Transforming Better Babies into Fitter Families: archival resources and the history of American eugenics movement, 1908-1930

In the early 1920s, determinist conceptions of biology helped to transform Better Babies contest into Fitter Families competitions with a strong commitment to controlled human breeding. While the earlier competitions were concerned for physical and mental standards, the latter contests collected data on a broad range of presumed hereditary characters. The complex behaviors thought to be determined by one's heredity included being generous, jealous, and cruel. In today's context, the popular media often interpret advances in molecular genetics in a similarly reductive and determinist fashion. This paper argues that such a narrow interpretation of contemporary biology unnecessarily constrains the public in developing social policies concerning complex social behavior ranging from crime to intelligence.     

Android Epistemology For Babies: Relections On Words,Thoughts And Theories

Words, Thoughts and Theories arguesthat infants and children discover the physical and psychological featuresof the world by a process akin to scientific inquiry, more or less asconceived by philosophers of science in the 1960s (the theory theory).This essay discusses some of the philosophical background to analternative, more popular, ``modular' or ``maturational' account ofdevelopment, dismisses an array of philosophical objections to the theorytheory, suggests that the theory theory offers an undeveloped project forartificial intelligence, and, relying on recent psychological work oncausation, offers suggestions about how principles of causal inference mayprovide a developmental solution to the ``frame problem'.     

The Sustainability Ethic: Political, Not Just Moral

Sustainable practices are commended to us both out of prudential regard for our own future and out of principled concern for the 'right to life' of endangered species, ecosystems and ways of life and for intergenerational justice among our own kind. The larger point of the 'sustainability ethic' might be more political, however. Insisting that any practice we adopt now must be sustainable into the indefinite future constitutes an institutional check preventing us from taking unfair advantage of our privileged temporal position vis-a-vis our successors.     

Pacifism, Just War, and Self-Defense

This essay distinguishes two main forms of pacifism, personal pacifism and political pacifism. It then contrasts the views on self-defense of political pacifism and just war theory, paying special attention to notions of the state and sovereignty.     

New Ways of Making Babies: The Case of Egg Donation (Book)

This research was undertaken to explore audience members learning ethics from two national museum exhibitions: The Return of Sherlock Holmes (RSH) and Human Body Exploration (HBE) in Taiwan. Based on literature review of ethics for museums, there are four dimensions related to exhibition ethics: environment, marketing, education, and services. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to examine the relationships within the dimensions of environment, marketing, education, and services of exhibition ethics and to understand the differences in exhibition ethics between RSH and HBE. The total number of valid questionnaires was 191 for RSH and 152 for HBE. The research method analysis of variance was applied to examine whether there were significant differences between individual's basic data and four different dimensions of exhibition ethics in museums.

As survey data revealed, exhibition ethics had significant relationships with four dimensions (serviceability, education, environment, and marketing) and significant differences to the demographic variable, such as age. We suggest that exhibition agents should emphasize exhibition contents more than relative commodities, thereby possibly attracting audiences to visit the museum exhibitions. In addition, the exhibitions that were related to sensible issues should be divided into different levels regulated in terms of audience age and the degree to which parents, teachers, or narrators at the museum could negatively influence a younger visitor's perception of an exhibition and thereby museums. Finally, during busy periods, the museums should control visitor numbers to maintain visiting quality. Therefore, the museums should be able to create added value to attract more audience members to visit the exhibition.     

弃婴引发的思考

婴儿被弃事件频频发生,大量弃婴涌入福利院、医疗机构.从目前我国弃婴的状况、常见类型出发,探讨弃婴产生的根本原因,医疗机构应当如何应对弃婴及如何加强全社会包括立法、司法、行政、宣传教育、医疗卫生等部门对弃婴的全面管理,以期从源头上避免此类事件的发生.     

Just Think About It: Mindfulness, Sexism, and Prejudice Toward Feminists

This study examined the relation between mindfulness, sexist motivations and beliefs, and prejudice toward women who violate traditional gender roles—namely feminists. In a preliminary study, 672 (251 men, 421 women) undergraduates from a United States Midwestern university completed a measure of mindfulness and warmth toward feminists and consistent with hypotheses, more mindfulness was associated with more warmth toward feminists. Extending this initial finding to the main study, 653 (273 men, 380 women) undergraduates from a U.S. Midwestern university completed measures of mindfulness, motivation to respond without sexism, ambivalent sexism, and warmth toward feminists. Consistent with hypotheses, compared to women participants, men participants were lower on internal motivation to respond without sexism, higher on hostile and benevolent sexism and less warm toward feminists. Also consistent with hypotheses, for men participants, more mindfulness was associated with higher internal motivation to respond without sexism, less benevolent sexism, and more warmth toward feminists. In contrast, for women participants, more mindfulness was only associated with less hostile sexism. Finally, a path analysis revealed that the positive relation between mindfulness and warmth toward feminists for men participants was partially mediated by more internal motivation to respond without sexism (i.e., a significant indirect effect), but not by less sexist beliefs. Implications for mindfulness, sexism, and prejudice more generally are discussed.     

It's Not Just a Headache,Dear

No abstract available for this article.     

Just War: theory and application

ABSTRACT How should just war theory be applied to assess a community's claim to defend itself? The IRA's claim to be fighting a just war to end British rule in Northern Ireland is upheld against the objection (e.g. by Simpson in this Journal, 1986) that they have a right only to self-defence against indigenous tyranny. Under just war theory no unclarity concerning the alien status of British rule could render the IRA claim unjustifiable: only the well-grounded denial of its alien status might serve (though this is doubtful). But if that denial is argued for by identifying a separate British community in Ireland then the IRA must be granted a right to repel alien occupation of nationalist areas. However the IRA's rejection of the ‘two communities’ view can be defended; for what constitutes a single community is subject to moral considerations. Accordingly a genuine community's claim to self-defence is against being wronged, rather than harmed. It is concluded that just war theory cannot be applied without antecedent moral judgements identifying the community potentially wronged.     

Babies by bar-press: Maternal behavior in the rat

Pregnant rats were trained to press a bar for food rewards: Postpartum these Ss were tested when each bar-press delivered a rat pup (S’s own or foster) into the food cup. Ss repetitively bar-pressed, snatched up the pup as it tumbled down the chute and retrieved the pup into the adjacent nest box. Ss lived with 6 nursing pups but bar-pressed for hundreds: E removed all but 6 pups from the nest box after S had accumulated about 20. Maximal performance was 684 responses in a 3-h period. This technique is currently being used to study weaning and hormonal factors involved in the rat’s maternal motivation.