A Preface to Ethics:

This essay outlines a new preface for ethics demanded by the massive developments of the global age. It does so in and through the comparative use of “myths” to explicate the lived structure of experience. The essay begins by isolating main features of global dynamics, including proximity, the compression of the world and the expansion of consciousness, and also global, cultural reflexivity. In the second step of the “preface,” it is argued that globality itself is a moral space in which peoples must orient their lives. It is a moral space defined by the massive extension of human power in the modern world. In light of the challenge that global dynamics and the extension of human power now pose, the essay then isolates, methodologically, options for developing a global ethics, and advocates a distinctly hermeneutical approach. This approach is practiced in the last section of the “preface” by engaging ethically the biblical “myth” of creation and its reinterpretation in an epitome of Jesus's Torah teaching. The intention is to show how current religious thought can speak to massive challenges in a distinctive way. It is, again, to offer a preface to ethics.     

Solidarity and Community Engagement in Global Health Research

Abstract

Community engagement (CE) is gaining prominence in global health research. A number of ethical goals–spanning the instrumental, intrinsic, and transformative–have been ascribed to CE in global health research. This paper draws attention to an additional transformative value that CE is not typically linked to but that seems very relevant: solidarity. Both are concerned with building relationships and connecting parties that are distant from one another. This paper first argues that furthering solidarity should be recognized as another ethical goal for CE in global health research. It contends that, over time, CE can build the bases of solidaristic relationships—moral imagination, recognition, understanding, empathy—between researchers and community members. Applying concepts from existing accounts of solidarity, the paper develops preliminary ideas about who should be engaged and how to advance solidarity. The proposed approach is compared to current CE practice in global health research. Finally, the paper briefly considers how solidaristic CE could affect how global health research is performed.     

Approaching Heidegger’s History of Being Through the Black Notebooks

ABSTRACT

This essay explores the importance of the Black Notebooks (GA 94-99) beyond their contribution to Heidegger’s political biography. While attention has up to now focused almost exclusively on other matters, the Black Notebooks offer new perspectives on Heidegger’s writings from the 1930s and 1940s, and beyond. The essay argues, that any reading of Heidegger’s later work that tries to ignore the question for the History of Being, as it moves from a consideration of the Meaning of Being to the History of Being, is doomed to misunderstand the whole of Heidegger’s thought. Therefore, if one wants to mobilize Heidegger’s thinking as a response to the great questions of our age, which this essay identifies as those of Global Warming, Globalisation, Nihilism and the Nightmare of the Manipulated Human Being, then one needs to force the question of history as the central problem underlying any future potentiality of Heidegger's philosophical impact.     

Testing the Francis Burnout Inventory among Anglican clergy in England

ABSTRACT

Drawing on the classic model of balanced affect, the Francis Burnout Inventory (FBI) conceptualised good work-related psychological health among religious leaders in terms of negative affect being balanced by positive affect. In the FBI negative affect is assessed by the Scale of Emotional Exhaustion in Ministry (SEEM) and positive affect is assessed by the Satisfaction in Ministry Scale (SIMS). A sample of 99 Anglican clergy serving in a rural diocese in the Church of England (75 men and 24 women) completed SEEM and SIMS together with the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS) as an independent measure of wellbeing. The results confirm the hypothesis that high SIMS scores reduced the negative effects of high SEEM scores on the independent measure of wellbeing.     

Positive Public Health Ethics: Toward Flourishing and Resilient Communities and Individuals

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global contagion of unprecedented proportions and health, economic, and social consequences. As with many health problems, its impact is uneven. This article argues the COVID-19 pandemic is a global health injustice due to moral failures of national governments and international organizations to prepare for, prevent and control it. Global and national health communities had a moral obligation to act in accordance with the current state of knowledge of pandemic preparedness. This obligation—a positive duty to develop and implement systems to reduce threats to and safeguard individuals’ and, communities’ abilities to flourish—stems from theories of global health justice and governance. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed and amplified the fragility and deficiencies in our global and domestic health institutions and systems. Moving forward, positive public health ethics is needed to set ethical standards for building and operating robust public health systems for resilient individuals and communities.     

Culture variation in the average identity extraction: The role of global vs. local processing orientation

ABSTRACT

Research has shown that observers often spontaneously extract a mean representation from multiple faces/objects in a scene even when this is not required by the task. This phenomenon, now known as ensemble coding, has so far mainly been based on data from Western populations. This study compared East Asian and Western participants in an implicit ensemble-coding task, where the explicit task was to judge whether a test face was present in a briefly exposed set of faces. Although both groups showed a tendency to mistake an average of the presented faces as target, thus confirming the universality of ensemble coding, East Asian participants displayed a higher averaging tendency relative to the Westerners. To further examine how a cultural default can be adapted to global or local processing demand, our second experiment tested the effects of priming global or local processing orientation on ensemble coding via a Navon task procedure. Results revealed a reduced tendency for ensemble coding following the priming of local processing orientation. Together, these results suggest that culture can influence the proneness to ensemble coding, and the default cultural mode is malleable to a temporary processing demand.     

The minimal self hypothesis

For millennia self has been conjectured to be necessary for consciousness. But scant empirical evidence has been adduced to support this hypothesis. Inconsistent explications of “self” and failure to design apt experiments have impeded progress. Advocates of phenomenological psychiatry, however, have helped explicate “self,” and employed it to explain some psychopathological symptoms. In those studies, “self” is understood in a minimalist sense, sheer “for-me-ness.” Unfortunately, explication of the “minimal self” (MS) has relied on conceptual analysis, and applications to psychopathology have been hermeneutic, allowing for many degrees of interpretive latitude. The result is that MS’s current scientific status is analogous to that of the “atom,” at the time when “atom” was just beginning to undergo transformation from a philosophical to a scientific concept. Fortunately, there is now an opportunity to promote a similar transformation for “MS.” Discovery of the brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN) opened the door to neuroimaging investigations of self. Taking the DMN and other forms of intrinsic activity as a starting point, an empirical foothold can be established, one that spurs experimental research and that enables extension of research into multiple phenomena. New experimental protocols that posit “MS” can help explain phenomena hitherto not thought to be related to self, thereby hastening development of a mature science of self. In particular, targeting phenomena wherein consciousness is lost and recovered, as in some cases of Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome (UWS), allow for design of neuroimaging probes that enable detection of MS during non-conscious states. These probes, as well as other experimental protocols applied to NREM Sleep, General Anesthesia (GA), and the waking state, provide some evidence to suggest that not only can self and consciousness dissociate, MS might be a necessary precondition for conscious experience. Finally, these findings have implications for the science of consciousness: it has been suggested that “levels of consciousness” (LoC) is not a legitimate concept for the science of consciousness. But because we have the conceptual and methodological tools with which to refine investigations of MS, we have the means to identify a possible foundation—a bifurcation point—for consciousness, as well as the means by which to measure degrees of distance from that foundation. These neuroimaging investigations of MS position us to better assess whether LoC has a role to play in a mature science of consciousness.     

Fire & Language: The Two-Faced Process of Progress in Deep-Structural Sociocultural Evolution

Abstract

This paper attempts to show how the inherent structure of human becoming is evolutionarily determined to work toward a “meta-system transition” to a higher order of control with a growing risk of extinction as humanity approaches the “event horizon.” The “double helix” of progress technological and social caused manifold cultural surface structures according to the law of increasing entropy, which, however, are mechanically determined to reunite following the same law. Separate individual centers of cybernetic processing thus gradually turn themselves into discursive (“neural”) units, possibly collapsing into a super-conscious single will once information transmission in the network reaches a certain density and noise decreases below a certain threshold.     

Mattel,Lead Paint,and Magnets: Ethics and Supply Chain Management

Over a period of 19 months in 2006 and 2007, Mattel recalled approximately 14 million toys. The company was subjected to numerous lawsuits and regulatory actions and suffered severe damage to its reputation. Two issues were involved: excessive levels of lead in numerous toy surface paints and small detachable magnets in some toys, which could be swallowed. An examination of the facts shows that two different ethical situations were involved—one concerning product design and the other concerning manufacturing practices of Mattel's Chinese contractors and subcontractors. The ethical obligations of the company and individuals within the company in the two situations were quite different, and illustrate problems faced by companies in managing their global supply chains.     

推理表征影响整体推理的实验研究

本研究采用５个实验探讨了推理表征对整体推理的影响。研究结果表明，读者在演绎推理和类比推理的条件下可以保持课文的整体连贯即整体推理，只是由于工作记忆容量有限，推理表征对于保持整体推理具有弱化作用。