Who Owns the Product?

If persons fully own themselves and can acquire, by unilateral acts, unconditional full property rights to previously unowned natural resources, then by these same principles of property they also own the products of their property and of their labour. But (a) the principles of property are silent on the question of the division of joint products; (b) the market is a form of cooperation in production which makes the total social product a joint product. In the circumstances of an unrestrained fully developed market, therefore, it is not fully determinate what one's product is. Thus the holdings that each person ends up with cannot be justified merely in terms of ownership of products. I offer an explanation of why some may resist this view of the market.     

On the New Form of Human Advancement and the Shared Values of Humanity—From the Perspective of the Relations Between Particularity and Universality

The relation between particularity and universality provides an important perspective to understand a new form of human advancement and the shared values of humanity, as well as their relations. On the one hand, as a unique state of civilization, a new form of human advancement is universal to a principle extent. China is moving closer to the center of the world; it will only give its particularity only if it can create universality since human universality is the essential attribute of socialism. A new form of human advancement also addresses universal problems facing mankind, embraces existing cultures, and coexists with them in harmony. On the other hand, as a reference to universal value, the shared values of humanity are precisely based on the particularity of “realistic man.” The difference is a premise that fundamentally defines how common is possible. Humanity is in the complex relationship between various groups and individual subjects, whose common values have the nature of good means to serve the universal purpose, and whose essence is the public value in the international community. Both a new form of human advancement and the shared values of humanity highlight the principal position of China. The connotation of the shared values of humanity constitutes the fundamental component of the core values of a new form of human advancement which in turn implements the shared values of humanity. Carrying forward the shared values of humanity poses higher requirements for China to develop a new form of human advancement.     

Are Gender Differences in Basic Human Values a Generational Phenomenon?

The Schwartz Value Survey (SVS) was administered to 979 Canadian knowledge workers to determine whether differences in value priorities between men and women differed significantly between members of the Baby Boomer generation and members of Generation X. Multivariate analysis of covariance controlling for education, income, and scale use revealed a significant gender-by-generation interaction, which signifies that the patterns of differences between men's and women's value priorities were different for Baby Boomers and Generation Xers. Four of the 10 SVS value types (i.e., power, tradition, universalism, and achievement) were associated with both gender and generation. A number of other value types were associated solely with generation. The findings suggest that both gender and generation are important variables in the study of values and should not be considered in isolation of each other.     

Human Enhancement and the Anthropology of the “Entire Human Being”

About one and a half decades ago, two prominent reports were published in the United States (US) which strongly influenced subsequent international discussions on the topic of human enhancement: a 2002 report on “converging technologies for improving human performance”, based on a workshop which was organised by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the US Department of Commerce in December 2001, and the first report of US President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics (PCBE), published in October 2003 with the title Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness. The 2002 report included a wide variety of contributions from academics in various fields of research, from representatives of US institutions, and from companies. Due primarily to the influence of the two NSF staff editing the report, it can be regarded as the first major instance of the influence of transhumanism, a techno-futurist ideology and movement, on the US technology and innovation discourse. The PCBE report, on the other hand, is a prime example of a conservative critique of the transhumanist notion of human enhancement. In this invited contribution, these two crucial publications are analysed mainly in order to point out the relevance of philosophical anthropology as developed since the 1920s by Helmuth Plessner and others. This remarkable school of thought is experiencing a revival in countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, and, to some extent, in the English-speaking world. In this article, it is argued that philosophical anthropology provides us with an important alternative to both anthropological essentialism and scientism, two approaches that are still highly relevant in current discourse on human enhancement.     

Bosnia—Requiem for the Vanishing Human

Taking a position informed by postcolonial thought, it is argued that Jung's concept of individuation, with its emphasis on separateness and the withdrawal of projections, is essentially modern and Western. Any group of people is regarded by Jung only as a regressive threat to the individuation process. Jung's European colonialism is evident in his trips to Africa and his response to the dreams that he had there. It is argued that traces of this colonialism remain evident as a colonialism of the psyche to the extent that opposites such as light/dark, white/black, civilized/primitive, conscious/unconscious remain as the organizing principles in our theory of psyche. The author's experience of growing up in apartheid South Africa is discussed, together with an account of a dream of a traditional Xhosa woman and another Xhosa woman's life. Thereafter, Senghor's concept of negritude is used to describe an individuating consciousness that might be closer to our shared human experience than is found in Jung's writings. Individuation is then discussed in terms of the Zulu concept of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is based on the recognition that we become persons through other persons who treat us as persons, and that the community can be imagined as facilitating our individuation. It is suggested that Ubuntu might describe our experience of growth within the Jungian community.     

Fallen or Unfallen? Christ's Human Nature and the Ontology of Human Sinfulness

Abstract: Because Christ's sinlessness is a matter of virtual consensus among Christians, debates over whether the human nature he assumed was fallen or unfallen turn on the ontological conditions of his being ‘without sin’ (Heb. 4:15). The claim that Christ assumed a fallen nature can be defended by distinguishing between fallenness and sinfulness as properties of nature and hypostasis, respectively. Moreover, by highlighting the peculiar place of the will in human nature, this christological analysis helps counter the charge that an Augustinian understanding of original sin entails a dualism inconsistent with belief in the goodness of creation and human moral accountability.     

Human Dignity as the Essence of Nussbaum’s Ethics of Human Development

Philosophia - Martha C. Nussbaum, in the context of ancient philosophy, formulated ethics of human development based on 10 basic human capabilities (and opportunities) as a precondition of...     

Do Work Values Predict the Use of Intraorganizational Influence Strategies?

It was the purpose of this paper to analyze the relationships between work values and the use of intraorganizational influence strategies. Given sufficient discretional space, it was assumed that work values either function as higher order goals or as individual constraints A prediction study with a I-year time interval was executed. At the first wave, work values were measured with the Work Values Inventory (Super, 1970). At the second wave, 4 intraorganizational influence strategies (rational persuasion, ingratiation, pressure. upward appeals) of 137 job beginners were measured. The data support the idea that work values function both as higher order goals and as individual constraints of influence behavior. The implications for the vocational career are discussed.     

The Number of Distinct Basic Values and Their Structure Assessed by PVQ–40

Sixty-eight outpatients from a veterans' administration psychiatry clinic and community mental health center were assessed with 3 measures of depressive personality disorder (DPD)-the Diagnostic Interview for Depressive Personality Disorder (Gunderson, Phillips, Triebwasser, &; Hirschfeld, 1994), the Depressive Personality Disorder Inventory (Huprich, Margrett, Barthelemy, &; Fine, 1996), and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis II Disorders (First, Gibbon, Spitzer, Williams, &; Benjamin, 1997a)-to evaluate their convergent and discriminant validity. Evidence supporting the measures' validity was mixed. The rate of convergence of depressive personality diagnoses across 3 measures was less than optimal, but the degree of intercorrelation among the measures was strong. Although depressive personality scores had moderate levels of intercorrelations with other personality disorders, the degree of intercorrelation decreased substantially after controlling for depressive symptoms. I conclude that further work is needed to strengthen the validity of measures of DPD.     

Keeping the “Human in the Loop” in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Science and Engineering Ethics - The benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in medicine are unquestionable and it is unlikely that the pace of its development will slow down. From better...     

The Spontaneous Generation of the Human in the “Heng Xian”

This essay argues that the “Heng Xian” bridges between two distinct discourses that were both prevalent in the late fourth century. One discourse focused on the origination of the natural world through a spontaneous process of differentiation, a position familiar from the Daodejing and “Tai yi sheng shui.” The other focused on the specific ways in which different kinds of things live, a position known primarily from Ru discussions centering on the concept of xing 性, the nature or spontaneous reactions of a particular kind of thing. The “Heng Xian” attempts to account for the specificity of human life—including language and social organization—while remaining within a naturalistic view grounded in spontaneity. The essay concludes by reflecting on what the “Heng Xian” tells us about the status of human institutions.     

Do We Really Care for the World? Testing the Link between Transcendental Change Values and the Quixoteism Motive

We conducted five studies to test the transcendental change constellation (TCC)–quixoteism hypothesis: The presence of a specific set of values labeled TCC elicits a motive with the ultimate goal of increasing the welfare of the world (quixoteism). First, the salience of the TCC increased the commitment to (Study 1) and preference for (Study 2) action aimed at improving the welfare of the world. Second, the centrality of the TCC was associated with the affective reaction towards (Study 3) and support for (Study 4) a prosocial initiative when the welfare of the world was previously threatened and the initiative was aimed at improving such welfare. In Study 5, the centrality of the TCC was related to a quixotic style of life.