The question of the universality of human rights has much in common with the question of the universality of ethics. In the form of a multidisciplinary reflexive survey, the aim of this article is to show how human rights discourses derive from more basic principles related to basic needs. These needs are the universal grammar for moral principles, which will be distinguished from ethical norms...

Gillon outlines the principles of the deontological, or duty-based, group of moral theories in one of a series of British Medical Journal articles on the philosophical foundations of medical ethics. He differentiates between monistic theories, such as Immanuel Kant's, which rely on a single moral principle, and pluralistic theories, such as that of W.D. Ross, which rely on several principles t...

Abstract The article compares three influential theories used in sociology and psychology to categorize types of morality—Luc Boltanski & Laurent Thévenot’s justification theory , Shalom H. Schwartz’s basic human values Jonathan Haidt’s moral foundations —to simplify the complexity presented by different categorizations, while retaining necessary nuance, translate concepts each into languag...

We present kinematic measurements of the thick and thin disks in two edge-on galaxies. We have derived stellar rotation curves at and above the galaxies’ midplanes using Ca ii triplet features measured with the GMOS spectrograph on Gemini North. In one galaxy, FGC 1415, the kinematics above the plane show clear rotation that lags that of the midplane by ∼20-50%, similar to the behavior seen in ...

We derive age-metallicity relations (AMRs) and orbital parameters for the 1658 solar neighbourhood stars to which accurate distances are measured by the HIPPARCOS satellite. The sample stars comprise 1382 thin disc stars, 229 thick disc stars, and 47 halo stars according to their orbital parameters. We find a considerable scatter for thin disc AMR along the one-zone Galactic chemical evolution ...

Political philosophy seeks to justify principles of social justice. How should it go about that task? One answer, what may be called the practice-based method of justification, is that we are to justify principles, by moral reasoning, both for and from a social practice, which we identify by way of social interpretation. The approach contrasts, on the one hand, with what might be called pure so...

This paper examines whether the modern bioethical principles of respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice proposed by Beauchamp and Childress are existent in, compatible with, or acceptable to the leading Chinese moral philosophy-the ethics of Confucius. The author concludes that the moral values which the four prima facie principles uphold are expressly identifiable in Co...