“We are Human Beings, and We Value Human Life”: Glock and Diamond on Mental Capacities and Animal Ethics

How should a philosophical inquiry into the moral status of (nonhuman) animals proceed? Many philosophers maintain that by examining the “morally relevant” psychological or physiological capacities possessed by the members of different species, and comparing them with similar capacities possessed by human beings, the moral status of the animals in question can be established. Others contend that such an approach runs into serious moral and conceptual problems, a crucial one being that of how to give a coherent account of the natural sense of concern for profoundly cognitively impaired human beings if moral status is assumed to depend on features that centrally include cognitive capacities. The present article discusses this debate with reference to Wittgenstein-influenced philosophers whose respective approaches, on the face of it, diverge dramatically. With a primary focus on Hans-Johann Glock and Cora Diamond, and a secondary focus on recent work by Alice Crary, I argue that, despite an overt disavowal of the kind of approach favoured by Diamond and Crary, Glock’s affirmation that we simply do “value human life” brings him closer to that approach than he acknowledges.

BREAST IRONING: A RAPE OF THE GIRL-CHILD’S PERSONALITY INTEGRITY AND SEXUAL AUTONOMY

<p>Breast ironing also known as breast flattening, has been considered as one of the most widespread and systematic violations of the universal human rights to personal integrity and sexual autonomy perpetuated against the girl child. This exhilarating practice which is typically carried out by the girl’s mother on the pretext of protecting the female child from teenage sexual harassment and rape, early pregnancy and dropping out of school is unfortunately done to protect family name. Employing the qualitative research approach and the expository analytic method, this research reveals that this practice has ensuring clinical, psychological and social consequences on the female victim. The paper considers this practice a rape based on the fact that the female victim’s consent is never sought. Natural sense of justice demands that the victim whose personality integrity and right to sexual autonomy was to be defiled and destroyed deserves to give an informed consent. Therefore, the paper concludes that this harmful practice is an abuse because it violently violates the girl child right full sexual autonomy and right to possess natural physiological endowment that adorns a woman. This paper therefore recommends that strict laws and penalties should be promulgated to totally abolish and eradicate this barbaric and horrific mutilation.</p>

Using a Sonic Time-Lapse Method as a Compositional Tool

This article describes an innovative compositional method based on the use of a sonic time-lapse algorithm to create soundscape audio montages. The method is based on the superposition of short audio samples of 24-hour continuous field recordings carried out in various kinds of wildlife sonic environments. The optimisation of the algorithm focused on the enhancement of gradual crossfade transitions between recorded samples and the use of variable sample durations as a way of recreating a natural sense of evolution of sonic events in time. Future developments of the project will integrate virtual reality interfaces and environmental education projects as part of the time-lapse algorithm machine-learning techniques and also creative tools suitable for multimedia installations.

La promoció de la lectura a les llibreries de Catalunya (2018-2019)

La majoria de llibreries catalanes han estat tradicionalment un punt de trobada entre lectors i autors. De manera regular, les presentacions i signatures de llibres, com també les sessions de contacontes i, en menor grau, els clubs de lectura formen part del dia a dia de l’univers llibreter. Aquest paper es fa de manera natural, sense grans innovacions perquè es tracta d’un model plenament consolidat i adient a les característiques, físiques i humanes, d’aquests establiments culturals de proximitat. En aquest informe repassarem la situació dels darrers dos anys.

Post-Kantian Elements in the Intersubjectively Constituted Subject of Universalism as a Metaphilosophy

This comparative essay about two kinds of interpersonal-centric humanism is dedicated to the memory of professor Janusz Kuczyński and his conception of dialogical universalism as a metaphilosophy, and shows Immanuel Kant’s thought as a ceaseless source of inspiration for all anti-conservatives and universalists. Kant’s philosophy gave man an unforgettable sense of freedom, because it not only posed the imperative of building a pan-human community of all rational beings, but also revealed the above-natural sense of the human species’ imposition of purposefulness upon itself, and the realisation of this purposefulness in the form of a republican federation of free states dedicated to co-creating eternal peace. Kantian ethics did not reach beyond the obligations people had towards one another, hence it was functionally anthropological and uninfluenced by religion, which re-situated philosophy with regard to scientific cognition and religious experience, giving rise to a metaphysics of anthropological responsibility for the condition of the spiritual freedom this ethic propounded. Kant revealed the existence of a metaphysical difference in the sphere of being—between the determinism of nature and the moral kingdom of freedom—without direct reference to the transcendental source of these two essentially different worlds. Kant was the first to set morality rooted in the autonomy and unanimous will of all rational beings—or true humanity—against legal and religious legalism. Kant laid weight on the processual character of man’s self-education to social life through the sense of commitment to self-improvement for the benefit of the solidary co-existence of all rational beings that he developed in himself as a rational being. Thus created freedom is founded on the selflesness of goodness and represents a new quality of being that only manifests itself and evolves in community, interpersonalcentrically. It is a universalistic approach capable of gradually neutralising the human inclination towards radical evil.My attempt to compare these two interpersonalcentric humanism conceptions aims to add some substance to this very delicate element in Kuczyński’s universalism as a metaphilosophy construct.

Preliminary Assessment on the Effect of Bentonite and Ibeshe Clay on Bleaching of Rubber (Hevea Brasiliensis) Seed Oil

Rubber seed though not common known is very rich in its oil yield and over time its importance is becoming more prominent. Bleaching in the natural sense is relative to the removal of impurities from the oil or material. In this research work, Rubber seed oil was bleached using bentonite clay and Ibeshe clay at 0.5M, 1M and 2M concentrations of Hydrochloric acid. Physiochemical properties as well as spectroscopic analysis such as FT-IR and XRD analysis were carried out and aided in obtaining the bleaching efficiency of both clays. The FT-IR results displayed a visible change in the oil after it was bleached with Ibeshe clay but still retained most its functional group when bleached with bentonite clay. At 2M concentration of the acid, the oil bleached with bentonite showed 53% while with Ibeshe clay it remained at 16%. This summarizes that Ibeshe clay has little to no effect on bleaching performance.

Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy

This chapter features a selection of excerpts from Cavendish’s book, Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy. The passages treat a number of topics and issues: the divisibility of body; empty space and the impossibility of vacuum; the reliability of scientific instrumentation; the reliability and sophistication of natural sense organs; artefacts vs. natural productions; the knowledge and know-how that are ubiquitous in nature; creation; annihilation; the interdependence of creatures; color; materialism; the nature of ideas; representation; God; belief in the existence of God; the limits of knowledge; death and regeneration; creation; gender; order vs. disorder; atomism; motion; freedom; the impossibility of incorporeal motion; panpsychism; action at a distance; action by contact; sensory perception and patterning; rational perception; embodied cognition; self-knowledge; self-motion; the different kinds of matter; animal knowledge; and the eternity of matter. Cavendish begins Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy by repeating the claim that there is no inherent difference between women and men with respect to intellectual capacities. The book treats a wide range of topics, but a central undercurrent is that matter is eternal and that bodies are sophisticated and have the wherewithal to bring about organization and order on their own.

An approximation property for operator systems

Motivated by an observation of Namioka and Phelps on an approximation property of order unit spaces, we introduce the [Formula: see text]-tensor product and the [Formula: see text]-tensor product of two compact matrix convex sets. We define a new approximation property for operator systems, and give a characterization using the [Formula: see text]- and [Formula: see text]-tensor products in the spirit of Grothendieck. Thus, an operator system has the operator system approximation property if and only if it is [Formula: see text]-nuclear in a natural sense.

Connections adapted to non-negatively graded structures

Graded bundles are a particularly nice class of graded manifolds and represent a natural generalization of vector bundles. By exploiting the formalism of supermanifolds to describe Lie algebroids, we define the notion of a weighted[Formula: see text]-connection on a graded bundle. In a natural sense weighted [Formula: see text]-connections are adapted to the basic geometric structure of a graded bundle in the same way as linear [Formula: see text]-connections are adapted to the structure of a vector bundle. This notion generalizes directly to multi-graded bundles and in particular we present the notion of a bi-weighted[Formula: see text]-connection on a double vector bundle. We prove the existence of such adapted connections and use them to define (quasi-)actions of Lie algebroids on graded bundles.