the victim as well identifies with the contents of the "transfer" (what has been projected). These effects however are cancelled when the victim becomes capable of disbelieving and disidentifying with the negative introjects that result from projective identification.
Sociopaths and narcissists frequently use gaslighting tactics to abuse and undermine their victims. Sociopaths consistently transgress social mores, break laws and exploit others, but typically also are convincing liars, sometimes charming ones, who consistently deny wrongdoing. Thus, some who have been victimized by sociopaths may doubt their own perceptions. Some physically abusive spouses may gaslight their partners by flatly denying that they have been violent. Gaslighting may occur in parent–child relationships, with either parent, child, or both lying to the other and attempting to undermine perceptions.
Gaslighting has been observed between patients and staff in inpatient psychiatric facilities.
In a 1996 book, Dorpat claimed that "gaslighting and other methods of interpersonal control are widely used by mental health professionals as well as other people" because they are effective methods for shaping the behavior of other individuals. He noted that covert methods of interpersonal control such as gaslighting are used by clinicians with authoritarian attitudes, and he recommended instead more non-directive and egalitarian attitudes and methods on the part of clinicians, "treating patients as active collaborators and equal partners".
In interpersonal relationships, the victimizer "needs to be right" in order to "preserve his own sense of self", and "his sense of having power in the world"; and the victim allows the victimizer to "define [their] sense of reality" inasmuch as the victim "idealizes [them]" and "seeks [their] approval".
The psychological manipulation may include making the victim question their own memory, perception, and sanity. The abuser may invalidate the victim's experiences using dismissive language: "You're crazy. Don't be so sensitive. Don't be paranoid. I was just joking! ... I'm worried; I think you're not well."
Psychologists Jill Rogers and Diane Follingstad said that such dismissals can be detrimental to mental health outcomes. They described psychological abuse as "a range of aversive behaviors that are intended to harm an individual through coercion, control, verbal abuse, monitoring, isolation, threatening, jealousy, humiliation, manipulation, treating one as an inferior, creating a hostile environment, wounding a person regarding their sexuality and/or fidelity, withholding from a partner emotionally and/or physically".
Gaslighting has been observed in some cases of marital infidelity: "Therapists may contribute to the victim's distress through mislabeling the [victim's] reactions. [...] The gaslighting behaviors of the spouse provide a recipe for the so-called 'nervous breakdown' for some [victims] [and] suicide in some of the worst situations."
In their 1988 article "Gaslighting: A Marital Syndrome", psychologists Gertrude Zemon Gass and William Nichols studied men's extramarital affairs and their consequences on their wives. They described how a man may try to convince his wife that she is imagining things rather than admitting to an affair: "a wife picks up a telephone extension in her own home and accidentally overhears her husband and his girlfriend planning a tryst while he is on a business trip." His denial challenges the evidence of her senses: "I wasn't on the telephone with any girlfriend. You must have been dreaming."
Rogers and Follingstand examined women's experiences with psychological abuse as a predictor of symptoms and clinical levels of depression, anxiety, and somatization, as well as suicidal ideation and life functioning. They concluded that psychological abuse affects women's mental health outcomes, but the perceived negative changes in one's traits, problematic relationship schemas, and response styles were stronger indicators of mental health outcomes than the actual abuse.
Psychotherapist Stephanie Moulton Sarkis explained that it takes "a certain amount of cognitive dissonance to remain connected to a gaslighter" and that "the healthiest way to resolve cognitive dissonance" in such situations involves "leaving or distancing yourself from the gaslighter".
As described by Patricia Evans, seven "warning signs" of gaslighting are the observed abuser's:
Evans considers it necessary to understand the warning signs in order to begin the process of healing from it.
The psychologist Elinor Greenberg has described three common methods of gaslighting:
An abuser's ultimate goal, as described by the divorce process coach Lindsey Ellison, is to make their victim second-guess their choices and to question their sanity, making them more dependent on the abuser. One tactic used to degrade a victim's self-esteem is the abuser alternating between ignoring and attending to the victim, so that the victim lowers their expectation of what constitutes affection, and perceives themselves as less worthy of affection.
Psychotherapist Stephanie Moulton Sarkis, who observed gaslighting to be present in about 30–40% of the couples she treats, says that "Gaslighting is as likely to be done by men as women" and that "as far as we know, the genders are represented equally". She explains further that we tend to think gaslighters to be mostly men because "men are often more reluctant (perhaps embarrassed) to talk to someone about a female partner who is being emotionally abusive".
Sociologist Paige Sweet, in the context of the social inequalities and power-laden intimate relationships of domestic violence, has studied gaslighting tactics that "are gendered in that they rely on the association of femininity with irrationality".
According to philosophy professor Kate Abramson, the act of gaslighting is not specifically tied to being sexist, although women tend to be frequent targets of gaslighting compared to men who more often engage in gaslighting. Abramson explained this as a result of social conditioning, and said "it's part of the structure of sexism that women are supposed to be less confident, to doubt our views, beliefs, reactions, and perceptions, more than men. And gaslighting is aimed at undermining someone's views, beliefs, reactions, and perceptions. The sexist norm of self-doubt, in all its forms, prepares us for just that." Abramson said that the final "stage" of gaslighting is severe, major, clinical depression. With respect to women in particular, philosophy professor Hilde Lindemann said that in such cases, the victim's ability to resist the manipulation depends on "her ability to trust her own judgements". Establishment of "counterstories" may help the victim reacquire "ordinary levels of free agency".
Children at the hands of unloving parents may become victims of gaslighting. Maternal gaslighting of daughters has received particular attention. In a section titled “Lying, Gaslighting, and Denial” in her best-seller "Mothers Who Can’t Love: A Healing Guide for Daughters", therapist and author Susan Forward writes: “A severely narcissistic mother’s anger, criticism, and thoughtless dismissal of her daughter’s feelings are painful and destructive. And every daughter clings to the belief that if only her mother could see that behavior and its effects, she’d stop. Daughters try again and again to hold up a mirror, hoping that this time, things will be different. But severe narcissists stay true to form, responding to any confrontation with drama followed by deflection and a focus on your shortcomings. When that doesn’t produce the desired results, they turn to what may be their most frustrating and infuriating tool: denial. Confrontation makes them feel cornered, and when that happens, they can’t and won’t validate your experience or acknowledge their part in it. Rather, they rewrite reality and tell you that what you saw, you didn’t see, what you experienced didn’t happen, and what you call real is actually a figment of your imagination.”
But both mothers and fathers may gaslight children. Psychologically abusive parents often put on a “good parent” face in public yet withhold love and care in private, leading children to question their own perceptions of reality and to wonder whether their parent is the good person everyone else sees or the much darker person that comes out when child and parent are alone. Manipulative parents may also “pit children against each other; ... play favorites but persuade the unloved child it’s all his or her fault for not being more gifted, prettier, and otherwise more lovable.”
Columnist Maureen Dowd was one of the first to use the term in the political context. She described the Bill Clinton administration's use of the technique in subjecting Newt Gingrich to small indignities intended to provoke him to make public complaints that "came across as hysterical".
In his 2008 book "State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind", psychologist Bryant Welch described the prevalence of the technique in American politics beginning in the age of modern communications, stating:
Journalist Frida Ghitis used the term "gaslighting" to describe Russia's global relations. While Russian operatives were active in Crimea, Russian officials continually denied their presence and manipulated the distrust of political groups in their favor.
Journalists at "The New York Times Magazine", BBC and "Teen Vogue", as well as psychologists Bryant Welch, Robert Feldman and Leah McElrath, have described some of the actions of Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential election and his term as president as examples of gaslighting. Journalism professor Ben Yagoda wrote in "The Chronicle of Higher Education" in January 2017 that the term "gaslighting" had become topical again as the result of Trump's behavior, saying that Trump's "habitual tendency to say 'X', and then, at some later date, indignantly declare, 'I did not say "X". In fact, I would never dream of saying "X"" had brought new notability to the term.
Gaslighting is utilized by leaders and followers of sectarian groups to ensure conformity of any potentially deviating members.
Gaslighting in the workplace is when people do things that cause colleagues to question themselves and their actions in a way that is detrimental to their careers. The victim may be excluded, made the subject of gossip, persistently discredited or questioned to destroy their confidence. The perpetrator may divert conversations to perceived faults or wrongs. Gaslighting can be committed by anyone and can be especially detrimental when the perpetrator has a position of power.
Pop group Steely Dan features a song entitled "Gaslighting Abbie" on their 2000 album "Two Against Nature."
The 2016 mystery and psychological thriller film "The Girl on the Train" explored the direct effects gaslighting had on the protagonist (Rachel). Rachel's ex-husband Tom who was the violent abuser is the victimizer. Rachel suffered from severe depression and alcoholism. When Rachel would black out drunk, he consistently told her that she had done terrible things that she was incapable of remembering.
Gaslighting was the main theme of a 2016 plotline in BBC's radio soap opera, "The Archers". The story concerned the emotional abuse of Helen Archer by her partner and later husband, Rob Titchener, over the course of two years, and caused much public discussion about the phenomenon.
For several months during 2018, gaslighting was a main plotline in NBC's soap opera "Days of Our Lives", as character Gabi Hernandez was caught gaslighting her best friend Abigail Deveroux after Gabi was framed for a murder Abigail had committed in the series.
In March 2020 the Dixie Chicks released a song titled "Gaslighter", the title track from their forthcoming album "Gaslighter", a reference to gaslighting inspired by lead singer Natalie Maines' divorce from actor Adrian Pasdar.
| 2484315 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2484315 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Evolutionary ethics
Evolutionary ethics is a field of inquiry that explores how evolutionary theory might bear on our understanding of ethics or morality. The range of issues investigated by evolutionary ethics is quite broad. Supporters of evolutionary ethics have claimed that it has important implications in the fields of descriptive ethics, normative ethics, and metaethics.
Descriptive evolutionary ethics consists of biological approaches to morality based on the alleged role of evolution in shaping human psychology and behavior. Such approaches may be based in scientific fields such as evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, or ethology, and seek to explain certain human moral behaviors, capacities, and tendencies in evolutionary terms. For example, the nearly universal belief that incest is morally wrong might be explained as an evolutionary adaptation that furthered human survival.
Normative (or prescriptive) evolutionary ethics, by contrast, seeks not to explain moral behavior, but to justify or debunk certain normative ethical theories or claims. For instance, some proponents of normative evolutionary ethics have argued that evolutionary theory undermines certain widely held views of humans' moral superiority over other animals.
Evolutionary metaethics asks how evolutionary theory bears on theories of ethical discourse, the question of whether objective moral values exist, and the possibility of objective moral knowledge. For example, some evolutionary ethicists have appealed to evolutionary theory to defend various forms of moral anti-realism (the claim, roughly, that objective moral facts do not exist) and moral skepticism.
The first notable attempt to explore links between evolution and ethics was made by Charles Darwin in "The Descent of Man" (1871). In Chapters IV and V of that work Darwin set out to explain the origin of human morality in order to show that there was no absolute gap between man and animals. Darwin sought to show how a refined moral sense, or conscience, could have developed through a natural evolutionary process that began with social instincts rooted in our nature as social animals.
Not long after the publication of Darwin's "The Descent of Man", evolutionary ethics took a very different—and far more dubious—turn in the form of Social Darwinism. Leading Social Darwinists such as Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner sought to apply the lessons of biological evolution to social and political life. Just as in nature, they claimed, progress occurs through a ruthless process of competitive struggle and "survival of the fittest," so human progress will occur only if government allows unrestricted business competition and makes no effort to protect the "weak" or "unfit" by means of social welfare laws. Critics such as Thomas Henry Huxley, G. E. Moore, William James, and John Dewey roundly criticized such attempts to draw ethical and political lessons from Darwinism, and by the early decades of the twentieth century Social Darwinism was widely viewed as discredited.
The modern revival of evolutionary ethics owes much to E. O. Wilson's 1975 book, "Sociobiology: The New Synthesis". In that work, Wilson argues that there is a genetic basis for a wide variety of human and nonhuman social behaviors. In recent decades, evolutionary ethics has become a lively topic of debate in both scientific and philosophical circles.
The most widely accepted form of evolutionary ethics is descriptive evolutionary ethics. Descriptive evolutionary ethics seeks to explain various kinds of moral phenomena wholly or partly in genetic terms. Ethical topics addressed include altruistic behaviors, conservation ethics, an innate sense of fairness, a capacity for normative guidance, feelings of kindness or love, self-sacrifice, incest-avoidance, parental care, in-group loyalty, monogamy, feelings related to competitiveness and retribution, moral "cheating," and hypocrisy.
A key issue in evolutionary psychology has been how altruistic feelings and behaviors could have evolved, in both humans and nonhumans, when the process of natural selection is based on the multiplication over time only of those genes that adapt better to changes in the environment of the species. Theories addressing this have included kin selection, group selection, and reciprocal altruism (both direct and indirect, and on a society-wide scale). Descriptive evolutionary ethicists have also debated whether various types of moral phenomena should be seen as adaptations which have evolved because of their direct adaptive benefits, or spin-offs that evolved as side-effects of adaptive behaviors.
Normative evolutionary ethics is the most controversial branch of evolutionary ethics. Normative evolutionary ethics aims at defining which acts are right or wrong, and which things are good or bad, in evolutionary terms. It is not merely "describing", but it is "prescribing" goals, values and obligations. Social Darwinism, discussed above, is the most historically influential version of normative evolutionary ethics. As philosopher G. E. Moore famously argued, many early versions of normative evolutionary ethics seemed to commit a logical mistake that Moore dubbed the "naturalistic fallacy". This was the mistake of defining a normative property, such as goodness, in terms of some non-normative, naturalistic property, such as pleasure or survival.
More sophisticated forms of normative evolutionary ethics need not commit either the naturalistic fallacy or the is-ought fallacy. But all varieties of normative evolutionary ethics face the difficult challenge of explaining how evolutionary facts can have normative authority for rational agents. "Regardless of why one has a given trait, the question for a rational agent is always: is it right for me to exercise it, or should I instead renounce and resist it as far as I am able?"
Evolutionary theory may not be able to tell us what is morally right or wrong, but it might be able to illuminate our use of moral language, or to cast doubt on the existence of objective moral facts or the possibility of moral knowledge. Evolutionary ethicists such as Michael Ruse, E. O. Wilson, Richard Joyce, and Sharon Street have defended such claims.
Some philosophers who support evolutionary meta-ethics use it to undermine views of human well-being that rely upon Aristotelian teleology, or other goal-directed accounts of human flourishing. A number of thinkers have appealed to evolutionary theory in an attempt to debunk moral realism or support moral skepticism. Sharon Street is one prominent ethicist who argues that evolutionary psychology undercuts moral realism. According to Street, human moral decision-making is "thoroughly saturated" with evolutionary influences. Natural selection, she argues, would have rewarded moral dispositions that increased fitness, not ones that track moral truths, should they exist. It would be a remarkable and unlikely coincidence if "morally blind" ethical traits aimed solely at survival and reproduction aligned closely with independent moral truths. So we cannot be confident that our moral beliefs accurately track objective moral truth. Consequently, realism forces us to embrace moral skepticism. Such skepticism, Street claims, is implausible. So we should reject realism and instead embrace some antirealist view that allows for rationally justified moral beliefs.
Defenders of moral realism have offered two sorts of replies. One is to deny that evolved moral responses would likely diverge sharply from moral truth. According to David Copp, for example, evolution would favor moral responses that promote social peace, harmony, and cooperation. But such qualities are precisely those that lie at the core of any plausible theory of objective moral truth. So Street's alleged "dilemma"—deny evolution or embrace moral skepticism—is a false choice.
A second response to Street is to deny that morality is as "saturated" with evolutionary influences as Street claims. William Fitzpatrick, for instance, argues that "[e]ven if there is significant evolutionary influence on the content of many of our moral beliefs, it remains possible that many of our moral beliefs are arrived at partly (or in some cases wholly) through autonomous moral reflection and reasoning, just as with our mathematical, scientific and philosophical beliefs." The wide variability of moral codes, both across cultures and historical time periods, is difficult to explain if morality is as pervasively shaped by genetic factors as Street claims.
Another common argument evolutionary ethicists use to debunk moral realism is to claim that the success of evolutionary psychology in explaining human ethical responses makes the notion of moral truth "explanatorily superfluous." If we can fully explain, for example, why parents naturally love and care for their children in purely evolutionary terms, there is no need to invoke any "spooky" realist moral truths to do any explanatory work. Thus, for reasons of theoretical simplicity we should not posit the existence of such truths and, instead, should explain the widely held belief in objective moral truth as "an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes in order to get us to cooperate with one another (so that our genes survive)."
Here again the central question is whether the influence of evolution on morality is as pervasive as the critics of moral realism claim. If, as seems likely, there are important aspects of morality that cannot be explained in genetic terms, appeals to moral truth may provide genuine explanation of these aspects.
| 2490200 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2490200 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Joseph Fins
Joseph J. Fins, M.A.C.P., F.R.C.P. (born 1959) is an American physician and medical ethicist. He is chief of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical College, where he serves as The E. William Davis Jr., M.D. Professor of Medical Ethics, and Professor of Medicine, Professor of Public Health, and Professor of Medicine in Psychiatry. Fins is also Director of Medical Ethics and an attending physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center. Fins is also a member of the adjunct faculty of Rockefeller University and has served as Associate for Medicine at The Hastings Center. He was appointed by President Bill Clinton to "The White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy" and currently serves on "The New York State Task Force on Life and the Law" by gubernatorial appointment.
In October 2010, Fins was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the United States National Academies. In 2012, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In December 2013 he was elected an Academico de Honor de la Real Academia Nacional de Medicina de Espana (Honored Academic of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Spain).
Fins' scholarship in medical ethics and health policy has focused on palliative care, rational approaches to ethical dilemmas and the development of "clinical pragmatism" as a method of moral problem-solving drawing upon the American pragmatic tradition of William James and John Dewey. His more recent work has been in neuroethics and disorders of consciousness following severe brain injury. He was a co-author of the landmark "Nature" paper describing the first use of deep brain stimulation in the minimally conscious state.
Fins has been a visiting professor in Medical Ethics at The Complutense University in Madrid and Philipps University in Marburg, Germany. He is a recipient of a Soros Open Society Institute Project on Death in America Faculty Scholars Award, a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation Visiting Fellowship and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research.
Fins received a B.A. (College of Letters with Honors) from Wesleyan University in 1982 and an M.D. from Cornell University Medical College in 1986. After an internship at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, he completed his internal medicine residency training and fellowship in general internal medicine at The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. He is the author of "A Palliative Ethic of Care: Clinical Wisdom at Life's End" published by Jones and Bartlett (2006) and "Rights Come to Mind: Brain Injury, Ethics, and the Struggle for Consciousness" published by Cambridge University Press (2015).
A board certified internist, Fins has served as a governor of the American College of Physicians and vice chair of the College's Committee on Professionalism and Human Rights. He is a recipient of the College's Laureate Award and is a Master (MACP) of the College.
He has served on the boards of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities, the Fund for Modern Courts and Wesleyan University, where he is now a trustee emeritus. He is also a member of the Governing Board of the International Neuroethics Society. Fins also served as a member of "New York's Attorney General's Commission on Quality Care at the End of Life" and sits on a number of editorial boards, including the "Journal of Pain and Symptom Management", "The Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics", "The Oncologist", "BioMed Central Medical Ethics", "Neuroethics" and the Basic Bioethics Series of MIT Press.
In October 2009, Fins was elected president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. He served his two-year term from 2011 to 2013. He is a member of the Hastings Center Board of Trustees and chair of its Fellow's Council.
| 2490422 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2490422 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Gilbert Simondon
Gilbert Simondon (; 2 October 1924 – 7 February 1989) was a French philosopher best known for his theory of individuation, a major source of inspiration for Gilles Deleuze and Bernard Stiegler.
Born in Saint-Étienne, Simondon was a student of philosopher of science Georges Canguilhem, philosopher Martial Guéroult, and phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Sorbonne. He defended his doctoral dissertations in 1958 at the University of Paris. His main thesis, "L'individuation à la lumière des notions de Forme et d'Information" ("Individuation in the light of the notions of Form and Information"), was published in two parts, the first in 1964 under the title "L'individu et sa génèse physico-biologique" ("Individuation and its physical-biological genesis") at the Presses Universitaires de France, while it is only in 1989 that Aubier published the second part, "L'individuation psychique et collective" ("Psychic and collective individuation"). While his main thesis, which laid the foundations of his thinking, was not widely read until it was commented upon by Gilles Deleuze and, more recently, Bruno Latour and Bernard Stiegler, his complementary thesis, "Du mode d'existence des objets techniques" ("On the mode of existence of technical objects") was published by Aubier immediately after being completed (in 1958) and had an instant impact on a wide audience. It was only in 2005 that Jérôme Millon published a complete edition of the main thesis.
In "L'individuation psychique et collective", Simondon developed a theory of individual and collective individuation, in which the individual subject is considered as an effect of individuation, rather than as a cause. Thus the individual atom is replaced by the never-ending process of individuation. Simondon also conceived of "pre-individual fields" as the resources making individuation itself possible. Individuation is an always incomplete process, always leaving a "pre-individual" left-over, itself making possible future individuations. Furthermore, psychic individuation always creates both an individual and a collective subject, which individuate themselves together. Simondon criticized Norbert Wiener's theory of cybernetics, arguing that "Right from the start, Cybernetics has accepted what all theory of technology must refuse: a classification of technological objects conducted by means of established criteria and following genera and species." Simondon aimed to overcome the shortcomings of cybernetics by developing a "general phenomenology" of machines.
Simondon's theory of individuation through transduction in a metastable environment was an important influence on the thought of Gilles Deleuze, whose "Différence et répétition" (1968), "Logique du sens" (1969) and "L'île déserte" (2002) make explicit reference to Simondon's work. "Gilbert Simondon: une pensée de l'individuation et de la technique" (1994), the proceedings of the first conference devoted to Simondon's work, further charts his influence on such thinkers as François Laruelle, Gilles Châtelet, Anne Fagot-Largeau, Yves Deforge, René Thom, and Bernard Stiegler (the latter having placed Simondon's theory of individuation at the very heart of his ongoing and multi-volume philosophical project). Another contributor to "Gilbert Simondon: une pensée de l'individuation et de la technique", Simondon's friend John Hart, was the instigator of the very first translation—from French into English c.1980—of Simondon's work (this at University of Western Ontario in Canada where Hart had founded both a Department of Computer Science and a Simondon-inspired network: the ATN, or Audio Tactile Network in 1964). Currently, Simondon can be seen as a major influence on the work of such scholars as Paolo Virno, Jean-Hugues Barthélémy, Thierry Bardini, Luciana Parisi, Brian Massumi, Adrian Mackenzie, Muriel Combes, Carl Mitcham, Andrew Feenberg, Yuk Hui, Isabelle Stengers, Thomas LaMarre, Bruno Latour and Anne Sauvagnargues.
Posthumous publications
English translations
François Lagarde and Pascal Chabot have made a movie on Simondon: Simondon of the Desert (english translation) with Anne Fagot-Largeault, Arne De Boever, Dominique Lecourt, Gilbert Hottois, Giovanni Carrozzini, Jean-Hugues Barthélémy, Jean Clottes, and music by Jean-Luc Guillonet.
| 2492259 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2492259 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Commodity form theory
Commodity form theory is a theory of jurisprudence advanced by the Soviet legal theorist Evgeny Pashukanis. The theory argues that the legal form is the parallel of the commodity form under capitalist society.
All law is concerned with the process of the exchanging of commodities between subjects who act as the "guardians" of commodities and are created by law in order to enable the commodity production form of society to function. The theory can be explained as based on two premises, logical and historical.
"Every legal relation" proclaims Pashukanis, "is a relation between subjects". Pashukanis' conceptual account of law begins with the idea of a responsible agent - what he calls "the legal subject".
Property, says Pashukanis, is the basis of the legal form, but only capitalist property that can be disposed of in the market. The subject in law is the expression of the freedom of property, that is, the freedom of alienate property.
Thus the key to understanding law is the contradiction between commodities and subjects.
Commodities according to Karl Marx relate to each other as values, that is exchange takes place on the basis of equivalent amounts of labour-time embodied in commodities passing between buyers and sellers, indicating that there are social relations among things and material relations among people.
Contract is both logically the central legal premise on which all other aspects of law are based, and also the highest form of expression of the commodity owning subject. This is because it is the relations of contract that are crucial for commodity production society since the contract is the necessary legal expression of commodity owners' ability to use their commodities in the market. For Pashukanis, all other forms of legal relations in capitalism flow from this.
The commodity form of exchange historically precedes the legal system which emerges from it. But it is not merely that the commodity form produces the legal form; it is that the commodity form exists prior to the legal form and that only with the full development of the commodity form is there the possibility of a fully developed abstract legal form at all.
Commodity form theory is related to Marx's theory of commodity fetishism. Marx argued that the commodity was a fetishized form because the formal equality that the commodity form postulated was only an apparent equality. The legal form is blind to substantive human differences, just as the commodity form is blind to substantive differences in use value. Ultimately, the legal form, just as the commodity form, exists independently of the will of the individual. The illusion is produced that the law – as the universal political equivalent – has a life of its own.
| 2493456 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2493456 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Akrasia
Akrasia (; Greek , "lacking command"), occasionally transliterated as acrasia or Anglicised as acrasy or acracy, is described as a lack of self-control or the state of acting against one's better judgment. The adjectival form is "akratic".
The problem goes back at least as far as Plato. In Plato's "Protagoras" Socrates asks precisely how it is possible that, "if" one judges action A to be the best course of action, one would do anything other than A?
In the dialogue "Protagoras", Socrates attests that akrasia does not exist, claiming "No one goes willingly toward the bad" (358d). If a person examines a situation and decides to act in the way he determines to be best, he will pursue this action, as the best course is also the good course, i.e. man's natural goal. An all-things-considered assessment of the situation will bring full knowledge of a decision's outcome and worth linked to well-developed principles of the good. A person, according to Socrates, never chooses to act poorly or against his better judgment; and, therefore, actions that go against what is best are simply a product of being ignorant of facts or knowledge of what is best or good.
Aristotle, on the other hand, took a more empirical approach to the question, acknowledging that we intuitively believe in akrasia. He distances himself from the Socratic position by locating the breakdown of reasoning in an agent’s opinion, not his appetition. Now, without recourse to appetitive desires, Aristotle reasons that akrasia occurs as a result of opinion. Opinion is formulated mentally in a way that may or may not imitate truth, while appetites are merely desires of the body. Thus, opinion is only incidentally aligned with or opposed to the good, making an akratic action the product of opinion instead of reason. For Aristotle, the antonym of "akrasia" is "enkrateia", which means "in power" (over oneself).
The word "akrasia" occurs twice in the Koine Greek New Testament. In Jesus uses it to describe hypocritical religious leaders, translated "self-indulgence" in several translations, including the English Standard version. Paul the Apostle also gives the threat of temptation through akrasia as a reason for a husband and wife to not deprive each other of sex (). In another passage (Rom. 7:15–25) Paul, without actually using the term "akrasia", seems to reference the same psychological phenomenon in discussing the internal conflict between, on the one hand, "the law of God," which he equates with "the law of my mind"; and "another law in my members," identified with "the flesh, the law of sin." "For the good that I would do, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do." (v.19)
In Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queene", book II, Acrasia, the embodiment of intemperance dwelling in the "Bower of Bliss", had the Circe-like capacity of transforming her lovers into monstrous animal shapes.
Donald Davidson (1969–1980) attempted to solve the problem by first criticizing earlier thinkers who wanted to limit the scope of akrasia to agents who despite having reached a rational decision were somehow swerved off their "desired" tracks. Indeed, Davidson expands akrasia to include any judgment that is reached but not fulfilled, whether it be as a result of an opinion, a real or imagined good, or a moral belief. "[T]he puzzle I shall discuss depends only on the attitude or belief of the agent...my subject concerns evaluative judgments, whether they are analyzed cognitively, prescriptively, or otherwise." Thus, he expands akrasia to include cases in which the agent seeks to fulfill desires, for example, but ends up denying himself the pleasure he has deemed most choice-worthy.
Davidson sees the problem as one of reconciling the following apparently inconsistent triad:
Davidson solves the problem by saying that, when people act in this way, they temporarily believe that the worse course of action is better, because they have not made an all-things-considered judgment, but only a judgment based on a subset of possible considerations.
Another contemporary philosopher, Amélie Rorty (1980) has tackled the problem by distilling out akrasia's many forms. She contends that akrasia is manifested in different stages of the practical reasoning process. She enumerates four types of akrasia: akrasia of direction or aim, of interpretation, of irrationality, and of character. She separates the practical reasoning process into four steps, showing the breakdown that may occur between each step and how each constitutes an akratic state.
Another explanation is that there are different forms of motivation which can conflict with each other. Throughout the ages, many have identified a conflict between reason and emotion, which might make it possible to believe that one should do A rather than B, but still end up wanting to do B more than A.
Psychologist George Ainslie argues that akrasia results from the empirically verified phenomenon of hyperbolic discounting, which causes us to make different judgements close to a reward than we will when further from it.
Richard Holton (1999), argues that weakness of the will involves revising one's resolutions too easily. Under this view, it is possible to act against one's better judgment (that is, be akratic), but without being weak-willed. Suppose, for example, Sarah "judges" that taking revenge upon a murderer is not the best course of action, but makes the resolution to take revenge anyway and sticks to that resolution. According to Holton, Sarah behaves akratically but does not show weakness of will.
| 2494366 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2494366 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | COYOTE
COYOTE is an American sex workers' rights organization. Its name is a backronym for "C"all "O"ff "Y"our "O"ld "T"ired "E"thics, a reflection of the fact that sex work tends to be stigmatized primarily because of society-imposed standards of ethics. COYOTE's goals include the decriminalization (as opposed to the legalization) of prostitution, pimping and pandering, as well as the elimination of social stigma concerning sex work as an occupation.
COYOTE provides counseling and legal referrals for sex workers, and assistance in leaving sex work for different careers.
COYOTE provides expert advice and sensitivity training for social service and law enforcement agencies that deal with sex workers. COYOTE members have testified as expert witnesses during trials. The organization works to educate the general public about sex work, and promotes education about safe sex, AIDS and sexually transmitted disease among sex workers, their clients and the general public.
COYOTE was founded in San Francisco in 1973 by Margo St. James, a feminist and former sex worker, along with Jennifer James, a Seattle-based professor of anthropology. Margo St. James had previously been arrested and convicted of a prostitution offense at age 25, but overturned the conviction after studying law for a year at Lincoln University San Francisco. She chose the name COYOTE because novelist Tom Robbins called her a "coyote trickster" and came up with "Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics" to fit the chosen backronym. St. James believed that sex work should be considered labor equivalent to any other career, writing in 1977 that "to make a great distinction between being paid for an hour's sexual services, or an hour's typing, or an hour's acting on a stage is to make a distinction that is not there."
The group's purpose was "to provide a loose union of women—both prostitutes and feminists—to fight for legal change."
COYOTE provided safe spaces for sex workers to meet to talk about their experiences and find support. They had "rap sessions" which used feminist consciousness raising methods, and let the women know that they were not alone in their experiences. They gathered stories and facts about the injustices sex workers faced and launched a public education drive to highlight the racist and sexist biases of prostitution arrests. Meetings and events were advertised through underground newspapers. COYOTE organized educational programs and cultural events to raise money for other projects and held public demonstrations to protest entrapment. They also organized "whore conventions" in San Francisco (1974), Washington, DC (1976), and in Brussels and Amsterdam (1985 and 1986).
COYOTE offered a variety of services to sex workers. They offered a hotline for prostitutes called SLIP (Survival Line for Independent Prostitutes), immediate legal assistance for prostitutes who had been arrested, suitable clothing for court appearances, and classes on survival skills for prostitutes in jail. COYOTE won policy changes in the 1970s that gradually diminished prostitution laws. They abolished mandatory penicillin therapy and multi-day jail quarantines and pressured public defenders to provide better representation for people accused of soliciting and prostitution, misdemeanor offenses.
They instigated and sponsored at least 26 lawsuits on behalf of prostitutes and lifted a mandatory three-day venereal disease quarantine imposed by the San Francisco Police Department on prostitutes. They won by claiming that the incidence of VD disease is at least as high among people 20 to 40 years old as among whores and "only women are arrested and forced to have regular checks for VD." COYOTE got a judge to dismiss prostitution charges against 37 women whose male customers were not arrested and they organized protests against police harassment, which they believed was one of the most critical issues affecting prostitutes.
COYOTE threw annual Hookers' Balls from 1973–1979 in San Francisco, which served to destigmatize sex work, celebrate sex workers, and raise funds. From these events, COYOTE raised a bail fund to free women from exploitative pimps and created special welfare programs and assistance services.
As public concern about the AIDS epidemic grew, sex workers were increasingly blamed for spreading the disease. COYOTE immediately sought to address this, stating that the organization was "working to prevent the scapegoating of prostitutes for AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, and to educate prostitutes, their clients, and the general public about prevention of these disease". The organization spoke out against mandatory testing for sex workers for AIDS, deeming it a violation of civil rights. Various members of COYOTE joined together in 1988 to form the California Prostitutes Education Project (CAL-PEP), aiming to provide education about sex work from sex workers themselves. CAL-PEP published "Prostitutes Prevent AIDS: A Manual for Health Education" in 1988 with federal and state funding.
Shortly after the founding of COYOTE, Association of Seattle Prostitutes (ASP) and Prostitutes of New York (PONY) were founded. There were roughly 20 other "sister organizations" founded by 1979. As COYOTE gained credibility as a national movement, it gained affiliations with more liberal and mainstream feminist organizations such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), Wages for Housework, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the American Bar Association. These affiliations were possible in part due to COYOTE's wide support base, which at one point consisted of 270,000 members.
In 1976, COYOTE, led by St. James, filed a lawsuit against Rhode Island. In the case, "COYOTE v. Roberts", the argument was based on how much power the state should have to control the sexual activity of its citizens. The lawsuit also alleged discrimination on how the law was being applied. Data was submitted that demonstrated selective prosecution: the Providence police were arresting female sex workers far more often than the male customers. St. James testified in the case. Although the case eventually was dismissed when Rhode Island General Assembly changed the prostitution statute in 1980, COYOTE and St. James are given credit as one of the reasons prostitution in Rhode Island was decriminalized, although prostitution was outlawed again in 2009 (see Prostitution in Rhode Island). "Samantha" and Gloria Lockett were co-directors of COYOTE in the early 1990s. They had been critical of the group for focusing on "higher class" prostitutes (such as call girls and escorts) and white sex workers, while ignoring the concerns of streetwalkers and ethnic minorities.
, Norma Jean Almodovar serves as the executive director of the Los Angeles branch of COYOTE.
| 2496233 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2496233 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Power-knowledge
The relationship between power and knowledge has been always a central theme in the social sciences. From a political economy perspective, Harold Innis extensively wrote on the "monopoly of knowledge", in which empires over the history exploited information and communication resources to produce exclusive knowledge and power. In sociology, the French philosopher Michel Foucault has contributed to the popularity of the term 'Power-knowledge' ().
According to Foucault's understanding of power, power is based on knowledge and makes use of knowledge; on the other hand, power reproduces knowledge by shaping it in accordance with its anonymous intentions. Power (re-) creates its own fields of exercise through knowledge.
Foucault incorporates this inevitable mutuality into his neologism power-knowledge, the most important part of which is the hyphen that links the two aspects of the integrated concept together (and alludes to their inherent inextricability).
It is helpful noting that Foucault has a textual understanding of both power and knowledge. Both power and knowledge are to be seen as de-centralised, relativistic, ubiquitous, and unstable (dynamic) systemic phenomena. Thus Foucault's concept of power draws on micro-relations without falling into reductionism because it does not neglect, but emphasizes, the systemic (or structural) aspect of the phenomenon. However, he does not actually define knowledge.
In information sciences 'knowledge' is defined as a higher form of information, which requires understanding the patterns and creating useful meaning of the information people collect.
In his 1934 play ‘The Rock’ T. S. Eliot wrote: ‘Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?’. This division between information, knowledge and wisdom inspired many generation of information scientists later on.
In his later works, Foucault suggests that power-knowledge was later replaced in the modern world, with the term governmentality which points to a specific mentality of governance.
While in most of the 20th century the term ‘knowledge’ has been closely associated with power, in the last decades ‘information’ has become a central term as well. With the growing use of big-data, information is increasingly seen as the means to generate useful knowledge and power.
One of the recently developed model, known as the Volume and Control Model, describes how information is capitalized by global corporations and transforms into economic power. Volume is defined as the informational resources—the amount and diversity of information and the people producing it. Control is the ability to channel the interaction between information and people through two competing mechanisms: popularization (information relevant to most people), and personalization (information relevant to each individual person).
According to this understanding, knowledge is never neutral, as it determines force relations. The notion of power-knowledge is therefore likely to be employed in critical, normative contexts. One example of the implications of power-knowledge is Google’s monopoly of knowledge, its PageRank algorithm, and its inevitable commercial and cultural biases around the world, which are based on the volume and control principles. A recent study shows, for example, the commercial implications of Google Images algorithm, as all search results for the term 'beauty' in different languages predominantly yield images of white young females.
| 2496957 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2496957 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Pāṭimokkha
In Theravada Buddhism, the Patimokkha is the basic code of monastic discipline, consisting of 227 rules for fully ordained monks (bhikkhus) and 311 for nuns (bhikkhunis). It is contained in the Suttavibhanga, a division of the Vinaya Pitaka.
The four parajikas (defeats) are rules entailing expulsion from the sangha for life. If a monk breaks any one of the rules he is automatically "defeated" in the holy life and falls from monkhood immediately. He is not allowed to become a monk again in his lifetime. Intention is necessary in all these four cases to constitute an offence. The four parajikas for bhikkus are:
The parajikas are more specific definitions of the first four of the Five Precepts.
The thirteen sanghadisesas are rules requiring an initial and subsequent meeting of the sangha (communal meetings). If the monk breaks any rule here he has to undergo a period of probation or discipline after which, if he shows himself to be repentant, he may be reinstated by a sangha of not less than twenty monks. Like the parajikas, the sanghadisesas can only come about through the monk's own intention and cannot be accidentally invoked. The thirteen sanghadisesas for bhikkus are:
The aniyata are two indefinite rules where a monk is accused of having committed an offence with a woman in a screened (enclosed) or private place by a lay person. It is indefinite because the final outcome depends on whether the monk acknowledges the offence. Benefit of the doubt is given to the monk unless there is over-riding evidence.
Thus it is not proper for a monk to be alone with a woman, especially in screened or private places.
The nissaggiya pacittiya are rules entailing "confession with forfeiture." They are mostly concerned with the possessing of items which are disallowed or obtained in disallowable ways. The monk must forfeit the item and then confess his offense to another monk. The thirty nissaggiya pacittiya for bhikkhu are:
92 pacittiya are rules entailing confession. There are ninety two Pacittiya and they are minor violations which do not entail expulsion or any probationary periods.
1. A deliberate lie is to be confessed.
2. An insult is to be confessed.
3. Malicious tale-bearing among bhikkhus is to be confessed.
4. Should any bhikkhu have an unordained person recite Dhamma line by line (with him), it is to be confessed.
5. Should any bhikkhu lie down together (in the same dwelling) with an unordained person for more than two or three consecutive nights, it is to be confessed.
6. Should any bhikkhu lie down together (in the same dwelling) with a woman, it is to be confessed.
7. Should any bhikkhu teach more than five or six sentences of Dhamma to a woman, unless a knowledgeable man is present, it is to be confessed.
8. Should any bhikkhu report (his own) superior human state, when it is factual, to an unordained person, it is to be confessed.
9. Should any bhikkhu report (another) bhikkhu's serious offense to an unordained person, unless authorized by the bhikkhus, it is to be confessed.
10. Should any bhikkhu dig soil or have it dug, it is to be confessed.
11. The damaging of a living plant is to be confessed.
12. Evasive speech and causing frustration are to be confessed.
13. Criticizing or complaining (about a Community official) is to be confessed.
14. Should any bhikkhu set a bed, bench, mattress, or stool belonging to the Community out in the open, or have it set out, and then on departing neither put it away nor have it put away, or should he go without taking leave, it is to be confessed.
15. Should any bhikkhu set out bedding in a dwelling belonging to the Community, or have it set out, and then on departing neither put it away nor have it put away, or should he go without taking leave, it is to be confessed.
16. Should any bhikkhu knowingly lie down in a dwelling belonging to the Community so as to intrude on a bhikkhu who arrived there first, (thinking), "Whoever finds it confining will go away," doing it for just that reason and no other, it is to be confessed.
17. Should any bhikkhu, angered and displeased, evict a bhikkhu from a dwelling belonging to the Community, or have him evicted, it is to be confessed.
18. Should any bhikkhu sit or lie down on a bed or bench with detachable legs on an (unplanked) loft in a dwelling belonging to the Community, it is to be confessed.
19. When a bhikkhu is having a large dwelling built, he may supervise two or three layers of facing to plaster the area around the window frame and reinforce the area around the door frame the width of the door opening, while standing where there are no crops to speak of. Should he supervise more than that, even if standing where there are no crops to speak of, it is to be confessed.
20. Should any bhikkhu knowingly pour water containing living beings, or have it poured, on grass or on clay, it is to be confessed.
21. Should any bhikkhu, unauthorized, exhort the bhikkhunīs, it is to be confessed.
22. Should any bhikkhu, even if authorized, exhort the bhikkhunīs after sunset, it is to be confessed.
23. Should any bhikkhu, having gone to the bhikkhunīs' quarters, exhort the bhikkhunīs, except at the proper occasion, it is to be confessed. Here the proper occasion is this: A bhikkhunī is ill. This is the proper occasion here.
24. Should any bhikkhu say that the bhikkhus exhort the bhikkhunīs for the sake of worldly gain, it is to be confessed.
25. Should any bhikkhu give robe-cloth to a bhikkhunī unrelated to him, except in exchange, it is to be confessed.
26. Should any bhikkhu sew robe-cloth or have it sewn for a bhikkhunī unrelated to him, it is to be confessed.
27. Should any bhikkhu, by arrangement, travel together with a bhikkhunī even for the interval between one village and the next, except at the proper occasion, it is to be confessed. Here the proper occasion is this: The road is to be traveled by caravan and is considered dubious and risky. This is the proper occasion here.
28. Should any bhikkhu, by arrangement, get in the same boat with a bhikkhunī going upstream or downstream, except to cross over to the other bank, it is to be confessed.
29. Should any bhikkhu knowingly eat almsfood donated through the prompting of a bhikkhunī, except for food that householders had already intended for him prior (to her prompting), it is to be confessed.
30. Should any bhikkhu sit in private, alone with a bhikkhunī, it is to be confessed.
31. A bhikkhu who is not ill may eat one meal at a public alms center. Should he eat more than that, it is to be confessed.
32. A group meal, except on the proper occasions, is to be confessed. Here the proper occasions are these: a time of illness, a time of giving cloth, a time of making robes, a time of going on a journey, a time of embarking on a boat, an extraordinary occasion, a time when the meal is supplied by contemplatives. These are the proper occasions here.
33. An out-of-turn meal, except on the proper occasions, is to be confessed. Here the proper occasions are these: a time of illness, a time of giving cloth (the robe season), a time of making robes. These are the proper occasions here.
34. In case a bhikkhu arriving at a family residence is presented with cakes or cooked grain-meal, he may accept two or three bowlfuls if he so desires. If he should accept more than that, it is to be confessed. Having accepted the two-or-three bowlfuls and having taken them from there, he is to share them among the bhikkhus. This is the proper course here.
35. Should any bhikkhu, having eaten and turned down an offer (of further food), chew or consume staple or non-staple food that is not left over, it is to be confessed.
36. Should any bhikkhu, knowingly and wishing to find fault, present staple or non-staple food to a bhikkhu who has eaten and turned down an offer (for further food), saying, "Here, bhikkhu, chew or consume this" — when it has been eaten, it is to be confessed.
37. Should any bhikkhu chew or consume staple or non-staple food at the wrong time, it is to be confessed.
38. Should any bhikkhu chew or consume stored-up staple or non-staple food, it is to be confessed.
39. There are these finer staple foods, i.e., ghee, fresh butter, oil, honey, sugar/molasses, fish, meat, milk, and curds. Should any bhikkhu who is not ill, having asked for finer staple foods such as these for his own sake, then eat them, it is to be confessed.
40. Should any bhikkhu take into his mouth an edible that has not been given, except for water and tooth-cleaning sticks, it is to be confessed.
41. Should any bhikkhu give staple or non-staple food with his own hand to a naked ascetic, a male wanderer, or a female wanderer, it is to be confessed.
42. Should any bhikkhu say to a bhikkhu, "Come, my friend, let's enter the village or town for alms," and then — whether or not he has had (food) given to him — dismiss him, saying, "Go away, my friend. I don't like sitting or talking with you. I prefer sitting or talking alone," if doing it for that reason and no other, it is to be confessed.
43. Should a bhikkhu sit intruding on a family "with its meal," it is to be confessed.
44. Should any bhikkhu sit in private on a secluded seat with a woman, it is to be confessed.
45. Should any bhikkhu sit in private, alone with a woman, it is to be confessed.
46. Should any bhikkhu, being invited for a meal and without taking leave of an available bhikkhu, go calling on families before or after the meal, except at the proper times, it is to be confessed. Here the proper times are these: the time of giving cloth, the time of making robes. These are the proper times here.
47. A bhikkhu who is not ill may accept (make use of) a four-month invitation to ask for requisites. If he should accept (make use of) it for longer than that; unless the invitation is renewed or is permanent; it is to be confessed.
48. Should any bhikkhu go to see an army on active duty, unless there is a suitable reason, it is to be confessed.
49. There being some reason or another for a bhikkhu to go to an army, he may stay two or three (consecutive) nights with the army. If he should stay longer than that, it is to be confessed.
50. If a bhikkhu staying two or three nights with an army should go to a battlefield, a roll call, the troops in battle formation, or to see a review of the (battle) units, it is to be confessed.
51. The drinking of alcohol or fermented liquor is to be confessed.
52. Tickling with the fingers is to be confessed.
53. The act of playing in the water is to be confessed.
54. Disrespect is to be confessed.
55. Should any bhikkhu try to frighten another bhikkhu, it is to be confessed.
56. Should any bhikkhu who is not ill, seeking to warm himself, kindle a fire or have one kindled, unless there is a suitable reason, it is to be confessed.
57. Should any bhikkhu bathe at intervals of less than half a month, except at the proper occasions, it is to be confessed. Here the proper occasions are these: the last month and a half of the hot season, the first month of the rains, these two and a half months being a time of heat, a time of fever; (also) a time of illness; a time of work; a time of going on a journey; a time of wind or rain. These are the proper times here.
58. When a bhikkhu receives a new robe, any one of three means of discoloring it is to be applied: green, brown, or black. If a bhikkhu should make use of a new robe without applying any of the three means of discoloring it, it is to be confessed.
59. Should any bhikkhu, himself having placed robe-cloth under shared ownership (vikappana) with a bhikkhu, a bhikkhuni, a female probationer, a male novice, or a female novice, then make use of the cloth without the shared ownership's being rescinded, it is to be confessed.
60. Should any bhikkhu hide (another) bhikkhu's bowl, robe, sitting cloth, needle case, or belt, or have it hidden, even as a joke, it is to be confessed.
61. Should any bhikkhu knowingly deprive an animal of life, it is to be confessed.
62. Should any bhikkhu knowingly make use of water with living beings in it, it is to be confessed.
63. Should any bhikkhu knowingly agitate for the reviving of an issue that has been rightfully dealt with, it is to be confessed.
64. Should any bhikkhu knowingly conceal another bhikkhu's serious offense, it is to be confessed.
65. Should any bhikkhu knowingly give full ordination to an individual less than twenty years of age, the individual is not ordained and the bhikkhus are blameworthy; and as for him (the preceptor), it is to be confessed.
66. Should any bhikkhu knowingly and by arrangement travel together with a caravan of thieves, even for the interval between one village and the next, it is to be confessed.
67. Should any bhikkhu, by arrangement, travel together with a woman, even for the interval between one village and the next, it is to be confessed.
68. Should any bhikkhu say the following: "As I understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One, those acts the Blessed One says are obstructive, when indulged in are not genuine obstructions," the bhikkhus should admonish him thus: "Do not say that, venerable sir. Do not misrepresent the Blessed One, for it is not good to misrepresent the Blessed One. The Blessed One would not say anything like that. In many ways, friend, the Blessed One has described obstructive acts, and when indulged in they are genuine obstructions."
And should the bhikkhu, thus admonished by the bhikkhus, persist as before, the bhikkhus are to rebuke him up to three times so as to desist. If while being rebuked up to three times he desists, that is good. If he does not desist, it is to be confessed.
69. Should any bhikkhu knowingly consort, join in communion, or lie down in the same lodging with a bhikkhu professing such a view who has not acted in compliance with the rule, who has not abandoned that view, it is to be confessed.
70. And if a novice should say the following: "As I understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One, those acts the Blessed One says are obstructive when indulged in, are not genuine obstructions," the bhikkhus should admonish him thus: "Do not say that, friend novice. Do not misrepresent the Blessed One, for it is not good to misrepresent the Blessed One. The Blessed One would not say anything like that. In many ways, friend, the Blessed One has described obstructive acts, and when indulged in they are genuine obstructions."
And should that novice, thus admonished by the bhikkhus, persist as before, the bhikkhus should admonish him as follows: "From this day forth, friend novice, you are not to claim the Blessed One as your teacher, nor are you even to have the opportunity the other novices get — that of sharing lodgings two or three nights with the bhikkhus. Away with you! Out of our sight! (literally, 'Get lost!')"
Should any bhikkhu knowingly support, receive services from, consort with, or lie down in the same lodging with a novice thus expelled, it is to be confessed.
71. Should any bhikkhu, admonished by the bhikkhus in accordance with a rule, say, "Friends, I will not train myself under this training rule until I have put questions about it to another bhikkhu, experienced and learned in the discipline," it is to be confessed. Bhikkhus, (a training rule) is to be understood, is to be asked about, is to be pondered. This is the proper course here.
72. Should any bhikkhu, when the Patimokkha is being repeated, say, "Why are these lesser and minor training rules repeated when they lead only to anxiety, bother and confusion?" the criticism of the training rules is to be confessed.
73. Should any bhikkhu, when the Patimokkha is being recited every half-month, say, "Just now have I heard that this case, too, is handed down in the Patimokkha, is included in the Patimokkha, and comes up for recitation every half-month;" and if other bhikkhus should know, "That bhikkhu has already sat through two or three recitations of the Patimokkha, if not more," the bhikkhu is not exempted for being ignorant. Whatever the offense he has committed, he is to be dealt with in accordance with the rule; and in addition, his deception is to be exposed: "It is no gain for you, friend, it is ill-done, that when the Patimokkha is being recited, you do not pay proper attention and take it to heart." Here the deception is to be confessed.
74. Should any bhikkhu, angered and displeased, give a blow to (another) bhikkhu, it is to be confessed.
75. Should any bhikkhu, angered and displeased, raise his hand against (another) bhikkhu, it is to be confessed.
76. Should any bhikkhu charge a bhikkhu with an unfounded sanghadisesa (offense), it is to be confessed.
77. Should any bhikkhu purposefully provoke anxiety in (another) bhikkhu, (thinking,) "This way, even for just a moment, he will have no peace," if doing it for just this reason and no other, it is to be confessed.
78. Should any bhikkhu stand eavesdropping on bhikkhus when they are arguing, quarreling, and disputing, thinking, "I will overhear what they say" if doing it for just this reason and no other, it is to be confessed.
79. Should any bhikkhu, having given consent (by proxy) to a formal act carried out in accordance with the rule, later complain (about the act), it is to be confessed.
80. Should any bhikkhu, when deliberation is being carried on in the Community, get up from his seat and leave without having given consent, it is to be confessed.
81. Should any bhikkhu, (acting as part of) a Community in concord, give robe-cloth (to an individual bhikkhu) and later complain, "The bhikkhus apportion the Community's gains according to friendship," it is to be confessed.
82. Should any bhikkhu knowingly divert to an individual gains that had been allocated for the Community, it is to be confessed.
83. Should any bhikkhu, without being previously announced, cross the threshold of a consecrated noble king's (sleeping chamber) from which the king has not left, from which the treasure (the queen) has not withdrawn, it is to be confessed.
84. Should any bhikkhu pick up or have (someone) pick up a valuable or what is considered a valuable, except within a monastery or within a dwelling, it is to be confessed. But when a bhikkhu has picked up or had (someone) pick up a valuable or what is considered a valuable (left) in a monastery or in a dwelling, he is to keep it, (thinking,) "Whoever it belongs to will (come and) fetch it." This is the proper course here.
85. Should any bhikkhu, without taking leave of an available bhikkhu, enter a village at the wrong time, unless there is a suitable emergency, it is to be confessed.
86. Should any bhikkhu have a needle case made of bone, ivory, or horn, it is to be broken and confessed.
87. When a bhikkhu is making a new bed or bench, it is to have legs (at most) eight fingerbreadths long, using Sugata fingerbreadths, not counting the lower edge of the frame. In excess of that it is to be cut down and confessed.
88. Should any bhikkhu have a bed or bench upholstered, it (the upholstery) is to be torn off and confessed.
89. When a bhikkhu is making a sitting cloth, it is to be made to the standard measurement. Here the standard is this: two spans, using the Sugata span, in length, 1 1/2 in width, the border a span. In excess of that, it is to be cut down and confessed.
90. When a bhikkhu is making a skin-eruption covering cloth, it is to be made to the standard measurement. Here the standard is this: four spans, using the Sugata span, in length, two spans in width. In excess of that, it is to be cut down and confessed.
91. When a bhikkhu is making a rains-bathing cloth, it is to be made to the standard measurement. Here the standard is this: six spans, using the Sugata span, in length, 2 1/2 in width. In excess of that, it is to be cut down and confessed.
92. Should any bhikkhu have a robe made the size of the Sugata robe or larger, it is to be cut down and confessed. Here, the size of the Sugata robe is this: nine spans, using the Sugata span, in length, six spans in width. This is the size of the Sugata's Sugata robe.
Patidesaniya are violations which must be verbally acknowledged.
There are seventy five sekhiya or rules of training, which are mainly about the deportment of a monk. In many countries, it is also standard for novice monks (samanera) to follow the Sekhiyavatta rules in addition to the Ten Precepts.
A bhikku should train himself thus: I will not teach Dhamma to someone who is not sick and...
A bhikku should train himself thus: If I am not sick...
Adhikarana-samatha are seven rules for settlement of legal processes that concern monks only.
| 2497260 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2497260 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Civil courage
Civil courage is a type of courage, related closely to heroism, in which a person acts bravely to intervene or take a stand in a social situation.
Italian journalist and writer (1925–1996) wrote, "Je mehr Bürger mit Zivilcourage ein Land hat, desto weniger Helden wird es einmal brauchen" ("The more citizens with civil courage a country has, the fewer heroes it needs").
Civil courage has been referred to by psychologist Tobias Greitemeyer as constituting acts of bravery, carried out with the objective of enforcing a societal or ethical standard, without concern for the effect these acts might have on one's own position. This is because this civil courage is often punished since it entails risks and almost ensures ostracism not only from a group that the courageous individual belongs but also from society. In this way, it is distinguished from altruistic behavior and other forms of courage.
In the case of altruistic, helping behavior, an individual might expect to be praised or receive positive social consequences from the result of their having helped, despite possible financial or material loss. In actions where civil courage is demonstrated, the person carrying out the action may experience negative social consequences such as alienation, verbal abuse or violence. Civil courage is displayed when a person, in spite of the perceived threat of negative consequences acts to intervene in a social context. This is demonstrated in the case of whistleblowers, who do not necessarily risk their lives but their action could lead to years in prison.
There are those who associate civil courage to the concept of non-violence attributed to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and cited such association as the cause why it faded as a model of conduct due to the perception that it is uninteresting and boring.
| 2502980 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2502980 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Social dominance orientation
Social dominance orientation (SDO) is a personality trait which predicts social and political attitudes, and is a widely used social psychological scale. SDO is conceptualized under social dominance theory as a measure of individual differences in levels of group-based discrimination; that is, it is a measure of an individual's preference for hierarchy within any social system and the domination over lower-status groups. It is a predisposition toward anti-egalitarianism within and between groups. The concept of SDO as a measurable individual difference is a product of social dominance theory.
Individuals who score high in SDO desire to maintain and, in many cases, increase the differences between social statuses of different groups, as well as individual group members. Typically, they are dominant, driven, tough, and seekers of power. People high in SDO also prefer hierarchical group orientations. Often, people who score high in SDO adhere strongly to belief in a "dog-eat-dog" world. It has also been found that men are generally higher than women in SDO measures. Studies have found that SDO has a strong positive relationship with authoritarian and racist beliefs.
SDO was first proposed by Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto as part of their social dominance theory (SDT). SDO is the key measurable component of SDT that is specific to it.
SDT begins with the empirical observation that surplus-producing social systems have a threefold group-based hierarchy structure: age-based, gender-based and "arbitrary set-based", which can include race, class, sexual orientation, caste, ethnicity, religious affiliation, etc. Age-based hierarchies invariably give more power to adults and middle-age people than children and younger adults, and gender-based hierarchies invariably grant more power to one gender over others, but arbitrary-set hierarchies—though quite resilient—are truly arbitrary. :
SDT is based on three primary assumptions:
SDO is the individual attitudinal aspect of SDT. It is influenced by group status, socialization, and temperament. In turn, it influences support for HE and HA "legitimating myths", defined as "values, attitudes, beliefs, causal attributions and ideologies" that in turn justify social institutions and practices that either enhance or attenuate group hierarchy.
While the correlation of gender with SDO scores has been empirically measured and confirmed, the impact of temperament and socialization is less clear. Duckitt has suggested a model of attitude development for SDO, suggesting that unaffectionate socialisation in childhood causes a tough-minded attitude. According to Duckitt's model, people high in tough-minded personality are predisposed to view the world as a competitive place in which resource competition is zero-sum. A desire to compete, which fits with social dominance orientation, influences in-group and outside-group attitudes. People high in SDO also believe that hierarchies are present in all aspects of society and are more likely to agree with statements such as "It's probably a good thing that certain groups are at the top and other groups are at the bottom". In turn, SDO predicts stereotyping, discrimination and prejudice.
SDO has been measured by a series of scales that have been refined over time, all of which contain a balance of pro- and contra-trait statements or phrases. A 7-point Likert scale is used for each item; participants rate their agreement or disagreement with the statements from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Most of the research was conducted with the SDO-5 (a 14-point scale) and SDO-6. The SDO-7 scale is the most recent scale measuring social dominance orientation, which embeds two sub-dimensions: dominance (SDO-D) and anti-egalitarianism (SDO-E).
Keying is reversed on questions 9 through 16, to control for acquiescence bias.
Rubin and Hewstone (2004) argue that social dominance research has changed its focus dramatically over the years, and these changes have been reflected in different versions of the social dominance orientation construct. Social dominance orientation was originally defined as "the degree to which individuals desire social dominance and superiority for themselves and their primordial groups over other groups" (p. 209). It then quickly changed to not only "(a) a…desire for and value given to in-group dominance over out-groups" but also "(b) the desire for nonegalitarian, hierarchical relationships between groups within the social system" (p. 1007). The most recent measure of social dominance orientation (see SDO-6 above) focuses on the "general desire for unequal relations among social groups, regardless of whether this means ingroup domination or ingroup subordination" (p. 312). Given these changes, Rubin and Hewstone believe that evidence for social dominance theory should be considered "as supporting three separate SDO hypotheses, rather than one single theory" (p. 22).
Robert Altemeyer said that people with a high SDO want more power (agreeing with items such as ""Winning is more important than how you play the game"") and are higher on Machiavellianism.
These observations are at odds with conceptualisations of SDO as a group-based phenomenon, suggesting that the SDO reflects interpersonal dominance, not only group-based dominance. This is supported by Sidanius and Pratto's own evidence that high-SDO individuals tend to gravitate toward hierarchy-enhancing jobs and institutions, such as law enforcement, that are themselves hierarchically structured vis-a-vis individuals within them.
SDO correlates weakly with right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) (r ≈ .18). Both predict attitudes, such as sexist, racist, and heterosexist attitudes. The two contribute to different forms of prejudice; SDO correlates to higher prejudice against subordinate and disadvantaged groups, RWA correlates to higher prejudice against threatening groups, while both are associated with increases in prejudice for "dissident" groups. SDO and RWA contribute to prejudice in an additive rather than interactive way (the interaction of SDO and RWA accounted, in one study, for an average of less than .001% variance in addition to their linear combination), that is the association between SDO and prejudice is similar regardless of a person's level of RWA, and vice versa. Crawford et al. (2013) found that RWA and SDO differentially predicted interpretations of media reports about socially threatening (for example, gays and lesbians) and disadvantaged groups (for example, African Americans), respectively. Subjects with high SDO, but not RWA, scores reacted positively to articles and authors that opposed affirmative action, and negatively to pro-affirmative-action article content. Moreover, RWA, but not SDO, predicted subjects' evaluations of same-sex relationships, such that high-RWA individuals favored anti-same-sex relationships article content and low-RWA individuals favorably rated pro-same-sex relationships content.
Studies on the relationship of SDO with the higher order Big Five personality traits have associated high SDO with lower openness to experience and lower agreeableness. Meta-analytic aggregation of these studies indicates that the association with low Agreeableness is more robust than the link to Openness to experience. Individuals low in Agreeableness are more inclined to report being motivated by self-interest and self-indulgence"." They also tend to be more self-centred and are more 'tough-minded' compared to those who are high on Agreeableness, leading them to perceive the world to be a highly-competitive place, where the way to success is through power and dominance – all of which predict SDO.
Low Openness, by contrast, aligns more strongly with RWA; thinking in clear and straightforward moral codes that dictate how society as a system should function. Being low in Openness prompts the individual to value security, stability and control: fundamental elements of RWA.
In case of SDO all five facets of Agreeableness significantly correlate (negatively), even after controlling for RWA. 'Tough-mindedness' (opposite of tender-mindedness' facet) is the strongest predictor of SDO. After the effect of SDO is controlled for, only one facet of agreeableness is predictive of RWA. Facets also distinguish SDO from RWA, with 'Dominators' (individuals high on SDO), but not 'Authoritarians' (individuals who score high on RWA), having been found to be lower in dutifulness, morality, sympathy and co-operation. RWA is also associated with religiosity, conservativism, righteousness, and, to some extent, a conscientious moral code, which distinguishes RWA from SDO.
SDO is inversely related to empathy. Facets of Agreeableness that are linked to altruism, sympathy and compassion are the
strongest predictors of SDO. SDO has been suggested to have a link with callous affect (which is to be found on the psychopathy sub-scale), the 'polar opposite' of empathy.
The relationship between SDO and "(lack of)" empathy has been found to be reciprocal – with equivocal findings. Some studies show that empathy significantly impacts SDO, whereas other research suggest the opposite effect is more robust; that SDO predicts empathy. The latter showcases how powerful of a predictor SDO may be, not only affecting individual's certain behaviours, but potentially influencing upstream the
proneness to those behaviours. It also suggests, that those scoring high on SDO proactively avoid scenarios that could prompt
them to be more empathetic or tender-minded. This avoidance decreases concern for other's welfare.
Empathy indirectly affects generalized prejudice through its negative relationship with SDO. It also
has a direct effect on generalized prejudice, as lack of empathy makes one unable to put oneself in the other person's shoes, which predicts prejudice and antidemocratic views.
Some recent research has suggested the relationship between SDO and empathy may be more complex, arguing that people with high levels of SDO are less likely to show empathy towards low status people but more likely to show it towards high status people. Conversely, people with low SDO levels demonstrate the reverse behaviour.
Research suggests that people high in SDO tend to support using violence in intergroup relations while those low in SDO oppose it, however it has also been argued that people low in SDO can also support (and those high in it oppose) violence in some circumstances, if the violence is seen as a form of counter dominance - for example, Lebanese people low in SDO approved more strongly of terrorism against the West than Lebanese people high in SDO, seemingly because it entailed a low status group (Lebanese) attacking a high status one (Westerners).
Low levels of SDO have been found to result in individuals possessing positive biases towards outgroup members, for example regarding outgroup members as less irrational than ingroup members, the reverse of what is usually found.
In the modern day US, research indicates that most people tend to score fairly low on the SDO scale, with an average score of 2.98 on a 7 point scale (with 7 being the highest in SDO and 1 the lowest), with a standard deviation of 1.19. This has also been found to apply cross-culturally, with the average SDO score being around 2.6, although there was some variation (Switzerland scoring somewhat lower and Japan scoring substantially higher). Because SDO scales tend to skew towards egalitarianism, some researchers have argued that this has caused a misinterpretation of correlations between SDO scores and other variables, arguing that low-SDO scorers, rather than high-SDO scorers, are possibly driving most of the correlations. Thus SDO research may actually be discovering the psychology of egalitarianism rather than the reverse.
SDO has been found to be related to color blindess. For low SDO individuals, color blindness predicts more negative attitudes towards ethnic minorities but for high SDO individuals, it predicts more positive attitudes.
SDO has also been found to relate to attitudes towards social class.
Felicia Pratto and her colleagues have found evidence that a high social dominance orientation is strongly correlated with conservative political views, and opposition to programs and policies that aim to promote equality (such as affirmative action, laws advocating equal rights for homosexuals, women in combat, etc.).
There has been some debate within the psychology community on what the relation is between SDO and racism/sexism. One explanation suggests that opposition to programs that promote equality need not be based on racism or sexism but on a "principled conservatism", that is, a "concern for equality of opportunity, color-blindness, and genuine conservative values".
Some principled-conservatism theorists have suggested that racism and conservatism are independent, and only very weakly correlated among the highly educated, who truly understand the concepts of conservative values and attitudes. In an effort to examine the relationship between education, SDO, and racism, Sidanius and his colleagues asked approximately 4,600 Euro-Americans to complete a survey in which they were asked about their political and social attitudes, and their social dominance orientation was assessed. "These findings contradict much of the case for the principled conservatism hypothesis, which maintains that political values that are largely devoid of racism, especially among highly educated people." Contrary to what these theorists would predict, correlations among SDO, political conservatism, and racism were strongest among the most educated, and weakest among the least educated. Sidanius and his colleagues hypothesized this was because the most educated conservatives tend to be more invested in the hierarchical structure of society and in maintaining the inequality of the status quo in society in order to safeguard their status.
SDO is typically measured as an individual personality construct. However, cultural forms of SDO have been discovered on the macro level of society. Discrimination, prejudice and stereotyping can occur at various levels of institutions in society, such as transnational corporations, government agencies, schools and criminal justice systems. The basis of this theory of societal level SDO is rooted in evolutionary psychology, which states that humans have an evolved predisposition to express social dominance that is heightened under certain social conditions (such as group status) and is also mediated by factors such as individual personality and temperament. Democratic societies are lower in SDO measures The more that a society encourages citizens to cooperate with others and feel concern for the welfare of others, the lower the SDO in that culture. High levels of national income and empowerment of women are also associated with low national SDO, whereas more traditional societies with lower income, male domination and more closed institutional systems are associated with a higher SDO. Individuals who are socialized within these traditional societies are more likely to internalize gender hierarchies and are less likely to challenge them.
The biology of SDO is unknown.
Plenty of evidence suggests that men tend to score higher on SDO than women, and this is true across different countries,
cultures, age-groups, classes, religions and educational levels. Researchers argue for an
'invariance' in the difference between men and women's SDO; suggesting that even if all other factors were to be controlled for, the difference between men and women's SDO would still remain – this however in some cases is disproved.
From an evolutionary and biological perspective SDO facilitates men to be successful in their reproductive strategy through
achieving social power and control over other males and becoming desired mating partners for the opposite sex.
Males are observed to be more socially hierarchical, as indicated by speaking time, and yielding to interruptions.
Noting that males tend to have higher SDO scores than females, Sidanius and Pratto speculate that SDO may be influenced by hormones that differ between the sexes, namely androgens, primarily testosterone. Male levels of testosterone are much higher than those of females.
Taking a socio-cultural perspective, it is argued that the gap between women and men in SDO is dependent upon societal norms prescribing different expectations for gender roles of men and women. Men are expected to be dominant and assertive, whereas women are supposed to be submissive and tender.
Differences between male and female attributional cognitive complexity are suggested to contribute to the gender gap in SDO. Women have been found to be more attributionally complex compared to men; they use more contextual information and evaluate social information more precisely. It is proposed that lower social status prompts higher cognitive complexity in order to compensate for the lack of control in that social situation by processing it more attentively and evaluating it more in depth. The difference in cognitive complexity between high and low status individuals could contribute to the differences between male and female SDO.
Some evidence suggests that both the dominance and anti-egalitarianism dimensions of SDO are determined by genetic, rather than environmental, factors.
| 2504255 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2504255 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | 'I' and the 'me'
The I' and the 'me are terms central to the social philosophy of George Herbert Mead, one of the key influences on the development of the branch of sociology called symbolic interactionism. The terms refer to the psychology of the individual, where in Mead's understanding, the "me" is the socialized aspect of the person, and the "I" is the active aspect of the person.
One might usefully 'compare Mead's "I" and "me", respectively, with Sartre's "choice" and "the situation". But Mead himself matched up the "me" with Freud's "censor", and the "I" with his "ego"; and this is psychologically apt.
The "Me" is what is learned in interaction with others and (more generally) with the environment: other people's attitudes, once internalized in the self, constitute the "Me". This includes both knowledge about that environment (including society), but "also" about who the person is: their "sense of self". "What the individual is for himself is not something that he invented. It is what his significant others have come to ...treat him as being." This is because people learn to see who they are (man or woman, old or young, etc.) by observing the responses of others to themselves or their actions. If others respond to a person as (for instance) a woman, the person develops a sense of herself indeed as a woman.
At the same time, 'the "Me" disciplines the "I" by holding it back from breaking the law of the community'. It is thus very close to the way in a man Freud's 'ego-censor, the conscience...arose from the critical influence of his parents (conveyed to him by the medium of the voice), to whom were added, as time went on, those who trained and taught him and the innumerable and indefinable host of all the other people in his environment—his fellow-men—and public opinion'. It is 'the attitude of the other in one's own organism, as controlling the thing that he is going to do'.
By contrast, 'the "I" is the response of the individual to the attitude of the community'. The "I" acts creatively, though within the context of the "me". Mead notes that "It is only after we have acted that we know what we have done...what we have said." People, he argues, are not automatons; Mead states that "the "I" reacts to the self which arises though the taking of the attitude of others." They do not blindly follow rules. They "construct" a response on the basis of what they have learned, the "me". Mead highlighted accordingly those values that attach particularly to the "I" rather than to the "me", "...which cannot be calculated and which involve a reconstruction of the society, and so of the 'me' which belongs to that society." Taken together, the "I" and the "me" form the person or the self in Mead's social philosophy. According to Mead, there would be no possibility of personality without both the "I" and the "Me".
Mead explored what he called 'the fusion of the "I" and the "me" in the attitudes of religion, patriotism, and team work', noting what he called the "peculiar sense of exaltation" that belongs to them. He also considered that 'the idea of the fusion of the "I" and the "me" gives a very adequate explanation of this exaltation...in the aesthetic experience'.
In everyday life, however, 'a complete fusion of the "I" and the "me" may not be a good thing...it is a dynamic sort of balance between the "I" and the "me" that is required'.
When there is a predominance of the "me" in the personality, 'we speak of a person as a conventional individual; his ideas are exactly the same as those of his neighbours; he is hardly more than a "me" under the circumstances'—"...the shallow, brittle, conformist kind of personality..." that is ""all persona", with its excessive concern for "what people think"." The alternative—and in many ways Mead's ideal—was the person who has a definite personality, who replies to the organized attitude in a way that makes a significant difference. With such a person, the "I" is the most important phase of the experience.
Mead recognised that it is normal for an individual to have 'all sorts of selves answering to all sorts of different social reactions', but also that it was possible for 'a tendency to break up the personality' to appear: 'Two separate "me's" and "I's", two different selves, result...the phenomenon of dissociation of personality'.
Walt Whitman 'marks off the impulsive "I", the natural, existential aspect of the self, from critical sanction. It is the cultured self, the "me", in Mead's terms, that needs re-mediation'.
| 2508071 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2508071 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | International Day of Peace
The International Day of Peace, sometimes unofficially known as World Peace Day, is a United Nations-sanctioned holiday observed annually on 21 September. It is dedicated to world peace, and specifically the absence of war and violence, such as might be occasioned by a temporary ceasefire in a combat zone for humanitarian aid access. The day was first celebrated in 1981, and is kept by many nations, political groups, military groups, and people. In 2013 the day was dedicated by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to peace education, the key preventive means to reduce war sustainably.
To inaugurate the day, the United Nations Peace Bell is rung at UN Headquarters (in New York City). The bell is cast from coins donated by children from all continents except Africa, and was a gift from the United Nations Association of Japan, as "a reminder of the human cost of war"; the inscription on its side reads, "Long live absolute world peace".
In recent years, a searchable map of events has been published at un.org.
The United Nations General Assembly declared, in a resolution sponsored by the United Kingdom and Costa Rica, the International Day of Peace, to be devoted to commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace. The date initially chosen was the regular opening day of the annual sessions of the General Assembly, the third Tuesday of September. (This was changed in 2001 to the current annual celebration on 21 September each year — see 2001 below.)
Tuesday 21 September 1982 was the first occurrence of the International Day of Peace.
The theme of the first International Day of Peace was the Right to peace of people.
Since 1983, at the request of the Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Pathways To Peace (PTP) submitted a “We the Peoples” Initiative Annual Report to the UN, summarizing the Peace Day activities. The reports from 2005 and 2009 are available as archives as cited below. For its initiatives for the International Year of Peace in 1987, PTP was granted “Peace Messenger” status by UN Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar .
In 2006 the name was changed from “We the Peoples” Initiative to "Culture of Peace Initiative."
A proposal for expanding the International Day of Peace to include Reconciliation, in which a massive number of emblems (White Doves) would be distributed after a formal presentation at the United Nations, was put forward by Vincent Coyle, of Derry, Northern Ireland, and was debated at Seanad Éireann. It was accepted that it would be impractical for one member state to ask for a particular slot at a general UN ceremony. However, events have been held at the United Nations in New York, with the support of Kofi Annan, in April.
In 2001 the opening day of the General Assembly was scheduled for 11 September, and Secretary General Kofi Annan drafted a message recognising the observance of International Peace Day on 21 September. That year the day was changed from the third Tuesday to specifically the twenty-first day of September, to take effect in 2002. A new resolution was passed by the General Assembly, sponsored by the United Kingdom (giving credit to Peace One Day) and Costa Rica (the original sponsors of the day), to give the International Day of Peace a fixed calendar date, 21 September, and declare it also as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence.
A diplomatic stir occurred when Lions Clubs International sponsored a competition for six posters to be used for International Day of Peace commemorative stamps issued by the UN Postal Administration. A poster by 15-year-old Taiwanese school student Yang Chih-Yuan was announced as one of the winners, but the announcement was withdrawn. Taiwan media reports, Taiwan Lions Club and the government of Taiwan claimed the decision not to use the poster resulted from pressure from China; the rejection of the student's painting on political grounds did not reflect the ideals of the International Day of Peace. The UN issued a statement that, although in the short list of eight designs, "due to an internal misunderstanding and miscommunication, Mr. Yang's proof got publicized in error as one of the six stamps intended to be issued." The government of Taiwan (Republic of China) later issued a stamp containing the image.
In 2005, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for the worldwide observance of a 22-hour cease-fire and day of nonviolence to mark the Day.
The Culture of Peace Initiative published an annual report for the International Day of Peace in 2005 describing events in 46 countries: Africa 11; East Asia and Pacific 12; Latin America and Caribbean 4; Europe 14; Middle East 3; North America 2 (22 states, provinces).
In 2006, then Secretary-General Kofi Annan rang the Peace Bell for the last time during his Term in office. That year the UN asserted the "many ways it works for peace and to encourage individuals, Groups and communities around the world to contemplate and communicate thoughts and activities on how to achieve peace."
The United Kingdom held the primary public and official observation of the United Nations International Day of Peace and Non-Violence in Rochdale, Greater Manchester. This was organized by Peace Parade UK.
In 2007, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon rang the Peace Bell at United Nations Headquarters in New York calling for a 24-hour cessation of hostilities on 21 September, and for a minute of silence to be observed around the world.
In 2009 – International Year of Reconciliation – the day was marked by a massive number of white doves being distributed after a formal presentation at the United Nations, bearing in mind the Charter of the United Nations, including the purposes and principles contained therein, and in particular those of saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war, bringing about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace, and practising tolerance and living together in peace with one another as good neighbours, thus developing friendly relations among nations and promoting international cooperation to resolve international economic, social, cultural and humanitarian issues. Vincent Coyle of Derry, Northern Ireland gave his full support.
"Take Action for a World Free of Nuclear Weapons ... Disarmament and non-proliferation ... to raise awareness of the dangers and costs of nuclear weapons, and on why nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation are so crucial."
The Culture of Peace Initiative published an annual report for the International Day of Peace in 2009 describing events in 77 countries: Africa 14; East Asia and Pacific 20; Latin America and Caribbean 11; Europe 23; Middle East 7; North America 2 countries (48 states, provinces).
"The United Nations is looking for stories from young people around the world who are working for peace. The campaign slogan this year is "Peace=Future, The math is easy"."
In 2011 the UN Peace Day's theme was "Peace and Democracy: Make Your Voice Heard". Many organizations held Peace Day events worldwide in 2011. There were school activities, music concerts, global comedy clubs (www.thinkPEACE.net), peace doves, prayer vigils, peace conferences, and UN activities. Organizations like Peace One Day, Wiser and Culture of Peace have been active participants in Peace Day activities for years.
The United Nations set the theme for this year's observance as Sustainable Peace for a Sustainable Future, commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and peoples.
In 2011, Peace One Day announced at their O2 Arena concert, a new international campaign called "Global Truce 2012", a grassroots initiative and international coalition with non-governmental organisations and Students' unions in every continent, which increased participation and action on Peace Day 2012, the day of "Global Truce". Particular focus in this campaign included a cessation of hostilities on the day and a reduction of domestic violence and bullying in society. The "Peace One Day Celebration" concert on Peace Day in 2012 was held at Wembley Arena to celebrate "Global Truce 2012". The "Global Truce" campaign will continue and be named with each year it leads up to, involving more partners and coalitions for mass participation and life-saving practical action on Peace Day.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has dedicated the World Peace Day 2013 to Peace education in an effort to refocus minds and financing on the preeminence of peace education as the means to bring about a culture of peace. Animator and children's book author, Sue DiCicco announced in May 2013 a global campaign to increase awareness of Peace Day and promote peace education within schools and community groups through the Peace Crane Project. Gorey Community School in Co. Wexford, Ireland, has been chosen to be School of Peace for 2013.
Peace One Day launched a new theme for Global Truce 2013: "Who Will You Make Peace With"?
To bring awareness to Peace Day, thinkPEACE promoted a Peace Day Comedy program, "Stand-Up For International Peace," held in over 50 global comedy clubs in 2013.
The theme of the 2014 International Day of Peace is the Right of Peoples to Peace, reaffirming the United Nations commitment to the UN "Declaration on the Right of Peoples to Peace", which recognizes that the promotion of peace is vital for the full enjoyment of all human rights.
To bring awareness to Peace Day 2014, the thinkPEACE Network will promote a Peace Day Comedy program, "Stand-Up For International Peace," to be held in over 50 global comedy clubs.
The "Waves Of Kindness Global Initiative" celebrates the United Nations International Day Of Peace though global meditation events.
Director of UNESCO to Vietnam, Katherine Müller, said in Global Education Magazine: "I personally identify with UNESCO’s values in the sense that I truly believe Education, Culture, Social and Natural Sciences, and Communication and Information are some of the most powerful drivers for sustainable development and peace, as a sustainable future cannot exist without sustainable peace. Raising awareness, capacity building, promoting understanding and respect for diversity, and fostering opportunities for interaction to find ways to ensure a culture of peace are all actions that will motivate people to become interested in setting peace as a priority for sustainable development."
The theme of the 2015 International Day of Peace was "Partnerships for Peace – Dignity for All".
The theme of the 2016 International Day of Peace was "The Sustainable Development Goals: Building Blocks for Peace".
This theme is based on the TOGETHER global campaign that promotes respect, safety and dignity for everyone forced to flee their homes in search of a better life.
In 2017, The Peace Crane Project announced the goal of collecting 1,000 cranes from students around the world to display in various venues to celebrate.
A survey by the Culture of Peace News Network found internet reports about 562 celebrations of the International Day of Peace from 127 countries around the world this year. These included 128 events coming from most of the provinces and states in Canada and the USA. Next were the countries formerly part of the Soviet Union with 104. There were 96 events cited in 27 European countries, 81 from 29 African countries, 67 from 20 Asian countries, 58 from 16 Latin American and Caribbean countries, and 28 from 21 Arab and Middle Eastern countries.
The 2018 U.N. Peace Day Theme is "The Right to Peace – The Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 70."
A survey by the Culture of Peace News Network found internet reports about 764 celebrations of the International Day of Peace from 129 countries around the world this year. These included 233 events coming from most of the provinces and states in Canada and the USA. Next were 177 events from Europe and 158 events from Asia. There were 95 events from Latin America and the Caribbean, 71 events from countries formerly part of the Soviet Union, 71 from Africa, and 15 from Arab and Middle Eastern countries.
The United Nations has selected the theme "Climate Action for Peace" for the 2019 International Day of Peace.
According to the UN website, "The United Nations calls upon all to take action to tackle climate change."
"On 23 September [2019], the United Nations is convening a Climate Action Summit with concrete and realistic plans to accelerate action to implement the Paris Agreement."
The International Day of Peace Student Observance on 20 September 2019 at United Nations Headquarters will feature young people presenting their projects to fight climate change and promote peace.
A survey by the Culture of Peace News Network found internet reports concerning more than 655 celebrations of the International Day of Peace from 103 countries around the world this year.
| 2514283 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2514283 |
Religion&Philosophy&Ethics | Remote control animal
Remote control animals are animals that are controlled remotely by humans. Some applications require electrodes to be implanted in the animal's nervous system connected to a receiver which is usually carried on the animal's back. The animals are controlled by the use of radio signals. The electrodes do not move the animal directly, as if controlling a robot; rather, they signal a direction or action desired by the human operator and then stimulate the animal's reward centres if the animal complies. These are sometimes called bio-robots or robo-animals. They can be considered to be cyborgs as they combine electronic devices with an organic life form. Because of the surgery required, and the moral and ethical issues involved, there has been criticism aimed at the use of remote control animals, especially regarding animal welfare and animal rights. A similar, non-invasive application has been reported which stimulates the brain with ultrasound to control the animal. Some applications (used primarily for dogs) use vibrations or sound to control the movements of the animals.
Several species of animals have been successfully controlled remotely. These include
moths, beetles, cockroaches, rats, dogfish sharks, mice and pigeons.
Remote control animals can be directed and used as working animals for search and rescue operations or various other uses.
Several studies have examined the remote control of rats using micro-electodes implanted into their brains and rely on stimulating the reward centre of the rat. Three electrodes are implanted; two in the ventral posterolateral nucleus of the thalamus which conveys facial sensory information from the left and right whiskers, and a third in the medial forebrain bundle which is involved in the reward process of the rat. This third electrode is used to give a rewarding electrical stimulus to the brain when the rat makes the correct move to the left or right. During training, the operator stimulates the left or right electrode of the rat making it "feel" a touch to the corresponding set of whiskers, as though it had come in contact with an obstacle. If the rat then makes the correct response, the operator rewards the rat by stimulating the third electrode.
In 2002, a team of scientists at the State University of New York remotely controlled rats from a laptop up to 500 m away. The rats could be instructed to turn left or right, climb trees and ladders, navigate piles of rubble, and jump from different heights. They could even be commanded into brightly lit areas, which rats usually avoid. It has been suggested that the rats could be used to carry cameras to people trapped in disaster zones.
In 2013, researchers reported the development of a radio-telemetry system to remotely control free-roaming rats with a range of 200 m. The backpack worn by the rat includes the mainboard and an FM transmitter-receiver, which can generate biphasic microcurrent pulses. All components in the system are commercially available and are fabricated from surface mount devices to reduce the size (25 x 15 x 2 mm) and weight (10 g with battery).
Concerns have been raised about the ethics of such studies. Even one of the pioneers in this area of study, Sanjiv Talwar, said "There's going to have to be a wide debate to see whether this is acceptable or not" and "There are some ethical issues here which I can't deny." Elsewhere he was quoted as saying "The idea sounds a little creepy." Some oppose the idea of placing living creatures under direct human command. "It's appalling, and yet another example of how the human species instrumentalises other species," says Gill Langley of the Dr Hadwen Trust based in Hertfordshire (UK), which funds alternatives to animal-based research. Gary Francione, an expert in animal welfare law at Rutgers University School of Law, says "The animal is no longer functioning as an animal," as the rat is operating under someone's control. And the issue goes beyond whether or not the stimulations are compelling or rewarding the rat to act. "There's got to be a level of discomfort in implanting these electrodes," he says, which may be difficult to justify. Talwar stated that the animal's "native intelligence" can stop it from performing some directives but with enough stimulation, this hesitation can sometimes be overcome, but occasionally cannot.
Researchers at Harvard University have created a brain-to-brain interface (BBI) between a human and a Sprague-Dawley rat. Simply by thinking the appropriate thought, the BBI allows the human to control the rat's tail. The human wears an EEG-based brain-to-computer interface (BCI), while the anesthetised rat is equipped with a focused ultrasound (FUS) computer-to-brain interface (CBI). FUS is a technology that allows the researchers to excite a specific region of neurons in the rat's brain using an ultrasound signal (350 kHz ultrasound frequency, tone burst duration of 0.5 ms, pulse repetition frequency of 1 kHz, given for 300 ms duration). The main advantage of FUS is that, unlike most brain-stimulation techniques, it is non-invasive. Whenever the human looks at a specific pattern (strobe light flicker) on a computer screen, the BCI communicates a command to the rat's CBI, which causes ultrasound to be beamed into the region of the rat's motor cortex responsible for tail movement. The researchers report that the human BCI has an accuracy of 94%, and that it generally takes around 1.5 s from the human looking at the screen to movement of the rat's tail.
Another system that non-invasively controls rats uses ultrasonic, epidermal and LED photic stimulators on the back. The system receives commands to deliver specified electrical stimulations to the hearing, pain and visual senses of the rat respectively. The three stimuli work in groups for the rat navigation.
Other researchers have dispensed with human remote control of rats and instead uses a General Regression Neural Network algorithm to analyse and model controlling of human operations.
Dogs are often used in disaster relief, at crime scenes and on the battlefield, but it's not always easy for them to hear the commands of their handlers. A command module which contains a microprocessor, wireless radio, GPS receiver and an attitude and heading reference system (essentially a gyroscope) can be fitted to dogs. The command module delivers vibration or sound commands (delivered by the handler over the radio) to the dog to guide it in a certain direction or to perform certain actions. The overall success rate of the control system is 86.6%.
Researchers responsible for developing remote control of a pigeon using brain implants conducted a similar successful experiment on mice in 2005.
In 1967, Franz Huber pioneered electrical stimulation to the brain of insects and showed that mushroom body stimulation elicits complex behaviours, including the inhibition of locomotion.
The US-based company Backyard Brains released the "RoboRoach", a remote controlled cockroach kit that they refer to as "The world's first commercially available cyborg". The project started as a University of Michigan biomedical engineering student senior design project in 2010 and was launched as an available beta product on 25 February 2011. The RoboRoach was officially released into production via a TED talk at the TED Global conference, and via the crowdsourcing website Kickstarter in 2013, the kit allows students to use microstimulation to momentarily control the movements of a walking cockroach (left and right) using a bluetooth-enabled smartphone as the controller. The RoboRoach was the first kit available to the general public for the remote control of an animal and was funded by the United States' National Institute of Mental Health as a device to serve as a teaching aid to promote an interest in neuroscience. This funding was due to the similarities between the RoboRoach microstimulation, and the microstimulation used in the treatments of Parkinson's disease (Deep Brain Stimulation) and deafness (Cochlear implants) in humans. Several animal welfare organizations including the RSPCA and PETA have expressed concerns about the ethics and welfare of animals in this project.
Another group at North Carolina State University has developed a remote control cockroach. Researchers at NCSU have programmed a path for cockroaches to follow while tracking their location with an Xbox Kinect. The system automatically adjusted the cockroach's movements to ensure it stayed on the prescribed path.
In 2009, remote control of the flight movements of the "Cotinus texana" and the much larger "Mecynorrhina torquata" beetles has been achieved during experiments funded by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The weight of the electronics and battery meant that only Mecynorrhina was strong enough to fly freely under radio control. A specific series of pulses sent to the optic lobes of the insect encouraged it to take flight. The average length of flights was just 45 seconds, although one lasted for more than 30 minutes. A single pulse caused the beetle to land again. Stimulation of basalar flight muscles allowed the controller to direct the insect left or right, although this was successful on only 75% of stimulations. After each maneuver, the beetles quickly righted themselves and continued flying parallel to the ground. In 2015, researchers was able to fine tune the beetle steering in flight by changing the pulse train applied on the wing-folding muscle. Recently, scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, have demonstrated graded turning and backward walking in a small darkling beetle (Zophobas morio), which is 2 cm to 2.5 cm long and weight only 1 g including the electronic backpack and battery. It has been suggested the beetles could be used for search and rescue mission, however, it has been noted that currently available batteries, solar cells and piezoelectrics that harvest energy from movement cannot provide enough power to run the electrodes and radio transmitters for very long.
Work using "Drosophila" has dispensed with stimulating electrodes and developed a 3-part remote control system that evokes action potentials in pre-specified "Drosophila" neurons using a laser beam. The central component of the remote control system is a Ligand-gated ion channel gated by ATP. When ATP is applied, uptake of external calcium is induced and action potentials generated. The remaining two parts of the remote control system include chemically caged ATP, which is injected into the central nervous system through the fly's simple eye, and laser light capable of uncaging the injected ATP. The giant fibre system in insects consists of a pair of large interneurons in the brain which can excite the insect flight and jump muscles. A 200 ms pulse of laser light elicited jumping, wing flapping, or other flight movements in 60%–80% of the flies. Although this frequency is lower than that observed with direct electrical stimulation of the giant fibre system, it is higher than that elicited by natural stimuli, such as a light-off stimulus.
Spiny dogfish sharks have been remotely controlled by implanting electrodes deep in the shark's brain to a remote control device outside the tank. When an electric current is passed through the wire, it stimulates the shark's sense of smell and the animal turns, just as it would move toward blood in the ocean. Stronger electrical signals—mimicking stronger smells—cause the shark to turn more sharply. One study is funded by a $600,000 grant from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It has been suggested that such sharks could search hostile waters with sensors that detect explosives, or cameras that record intelligence photographs. Outside the military, similar sensors could detect oil spills or gather data on the behaviour of sharks in their natural habitat. Scientists working with remote control sharks admit they are not sure exactly which neurons they are stimulating, and therefore, they can't always control the shark's direction reliably. The sharks only respond after some training, and some sharks don't respond at all. The research has prompted protests from bloggers who allude to remote controlled humans or horror films featuring maniacal cyborg sharks on a feeding frenzy.
An alternative technique was to use small gadgets attached to the shark's noses that released squid juice on demand.
South Korean researchers have remotely controlled the movements of a turtle using a completely non-invasive steering system. Red-eared terrapins ("Trachemys scripta elegans") were made to follow a specific path by manipulating the turtles' natural obstacle avoidance behaviour. If these turtles detect something is blocking their path in one direction, they move to avoid it. The researchers attached a black half cylinder to the turtle. The "visor" was positioned around the turtle's rear end, but was pivoted around using a microcontroller and a servo motor to either the left or right to partially block the turtle's vision on one side. This made the turtle believe there was an obstacle it needed to avoid on that side and thereby encouraged the turtle to move in the other direction.
Some animals have had parts of their bodies remotely controlled, rather than their entire bodies. Researchers in China stimulated the mesencephalon of geckos ("G. gecko") via micro stainless steel electrodes and observed the gecko's responses during stimulation. Locomotion responses such as spinal bending and limb movements could be elicited in different depths of mesencephalon. Stimulation of the periaqueductal gray area elicited ipsilateral spinal bending while stimulation of the ventral tegmental area elicited contralateral spinal bending.
In 2007, researchers at east China's Shandong University of Science and Technology implanted micro electrodes in the brain of a pigeon so they could remotely control it to fly right or left, or up or down.
Remote-controlled animals are considered to have several potential uses, replacing the need for humans in some dangerous situations. Their application is further widened if they are equipped with additional electronic devices. Small creatures fitted with cameras and other sensors have been proposed as being useful when searching for survivors after a building has collapsed, with cockroaches or rats being small and manoeuvrable enough to go under rubble.
There have been a number of suggested military uses of remote controlled animals, particularly in the area of surveillance. Remote-controlled dogfish sharks have been likened to the studies into the use of military dolphins. It has also been proposed that remote-controlled rats could be used for the clearing of land mines. Other suggested fields of application include pest control, the mapping of underground areas, and the study of animal behaviour.
Development of robots that are capable of performing the same actions as controlled animals is often technologically difficult and cost-prohibitive. Flight is very difficult to replicate while having an acceptable payload and flight duration. Harnessing insects and using their natural flying ability gives significant improvements in performance. The availability of "inexpensive, organic substitutes" therefore allows for the development of small, controllable robots that are otherwise currently unavailable.
Some animals are remotely controlled, but rather than being directed to move left or right, the animal is prevented from moving forward, or its behaviour is modified in other ways.
Shock collars deliver electrical shocks of varying intensity and duration to the neck or other area of a dog's body via a radio-controlled electronic device incorporated into a dog collar. Some collar models also include a tone or vibration setting, as an alternative to or in conjunction with the shock. Shock collars are now readily available and have been used in a range of applications, including behavioural modification, obedience training, and pet containment, as well as in military, police and service training. While similar systems are available for other animals, the most common are the collars designed for domestic dogs.
The use of shock collars is controversial and scientific evidence for their safety and efficacy is mixed. A few countries have enacted bans or controls on their use. Some animal welfare organizations warn against their use or actively support a ban on their use or sale. Some want restrictions placed on their sale. Some professional dog trainers and their organizations oppose their use and some support them. Support for their use or calls for bans from the general public is mixed.
In 2007, it was reported that scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation had developed a prototype "invisible fence" using the Global Positioning System (GPS) in a project nicknamed Bovines Without Borders. The system uses battery-powered collars that emit a sound to warn cattle when they are approaching a virtual boundary. If a cow wanders too near, the collar emits a warning noise. If it continues, the cow gets an electric shock of 250-milliwatts . The boundaries are drawn by GPS and exist only as a line on a computer. There are no wires or fixed transmitters at all. The cattle took less than an hour to learn to back off when they heard the warning noise. The scientists indicated that commercial units were up to 10 years away.
Another type of invisible fence uses a buried wire that sends radio signals to activate shock collars worn by animals that are "fenced" in. The system works with three signals. The first is visual (white plastic flags spaced at intervals around the perimeter in the fenced-in area), the second is audible (the collar emits a sound when the animal wearing it approaches buried cable), and finally there's an electric shock to indicate they have reached the fence.
Other invisible fences are wireless. Rather than using a buried wire, they emit a radio signal from a central unit, and activate when the animal travels beyond a certain radius from the unit.
| 2515883 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=2515883 |