The Experience of Minorities Under Pakistan's Blasphemy Laws

Human rights activists repeatedly assert that the blasphemy laws of Pakistan are discriminatory and violate human rights guaranteed by both the Constitution of Pakistan and international treaties. However, supporters of the blasphemy laws vehemently disagree with this view. They argue that Pakistan's blasphemy laws are not discriminatory and apply equally to all citizens of Pakistan. In support of this, they offer the evidence that the majority of those accused of blasphemy belong to the Muslim community. This article examines this argument in the light of the experience of minorities living under Pakistan's blasphemy laws. While the blasphemy laws have undoubtedly affected all the minority groups in Pakistan to a greater or lesser extent, this article will focus on Christians and Ahmadis as these are the two minorities most affected by the blasphemy laws.     

War experiences and emerging rights claims in postwar former Yugoslavia: The role of generalized conflict exposure and collective anomie

Violent conflicts have often been observed to generate social environments in which human rights violations are more easily tolerated and legitimized. However, recent research has documented cases in which communities exposed to violence react with increased condemnations of human rights violations. In this article, we focus on the distinction between generalized and particularized violence. Our findings show that, in the postwar ex-Yugoslavia context, when local communities have been exposed to violence that was generalized across different ethno-national groups, they strongly condemn human rights violations. Multilevel structural equation models show that the relationship between generalized victimization and the condemnation of human rights violations is mediated by a collective sense of anomie. The processes that move from collective exposure to violence to the collective reaffirmation of human rights are more likely to unfold in communities where violence transcended group boundaries than in communities where particular groups were disproportionately affected by the violence.     

Research participation as a contract

In this article, I present a contractualist conception of human-participant research ethics, arguing that the most appropriate source of the rights and responsibilities of researcher and participant is the contractual understanding between them. This conception appears to explain many of the more fundamental ethical incidents of human-participant research. I argue that a system of contractual rights and responsibilities would allow a great deal of research that has often been felt to be ethically problematic, such as research involving deception, concealed research, and research on dependent populations. However, in defining the conditions under which such research should be permissible, my contractualist theory also makes it clear that there are limits -- and explains what those limits are -- to the propriety of such research.     

THE FORUM

In this article, I present a contractualist conception of human-participant research ethics, arguing that the most appropriate source of the rights and responsibilities of researcher and participant is the contractual understanding between them. This conception appears to explain many of the more fundamental ethical incidents of human-participant research. I argue that a system of contractual rights and responsibilities would allow a great deal of research that has often been felt to be ethically problematic, such as research involving deception, concealed research, and research on dependent populations. However, in defining the conditions under which such research should be permissible, my contractualist theory also makes it clear that there are limits-and explains what those limits are-to the propriety of such research.     

Hypothetico-Deductivism is Still Hopeless

Since Christensen refuted the Bootstrap theory of confirmation in 1990, there have been some trials to improve the Hypothetico-Deductive theory of confirmation. After some trials, Gemes (1998) declared that his revised version completely overcame the difficulties of Hypothetico-Deductivism without generating any new difficulties. In this paper, I will assert that Gemes's revised version encounters some new difficulties, so it cannot be a true alternative to the Bootstrap theory of confirmation and to classical Hypothetico-Deductivism. Also I will assert that, in principle, such new difficulties cannot be overcome by any trials dependent only on formal logic.     

Kant??s view on the parent-child relationship and its problems??Analyses from a temporal perspective as to the creation and rearing of a being endowed with freedom

This article will probe into Kant’s viewpoints about parent-child relationship so as to demonstrate that they are inspiring on the one hand—for example on dealing with the relationship as that pertinent to the thing in itself, but on the other hand, there are many flaws. His strategy on avoiding the difficulty of “creating by man a being endowed with freedom” depends merely on an one-sided comprehension of time, because according to Kant himself, there is a difference as to the time between sensual forms of intuition and expressive form of transcendental imagination. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant gives a profound enunciation with respect to the two and the latter is related to “free causality” and “categorical imperative” in his moral philosophy. Once it refers to the rights of a being endowed with freedom and the time it requires to maintain them, it is problematic to assert that the creation of such beings is not concerned with, in any sense whatsoever, time and the sensual, mortal body. What is more, Kant failed to take into full consideration that parents are also beings endowed with freedom whose rights to the child are not totally dependent on the latter’s inherent rights but on their own inherent basis. Granting parents too few natural rights, Kant on the other hand allocates them too much obligations in that the parent-child relation is unbalanced in his field of view. Thirdly, he gives no consideration as to whether or not the empirical process of rearing children itself can also create some rights, which nevertheless, should be taken into account when temporal elements can be found from the very original parent-child relationship.     

Autonomy,life as an intrinsic value,and the right to die in dignity

This paper examines two models of thinking relating to the issue of the right to die in dignity: one takes into consideration the rights and interests of the individual; the other supposes that human life is inherently valuable. I contend that preference should be given to the first model, and further assert that the second model may be justified in moral terms only as long as it does not resort to paternalism. The view that holds that certain patients are not able to comprehend their own interests in a fully rational manner, and therefore ‘we’ know what is good for these patients better than ‘they’ do, is morally unjustifiable. I proceed by refuting the ‘quality of life’ argument, asserting that each person is entitled to decide for herself when it is worth living and when it is not. In this connection, a caveat will be made regarding the role of the family. The author’s research interests include bioethics, free speech, tolerance and ethics in the media.     

Embryos, individuals, and persons: an argument against embryo creation and research

One strategy for arguing that it should be legally permissible to create human embryos, or to use of spare human embryos, for scientific research purposes involves the claim that such embryos cannot be persons because they are not human individuals while twinning may yet take place. Being a human individual is considered to be by most people a necessary condition for being a human person. I argue first that such an argument against the personhood of embryos must be rationally conclusive if their destruction in public places such as laboratories is to be countenanced. I base this argument on a popular understanding of the role that the notion of privacy plays in abortion law. I then argue that such arguments against personhood are not rationally conclusive. The claim that the early embryos is not a human individual is not nearly as obvious as some assert.     

The ‘new’ barbarians: governmentality, securitization and Islam in Western Europe

In the post 9/11 context new forms of governance of Muslims based on the resurfacing of old colonial ideas have emerged. Micro-surveillance measures involving the hyper-legalization of settled Muslim populations in Western Europe have led to a curtailment of rights through legal measures and political discourses. A new form of governmentality identifies signs of religious belief, such as the hijab, as a potential threat to national identity and security. Operating through a combination of legal mechanisms and popular narratives based on themes associated with colonial governance, Muslims have been ‘cast out’ of law and politics. With decolonization, this narrative has been transformed into one about a ‘home-grown’ alien force whose transnational attachments, thought to be evident in a refusal to confine religious identity to the private sphere, are presented as a risk that needs to be contained. European Muslims have rebelled against their removal from the protection of the law by declaring their rights as citizens and as humans as a way of combating religious and cultural discrimination. Historically, human rights have emerged out of processes of containment and exclusions. Today, a new generation of Muslims has appropriated the language of rights to protest against these exclusions, holding the mirror up to the transgressors of human rights: their original proponents. This is a case of ‘realized citizenship’ in which European Muslims gain access to and mobilize resources and skills to bridge the gap between the promise of citizenship and human rights.     

The plateau in mnemonic resolution across large set sizes indicates discrete resource limits in visual working memory

The precision of visual working memory (WM) representations declines monotonically with increasing storage load. Two distinct models of WM capacity predict different shapes for this precision-by-set-size function. Flexible-resource models, which assert a continuous allocation of resources across an unlimited number of items, predict a monotonic decline in precision across a large range of set sizes. Conversely, discrete-resource models, which assert a relatively small item limit for WM storage, predict that precision will plateau once this item limit is exceeded. Recent work has demonstrated such a plateau in mnemonic precision. Moreover, the set size at which mnemonic precision reached asymptote has been strongly predicted by estimated item limits in WM. In the present work, we extend this evidence in three ways. First, we show that this empirical pattern generalizes beyond orientation memory to color memory. Second, we rule out encoding limits as the source of discrete limits by demonstrating equivalent performance across simultaneous and sequential presentations of the memoranda. Finally, we demonstrate that the analytic approach commonly used to estimate precision yields flawed parameter estimates when the range of stimulus space is narrowed (e.g., a 180o rather than a 360o orientation space) and typical numbers of observations are collected. Such errors in parameter estimation reconcile an apparent conflict between our findings and others based on different stimuli. These findings provide further support for discrete-resource models of WM capacity.     

Health Outcomes and Attitudes Toward Female Genital Cutting in a Community-Based Sample of West African Immigrant Women from High-Prevalence Countries in New York City

Female genital cutting (FGC), a deeply rooted cultural practice with high prevalence rates in many West African countries, is considered by many to represent systematic gender-based violence and human rights violation. Although short- and long-term health consequences of FGC have been examined in studies in Africa, the experiences of women who have immigrated to the Western countries such as the United States have remained largely unexplored. We sought to examine prevalence rates of FGC, as well as differences in demographic characteristics, health outcomes, and knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs among West African immigrants. This study employed audio computer-assisted self-interviewing with a community-based sample of 68 women from Gambia, Guinea, Mali, and Sierra Leone living in New York City. The rate of FGC was 68% overall and varied significantly by country, tribe or ethnicity, and marital status. Women with FGC had a significantly higher number of live births and were more likely to report a history of vaginal pain and decreased sexual arousal, but there were no other significant differences in gynecological and obstetric outcomes, sexual functioning, or psychological outcomes. Participants also had similar rates of opposition to FGC, although women with FGC were less likely to assert human rights as a reason to end the practice. Women reported a high level of surprise and unpreparedness for the FGC procedure, and 22% reported that it was done without their parents’ consent. Long-term health consequences of FGC among women who have immigrated remain unclear, although resistance to the practice is overwhelming.     

Rights for me but not for thee: Restriction of human rights based on group membership and threat perceptions

Policies aimed at limiting border crossing and influencing other cultural values have been enacted domestically and internationally in the name of security. However, do these decisions concerning such tradeoffs resonate equally across all groups? In two studies, we probe the moderating impact of intergroup threat on the inclination to restrict human rights. In Study 1, we employ a unique economic tradeoff model to directly compare the value of security with the rights of either citizens or non-citizens. In Study 2, we broaden these findings by examining whether support for infringements on the right to privacy varies among diverse groups. Across both studies, our results consistently show that an increase in intergroup threat corresponds to heightened restriction of rights, but only when contemplating individuals who are not citizens, such as non-citizens, residents, or foreigners. We propose future research directions that include promoting the concept of a global community and exploring altruistic behaviours associated with rights protection.     

Organizational Image Assessment in the Health and Human Services Sector1

Five studies were conducted from 1976 to 1984 in southcentral Pennsylvania to evaluate the potential of bipolar ratings by adult user populations for assessing the general agency and/ or specific program image of service organizations in the not-for-profit sector. Statistically reliable differences in mean ratings on scales such as staff qualifications, physical accessibility, and so forth were found to distinguish image profiles and the clarity of image of three human service agencies within the same region of service, to detect change over a 6-year period in the image of individual agencies, and to be sensitive to the effects of management actions designed to modify the image of an in-patient psychiatric facility within a region. The demonstration that specific management interventions over a 2-year period were detectable by ratings along specifically relevant dimensions encourages the immediate application of this inexpensive feedback device by managers of human service agencies and the further investigation of user image ratings as a system output potentially amenable to control system analyses.     

Modeling on the simulation writer interactive program

The Simulation Writer Interactive Program (SWIP) is an extension of the Michigan Experimental Simulation Supervisor program series, and is designed to permit individuals who are not skilled programmers to create numerical simulation models, primarily for instructional purposes. SWIP elicts from the user information about the manipulable (independent), central (intermediate), and observable (dependent) variables in the user’s model, as well as any necessary tables and control information. A powerful editor is available within SWIP for making modifications. SWIP deduces the structure of the user’s model from the information about the variables, and produces an interpreted version of the model which is used to generate simulated data. A variety of model structures are possible in SWIP, including multivariate models, models for repeated measures experiments, and timeseries models. A context-dependent question-answering facility is also available.     

Dignity,Torture, and Human Rights

This paper focuses on a distinct puzzle for understanding the relationship between dignity and human rights. The puzzle is that dignity appears to enter human rights theory in two distinct roles: on the one hand, dignity is commonly pointed to as the foundation of human rights, i.e. that in virtue of which we have human rights. On the other hand, dignity is commonly pointed to as that which is at risk in a subset of human rights, paradigmatically torture. But how can dignity underpin all human rights, and yet only be at stake in very specific human rights violations? And if dignity is lost in torture, how can the tortured retain their human rights? In this paper I offer a solution to these puzzles, in the form of a new theory of dignity. On this new theory, an individual’s dignity can be constituted via either of two pathways: the agent’s own normative competencies, or the authority of her community. The former is what’s typically at stake in practices such as torture; it in virtue of the latter that we have human rights.     

Gathered at the Altar: Homosexuals and Human Rights

Abstract

The Catholic Church affirms a double standard regarding homosexuals inside and outside the Church. As evidenced in the teaching of the Bishops' Conference for England and Wales, the (employment) rights of homosexuals are to be defended outside the Church, but not within. This teaching bespeaks a more general ambivalence regarding human rights discourse, which, though it can be used to express what is needed for human flourishing, can tempt us to forget that we are first and last creatures, entirely dependent on others. The Church's teaching on homosexuality is not so much an affront to human rights as the denial of those whom Christ has been gathering at the altar; the queer folk whom he loves in their loving of one another.     

A context noise model of episodic word recognition

Item noise models of recognition assert that interference at retrieval is generated by the words from the study list. Context noise models of recognition assert that interference at retrieval is generated by the contexts in which the test word has appeared. The authors introduce the bind cue decide model of episodic memory, a Bayesian context noise model, and demonstrate how it can account for data from the item noise and dual-processing approaches to recognition memory. From the item noise perspective, list strength and list length effects, the mirror effect for word frequency and concreteness, and the effects of the similarity of other words in a list are considered. From the dual-processing perspective, process dissociation data on the effects of length, temporal separation of lists, strength, and diagnosticity of context are examined. The authors conclude that the context noise approach to recognition is a viable alternative to existing approaches.     

From Pussy Riot’s ‘punk prayer’ to Matilda: Orthodox believers,critique, and religious freedom in Russia

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the configurations of belief, critique, and religious freedom in Russia since the performance of the Russian group Pussy Riot in 2012. The ‘punk prayer’ and its legal and political aftermath are interpreted as an incidence of the contestation of the boundary between the secular and the religious in the Russian legal and social sphere. The authors show that the outcome of this contestation has had a decisive impact on the way in which religion, critique, and the human right of religious freedom have been defined in the present Russian context. In response to Pussy Riot, the Russian legislator turned offending religious feelings into a crime. The article investigates two more recent cases where offended feelings of believers were involved, the opera “Tannhäuser” in Ekaterinburg in 2015 and the movie Matilda in 2017, and analyses how the initial power-conforming configuration that emerged as a reply to the ‘punk prayer’ has revealed a ‘power-disturbing’ potential as conservative Orthodox groups have started to challenge the authority of the State and the Church leadership. The article is based on primary sources from Russian debates surrounding Pussy Riot, Matilda, and “Tannhäuser” and on theoretical literature on the religious–secular boundary and human rights.     

Human Rights and Human Dignity

Why should all human beings have certain rights simply by virtue of being human? One justification is an appeal to religious authority. However, in increasingly secular societies this approach has its limits. An alternative answer is that human rights are justified through human dignity. This paper argues that human rights and human dignity are better separated for three reasons. First, the justification paradox: the concept of human dignity does not solve the justification problem for human rights but rather aggravates it in secular societies. Second, the Kantian cul-de-sac: if human rights were based on Kant’s concept of dignity rather than theist grounds, such rights would lose their universal validity. Third, hazard by association: human dignity is nowadays more controversial than the concept of human rights, especially given unresolved tensions between aspirational dignity and inviolable dignity. In conclusion, proponents of universal human rights will fare better with alternative frameworks to justify human rights rather than relying on the concept of dignity.