The Case Against Weapons Research

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Forge

Weapons research seeks to design new or improved weapons and their ancillary structures. It is argued here that weapons research is both morally wrong and morally unjustified. This ‘case against weapons research' requires lengthy discussion and the argument given here is a summary of that discussion. The central claim is that the ‘standard justification; for all forms of weapons acquisition and deployment, which appeals to defense and deterrence, does not stand up for weapons research because the harms caused by the latter projects into the future in unknowable ways. Weapons research produces practical knowledge in the form of designs for the means to harm, and its practitioners cannot know how this knowledge will be used in the future.

Author(s):  
John Forge

Weapons research seeks to design new or improved weapons and their ancillary structures. This chapter argues that weapons research is both morally wrong and morally unjustified. This “case against weapons research” requires lengthy discussion and the argument given here is a summary of that discussion. The central claim is that the “standard justification” for all forms of weapons acquisition and deployment, which appeals to defense and deterrence, does not stand up for weapons research because the harms caused by the latter projects into the future in unknowable ways. Weapons research produces practical knowledge in the form of designs for the means to harm, and its practitioners cannot know how this knowledge will be used in the future.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-195
Author(s):  
Adam F. Scales

AbstractAutonomous Vehicles (AVs) are likely to change a great deal about the practical workings of the liability system for auto accidents. However, we cannot know how just yet. Attempts to anticipate the future and preemptively redesign the liability system around its imagined contours are likely to invite error and frustration. Discretion often being the better part of valor, I suggest we muddle through a bit first.


2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-119
Author(s):  
Xinming Xia ◽  
Wan-Hsin Liu

AbstractThis paper analyses how China’s investments in Germany have developed over time and the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in this regard, based on four different datasets, including our own survey in mid-2020. Our analysis shows that Germany is currently one of the most attractive investment destinations for Chinese investors. Chinese state-owned enterprises have played an important role as investors in Germany — particularly in large-scale projects. The COVID-19 pandemic has had some negative but rather temporary effects on Chinese investments in Germany. Germany is expected to stay attractive to Chinese investors who seek to gain access to advanced technologies and know-how in the future.


2018 ◽  
Vol 108 (09) ◽  
pp. 611-616
Author(s):  
S. F. Schäfer ◽  
U. Bracht

Zukünftige Antriebstechnologien sowie neue Fabrik- und Logistikkonzepte verändern die Rahmenbedingungen der Automobilproduktion grundlegend. Schon heute muss die Strukturlayoutplanung Innovationen und Unsicherheiten in Form von mehr Varianten, abgestimmt in sehr kurzer Zeit, durch die Einbeziehung von weiteren Know-how-Trägern berücksichtigen. Neue Herausforderungen, wie die Planung der Batteriefertigungen, müssen schnell und intuitiv gelöst werden. Einen Beitrag dafür liefert dieser Artikel.   Future technologies in automotive mobility as well as new factory and logistic concepts are changing the framework in car production. Innovations and uncertainties (e. g. the impact of new technologies) have to be taken in consideration for the factory of the future. New tasks, such as planning the assembly of batteries, need to be solved fast and intuitively. This paper presents an approach to this topic.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Grace Tedy Tulak ◽  
Syahrul Ramadhan ◽  
Alimatul Musrifah

Abstrak: Anak usia sekolah mempunyai kebiasaan kurang memperhatikan perilaku mencuci tangan terutama di lingkungan sekolah. Kebiasaan Cuci Tangan Pakai Sabun (CTPS) masih menjadi perhatian dunia karena masih ditemukan masyarakat yang melupakan perilaku mencuci tangan. Fokus kegiatan CTPS adalah anak usia sekolah yang menjadi “Agen Perubahan” pada masa depan. Dalam kegiatan ini akan dilakukan edukasi cuci tangan pakai sabun kepada siswa MI As’adiyah dalam bentuk penyuluhan di kelas dan dilanjutkan dengan simulasi di lapangan dengan berpedoman pada 6 langkah cuci tangan. Sebelum melakukan kegiatan ini siswa MI As’adiyah belum mengetahui cara mencuci tangan pakai sabun sehingga kegiatan ini dinggap berhasil 100% berhasil karena semua siswa dapat mempraktekkan mencucuci tangan menggunakan sabun dengan baik dan benar. Abstract:  School-age children have a habit of not paying attention to handwashing behavior, especially in the school environment. Handwashing with soap habit is still the world’s attention because it is still found that people still forget to do handwashing behavior. The focus of CTPS activities is school children as “agents of change” in the future. In this activity, education will be carried out washing hands with soap to MI As'adiyah students in the form of counseling in class and followed by simulation in the field guided by the 6 steps of handwashing. Before doing this activity MI As'adiyah students did not know how to wash their hands use the soap so this activity could be 100% successful because all students could practice washing hands with soap properly and correctly.


2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 362-380
Author(s):  
Riitta Forsten-Astikainen ◽  
Pia Heilmann

Purpose This study examines in detail how a new occupational group in a field creates and defines its professional competences. The background of the study refers to a new way of organizing social and health care services that requires new type of expertise. The authors examine the professionals of this new sector – service agents and the competences – they need in a multi-professional networking organization. The goal of this organizational pilot project is to gather both experience and practical knowledge of how the “gatekeeper” model can work between the customer and the service provider. The purpose of this paper is to learn the service agents’ perspective on their own work, namely, how they create their work, what their visions of the future are, and what can be learned from the new organizing model. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative data collection and small-scale exploratory study of a new profession: eight service agents and their two supervisors were interviewed to raise awareness of what professional competences these new job contents require, how service agents can influence the content of their work, and what competence needs will emerge in the future. Findings The key findings indicate that service agents lack the courage to modify their own mission. When a new profession is created, they are uncertain about how to create self-content on their own terms. They assume they need a certain degree and to know something more than they already know. They do not dare define their own new professional territory, but rather wait for that definition to come from their organization or society. However, the results also show that some service agents have a hidden willingness to be creative even when there is a lack of courage. There is a need to take more initiative and for agents to think freely outside the box in this new situation. Research limitations/implications The number of interviewees is small and the context specific. However, the study gives an indication of the factors that need to be taken into account when the dissemination of the model starts. Originality/value The paper describes the results of the pilot project of a new profession and a customer-oriented model in the social and health care sector.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kastriot Dermaku ◽  
◽  
Liridon Hoti Ilir Gashi ◽  
Selami Klaiqi ◽  
◽  
...  

Nowadays, we know how important it is for a country to have a good telecom infrastructure, including Kosovo. The purpose of this paper is to plan the telecommunications infrastructure based on the geographic information provided by GIS. By using these systems, we can draw analyses and conclusions on the possibility of planning the extension of this infrastructure in the future, consequently conveying ideas to different sectors of development or for using telecommunications infrastructure. The data by which the scenarios of this study have been drafted, are real and generated in Prishtina. They are employed to illustrate the use and techniques of GIS.


2021 ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Sandro Galea

This chapter discusses how the time of the COVID-19 pandemic was also a time when the world, in many respects, had never been better—or healthier. In a number of key areas—from life expectancy, to declines in poverty, to reductions in preventable diseases like HIV/AIDS—it was, and is, a more favorable time to be alive than any other point in recorded history. All these advances was a byproduct of foundational forces unfolding over time, forces like industrialization, global development, urbanization, and political changes. However, the incidental nature of this success has meant that we have yet to fully acknowledge why it occurred, which hinders our ability to advance it in the future. Why do we need to know how we got here? First, our understanding of the causes of health shapes our investment in health. America's investment in healthcare comes at the expense of their investment in the foundational drivers of health. The second reason is that if we do not understand the true causes of health, we will be unable to build a world that is ready for the next pandemic.


2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Serani Merlo

La conciencia actual de que estamos haciendo inhabitable la “casa común” para las futuras generaciones, tiene raíces objetivas y subjetivas. Subjetivamente el hombre de la calle percibe con angustia la destrucción de algo que ya no conoce y que no sabe cómo cuidar. La modernidad, con su división entre la res extensa y la res cogitans, condujo a una disociación entre la idea de naturaleza que tiene el hombre común, y la idea docta de naturaleza. Las ontologías doctas de corte materialista o idealista hacen depender la naturaleza de la subjetividad humana, mientras que la experiencia espontánea reconoce en ella una existencia “dada”. Se proponen tres sentidos de “lo dado” que permiten hacerse cargo filosóficamente de la experiencia común. Nos parece imperativo recuperar una concepción realista de la naturaleza que permita establecer límites objetivos a la técnica y a su lógica, que tiende hoy a invadir, todo el ámbito de lo práctico, incluidas la economía y la política. ---------- The current awareness that we are making uninhabitable our “common house” for the future generations has both objective and subjective roots. Subjectively, the common man anxiously perceives the destruction of something that no longer understands and who does not know how to care. With its division among res extensa and res cogitans, modernity leads to dissociation between the common idea of nature and the academic one. The erudite materialistic or idealistic ontologies make depend “nature” from human subjectivity, while, on the contrary, with spontaneous experience we should recognize to it a “given” existence. We suggest here three meanings of the term “given” that allow us to face in a philosophical sense our common experience. It seems necessary to recover a realistic conception of nature that aims to establish objective limits to technique and its logic, which now tends to invade the entire “practical field”, including economics and politics.


2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (5) ◽  
pp. 670-686
Author(s):  
Rory O’Connell

AbstractElizabeth Anscombe introduced the notion of “practical knowledge” into contemporary philosophy. Philosophers of action have criticized Anscombe’s negative characterization of such knowledge as “non-observational,” but have recently come to pay more attention to her positive characterization of practical knowledge as “the cause of what it understands.” I argue that two recent Anscombean accounts of practical knowledge, “Formalism” and “Normativism,” each fail to explain the productive character of practical knowledge in a way that secures its status as non-observational. I argue that to do this, we must appreciate the role of know-how or skill in practical knowledge.


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