Steven Pinker observes that an evolutionary basis for morality invites nihilism because of the nature of evolutionary adaptation, which happens by chance and persists because of its survival value. Pinker thinks nihilism can be avoided because moral behavior may have evolved in conformance with an objective morality grounded in the logic and benefits of reciprocal, cooperative behavior. Even if there isn’t an objective morality, Pinker argues that our moral sense is “real for us” and can’t simply be dismissed. But the (...) logic of reciprocal obligation – the difficulty in arguing that someone has an obligation towards you without your being similarly obliged -- only applies if we already accept someone having an obligation to do something rather than just finding it desirable. The net benefits of cooperation also do not imply obligations. While morality is still “real for us,” this too falls short of the objective grounding of morality needed to refute nihilism. We can have morality, but we are on our own in defending it. (shrink)

The paper reports some insights that is acquired in the online survey observing the moral politics among Indonesian. The survey maps the participant’s responses into two dimensional axis of political ideology, comprised by the source of moral virtues (ethic-esoteric) and the method to achieve them (progressive-conservative). Since the political ideology is emerged from the moral political values, the observations through the responses in the survey are delivered. The observation also brings some insights from information theory, regarding to the uncertainty within (...) the political minds as captured by the survey. (shrink)

The paper presents a very simple toy model that is simulated to experience some aspects related to what is it people want and need when related to the social happiness. By outlining some short discussions related to the distinguishing of what we call “want” and “need”, we see how both micro-social aspects may emerge the happiness as well as the urge to innovate and affinity to the collective creativity and social progress.

Due to tremendous progress in digital electronics now intelligent and autonomous agents are gradually being adopted into the fields and domains of the military, defense and warfare. This paper tries to explore some of the inherent ethical issues, threats and some remedial issues about the impact of such systems on human civilization and existence in general. This paper discusses human ethics in contrast to machine ethics and the problems caused by non-sentient agents. A systematic study is made on paradoxes regarding (...) the long-term advantages of such agents in military combat. This paper proposes an international standard which could be adopted by all nations to bypass the adverse effects and solve ethical issues of such intelligent agents. (shrink)

The essay discusses the nature of friendship and the role of parental love in the development of what Aristotle refers to as perfect friendship. I also conclude with some remarks regarding the influence of technology upon the significance of friendship.

The sound producing machinery of change is a viral element in the problems of civilization. A silent relation that is unmoved, as it is unexposed to the power of the discourse of change and a silent logic of volumetric processes, together illustrated to companion empirical nature are employed for the elaboration of historical conceptual paradox involving mind and matter. Mind, conceived as an enduring state of the becoming of energy into a state of matter, and matter as the constantly becoming (...) environment, are tested with criteria of witnessibility for consistency to capture an acceptably reasoned description, from a modern perspective, of cultural evolution. A self-generating friction at the conceptual border of the social and natural sciences, as the recurring source of the problems of civilization, is discussed. The philosophies of logical positivism and post modernism referenced from the elaborated philosophy are determined to reflect a need for a representation of nature that is independent of temporal and physical parameters of perspective. Emergence is discussed within the framework of first witness perspective and a visually based mathematical-physical model of space is elaborated. (shrink)

We describe a research on the interplay that appears to exist in companies between Human Resource Management and innovation. This complex, multicomponent, non-linear and dynamic interplay is often viewed as a "black box". To help open the black box, we outline both a theoretical framework and preliminary empirical data. We view innovation as an organization-level property, favored by the organization's self-perception as a knowledge engine. Therefore, we devised a protocol to study the companies' strategies for training and development and their (...) innovation profile. The protocol consisted in a questionnaire with 100 closed questions, suitable for companies which rely mostly on an inner training and development service. The questionnaire was administered to a sample of Italian firms from the Food & beverages and Fashion markets. The results show that certain facets of training and development are indeed correlated to innovation. Finally, we discuss the results. (shrink)