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markfrankel18

John Searle: The Philosopher in the World by Tim Crane | NYRblog | The New York Review ... - 0 views

www.nybooks.com/...john-searle-philosopher-world

TOK ethics law rights philosophy

shared by markfrankel18 on 21 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • No, I’m not skeptical about the idea of universal human rights. I’m skeptical about what I call positive rights.
  • So I say that you can make a good case for universal human rights of a negative kind, but that you cannot make the comparable case for universal human rights of a positive kind.
  • As a professor in Berkeley I have certain rights, and certain obligations. But the idea of universal rights—that you have certain rights just in virtue of being a human being—is a fantastic idea. And I think, Why not extend the idea of universal rights to conscious animals? Just in virtue of being a conscious animal, you have certain rights. The fact that animals cannot undertake obligations does not imply that they cannot have rights against us who do have obligations. Babies have rights even before they are able to undertake obligations. Now I have to make a confession. I try not to think about animal rights because I fear I’d have to become a vegetarian if I worked it out consistently. But I think there is a very good case to be made for saying that if you grant the validity of universal human rights, then it looks like it would be some kind of special pleading if you said there’s no such thing as universal animal rights. I think there are animal rights.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • For every right there’s an obligation. We’re under an obligation to treat animals as we arrogantly say, “humanely.” And I think that’s right. I think we are under an obligation to treat animals humanely. The sort of obligation is the sort that typically goes with rights. Animals have a right against us to be treated humanely. Now whether or not this gives us a right to slaughter animals for the sake of eating them, well, I’ve been eating them for so long that I’ve come to take it for granted. But I’m not sure that I could justify it if I was forced to
Lawrence Hrubes

Maya Angelou and the Internet's Stamp of Approval - The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...he-internets-stamp-of-approval

arts poetry internet media errors misinformation

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 11 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • his week, the United States Postal Service came in for a full news cycle’s worth of ridicule after it was&nbsp;pointed out, by the Washington&nbsp;Post, that the agency’s new Maya Angelou stamp featured a quotation that the late poet and memoirist didn’t write. The line—“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song”—has been widely attributed to Angelou. And it seems like something she might have written, perhaps as a shorthand explanation for the title of her most famous book, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” But the line, in a slightly different form, was originally published in a poetry collection from 1967 called “A Cup of Sun,” by Joan Walsh Anglund. The&nbsp;Post&nbsp;reported this on Monday. By Tuesday, when such luminaries as First Lady Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey stood onstage in front of a giant reproduction of the Angelou stamp at the official unveiling, everyone knew that the words behind them belonged to someone else. According to the U.S.P.S., more than&nbsp;eighty million Angelou stamps were produced, and there are no plans to retract them. <!doctype html>div,ul,li{margin:0;padding:0;}.abgc{height:15px;position:absolute;right:16px;text-rendering:geometricPrecision;top:0;width:15px;z-index:9010;}.abgb{height:100%;}.abgc img{display:block;}.abgc svg{display:block;}.abgs{display:none;height:100%;}.abgl{text-decoration:none;}.cbc{background-image: url('http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/images/x_button_blue2.png');background-position: right top;background-repeat: no-repeat;cursor:pointer;height:15px;right:0;top:0;margin:0;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:16px;z-index:9010;}.cbc.cbc-hover {background-image: url('http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/images/x_button_dark.png');}.cbc > .cb-x{height: 15px;position:absolute;width: 16px;right:0;top:0;}.cb-x > .cb-x-svg{background-color: lightgray;position:absolute;}.cbc.cbc-hover > .cb-x > .cb-x-svg{background-color: #58585a;}.cb-x > .cb-x-svg > .cb-x-svg-path{fill : #00aecd;}.cbc.cbc-hover > .cb-x > .cb-x-svg > .cb-x-svg-path{fill : white;}.cb-x > .cb-x-svg > .cb-x-svg-s-path{fill : white;} .ddmc{background:#ccc;color:#000;padding:0;position:absolute;z-index:9020;max-width:100%;box-shadow:2px 2px 3px #aaaaaa;}.ddmc.left{margin-right:0;left:0px;}.ddmc.right{margin-left:0;right:0px;}.ddmc.top{bottom:20px;}.ddmc.bottom{top:20px;}.ddmc .tip{border-left:4px solid transparent;border-right:4px solid transparent;height:0;position:absolute;width:0;font-size:0;line-height:0;}.ddmc.bottom .tip{border-bottom:4px solid #ccc;top:-4px;}.ddmc.top .tip{border-top:4px solid #ccc;bottom:-4px;}.ddmc.right .tip{right:3px;}.ddmc.left .tip{left:3px;}.ddmc .dropdown-content{display:block;}.dropdown-content{display:none;border-collapse:collapse;}.dropdown-item{font:12px Arial,sans-serif;cursor:pointer;padding:3px 7px;vertical-align:middle;}.dropdown-item-hover{background:#58585a;color:#fff;}.dropdown-content > table{border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:0;}.dropdown-content > table > tbody > tr > td{padding:0;}Ad covers the pageStop seeing this ad.feedback_container {width: 100%;height: 100%;position: absolute;top:0;left:0;display: none;z-index: 9020;background-color: white;}.feedback_page {font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;;font-size: 13px;margin: 16px 16px 16px 16px;}.feedback_title {font-weight: bold;color: #000000;}.feedback_page a {font-weight: normal;color: #3366cc;}.feedback_description {color: #666666;line-height: 16px;margin: 12px 0 12px 0;}.feedback_closing {color: #0367ff;line-height: 16px;margin: 12px 0 12px 0;}.feedback_logo {position: absolute;right: 0;bottom: 0;margin: 0 12px 9px 0;}.feedback_logo img {height: 15px;}.survey_description {color: #666666;line-height: 17px;margin: 12px 0 10px 0;}.survey {color: #666666;line-height: 20px;}.survey_option input {margin: 0;vertical-align: middle;}.survey_option_text {margin: 0 0 0 5px;line-height: 17px;vertical-align: bottom;}.survey_option:hover {background-color: lightblue;cursor: default;}It&amp;#39;s gone. UndoWhat was wrong with this ad?InappropriateRepetitiveIrrelevantThanks for the feedback! BackWe’ll review this ad to improve your
Lawrence Hrubes

Lawsuit Filed Today on Behalf of Chimpanzee Seeking Legal Personhood : The Nonhuman Rig... - 0 views

www.nonhumanrightsproject.org/...anzee-seeking-legal-personhood

TOK ethics animals rights science law

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 08 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • The Nonhuman Rights Project is the only organization working toward actual LEGAL rights for members of species other than our own. Our mission is to change the common law status of at least some nonhuman animals from mere “things,” which lack the capacity to possess any legal right, to “persons,” who possess such fundamental rights as bodily integrity and bodily liberty, and those other legal rights to which evolving standards of morality, scientific discovery, and human experience entitle them. Our first cases were filed in 2013.
  • The legal cause of action that we are using is the common law writ of habeas corpus, through which somebody who is being held captive, for example in prison, seeks relief by having a judge call upon his captors to show cause as to why they have the right to hold him. More specifically, our suits are based on a case that was fought in England in 1772, when an American slave, James Somerset, who had been taken to London by his owner, escaped, was recaptured and was being held in chains on a ship that was about to set sail for the slave markets of Jamaica. With help from a group of abolitionist attorneys, Somerset’s godparents filed a writ of habeas corpus on Somerset’s behalf in order to challenge Somerset’s classification as a legal thing, and the case went before the Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench, Lord Mansfield. In what became one of the most important trials in Anglo-American history, Lord Mansfield ruled that Somerset was not a piece of property, but instead a legal person, and he set him free.
markfrankel18

Whole Foods is taking heat for selling rabbit - Quartz - 0 views

qz.com/...g-heat-for-selling-rabbit-meat

ethics animals pets classification

shared by markfrankel18 on 24 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • But worrying about data is probably just a distraction, because, ultimately,&nbsp;“pet” is a relative term—there are&nbsp;more fish&nbsp;in our home aquariums than there are pet dogs, and any category that lumps the two together feels inadequate.
  • Herzog started thinking about this 20 years ago, when he was sitting in a hotel bar having a beer with the psychologist and animal rights activist, Ken Shapiro. Herzog&nbsp;knew Shapiro was a vegan; Shapiro&nbsp;knew Herzog ate meat. Both men had read all of the same psychology and animal-rights literature, and both spent a lot of time working through the same philosophical questions. But somehow, they came to different conclusions about how to live their lives. + “Hal, I don’t get it: why aren’t you like us?” Shapiro suddenly asked. Herzog didn’t have an answer. He still doesn’t. + “I’ve been struggling with this for a long time,” Herzog says. “I can handle moral ambiguity.&nbsp;I can deal with it. So I don’t have that need for moral consistency that animal activists do.” He laughs a little.&nbsp;“And I know that their logic is better than mine, so I don’t even try arguing with them. They win in these arguments.” +
  • Rabbits, as this passer-by is implying,&nbsp;are widely consumed in other countries. Western Europeans love rabbit sausage,&nbsp;slow-cooked rabbit stews, and braised bunny dishes, while the Chinese—who account for 30% of global rabbit consumption—consider rabbit’s head a delicacy. + Rabbit was even a staple of the American diet at one time. It helped sustain the European transplants&nbsp;who migrated west across the frontier, and during World War II, eating rabbit was promoted as an act of patriotism akin to growing a victory garden. But as small farms gave way to large-scale operations, rabbit meat’s popularity melted away and other meats took over.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Outside of the Union Square store, the activists are talking to a small crowd.&nbsp;“They refuse to test products on the very animals they turn around and sell as meat,” says a man wearing fuzzy bunny ears and holding a big sign. + This inconsistency presents a valid question:&nbsp;If I decide there is something ethically wrong with dripping chemicals into a rabbit’s eye to test its toxicity, is it hypocritical&nbsp;to eat that animal? + Hal Herzog talks about the relative ability of an individual to live with moral inconsistency, but perhaps the rabbit debate is less about morality and instead has to do with the categorical boundaries we use to talk about the debate in the first place.
Lawrence Hrubes

BBC News - US chimpanzee Tommy 'has no human rights' - court - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-us-canada-30338231

TOK ethics animals rights law duty

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 05 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • A chimpanzee is not entitled to the same rights as people and does not have be freed from captivity by its owner, a US court has ruled. The appeals court in New York state said caged chimpanzee Tommy could not be recognised as a "legal person" as it "cannot bear any legal duties". The Nonhuman Rights Project had argued that chimps who had such similar characteristics to the humans deserved basic rights, including freedom. The rights group said it would appeal. Owner pleased In its ruling, the judges wrote: "So far as legal theory is concerned, a person is any being whom the law regards as capable of rights and duties. "Needless to say, unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions.'' The court added that there was no precedent for treating animals as persons and no legal basis.
markfrankel18

The Moral Instinct - New York Times - 3 views

www.nytimes.com/...13Psychology-t.html

ethics TOK Pinker

shared by markfrankel18 on 31 Mar 13 - Cached
  • It seems we may all be vulnerable to moral illusions the ethical equivalent of the bending lines that trick the eye on cereal boxes and in psychology textbooks. Illusions are a favorite tool of perception scientists for exposing the workings of the five senses, and of philosophers for shaking people out of the naïve belief that our minds give us a transparent window onto the world (since if our eyes can be fooled by an illusion, why should we trust them at other times?). Today, a new field is using illusions to unmask a sixth sense, the moral sense.
  • The first hallmark of moralization is that the rules it invokes are felt to be universal. Prohibitions of rape and murder, for example, are felt not to be matters of local custom but to be universally and objectively warranted. One can easily say, “I don’t like brussels sprouts, but I don’t care if you eat them,” but no one would say, “I don’t like killing, but I don’t care if you murder someone.”The other hallmark is that people feel that those who commit immoral acts deserve to be punished.
  • Until recently, it was understood that some people didn’t enjoy smoking or avoided it because it was hazardous to their health. But with the discovery of the harmful effects of secondhand smoke, smoking is now treated as immoral. Smokers are ostracized; images of people smoking are censored; and entities touched by smoke are felt to be contaminated (so hotels have not only nonsmoking rooms but nonsmoking floors). The desire for retribution has been visited on tobacco companies, who have been slapped with staggering “punitive damages.” At the same time, many behaviors have been amoralized, switched from moral failings to lifestyle choices.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • But whether an activity flips our mental switches to the “moral” setting isn’t just a matter of how much harm it does. We don’t show contempt to the man who fails to change the batteries in his smoke alarms or takes his family on a driving vacation, both of which multiply the risk they will die in an accident. Driving a gas-guzzling Hummer is reprehensible, but driving a gas-guzzling old Volvo is not; eating a Big Mac is unconscionable, but not imported cheese or crème brûlée. The reason for these double standards is obvious: people tend to align their moralization with their own lifestyles.
  • People don’t generally engage in moral reasoning, Haidt argues, but moral rationalization: they begin with the conclusion, coughed up by an unconscious emotion, and then work backward to a plausible justification.
  • Together, the findings corroborate Greene’s theory that our nonutilitarian intuitions come from the victory of an emotional impulse over a cost-benefit analysis.
  • The psychologist Philip Tetlock has shown that the mentality of taboo — a conviction that some thoughts are sinful to think — is not just a superstition of Polynesians but a mind-set that can easily be triggered in college-educated Americans. Just ask them to think about applying the sphere of reciprocity to relationships customarily governed by community or authority. When Tetlock asked subjects for their opinions on whether adoption agencies should place children with the couples willing to pay the most, whether people should have the right to sell their organs and whether they should be able to buy their way out of jury duty, the subjects not only disagreed but felt personally insulted and were outraged that anyone would raise the question.
  • The moral sense, then, may be rooted in the design of the normal human brain. Yet for all the awe that may fill our minds when we reflect on an innate moral law within, the idea is at best incomplete. Consider this moral dilemma: A runaway trolley is about to kill a schoolteacher. You can divert the trolley onto a sidetrack, but the trolley would trip a switch sending a signal to a class of 6-year-olds, giving them permission to name a teddy bear Muhammad. Is it permissible to pull the lever? This is no joke. Last month a British woman teaching in a private school in Sudan allowed her class to name a teddy bear after the most popular boy in the class, who bore the name of the founder of Islam. She was jailed for blasphemy and threatened with a public flogging, while a mob outside the prison demanded her death. To the protesters, the woman’s life clearly had less value than maximizing the dignity of their religion, and their judgment on whether it is right to divert the hypothetical trolley would have differed from ours. Whatever grammar guides people’s moral judgments can’t be all that universal. Anyone who stayed awake through Anthropology 101 can offer many other examples.
  • The impulse to avoid harm, which gives trolley ponderers the willies when they consider throwing a man off a bridge, can also be found in rhesus monkeys, who go hungry rather than pull a chain that delivers food to them and a shock to another monkey. Respect for authority is clearly related to the pecking orders of dominance and appeasement that are widespread in the animal kingdom. The purity-defilement contrast taps the emotion of disgust that is triggered by potential disease vectors like bodily effluvia, decaying flesh and unconventional forms of meat, and by risky sexual practices like incest.
  • All this brings us to a theory of how the moral sense can be universal and variable at the same time. The five moral spheres are universal, a legacy of evolution. But how they are ranked in importance, and which is brought in to moralize which area of social life — sex, government, commerce, religion, diet and so on — depends on the culture.
  • By analogy, we are born with a universal moral grammar that forces us to analyze human action in terms of its moral structure, with just as little awareness. The idea that the moral sense is an innate part of human nature is not far-fetched. A list of human universals collected by the anthropologist Donald E. Brown includes many moral concepts and emotions, including a distinction between right and wrong; empathy; fairness; admiration of generosity; rights and obligations; proscription of murder, rape and other forms of violence; redress of wrongs; sanctions for wrongs against the community; shame; and taboos.
  • Here is the worry. The scientific outlook has taught us that some parts of our subjective experience are products of our biological makeup and have no objective counterpart in the world. The qualitative difference between red and green, the tastiness of fruit and foulness of carrion, the scariness of heights and prettiness of flowers are design features of our common nervous system, and if our species had evolved in a different ecosystem or if we were missing a few genes, our reactions could go the other way. Now, if the distinction between right and wrong is also a product of brain wiring, why should we believe it is any more real than the distinction between red and green? And if it is just a collective hallucination, how could we argue that evils like genocide and slavery are wrong for everyone, rather than just distasteful to us?
  • Putting God in charge of morality is one way to solve the problem, of course, but Plato made short work of it 2,400 years ago. Does God have a good reason for designating certain acts as moral and others as immoral? If not — if his dictates are divine whims — why should we take them seriously? Suppose that God commanded us to torture a child. Would that make it all right, or would some other standard give us reasons to resist? And if, on the other hand, God was forced by moral reasons to issue some dictates and not others — if a command to torture a child was never an option — then why not appeal to those reasons directly?
markfrankel18

Many scientific "truths" are, in fact, false - Quartz - 0 views

qz.com/...tific-truths-are-in-fact-false

TOK science psychology

shared by markfrankel18 on 25 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • Each scientific field must adopt its own methods of ensuring accuracy. But ultimately, this self-reflection is a key part of the scientific process. As Bishop notes, “Science has proved itself to be an incredibly powerful method.” And yet there’s always room for further advancement. “There’s never an end point,” says Bishop. “We’re always groping towards the next thing. Sometimes science does disappear down the wrong path for a bit before it corrects itself.” For Nosek, who led the re-testing of 100 psychology papers, the current focus on reproducibility is simply part of the scientific process. “Science isn’t about truth and falsity, it’s about reducing uncertainty,” he says. “Really this whole project is science on science: Researchers doing what science is supposed to do, which is be skeptical of our own process, procedure, methods, and look for ways to improve.”
Lawrence Hrubes

Believe in animal rights? Be prepared to go pet-free - Home | The 180 with Jim Brown | ... - 1 views

www.cbc.ca/...pared-to-go-pet-free-1.3765424

ethics animals

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 18 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • If we want to achieve true animal rights, we need to stop having pets.&nbsp; That's according to&nbsp;Gary Francione, a law professor who deals with animal rights, and a longtime vegan. He&nbsp;says keeping pets is just another way of exploiting animals.&nbsp; And he says pets shouldn't exist.
markfrankel18

On Syria, a U.N. Vote Isn't Optional - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...a-a-un-vote-isnt-optional.html

ToK history ethics war

shared by markfrankel18 on 04 Sep 13 - Cached
  • markfrankel18 on 04 Sep 13
     
    "Consider the world that preceded the United Nations. The basic rule of that system, one that lasted for centuries, was that states had just cause to go to war when legal rights had been violated. Spain tried to justify its conquest of the Americas by saying it was protecting indigenous civilians from atrocities committed by other indigenous peoples. The War of the Austrian Succession was fought over whether a woman had a right to inherit the throne. The United States largely justified the Mexican-American War, including the conquest of California and much of what is now the Southwest, by pointing to Mexico's failure to pay old tort claims and outstanding debts. The problem with the old system was not that no one could enforce the law, but that too many who wished to do so could. The result was almost constant war."
markfrankel18

N.Y. Judge Grants Legal Rights To 2 Research Chimps : The Two-Way : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...al-rights-to-2-research-chimps

TOK ethics animals science

shared by markfrankel18 on 21 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • A New York judge has granted two research chimps the writ of habeas corpus — a move that allows them to challenge their detention. The decision, says Science magazine, effectively recognizes chimps as legal persons, marking the first time in U.S. history that an animal has been given that right.
markfrankel18

The Right to Write - NYTimes.com - 1 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...the-right-to-write

TOK literature ethics

shared by markfrankel18 on 29 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • I sat on a panel once with another novelist and a distinguished African-American critic, to discuss Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” The critic said, “Of course, as a white woman, Stowe had no right to write the black experience.” The other novelist said lightly, “No, of course not. And I had no right to write about 14th-century Scandinavians. Which I did.”
  • Who owns the story, the person who lives it or the person who writes it?
Lawrence Hrubes

Pondering Miracles, Medical and Religious - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...les-medical-and-religious.html

religious knowledge systems science medicine miracles faith

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 06 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • The tribunal that questioned me was not juridical, but ecclesiastical. I was not asked about my faith. (For the record, I’m an atheist.) I was not asked if it was a miracle. I was asked if I could explain it scientifically. I could not, though I had come armed for my testimony with the most up-to-date hematological literature, which showed that long survivals following relapses were not seen.
  • When, at the end, the Vatican committee asked if I had anything more to say, I blurted out that as much as her survival, thus far, was remarkable, I fully expected her to relapse some day sooner or later. What would the Vatican do then, revoke the canonization? The clerics recorded my doubts. But the case went forward and d’Youville was canonized on Dec. 9, 1990.
  • Respect for our religious patients demands understanding and tolerance; their beliefs are as true for them as the “facts” may be for physicians. Now almost 40 years later, that mystery woman is still alive and I still cannot explain why. Along with the Vatican, she calls it a miracle. Why should my inability to offer an explanation trump her belief? However they are interpreted, miracles exist, because that is how they are lived in our world.
Lawrence Hrubes

If Animals Have Rights, Should Robots? - The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...mals-have-rights-should-robots

ethics animals robots technology

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 01 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • People projected thoughts into Harambe’s mind. “Our tendency is to see our actions through human lenses,” a neuroscientist named Kurt Gray told the network as the frenzy peaked. “We can’t imagine what it’s like to actually be a gorilla. We can only imagine what it’s like to be us being a gorilla.” This simple fact is responsible for centuries of ethical dispute. One Harambe activist might believe that killing a gorilla as a safeguard against losing human life is unjust due to our cognitive similarity: the way gorillas think is a lot like the way we think, so they merit a similar moral standing. Another might believe that gorillas get their standing from a cognitive dissimilarity: because of our advanced powers of reason, we are called to rise above the cat-eat-mouse game, to be special protectors of animals, from chickens to chimpanzees. (Both views also support untroubled omnivorism: we kill animals because we are but animals, or because our exceptionalism means that human interests win.) These beliefs, obviously opposed, mark our uncertainty about whether we’re rightful peers or masters among other entities with brains.
  • The big difference, they argue, is “sentience.” Many animals have it; zygotes and embryos don’t. Colb and Dorf define sentience as “the ability to have subjective experiences,” which is a little tricky, because animal subjectivity is what’s hard for us to pin down. A famous paper called “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?,” by the philosopher Thomas Nagel, points out that even if humans were to start flying, eating bugs, and getting around by sonar they would not have a bat’s full experience, or the batty subjectivity that the creature had developed from birth.
  • If animals suffer, the philosopher Peter Singer noted in “Animal Liberation” (1975), shouldn’t we include them in the calculus of minimizing pain? Such an approach to peership has advantages: it establishes the moral claims of animals without projecting human motivations onto them. But it introduces other problems. Bludgeoning your neighbor is clearly worse than poisoning a rat.
markfrankel18

Court Declares Captive Orangutan Is "Non-Human Person" | IFLScience - 0 views

www.iflscience.com/...tends-rights-captive-orangutan

TOK person science ethics

shared by markfrankel18 on 23 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • An Argentinian court has decided that a Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii) named Sandra is a non-human person with rights, and will no longer be held captive in the Buenos Aires zoo where she has lived for the last 20 years. Sandra's case was taken up in November 2013 by the Association of Professional Lawyers for Animal Rights (AFADA). The lawyers argued that Sandra was intelligent and self-aware enough to understand and be negatively affected by her conditions, as well as being aware of the passage of time. The court agreed, and the judges unanimously voted in favor of a writ of habeas corpus for Sandra, deciding that she had been wrongfully imprisoned.
anonymous

6 Ways Albert Einstein Fought for Civil Rights - 0 views

www.livescience.com/ert-einstein-civil-rights.html

TOK science ethics history psychology math segregation

shared by anonymous on 10 Mar 15 - No Cached
sleggettisp liked it
  • anonymous on 10 Mar 15
     
    Einstein wasn't only a scientist and mathematician but also a civil-rights activist.
Lawrence Hrubes

BBC News - French veil law: Muslim woman's challenge in Strasbourg - 2 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-europe-25118160

TOK ethics religion culture rights law Islam gender

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 27 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 27 Nov 13
     
    ""Wearing the full veil not only makes it difficult to identify a person, it makes her indistinguishable from other full veil wearers and effectively erases the woman who wears it," she told the court. Ramby de Mello, a British lawyer representing the unnamed woman, said the law violated his client's religious, free speech and privacy rights and made her feel "like a prisoner in her own country"."
Lawrence Hrubes

South Korea's Textbook Whitewash - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...koreas-textbook-whitewash.html

history

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 13 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • The administration of President Park Geun-hye also knows that history is a powerful tool for molding young minds. That is why, after weeks of rancorous public debate, on Nov. 3 it made official its decision to replace current middle and high school history textbooks produced by private publishers with government-issued ones by 2017. The announcement was condemned by many scholars and the political opposition.
  • It’s often said that the teaching of history is inherently political, and using education to influence the population is nothing new in South Korea. The problem, however, is the kind of Korean history the current government wants to tell through textbooks of its own production — authored, reviewed and disseminated under strict official guidance.
Lawrence Hrubes

The Words That Killed Medieval Jews - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...that-killed-medieval-jews.html

history language

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 12 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • No historian can claim to have insight into the motives of living individuals. But history does show that a heightening of rhetoric against a certain group can incite violence against that group, even when no violence is called for. When a group is labeled hostile and brutal, its members are more likely to be treated with hostility and brutality. Visual images are particularly powerful, spurring actions that may well be unintended by the images’ creators.
Lawrence Hrubes

Will You Ever Be Able to Upload Your Brain? - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...able-to-upload-your-brain.html

science neuroscience brain mind models

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 17 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • I am a theoretical neuroscientist. I study models of brain circuits, precisely the sort of models that would be needed to try to reconstruct or emulate a functioning brain from a detailed knowledge of its structure. I don’t in principle see any reason that what I’ve described could not someday, in the very far future, be achieved (though it’s an active field of philosophical debate). But to accomplish this, these future scientists would need to know details of staggering complexity about the brain’s structure, details quite likely far beyond what any method today could preserve in a dead brain.
Lawrence Hrubes

When Philosophy Lost Its Way - The New York Times - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...when-philosophy-lost-its-way

philosophy ethics

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 13 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Having adopted the same structural form as the sciences, it’s no wonder philosophy fell prey to physics envy and feelings of inadequacy. Philosophy adopted the scientific&nbsp;modus operandi&nbsp;of knowledge production, but failed to match the sciences in terms of making progress in describing the world. Much has been made of this inability of philosophy to match the cognitive success of the sciences. But what has passed unnoticed is philosophy’s all-too-successful aping of the institutional form of the sciences. We, too, produce research articles. We, too, are judged by the same coin of the realm: peer-reviewed products. We, too, develop sub-specializations far from the comprehension of the person on the street. In all of these ways we are so very “scientific.”
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