A central observation of the social sciences has been that the modern age is one of constant change. This change has resulted in the emergence of new moral and ethical claims and understandings, which author Brian M. Lowe refers to as "moral vocabularies." Lowe skillfully seeks to explain conditions under which certain moral vocabularies are more likely to gain acceptance in the wider host society. By focusing on the animal rights and tobacco control movements, this absorbing work explores the process of moralization and the fragmentary nature of the emergence of new forms of moral and ethical meanings within the wider host society. Emerging Moral Vocabularies challenges the broad assertion that Western post-industrial societies are inevitably becoming more individualistic and self-centered, and instead encourages scholars to examine emerging forms of moral and ethical meanings, which create new moral boundaries. Book jacket.

With a new century, there has emerged a new age in moral considerations. The Arab Spring, Facebook, and the Occupy Movement all point to an awareness of, and concern for, the moral character of the individual and the collective. The phrase, “it’s the right thing to do”, echoing throughout news media and one’s daily exchanges, typically indicates a moral positioning. Presented in this book is the argument that now is the time to call it what it is, a matter of conscience, and to embrace the transformative power of a new vocabulary for moral and character education. In a more expansive approach than typically seen, this book examines the nature and function of conscience. Building upon the foundational work of Thomas Green (1999), the vocabulary of reflexive judgment, reflexive emotions, normation, and voices of conscience, are explored as they apply to moral formation, with examples and applications provided. Specific attention is given to the interrelationship of the collective conscience with democracy. Educating for conscience and the notion of the sacred are also examined. Written from an educator’s perspective, this book offers a framework for moral education to both the secular and religious domains.

This book systematically addresses the issue of assessing the normative nature of visions of emerging technologies in an epistemologically robust way. In the context of democratic governance of emerging technologies, not only it is important to reflect on technologies’ moral significance, but also to address their emerging and future oriented character. The book proposes an original approach to deal with the issue of “plausible” ethical evaluation of new technologies. Taking its start from current debates about Technology Assessment, the proposed solution emerges as a combination of theoretical and methodological insights from the fields of Philosophy of Technology, Science and Technology Studies and a normative justification based on pragmatist ethics. The book’s main contribution is to engage a diverse and interdisciplinary audience (ethicists, philosophers, social scientists, technology assessment researchers and practitioners) in a reflection concerning the epistemological challenges that are associated to the endeavour of appraising the moral significance of emerging technologies in the attempt of democratically governing them. It brings together concepts and methodologies from different disciplines and shows their synergy in applying them to two specific case studies of emerging biomedical technologies.

This volume considers the rise of a new mode of creating, spreading, and encountering moral claims and ideas as they are expressed within spectacles. Brian M. Lowe explains how spectacles emerge when we are saturated with mediated representations—including pictures, texts, and videos—and exposed to television and movies and the myriad stories they tell us. The question of which moral issues gain our attention and which are neglected increasingly relates to how societal concerns are supported—or obscured—by spectacles. This project explores how this new form of moral understanding came to be. Through a series of case studies, including the use of radio and comic books; the crafting of Russian national identity through art; television and film; the evolution of human rights law through film and journalism; and the promotion of animal rights campaigns, this book unveils some of the ways in which our spectacular environment shapes moral understanding, and is in turn shaped by spectacle.

"New insights offered by neuroscience have provoked discussions of the nature of human agency and responsibility. Alces draws on neuroscience to explore the internal contradictions of legal doctrines, and consider what would be involved in constructing novel legal regimes based on emerging understandings of human capacities and characteristics not only in criminal law but in contract and tort law."--Provided by publisher.

This volume addresses the overlapping aspects of the fields of genomics, obesity and (non-) medical ethics. It is unique in its examination of the implications of genomics for obesity from an ethical perspective. Genomics covers the sciences and technologies involved in the pathways that DNA takes until the organism is completely built and sustained: the range of genes (DNA), transcriptor factors, enhancers, promoters, RNA (copy of DNA), proteins, metabolism of cell, cellular interactions, organisms. Genomics offers a holistic approach, which, when applied to obesity, can have surprising and disturbing implications for the existing networks tackling this phenomenon. The ethical concerns and consideration presented are inspired by the interaction between the procedural perspective emphasizing the necessity of consultative and participatory organizational relationships in the new gray zones between medicine and food, and the substantive perspective that both cherishes individual autonomy and embeds it in socio-cultural contexts.