Developmental Level of Moral Judgment Influences Behavioral Patterns during Moral Decision-making

We developed and tested a behavioral version of the Defining Issues Test-1 revised (DIT-1r), which is a measure of the development of moral judgment. We conducted a behavioral experiment using the behavioral Defining Issues Test (bDIT) to examine the relationship between participants’ moral developmental status, moral competence, and reaction time when making moral judgments. We found that when the judgments were made based on the preferred moral schema, the reaction time for moral judgments was significantly moderated by the moral developmental status. In addition, as a participant becomes more confident with moral judgment, the participant differentiates the preferred versus other schemas better particularly when the participant’s abilities for moral judgment are more developed

“Euro-Bonds” The Ruiz Zambrano judgment or the Real Invention of EU Citizenship

[Description: This paper aims to provide a brief analysis of the Ruiz Zambrano judgment (Case C-34/09). Traditionally, the EU citizenship has been mainly construed as a status of integration into the Member States of the Union: a status of transnational integration. The basic claim developed in these pages is that, with Zambrano, the EUCJ moved away from a concept of transnational integration to one of genuine European integration, thus fostering a new vision, based on the existence of Euro-bonds.

アクティブ・ラーニングに関する群馬高専の現状と取り組み

Due to the accelerated progress of knowledge and information technology, as typified by artificial intelligence, education is required to acquire knowledge and skills; yet concurrently, cultivating the abilities of thought, judgment, and expression is necessary as well, and "deep learning" and "active learning" have attracted much attention in school education. The National Institute of Technology clearly stated the promotion of active learning using information and communication technology in the plan of 2014 of the 3rd Medium Term Plan. In response to this, the Education and Research Committee at the National Institute of Technology, Gunma College commenced efforts toward introducing active learning in 2014. In this review, we will compile the results of initiatives to introduce active learning in the past five years, hoping to present future guidelines. In Chapter 2, we reviewed the policy on active learning promoted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and described the status of active learning introduction at elementary and junior high school, high school, and college and university levels. In Chapters 3 and 4, based on a questionnaire survey, we reported on the current situation of our school about the educational method in which students actively learn

The Reliable Application of Fingerprint Evidence

In November 2017, a state appellate court did something almost unprecedented: It held that a trial judge made an error by admitting testimony on latent fingerprinting. In State v. McPhaul, the North Carolina appellate panel found error in admitting expert testimony, based on the lack of evidence that the expert reliably reached conclusions about the fingerprint evidence. The panel did not reverse the defendant\u27s conviction, however, finding the error to be harmless. The ruling has broader significance for as-applied challenges to the forensic testimony commonly used in criminal cases, in which judges have often not carefully examined reliability either for many forensic methods in general, or how they are applied in a given case. Many forensic techniques rely on the subjective judgment of an expert, who may not be able to fully explain how they concluded that a fingerprint, ballistics, or other types of pattern evidence is a match, except to cite to their own judgment and experience. In this essay, I describe the scientific status of fingerprint evidence, the facts and the judicial reasoning in McPhaul, and the implications of the decision. This sleeper ruling should awaken interest in the reliable application of forensic methods in individual cases

Rational a priori or Emotional a priori? Husserl and Scheler’s Criticisms of Kant Regarding the Foundation of Ethics

Based on the dispute between Protagoras and Socrates on the origin of ethics, one can ask the question of whether the principle of ethics is reason orfeeling/emotion, or whether ethics is grounded on reason or feeling/emotion. The development of Kant’s thoughts on ethics shows the tension between reason and feeling/emotion. In Kant’s final critical ethics, he held to a principle of “rational a priori.” On the one hand, this is presented as the rational a priori principle being the binding principle of judgment. On the other hand, it is presented as the doctrine of “rational fact” as the ultimate argument of his ethics. Husserl believed that Kant’s doctrine of a rational a priori totally disregarded the a priori essential laws of feeling. Like Husserl, Scheler criticized Kant’s doctrine of a rational a priori, and therefore developed his own theory of an “emotional a priori”. Both of them focused their critiques on the grounding level of ethics. Scheler, however, did not follow Husserl all the way, but criticized him and reflected on his thoughts. At last, he revealed the primary status of a phenomenological material ethics of value

Presidential Constitutionalism and Civil Rights

As the judicial and legislative branches have taken a more passive approach to civil rights enforcement, the President’s exercise of independent, extrajudicial constitutional judgment has become increasingly important. Modern U.S. presidents have advanced constitutional interpretations on matters of race, gender, HIV-status, self-incrimination, reproductive liberty, and gun rights, and President Obama has been especially active in promoting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons — most famously by refusing to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Commentators have criticized the President’s refusal to defend DOMA from numerous perspectives but have not considered how the President’s DOMA policy fits within a principled commitment to LGBT equality that includes supporting and signing legislation, pursuing regulatory initiatives, filing complaints and other court papers, making formal and informal choices in law enforcement, and using the bully pulpit to sway public opinion. The President’s nondefense of DOMA not only derives normative force from his larger vision regarding substantive equality and individual rights, but it also demonstrates how certain features of the presidency — including accountability and expertise — can be instrumental in promoting equality-based claims. In this way, presidential constitutionalism can engage coordinate institutions — including the Supreme Court — in the development of constitutional law

Variations in judgments of intentional action and moral evaluation across eight cultures

Individuals tend to judge bad side effects as more intentional than good side effects (the Knobe or side- effect effect). Here, we assessed how widespread these findings are by testing eleven adult cohorts of eight highly contrasted cultures on their attributions of intentional action as well as ratings of blame and praise. We found limited generalizability of the original side-effect effect, and even a reversal of the effect in two rural, traditional cultures (Samoa and Vanuatu) where participants were more likely to judge the good side effect as intentional. Three follow-up experiments indicate that this reversal of the side-effect effect is not due to semantics and may be linked to the perception of the status of the protagonist. These results highlight the importance of factoring cultural context in our understanding of moral cognition

Comparing linguistic judgments and corpus frequencies as windows on grammatical competence: A study of argument linearization in German clauses

We present an overview of several corpus studies we carried out into the frequencies of argument NP orderings in the midfield of subordinate and main clauses of German. Comparing the corpus frequencies with grammaticality ratings published by Keller’s (2000), we observe a “grammaticality–frequency gap”: Quite a few argument orderings with zero corpus frequency are nevertheless assigned medium–range grammaticality ratings. We propose an explanation in terms of a two-factor theory. First, we hypothesize that the grammatical induction component needs a sufficient number of exposures to a syntactic pattern to incorporate it into its repertoire of more or less stable rules of grammar. Moderately to highly frequent argument NP orderings are likely have attained this status, but not their zero-frequency counterparts. This is why the latter argument sequences cannot be produced by the grammatical encoder and are absent from the corpora. Secondly, we assumed that an extraneous (nonlinguistic) judgment process biases the ratings of moderately grammatical linear order patterns: Confronted with such structures, the informants produce their own “ideal delivery” variant of the to-be-rated target sentence and evaluate the similarity between the two versions. A high similarity score yielded by this judgment then exerts a positive bias on the grammaticality rating—a score that should not be mistaken for an authentic grammaticality rating. We conclude that, at least in the linearization domain studied here, the goal of gaining a clear view of the internal grammar of language users is best served by a combined strategy in which grammar rules are founded on structures that elicit moderate to high grammaticality ratings and attain at least moderate usage frequencies

Two means two, but must does not mean must:an analysis of recent decisions on the conditions for parental orders in surrogacy

This article examines the High Court decisions in Re Z (A Child) (Surrogate Father: Parental Order) [2017] 1 FLR 472 and Re X (A Child) (Parental Order: Time Limit) [2015] 1 FLR 349, which concerned two of the conditions for the granting of ‘parental orders’ after surrogacy in section 54 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008. The article observes that the strict approach employed in Re Z to the interpretation of the requirement that an application be made by ‘two people’ in section 54 (1), contrasts with the ‘liberal’ approach taken in previous cases, including Re X, concerning the six month ‘time limit’ during which applications ‘must’ be made in section 54 (3). This article suggests that the judgments do not fully engage with this divergence, instead presenting the different approaches as an uncontroversial matter of statutory interpretation. The article argues that these different outcomes can be explained by the continuing policy significance of the two-parent model within the attribution of legal parenthood in cases of assisted reproduction. The article concludes that the contrasting and contradictory reasoning of these decisions illustrates the need for wholesale legislative reforms of surrogacy arrangements