Great resource for human dignity issues.

for - AI - progress trap - example - Facebook AI algorithm - target - increase user engagement - by spreading hateful conspiracy theories - AI did this autonomously - no morality - Yuval Noah Harari story

for - AI - progress trap - example - no morality - Open AI - GPT4 - could not solve captcha - so hired human at Task Rabbit to solve - Yuval Noah Harari story

What could this symbolize with what happened then to women's bodies?

Freedom from and freedom to -- Their intentions were pure but the fact that women's bodies "went up into flames" meant the problem was not resolved, only got worse. Intention vs. Execution.

It criticises modern morals and the good and bad.

Criticises the trajectory of the feminism fight, which is ironic because a society in which women suffer is created by the fight for women's right in itself.

Losing to evil intentions is indeed a big problem in the world. Thanks for your comment, Import Reaction Video.

Philosophy & religion should inherently be taught in education, which would partially solve this problem. Ethics. Morality.

(~3:50)

Rob argues that a decline of consensus on morality makes liberty vanish. A society is not a society if they do not adhere to moral law.

What role does formal education play in the development of morality?

Rob Pirie argues that if one doesn't understand the foundational principles of their society, in the case of the American Republic, the ancient Greek and Roman history, with a consensus on the foundational virtues for society, the society cannot sustain itself.

Thus, he argues, there is a need for classical (self-)education

Interesting series which I'll be following along by Rob Pierie. Might even read the books myself as part of my intellectualism project.

He'll dive into how the demise of education and morality affects society and ultimately leads to serfdom

He misses the point of wisdom. Wisdom is about mindset and uplifting each other, to care and empathize... It's not about objective correctness; truth or false, this is science... Nor is it about the correctness of living life, that is ethics and morality...

Wisdom is thus about mindset and empathy.

Lennox argues that both rationality and morality cannot be explained without the Bible & God... Humans are naturally rational and moral beings because "Man are created in God's image" or "The Holy Spirit remains in men"

The Holy Ghost is the reason we can tell right from wrong (spiritual anti-virus)... However, the more we sin, the more we silence this voice in our head until ultimately we cannot hear it anymore.

No person is born a criminal. A killer.

When we get baptized, we effectively restore our connection to God, and thus reenact the Holy Ghost within us; restoring our innocence. Our soul's integrity has been restored and we can hear the Spirit speaking to us loud and clear once again.

As Simone Weil argued, the purpose of a punishment, an adequate one, that is, is to cleanse the taint of our behavior from ourselves... Allowing ourselves to get back into humanity without judgement. Baptism serves the same purpose on a Spiritual level... With the key difference being that it was Christ who endured the ultimate punishment, and by being baptized (willingly), we enjoy that same punishment, can reap its benefits.

By killing himself, he is cleansing the world of his "inner darkness" being a Turk, the beastliness that ruined the superior and ordered Venetian society. It is this, himself, who he kills -- showing he is, at heart, still a Turk, and not the driving motivation that causes all these events to unfold (Iago) -- as Iago is stabbed but has not died. This signifies the curse of suspicion and reason cannot be eliminated -- reason preys on individual people and is not something one can rid. In the end, he chooses once again to rid the tumor of society (which he believes first is his wife, Desdemona, now it is him, the Turk), following honor rather than personal desire.

Does this point to personal truths and the rejection of black and white morality? Is Emilia true to herself, not trying so hard to grasp humanity through the external rules of morality?

Even the way he wants to kill her comes down to pride, justice, and his tightly held "Venetian morality" that comes from Iago's advice, all because he cannot trust his own morality and create his own convictions

Othello is subjective about his "universal" morals based on the ranking, standing and pride (manliness) of who Cassio hurts. If it be a beggar, it would have been no problem?

Pride has to do with morality of the Church. What aids their downfall is morality. This has ties to Blake, how religion is a restriction of freedom and true innocence.

T. Herlau, "Moral Reinforcement Learning Using Actual Causation," 2022 2nd International Conference on Computer, Control and Robotics (ICCCR), Shanghai, China, 2022, pp. 179-185, doi: 10.1109/ICCCR54399.2022.9790262. keywords: {Digital control;Ethics;Costs;Philosophical considerations;Toy manufacturing industry;Reinforcement learning;Forestry;Causality;Reinforcement learning;Actual Causation;Ethical reinforcement learning}

Enligt SAOB betyder "vandel":

sätt att leva sitt liv ur moralisk syn­vinkel

Med andra ord: du skall kunna utvisas på grund av hur du lever ditt liv ur moralisk synvinkel.

Detta är alltså vad Moderaterna, Sverigedemokraterna, Liberalerna och Kristdemokraterna står för år 2022.

11:00 Moral above physical victories

``` Trauma Releasing Exercises are a form of Cult Deprogramming

[[Trauma Releasing Exercises]] (TRE) by [[David Berceli]]

related articles: [[Tremor]], [[Quakers]] (aka "shakers"), [[Bradford Keeney]] ([[Shaking medicine]]), [[Somatic experiencing]] ([[Peter A. Levine]]), [[Ecstatic dance]], [[Runner's high]], ... (its revealing that wikipedia has no articles on these "alternative medicine" topics... all hail the cult of big pharma!)

this association assumes that cults use [[Psychological trauma]] to imprison their slaves.

Psychological trauma is an emotional response caused by severe distressing events such as accidents, violence, sexual assault, terror, or sensory overload.

in every cult, there are people who want to escape. this "want to escape" starts early in childhood, where it is counteracted by punishment = by creating psychological trauma.

Sigmund Freud's [[Psychoanalysis]] always blames "some childhood trauma" for "neurotic" behavior in adults, instead of fixing the child education, to prevent the creation of that trauma in the first place = radical solution.

the cult slaves are expected to use their body only for working, not for sports, not for fighting, not for pleasure. all problems should be solved peacefully and intellectually ("let us talk..."). because the cult leaders know: if the slaves make too much use of their body (shaking medicine), the slaves would escape.

also related: [[Slave morality]] is another word for [[Cult]], because the [[Public opinion]] of every cult is a form of slave morality (beautiful lies), and hard truths ([[Red pill and blue pill|red pills]]) are hidden as master morality. ```

• Machine learning
  • will learn all our bad habits
  • and become supercharged, amplified versions of them
• The antidote to apocalyptic machine learning
  • is human happiness and wisdom

• It is the immoral human being that is the real problem
• they will teach AI to be immoral and with its power, can end up destroying humanity

• bad actor will teach AI to be immoral
• this also creates an arms race as "good" actors are forced to develop AI to counter the AI of bad actors

potential influence on pirates?

Misinformation exposure and extreme right-wing ideology appear associated in this report. Others find that it is partisanship that predicts susceptibility.

Elite mis and disinformation sharers have a negative effect on followers.

Estimated ideological extremity is associated with higher elite misinformation-exposure scores for estimated conservatives more so than estimated liberals.

Political ideology is estimated using accounts followed10. b Political ideology is estimated using domains shared30 (Red: conservative, blue: liberal). Source data are provided as a Source Data file.

Estimated ideological extremity is associated with higher language toxicity and moral outrage scores for estimated conservatives more so than estimated liberals.

The relationship between estimated political ideology and (a) language toxicity and (b) expressions of moral outrage. Extreme values are winsorized by 95% quantile for visualization purposes. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.

In the co-share network, a cluster of websites shared more by conservatives is also shared more by users with higher misinformation exposure scores.

Nodes represent website domains shared by at least 20 users in our dataset and edges are weighted based on common users who shared them. a Separate colors represent different clusters of websites determined using community-detection algorithms29. b The intensity of the color of each node shows the average misinformation-exposure score of users who shared the website domain (darker = higher PolitiFact score). c Nodes’ color represents the average estimated ideology of the users who shared the website domain (red: conservative, blue: liberal). d The intensity of the color of each node shows the average use of language toxicity by users who shared the website domain (darker = higher use of toxic language). e The intensity of the color of each node shows the average expression of moral outrage by users who shared the website domain (darker = higher expression of moral outrage). Nodes are positioned using directed-force layout on the weighted network.

Exposure to elite misinformation is associated with the use of toxic language and moral outrage.

Shown is the relationship between users’ misinformation-exposure scores and (a) the toxicity of the language used in their tweets, measured using the Google Jigsaw Perspective API27, and (b) the extent to which their tweets involved expressions of moral outrage, measured using the algorithm from ref. 28. Extreme values are winsorized by 95% quantile for visualization purposes. Small dots in the background show individual observations; large dots show the average value across bins of size 0.1, with size of dots proportional to the number of observations in each bin. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.

The psychology of hate: Moral concerns differentiate hate from dislike

The effect of hate versus dislike on morality judgments (a) and moral emotions (b) in Study 2. Hated objects were rated as significantly more tied to core moral beliefs and moral emotions than disliked attitude objects.

The effect of hate versus dislike on ratings of (a) negativity, (b) morality and (c) attitude strength in Study 3. Hated objects were rated as significantly more negative and were more associated with attitude strength than disliked objects but received similar ratings in negativity and attitude strength as extremely disliked objects. Hated objects were rated as more related to morality than extremely disliked attitude objects and disliked attitude objects.

Results

Consistent with our three laboratory studies, this analysis of real-world hate groups lent further support to the morality hypothesis. The language of hate groups was different, in the moral domain, from that of complain forums. These results reflect real, uncensored language used by groups and individuals known to espouse hate or dislike, and often known to take significant actions in support of these attitudes. Importantly, the expressions of these groups and individuals are less likely to involve their own lay theories about hate or dislike—but rather their public positions on these issues. There are, admittedly, several differences between hate websites and complaint forums and these data should be treated as preliminary. But taken together with the carefully controlled lab experiments, this overall pattern of findings suggests that morality helps differentiate expressions of hate from expressions of dislike.

Yates, C., & Feil, E. (2021, February 1). Will coronavirus really evolve to become less deadly? The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/will-coronavirus-really-evolve-to-become-less-deadly-153817

Atari, M., Reimer, N. K., Graham, J., Hoover, J., Kennedy, B., Davani, A. M., Karimi-Malekabadi, F., Birjandi, S., & Dehghani, M. (2021). Pathogens Are Linked to Human Moral Systems Across Time and Space. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/tnyh9

By saying that values are subjective you are saying that values are determined and not discovered. That there is no "reality that transcends you" which contains good and band, that you can integrate with.

Umberto Eco indicates that every work of art can be read in one of three ways: - moral, - allegorical - anagogical

Compare this to early Christianities which had various different readings of the scriptures.

Relate this also to the idea of Heraclitus and the not stepping into the same river twice as a viewer can view a work multiple times in different physical and personal contexts which will change their mood and interpretation of the work.

In my opinion this struggle needs to play out. Data science can always be streamlined to remove the bias that everyone has. the conflict this article speaks of is just the natural progression of what has been happening already. The only way this will get better is through constant struggle, just like everything else.

Kumar, A., Chowdhary, S., Capraro, V., & Perc, M. (2021). Evolution of honesty in higher-order social networks. Physical Review E, 104(5), 054308. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.104.054308

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/facebook-papers-democracy-election-zuckerberg/620478/

Adrienne LaFrance outlines the reasons we need to either abandon Facebook or cause some more extreme regulation of it and how it operates.

While she outlines the ills, she doesn't make a specific plea about the solution of the problem. There's definitely a raging fire in the theater, but no one seems to know what to do about it. We're just sitting here watching the structure burn down around us. We need clearer plans for what must be done to solve this problem.

If it's neither moral nor legal for one to shout "fire" in a crowded theater, why is it somehow both legal and moral for a service like Facebook to allow their service to scream "fire, fire, fire" within a crowded society?

Not just Facebook, but specifically Mark Zuckerberg who appears to be on the spectrum and isn't capable of being moral in a traditional sense.

Deep Concept: Modern America is mostly corrupt from it's own creation of wealth. Wealth is power, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely! Money and wealth have completely changed the underlying foundation of America. Modern America is the corrupted result of wealth. Morality and ethics in modern American have been reshaped to "fit" European Aristocracy, ironically the same European aristocracy America fled in the Revolutionary War.

Billions and billions of tax payer money is spent on projects that could never pass rigorous examination and best public ROI use. Political authoritative conditions rule public tax money for the benefit of a few at the expense of the many. The public "cult-like" sheep have no clue how they are being abused.

The authoritative abusers (politicians) follow the "mostly" corrupt American (fuck-you) form of government and individual power tactics that have been conveniently embedded in corrupt modern morality and ethics, used by corrupted lawyers and judges to codify the fundamental moral code that underpins the original American Constitution.

Masks and Their Moralities | The Familiar Strange. (n.d.). Retrieved September 1, 2021, from https://thefamiliarstrange.com/2021/08/30/masks-moralities/

Rosenfeld, D. L., & Tomiyama, A. J. (2021). Jab My Arm, Not My Morality: Perceived Moral Reproach as a Barrier to COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ycbrd

Vartanova, I., Eriksson, K., Kirgil, Z. M., & Strimling, P. (2021, April 26). The advent of the COVID-19 epidemic did not affect Americans’ endorsement of moral foundations. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/957zk

Keshmirian, A., Bahrami, B., & Deroy, O. (2021, April 27). Many Heads Are More Utilitarian Than One. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/7e3dc

Levine, E. (2021). Community standards of deception: Deception is perceived to be ethical when it prevents unnecessary harm. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/g5trb

Henderson, Robert K., and Simone Schnall. ‘Disease and Disapproval: COVID-19 Concern Is Related to Greater Moral Condemnation’. PsyArXiv, 7 December 2020. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/7szaw.

Conservatives stand for honesty, integrity, morality, and steely-eyed realism. We hold our opinions because we are confident that they are correct, we have the confidence in them to encourage free and open debate, and if our opinions are shown to be wrong we gratefully accept the correction of our errors.

Modern liberalism (not to be confused with classical liberalism) is the opposite. It is characterized by dishonesty and immorality (both typically excused with the platitude that "everybody does it"), self-delusion, and a reflexive resort to censorship and worse. ("Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out." -David Horowitz)

You see that in the climate debates, where leftists (climate activists) have repeatedly been caught manipulating, withholding, exaggerating, or even fabricating evidence, flouting the law, blackballing skeptics, and censoring contrary viewpoints, to promote the CAGW scare. The major blogs, publications, and institutions which climate activists control are ruthlessly censored, to suppress dissent.

In stark contrast, the most prominent conservative (climate realist) blogs and institutions actively encourage open discussion and dissent. That's why, for example, WUWT is so obviously and strikingly superior to any of the leftists' climate blogs.

Unfortunately, some people who call themselves "conservative" don't act like it. I'm tired of self-identified conservatives, like Michael Shannon, raging about Republicans' lack of conservatism, while they, themselves, behave like liberals.

If Mr. Shannon were really a conservative, he wouldn't censor his blog, to suppress expression of opinions different from his own. Unfortunately, that's exactly what he does. That's why you don't see the following comment in the comments section, on this article:

· ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

1.If conservatives can’t win Republican primaries, they certainly cannot hope to win as third-party candidates running against both Republicans and Democrats.

2.If so-called “conservatives” don’t care about anything but money, they’re no more conservative than the country clubbers whose Republican identity is based entirely on their desire for low taxes.

There’s something very, very wrong with a 785-word rant accusing Republicans of being “morally corrupt,” which talks almost exclusively about… money. In 785 words you devoted a grand total of three words to a passing mention of moral issues.

One in four American babies die by “choice,” but you never mentioned it.

The courts have spent the last eighty years brazenly lying to impose progressive agendas, and trampling the nation’s fifty-one constitutions in the process, yet now, for the first time in eight decades, honest jurors might actually have a slender majority on the SCOTUS, but you never mentioned it.

The American family is in tatters, with 39.6% of babies born out of wedlock in 2018, but you used the word “family” just once, and never mentioned illegitimacy.

The academy has been mostly taken over by far-left crackpots and atheists, who do everything in their power to crush all dissent, who enforce values antithetical to Christian morality, and who have created entire disciplines dedicated to promoting leftist lunacy, but you never mentioned it.

Academics expose corruption in Grievance Studies

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera

The misallocation of federal monies is a real problem, but it is far from the only problem, it is far from our most important problem, and it is only peripherally a moral issue. If you’re going to editorialize about moral corruption, you should talk about morality, not just money.

Interesting way to put it, and also a hard truth for humanity in general. "What we don't know can't hurt us" is an argument that can be applied to a myriad of things due to the processing or production of which, other parties get affected negatively. From food, to clothes, to technology ect. Like an unavoidable 'selective' morality.

Jones, D., & Helmreich, S. (2020). A history of herd immunity. The Lancet, 396(10254), 810–811. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31924-3

Holman, E. A., Thompson, R. R., Garfin, D. R., & Silver, R. C. (2020). The unfolding COVID-19 pandemic: A probability-based, nationally representative study of mental health in the U.S. Science Advances, eabd5390. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abd5390

Kneer, M., & Hannikainen, I. R. (2020). Triage Dilemmas: A Window into (Ecologically Valid) Moral Cognition. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/v87sb

Berman, J. Z., & Kupor, D. (2020). Moral Choice When Harming Is Unavoidable: Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620948821

Borhany, H., Golbabaei, S., Jameie, M., & Borhani, K. (2020). Moral decision making in healthcare and medical professions during the COVID-19 pandemic [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/5c769

Díaz, R., & Cova, F. (2020, April 14). Moral values and trait pathogen disgust predict compliance with official recommendations regarding COVID-19 pandemic in US samples. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/5zrqx

Dimant, E., van Kleef, G. A., & Shalvi, S. (2020). Requiem for a Nudge: Framing effects in nudging honesty. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 172, 247–266. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2020.02.015

Rosenfeld, D. L., & Tomiyama, A. J. (2020). Judgments of Businesspeople Who Shake Hands in the Era of COVID-19 [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/3fnrh

Smilansky, S. (n.d.). Should We Sacrifice the Utilitarians First? The Philosophical Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqaa003

Twitter Post - Interaction of mandated behavioral change and personal/religious beliefs

Kennedy, B., Atari, M., Davani, A. M., Hoover, J., Omrani, A., Graham, J., & Dehghani, M. (2020, May 7). Moral Concerns are Differentially Observable in Language. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/uqmty

Why the Golden Rule isn't enough

Mengzian extension models general moral concern on the natural concern we already have for people close to us, while the Golden Rule models general moral concern on concern for oneself.

Ilike Mengzian extension better for three reasons. First, Mengzian extension is more psychologically plausible as a model of moral development. People do, naturally, have concern and compassion for others around them. Explicit exhortations aren’t needed to produce this natural concern and compassion, and these natural reactions are likely to be the main seed from which mature moral cognition grows. Our moral reactions to vivid, nearby cases become the bases for more general principles and policies. If you need to reason or analogise your way into concern even for close family members, you’re already in deep moral trouble.

Second, Mengzian extension is less ambitious – in a good way. The Golden Rule imagines a leap from self-interest to generalised good treatment of others. This might be excellent and helpful advice, perhaps especially for people who are already concerned about others and thinking about how to implement that concern. But Mengzian extension has the advantage of starting the cognitive project much nearer the target, requiring less of a leap. Self-to-other is a huge moral and ontological divide. Family-to-neighbour, neighbour-to-fellow citizen – that’s much less of a divide.

Third, you can turn Mengzian extension back on yourself, if you are one of those people who has trouble standing up for your own interests – if you’re the type of person who is excessively hard on yourself or who tends to defer a bit too much to others. You would want to stand up for your loved ones and help them flourish. Apply Mengzian extension, and offer the same kindness to yourself. If you’d want your father to be able to take a vacation, realise that you probably deserve a vacation too. If you wouldn’t want your sister to be insulted by her spouse in public, realise that you too shouldn’t have to suffer that indignity.

Development idea: Bring back the Grand Guignol, but have evil politicians instead.

Solon (c.  638 – c.  558 BC) was an Athenian poet, statesman, and lawmaker. In Plutarch's telling, he is particularly notable for his efforts to legislate against political, economic, and moral decline in pre-Socratic Athens.

Victor recognizes that grave robbing and animal torture are "loathsome activities," but imagining the "great object" of their results overpowers his conscious. Here, Shelley seems to explore the relation between imagination, morality, and convention, and to what extent feelings express what ought to be done morally.

Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC – AD 65) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, moralist, and dramatist. He was forced to commit suicide by Nero after allegedly plotting the Emperor's death.

In the fable by Aesop, a donkey becomes jealous of his farmer's lap-dog and tries to imitate it by jumping onto the farmer's lap, angering the farmer who punishes him. The moral is not to try to be something you are not. The Creature's situation inverts this lesson, however, since he is trying to be himself but is still rejected.

Victor recalls his father's judgments as a moral compass. Being "pleased with yourself," in his father's view, shows an egotism that is at odds with the familial and social feelings of "affection," one of the novel's most important arguments.

It wasn't until very recently that I, as a white person, felt like I could really lead work on racism because I am white. I think white people are socialized to believe that we can't speak on racism because we don't have direct experience with it. Of course, that assumes that unless you are a neo-Nazi, you do not participate in racism. I think a simple early lesson to teach our white students is that racism is about us, and it is not only okay for us to engage in these conversations, but we are morally compelled to do so.

Poverty is not due to individuals, especially when class mobility in the USA does not exist anymore.

An interesting look at "influencer morality".

This might be the A/B illusion.

But it is very difficult to fully express these utility functions in code. The goal is to literally turn our ethics into code -- to translate them into coherent data structures, algorithms, and decision trees. We want to deduce our moral intuitions and more.

This is an interesting take. The Internet - a thing - is given volition. It "encourages", it tempts. Hardly the first time we've seen this with technology, but it's part of that misallocation of causes.

This reminds me of the "Q" question, the assumption that just exposure to literature will inculcate an upstanding character: the banner model for humanities education.

What does he mean by "moral words"? Are there ethical implications here?

If this is the case, what is rhetoric's relation to morality?

He mentioned several times that human nature can be the basis for values and morality, but here he says that human nature is subject to change. In that case It sounds like he believes that the standards of morality and value which are based on human nature should also change and that doesn't sound like very firm ground to stand on.

The author points out that human competition, which thus far has driven the exponential development/advancement of technology, would drive developers towards the "unfettered versions." While I agree that it would likely be the case, I think it's possible that the author is underestimating how much of ourselves would likely end up in the superhuman. Aspects of humanity that were likely never intended to be in the superhuman, but will end up there inherently due to who is programming it.

The authors of the Rockfish Gap Report recognized the need to create curriculum that focused on the moral/ethical implications of medical practice. The fact that the "extent & limits" of the practice is emphasized here demonstrates that there is more to care than simply repairing the body on an anatomical level, thus prompting the need for a more compassionate kind of care. The initial purpose of UVA's medical curriculum was to create a more compassionate pool of health-providers, and this vision persists today in programs like the nursing school's Compassionate Care initiative. This fully aligns with Jefferson's belief that students should focus on their area of study from a micro and macro level, synthesizing knowledge of the hard sciences with philosophical and ethical inquiry.

The development of the University was an incredible feat that I am sure many wanted to be a part of. John Robinson likely hoped to do some good in death by having his final legacy be contributing his land and slaves for the university's use. Though Lexington was not chosen as the site for the University, Robinson's willingness to donate the wealth he accumulated throughout his lifetime to UVA demonstrates the human tendency to be a part of a cause greater than who they are individually, thus in a sense defying death.

I do not think this goal was possible with the existence of slaves at UVA. No one can accept the most immoral institution and remain moral. I find excerpts like this extremely interesting, as these men apparently valued virtue but still supported the university’s ownership of slaves. The existence of slaves also cultivated a racist mindset among the students, not a "virtuous" one, which was counterproductive to the founders’ goal.

This part of the text makes it known that everyone who was to be involved in the University's establishment should have the right of knowing what goes on with his own transactions. While reading this, i was constantly reminded of how my engagement constantly talks about people having the right to control what goes on to their bodies. Some people choose to stay ignorant to the problems going on in their body while others care to know what is going on and what indeed is the best way to proceed forward. It is all a right and in no way, shape, or form should this right be violated and/or questioned. I believe that while, several other aspects of the document were designed for failure, this section provided some sort of hope for equality and self awareness. - Kayla Thomas

This section reminded me of the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes who believed the nature of man is inherently bad and the purpose of government and education is to control man's selfish desires. In my opinion, I side more with John Locke's philosophy that the nature of man is inherently good but society is corrupted by certain negative people. Education's purpose should be to remind people of their virtuous nature and not become distracted by the inequalities and failures of society.

This idea seems to be really important in being a conscious and involved member of society in our time. In light of recent events, we can look to interpret the "duties to [our] neighbors" to mean that we need to care for and support each other, regardless of differences.

The report consistently gives reference and importance to the student's morals. I think that this is ironic because the morals of the university have changed so much since the commencement of the university. It was acceptable in 1819 to consider slaves as property, not people. This was something that did not exist on student's moral compass until about 1953, when the first black student stepped on grounds. And even then, students and faculty pushed Mr. Gregory Swanson (the first black student at uva) to leave because of all the ridicule he dealt with. So, was the university truly built on morals if we could not accept all? Morals of the university have thankfully changed over time.

I think the term "morals" is interesting in this sentence considering the time period. One of the morals that most people lacked during this time period was owning slaves.The next sentence also says "understand his duties to his neighbors, and country." However, his duty was only to treat white people right and either discard or treat minorities unfairly. It also say "the functions confided to him by either." The crazy thing is the a lot of the people in the country were not represented or given the function to confide in him.

The word "secure" demonstrates a need for status and purpose. This seems interesting in reflecting on the document as a whole, which is essentially a declaration of establishment and is securing the meaning of the university. "Tread with awful reverence" prompts a reflection upon what is considered a good and valuable life in this situation. Do we need to keep this reverence in mind with all decisions that come with the progression of the school? Tana Mardian

In my Mortality and Morality engagement class, we often times talk about the role of family in the event that someone does become sick and how their presence can make a huge impact on how a situation is carried out. Family is often time seen as an extra layer of protection over any individual, especially for children. We assume that children are not old enough or mature enough to make major decisions for themselves, so it is ideal to keep them within reach in case of emergency. Therefore, if a school can supply resources that could be beneficial in times of need many parents would view that as a plus. - Kayla Thomas

A fascinating distinction.

A very important point being made here.

"Those who found morality on sentiment, more than on reason, are inclined to comprehend ethics under the former observation, and to maintain, that, in all questions, which regard conduct and manners, the difference among men is really greater than at first sight it appears." - Hume

There is a strong moral component here in Locke's thinking about language.

This is always the kicker in policy questions and where rational people can actually disagree. People have different valuations of the same moral ideals. This is why I periodically try to imagine the basis of my morality space and evaluate to what extent it is orthonormal.

This seems like a punishment, but we are looking at it with our moral lens.

Truth without morality. Truth because of social conventions.

We think we dislike deception, but we really hate the consequences of that choice. It has not yet gained the moral distinction.

shedding the art of implied moral and philosophical attributes

This sounds more realiistic

morality a central issue. Teaching children while young and still susceptible

Here's the thing: there is compelling contemporary psychological evidence that shows that our moral behaviors are, in fact, greatly influenced by our environment. Even those of us who are steadfast in our moral convictions are influenced. So it makes sense to place the even more susceptible youth in suitable environment to at least aid in proper moral development.

Charges against rhetoric