In a recent article Yvonne Chiu argues that nonuniformed combat is impermissible. However, her argument that by fighting without uniforms nonuniformed guerillas coerce civilians into participating in the armed conflict and thus into surrendering their immunity (their right not to be attacked) fails: there is no coercion, no participation, and no surrendering of immunity. Yet even if this argument of hers were correct, it would still not show that such “coercion” would amount to a rights infringement. Moreover, even (...) if it did, there are examples that show that such an infringement would sometimes be perfectly justified. Finally, if she were right that forcing civilians into a moral position that they have not accepted or chosen is absolutely wrong, then this would affect the moral status of uniformed combatants no less than it would affect the moral status of nonuniformed ones. (shrink)

Reply to commentators: Symposium on the winner of the 2019 NASSP Book Award Prize: Yvonne Chiu, *Conspiring with the Enemy: The Ethic of Cooperation in Warfare* (Columbia University Press, 2019).

After a regime-changing war, a state often engages in lustration—condemnation and punishment of dangerous, corrupt, or culpable remnants of the previous system—e.g., de-Nazification or the more recent de-Ba’athification in Iraq. This common practice poses an important moral dilemma for liberals because even thoughtful and nuanced lustration involves condemning groups of people, instead of treating each case individually. It also raises important questions about collective agency, group treatment, and rectifying historical injustices. Liberals often oppose lustration because it denies moral individualism and (...) ignores rule of law, and their only justifications for lustration are consequentialist ones. This article suggests that lustration may not necessarily be a problem for liberals. While group treatment might be justified on grounds of convenience and pragmatism in times of transitional justice, there are also valid moral arguments consistent with moral individualism and due process for wholesale group punishment after a war. This article offers four overlapping moral justifications, in a robust defense of the core concept of lustration that is covered by each argument. (shrink)

In *Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case*, BAI Tongdong says that his main target is democracy, but he focuses much of his critiques on liberalism, rejecting its foundational value of autonomy in favor of Confucian grounds for governance. Given the extent of his concurrence with liberalism, however, it would be more consistent with Bai’s stated aim (of tempering the democratic part and shoring up the liberal side of liberal democracy) to make common cause with liberalism against populism. Mencian compassion and (...) humaneness have much to add to liberal conversation about virtue, and a Mencian-liberal theory of governance, instead, could yield the Confucian ideal of ‘harmony without uniformity,’. (shrink)

Taiwan and Kurdistan appear to have little in common, but the progressive values of these two societies embedded within hostile regions make them both natural allies and important strategic assets in the U.S.’s and international community’s long-term fight against authoritarianism and radical religious theocracies. Instead, they have been ignored and/or exploited in the pursuit of short-term geopolitical and economic interests in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions, which comes at great cost to American and international values as well as long-term (...) strategic interests, so both citizens and policymakers must consider new approaches. (shrink)

*North American Society for Social Philosophy (NASSP) Book Award 2019.* -/- *International Studies Association (ISA) - International Ethics Section Book Award 2021.* -/- Although military mores have relied primarily on just war theory, the ethic of cooperation in warfare (ECW)—between enemies even as they are trying to kill each other—is as central to the practice of warfare and to conceptualization of its morality. Neither game theory nor unilateral moral duties (God-given or otherwise) can explain the explicit language of cooperation in (...) developing and enforcing principles of military ethics and the law of armed conflict. -/- The ethic of cooperation is borne of various motivations: reciprocity, self-preservation, and efficiency, to be sure, but also a sense of warrior honor and concern with human rights. This shared morality can persist despite making it more difficult for one side or the other to win and, unfortunately, its well-meaning motivations often lead to unintended tragic consequences. -/- This book explores three manifestations of this significant yet overlooked ethic of cooperation in warfare: (1) for a “fair fight,” (2) to protect classes of individuals (e.g., non-combatants or prisoners of war), and (3) to end the war quickly. Such cooperation can take unexpected forms, from ad hoc decisions on the battlefield to institutionalization in international law, and is the source of some critical tensions in one of the most significant developments in warfare in recent years: namely, how to handle terrorism or other forms of warfare that lie outside the purview of international law. -/- Each type of ECW raises questions internal to that ethic, such as inconsistencies in the concept of “parity” across different weapons bans, contradictions within the warrior ethic that heavily influence—and therefore confuse—notions of the “fair fight,” the disconnect between what protections a person receives and his responsibility for the war (e.g., political leaders), or the limited decisiveness of outcomes generated by very short wars. -/- Their simultaneous application also generates significant tensions and raises questions about the proper relationship of ECW to the immediate goal of war itself, which is to win, and thus yield either a political settlement or a justicial decision. For example, the ECWs for a “fair fight” and to protect classes of individuals can make it harder to win the war, but even more concerning is that they can also kill more people, which in the latter case contravenes its very purpose. -/- Human history is in some ways the story of trying to concurrently wage and tame war, and the architecture of warfare itself is informed by the ECW, in particular: (a) the political nature of war, (b) the abdication from jus ad bellum judgments in order to concentrate on justice within war (jus in bello), and (c) the ways in which modern nation-states collude to define “legitimacy” in war. -/- The combination of these three features leave questions of justicial right and responsibility for war disturbingly unresolved, it also generates new challenges in a geopolitical context in which cooperative and non-cooperative (e.g. contemporary terrorism) forms of warfare clash. (shrink)

Non-uniformed combat morally infringes on civilians’ fundamental right to immunity and exacts an impermissible form of unofficial conscription that is morally prohibited even if the civilians knowingly consent to it. It is often argued that revolutionary groups burdened by resource disparities relative to the state or who claim alternative sources of political legitimacy (such as national self-determination or the constitution of a political collective) are justified in using unconventional tactics such as non-uniformed combat. Neither those reasons nor the provision of (...) public goods, however, are sufficient to justify such rights violations and this form of conscription, and it calls into question the suitability of current international legal protections for the non-uniformed. (shrink)

The presence and absence of autonomy in Joseph Chan’s democratic Confucianism loom large, but not always in the ways that he maintains. Although Chan claims that his reconstruction of Confucianism for modern democracy can accept some forms of moral autonomy, what he presents does not constitute genuine moral autonomy, and the absence of that autonomy sits in tension with some other aspects of his model. When it comes to personal autonomy, it is the opposite: Chan says that the exercise of (...) personal autonomy can be part of a life well-lived but is not strictly necessary and can be outweighed by perfectionist considerations of well-being and ethics; however, his model incorporates and relies on the exercise of personal autonomy and leaves room for its intrinsic value. (shrink)

A religion with Buddhism's particular moral philosophies of non-violence and asceticism and with its *functional* polytheism in practice should not generate genocidal nationalist violence. Yet, there are resources within the Buddhist canon that people can draw from to justify violence in defense of the religion and of a Buddhist-based polity. When those resources are exploited, for example in the context of particular Theravāda Buddhist practices and the history of Buddhism and Buddhist identity in Burma from ancient times through its colonial (...) and contemporary periods, it perpetuates an ongoing tragedy that is less about religion than about ethno-nationalism. (shrink)

Although there is no more iconic, stalwart, and eloquent defender of liberty and representative democracy than J.S. Mill, he sometimes endorses non-democratic forms of governance. This article explains the reasons behind this seeming aberration and shows that Mill actually has complex and nuanced views of the transition from non-democratic to democratic government, including the comprehensive and parallel material, cultural, institutional, and character reforms that must occur, and the mechanism by which they will be enacted. Namely, an enlightened despot must cultivate (...) democratic virtues such as obedience, industriousness, spirit of nationality, and resistance to tyranny in the population and simultaneously prepare the way for his own demise and secure his own legitimacy by transitioning to the rule of law. This challenges recent scholarship that paints Mill’s non-democratic views as crudely and uncritically imperialist, because it fails to recognize and engage seriously with his sophisticated (if ultimately problematic) theory of individual and institutional development under enlightened colonialism. (shrink)

With the stunning spread of democracy over large swathes of the globe since 1975 seemingly coming to a halt and perhaps receding in recent years, we revisit the question of whether democracy is really compatible with all types of cultures and philosophies, particularly those from Asia, where nearly two-thirds of the world’s population lives. Joseph Chan’s *Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times* (Princeton University Press, 2014) reconstructs Confucianism in order to meld it with democracy in a mutually advantageous (...) marriage. Democracy can address the dangerous problem of the lack of accountability — the historical record is quite clear about what happens when rulers, even those who are wise and well-meaning, are unconstrained. This, unfortunately, is a problem that Confucianism shares. On the other hand, Confucianism can bring to the table not just virtues in general, but particular virtues that are often sadly lacking and sorely needed in democratic politics such as civility, benevolence, integrity, knowledge, and honesty. (shrink)

There is a famous puzzle in Rorty scholarship: Did or did Rorty not subscribe to a form of realism and truth when he made concessions regarding objectivity to Bjørn Ramberg in 2000? Relatedly, why did Rorty agree with Ramberg but nevertheless insist upon disagreeing with Brandom, though large parts of the research community hold their two respective requests for shifts in Rorty’s stance to be congruous? The present article takes up the discussion and tries, for the first time, to make (...) sense of Rorty’s insistence that there is a difference between Brandom’s notion of “made true by facts” and Ramberg’s notion of “getting things right” by showing that Ramberg’s appropriateness-conditions are fully compatible with Rorty’s revised interpretation of Davidson’s concept of “triangulation,” whereas Brandom’s inferential “made-true-by-facts”-language game is not. The reason why Rorty agrees with Ramberg but not with Brandom, I argue, is that Brandom’s contemporary concept of objectivity, as developed in his contribution to the debate and in his Making It Explicit, works with a scheme-content distinction, whereas Ramberg’s Davidson-based version does not. As many of his critics suppose, Rorty’s concession to Ramberg entails a substantive revision of Rorty’s position, not just a clarification. However, this new position is not in conflict with Rorty’s most important commitment, namely his anti-authoritarianism. The revised account still does not bind him to the forms of realism and truth that his critics favor. The article explains to which forms of realism and truth Rorty’s concessions to Ramberg commit him instead. (shrink)

W niniejszym tekście, poświęconym definiowaniu m. in. słów i zwrotów frazeologicznych podczas nauczania języków, autorka opisuje lingwistyczną teorię Anny Wierzbickiej, dotyczącą Natural Semantic Metalanguage i w adaptacyjnej formie przenosi ją na płaszczyznę zajęć z języka obcego, gdzie przynosi ona namacalne wyniki. Podczas zajęć językowych wymaga się od uczących się poprawnego definiowania ogólnego, które jednak rzadko przekazywane jest w podręcznikach i na wykładach, mimo iż zdolność ta nie jest wcale oczywista, samo definiowanie zaś nie jest łatwym zadaniem. Przeciwnie - od studentek (...) i studentów języków obcych oczekuje się mentalnego uzdolnienia w tym kierunku, nie uwzględniając faktu, że wiele osób ma trudności z definiowaniem nawet w języku ojczystym. W artykule autorka chce pokazać, że po części zignorowana teoria Anny Wierzbickiej ze swoim punktem wyjściowym, jakim są primes, pozwala uświadomić uczącym się języka obcego, że istotę słowa, wyrażenia czy frazy można wyjaśnić w oparciu o sposób określenia znaczenia, przyjęty w NSM. Nie jest przy tym konieczne, ażeby znaczenia opisywać i określać poprzez primes. Ważne jest, aby w celu uniknięcia błędnego koła podczas objaśnień definicji nie koncentrować się na synonimach i antonimach. Jak takie i podobne objaśnienia mogą wyglądać, pokazane jest na przykładach kilku definicji, które wyjaśnione zostały w oparciu o sposób określenia znaczenia przyjęty w NSM. Autorka dyskutuje również opisy i warunki działania takiej metody. Na zakończenie przedstawione są propozycje w zakresie metodologii nauczania umiejętności definiowania podczas zajęć języka obcego. (shrink)

In this article, we present an account of ming 明 in the Zhuangzi's Neipian in light of the disagreements among the thinkers of the time. We suggest that ming is associated with the Daoist sage's vision: he sees through the debaters' attempts to win the debates. We propose that ming is primarily a meta-epistemological stance, that is, the sage understands the nature of the debates and does not enter the fray; therefore he does not share the thinkers' anxieties. The sage (...) takes his stance at the pivot of dao and, from there, responds to the different views limitlessly. (shrink)

Resident microbiota do not just shape host immunity, they can also contribute to host protection against pathogens and infectious diseases. Previous reviews of the protective roles of the microbiota have focused exclusively on colonization resistance localized within a microenvironment. This review shows that the protection against pathogens also involves the mitigation of pathogenic impact without eliminating the pathogens (i.e., “disease tolerance”) and the containment of microorganisms to prevent pathogenic spread. Protective microorganisms can have an impact beyond their niche, interfering with (...) the entry, establishment, growth, and spread of pathogenic microorganisms. More fundamentally, we propose a series of conceptual clarifications in support of the idea of a “co-immunity,” where an organism is protected by both its own immune system and components of its microbiota. -/- . (shrink)

Greatly aided by an information age in which protesting laborers in a remote offshore outpost can capture front page headlines around the globe, theSarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SARBOX) has made corporate transparency the linchpin for good corporate governance. Under a SARBOX-enhancedregulatory framework, publicly traded corporations are required to rapidly disclose material changes in their financial conditions or operations—changes such as impairments to goodwill, a trademark, or some other intangible corporate asset. Especially challenging for multinational corporations (MNCs) with far-flung corporate empires (...) is the need to stay abreast of the ebb and flow of goodwill, at a time when transnational human rights groups are aggressively mobilizing world opinion against the sweatshop labor conditions that abound at the offshore production sites favored by MNCs. The author explains why the convergence of a digital age of free-flowing information and the advent of SARBOX, a legislative enactment of paraenetic design, is causing the boards of MNCs to more critically evaluate the long-term costs of their offshore operations. (shrink)

In industrial societies where civil law and state institutions have become well established secular vehicles for governing the populace, it is widely assumed that the state no longer has an interest in fortifying the religious sector as a complementary source of social control. Thus, a distinction is drawn between the Islamic state that is ruled by religious law and the secular state of Western industrial societies in which religion is deemed to have lost its influence in the public sphere. This (...) dissertation argues that civil law is not religiously neutral and thus challenges a central premise of secularization theory. Introducing a new theoretical model that classifies civil law on the basis of its purpose-to protect religious liberty, engage or fortify the religious sector, or to advance universal norms-the author examines the impact of the three different types of legislation upon religious freedom and the individual autonomy of religious minorities in Sweden, an aggressively secularized industrial society. The author concludes that, viewed from the standpoint of a religious nonconformist, there is no discernible difference between living in a society that is overtly ruled by religious law (e.g., an Islamic state) and living in a "secular” society that is ruled by civil law either embedded with religious norms or designed to facilitate state appropriation of the religious sector as a complementary means of social control. In either environment, the author argues, the religious nonconformist will be forced to conform to the religious norms of the predominant religious group. (shrink)

Mit Beiträgen von Heiner Hastedt, Peter Schefe, Michael Heidelberger, Wolfgang Coy, Peter Janich, Sybille Krämer, Heinz Zemanek, Rafael Capurro, Ekkehard Martens, Yvonne Dittrich, Holm Tetens, Geert Keil, John R. Searle, Margaret A. Boden, Godela Unseld, Ulrike Teubner, Rüdiger Weingarten, Florian Rötzer und Simone Dietz.

Holobionts are symbiotic assemblages composed by a macrobe host plus its symbiotic microbiota. In recent years, the ontological status of holobionts has created a great amount of controversy among philosophers and biologists: are holobionts biological individuals or are they rather ecological communities of independent individuals that interact together? Chiu and Eberl have recently developed an eco-immunity account of the holobiont wherein holobionts are neither biological individuals nor ecological communities, but hybrids between a host and its microbiota. According to their (...) account, the microbiota is not a proper part of the holobiont. Yet, it should be regarded as a set of scaffolds that support the individuality of the host. In this paper, we approach Chiu and Eberl’s account from a metaphysical perspective and argue that, contrary to what the authors claim, the eco-immunity account entails that the microorganisms that compose the host’s microbiota are proper parts of the holobiont. Second, we argue that by claiming that holobionts are hybrids, and therefore, not biological individuals, the authors seem to be assuming a controversial position about the ontology of hybrids, which are conventionally characterized as a type of biological individual. In doing so, our paper aligns with the contemporary tendency to incorporate metaphysical resources to shed light on current biological debates and builds on that to provide additional support to the consideration of holobionts as biological individuals from an eco-immunity perspective. (shrink)

In this chapter, mixed with moral psychology and ethics, I explore the topic of manipulation by analyzing “Orange Is The New Black” season two antagonist, Yvonne “Vee” Parker. I claim that Vee is a master manipulator. I begin by laying out several definitions and features of manipulation. Definitions include covert influence, non-rational influence, the effect of non-rational influence, and intentionally making someone or altering a situation to make someone succumb to weaknesses. Features include trust, deception, emotion, false belief, and (...) vulnerability. I argue that although philosophers (Anne Barnhill, Robert Noggle, and Colin McGinn) are divided on what manipulation is because not all definitions and features fit all cases, I claim that Vee’s actions fit them all. I then attempt to explore what is bad and possibly good about manipulation. I examine if excellence alone is what makes manipulation good or should we take into consideration the autonomy denied the listener, the vices employed, and the bad consequences that arise from manipulation. I conclude with offering up suggestions on how one can guard themselves against manipulators. (shrink)

This article explores the implicit theories of morality, or the conceptions regarding the patterns of stability, continuity and change in moral dispositions, both in lay and academic discourses. The controversies surrounding these conceptions and the fragmentation of the models and perspectives in metaethics and moral psychology endangers the pursuit of adequate operationalizations of morally relevant constructs. The current debate between situationists, who deny that character is an useful concept for understanding human behavior, which is better explained by contextual factors (Doris (...) 1998; Harman 1998) and dispositionists, who advocate the cross-situational stability of traits, is also present in the lay discourse, through the existence of competing commonsense ontological assumptions regarding the mutability or alterability of moral features, namely the implicit theories perspective (Chiu, Dweck, Tong, & Fu 1997). These personal theories are primary suspects in the affective and cognitive reactions to transgressions: the type of attended information in formulating evaluative judgments, the calibration of moral responsibility and blameworthiness, the assignment of retribution or reparatory recommendations to transgressors. In the second part of the study we attempt to advance toward a more fine-grained inspection of these lay beliefs, arguing that the construct of implicit theories of morality, as it is currently treated and measured, tends to be restrictive and oversimplifying. (shrink)

Đại dịch COVID-19 đã gây ra những diễn biến phức tạp, khó lường và tác động đến nhiều mặt của đời sống xã hội, lĩnh vực giáo dục cũng không nằm ngoài tác động đó. Học sinh được trải nghiệm học tập trực tuyến và có những khoảng thời gian “bất thường” rời xa trường lớp, bạn bè và tự học ở nhà (Hoang, 2020; Tran, 2020). Các hoạt động khoa học và giáo dục cũng chịu tác động không nhỏ (...) (Vuong, 2018). Đời sống vật chất lẫn tinh thần của đội ngũ giáo viên cả trong nước lẫn giáo viên nước ngoài đi dạy tại các quốc gia đều bị suy giảm (Vu et al., 2020). Đã có gần 42.000 giáo viên phải hoãn hợp đồng làm việc và không có lương, trong đó có 29.700 giáo viên mẫu giáo bỗng chốc trở nên thất nghiệp và phải làm các công việc thời vụ để đáp ứng đời sống thường nhật (Bich Thanh, 2020). Khoảng 70% các tổ chức giáo dục tư nhân có thể sẽ phá sản khi không thể lưu động đủ chi trả các loại hình tài chính khác nhau (Nguyen, 2020). Rất nhiều trường học đang lo lắng về tình trạng không mong muốn này bởi giáo viên sẽ không thể đảm bảo chất lượng công việc khi mà chất lượng cuộc sống của họ cũng đang bị đe dọa (Canrinus et al., 2012). Hơn nữa, hiệu suất làm việc giáo viên được cho là yếu tố tác động quan trọng và có ảnh hưởng nhiều nhất đến học sinh (Darling-Hammond and Youngs, 2002; Staiger and Rockoff, 2010), so với các tác động bên ngoài như lòng yêu nghề, cách diễn đạt, sự tương tác hay mối quan hệ giữa giáo viên và học sinh (Marsh and Bailey, 1991). (shrink)