Chien-ming Chung-kuo che-hsueh shih [A Short History of Chinese Philosophy] compiled by Yang Yung-kuo is a good product of the Campaign to Criticize Lin Piao and Confucius and it is a book widely read by workers, peasants and soldiers. Philosophical struggle is closely linked to political struggle, a given philosophical thought is the theoretical basis of a given political line, and philosophy is a tool for class struggle. Ever since class society has existed, part of the history of philosophy has (...) simply been the reflection of the class struggle in philosophy in various historical periods. In the preface to the book, the compiler points out that "one of the common characteristics of the revisionist bosses within our Party has been to tamper with Marxism from the reactionary Confucian viewpoint for the sinister purpose of creating public opinion calling for the restoration of capitalism." An understanding of the many instances and the general laws of the philosophical struggles in Chinese history will help us thoroughly criticize the ideological origins and the ultrarightist nature of revisionism from a highly developed philosophical world view. One of the important characteristics of Confucian thought is that it uses eclecticism to camouflage its stubborn advocacy of old things and to oppose revolutionary dialectics and the philosophy of struggle. The unrepentant capitalist-roaders within the Party are using an eclectic strategem to carry out the revisionist line. Thus, reading this book on the history of philosophy by Yang Yung-kuo and acquainting ourselves with the sordid actions which Confucius took to carry out restoration and retrogression with the aid of eclecticism will benefit the present struggle against the Right-leaning wind of reversing decisions. (shrink)

The debate on the problems in aesthetics now is focused on the most basic question, the question of whether beauty is subjective or objective. More than a year of debate has shown that idealism still has great influence. The reason for this is that, on the one hand, idealist aesthetics offers explanations, which although fictitious, are capable of misleading people; and on the other hand, mechanical materialist aesthetics provides only mechanical and vulgar explanations of the problems in aesthetics, and it (...) leaves loopholes in its attacks on idealist aesthetics. (shrink)

The call for "doing right things on behalf of Heaven" made by Sung Chiang, the hero of the Chinese novel Shui hu [Water Margin], has long been welcomed by some people. They think that a right thing should be defined as the "revolutionary course" or the "reason" by which rebellions can be justified and that "doing right things on behalf of Heaven" is an antigovernment slogan. They are wrong. As has been clearly demonstrated in Shui hu, right things refer to (...) the Confucian-Mencian doctrine and Neo-Confucianism in the Sung and Ming dynasties. Hanging out the white flag of reactionary Neo-Confucianism, Sung Chiang carries out the capitulationist line and buries the peasant uprising. (shrink)

Marxism is an intrinsically critical and revolutionary theory. It was formed and developed in its integration with the proletarian struggle for revolution and its struggle against streams of various anti-Marxist ideas. As Lenin said, it had to fight at every step in its development.

This volume explores Confucian views regarding the human body, health, virtue, suffering, suicide, euthanasia, `human drugs,' human experimentation, and justice in health care distribution. These views are rooted in Confucian metaphysical, cosmological, and moral convictions, which stand in contrast to modern Western liberal perspectives in a number of important ways. In the contemporary world, a wide variety of different moral traditions flourish; there is real moral diversity. Given this circumstance, difficult and even painful ethical conflicts often occur between the East (...) and the West with regard to the issues of life, birth, reproduction, and death. The essays in this volume analyze the ways in which Confucian bioethics can clarify important moral concepts, provide arguments, and offer ethical guidance. The volume should be of interest to both general readers coming afresh to the study of bioethics, ethics, and Confucianism, as well as for philosophers, ethicists, and other scholars already familiar with the subject. (shrink)

COUNCIL FOR RESEARCH IN VALUES AND PHILOSOPHY MEMBERS S. Avineri, Jerusalem P. Balasubramaniam, Madras M. Bedna, Prague P....

Gene therapy approaches have great promise in the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders and malignant brain tumors. Neuwelt et al. review available viral-mediated gene therapy methods and their blood-brain-barrier (BBB) disruption delivery technique, briefly mentioning nonviral mediated gene therapy methods. This commentary discussed the BBB disruption delivery technique, viral and nonviral mediated gene therapy approaches to Parkinson's disease, and the potential use of antisense oligo to suppress malignant brain tumors.

Can business humanize its stakeholders? And if so, how does this relate to moral consideration for stakeholders? In this paper we compare two business orientations that are relevant for current business theory and practice: a stakeholder orientation and a profit orientation. We empirically investigate the causal relationships between business orientation, humanization, and moral consideration. We report the results of six experiments, making use of different operationalizations of a stakeholder and profit orientation, different stakeholders, and different participant samples. Our findings support (...) the prediction that individual stakeholders observing a stakeholder-oriented firm see the firm’s other stakeholders as more human than individual stakeholders observing a profit-oriented firm. This humanization, in turn, increases individual stakeholders’ moral consideration for the firm’s other stakeholders. Our findings underscore the importance of humanization for stakeholders’ moral consideration for each other. This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the firm as a moral community of stakeholders. Specifically, we move away from a focus on managers, and how they can make business more moral. Instead we direct attention to stakeholders, and how business can make these stakeholders more moral. (shrink)

The Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival has seen hundreds of arts, public and community groups coproduce over 300 events to over 25,000 audience members. Integral to this arts-based approach, in contrast to social marketing or public education models, is the notion that mental health is an essentially contested concept whereby meanings are negotiated and debate encouraged. With emerging evidence that the festival is an ef ective way of engaging people intellectually and emotionally, we explore ethical issues, challenges and (...) paradoxes that have emerged as the festival has developed. Consideration is given to issues of power, purpose, opportunity costs, reach, impact, programming risks, and participation from those with experience of mental ill-health. Throughout, we explore practical implications for funding, managing, programming, marketing and evaluation of this and similar endeavours. (shrink)

New agrifood technologies are often difficult to grasp for the public, which may lead to resistance or even rejection. Insight into which technology features determine public acceptability of the technology could offer guidelines for responsible technology development. This paper systematically assesses the relative importance of specific technology features for consumer response in the agrifood domain in two consecutive studies. Prominent technology features were selected from expert judgment and literature. The effects of these features on consumer evaluation were tested in a (...) consumer study. Fictitious technologies were used to avoid any uncontrollable contextual influences that existing new technologies may evoke. Results show that technologies that were seen as more natural and newer were perceived less risky, more beneficial, and were evaluated more positively. Technologies applied to food were judged to be more beneficial, but also more risky than those applied to non-food. Technologies used in the production process were perceived to be less risky and evaluated more positively than those used in the product. Technologies owned by the market leader were perceived to be more beneficial, and evaluated more positively than those that were freely available. In a next study, effects of the technology features on consumer response were tested for existing new agrifood technologies. This study replicated the results for perceived naturalness, perceived newness, and place in the production process where the technology is applied. However, in contrast to the first study, we did not find an effect of application area and technology ownership. (shrink)

The Monographs produced by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) apply rigorous procedures for the scientific review and evaluation of carcinogenic hazards by independent experts. The Preamble to the IARC Monographs, which outlines these procedures, was updated in 2019, following recommendations of a 2018 expert Advisory Group. This article presents the key features of the updated Preamble, a major milestone that will enable IARC to take advantage of recent scientific and procedural advances made during the 12 years since (...) the last Preamble amendments. The updated Preamble formalizes important developments already being pioneered in the Monographs Programme. These developments were taken forward in a clarified and strengthened process for identifying, reviewing, evaluating and integrating evidence to identify causes of human cancer. The advancements adopted include strengthening of systematic review methodologies; greater emphasis on mechanistic evidence, based on key characteristics of carcinogens; greater consideration of quality and informativeness in the critical evaluation of epidemiological studies, including their exposure assessment methods; improved harmonization of evaluation criteria for the different evidence streams; and a single-step process of integrating evidence on cancer in humans, cancer in experimental animals and mechanisms for reaching overall evaluations. In all, the updated Preamble underpins a stronger and more transparent method for the identification of carcinogenic hazards, the essential first step in cancer prevention. (shrink)

Inside a combinatory algebra, there are ‘internal’ versions of the finite type structure over ω, which form models of various systems of finite type arithmetic. This paper compares internal representations of the intensional and extensional functionals. If these classes coincide, the algebra is called ft-extensional. Some criteria for ft-extensionality are given and a number of well-known ca's are shown to be ft-extensional, regardless of the particular choice of representation for ω. In particular, DA, Pω, Tω, Hω and certain D∞-models all (...) share the property of ft-extensionality. It is also shown that ft-extensionality is by no means an intrinsic property of ca's i.e., that there exists a very concrete class of ca's—the class of reflexive coherence spaces—no member of which has this property. This leads to a comparison of ft-extensionality with the well-studied notions of extensionality and weak extensionality. Ft-extensionality turns out to be completely independent. (shrink)

This study uses the Schwartz Values Questionnaire and version 2 of the Defining Issues Test to investigate the values, value types (clusters of related values) and level of moral reasoning of a sample of 108 MBA students in a Canadian university. There are no statistically significant differences in the levels of moral reasoning attributed to gender. Male and female MBA students rank 'family security' and 'healthy' as their two most important values. For males, hedonism, achievement and self-direction are the three (...) most important value types, while for females they are benevolence, hedonism and security, respectively. There are statistically significant gender differences for the value types hedonism, achievement, stimulation and power. Overall, however, there are more similarities than differences between the male and the female students. Regression analysis indicates a statistically significant positive association between the postconventional level of moral reasoning as measured by P-scores and the value-type universalism. The findings provide further evidence that value types affect the postconventional level of moral reasoning. (shrink)