Traditional Marriage in Rural Bangladesh: An Ethical Consideration

One of the common arguments to justify the traditional arrangement to marry off daughters in rural Bangladesh is that through this procedure they get a secured life under their husband’s supervision. It is a well-known proposition that if parents really care about daughters, searching for a bridegroom from a well-off family is the best option. Typically, daughters’ families mainly the father arrange such marriage, and the girl’s consent is hardly taken into account. However, I argue this traditional system values only girls’ caregiving and reproductive roles, ignoring all other life-affirming values. If daughters are not free to decide whether to marry or not to marry, their autonomy as human beings are violated. Moreover, considering marriage as a responsibility shifting process could objectify and commodify women in such a way that would destroy potentials to flourish life and make them a victim of violence. There are strong theoretical and empirical reasons to believe that the entire procedure of marriage is ethically blameworthy and detrimental for women. Sufficient ground can be found to put more priority on developing daughters’ competency to make them economically and socially independent so that they can choose when to marry, whom to marry or not to marry.

“She Finds People Like You Hilarious!”

For centuries, people with dwarfism have been sought after for humorous entertainment purposes. Even today, dwarfs are employed within various forms of lowbrow entertainment that is unique to them. This begs the question, why do we laugh at people with dwarfism?1 Using superiority and inferiority theories, the article aims to demonstrate why we laugh at dwarfs by exploring both historical and present forms of dwarf entertainment. Laughing at dwarfs is a form of disablism that permits dwarfism to be deemed inferior within society due to their non-normative embodiment. The article demonstrates some of the implications this sort of humour has upon how people with dwarfism are perceived and subsequently treated within society. The article calls for a more ethical consideration of the humour used in relation to dwarfism with the entertainment industry.

The Medusa effect reveals levels of mind perception in pictures

Throughout our species history, humans have created pictures. The resulting picture record reveals an overwhelming preference for depicting things with minds. This preference suggests that pictures capture something of the mind that is significant to us, albeit at reduced potency. Here, we show that abstraction dims the perceived mind, even within the same picture. In a series of experiments, people were perceived as more real, and higher in both Agency (ability to do) and Experience (ability to feel), when they were presented as pictures than when they were presented as pictures of pictures. This pattern persisted across different tasks and even when comparators were matched for identity and image size. Viewers spontaneously discriminated between different levels of abstraction during eye tracking and were less willing to share money with a more abstracted person in a dictator game. Given that mind perception underpins moral judgement, our findings suggest that depicted persons will receive greater or lesser ethical consideration, depending on the level of abstraction.

Jus post vim Revisited

This chapter revisits the theme of jus post vim in the non-ideal form. It begins by looking at the grey area between vim success and failure, characterized by shaky containment (the lingering doubt that the enemy is really contained) or by persistent contested order that threatens the ability of law enforcement mechanisms to uphold a minimalist view of order in certain states. Among the vim failures are the unjust escalation to war, the unfazed enemy outcome, the recurring last straw scenario, and the intractable contested and fragmented sovereignty dilemma. The chapter continues by exploring jus ex vi, or the ethical consideration of terminating the use of limited force, further to tease out what success and failure might look like. The key to defining success and knowing when to end vim operations depends on the just management of military risk principle. The chapter concludes by exploring moral options in cases of failure. Building on the observation that framing the use of force as punishment can be more restrictive than open-ended justifications based in self-defense constructed as prevention or protection against future acts of aggression, the chapter concludes by arguing states might have recourse to the punishment principles. Drawn from an interpretation of the just war tradition privileging a presumption against war as being at the heart of just war thinking, the escalation management and demonstrable retribution criteria depict the narrow moral logic where the legitimate goal of limited force is something other than the moral truncated victory of jus post vim.