In some cultures, people tend to believe that it is very important to be sexually exclusive in romantic relationships and idealise monogamous romantic relationships; but there is a tension in this ideal. Sex is generally considered to have value, and usually when we love someone we want to increase the amount of value in their lives, not restrict it without good reason. There is thus a call, not yet adequately responded to by philosophers, for greater clarity in the reasons §why (...) it might be reasonable for a couple to adopt a policy of sexual exclusivity. This article argues that we cannot justify the demand for sexual exclusivity by a need to protect the relationship from the risk of one partner ‘trading-up’, or by appealing to jealousy. However, sexual exclusivity can be intelligible if it supports the romantic relationship and helps to distinguish it from other relationships. Nonetheless, sexual exclusivity ought not to be the hegemonic social norm that it currently is in some societies because this diminishes the potential value it might have and gives the idea of faithfulness the wrong focus. (shrink)

Natasha McKeever argues that prima facie, a friends-with-benefits relationship can be, at the same time, a good friendship. This is because sex is compatible with friendship in that it can complement and potentially even strengthen the three core characteristics of friendship: mutual liking, mutual caring, and mutual sharing. She acknowledges that, by generating uncertainty and having the potential to generate feelings of romantic love, sex does pose risks to friendship. However, she argues that while these risks are significant considerations, (...) they can be mitigated and managed and so do not provide strong reasons against friends-with-benefits relationships. (shrink)

Sexual infidelity is widespread, but it is also widely condemned, yet relatively little philosophical work has been done on what makes it wrong and how wrong it is. In this paper, I argue that sexual infidelity is wrong if it involves breaking a commitment to be sexually exclusive, which has special significance in the relationship. However, it is not necessarily worse than other kinds of infidelity, and the context in which it takes place ought to be considered. I finish the (...) paper by looking at how the hegemonic norm of monogamy makes infidelity both more likely and more difficult to deal with. (shrink)

Harry Frankfurt has a comprehensive and, at times, compelling, account of love, which are outlined in several of his works. However, he does not think that romantic love fits the ideal of love as it ‘includes a number of vividly distracting elements, which do not belong to the essential nature of love as a mode of disinterested concern’. In this paper, I argue that we can, nonetheless, learn some important things about romantic love from his account. Furthermore, I will suggest, (...) conversely, that there is distinct value in romantic love, which derives from the nature of the relationship on which it is based. Frankfurt tries to take agape and reformulate it so that it can also account for love of particular people. Whilst he succeeds, to some extent, in describing parental love, he fails to accurately describe romantic love and friendship, and, moreover, overlooks what is distinctly valuable about them. Although it was not his intention to describe romantic love, by failing to include features such as reciprocity in his account of love, Frankfurt leaves no room for a kind of love that is important and valuable to many people. (shrink)

In this chapter, Natasha McKeever and Luke Brunning consider (sexual) jealousy in romantic life. They argue that jealousy is best understood as an emotional response to the threatened loss of love or attention, to which one feels deserving, because of a rival. Furthermore, the general value of jealousy can be questioned, and jealousy’s instrumental value needs to be balanced against a range of potential harms. They assess two potential ways of managing jealousy (which are not mutually exclusive)—firstly by adopting (...) a policy of monogamy and secondly by engaging in emotional work. Neither of these methods is easy, and neither will solve jealousy altogether, but Brunning and McKeever argue that the second strategy should be taken more seriously. (shrink)

It is usually taken for granted that romantic relationships will be sexual, but it seems that there is no necessary reason for this, as it is possible for romantic relationships to not include sex. Indeed, sometimes sex is a part of a romantic relationship for only a relatively short period of it. Furthermore, scientific explanations of the link between sex and love don’t seem fully satisfying because they tell us only about the mechanics of sex, rather than its meaning or (...) phenomenology. Therefore, the question of why it is that the archetypal romantic relationship includes sex, calls for philosophical analysis, yet it has been under-explored in philosophy. In this paper, I attempt to remedy this. I argue that sex is important to romantic love because it partly constitutes, builds, and expresses four of the central goods of a romantic relationship: 1) pleasure, 2) union, 3) intimacy, and 4) vulnerability and care. Thus, sex can be, and often is, an important vehicle for romantic love, though it is not essential for it. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that we can make sense of moral norms against consensual, adult incest by appealing to the value of familial relationships and the potential for sex to damage them. Viewing sex as unconscionable between family members helps to enable the loving intimacy normally associated with family relationships. Therefore, there is good reason for incest, even when consensual and between adults, to remain taboo. That being said, I argue that there is insufficient legal justification for all consensual, (...) adult incest to be criminalised. I examine four potential arguments in favor of consensual, adult incest being illegal, and conclude that none of them succeeds in justifying a total legal prohibition against it. (shrink)

In Sascha Settegast’s recently published article, “Prostitution and the Good of Sex” in Social Theory and Practice, he argues that prostitution is intrinsically harmful. In this article, I object to his argument, making the following three responses to his account: 1) bad sex is not “detrimental to the good life”; 2) bad sex is not necessarily unvirtuous; 3) sex work is work as well as sex, and so must be evaluated as work in addition to as sex.

The norm of monogamy is pervasive, having remained widespread, in most Western cultures at least, in spite of increasing tolerance toward more diverse relationship types. It is also puzzling. People willingly, and often with gusto, adhere to it, yet it is also, prima facie at least, highly restrictive. Being in a monogamous relationship means agreeing to give up certain sorts of valuable interactions and relationships with other people and to severely restrict one’s opportunities for sex and love. It is this (...) restrictiveness which has led for calls among some philosophers for the justification of the norm, and some have argued that it cannot be justified. John McMurtry, for example, writing in 1972, compared monogamy to private property and argued that it serves the capitalist order (McMurtry 1972, 596–97). More recently, Harry Chalmers (2019) has argued that monogamy is morally impermissible. In this chapter we argue that rather than justify the norm, we ought to explain and understand its pervasiveness. Not everyone who follows the norm is doing so blindly, irrationally, or immorally. Indeed, many people are monogamous because being monogamous supports their needs and best enables them to flourish. We suggest that the human need for trust and attachment could underlie many people’s desires for monogamy and, therefore, explain monogamy’s pervasiveness. Focusing on the human need for trust and attachment security can also help us to understand why sexual infidelity can feel like such a betrayal. It can make sense to mutually agree to exclusivity in relationships, in spite of the apparent restrictions this brings. In a sense, not all restrictions are restrictive, because holding ourselves to limits on our behavior can in fact help us to invest in and experience the things we value most. (shrink)

This paper is about what we call Deontically-flavored Nominal Constructions (DNCs) in English, such as "No ice cream" or "Dogs on leash only". DNCs are often perceived as commands and have been argued to be a type of non-canonical imperative, much like root infinitives in German or Russian. We argue instead that DNCs at their core are declaratives that cite a rule but can be used performatively in the right context. We propose that DNCs contain an elided deontic modal, i.e., (...) allowed, whose presence explains their distributional restrictions and interpretational properties. Among other things, we speculate on the licensing conditions of DNCs (the presence of 'only' or the negative determiner 'no'), suggesting that these are tied to the properties of discourses in which rules can be used naturally. (shrink)

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology is a consortium that comprises leading informaticians, biologists, clinicians, and ontologists, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Roadmap, to develop innovative technology and methods that allow scientists to record, manage, and disseminate biomedical information and knowledge in machine-processable form. The goals of the Center are (1) to help unify the divergent and isolated efforts in ontology development by promoting high quality open-source, standards-based tools to create, manage, and use ontologies, (2) to create (...) new software tools so that scientists can use ontologies to annotate and analyze biomedical data, (3) to provide a national resource for the ongoing evaluation, integration, and evolution of biomedical ontologies and associated tools and theories in the context of driving biomedical projects (DBPs), and (4) to disseminate the tools and resources of the Center and to identify, evaluate, and communicate best practices of ontology development to the biomedical community. Through the research activities within the Center, collaborations with the DBPs, and interactions with the biomedical community, our goal is to help scientists to work more effectively in the e-science paradigm, enhancing experiment design, experiment execution, data analysis, information synthesis, hypothesis generation and testing, and understand human disease. (shrink)

Ông Ban Ki-moon, cựu Tổng thư ký Liên hợp quốc hiện đang đóng vai trò Chủ tịch Global Center on Adaptation (GCA), mới có xác nhận tại Africa Climate Summit diễn ra ở Nairobi, về nguy cơ tình trạng thiếu thốn tài chính sẽ ngăn cản những tiến bộ tiếp theo, thậm chí đe dọa cả những kết quả tích cực về bảo tồn sinh thái đã đạt được, tại Châu Phi.

Châu Phi hiện được đánh giá là chịu tác động tiêu cực nặng nhất của cuộc khủng hoảng khí hậu, nhưng chỉ được phân bổ 3% tổng lượng tài chính thích ứng khí hậu, tài chính cần thiết để thiết kế chuyển đổi, thích ứng phương thức hoạt động kinh tế.

Nhà văn hóa trong đời sống nông thôn Việt Nam - qua việc nghiên cứu, khảo sát về các hoạt động của nhà văn hóa Hương Xạ - xã Hương Xạ - huyện Hạ Hòa - tỉnh Phú Thọ -/- Nguyễn Thị Thúy Ngân -/- Luận văn tốt nghiệp năm 2016, ngành KHXH-NV.

Lĩnh vực tín dụng cá nhân tuy có nhiều tiềm năng và tạo cho các ngân hàng có nguồn thu bền vững trong dài hạn nhưng hoạt động này hàm chứa nhiều rủi ro mà các ngân hàng càng quan tâm, đặc biệt trong sô' đó là rủi do không thể trả nỢ, đứng ở 2 khía cạnh là sô' nợ gôc và thời hạn trả nợ. Sẽ rất nguy hiểm nếu trong thời kỳ hiện nay ngân hàng tiếp tục (...) bổ sung vào khối lượng nợ xấu của mình từ rủi ro tín dụng cá nhân khi lượng nợ xấu từ khách hàng doanh nghiệp vẫn chưa thể xử lý được. Do đó, có thể nhận thấy trong thời điểm hiện nay cùng với sự tăng trưởng của tín dụng thì việc nhận diện và đo lường rủi ro tín dụng trở thành việc làm cấp bách. (shrink)

Bài viết đánh giá các nhân tố tác động đến việc sử dụng QR-Code tại các cửa hàng tạp hóa trên địa bàn TP. Biên Hòa, tỉnh Đồng Nai. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy, có 3 nhân tố ảnh hưởng đến việc sử dụng QR Code gồm: Tính dễ dàng thao tác; Tính nhanh chóng tiện lợi; Tính an toàn bảo mật. Từ đó, nghiên cứu kiến nghị đối với các ngân hàng và các tổ chức tín dụng cung (...) cấp dịch vụ QR Code đến người dân sử dụng rộng rãi hơn không chỉ ở khu vực thành thị, cũng như các khu vực nông thôn. [The paper evaluates factors affecting the use of QR-Code at grocery stores in Bien Hoa city, Dong Nai province. Research result points out 3 factors affecting the use of QR Code which are Ease of use; Speed and convenience; Safety and security. From this finding, the study suggests that banks and credit institutions provide QR Code service to people more widely not only in urban areas, but also in rural areas.]. (shrink)

Ông Ban Ki-moon, cựu Tổng thư ký Liên hợp quốc hiện đang đóng vai trò Chủ tịch Global Center on Adaptation (GCA), mới có xác nhận tại Africa Climate Summit diễn ra ở Nairobi, về nguy cơ tình trạng thiếu thốn tài chính sẽ ngăn cản những tiến bộ tiếp theo, thậm chí đe dọa cả những kết quả tích cực về bảo tồn sinh thái đã đạt được, tại Châu Phi.

Bói cá là hình ảnh loài chim quen thuộc ở nông thôn Việt Nam. Ngay ở ngoại ô Hà Nội, thỉnh thoảng vẫn có thể bắt gặp một chú bói cá đậu rất yên tĩnh trên cành cây, chờ phút xuất thần trổ tài, tinh nghề tới mức thượng thừa, được tôn vinh bằng tên hiệu kiêu hãnh “bói”, họ Bói tên Cá!

Săn bắt tê tê là câu chuyện đã kéo dài nhiều thập niên. Tê tê bị săn bắt và kinh doanh lậu nhiều tới mức đã có không biết bao nhiêu phim ảnh, phóng sự điều tra và cả sách bàn về việc này. Một cuốn đáng đọc nói về săn bắt động vật hoang dã để tiêu thụ học theo kiểu cách xa hoa là Poached. Nhưng điều tra khảo sát 1017 cư dân tại 105 ngôi làng ở nông (...) thôn và vùng rừng của Nepal, được xuất bản cuối tháng 8-2023 trên ấn phẩm Conservation Science and Practice (Wiley), mới thực sự ở quy mô bộc lộ được quan niệm và nhận thức đại diên cho cư dân Nepal đối với loài động vật hiền lành này. (shrink)

Wie verändern sich Mensch und Körper durch Technik? Und welches Menschenverständnis vertritt der Transhumanismus? Anna Puzio befasst sich in der ersten philosophischen Studie zur Anthropologie des Transhumanismus mit führenden Personen des Feldes, u. a. mit Nick Bostrom, David Pearce und Natasha Vita-More. Neben Körperoptimierung und Medizintechnologien beleuchtet sie auch Alltagstechnologien wie Wearables. Dabei entwickelt sie einen neuen Ansatz zur Technikanthropologie und ein neues inklusives Menschen- und Körperverständnis im Anschluss an Donna Haraway und den Kritischen Posthumanismus im amerikanischen Raum.

Ban đầu, cây lớn rất chậm. Phải tới khi bén rễ sâu, và lớn vượt lên tầm 2 mét, đón nhiều nắng hơn hẳn thì tán lá mới thực sự tỏa ra các phía.

Creations of many contemporary artists indicate the emergence of technoculture. Although artistic manifestations of technoculture may appear to be a provocation, they encourage fundamental ontological questions, such as whether a person has unchanging nature; what was and is our relationship to the Other, and what it should be; to what extent can body and mind be altered before they stop being “human”; what is the future of our species. To properly understand the works of technoculture artists, it appears necessary to (...) have a thorough grasp post- and transhumanism as their key sources of inspiration. As a result, the developed tools will be employed to indicate which aspects of technoculture are a manifestation of post- and transhumanist ideas. This analysis is based primarily on the works of Stelarc and Orlan – two widely commented artists of technoculture. (shrink)