The ‘ethic of knowledge’ and responsible science: Responses to genetically motivated racism

This study takes off from the ethical problem that racism grounded in population genetics raises. It is an analysis of four standard scientific responses to the problem of genetically motivated racism, seen in connection with the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP): (1) Discriminatory uses of scientific facts and arguments are in principle ‘misuses’ of scientific data that the researcher cannot be further responsible for. (2) In a strict scientific sense, genomic facts ‘disclaim racism’, which means that an epistemically correct grasp of genomics should be ethically justified. (3) Ethical difficulties are issues to be ‘resolved’ by an ethics institution or committee, which will guarantee the ethical quality of the research scrutinized. (4) Although population genetics occasionally may lead to racism, its overall ‘value’ for humankind justifies its cause as a desirable pursuit. I argue that these typical responses to genetically motivated racism supervene on a principle called the ‘ethic of knowledge’, which implies that an epistemically correct account has intrinsic ethical value. This principle, and its logically related ideas concerning the ethic of science, effectively avoids a deeper ethical question of responsibility in science from being raised.

Revising the History of Meta-ethics: the Case of Ayer’s Emotivism

The aim of this paper is double. In the fi rst part I argue against the traditional interpretation of Ayer’s emotivism. According to this interpretation, in Language, Truth and Logic Ayer based emotivism on his “radical empiricist” (positivist) view. I argue that this is not so. Then, in the second part I develop a new interpretation of emotivism according to which Ayer’s analysis of moral vocabulary does not depend on positivism. The purpose of the article is to contribute to the history of metaethics by presenting a correct account of Ayer’s analysis.

Course Ideological and Political Teaching Platform Based on the Fusion of Multiple Data and Information in an Intelligent Environment

In the current teaching of politics, teachers still focus on the cultivation of the basic intelligence of students’ language intelligence, and it is easy to ignore the cultivation of other intelligences that affect the overall development of students. This research mainly discusses the design of curriculum ideological and political teaching platform based on the fusion of multiple data and information in an intelligent environment. This research adopts the MVC architecture, and the web application developed based on the MVC (Model View Controller) architecture pattern is easier to complete the realization of multiple controllers. The front desk ideological and political teaching teacher module includes the login system. In addition, the teacher can view the test status of a specific student and can also pay attention to the total intelligence of all students who have been tested. The process of the student test is to enter the correct account and password to log in to the system and then perform the test. After the test, the test result can be viewed, and the personal information can be maintained at the same time. In addition, the personal login password can be modified. The existence of the database is to ensure that the data is correct and effective. This system uses MySql to design the database, and the name of the database is braintest_db. The data table in relational database is the main object of storing and managing data, and it is also an important task of database design. This system has designed three kinds of user logins, namely, administrator, student, and teacher, and login can be realized according to the account number and password. Among them, teacher’s participation is by inquiring about students’ test situation, paying attention to students’ multiple intelligences, and teaching students in accordance with their aptitude. In addition, the main object of this test is students, and the analysis of multiple intelligences is realized through student tests. Students are vitally physical objects that can be tested and searched for results. In the study, 20% of the students both learn the basic content of the platform and use the forum. This research will help improve students’ literacy in an all-round way.

The Role of Imaginary Cases in Ethics

This paper examines the rationale for the standard practice in ethics of arguing from imaginary cases to real ones. Challengeable aspects of this practice are exposed. One question is whether an imaginary case is being taken to establish a Rossian prima facie duty or a duty proper. Another is whether, once we have established the correct account of an imaginary case, we can be sure that another case similar to the first in all respects relevant to our account of the first must be given the same account, irrespective of other differences. A generalist will try to extract principles from the imaginary case and apply them to the real case. This paper argues that this is hopeless. Is particularism in a better situation? A possible line is that what the imaginary case reveals is the importance that certain features can have and may have in the real case before us. No more can be expected.

‘The moral irrelevance of moral coercion’

An agent A morally coerces another agent, B, when A manipulates non-epistemological facts in order that B’s moral commitments enjoin B to do what A wants B to do, and B is motivated by these commitments. It is widely argued that forced choices arising from moral coercion are morally distinct from forced choices arising from moral duress or happenstance. On these accounts, the fact of being coerced bears on what an agent may do, the voluntariness of her actions, and/or her accountability for any harms that result from her actions (where accountability includes liability to defensive harm, punishment, blame and compensation). This paper does not provide an account of the wrongness of moral coercion. Rather, I argue that, whatever the correct account of its wrongness, the mere fact of being coerced has no bearing on what the agent may do, on the voluntariness of her action, or her accountability for any resultant harm, compared to otherwise identical cases arising from duress and happenstance.

Truth, Truth-aptness, and Belief

Three of the forms and assumptions of moral practice are that moral judgements are truth-apt, sometimes true, and that they express moral beliefs. Vindicating these assumptions seems inconsistent with expressivism as traditionally conceived. However, minimalist accounts of truth-aptness, truth, and belief may help the expressivist. Minimalism says that the correct account of a notion is revealed by all and only those platitudes surrounding it. Practical expressivists accept that moral sentences satisfy truth-aptness, and they also accept that moral sentences are truth-apt. This helps expressivism secure truth-aptness, but also encourages the thought that there is nothing distinctive in the expressivist position. But creeping minimalism can be resisted since there is a robust sense of belief that resists minimalism. It is in this robust sense that expressivists will deny (and descriptivists accept) that the meaning of moral judgements is to be explained in terms of their expressing moral beliefs.

Objectified Women and Fetishized Objects

There are at least three senses of sexual objectification: the moral sense of treating a person as if she were primarily a sexual object, the political sense in which women socially count as instruments for men’s sexual pleasure, and the epistemic sense of forming a belief that a person is as one sexually desires them to be. These different senses have been treated as rivals, competing about what the correct account of sexual objectification is, or they have been treated as entirely different projects. I argue for a third relation between them: each sense grasps an aspect of the existing social phenomenon of sexual objectification. Each further points out a wrong involved in sexual objectification. And the three aspects interact—we cannot fully explain any one sense of sexual objectification without the other two. To properly understand this interrelation I lean on an analogy: commodity fetishism as described by Marx helps make sense of the complex social reality of sexual objectification.

A Defense of Locke’s Moral Epistemology

In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke provides an empirical account of all of our ideas, including our moral ideas. However, Locke’s account of moral epistemology is difficult to understand leading to mistaken objections to his moral epistemological theory. In this paper, I offer what I believe to be the correct account of Locke’s moral epistemology. This account of his moral epistemology resolves the objections that morality is not demonstrable, that Locke’s account fails to demonstrate the normativity of statements, and that Locke has not provided us with the means to determine the correctness of the moral rules.

Eclipse and plague: Themistocles, Pericles, Anaxagoras and the Athenians’ war on science

The biography of Anaxagoras (500–428 BC), the most brilliant scientist of antiquity, contains many unresolved contradictions, which are best explained as follows. After he ‘predicted’ the fall of the meteorite at Aegospotami in 466, he lived nearby at Lampsacus as the protege of its ruler Themistocles. In 460 Pericles became his patron at Athens, where he lived for the next 30 years. In 431, Pericles was taking part in an expedition to the Peloponnese when the sun was eclipsed; he tried to dispel his helmsman’s fear by covering his face with his cloak, illustrating Anaxagoras’ correct account of eclipses. In 430 he led a second such expedition, which failed badly; its return coincided with the plague. The seer Diopeithes brought in a decree that targeted the ‘atheist’ Anaxagoras by banning astronomy. This enabled Thucydides son of Melesias and Cleon to attack Pericles by prosecuting Anaxagoras, on the ground that Pericles’ impiety had angered the gods, thereby causing the plague. Pericles sent Anaxagoras back to Lampsacus, where he soon died; Pericles was himself deposed and fined, in a first triumph for the Athenian populist reaction against the fifthcentury Enlightenment.

How Puzzles of Petitionary Prayer Solve Themselves: Divine Omnirationality, Interest-Relative Explanation, and Answered Prayer

Some have seen in the divine attribute of omnirationality, identified by Alexander R. Pruss, the promise of a dissolution of the usual puzzles of petitionary prayer. Scott Davison has challenged this line of thought with a series of example cases. I will argue that Davison is only partially correct, and that the reasons for this reveal an important new way to approach the puzzles of petitionary prayer. Because explanations are typically interest-relative, there is not one correct account of “answered prayer” but many, corresponding to a variety of reasons to care whether God might answer our prayers. It follows from this that the omnirationality solution can be vindicated and that puzzles of petitionary prayer that are not dissolved thereby will typically contain within themselves the seeds of their own solutions.