Moral Objectivism in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Moral psychologists have recently turned their attention to the study of folk metaethical beliefs. We report the results of a cross-cultural study using Chinese, Polish, and Ecuadorian participants that seeks to advance this line of investigation. Individuals in all three demographic groups were observed to attribute objectivity to ethical statements in very similar patterns. Differences in participants’ strength of opinion about an issue, the level of societal agreement or disagreement about an issue, and participants’ age were found to significantly affect their inclination to view the truth of an ethical statement as a matter of objective fact. Implications for theorizing about folk morality are discussed.

Moral Objectivism in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Moral psychologists have recently turned their attention to the study of folk metaethical beliefs. We report the results of a cross-cultural study using Chinese, Polish and Ecuadorian participants that seeks to advance this line of investigation. Individuals in all three demographic groups were observed to attribute objectivity to ethical statements in very similar patterns. Differences in participants’ strength of opinion about an issue, the level of societal agreement or disagreement about an issue, and participants’ age were found to significantly affect their inclination to view the truth of an ethical statement as a matter of objective fact. Implications for theorizing about folk morality are discussed.

Ethics and Time: After the Anthropocene

This “treatise” on ethics and literary practice is a self-reflective piece that argues and enacts ethical criticism through poetic form as well as content. That is, I deliberately employ poetry not only as a literary genre but also as rhetorical arguments—investigative, demonstrative, and evidentiary—and as forms of ethical action. The two previously unpublished poems here are drawn from a larger, lyrical discourse sequence tentatively entitled “Heidegger, Ethics, and Time: After the Anthropocene.” The “poetic arguments,” then, concern the possible interrelations and effects of time and ethics within the philosophical context of post-human “being” collectively, and also of personal death as a shared event. There are a couple of famous theories of time and ethics that ebb and flow within the different formal abridgements of time in these two poems. One set of theories is expounded in Martin Heidegger’s major work, Being and Time, as well as many of his other treatises on language, poetry, and ethics. Another set of theories is founded in Emmanuel Levinas’ work on time and alterity. But unlike these philosophies, the two poems here deal in detail with (1) the potential particularities of lived sensation and feeling (2) as they might be experienced by sentient and non-sentient ‘being’ (3) that survive death—of our species (poem II) and/or individual death (poem III). However, rather than simply rehearsing philosophy or recasting it into poetic form, these two poems argue for and against the notion that time is a physical and thus materially moral absolute, necessary for any (conscious) life to exist at all; and these two poems also argue physically, through their structure and style. They argue that physical dimension of time is not only a material force that is “unkind to material things” (aging, decay), as articulated in the content of one poem for example, but also a moral force that is revealed and played against in the constricted temporal motion and music of the poems (i.e., their forms, and variations within). In addition to philosophical arguments that poetry by its nature deliberately leaves ambiguous (indeterminate, but also will-free), the aural, temporal forms of the poems themselves flow in or move through but also reshape time. A simple instance of this is the way meter and rhyme are activated by time, yet also transform time, pushing back against its otherwise unmarked inexorable ineffable… The temporal properties of poetic forms in conjunction with content therefore constitute “lyrical ethics” in literary practice. Thinking (and putting aside as well) Heidegger and Levinas, these poems as temporal forms may physically shift, even if only momentarily, the relation of the listener or reader to Being/Death, or Alterity/Other. For example, the enhanced villanelle and modified Spenserian stanza offered here each shapes time differently, and thus differently shapes the intuitive, affective, cognitive responses of readers. With its cyclical repetition of lines, usually over five tercets and a quatrain, the villanelle with every advancing stanza physically ‘throws’ time (the concept and the line) back on itself (or perhaps is “thrown forward” [Geworfen]). In contrast, the pattern of the Spenserian nine-line stanza allows time to hover around a still but outward-expanding point (like a partial mini-[uni]verse) before drifting to the next stanza (especially here, where the final rhyme at the end of each stanza is much delayed.). Within and without the context of Heidegger and Levinas, I assert that these structural features are ethical statements in literary practice. The choice of these traditional forms of poetry in itself is an ethical statement. Stylistically as well as thematically, these two poems argue “all sides” of ethical positions in relation to the end of being human. Perhaps more importantly, these two poems explore the inevitably human experience of philosophically different ethical positions on death “post anthropocentrically”—what might come in the rhetorical after we can never know except poetically.

Adherence to ARRIVE guidelines in animal research articles published in a National and International Pharmacology Journal

Background: This study compares the adherence to Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines in an Indian (IJP: Indian Journal of Pharmacology) and International journal (JPET: Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics).Methods: All original animal studies published in IJP and JPET between January 2014 and September 2015 were downloaded manually and 100 articles were randomly chosen from each journal and analyzed using the ARRIVE guidelines checklist and checked for adherence.Results: Most articles indicated the ethical statement (IJP- 96%, JPET- 98%). Steps taken to minimize effects of subjective bias in the study design were not mentioned in more than half the articles (IJP-50%, JPET-37%). Details of experimental animals were not adequately reported (IJP- 79%, JPET-68%). Details of animal housing (IJP-20%, JPET-39%) and husbandry (IJP-59%, JPET-51%) were poorly reported. Explanation of sample size calculation was mentioned in 2% and 1% articles in IJP and JPET. Statistical methods were well explained, yet the methods used to assess whether the data met the assumptions of the statistical approach was poorly reported.Conclusions: The present study demonstrates relatively suboptimal reporting standards in animal studies published in IJP and JPET. Adherence to ARRIVE guidelines can be improved.

Moral Objectivism in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Moral psychologists have recently turned their attention to the study of folk metaethical beliefs. We report the results of a cross-cultural study using Chinese, Polish and Ecuadorian participants that seeks to advance this line of investigation. Individuals in all three demographic groups were observed to attribute objectivity to ethical statements in very similar patterns. Differences in participants’ strength of opinion about an issue, the level of societal agreement or disagreement about an issue, and participants’ age were found to significantly affect their inclination to view the truth of an ethical statement as a matter of objective fact. Implications for theorizing about folk morality are discussed.

Toward An Ethical Code in Bible Translation Consulting

One of the great unknowns remaining in Bible translation projects is a formal understanding of the ethical foundations needed for the consulting task. Although this is also true for consultants in anthropology, linguistics and related disciplines, the focus of this article will be on translation consulting. Ethical standards in Bible translation projects must also be examined regarding the translation team and other parties involved, but this article will focus on the consultant. To whom are consultants responsible? Is it to the initiating institution or organization, to the individual’s or a people group’s conscience, to God, to the translation team, or to the translation project? How do all parties know about their ethics? And, at the very least, how do the parties involved handle ethical considerations, such as disagreement, mutual aversion, rejection or cross-cultural differences? Because there is a void in this area, consultants and others involved often experience misunderstanding and distrust, and thus the quality of the Bible translation or the consulted product is at risk. This is caused by cross-cultural issues, divergent expectations about translation issues, vague job descriptions and understanding, lack of frameworks and planning, etc. Some of the difficulties that Bible translation projects face, and how these challenges could be overcome, will be addressed. The term “loyalty,” borrowed from functional translation approaches, will be introduced to the process of Bible translation consulting. Finally, a proposal toward an ethical statement of standards for consultants will be drafted.