News

Facebook and Bebo risk 'infantilising' the human mind

cait — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:28:00 GMT

By Patrick Wintour from Guardian.

"Social network sites risk infantilising the mid-21st century mind, leaving it characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity, according to a leading neuroscientist.

The startling warning from Lady Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln college, Oxford, and director of the Royal Institution, has led members of the government to admit their work on internet regulation has not extended to broader issues, such as the psychological impact on children."

Susan Greenfield is a grant winner for the New Science of Virtues Project.

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Link to video interview with Susan Greefield.

Image from Flickr Creative Commons.

When American and European Ideas of Privacy Collide

cait — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:41:00 GMT

By Adam Liptak from The NewYork Times.

"'Americans to this day don’t fully appreciate how Europeans regard privacy,' said Jane Kirtley, who teaches media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota. 'The reality is that they consider privacy a fundamental human right.'

Google understands.

'The framework in Europe is of privacy as a human-dignity right,' said Nicole Wong, a lawyer with the company. 'As enforced in the U.S., it’s a consumer-protection right.'"

Read the article.

Photo from Flickr Creative Commons.

The Three Virtues We Need

cait — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:02:00 GMT

By Philip Pullman from Gaurdian.

"At first sight, of course, viceis more attractive. She is sexier, she promises to be better companythan her plain sister virtue. Every novelist, and every reader too, has more fun with the villains than with the good guys. Goodness is staunch and patient, but wickedness is vivid and dynamic; we admire the first, but we thrill to the second.Nevertheless, I want to say a word in praise of virtue: the quality or qualities that enable a nation and its citizens to live well, by which I mean morally well."

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Government should nurture virtue

cait — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:59:00 GMT

By Nick Clegg from Gaurdian.

"I basically believe people are born good. How can you think anything else when you see the innocence of young children? Of course, people are born with different, sometimes difficult, personalities. But fundamental optimism about human nature has always been a driving impulse of mine. I believe most people, most of the time, will do the right thing for themselves and their community if they are given the power and opportunity to do so."

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The virtue of vagueness

cait — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:55:00 GMT

By Andrew Robinson from Nature.

"Although scientists strive for increasing clarity in their measurements and concepts, it is often uncertainty that spurs new thinking. The haziness of the species notion set the young Charles Darwin pondering evolution. Francis Crick observed that if he and James Watson had worried about how to define the gene in the 1950s, progress in molecular biology would have stalled. “In research the front line is almost always in a fog,” Crick wrote in his autobiography. Even today there is no consensus definition of the gene."

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Are Sperm Donors Really Anonymous Anymore?

cait — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:52:00 GMT

By Rachel Lehmann-Haupt from Slate.

"The sperm bank protected his anonymity, just as it promised. But that did not mean he couldn't be found. In an age of sophisticated genetic testing, the concept of anonymity is rapidly fading. With some clever sleuthing—tests that can track down ancestral origins, donor numbers, and bits of biographical information—parents and offspring can find out the donors. 'With DNA testing and Google, there's no such thing as anonymity anymore,' says Wendy Kramer, the founder of the Donor Sibling Registry. 'Donors are choosing anonymity because they're not educated,' adds Kramer. 'If they were properly educated on the consequences, then many would choose not to donate.'"

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Review - Weakness of Will from Plato to the Present

cait — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:44:00 GMT

By Christian Perring from Metapsychology.

"This excellent collection is an essential work in history of ethics and moral psychology. Editor Tobias Hoffman has brought together leading scholars in their fields to discuss weakness of will in Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Henry of Ghent, Dante, Montaigne, Descartes, Kant, and Nietzsche, ending with a couple of contemporary papers. While the book is published by Catholic University Press and several authors show strong sympathy with a religious viewpoint, the papers themselves are strictly philosophical, even for the discussion of writings of those not normally included in the philosophical canon, Montaigne and Dante. The quality of the papers is uniformly strong, with most of the historical papers copiously footnoted."

Can Battlefield Robots Take the Place of Soldiers?

cait — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:50:00 GMT

By Chris Bowlby from BBC News.

"Can war be fought by lots of well-behaved machines, making it "safer for humans"? That is the seductive vision, and hope, of those manufacturing and researching the future of military robotics."

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A TV Confession Reignites Britain's Euthanasia Debate

cait — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:45:00 GMT

By Catherine Mayer from Time.

"Not since Robin Hood has a local hero given the Nottinghamshire authorities quite such a headache as the one induced by TV presenter and resident Ray Gosling. In a BBC program broadcast on Feb. 15, Gosling confessed to a killing. 'Maybe this is the time to share a secret that I've kept for quite a long time,' said Gosling, filmed strolling among the weathered headstones at a cemetery for a documentary about attitudes toward mortality. 'I killed someone once. He was a young chap. He'd been my lover. He got AIDS.'"

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A virtuous Olympics? Organizers Say They've Tried

cait — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:19:00 GMT

By David Crary from The Washington Post.

"Vancouver, British Columbia -- A carbon-neutral torch relay. A multimillion dollar partnership with Canada's aboriginals. Bouquets for medal winners made by former prostitutes and drug addicts.

Even before the first event - and the first big protest rally - organizers of the Winter Games claim to have set new Olympic standards for environmental and social responsibility."

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Can a Brain Scan Predict a Broken Promise?

cait — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:10:00 GMT

By Kamila E. Sip and David Carmel from Scientific American

"By saying “I do”, newlyweds promise to love and cherish each other no matter what happens for the rest of their lives; hardly anybody makes this promise intending to break it. But imagine making a promise when in fact, you know you would benefit from not keeping it. Would you keep it anyway? Could we somehow tell in advance whether you’re going to keep it or break it? And finally, could we predict your decision by looking at what happens in your brain?"

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Why Watching Oprah Makes you a Better Person

cait — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:15:00 GMT

By Rachel Rettner from msnbc.

Other people's good deeds inspire the rest of us, study suggests.

"The warm and fuzzy feelings you may experience after watching others perform virtuous deeds may in turn lead you to act altruistically as well, according to a new study based on the results of two spearate experiments.

Among the findings: People who watch inspirational clips from the Oprah Winfrey show are more likely to commit to helping others, and spend more time doing a 'good deed.'"

Read the article.

Image from Flickr Creative Commons.

Why it’s wrong to preach “climate justice”

cait — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:10:00 GMT

By Mark Lynas from New Statesman.

"In my view, the historical responsibility question is an unassailable argument for adaptation financing. It is a clear legal principle that if you cause damage you must pay compensation. (Indeed, the $100bn in initial financing put on the table at Copenhagen was a de facto recognition of this principle.) But to use "climate justice" as an argument for increased future pollution by anyone is wrong. It is time that campaigners rightly concerned with equality recognised that there can be no trade-off between solving poverty and planetary survival."

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Resources and Problems in Whitehead's Metaphysics

cait — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:42:00 GMT

By Willian Grassie from The Global Spiral.

"In 1927, British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead was asked to give the prestigious Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology at the University of Edinburgh. His talks were published two years later as Process and Reality, the book that introduced Whitehead's process philosophy to the world and secured him a place in the canon of Western metaphysics. Today, Whitehead’s influence has not abated. One sees this, for instance, in the reliance on Whitehead’s thought by many of the luminaries in the field of religion and science including Ian Barbour, Holmes Rolston, and John Haught.¹ Indeed, Whitehead’s signature can even be traced in the very name of Metanexus Institute. The key to Whitehead’s lasting consequence is that his process relational metaphysics solves many philosophical problems in understanding and interpreting contemporary science. However, I will argue that Whitehead’s process metaphysics tends to 1) depersonalize God to the extent of rendering theism irrelevant and 2) naturalize moral evil in the service of evolution. Once these points are established, it is then possible to seek a partial solution to these problems by synthesizing Whitehead’s thought with that of his successors."

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Forgiveness triumphs over evil

nick stock — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:05:00 GMT

by Geoff Pursinger from The Tigard Times

"Holocaust survivor Alter Wiener stood before a group of more than 2,000 students at Tigard High School, Jan. 11, delivering a message of tolerance and forgiveness at the school’s annual Human Rights Assembly.

Wiener, 83, spoke about his early life growing up in Nazi-occupied Poland, the murder of his father, and the years he spent in five different concentration camps before the end of World War II..."

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