Are Humans More Equal Than Other Animals? An Evolutionary Argument Against Exclusively Human Dignity

Secular arguments for equal and exclusively human worth generally tend to follow one of two strategies. One, which has recently gained renewed attention because of a novel argument by S. Matthew Liao, aims to directly ground worth in an intrinsic property that all humans have in common, whereas the other concedes that there is no morally relevant intrinsic difference between all humans and all other animals, and instead appeals to the membership of all humans in a special kind. In this article, I argue that both strategies necessitate drawing a line that is both arbitrary and implausibly opens a moral gulf between individuals whose difference from one another in terms of empirical reality is entirely unremarkable, providing reasons to reject them that go beyond the standard objections in the literature. I conclude that, if all humans are to be included in the community of equals, we must lay to rest the idea that we can do so without also including a wide range of non-human animals.

     

Assessing the Organizational Climate for Translational Research with a New Survey Tool

Science and Engineering Ethics - Promoting translational research as a means to overcoming chasms in the translation of knowledge through successive fields of research from basic science to public...     

An information-theory approach to geometry for animal groups

Animal Cognition - One of the hardest problems in studying animal behaviour is to quantify patterns of social interaction at the group level. Recent technological developments in global positioning...     

管仲和亚里士多德法治思想异同论

管仲和亚里士多德分别在古代中国和希腊大致同时提出了法治理论,旗帜鲜明地提倡法治反对人治。然而,由于对于法律与法治的不同理解,管仲的法治是君主用法律维护其统治的“以法治国”,亚里士多德的法治则是用良法规范社会的“依法治国”。两者的“法治”内涵虽然不同,但法治思想中的“法律至上”对我国的法治建设有所启示。     

The interaction between response effects during the acquisition of response priming

In three experiments we investigated the role of associative learning in the acquisition of response priming by effect stimuli, by examining their interaction during response-effect learning. Having replicated the ability of visual effect stimuli to prime their associated responses, we paired a response with a compound consisting of visual and auditory effects before assessing the ability of the auditory effect stimulus to prime the response. This priming was reduced if the visual stimulus had been pre-trained as an effect of the response. By contrast, priming by the visual effect stimulus was potentiated when the auditory effect had been pre-trained. We interpret these interactions in terms of contemporary associative learning theory derived from studies of conditioning.     

An examination of self-presentational concern of Turkish adolescents: an example of physical education setting

The purpose of this study was to examine self-presentational concern of Turkish adolescents with regard to the gender composition of physical education (PE) class and also to investigate the attitude toward PE and PE class preferences of Turkish adolescents based on this concern. A total of 1,807 eighth-grade students (936 females and 871 males) completed the Attitudes Toward Physical Education Scale and Social Physique Anxiety Scale (SPAS). The findings indicated that although self-presentational concern did not differ according to the gender composition of PE class, there was a significant difference in class preference among adolescents based on this concern with most of the females who had a high self-presentational concern preferring noncoed PE class. Additionally, no significant difference was found in attitude toward PE among self-presentational concern groups. These findings are discussed in relation to the sex composition of PE class and self-presentational concerns of adolescents.     

Phylo- and ontogenetic fears and the expectation of danger: differences between spider- and flight-phobic subjects in cognitive and physiological responses to disorder-specific stimuli

To compare specific phobias with an assumed phylogenetic or ontogenetic origin in responses to fear-relevant (FR) stimuli, 17 spider- and 17 flight-phobic participants were exposed to pictures of spiders, flight accidents, or mushrooms randomly followed by either a startling noise or nothing else. While both groups showed a disorder-specific expectancy bias, only spider-phobic participants exhibited a disorder-specific covariation bias. Spider-phobic participants also showed enhanced skin conductance responses (SCRs), event-related brain potentials (ERPs), and startle responses triggered by disorder-specific FR pictures while flight-phobic participants showed only disorder-specific enhanced SCRs. In sum, our direct comparison between ontogenetic and phylogenetic phobias revealed that the former is characterized by biased and enhanced responses triggered by disorder-specific FR stimuli presumably based on a biological preparedness.     

Genetic and environmental influences on Person x Situation profiles

Genetic and environmental influences on Person x Situation interactions were studied using data of the German Observational Study of Adult Twins. The performance of 168 monozygotic and 132 dizygotic twin pairs in 15 tasks was observed by 120 judges who never met the twins in person. Four judges observed one twin of each pair in one task. Twin similarities in Person x Situation profiles were analyzed via (a) correlations across tasks between co-twins' Person x Situation profiles (their personality signatures) and (b) common-pathway genetic models that partitioned genetic and environmental contributions to trait levels and to Person x Situation interactions. Genes accounted for about 25% of the reliable Person x Situation interactions, whereas shared environmental influences were negligible.