As much it is necessary for science to rely on philosophical thinking ("Science without conscience is but ruin of the soul" said F. Rabelais, own translation); As much it is not suitable to mix Science and Belief, Natural and Supra-natural, Physics and Metaphysics, Chemistry and Alchemy, Rational and Irrational... Moreover, it is destructive for the critical spirit of young people to make amalgams between scientific discourse and non-scientific and/or pseudo-scientific speeches. On the contrary, it is necessary, and it is our duty, to always specify to them the line of demarcation between SCIENCE and other INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITIES.

Read more on this necessary demarcation within this remarkable philosophical thinking:

Science/non-science and boundary work, January 2007, In book: The Blackwell Encyclopedia of SociologyEdition: 1stChapter: science/non-science and boundary work publisher: Wiley-BlackwellEditors: George Ritzer,

Available on:

Chapter Science/Non‐science and Boundary Work

Dear Jamel Chahed ,

Thank you for the invitation!...

You started a very good discussion... Very few people will respond to the problem you raise... If there is somebody, he will either be an outsider... or hasbara...

I won't go deeper into it...

because I know it makes no sense... 'If truth wins, the life is lost'- This is an old ancient Roman saying- (I do not know if is the Cicero's saying)... I heard it when I was a kid... I didn't understand what it meant then...

but now its meaning made sense to me: ' Ha győz az igazság elvész az élet' (before said on Hungarian)...

A válaszom alapján te is meg fogod érteni tartalmát.

Based on my answer, you will also understand its content.... The meaning of 'consciousness' inspirated this resaspons...

Regards,

Laszlo

Thank you Dear László Attila Horváth for your reply and insights. You wrote, "... Very few people will respond to the problem you raise....". I dare to hope that it will be otherwise: let us be confident in the will of Scientists to participate in a space of discussion on Universally Shared Scientific Values (or at least which should be); if only to print awareness favorable to their dissemination, especially among young researchers.

As for Marcus Tullius Cicero, I appreciate, for my part, his wise reflection on Truth when he states "If the truth were self-evident, eloquence would be unnecessary"

Here, friends, are some quotes from the Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce:

Volume 1, paragraph 606: The phenomena of reasoning are, in their general features, parallel to those of moral conduct. For reasoning is essentially thought that is under self-control, just as moral conduct is conduct under self-control. Indeed […] [i]f you attend to the phenomena of reasoning, although they are not quite so familiar to you as those of morals […], you will nevertheless remark […] that a person who draws a rational conclusion, not only thinks it to be true, but thinks that similar reasoning would be just in every analogous case. […] [Hence,] we all have in our minds certain norms, or general patterns of right reasoning, and we can compare the inference with one of those and ask ourselves whether it satisfies that rule.

Volume 1, para. 191: Logic is the theory of self-controlled, or deliberate, thought; and as such, must appeal to ethics for its principles.

Volume 8, para. 136, footnote 3: The scientific man is deeply impressed with the majesty of truth […]. From that sentiment springs his ardent desire to further the discovery of truth. If he cannot discover it himself he wishes to lay a sure foundation from which some successor may come to the truth;—and the more far-reaching and general the particular question that he aims [at], the more it inspires him. It may be that all that he himself expects to ascertain is a minute fact,—say the parallax of a star. But he anticipates that this fact along with many others will ultimately lead to a great discovery.

Volume 7, para. 609: [There is no nobler purpose than science. However, anyone wishing to devote themselves to the pursuit of truth should know] that it would be hard and incessant work, mostly drudgery, requiring him to be mostly with knaves and fools; that it would cost him a great deal of money, considering all that it would prevent him from earning; that it would never bring him much honor, but would put a certain stamp of [public disgrace] upon him; that even among the company of those who professed to love the truth […] there would be found […] individuals who would treat him in the narrowest and most despicable spirit […]; [and finally] that after his whole life had been poured out into the inquiry, it was not unlikely that he might find that he had not found out anything.

Volume 8, bibliography General circa 1893: Both logically and dynamically the whole doctrine develops [not out a desire to gain wealth or become famous, but] out of the desire to know, or philosophia, which carries with it the confession that we do not know already. In those branches of knowledge that are the most perfect no self-respecting man puts forth a statement without affixing to it his estimate of its probable error, while in branches where arbitrary opinion is uncurbed authors are unwilling to confess that the smallest doubt hangs over their conclusions. Nothing can be more completely contrary to […] a scientific life than infallibilism, whether arrayed in its old [religious] trappings, or under its recent ‘scientistic’ disguise. […]

Volume 1, para.44: [Science] does not consist so much in knowing, nor even in "organized knowledge," as it does in diligent inquiry into truth for truth's sake, without any [prior agenda] […] [I]t is not knowing, but the love of learning, that characterizes the scientific man […]. If a man burns to learn and sets himself to comparing his ideas with experimental results in order that he may correct those ideas, every scientific man will recognize him as a brother, no matter how small his knowledge may be.

Volume 1, para. 61: One of the worst effects of the influence of moral and religious reasonings upon science lies in this, that the distinctions upon which both insist as fundamental are dual distinctions, and that their tendency is toward an ignoring of all distinctions that are not dual and especially of the conception of continuity. Religion recognizes the saints and the damned. It will not readily admit any third fate.

Volume 1, para 8: [T]he infallible scientists […], having acquired their notions of science from reading, and not from research, have the idea that "science" means knowledge, while the truth is [it means] the pursuit of those who are devoured by a desire to find things out....

Volume 1, para. 9: The full meaning of the adage Humanum est errare [To be human is to make errors], they have never waked up to.

Volume 1, para. 10: Only once, as far as I remember, in all my lifetime have I experienced the pleasure of praise[…]. That pleasure was beatific; and the praise that conferred it was meant for blame. It was that a critic said of me that I did not seem to be absolutely sure of my own conclusions.

Volume 1, para. 7: [In the texts that you are about to read,] I shall support my propositions by such arguments as I can. Demonstrative proof is not to be thought of. […] The best that can be done is to supply a hypothesis, not devoid of all likelihood, […] and capable of being verified or refuted by future observers.

Volume 1, para. 13: [The presence of errors is so central to my philosophy that] I used for myself to collect my ideas under the designation fallibilism; and indeed the first step toward finding out is to acknowledge you do not satisfactorily know already; so that no blight can so surely arrest all intellectual growth as the blight of cocksureness […].

Volume 5, para 265: [T]he Cartesian criterion [of trusting clear and distinct ideas] […] amounts to this: "Whatever I am clearly convinced of, is true." If I were really convinced, I should have done with reasoning and should require no test of certainty. But thus to make single individuals absolute judges of truth is most pernicious. [...] We individually cannot reasonably hope to attain the ultimate philosophy which we pursue; we can only seek it, therefore, for the community of philosophers.

Volume 5, para. 265: Philosophy ought to imitate the successful sciences in its methods, so far as to proceed only from tangible premisses which can be subjected to careful scrutiny, and to trust rather to the multitude and variety of its arguments than to the conclusiveness of any one. Its reasoning should not form a chain which is no stronger than its weakest link, but a cable whose fibers may be ever so slender, provided they are sufficiently numerous and intimately connected.

Terri Purvis

Marc Champagne Thank you for all these quotes from the "Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce", each more interesting than the other.

I would just like to mention the reference to Peirce's famous book (nearly 20k citations):

Peirce, C. S. (1974). Collected papers of charles sanders peirce (Vol. 1). Harvard University Press.

Partly available in reading on:

https://books.google.tn/books?hl=fr&lr=&id=G7IzSoUFx1YC&oi=fnd&pg=PR3&dq=Collected+papers+of+Charles+Sanders+Peirce&ots=W9lmmf2fSk&sig=r5J1O1iEf0wtdZ2sMb_OdaiHhw8&redir_esc=y#v=one page&q=Collected%20papers%20of%20Charles%20Sanders%20Peirce&f=false

Peirce's work seems technical to me (my knowledge of Peirce is not vast, in fact not even meagre), I wonder if he applied himself directly to the world as did Mills. While science and conscience is a specific area, which my own papers deal with in passing on health topics, can a lack of visible conscience in one area allow for contemplation of the subject in another, and the inability to measure just and unjust function or fail to function in one area but is capable of application in another? Would such a perspective fail to achieve the object of this discussion?

About Science & Religion, I think, that one has nothing to add to what Dyson Freeman himself wrote on the topic: "Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but they look out at the same universe. Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect. Trouble arises when either science or religion claims universal jurisdiction, when either religious or scientific dogma claims to be infallible. Religious creationists and scientific materialists are equally dogmatic and insensitive. By their arrogance, they bring both science and religion into disrepute. The media exaggerate their numbers and importance. The media rarely mention the fact that the great majority of religious people belong to moderate denominations that treat science with respect, or the fact that the great majority of scientists treat religion with respect so long as religion does not claim jurisdiction over scientific questions" Freeman Dyson (March 15, 2000). Progress In Religion (Speech). Templeton Prize Reading

Ethics & Artificial Intelligence. "The possibility of creating thinking machines raises a host of ethical issues.  These questions relate both to ensuring that such machines do not harm humans and other morally relevant beings, and to the moral status of the machines themselves". This is how starts this famous paper (around 1.2k citations): Bostrom, N., & Yudkowsky, E. (2018). The ethics of artificial intelligence. In Artificial intelligence safety and security (pp. 57-69). Chapman and Hall/CRC.

Available on:

http://faculty.smcm.edu/acjamieson/s13/artificialintelligence.pdf

The paper comes to this ultimate conclusion "And finally, the prospect of AIs with superhuman intelligence and superhuman abilities presents us with the extraordinary challenge of stating an algorithm that outputs superethical behavior.  These challenges may seem visionary, but it seems predictable that we will encounter them; and they are not devoid of suggestions for present‐day research directions"

This is a recent open-access book released on July 17, 2023: Campbell, Heidi A; Cheong, Pauline Hope (2023). Thinking tools for AI, Religion & Culture. Available on: https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/198190

Presentation: “Thinking Tools for AI, Religion and Culture” seeks to raise key ethical questions and issue culturally informed provocations that are currently missing in most current popular media discussions about humanity and artificial intelligence. This edited collection brings together a diverse group of female scholars from a variety of academic disciplines, religious contexts and seven different countries who offer series of thought-provoking, religiously- informed, and ethical reflections on current debates around AI. Our aim is to create a curated and enlightened conversation, which moves beyond the extremes of fear or mere acceptance of our future with AI, and in doing so illuminate new and missing perspectives that broaden the current public discourse around ethics and AI.

About Science & Religion, I think that one has nothing to add to what Dyson Freeman wrote on the topic: "Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but they look out at the same universe. Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect. Trouble arises when either science or religion claims universal jurisdiction, when either religious or scientific dogma claims to be infallible. Religious creationists and scientific materialists are equally dogmatic and insensitive. By their arrogance, they bring both science and religion into disrepute. The media exaggerate their numbers and importance. The media rarely mention the fact that the great majority of religious people belong to moderate denominations that treat science with respect, or the fact that the great majority of scientists treat religion with respect so long as religion does not claim jurisdiction over scientific questions" Freeman Dyson (March 15, 2000). Progress In Religion (Speech). Templeton Prize Reading

On mystical teachings. Fundamentally there should be no problem with gurus' mystical teachings, religious' cult rites learnings, or even certain para-scientific teachings by thought masters. This comes under the principle of "freedom of conscience" what the individual believes is suitable for him, for his science, for his conscience, for his life, in short for his truth, true for him and not necessarily for others. It is exactly the opposite of "scientific fact", which to be qualified as "scientific" must come under "universal knowledge". The problem starts when these gurus and thought masters start from scientific topics, to sneak into non-scientific and/or pseudo-scientific discussions; or into mystical and/or irrational discourses. Scientific discourse is clear and does not suffer from any subjectivity, including when it relates to scientific controversies.

This research by Doug Cloud (2020) proposes an analysis of "The Corrupted Scientist Archetype and Its Implications for Climate Change Communication and Public Perceptions of Science, Environmental Communication, 14:6, 816-829",

Abstract

In debates about policy responses to anthropogenic global warming (AGW), arguers sometimes challenge the credibility of scientists by alleging that those scientists have been tainted by financial and political commitments – in short, that they are Corrupted Scientists. Arguers use this technique to both challenge and support the scientific consensus on AGW. This study undertakes a detailed discourse analysis of 20 U.S. Congressional Hearings to examine how arguers invoke the Corrupted Scientist archetype to make arguments, how others respond, and the implications of both for climate change communication and public perceptions of science and scientists. Although the archetype might help reveal corruption, it could also distort the public’s understanding of scientific disinterestedness by characterizing it as a matter of individual virtue rather than institutional safeguards (e.g. peer review). This distortion of disinterestedness presents three rhetorical challenges for science communicators and others.

Paper to be requested on:Article The Corrupted Scientist Archetype and Its Implications for C...

On "Science of Science" (SciSci). Much interest and pleasure in reading this exceptional paper (Almost 1 k citations): "Fortunato, S., Bergstrom, C. T., Börner, K., Evans, J. A., Helbing, D., Milojević, S., ... & Barabási, A. L. (2018). Science of science. Science, 359(6379), eaao0185". Available on: Article Science of science

Excerpts from the paper "...The science of science (SciSci) offers a quantitative understanding of the interactions among scientific agents across diverse geographic and temporal scales: It provides insights into the conditions underlying creativity and the genesis of scientific discovery, with the ultimate goal of developing tools and policies that have the potential to accelerate science. In the past decade, SciSci has benefited from an influx of natural, computational, and social scientists who together have developed big data–based capabilities for empirical analysis and generative modeling that capture the unfolding of science, its institutions, and its workforce. The value proposition of SciSci is that with a deeper understanding of the factors that drive successful science, we can more effectively address environmental, societal, and technological problems..."

Oustanding well-cited essay on revulsion to killing in the name of religion: Cavanaugh, W. T. (1995). A fire strong enough to consume the house: The wars of religion and the rise of the state. Modern theology, 11(4), 397-420. Available on: http://www.jesusradicals.com/uploads/2/6/3/8/26388433/wars-of-religion-and-the-rise-of-the-state.pdf

Excerpt:

"In September of 1993, the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago issued a declaration called "Towards a Global Ethic" meant to locate ethical values common to the world's religions. One of the most emphatic parts of the statement is that condemning wars waged in the name of religion. "Time and again we see leaders and members of religions incite aggression, fanaticism, hate and xenophobia—even inspire and legitimize violent and bloody conflicts. Religion often is misused for purely power-political goals, including war. We are filled with disgust." Is the Parliament of the World's Religions taking a pacifist stand? Well, no. While violence in general is condemned,

the document stops well short of calling religious people out of the armies of the world. Only killing in the name of religion is damned; bloodshed on behalf of the State is subject to no such scorn.

What is wrong, then, with killing in the name of religion? The answer can be derived from the definition of "religion" implicit in the declaration. Religion is assumed to be a matter pertinent to the private sphere of values. The individual's public and lethal loyalty belongs to the State.

My purpose in this essay will be to focus on the way revulsion to killing in the name of religion is used to legitimize the transfer of ultimate loyalty to the modern State. Specifically, I will examine how the so-called "Wars of Religion" of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe are evoked as the founding moment of modern liberalism by theorists such as John Rawls, Judith Shklar, and Jeffrey Stout"

Am Spiegelgrund Hospital in Vienna: The Clinic of Child Euthanasia. This is an article on the scientific and policy origins of euthanasia of mentally and physically disabled children in Vienna [1] Abstract: "Medicine in the German Third Reich became an instrument of Nazi political philosophy that included racial purification using biologic measures. This included an involuntary euthanasia program directed at mentally and physically disabled children. One such effort existed at the Am Spiegelgrund Hospital in Vienna under the direction of Dr Heinrich Gross. This article details the scientific and policy origins of child euthanasia in Vienna, the use of scientific materials obtained for personal and professional gain, and the postwar attempts to reconcile with this abject past".

[1] Thomas, F. P., Beres, A., & Shevell, M. I. (2006). “A cold wind coming”: Heinrich Gross and child euthanasia in Vienna. Journal of Child Neurology, 21(4), 342-348. Available on: Ftp53-with-cover-page-v2.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fd1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net

Photo Dr. Heinrich Gross and his staff selecting children for death Source: WW2 Gravestone, Heinrich Gross' activities is that after the children had been murdered, parts of their bodies, particularly their brains:

https://ww2gravestone.com/heinrich-gross-activities-children-murdered-parts-bodies-particularly-brains/

Nazi Science - The Dachau Hypothermia Experiments. Interesting discussion within the paper [1] on Science and Conscience. One may read there: "... Inferior science does not generally come to the attention of the ethicist because it is usually discarded by scientists. Ethical dialogues deal with work of sound scientific but controversial moral content, and the mere fact that a debate is conducted implies that the subject under consideration has scientific merit. If the shortcomings of the Dachau hypothermia study had been fully appreciated, the ethical dialogue probably would never have begun. Continuing it runs the risk of implying that these grotesque Nazi medical exercises yielded results worthy of consideration and possibly of benefit to humanity. The present analysis clearly shows that nothing could be further from the truth. Although the Dachau experiments opened the dialogue about an important ethical issue, the discontinuation of debate about these experiments should not bring an end to exploration of the larger subject —the implications of the use of ethically tainted data. But the Dachau study is an inappropriate example for that purpose".

Berger, R. L. (1990). Nazi science—the Dachau hypothermia experiments. New England journal of medicine, 322(20), 1435-1440.

To be requested on: Article Nazi Science — The Dachau Hypothermia Experiments

See also:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Science_and_history_serving_political_and_ideological_totalitarianism#view=64c13ff1553b09e12c035ead

A remarkable recent text which gives food for thought on war, peace, morals, and conscience, by Robert W. McElroy (2023) "Our New Moment: Renewing Catholic Teaching on War and Peace," The Journal of Social Encounters: Vol. 7: Iss. 1, 266-271. Available at: https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/social_encounters/vol7/iss1/18

One may read there: "This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of Pacem in Terris and the fortieth anniversary of The Challenge of Peace, the American bishops' pastoral letter on questions of war and peace....The Challenge of Peace set forth the substantive conception of peace that arises from the Scriptures and the tradition of human reason – the same conception of peace rooted in justice and human rights that had been the foundation for Pacem in Terris. It presented both the tradition of nonviolence and the legitimate use of military means to defend human rights as authentic expressions of Catholic faith designed to attain the same goal: the comprehensive protection of humanity under attack. And the pastoral letter consistently presented defensive war as a last resort throughout its analysis of the challenges which the world was facing. Perhaps most importantly of all, The Challenge of Peace addressed the crisis of nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as the wider questions of nuclear proliferation. The bishops proclaimed that the combination of nuclear threats and the prevalence of conventional war in the world using highly advanced weapons systems had created a “New Moment” that demanded the specific application of Catholic teaching on war and peace to particular policy questions. For this reason, The Challenge of Peace dealt in detail with the issues of counter population nuclear war, the initiation of nuclear war, the concept of limited nuclear war and the pathways to reversing nuclear proliferation. This bishops’ statement deeply informed public policy, educated millions of Catholics about the Church’s teaching on war and peace, and provided an enduring example of how bishops can teach effectively on volatile questions in a polarized environment..."

The author comes to the conclusion: "Discerning the implications of this dramatic shift in Catholic teaching constitutes one of the central tasks for theologians, bishops, policymakers and committed Catholics who work in the area of ethics and nuclear weapons. On this issue the successive moral positions of the Church regarding deterrence and possession have all been consciously framed as interim ethics in anticipation of a better moment. How can we realistically contribute in God's grace to bringing that moment to reality?".

Cardinal Robert W. McElroy is the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, California. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University in 1989 with a dissertation on Morality and American Foreign Policy : The Role of Moral Norms in International Affairs. He is author of The Search for an American Public Theology: The Contributions of John Courtney Murray (Paulist Press, 1989), Morality and American Foreign Policy: The Role of Ethics in International Affairs (Princeton University Press, 1992), and articles on Catholic social thought.

See also:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/War_Peace/2

Released 3 days ago, this article by Варава B. B. (2023) "Temptation of Ethics and Trial of Conscience: Features of Russian Moral Philosophy, Russian Journal of Philosophical Sciences 66 (2):48-61" revisits the ideas of F.M. Dostoevsky, N.A. Berdyaev, and others to illustrate that within the context of Russian philosophy, the critical situation is less about the anticipation of death and more about the moral anguish of conscience arising from the evil and falsehood prevalent in the world, a sentiment shared by diverse individuals like V.S. Solovyov and V.M. Shukshin. This perspective significantly redefines the concept of the existential in Russian philosophy, equating it with profound moral reflection. In discussing philosophical and anthropological issues under the “post-human threat,” the author introduces the concept of “conscientious faith.” This concept, serving as a fundamental anthropological unit, posits that it is the conscience, with its appeal to personal moral responsibility, that reveals the moral essence of an individual, thereby establishing human uniqueness".

"Teaching religion is the consciousness of confrontation and the responsibility to understand. It must not pretend to be able to leave out the threat of colonialism permanently. What it does is wager, in going anywhere, that, in struggling for a shared world, one shall not pass on anything less". This is the ultimate conclusion of the excellent paper by Levene, N. (2020). The Religion of Confrontation: Concepts, Violence, and Scholarship. Harvard Theological Review, 113(1), 111-137. To be requested on: Article The Religion of Confrontation: Concepts, Violence, and Scholarship

Seen from the point of view of contemporary morality, the paper of Fernandez, E. (2015) "Moral justification of anatomical dissection and conquest in the Spanish Chronicles of the Indies, Endeavour, 39(2), 85-94", available on: https://www.academia.edu/download/89980146/j.endeavour.2015.05.00320220820-1-12mrzao.pdf , is a text that is sometimes difficult to read, but bears witness to human progress and challenges about the risks of slippage and backtracking, unfortunately still relevant. One may read within the paper "The first known reports of anatomical dissection in the Americas are not scientific descriptions in medical books but three short narrative passages in the Chronicles of the Indies. The Chronicles are reports of the Spanish conquest and colonization written in the sixteenth century by those who participated in the events or had access to witnesses. They are one-sided accounts of military operations as well as of the daily life in the newly founded colonies, most of them from the pen of clerics or officers of the crown. Not surprisingly, they presented the events in ways that contributed to legitimize the conquest and colonization".

Illustration from the paper: Engraving with the portrait of Andreas Vesalius showing the muscles and tendons of a dissected arm. From the first edition of his De humani corporis fabrica, Basilea, J. Oporinus, 1543. By permission of the History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health

A Remarkable Paper On The Conscientiousness Paradox "Chen, S. X., Lam, B. C. P., Buchtel, E. E., & Bond, M. H. (2014). The conscientiousness paradox: Cultural mindset shapes competence perception. European Journal of Personality, 28(5), 425–436. Abstract "Studies comparing personality across cultures have found inconsistencies between self‐reports and measures of national character or behaviour, especially on evaluative traits such as Conscientiousness. We demonstrate that self‐perceptions and other‐perceptions of personality vary with cultural mindset, thereby accounting for some of this inconsistency. Three studies used multiple methods to examine perceptions of Conscientiousness and especially its facet Competence that most characterizes performance evaluations. In Study 1, Mainland Chinese reported lower levels of self‐efficacy than did Canadians, with the country effect partially mediated by Canadian participants' higher level of independent self‐construal. In Study 2, language as a cultural prime induced similar effects on Hong Kong bilinguals, who rated themselves as more competent and conscientious when responding in English than in Chinese. Study 3 demonstrated these same effects on ratings of both self‐perceived and observer‐perceived competence and conscientiousness, with participants changing both their competence‐communicating behaviours and self‐evaluations in response to the cultural primes of spoken language and ethnicity of an interviewer. These results converge to show that self‐perceptions and self‐presentations change to fit the social contexts shaped by language and culture"

On Conscience & Social Conscience. "Socrates referred to conscience as “Daimonion”, an inner voice of divine state, which warns in decisive moments and prevents the execution of a dangerous intention. Roughly a thousand years later, Martin Luther also dealt with this personal guardian spirit and emphasized that there is a higher instance that knows the moral value of one’s own action. Even more: The noblest entrepreneurial driving force, the “social conscience”, is altruistic in nature and characterized by unselfish action, selflessness and consideration for other ways of thinking and behaving. Unlike what we have learned in business administration, no immediate benefit or value is sought here. A procedure that is foreign to most merchants and therefore enjoys high reputation, equated with a good reputation". Abstract of the Chapter (released 3 days ago):

Hermanni, AJ. (2023). Social Conscience. In: Business Guide for Strategic Management. Springer, Wiesbaden

"IN FEBRUARY 2014, A MAP showing nuclear fallout radiating into Europe from the Sahara was published in the French newspaper Le Parisien along with an article whose opening line was: ‘‘C’est une carte qui fait froid dans le dos’’ (it is a map that chills the spine). Based on secret documents not declassified by the French defense ministry until 2013, the so-called ‘‘document choc’’ (shocking document) shows the aerial spread of toxic particles over the thirteen days directly after the French detonated their first atomic bomb on the inhabitants of Reggane, Algeria, in February 1960 (fig. 1).1 Gerboise bleue was the first of four aerial atomic bombs, followed by thirteen subterranean bombs and dozens of toxic chemical contaminations, that the French military deliberately unleashed on all those living in the African Sahara between 1960 and 1966 before moving nuclear bombing operations to occupied atolls in the Pacific Ocean". Excerpts from:

Jarvis, J. (2023). Forget Decolonizing: Atomic Visions from the Radioactive Sahara. Representations, 162(1), 125-143. Available on: https://www.jillmariejarvis.com/s/Forget-Decolonizing-Jarvis.pdf

Map from [1]. See legend

On Bhopal disaster These are Excerpts from "The Bhopal Saga – Causes and Consequences of the World's Largest Industrial Disaster". By Ingrid Eckerman, Published by Universities Press (India) Private Limited 2005. The book is available on: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0FqO8XKy9NRZDNzTkZQeVJQbE0/edit?pli=1&resourcekey=0-AQV8IQqhWZocx_FV5bq11w

"...The population of the affected areas in 1984 is estimated to be 520,000 in the 36 wards. In 1988, it was estimated as 565,000. In 1995, more than 618,000 cases in the 56 wards had been filed: 597,300 personal injuries, 15,200 deaths and 5,000 others. The approximate number of gas victims who failed to file their claims was estimated at 100,000 [18]. According to official records, in 1999, 1,001,723 claims for injury and 22,149 claims for deaths were registered in Bhopal [21] , i.e officially, local records show that there were about five times more claims than the US compensation calculations...".

On compensations:

"...According to the Supreme Court directive, those directly affected should be provided with the interim relief ranging from Rs 25,000 to Rs 400,000. The SC directive concerning death cases assured Rs 100,000 to Rs 500,000 [19]. The final compensation for personal injury is for the majority Rs 25,000 (US$ 830).This sum is reduced by the interim relief paid out earlier, around Rs 10,000. the final compensation. This compensation will be paid to all claimants [20]. For death claims, the average sum paid out is Rs 62,000. The size of the compensation was set in 1989. Because of inflation, the sum of Rs 25,000 has lost half of its value since 1989..."

[18] Chauhan, P., S., Bhopal Tragedy. Socio-legal Implications. 1996, Rawat Publications: Jaipur.

[19] Mathew, J., Fighting for a cause, in Chronicle. 1999, May 9: Bhopal.

[20] Chadha, C.S., Brief description of work done for Bhopal gas tragedy relief. Personal communication. 1995, Jan 9: Bhopal.

[21]. The truth of Bhopal. Bhopal Gas Tragedy, 15th anniversary. 1999, Bhopal Gas Pidit Mahila Udyog, Sanghthan, Stationery workers Union, Gas Pidit Avam Nirashrit Pension Bhogi Sangharsh Morcha: Bhopal.

John Locke’s Thoughts on "Tolerance", Excerpts from the conclusion of Chapter [1] by Ezgi(2023): "One of the other important issues emphasized in A Letter on Tolerance is the distinction between the political realm and the spiritual realm. Locke also secured the liberty of belief by separating and restricting these two areas. Because according to him, real freedom is the freedom to choose one's belief and to live it freely. Since man is a rational being, he will make the right decision for himself.

Therefore, the state should not interfere in this area and should provide the

necessary environment for people to freely practice their beliefs. For Locke, it is unacceptable for the state, which emerged with a contract to protect the fundamental rights of individuals, to intervene especially in the religious field. In this sense, while Locke assigns the political power to ensure the security of life and property, he holds the spiritual power responsible for people's religious and virtuous lives. Here, all stakeholders that make up the society are expected to be respectful and tolerant of each other".

[1] Ezgi, Ö. R. E. N. (2023). John Locke’s Thoughts on “Tolerance”. PIONEER AND CONTEMPORARY STUDIES IN SOCIAL, HUMAN AND ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES, 379-390. Available on: https://as-books.com/index.php/pcsshas/article/download/152/136

This chapter [1] discusses many “market failures,” areas in which the invisible hand guides the economy poorly. One may read within the text "... Markets do not necessarily produce a fair distribution of income.... Moreover, recall that goods follow dollar votes and not the greatest need. A rich man’s cat may drink the milk that a poor boy needs to remain healthy. Does this happen because the market is failing? Not at all, for the market mechanism is doing its job— putting goods in the hands of those who have the dollar votes. If a country spends more fertilizing its lawns than feeding poor children, that is a defect of income distribution, not of the market. Even the most efficient market system may generate great inequality..."

[1] Smith, A. Markets and Government in a Modern Economy.

https://arts.kmutt.ac.th/sola/Jaruwan/download_ssc260inter/Additional%20Reading/chapter2.pdf

The uses of the results require ethics

As in bio ethics. Another critical area

Is in the nuclear field.

Emvironmental knowledge is not acted enough on.

In the actual persuit there are rules in the medical field.

Sri Lanka hit by record brain drain, but some stay to rebuild. One can only pay tribute to these doctors and entrepreneurs who remain faithful to the country. "As Sri Lanka sank deep into its economic crisis last year, dentist Lakmal Kulasekara watched many in his field pack up and leave. No matter how bad things became, he was determined to stay. "My education was paid for by the people of Sri Lanka, including poor people, and if I don't pay it back, I am not a man," he said of the nation's free public education system. "Yes, we have a problem in our country. But just because of the problem, if everyone chooses to leave, then what will happen?""

Excerpts from: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Sri-Lanka-crisis/Sri-Lanka-hit-by-record-brain-drain-but-some-stay-to-rebuild

Released 3 days ago

On Intellectual Leadership. Fortunately, there still exists everywhere a certain leadership capable of imparting momentum to human progress and development. What is good leadership and how does it differ from bad leadership? The well-cited paper by Masciulli et al. (2016) [1] tries to answer this question and one may read there "...We tend to believe that ‘good’ leadership should be good both ethically and instrumentally. ‘Bad’ leadership can be designated as such if it is morally evil, rests on the violation of human dignity and rights (or some variant moral orientation), or caters solely to the egoistic whims and private interests of a ruler. It may also be ‘bad’ in the sense of being ineffective due to, for example, incompetence, rigidity or intemperance in leaders or followers that interferes with the use of appropriate means to attain the ends sought. In ‘effective’ leadership, the leader successfully chooses the means that bring about the desired ends. If the means chosen are devised anew – rather than simply taken from the arsenal of time-tested, routine responses to typical problems – effective leadership corresponds to the pattern of innovative adaptation. Complex leadership can be both ‘effective’ and ‘ethical’; that is, the leader successfully chooses the means that are most likely to attain the ends sought, but also seeks to embody end values (equality, freedom, justice, human rights, environmental The Ashgate Research Companion to Political Leadership sustainability) and modal-values (honesty, reliability, trustworthiness, fairness) in the process. The effectiveness of leadership is determined by the actual short- and long-term consequences of leaders’ actions. Judgment of a leader’s effectiveness may be revised in historiographies, in view of long-term consequences..".

[1] Masciulli, J., Molchanov, M. A., & Knight, W. A. (2016). Political leadership in context. In The Ashgate research companion to political leadership (pp. 3-27). Routledge. Available on: https://www.academia.edu/download/42860803/Political_Leadership_in_Context20160219-6422-1nwd0d3.pdf

This well-known paper (around 470 citations) by Gillian K. Hadfield (2000), with the evocative title "The Price of Law: How the Market for Lawyers Distorts the Justice System", 98 MICH. L. REV. 953, Available on: https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2810&context=mlr, deals with the unjust role of the market in the process of doing justice. One may read within the text: "Because law is not delivered in the abstract but is delivered through a market mechanism, justice in theory not only departs from justice in fact, but it is the cause of the departure. When justice in our case-by-case system compels an increment in the complexity of our understanding of the just treatment of a dispute between litigants, it does so, incrementally, at the expense of reducing access to justice more generally. Exquisite justice for some systematically results in rough justice for others. Where is the justice in that? The question is not rhetorical".

"The buying and selling of organs in the global markets has become an ethical issue for transplant clinicians everywhere in the world. Even physicians who would have no part in the organ trade now bear a responsibility for the medical care of those recipients who return to their home countries having undergone organ transplantation from an unknown vendor. These recipients arrive at physician offices in widespread locations such as Tel Aviv, Toronto and Trinidad. Some patients return home with inadequate reports of operative events and unknown risks of donor-transmitted infection (such as hepatitis or tuberculosis) or a donor-transmitted malignancy. The source of their allografts is mainly from the poor and vulnerable in the developing world. These vendors or commercial living donors resort to an organ sale because they have virtually no other means to provide support for themselves or their families. Selling kidneys may be a consideration of ‘autonomy’ in academic debate but it is not the coercive reality of experience when a kidney sale is a desperate alternative available to the poor". Excerpts from this well-known paper (around 400 citations).

Budiani-Saberi, D. A., & Delmonico, F. L. (2008). Organ trafficking and transplant tourism: a commentary on the global realities. American Journal of Transplantation, 8(5), 925-929. Available on:

Article Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism: A Commentary on th...

"In mid‐May 2006, three Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel applied to the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) for permission to sell their kidneys in order to send money to their children for food. Whether truly sincere or merely propagandistic, the request was made against the background of Israel's decision to suspend the transfer of Palestinian tax moneys to the Hamas‐led Palestinian Authority, and the subsequent increasing poverty and famine in the Gaza Strip" Excerpts from:

Epstein, M. (2007). The ethics of poverty and the poverty of ethics: the case of Palestinian prisoners in Israel seeking to sell their kidneys in order to feed their children. Journal of medical ethics, 33(8), 473-474.Article The ethics of poverty and the poverty of ethics: The case of...

Edilivre, by Flora (2017), Ghost writers, literary negroes: They work in the shadow of famous writers, they are like illegal immigrants. But this role of ghostwriter is not new and has been perpetuated for centuries and centuries already. Discover the story of these nameless writers..... (Own translation)

Read the article in French on:

https://www.edilivre.com/le-phenomene-des-negres-literaires/

On Paied Review and Paied Writer. "We find that advertisers hire bloggers with a large readership to promote their targets. Paid writers are more popular than benign users and tend to produce high-quality contents to promote the target restaurants. Besides, they need to write a certain amount of genuine reviews to earn readers’ trust. With the rise of social media, paid writers also use the social network to market themselves" Excerpts from the conclusion of the paper:

Ko, M. C., Huang, H. H., & Chen, H. H. (2017, August). Paid review and paid writer detection. In Proceedings of the international conference on web intelligence (pp. 637-645). Available on: http://www.cs.nccu.edu.tw/~hhhuang/docs/wi2017b.pdf

"Human Trafficking in the era of Globalization: The case of Trafficking in the Global Market Economy", a paper by Majeed A. Rahman, Transcience Journal Vol 2, No 1 (2011). Excerpts from the conclusion "The intensity of the problem of human trafficking has become a global pandemic that is rooted in every community organized by human traffickers who by overt and covert activities use several means possible including among others coercion and wealth to sustain the continues enslavement of vulnerable people across the globe. Again, this phenomena permeate every nation state and involves the recruitment, transportation, and to a large extent the enslavement of the economically vulnerable".

Available on:

https://www2.hu-berlin.de/transcience/Vol2_Issue1_2011_54_71_Glossary.pdf

This well-known article (More than 2500 citations) by Radin, M. J. (2013) "Market-inalienability. In Contract-Freedom and Restraint (pp. 269-357). Routledge" highlights the characteristic features of things that are and things that are not appropriately traded in markets.

Abstract: Things that may be given away but not sold are market-inalienable. In this Article, Professor Radin explores the significance of market-inalienability and its justifications. The author considers and rejects two archetypes that fail to recognize market-inalienability as a separate category of social interaction. One, universal commodification, holds that everything should in principle be subject to market transfer; the other, universal non-commodification, holds that the market should be abolished. Professor Radin also explores and ultimately rejects attempts based on economic analysis and liberal philosophical doctrines to justify particular distinctions between things that are and things that are not appropriately traded in markets. She then offers an alternative justification for market-inalienability that relates it to an ideal of human flourishing. This theory takes into account both the rhetoric in which we conceive of ourselves and our situation in nonideal circumstances. Professor Radin concludes by demonstrating how the theory might be applied to three contested market-inalienability: prostitution, baby-selling, and surrogate motherhood.

Available on:

https://www.stephankinsella.com/wp-content/uploads/texts/radin_market-inalienability.pdf

In her recent paper [1] Autonomous weapons: the moral responsibility of the engineer, Marie-des-Neiges Ruffo de Calabre (2023) poses and answers questions at the interface of engineering, responsibility, and morality in relation to weapons development. But IMHO, if the inventor invents this kind of atrocity for the sake of profit, he is ethically and morally responsible and in this case, it is legitimate to assert: "Never billions are ethically earned".

[1] Marie-des-Neiges Ruffo de Calabre (2023) Armes autonomes : la responsabilité morale de l’ingénieur, Dans Raison présente 2023/1 (N° 225), pages 87 à 96

Abstract (Own translation): Everyone knows about the existence of the Nobel Peace Prize, but the general public is sometimes unaware of the origin of its creation. Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, wanted to bequeath his fortune to benefactors of humanity to "compensate", it will be said, for the destruction caused by his invention. Faced with the march of progress, what moral options are still available to the engineer? Does he still have a choice? To what extent is the inventor, scientist, engineer morally responsible for the consequences of the technologies he has helped to develop? Should we be content to distinguish between the weapon and the shooter? Between the inert object and the intention to use it? Does the original intention of the creator matter morally? Is the legal framework sufficient to clarify matters of conscience? Can we refuse to develop a technology and call for its preventive ban, as some want for lethal autonomous weapon systems, SALAs? Can we "prevent progress", "disinvent" a weapon, at the risk of reliving the "Sputnik effect"? Should we restrict technological development, not use it to kill, or develop it only for deterrent or defensive purposes? Between the ethical duty to provide one's country with the best means of defending itself, and consequentialist considerations on possible abuses, collateral damage and the long-term future of emerging technologies in a military context, what is the proper place for ethical reflection specific to the engineer …

This phrase "science without conscience is but ruin of the soul" reflects the idea that the pursuit of scientific knowledge and progress should be accompanied by ethical considerations and moral responsibility.

Science, with its capacity to discover and understand the natural world, has brought about immense advancements and benefits to humanity. It has led to medical breakthroughs, technological innovations, and a deeper understanding of the universe. However, the quote reminds us that the mere accumulation of knowledge, divorced from ethical considerations, can have detrimental consequences.

When science is pursued without conscience, it can lead to the misuse or abuse of knowledge. Technological advancements can be used for destructive purposes, such as the development of weapons of mass destruction. Environmental exploitation can occur when scientific progress is pursued without regard for the long-term consequences on ecosystems. Ethical concerns may be overlooked in scientific research, leading to the mistreatment of human or animal subjects.

Moreover, science alone cannot provide answers to questions of morality and values. It is the responsibility of scientists, policymakers, and society as a whole to consider the ethical implications of scientific discoveries and technological advancements. This involves asking critical questions about the potential impacts on human well-being, societal equity, and the preservation of our environment.

Finally, the quote serves as a reminder that science should not exist in isolation from ethical principles. A conscience-guided approach to science ensures that knowledge and progress are used for the betterment of humanity, with due consideration for the well-being of individuals and the planet. By integrating conscience into scientific endeavors, we can strive for a harmonious balance between scientific advancement and the preservation of our moral and ethical values.

Good luck

credit AI tool

Mohammad Imam Thank you for these insightful thoughts about Scientific activities and Ethical considerations. You are right "Science alone cannot provide answers to questions of Morality and Values". IMHO, the only worthwhile Morality and Values in Science are those of Scientific Rigor and Integrity, which represent the Ethical Foundation of Scientific and Academic Activities. These, by definition, must pull upwards, never downwards.

"Racism and gender discrimination have profound impacts on the well-being of Black women... equity and reproductive justice frameworks (reproductive rights as human rights) need to be explored to address disparities ....We have outlined disparities in several health conditions and the dire mortality outcomes experienced by Black women. Health does not exist outside its social context. Without equity in social and economic conditions, health equity is unlikely to be achieved, and one cost of health inequality has been the lives of Black women". Excerpt from the conclusion of the paper (Around 170 citations): Chinn, J. J., Martin, I. K., & Redmond, N. (2021). Health equity among Black women in the United States. Journal of women's health, 30(2), 212-219. Available on: Article Health Equity Among Black Women in the United States

Watson (1975) discussed free action focussing on its relationship to an adequate conception of human motivation and responsibility [1]. He came to the following conclusion: "The truth, of course, is that God (traditionally conceived) is the only free agent, without sentence. In the case of God, who is omnipotent and omniscient, there can be no disparity between valuational and motivational systems... But human beings are only more or less free agents, typically less. They are free agents only in some respects. With regard to the appetites and passions, it is plain that in some situations the motivational systems of human beings exhibit an independence from their values which is inconsistent with free agency; that is to say, people are sometimes moved by their appetites and passions in conflict with their practical judgments".

And Watson ended his text with a beautiful quote from Nietzsche "Man's belly is the reason why man does not easily take himself for a God."

[1] Watson, G. (1975). Free agency. The journal of philosophy, 72(8), 205-220. (1528 citations)

Available on:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2024703.pdf?casa_token=M01GPSEwQVQAAAAA:M30PfGXJ8vnksLsR_F0QtG9MAMDL89n3Wan5iPMYtiN637qELqemFgbHO7TzQR0O_y4e7xugLATGIDu-AsCInl-FP1GXcyx6ownpcYF8qPhZuV27jg2blw

Philosophying with children. Children are endowed with an innate curiosity to want to know and adults, who are less philosophizing than children, are most often overwhelmed. Example:

- Dad, what is that?

- It's a pencil.

- What is a pencil for?

- It's for writing

- What's the point of writing?

- It's to tell something. Take a look at this book, for example, it tells a story that one can read.

- And you, Dad, can you read?

- Yes I can read.

- And me how can I read?

- You will learn at school

- What is the use of learning to read?

- It's to learn things

- What is the use of learning things?

- It is to learn how to do things and have a good job, for example

- Why have a job?

- It's to make money

- What's the point of making money?

- To buy things for his family

- And I'm going to have a family?

- Yes of course

- And children?

- Yes of course

- And how does one make children?

- Do you want to play hopscotch with me?

Speaking of the genesis of intelligence in children, our colleague Orlando M Lourenço mentioned on another thread, the essential book by Piaget, J. (1954). The construction of reality in the child. New York: Basic Books. The Original work was published in French in 1935: Piaget, J. 1935, (around 2800 citations). La naissance de l'intelligence chez l'enfant (p. 216). Neuchatel-Paris: Delachaux & Niestlé.

Piaget revolutionized the psychology of intelligence. He was the first to prove that the child has an intelligence of its own. An excerpt of the 9th French edition of the book (1977) is available at: https://www.fondationjeanpiaget.ch/fjp/site/textes/VE/JP36_NdI_avpropos_intro.pdf

Photo: Portrait of Jean Piaget (1896-1880). Source: http://www.unige.ch/presse/static/ideesgenie/PDF7PIAGET.pdf

The least of the things expected from intellectuals (who embody the conscience of people) is to have honest writing and reading on Human Rights, beginning from Fundamental Human Rights: Right to life, to food, to education, to logging, to health care.. Intellectuals should first work on these rights because No Human Dignity is Possible without these Fundamental Human Rights to be acquired. We can then talk through human rights issues including the right of access to property which is of course an Inalienable Human Right, like all Human Rights, for that matter. The Duty of Intellectuals within a given society is to light the way and show it to politicians and society to arrive at forms of hierarchy and reconciliation of Rights that guarantee first and foremost Dignity to all citizens within the same society. Beyond the paramount ambition of the establishment of the Cognitive and Moral Society, there is also a practical and concrete simple reason: it is a question of creating the conditions for defusing hatred, violence, and insecurity.

Reuters, July 12, 2023, By Leah Douglas, With 735 million people hungry, UN says world is 'off track' to meet its 2030 goal "About 735 million people worldwide faced chronic hunger in 2022, a figure much higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic and which threatens progress towards a global goal to end hunger by 2030, said the United Nations on Wednesday.

A multi-year upward trend in hunger rates leveled off last year as many countries recovered economically from the pandemic, but the war in Ukraine and its pressure on food and energy prices offset some of those gains, the U.N. said in its annual State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report. The result is that an estimated 122 million more people were hungry in 2022 than in 2019 and the world is "far off track" to meet the U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goal of ending hunger by 2030, said the report. Instead, the report projects that 600 million people will be undernourished in 2030." Read the Article on:

https://www.reuters.com/world/with-735-mln-people-hungry-un-says-world-is-off-track-meet-its-2030-goal-2023-07-12/

The Equality-Equity Dilemma in Cost-Benefit Analysis. Explained in the forthcoming paper [1] by Hemel from the New York University School of Law. Excerpt: "The “equality” side of the equality-equity dilemma refers to the federal regulatory practice of using an equal-dollar “value of a statistical life” (VSL) for all Americans. The “equity” side refers to the goal of improving the welfare of lower income groups. The dilemma is this: To know whether a regulation benefits or burdens members of a particular group on net, regulators must calculate benefits and costs using willingness-to-pay numbers for that particular group. Because willingness to pay for mortality risk reduction varies by income, distributional analysis for mortality risk regulation also must use VSLs that vary by income. Otherwise, the results of distributional analysis would bear little relationship to whether a regulation actually improves the welfare of the group whose interests regulators ostensibly aim to advance. But departing from “VSL equality” raises a serious risk of expressive harms—and more specifically, of sending a message of disrespect to the very people whose interests equitable cost-benefit analysis seeks to vindicate. These potential harms are most acute when regulators analyze costs and benefits across racial lines, as the use of different average VSLs for different racial groups inevitably echoes the United States’ long and ugly history of devaluing non-white lives".

[1] Hemel, Daniel J., The Equality-Equity Dilemma in Cost-Benefit Analysis (March 7, 2023). 3 American Journal of Law and Equality (forthcoming 2023), NYU Law and Economics Research Paper No. 23-27, NYU School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 23-40, Available at:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4381599

Without a lifelong passion for your scientific profession, it's difficult to expect significant results.

Governments that can't enable fundamental human rights shouldn't be in power as a matter of cause.

On Freedom of Conscience. Many personalities at the origin of major political, philosophical, scientific, artistic, economic, and technological paramount changes are fervent believers and this is part of their "Freedom of Conscience". We do not even know if the thinkers behind the fundamental human "Freedom of Conscience" principle are believers or not. Besides non-believers believe that there is no room for religion and no one should congratulate them and even less blame them for that since it is their freedom to think according to their conscience.

The values enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1949 are universal that constitute the foundations of a form of universal morality. Anything outside of that comes under the principle of "Freedom of Conscience" (liberté de conscience): a strictly individual or community liberty consecrated moreover by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In this respect, we can read in[1] "Keith Ward claims that the birthday of the secular state can be precisely dated to 1789 – not to the great French Revolution of that year, with its notoriously anti-clerical antecedents – but to the political arrangements set in place following the American Revolution. 'In 1789 the American Revolution introduced to the world in a formal way the idea of a secular state. The first Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, drafted two years later, laid down that there would be “no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”[2].

[1] Madeley, J. Unequally Yoked: The Antinomies of Church–State Separation in Europe and the USA. Eur Polit Sci 8, 273–288 (2009).

[2] Ward, K.: Religion and Community, Oxford: Clarendon Press (2000).*

In line with the previous post on The Equality-Equity Dilemma in Cost-Benefit Analysis. This research, released 3 days ago, represents a concrete example: "James KF, Hicks M, Choi KR, Tobin CST. Discrimination during childbirth and postpartum care utilization among Black birthing people in California, United States. Birth (Berkeley, Calif.). 2023 Aug." The paper investigates the relationship between discrimination during childbirth hospitalization and postpartum care utilization among Black birthing people in California, United States. The authors come to the conclusion that "Among Black birthing people in California, the drivers of postpartum care utilization after childbirth are complex. There are multiple negative drivers (e.g., experiencing racial and language discrimination and unmet needs), barriers (e.g., insurance discrimination), and positive drivers (e.g., clinician type and education) that affect postpartum care utilization among Black birthing people". The paper is available on:

https://europepmc.org/article/med/37548262

See Also:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Science_Conscience

Interesting paper relating ambiguous connections between Knowledge & Beliefs ; Science & Non-science ; Rational & Irrational ; Knowledge & Religion & Power. Hydrological Science and Its Connection to Religion in Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs: Advances in Historical Studies, 2013. Vol.2, No.3, 150-155

Abstract: "The history of water management in the Fertile Crescent is closely related to the religion. This is most clear in ancient Egypt in pharaonic time. The class of priests serving under the pharaoh had also many other administrative duties, they had good skill in science, collected hydrological and astronomical data and used it to levy taxes and predict the floods that irrigated the arable land. The special hydrological features of the river Nile make it rather predictable in behavior compared to other major rivers of the region. In this social position the priests had great influence and could use it to stop the pharaoh Ikhnaton in his attempt to establish a monotheistic religion by ousting Amon-Ra and replacing him with Aton. Social life was very colorful at pharaohs’ court and the various arts and festivals flourished. The most remarkable of these was the Opet festival where pharaoh himself was the leading figure together with the statues of the gods. The festival was to last 10 days and during that time the river Nile was to change color from grayish to reddish and thereby mark the beginning of the life-giving flood and bear witness to the good relations between the king and the divine powers. This kind of event, an annual prayer by the king to the gods for good harvest was well known in many societies, but it shows the remarkable skills of the Amon-Ra priest that they were ready to predict the onset of the Nile flood within ten days and get away with it"

Available on: https://www.scirp.org/html/37206.html

Lies and History: "All men are liars" The Bible. Quotes; (Own translation)

"History is condemned, by a vice of nature, to lies". "History books that contain no lies are very boring". Anatole France

"History is a series of lies on which we agree". Napoleon Bonaparte

"Politics is only the art of lying, the art of disguising oneself." Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni, Thoughts and maxims (1792)

"History is just a tall tale". Jules Renard, Journal

"The theater was born from history. But History owes so much to the theatre" Alain Decaux, The Anastasia Enigma

"The novel is the story of the present, while history is the novel of the past." Georges Duhamel

"History is written by the winners" (or by the winners) Robert Brasillach, far-right journalist and collaborations

"Modern history is written with prejudices, ancient history with scissors". Maurice Joly, Research on the art of achieving

"Whilst principlism is a useful framework to address bioethical dilemmas, the principles alone are unable to resolve complex moral issues, including the ethics of abortion and euthanasia. Rather, the principles should be applied cautiously and judiciously in these debates. It is only in this way that the principles will usefully structure a debate and lead to ethical progress. It is not our intention with this essay to undermine the use of principlism in bioethics, but rather to highlight its limits as a framework so that it can be more fruitfully utilized as an ethical tool in bioethics discourse and medical education". This is how Rigby and Symons (2023) concluded their remarkable recent paper "Abortion, euthanasia, and the limits of principlism. Med Health Care and Philos. Available on:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11019-023-10162-y#citeas

Israel's Immigration Policies and the Promotion of Genetic Testing: Worse Definition Criteria, Strengthen the State's Demographic Security, or Hasten the Messianic Era? This is the title of an article by Devir, N. P. (2020), The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 11(1), 65-85. Available on: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7108795/

In the conclusion of the article, the author wrote: "For Israel and the Jewish world, the significance of this topic, therefore, lies not only in the analysis of viewpoints held by high-level Israeli policymakers and clergy regarding immigration laws but also in its exploration of the cases of genetic testing done on some hidden “proof communities” whose stories are bound to become part of certain political agendas, at least if current trends are any indication of similar interest in the future. With respect to broader ethical issues, the ways in which such marginalized groups may be subject—or not—to genetic testing will provide a salient litmus test and an instructive case study as to the double standards applied to disadvantaged groups of color from the Global South vis-à-vis their more privileged counterparts in developed countries".

Some apply to the letter, the saying: "The important is not what is said, but who says it?" It is all the more distressing when it comes from an intellectual. An idea is good when it does not contradict common sense. Common sense comes from wisdom and it shines like a full moon in a dark sky. It is, however, not within everyone's reach, as the Chinese Lao-Tse specifies "When the wise point to the moon, the fool looks at the finger". e.g "what is said" is the moon "who says it" is the Sage's finger

La Libre, August 16 -2023, By Robin Gille Suicide of a Belgian after having discussed with an AI: a group files a complaint against the company Chai Research with the FPS Economy and the APD (Own translation) "It is the first time that in Belgium, and even in Europe, a 'chatbot' (chatbot) company has been the subject of a complaint. As Artificial intelligence develops in society, the warnings and other potential risks of the use of these tools are emerging. Last May, one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, Geoffrey Hinton, resigned from Google, claiming to “regret his invention”. But tragedies have also already occurred. Last year, a young Belgian researcher, discouraged by the results of his latest publication, killed himself after many conversations that could be described as strange with Eliza, an AI developed by the American company Chai Research..."

Article in Frech on:

https://www.lalibre.be/economie/emploi/2023/08/16/suicide-dun-belge-apres-avoir-discute-avec-une-ia-un-collectif-depose-plainte-contre-la-societe-chai-research-aupres-du-spf-economie-et-de-lapd-RXLNWU7Y6RF5TCHW3VI3YQ5Z2A/

See also:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Could_Suicide_be_Rational_and_Morally_Defensible/9

Washington Post, August 16, 2023, By Lenny Bernstein, Pig kidney transplant in brain-dead man marks advance, NYU surgeons say "A genetically altered pig kidney transplanted into a brain-dead man has continued to function for 32 days, an advance toward the possible use of animal organs in humans, surgeons at NYU Langone Health said Wednesday.

The kidney was not rejected in the minutes after it was transplanted — a problem in xenotransplantation, the use of organs from a different species. It began producing urine and took over the functions of a human kidney such as filtering toxins, the physicians said at a news conference.

Also Wednesday, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Heersink School of Medicine published a similar case study, of a brain-dead patient who received two pig kidneys that underwent 10 gene alterations earlier this year. The kidneys were not rejected and continued to function for seven days. The results were peer-reviewed and published in the journal JAMA Surgery..."

Read the article on:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/08/16/pig-kidney-transplant-organ/

The results related to the Alabama at Birmingham Heersink School of Medicine case study, of a brain-dead patient who received two pig kidneys were published in the journal JAMA Surgery. "Locke JE, Kumar V, Anderson D, Porrett PM. Normal Graft Function After Pig-to-Human Kidney Xenotransplant. JAMA Surg. Published online August 16, 2023. Available on:

Article Normal Graft Function After Pig-to-Human Kidney Xenotransplant

One may read within the conclusion: "The findings from this case series show that pig-to-human xenotransplant provided life-sustaining kidney function in a deceased human with CKD. Future research in living human recipients is necessary to determine long-term xenograft kidney function and whether xenografts could serve as a bridge or destination therapy for ESKD. Because our study represents a single case, generalizability of the findings is limited. This study showcases xenotransplant as a viable potential

solution to an organ shortage crisis responsible for thousands of preventable deaths annually".

To give himself a good conscience is a way for man to protect himself from his own demons: in this respect, he creates a legal arsenal that makes it possible to tame the impulses of personal conscience and inhibit them. The following text is taken from: Cravens, S. M. (2013). In Good Conscience: Expressions of Judicial Conscience in Federal Appellate Opinions. DuQ. L. REv., 51, 95.

"Wherever conscience is expressed as a matter of fulfillment of the responsibilities of the role, value is added to our understanding. Evading questions about the responsibilities of the role with regard to personal conscientious commitments, by contrast , comes at a cost. Judges, as trustees of the law, are accountable for the reasoning underlying their decisions. Omitting expressions of personal conscience, without first clarifying explicitly what counts as personal (as opposed to institutional) conscience, what the limits are on its legitimate use in the decision-making process, and what the authority is for all of that, does not resolve the issues. Instead, it keeps observers of the judiciary from understanding what role personal conscience might properly play. If, with transparency and with time, it becomes clear that personal conscience has no role to play, that will work itself out. Because they are not only there but visible, we have faith that they will be corrected. There is no assurance that the rule of the majority will be the expression of perfect reason when embodied in constitution or in statute. We ought not to expect more of it when embodied in the judgments of the courts. The tide rises and falls, but the sands of error crumble. . . . Ever in the making, as law develops through the centuries, is this new faith which silently and steadily effaces our mistakes and eccentricities. I sometimes think that we worry ourselves overmuch about the enduring consequences of our errors. They may work a little confusion for a time. In the end, they will be modified or corrected or their teachings ignored. The future takes care of such things. In the endless process of testing and retesting, there is a constant rejection of the dross, and a constant retention of whatever is pure and sound and fine.'..."

Available on (See page 164)

https://dsc.duq.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3881&context=dlr

The two following quotes on democracy, by Churchill, apply perfectly to the peer-review of scientific and academic production (just change Democracy by peer-review): 1. "Democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the others which have been experienced in history"; 2. "Democracy is a bad system, but it is the least bad of all systems" (Own translation)

Source:

https://des-livres-pour-changer-de-vie.com/110-citations-cultes-de-winston-churchill/

So a scientific or intellectual production duly published according to the standard of scientific or academic publishing protocols deserves in principle a priori-worthy favorable prejudice until we study the text, we understand the arguments, we analyze the references, and we compare thoughts and ideas. It is only then that we can allow ourselves constructive and informed criticism. And why not proceed to the development of an alternative thesis, see even to state an antithesis?

Anonymous quote (Own translation from French): "We are like books. Judged on the cover, at best by a synopsis, at worst by reviews. But who read the story?"

Source:

https://www.evolution-101.com/thoughts-on-judgments/

On the locution “Two Weights & Two Measures”. "The expression “double standards” derives from commercial exchange, anciently practiced using scales: the locution “two weights and two measures” originates from the biblical verse in the book of Proverbs, indicating the sample weight or measure used to sell and the sample used to buy: it, therefore, makes sense to speak of two weights and two measures instead of one weight and two measures since the weight indicates the “sample” and not the object to be weighed. The swindling merchant is dishonest or unjust in his judgment or stingy in giving. On the other hand, scales and weights by themselves are symbols of divine justice and the person who observes the precepts of that justice." Excerpt from:

Mazzone, L. (2023). More Than Just a Lie. Psychological and Moral Hypocrisy: From the Masked Personality to Disguised Inconsistency. In: Democratic Hypocrisy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. Available on:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-33820-5_3#citeas

The journalist Paul Brunton asked the sage of Kanchi about world peace, the sage of Kanchi answered "If you scrap your battleships, and let your cannon rust, that will not stop war. People will continue to fight even if they have to use sticks". Another sage from the scientific world this time EO Wilson, founder of sociobiology understood very well the deep driving force that governs human nature. He said, "The real problem of humanity is this: we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and divine technology." He arrived at this observation by examining the behavior of ants: different species of ants engage in wars, practice slavery, and various atrocities. However When EO Wilson was asked ten years before his death if humans would be able to solve the crises they would face over the next 100 years. He replied, "Yes if we are honest and intelligent".

OE Wilson, who knows ants very well (he is also named "Ant Men"; knows indeed that ants because they are ants, are incapable of being intelligent, they are honest by nature. That is not enough to spare them total extermination wars. Man is not always honest, he is intelligent by nature: will he be intelligent and honest enough today to honestly ask intelligent questions and intelligently give honest answers; that would spare Europe and the rest of the world!

SWI. SWissInfo, August 19, 2023, A Swiss citizen was arrested in Myanmar for creating a film that allegedly insulted Buddhism. "...Didier Nusbaumer was arrested on August 8 along with 13 Myanmar nationals, including a 12-year-old girl, ...The news report said that 52-year-old Nusbaumer wrote, filmed and edited the 75-minute long film titled, Don’t Expect Anything, which was posted on YouTube on July 24. ... “Although the people in the film’s main roles are Buddhist, they behaved inappropriately and degraded the dignity and morals of monks through their physical gestures and dialogue," the media report said.

Read the article on:

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/swiss-citizen-arrested-in-myanmar-for-film-said-to-insult-buddhism/48747220

Bloomberg, Feb, 9, 2018, By Stephen L. Carter, Destroying a Quote's History in Order to Save It. A famous Vietnam War dispatch is now 50 years old, but the origins of the phrase are ... "... 50th anniversary of the journalist Peter Arnett’s Vietnam dispatch for the Associated Press that included the much-misquoted quotation “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” The phrase has become among the most iconic in our political discourse.."

Read the article on:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-02-09/destroying-a-quote-s-history-in-order-to-save-it?sref=Fbhig0fX#xj4y7vzkg

Picture: Journalist Peter Arnett’s Vietnam dispatch for the Associated Press: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it". He was talking about the decision by allied commanders to bomb and shell the town regardless of civilian casualties, to rout the Vietcong. Source: https://aphelis.net/destroy-village-order-save-unknown-1968/

Science is just a derivative of conscience.

I enjoyed reading these thoughts on Honor, Life, and Dignity (Released 7 days ago) in a remarkable philosophical text by Pinzani, A. Living Honestly and Killing Honorably, Ehre and Ehrbarkeit in the Metaphysics of Morals. Studia Kantiana, vol. 21, n. 1 , 2023. Available on: https://revistas.ufpr.br/studiakantiana/article/viewFile/91537/49886

Abstract: This paper aims to call attention to some interpretative questions concerning a semantic constellation running through the entire Metaphysics of Morals. This semantic constellation has to do with the German root ehr- and refers to such concepts as ehrlich, Ehre, Ehrbarkeit, and Ehrlichkeit, which – although they have different meanings – share a connection to the central idea of the coincidence of honesty and honor, as shown by the Latin terms Kant often uses in the same context (honestas, honeste, etc.). It discusses how Kant uses the concepts of honesty and honor. It tries to answer the question of whether, according to Kant, it is acceptable to die for honor’s sake by analyzing some passages from the Metaphysics of Morals. Based on this analysis, it finally presents some conclusions on the concepts of dignity and agency and on their reciprocal relationship.

Reaching the conclusion, one may read "Far from being the object of an absolute, untouchable right grounded in innate dignity, life has to do with our capacity to be legal and moral agents. One could say that dignity and life are something that you should deserve. They depend on our acting; therefore, dignity is itself based on agency, exactly as life has value only for being the necessary condition for acting. We can lose our dignity (and our life) because of certain actions, even if we remain rational beings; or, better yet, precisely because we are rational beings able to be held responsible for our actions. According to Kant, we do not have rights as human beings, but rather as rational agents who assume full responsibility for their actions and who must bear the consequences. Agency becomes, therefore, literally a matter of life or death, since under certain circumstances, by acting against the Law, one can forfeit his right to the legal protection of one’s life by the State or can even lose his right to be considered a worthy human being, becoming instead a thing that can be possessed and disposed of at its master’s pleasure. This is a quite disturbing conclusion for our traditional vision of Kant’s practical philosophy. Yet, it opens up an interesting discussion on the right to life and on the right to kill that may extend much further than mere Kantian exegesis."

The journalist Paul Brunton asked the sage of Kanchi about world peace, the sage of Kanchi answered "If you scrap your battleships, and let your cannon rust, that will not stop war. People will continue to fight even if they have to use sticks". Another sage from the scientific world this time EO Wilson, founder of sociobiology understood very well the deep driving force that governs human nature. He said, "The real problem of humanity is this: we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and divine technology." He arrived at this observation by examining the behavior of ants: different species of ants engage in wars, practice slavery, and various atrocities. However When EO Wilson was asked ten years before his death if humans would be able to solve the crises they would face over the next 100 years. He replied, "Yes if we are honest and intelligent".

It is difficult to apprehend the question of the Ukrainian crisis without asking the nagging question "Have East-West relations been intelligent and honest for the past six-seven decades"? The answer is simple and obvious: not honest at all! absolutely not intelligent! The developments of the Ukrainian crisis do not bode well unless man uses his intelligence honestly.

OE Wilson, who knows ants very well (he is also named "Ant Men"; knows indeed that ants because they are ants, are incapable of being intelligent, they are honest by nature. That is not enough to spare them total extermination wars. Man is not always honest, he is intelligent by nature: will he be intelligent and honest enough today to honestly ask intelligent questions and intelligently give honest answers; that would spare Europe and the rest of the world!

Our duty as Scientists is to understand and explain away from any emotion, excess, and/or activism; The media and political authorities around the world are doing it very well and they are playing their part. And I'm not sure that some slip-ups or excesses helped get rid of this nightmare now. Europe (including Russia and other satellites from the former Soviet Union) is taking great steps backward and veiling its face so as not to admit that all of Europe is the turkey of the farce. De Gaulle very early, and even Mitterrand later with Vedrine in particular, understood the geostrategic stakes but after that, it is the decline, in the whole of Europe (including Russia and other satellites of the former Soviet Union), where an entertained irresistible wind of nationalism is blowing which recalls obscure episodes of its ancient and contemporary history. That's said once more I am convinced that we Scholars because we are Scholars, have to speak honestly the truth, It is our duty, and in this respect more than at any time since WWII we have to be intelligent and honest enough to honestly ask intelligent questions and intelligently give honest answers; that would spare Europe and the rest of the world!

It is deplorable to note that certain RG contributors on certain RG threads are taking speeches that advocate banning science and technology & returning to nature, going so far as to call for the banning of conventional medicine and advising a return to ancestral therapeutic methods and means. That these contributors use whatever ancestral medicine they want is their right, but they have no right to mislead readers into pseudo-scientific discourse. Moreover, they must assume the ethical responsibility for what they announce. Suppose, for example, that some of their followers take their point of view and refuse to seek treatment from conventional medicine. And because of that, they die! Would they feel responsible? What they are advocating should in no case have a place within a scientific portal intended for research.

An old proverb says "In the tongue, there is no bone" So to say that is easy to speak. The point is one, and scholars, in particular, have to assume ethical responsibility for what they are saying. For my part, if I advocated a discourse without risk for me and for my family but which could cause disasters for others, disasters that could have been avoided with the help of different discourses, perhaps more honest and more intelligent, I would feel not only guilty but responsible for all the unnecessary suffering my speech would have caused.

On Right to Abortion: Far from any moral and even less religious interpretation of the issue of abortion, (religion comes under the principle of "freedom of conscience" absolute "human right"); one of the rational and objective questions that deserve to be addressed before discussing the right to abortion could be: Do we have the right to give birth (to give life to a child) without being sure of being able to give him love? Love should be understood as the minimum AFFECTION requirement that a human being should have to build himself.

An interesting paper by Zohar Lederman et al. (2022), Rambam Health Care Campus, Haifa, Israel. Responsibility and vaccine nationalism in the Israeli‐Palestinian conflict. Developing World Bioethics. "Abstract: In this article we articulate a case from moral responsibility to assist Palestinians living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). We contextualize this responsibility by focusing on access to healthcare and the provision of vaccines against COVID-19. We specifically present two arguments from responsibility, one that is global or cosmopolitan, and one that is country-specific. For the latter, we focus on Israel.

INTRODUCTION “Every day a person is born in Gaza into an open-air prison, in the West Bank without civil rights, in Israel with an inferior status by law, and in neighboring countries effectively condemned to lifelong refugee status, like their parents and grandparents before them, solely because they are Palestinian and not Jewish.”1COVID-19 has revealed and emphasized great health injustices, both within and between countries.2 Access to vaccines is a case in point. Vaccine nationalism, a form of moral partiality, is generally considered to be morally unjustified by bioethicists. Treating vaccines as a national rather than a global resource, and allowing countries to prioritize their own citizens over citizens of other countries seems intuitively unjust, and authors have either opposed it3 or reluctantly allowed it.4 Only a few authors have advocated for a limited form of vaccine nationalism that is morally justified.5....." Read more on:

Article Responsibility and vaccine nationalism in the Israeli‐Palest...

1Human Rights Watch. (2021). A threshold crossed. Israeli authorities and the crimes of apartheid and persecution. pp. 21. Retrieved November 29, 2021, from https://www.hrw. org/news/2021/04/27/abusive-israeli-policies-constitute-crimes-apartheid-persecution#

2 Lederman, Z. (2021). Covid‐19: Medical, social and psychological aspects. eLS. https://doi. org/10.1002/9780470015902.a0029275

3 Lederman, Z., Hassoun, N., & Eckenwiler, L. (2020). Just international allocation of Covid‐19 vaccines.

Haaretz; Hassoun, N. (2021). Against vaccine nationalism. Journal of Medical Ethics, 47(11), 773‐774. https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2020-107193;

Herlitz, A., Lederman, Z., Miller, J., Fleurbaey, M., Venkatapuram, S., Atuire, C., Eckenwiler, L., & Hassoun, N. (2021). Just allocation of COVID‐19 vaccines. BMJ Global Health, 6(2), e004812;

Jecker, N., & Atuire, C. (2021). Out of Africa: A solidarity‐based approach to vaccine allocation. Hastings Center Report, 51(3), 27‐36;

Beaton, E., Gadomski, M., Manson, D., & Tan, K. C. (2021). Crisis nationalism: To what degree is national partiality justifiable during a global pandemic? Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 24, 285‐300. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-021-10160-0

4 Emanuel, E. J., Persad, G., Kern, A., Buchanan, A., Fabre, C., Halliday, D., Heath, J., Herzog, L., Leland, R. J., Lemango, E. T., Luna, F., McCoy, M. S., Norheim, O. F., Ottersen, T., Schaefer, G. O., Tan, K.‐C., Wellman, C. H., Wolff, J., & Richardson, H. S. (2020). An ethical framework for global vaccine allocation. Science, 369, 1309‐1312.

5 Ferguson, K., & Caplan, A. (2020). Love thy neighbour? Allocating vaccines in a world of competing obligations. Journal of Medical Ethics, 47, e20. https://doi.org/10.1136/ medethics-2020-106887;

Ferguson, K., & Caplan, A. (2021). Phantom premise and a shape‐shifting ism: reply to Hassoun. Journal of Medical Ethics, 47, 775‐776. https://doi.org/ 10.1136/medethics-2021-107404

Pic de la Mirandole's idea of Humanism, like that of Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism, assumes that the fundamental difference between animals and human beings lies in the ability of the latter to tear themselves away from nature; which confers on its historicity formalized moreover by Hegel. Since the animal cannot tear itself away from its animal nature, it has no historicity. One can wonder if the animal has a conscience and how much one can even consider that it has one, this one would be frozen in time.

Honesty is one of the Human Values. How can one honestly advocate and/or defend any universal value when he admits there can be any differentiation between humans? IMHO any other talk can only be an unbearable injustice. Justice is another Fundamental Human Value. Barack Obama explained with emotion [1] “When Trayvon Martin was killed, I said he could have been my son. In other words, Trayvon Martin could have been me thirty-five years ago... Few African Americans have not experienced being followed while shopping in a department store. I too have experienced this... Few African Americans have not had the experience of riding the elevator and seeing a woman nervously clutching her purse and holding her breath until she can get out,” (Own traduction from French)

[1] Black anger and “racial destinies” post-Obama, Claire Mestre, Marie Rose Moro In L'Autre Volume 18, Issue 1, 2017, pages 5 to 8

“Agapè” embodies the deepest Catholic thought in its theological and philosophical dimensions. A part of the religious understanding (which comes under the Freedom of Conscience Principle), one many consider the philosophical meaning of love in all its forms: in this regard, “Agapè” would be the pinnacle. Personally, the text that has marked me the most is that of Albert Cohen, a Jew, who by compassion identifies himself with one of the executioners of his people, Pierre Laval, President of the Council of Ministers of France during the occupation. Albert Cohen wrote: "I imagine him (Pierre Laval), I know him and I strangely become him, poor villain, greedy for ephemeral power. Yes, he was a militia leader and a servant of the Nazis, yes, he harmed my Jewish brothers, he scared my mother, and he sent children to their deaths guilty of being born of my people. Yes, when he was powerful and evil, he deserved death, a quick and painless death. But now he is abandoned by everyone and reviled, he is in a prison, and he has pain, he has asthma pain in his chest and, in a strange way, in my chest. He suffers and I see him defeated. I see his defeated face, his sick and degraded face of a lost man, and who knows it. I know him, and I am him by the strangeness of identification. I am him, and he is no longer a former minister, but an unfortunate and myself, and suddenly it hurts that the prisoner Laval is in pain (…) How then not to forgive this unfortunate man suddenly so close, suddenly my fellow" ? (p.1189-90 The Pleiade) , (Own Translation from French)

The separation between Beliefs (religions and other mystical convictions) and the State (in its political sense) is objective in that personal convictions are personal while the State, Laws.. are public things. The same goes for the objective separation between Science (which is universal) and Individual Beliefs, convictions, and political engagements. The values enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1949 are therefore universal values that constitute the foundations of a form of universal morality. Anything outside of that comes under the principle of "freedom of conscience" (liberté de conscience): a strictly individual or community liberty consecrated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In this respect, we can read in[1] "Keith Ward claims that the birthday of the secular state can be precisely dated to 1789 – not to the great French Revolution of that year, with its notoriously anti-clerical antecedents – but to the political arrangements set in place following the American Revolution. 'In 1789 the American Revolution introduced to the world in a formal way the idea of a secular state. The first Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America drafted two years later, laid down that there would be “no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”[2].

[1] Madeley, J. Unequally Yoked: The Antinomies of Church–State Separation in Europe and the USA. Eur Polit Sci 8, 273–288 (2009).

[2] Ward, K.: Religion and Community, Oxford: Clarendon Press (2000).

Hilary Putnam Paradox (the bomb). "Hilary Putnam has devised a bomb that threatens to devastate the realist philosophy we know and love. 1 He explains how he has learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. He welcomes the new order that it would bring. (RT&H, Preface) But we who still live in the target area do not agree. The bomb must be banned....

Putnam's thesis is incredible. We are in the presence of paradox, as surely as when we meet the man who offers us a proof that there are no people, and in particular that he himself does not exist. 3 It is out of the question to follow the argument where it leads. We know in advance that there is something wrong, and the challenge is to find out where. If the paradox-monger is good at his work, we stand to learn something; and indeed, I think that Putnam's paradox affords an important lesson...". Excerpts from the introduction of the paper (around 1.1k citations)

Lewis, D. (1984). Putnam's paradox. Australasian journal of philosophy, 62(3), 221-236. Available on:

https://andrewmbailey.com/dkl/Putnams_Paradox.pdf

In the same vein as the previous post: The Liar Paradox. "Thomas Bradwardine was born shortly before the start of the fourteenth century. While at Merton College in Oxford in the 1320s, .., who first came upon something of value concerning the insoluble.... The insolubles are paradoxes or antinomies of language, perhaps most famously expressed in the Liar Paradox: ‘What I am saying is false’... The problem with a proposition like ‘What I am saying is false’, is that we appear to be able to show not only that it is false, but that, in consequence, it is true as well. Briefly, if it were true that what I was saying was false, it would be false and so not true, hence (assuming it must be either true or false) it is false. But if what I was saying was false, then what I said was true, as well as false. If we think to avoid this contradiction by suggesting that what I said was neither true nor false, the revenge problem hits back through the alternative paradox: ‘What I am saying is not true’.7 The same reductio proof shows that it is not true. The problem for truth-value gap theorists is to explain why I did not speak truly when I anticipated them and said: ‘What I am saying is not true’...." Excerpts from the introduction of the paper (around 1.1k citations)

Read, S. (2002). The liar paradox from John Buridan back to Thomas Bradwardine. Vivarium, 40(2), 189-218.. Available on: https://www.academia.edu/download/8410440/read-bradwardine.pdf

Ku Klux Klan and Conceptualization of Insurgencies. Excerpts from Zilvar, 2021 [1] "... Although definitions of insurgencies differ, they can be conceptualized as:

• Organizations deliberately exploiting cultural, economic, ethnic/racial, or religious grievances that produce cleavages in societies;

• opposing existing status quo represented by a ruling party, social order, or religious majority;

• pursuing a statehood with a desire to govern over the claimed territory;

• willing to engage in violent clashes predominantly with governments;

• with an organizational structure that is either hierarchical or leaderless with shared goal/ideology.

Other theoretical approaches might have been employed, however, for purposes of this article debated concepts were sufficient. It examines the contemporary Ku Klux Klan, therefore, no deep correlation can be expected like in cases of Boko Haram or Taliban. Moreover, all five defining elements of insurgencies are later used as assessment parameters that indicate commonalities between them and the contemporary Ku Klux Klan..."

[1] Zilvar, M. (2021). The Contemporary Ku Klux Klan as an Insurgency. Security Theory and Practice, 2-16.

The article is Available on:

https://veda.polac.cz/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/The-Contemporary-Ku-Klux-Klan-as-an-Insurgency.pdf

See also:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Science_and_history_serving_political_and_ideological_totalitarianism

This is a valuable article [1] on the famous book of Victor Hugo "Les misérables" by Fortin (2022) "Revolution of Faith in Les Misérables: The Journey from Misery to Mercy in the Secular Age". One may read there: " With Les Misérables, Victor Hugo intended to provide a remedy for human ignorance and misery. Recasting the Christian way of life in terms of conscience, history, and progress, Les Misérables proposes a unique transposition of moral theology into the context of secular nineteenth-century France. The Christian vision has yet to redefine European values and society for the better. Hugo wishes to reform society, religion, and humanity to foster a communal harmony embracing diversity and transcending political, cultural, and religious conflicts. Reflecting its exiled author’s processing of the collapse of the second Republic, Les Misérables takes account of the serious obstacles to moral, spiritual, and social progress that are ignorance (lack of access to education), poverty (human-induced economic and spiritual misery), and criminality (habitual evil). Hugo struggles to keep his vision of a democratic society alive. At stake is the possibility of social-political and moral-spiritual reform empowering the people to take charge of its destiny. Hugo comes to terms with the fact that revolutions do not affect lasting positive social change, rather the opposite".

[1] Fortin, J. P. (2022). Revolution of Faith in Les Misérables: The Journey from Misery to Mercy in the Secular Age. Journal of Moral Theology, 11(1), 131-153.

Available on:

https://jmt.scholasticahq.com/article/31677.pdf

Dignity and Revolution. The "Enough!" ("¡Ya Basta!") proclaimed by the Zapatistas on the first day of 1994 was the cry of dignity [1]. Likewise in Tunisia, on January 14, 2011, the people stood up to shout "Get out!" ("Dégage!") slogan of what the people called in its constitution the "Revolt of Freedom and Dignity" and what the world has, wrongly, referred as "Revolt of Jasmine”, the prelude to what was called “Arab Spring”.

The loss of “Dignity” is, among all attacks on a human person, the strongest, the most intolerable, the most buried in the depths of oppressed souls. The desire to restore “Dignity” creates a groundswell, always devastating: what will happen afterward is not important and does not come into play.

What is happening today, little everywhere in the world, is just a repetition of History. "Those who don't remember history are condemned to repeat it" Said, George Orwell.

[1] Holloway, J. (2018). Dignity's revolt (pp. pp-159). PM Press. Available on:

http://cril.mitotedigital.org/sites/default/files/content/zap-dignitys_revolt-holloway.pdf

In line with my previous post. The chapter [1] mentioned above explains what it means to put dignity first in order to live a human life against and in an inhumane society. This is precisely the leitmotif of oppositional thought, at the heart of the struggle of millions of people all over the world. One may read within the Chapter [1] "Dignity, the refusal to accept humiliation and dehumanization, the refusal to conform: dignity is the core of the Zapatistas ' revolution of revolution. The idea of dignity has not been invented by the Zapatistas, but they have given it a prominence that it has never before possessed in revolutionary thought. When the Zapatistas rose, they planted the flag of dignity not just in the center of the uprising in Chiapas, but in the center of oppositional thought. Dignity is not peculiar to the indigenous peoples of the southeast of Mexico: the struggle to convert 'dignity and rebellion into freedom and dignity' (an odd but important formulation) is the struggle of (and for) human existence in an oppressive society, as relevant to life in Edinburgh, Athens, Tokyo, Los Angeles or Johannesburg as it is to the struggles of the people of the Lacandon Jungle."

[1] Holloway, J. (2018). Dignity's revolt (pp. pp-159). PM Press. Available on:

http://cril.mitotedigital.org/sites/default/files/content/zap-dignitys_revolt-holloway.pdf

See also:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/France-Africa_France-USA_Je_taime_moi_non_plus/2

Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd. In the middle of war Albert Camus published 'Le Mythe de Sisyphe" (The Myth of Sisyphus) (Gallimard, 1942). Within, Albert Camus utters a sentence, which has since become a famous quote “There is only one really serious philosophical problem: it is suicide". Albert Camus continues: “To judge that life is or is not worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy". (Own translation). Comment: To seek meaning in absurdity is to give meaning to life. And only for this reason, life should be worth living!

This research returns to a serious reality: Physicians are more likely to die by suicide than the general population "Ventriglio, A., Watson, C., & Bhugra, D. (2020). Suicide among doctors: A narrative review. Indian journal of psychiatry, 62(2), 114." Available on:

Article Suicide among doctors: A narrative review

One may read within the conclusion: “There is no doubt that because of their age, pressures especially related to the work environment, increasing managerialism, changing patient and societal expectations doctors are under increasing pressure. The vulnerability is important to recognize. It is important that in early stages of training doctors get more support which can be tailored according to need. This may reflect in development of symptoms of burnout, depression, suicidal ideation or other disorders. It is important that early diagnosis and early intervention are available because the loss of life can create major burden on healthcare systems.”

"The term “conscience” translates the Latin “conscientia”, which refers to sharing “knowledge” (scientia) “with” (con-), and which in turns translates the equivalent Greek term suneidenai (see Pierce 1955 and Sorabji 2014 for an etymological analysis of the term). The literal meaning of the term does not specify the type of knowledge involved and whom that knowledge is shared with. However, the concept has traditionally been used to refer to moral knowledge (we talk indifferently of conscience and moral conscience) that is shared with oneself. This reference to the self does not rule out that the source of the morality in question be external to the self. ... Reference to the self indicates that, from a psychological point of view, conscience involves introspection, awareness of one’s behavior, and self-assessment..."

Excerpt from: " Conscience (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conscience/ 1/16, First published Mar 14, 2016

Abstract:

This entry will expound the main features of the notion of conscience as it is used in philosophical discussion, religious teaching and in common language alike. The perspective adopted here will be theoretical, rather than historical. The entry focuses on the Western tradition and some examples are drawn from Christian sources. The entry is structured around four possible, but not mutually exclusive, ways of conceptualizing conscience. These will be preceded by an introductory section outlining the pluralistic, morally neutral and subjective nature of the concept of conscience. The four main aspects of conscience that will be described are the following. Section 2 discusses conscience as a faculty for self-knowledge and self-assessment. Section 3 presents the epistemic aspect of conscience that allows the formation of moral beliefs, distinguishing the different possible sources of moral principles that inform such beliefs. In section 4, conscience will be described as a motivational force or as the source of our sense of duty, which already presupposes a body of moral knowledge or of moral beliefs. Finally, section 5 will focus on conscience understood as the body of personal core and self-identifying moral beliefs which is often taken to be the basis of moral integrity (Fuss 1964; Wicclair 2011) and of our sense of personal identity (Childress 1979). As discussed in section 6, this last approach to conscience is often used with a political function to advocate freedom of thought and action in liberal democratic societies, for example, as explained in subsection 6.1, through conscientious objection to practices that one would otherwise be professionally or legally expected to perform.

Scientists are Humans with their "Egos" and their "Sad Passions" (or happy ones for that matter). The fact remains that "Scientists" who are not capable of distinguishing between personal questions (which relate to individual freedom) and questions relating to knowledge and science, which, by definition are universal, transcend the feelings and resentments of individuals, these scientists fail to follow the elementary rules of scientific rigor and integrity.

See also:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Scientific_Integrity_Research_Ethics_and_Higher_Education_Deontology_The_Senior_Scholars_Duty/37

As Uranium Depled Amunitions are being delivered to the Ukraine Army, it would be worth reading the European Parliamentary question - E-003481/2015 about "Gaza Strip, and bombs with depleted uranium", March 3, 2015. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2015-003481_EN.html One may read there "There is now enough convincing data to prove that Israel has repeatedly used depleted uranium weaponry. Such was the case in the large-scale massacre that took place in the Gaza Strip in August 2014. These weapons cause cancers and foetal malformations in the populations affected, which may take on epidemic proportions. In Iraq, in the city of Fallujah, where these bombs were launched in industrial quantities by the International Coalition led by the United States, 52% of children today are born with deformities. The lethal effects of radioactivity caused by explosions and subsequent fires, including cancer of the lungs and pleura, can persist for centuries in the environment and particularly in aquifers. We are therefore on the verge of another humanitarian catastrophe in Palestine and in particular in the Gaza Strip, where thousands of tons of depleted uranium bombs were dropped with the effects that have already been documented. In view of this situation, what is the Vice-President/High Representative thinking of doing to pressure Israel into assuming its responsibilities for this crime against humanity, and what help can the Vice-President/High Representative offer to the Palestinian authorities to carry out epidemiological monitoring, which also includes all EU citizens who have moved to the territory since then?"

See also:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/War_Peace/9

Deontology and Ethics impose on the scientific community that religion and personal beliefs, even political ones, have no "raison d'être" in academic and scientific activities, which by their very nature, that of Universal Knowledge, transcend beliefs and personal convictions. On a personal level, that of the individual, religion, and beliefs in general, come under the Principle of "Freedom of Conscience", one of the Fundamental Human Rights, inalienable by definition.

I found interesting these texts on Hypocrisy, (own translation from French): https://batinote.wordpress.com/2019/11/26/vous-meprisez-lhypocrisie-lisez-ce-texte/ "Hypocrisy is a natural feeling of the human being that is reflected as a self-defense system. It is an ungrateful feeling towards others because you wear a mask to hide your personality, ”says Dil-shaad Chaumoo, psychologist. For Sabrina Puddoo, who is also a psychologist, hypocrisy can be a one-time action or a mode of functioning of the personality that can switch into pathology. “This behavior fascinates, because it testifies to the capacity of dissimulation of the human being. But it disturbs and frightens, because it cancels all confidence and therefore all security. One explanation for this discomfort can be given in part by Maslow's Needs Scale. Indeed, this measure indicates the essential needs of the individual for him to feel good. Security and trust are part of it; yet hypocrisy prevents you from trusting the other and therefore from feeling safe,” she says. Mazarin in The Politicians' Breviary sums up, in five precepts, the essence of hypocrisy: simulate, dissimulate, trust no one, speak well of everyone, plan before you act". To understand the importance of hypocrisy in our life, it is enough to just note that it makes it possible to avoid civil war, which is not negligible but on condition of playing it well, like any good actor. To find out more, see Olivier Babeau’s excellent book: Éloge de l’hypocrisie, (but in French), available in parts on:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1u5Sr53fto9FLF06QNJoTk0kTgO7db3lk

This chapter [1] by Eslen-Ziya, H. (2022) "Knowledge, Counter-Knowledge, Pseudo-Science in Populism" starts by saying "As public irrationality, conspiracy theories, and anti-science movements are gaining momentum, we observe a “crisis of scientific truth”. It is a distrust of expertise and scientific knowledge ...". The author concludes the chapter "by arguing that the counter-knowledge linked with emotions and intergroup identities and notions of belonging replace the scientific truth"

[1] Eslen-Ziya, H. (2022). Knowledge, Counter-Knowledge, Pseudo-Science in Populism. In: Eslen–Ziya, H., Giorgi, A. (eds) Populism and Science in Europe. Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

We may wonder what to make of the results of this research released 4 days ago, "Li, Z., Gentina, E., & Maille, V. The complex relationship between creativity and consumer ethics depending on endemic corruption in emerging and developed countries. Journal of Consumer Behavior." The study considers "the mechanism through which creativity can lead to unethical behavior and focus on the role of subjective well-being. We collect data from 1463 individuals in two high-corruption and emerging countries, Brazil and China, and two low-corruption and developed countries, France and the United States. Based on a multi-level (or hierarchical) analysis, our results show that, in high-corruption countries, creativity is negatively related to unethical behaviors. Conversely, in low-corruption countries, the relationship is positive and mediated by subjective well-being".

The myth of Prometheus developed in Plato's Protagoras tells us that Prometheus understood that man without initial gifts, naked, without weapons, without any protection will have no chance of surviving in this wild world. "Prometheus begs Athena to teach him secretly, metallurgy, the arts, and agricultural techniques, and she accepts. Once there, he steals a brand of sacred fire then he offers it to men: "Here is the fire, take care of it. He will be your best protection". Zeus' anger and punishments were terrible: Pandora, the first mortal woman on Earth, is created and offered to Epimetheus (the brother of Prometheus who created man without initial gifts). Her box once opened, releases all the evils of humanity. The punishment reserved for Prometheus is crueler: "You stole the sacred fire of the Gods! ... Hephaestus, God of Fire, take Prometheus to the Caucasus Mountains and chain him to a rock! Let an eagle come and devour his liver, and let this punishment be repeated for eternity!..."

Zeus knows that man with science, arts, and technology might sin by Hubris (The summit of sin in Old Greece). But we should believe that man can't become God, Otherwise, Zeus would have prevented it.

Scientific racism, history of a misinterpretation. How was the idea of “human races” constructed and then deconstructed? Why is this outdated concept still used?, BY JULIE LACAZE Claude. Olivier Doron, historian and philosopher of science, returns for National Geographic to the historical origins and the current symbolic significance of this troubling word. Interview on: https://www.nationalgeographic.fr/sciences/le-racisme-scientifique-histoire-dun-contresens

To think of the human species in the plural is a dangerous idea, which tends to divide. However, the idea is making a strong comeback in the language of academics, and even, paradoxically, among anti-racist activists, who take up the American meaning of “race” (in the sense of “skin color”).....

Illustration: Skulls from the collection of Samuel Morton, one of the American fathers of "scientific racism", illustrate his classification of humanity into five races (fruits, according to him, of five divine decisions), which today are outdated. Left to right: Black American woman and white man, Native Mexican man, Chinese woman and Malaysian man, PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT CLARK/ UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA MUSEUM OF ARCHEOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY

See also:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Science_and_history_serving_political_and_ideological_totalitarianism

Scientific knowledge greatly broadens human consciousness.

Racism is racism and no quasi-scientific theory can justify this mess.

I enjoyed reading the research released today by our colleague João Carlos Orquiza as a Preprint [1]. I, in particular, loved the well-inspired statement, the author has put as final consideration: "In a universe ruled by the second law of thermodynamics, entropy stands as an unyielding force, representing the inherent drift towards disorder. In contrast, life, through free energy, defies this tendency, striving to maintain order and complexity. Human energy, an extension of this free energy, has become fundamental in the operations of contemporary societies". This should appeal for a "Third Principle for Free-Energy-Dynamics.

[1] Preprint The Diversion of Human Energy: How Labor Became a Commodity ...

This topic interacts with this discussion. Thank you Jamel Chahed.