Online research in philosophy

In order to clarify the relationship between morality and law, it is necessary to define both concepts precisely. Cultural realities refer to concepts which are more specifically defined if we focus towards the genealogy of those realities, that is to say, their motivation, function and aim. Should we start from legal anthropology, comparative law and history of law, law arises as a social technique which coactively imposes ways of solving conflicts, protecting fundamental values for a society's co-existence. Values subject to being protected are proposed by morality, the latter making subordination of law to morality inevitable. This explains that a great number of modern constitutions include a reference to fundamental moral values, that is to say, they have explicitly positivised moral contents. Legal reasoning, at all levels and expressions, needs to appeal to the aforementioned values. Constitutional reasoning, international law, legislative activity and judicial practice are studied to verify the latter. This subordination of law to morality sets out a serious problem: moralities are cultural realities which are only valid for a specific society. In order for law not to fall in a not very rational legal relativism, law should not be subordinated to morality, but to ethics, the latter understood as cross-cultural morality. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a step forward in this sense.

"The fourth in a series that explores cultural and ethical values in Classical Antiquity, this volume examines the negative foils, the anti-values, against ...

More than two hundred years after its publication, David Hume's Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals is still widely regarded as either a footnote to the more philosophically interesting third book of the Treatise, or an abbreviated, more stylish, version of that earlier work. These standard interpretations are rather difficult to square with Hume's own assessment of the second Enquiry. Are we to think that Hume called the EPM “incomparably the best” of all his writings only because he preferred that later style of exposition? Or worse, should we take his preference for the second Enquiry as a sign of aging literary vanity? Does Hume's stated preference for the EPM in no way speak to its philosophical content?

The goal of this paper is two-fold. First, I begin by reviewing several of themajor points of emphasis among health educatorsas they begin to incorporate multiculturalissues into healthcare education. I thenconsider the role of moral relativism, which iscurrently being endorsed by some healtheducators, as the foundation for resolvingcross-cultural conflicts in healthcare. Iargue that moral relativism is ultimatelyinconsistent with the stated goals inmulticultural curricular proposals and fails toprovide an effective framework for consideringmoral conflicts in cross-cultural settings. Instead, I propose that those methods seekingto establish a common morality, built uponmutually shared values, offer the mostpromising means of resolving cross-culturalconflicts. This leads to my second goal, tocompare recent work in moral pragmatism withwhat is now widely known in bioethics as moral``principlism.'' I argue that while proponentsof principlism and pragmatism each seek toestablish a common foundation for moraldeliberation, they fail to appreciatesignificant similarities between theirrespective approaches. Instead of offeringtwo completely unique and independent methodsof moral deliberation, I suggest thatprinciplism and pragmatism embrace commonthemes that point us in a positive direction,providing an effective framework useful forconsidering cross-cultural conflicts inhealthcare.

The artificial creation of life arises both strong fascination by scientists and strong concerns, if not abhorrence, by critics of science. What appears to be the crowning achievement of synthetic biology is at the same time considered a major evil. That conflict, which perhaps epitomizes many of the cultural conflicts about science in Western societies, calls for a deeper analysis. Standard ethical analyses, which would try to relate such conflicts to a difference in fundamental values, are difficult to apply here, because it is unclear what the underlying values of such emotions as fascination and abhorrence are. These emotions or affects, rather than just referring to what is morally right or wrong, seem to be rooted in our cultural heritage of desires and taboos of transgression. My analysis in this paper is primarily of historical nature. By investigating ideas about the creation of life from the earliest times to the present, I aim to clarify the cultural origins of those emotions. I argue that both the fascination and the abhorrence regarding the creation of life have a common religious basis. Moreover, unlike many commentators of 19th-century mad-scientist classics, from Mary Shelley to H.G. Wells, I argue that this basis has no ancient model in religious or mythological traditions but emerged only in the 19th century from an exchange between science and religion. As long as these emotions dominate public debates, ethical deliberations about synthetic biology are likely to be neglected.

Cross cultural ethical conflicts are a major challenge for managers of multinational corporations (MNEs) when an MNE''s business practices and a host country''s practices differ. We develop a set of decision principles to help MNE managers deal with these conflicts and illustrate with examples of ethical conflicts faced by MNEs doing business in contemporary Russia (DeGeorge, 1994). We discuss the generalizability of the principles by comparing them to the Donaldson (1989) and Buller and Kohls (1997) decision models. Finally we discuss changes in the cross cultural ethical problems facing MNE managers and offer suggestions for future corporate and academic work on these problems.

Thesis: With the end of the cold war, ideological conflicts have faded. In their stead, we have witnessed the rise of cultural strife. On the borders of the great civilizations conflicts involving basic cultural values have arisen. These have given increased emphasis to the ethical imperative of cross cultural understanding. How do we go about understanding different cultures? What are the grounds and premises of such understanding? How does such understanding tie into the basic ethical theories that have marked the West? The premise of this paper is that such understanding requires a new paradigm, one fundamentally different from that animating Western, scientific rationality. What is required is a rethinking of what constitutes our ethical selfhood. After proposing a concept of such selfhood, this essay shows that it is an implicit premise of Plato’s, Kant’s, Freud’s and Darwin’s thoughts about ethics. It makes some practical suggestions for increasing cross-cultural understanding and then concludes with a brief description of the normative, ethical ideal of such understanding.

The pace of globalisation has quickened considerably in the last ten to fifteen years. The process has yielded benefits but also resulted in conflicts. The benefits would be enhanced if the conflicts could be resolved. One source of conflicts is the desire to maintain cultural identity. Can Confucianism contribute to the working out of a universal global justice that can help resolve conflicts, particularly conflicts of cultural identities? Can it be part of the globalisation process without sacrificing its cultural identity? I argue that it can on both counts and thus it is neither a villain blocking the progress of universal justice, a necessary condition for conflict-free globalisation, nor a helpless victim of that progress.

*An examination of the survival of cultural values in a postmodern environment*.