Morality and philanthropy

Samuel Lipman is publisher of The New Criterionand music critic for Commentary.He has written widely on classical music as well as on contemporary painting.     

A comparison of the self-image of talented teenagers with a normal adolescent population

The self-image of a group of 177 adolescents talented in one of five areas — mathematics, science, music, athletics, and art — was compared to that of a normal group of teenagers, using the Offer Self-Image Questionnaire for Adolescents (OSIQ). In addition, correlations between the talented OSIQ scores and instructor ratings of engagement and aptitude in the talent area was obtained. The findings indicate that talented adolescents educated in a normal high school setting evidence patterns of self-image and esteem very similar to their more average peers. The talented teenagers, however, also report considerable uncertainty involving issues of sexual and social competence. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for later patterns of talent development.This study is part of a longitudinal study of talented adolescents supported in full by a grant from the Spencer Foundation.Research interests include adolescent self-concept and the psychology of challenging experience.Research interests include the psychology of adolescence and the study of optimal experience, creativity, and intrinsic motivation.     

Selling Oneself into Slavery: Mill and Paternalism

'Voluntarily acceding to slavery', Joel Feinberg has written, 'is too much for Mill to stomach', and so Mill espouses strong paternalism and contradicts his famous principle of individual sovereignty. Mill's critics have found incoherence where none exists, largely because they have failed to take seriously his own claim that the non- enforcement of slavery contracts is required by the principle of liberty. The refusal to enforce such contracts arises not from Mill's espousal of paternalism, but from the paradox of sovereignty. Reconstruction of Mill's solution to this paradox not only dispels the charge that he abandoned the sovereignty of the individual, but also contributes to the reinterpretation of his defence of freedom, as a result of which his entire doctrine of antipaternalism emerges as a coherent and defensible position.     

The efficiency of the demarking point of the femoral head as a sex determining parameter

The percentage of skeletal remains that can be sexed depends on the degree of completeness of the skeleton, the parameters that are used and the type of statistical analysis that is done. The objective of the present study was to assess the accuracy of the demarking point in sexing the femur of South African whites and blacks. One hundred pairs of femurs were randomly selected from the bone collections of each of the two racial groups. The bones were sexed by measuring the head diameters and comparing them with the corresponding demarking point values that had been previously determined. The sex that was so allocated to each bone was compared with its documented sex in the database in order to assess the accuracy of the method. The overall success rate of sex identification was 32% for both white and black populations, but the accuracy of sexing was 100%.     

Biotechnology, Ethics and the Politics of Cloning

As the debates over cloning and stem cell research indicate, issues raised by biotechnology combine research into the genetic sciences, perspectives and contexts articulated by the social sciences, and the ethical and anthropological concerns of philosophy. Consequently, we argue that intervening in the debates over biotechnology require supradisciplinary critical philosophy and social theory to illuminate the problems and their stakes. More specifically, we will demonstrate problems with the cloning of animals that for now render the cloning of humans unacceptable. In addition, we take on arguments for and against stem cell research and contend that it contains positive potential for medical advances that should not be blocked by problematic conservative positions. Nonetheless, we believe that the entire realm of biotechnology is fraught with dangers and problems that require careful study and democratic debate of key ethical and political issues.     

The judiciary and post-election conflict resolution and democratic consolidation in Ghana’s Fourth Republic

ABSTRACT

In recent times most elections in Africa have been fraught with post-elections conflicts that have had dire consequences on citizens. Kenya, Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe are few of these cases. This makes post-election conflict resolution a very important aspect of the electoral process deserving enormous attention. However, extant literature has not accorded it the needed attention. It is as a result of this, that this study investigates the nature of post-election conflict resolution in Ghana’s Fourth Republic. The study, based on a qualitative case study approach, found among others that, the Courts have been instrumental in consolidating democracy in Ghana, and stakeholders are devotedly operating within the legal framework governing elections, despite logistical, law enforcement and justice delivery challenges. The study being conscious of the progress made over the years concludes that, where democratic institutions are consolidating, the use of unconventional means to resolve conflicts is usually not an option.