Luxury Cruise Vacations and Cruise Deals on Oceania Cruises

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FROM THE OCEANIA CRUISES BLOGNew Innovative Gourmet Menus at The Grand Dining Room

While The Grand Dining Room has become known for its exquisite European-inspired culinary creations, were thrilled to unveil a sweeping re-inspiration of our dinner menus, which now offer you the ultimate fine dining experience at sea.

Filled with a spectacular array of diverse and exotic destinations, your world awaits your discovery. There is simply no better way to explore it than aboard the elegant ships of Oceania Cruises. Our unique itineraries are wide-ranging, featuring the most fascinating destinations throughout the world. Regatta, Insignia, Nautica, Sirena, Marina and Riviera are all intimate and luxurious, with each calling on the worlds most desirable ports, from historic cities and modern meccas to seaside villages and faraway islands. On a voyage with Oceania Cruises, each day offers the rewarding opportunity to experience the history, culture and cuisine of a wondrous new destination.

Relax on board our luxurious ships and savor cuisine renowned as the finest at sea, rivaling even Michelin-starred restaurants ashore. Inspired by Master Chef Jacques Ppin, these culinary delights have always been a hallmark that distinguishes the Oceania Cruises experience from any other. Considering the uncompromising quality, perhaps the most remarkable aspect of an Oceania Cruises voyage is its incredible value. Lavish complimentary amenities abound, and there are never supplemental charges in any of the onboard restaurants. Value packages ensure that sipping a glass of vintage wine, surfing the Internet or enjoying a shore excursion is both convenient and affordable.

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Luxury Cruise Vacations and Cruise Deals on Oceania Cruises

Aerospace | tulsaworld.com

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Monday, July 23, 2018

Sunday, July 22, 2018

Monday, July 16, 2018

The airplane ferried presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.

The exclusive contract comprises overhaul of CF6-80E1 and CFM56-5B thrust-reverser halves.

Sunday, July 15, 2018

While Akka's not banking on convincing a plane maker to necessarily build the entire "Link & Fly" concept, it's betting on the design to be an attention grabber.

Friday, July 13, 2018

Thursday, July 12, 2018

Money will be used to try to establish nonstop service to Seattle.

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Southwest Airlines will stop serving the small bags of free peanuts long associated with the discount carrier's no-frills business model.

Thursday, July 05, 2018

The suspension affects about 250 permanent employees and contract workers at the NORDAM's Nacelle and Thrust Reverser Systems Division, 6911 N. Whirlpool Dr.

Tuesday, July 03, 2018

Airbus will miss its delivery target for Pratt & Whitney-powered A320neo narrow-body jets this year, after problems with the engines caused an almost three-month halt in shipments, people familiar with the matter said.

Friday, June 22, 2018

"The old runway had basically outlived its life," Mayor Leonard Washington said.

Saturday, June 09, 2018

Flights are on sale for $227 one way, and service has already begun, according to the American Airlines website.

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Douglas was involved in the effort to build a object that would go into space shortly after Russian reached space in the 1950s.

Thursday, May 17, 2018

Monday, May 07, 2018

TIAs last nonstop to Austin was operated by ExpressJet from June 2007 to March 2008.

Saturday, April 21, 2018

Spirit AeroSystems employs about 1,300 at its facility in Tulsa.

Friday, April 20, 2018

All told, the money is part of $145,020 American is donating in grants to 13 local nonprofits.

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Osage Nation officials are rebranding and repurposing the airpark formerly known as Tulsa Downtown Airpark.

Thursday, April 12, 2018

The talk will center on the importance of workforce as it relates to corporate investment.

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Both flights will operate on Wednesday and Saturday.

Friday, April 06, 2018

About 300 direct-touch employees and contractors currently support the G650 program in Tulsa, and some salaried employees also would be impacted by the reallocation, set to be implemented by mid-2019, a Triumph Group spokeswoman said.

Wednesday, April 04, 2018

The company developed the facility after bringing 18 machines from Mexico to install in Oklahoma.

Friday, March 30, 2018

Embraers first new narrow-body jet is set to fly into commercial service next week to take on Bombardier. But thats just a prelude to the bigger battle emerging between heavyweights Boeing and Airbus.

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Denver is among five nonstop services that will be offered from Tulsa by the discount carrier.

Saturday, March 10, 2018

China's 9-ton space station, Tiangong-1, will come falling from space soon.

The Tulsa Airports Improvement Trust approved a bid for one infrastructure project and tweaked another during its Thursday meeting.

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

The base, also known as Tech Ops-Tulsa, employs 5,200 people and handles aircraft overhaul as well as component and avionics repair.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Nationally there has been a 5-10 percent decline in parking transactions and a 4-13 percent drop in rental car transactions while congestion on airport road has shot up 46 percent

Monday, February 12, 2018

Thursday, February 08, 2018

John Fitzpatrick is a 1978 graduate of the University of Tulsas Electrical Engineering College and served 12 years as a fighter pilot with Tulsas 125th Tactical Fighter Squadron.

Friday, February 02, 2018

Thursday, February 01, 2018

The new rules require travelers to place all electronics larger than a cell phone in bins for X-ray screening in standard lanes. They do not apply to TSA pre-check lanes.

Saturday, January 27, 2018

The new Oklahoma City facility will be home to much of Kratos Defense & Security Solutions' design and manufacturing of a new version of offensive jet drones.

A total of 2,885,327 passengers arrived and departed from the airport in 2017, with March and October seeing the biggest increase in activity over the previous year.

Friday, January 26, 2018

Administrative and administrative offices will be established in Oklahoma City, Gov. Mary Fallin said.

Saturday, January 20, 2018

Commercial airline passengers pay the charge as part of their airline ticket costs, and a bill in Congress could allow airports to double it.

Friday, January 19, 2018

On June 7, American Airlines will begin offering four nonstop flights (two in each direction) between Oklahoma City and Philadelphia daily.

Thursday, January 18, 2018

Attendees also heard from the center's director, as well as several of its key personnel.

Friday, January 05, 2018

Dr. John William "Bill" Kinsinger was unresponsive in the cockpit of the airplane, and the search is continuing about 135 miles north of the Yucatan Peninsula, the Coast Guard reports.

Thursday, January 04, 2018

The bonuses will total about $130 million and will be made in the first quarter of 2018.

Monday, January 01, 2018

From aviation and aerospace to manufacturing and retail, the Tulsa area saw a lot of changes during year. Here are the stories we think made the most impact. Read more in Sunday's Work & Monday section.

Sunday, December 24, 2017

Tulsa International Airport and surrounding off-airport and aviation and aerospace businesses in the Tulsa Metropolitan Statistical Area generate an annual economic impact of $11.7 billion.

Manufacturing had a good year, but national retailers continued to struggle.

Thursday, December 21, 2017

The hybrid class at Tulsa's Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology offers 13 months of online coursework before students have to be on campus.

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

The Tulsa Municipal Airport Trust gave its approval for a sublease at the American Airlines Maintenance & Engineering Center complex to be reassigned from EDS Information Services, LLC to DXC Technology Services, an affiliated company.

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Dow 30 24,754.75 37.45 S&P 500 2681.47 8.69 Okla. Sweet 53.75 0.25 Nat.gas futures 2.69 0.05Yen per dollar 112.94 0.38Gold 1260.70 1.50

Monday, December 18, 2017

Tulsa International Airport recorded its busiest November in a decade, officials said.

Dow 30 24,792.20 140.46 S&P 500 2690.16 14.35 Okla. Sweet 53.50 0.25 Nat.gas futures 2.75 0.13Yen per dollar 112.56 0.07Gold 1265.60 8.00

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Aerospace | tulsaworld.com

The Personal Empowerment Coach Certification – The S.W.A.T …

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Our Personal Empowerment Coach Certification is designed for the woman who is either ready to launch her coaching business or is already an expert in her chosen field and would love to add Accredited Personal Empowerment Coach to her resume.

This self-paced program will give you the fastest yet most comprehensive training to help shift your clients out of any disempowered situation into making healthy, authentic, appropriate choices.

Crystal is a Godsend! I have had the privilege of working with Crystal as a student in her S.W.A.T. Institute, as a coaching client, and as a participant in her 12-week Emotional Edge Telecourse. As a S.W.A.T. student, I have been blown away by the quality of the educational curriculum. I have a doctoral degree and have taken many advanced level college and graduate courses. However, the S.W.A.T. curriculum was more comprehensive and useful than most of the graduate level courses I have taken! I learned SO much going through this program and it has been amazing to use the material to help other women.

Crystals coaching style is simply Genius! Her intuition is spot on and I have personally experienced how incredible Crystal is at seeing things for what they truly are. On our first coaching call, Crystal was able call me out on my secrets and get to the core of my issues in a way that was unbelievable to me. I have worked with other coaches in the past and none have had the intuition and wisdom of Crystal Andrus Morrisette, who has helped me to make MAJOR transformations in my life. Before working with Crystal, I felt lost and confused. I felt desperate, looking around relentlessly for answers. Well, Crystal quickly guided me to all the answers. She re-connected me with my real self and helped me to heal the wounds I had been carrying around for decades. I feel like a million bucks after working with Crystal! I wake up each day with a huge grin on my face, excited and hopeful for a future that I could not see before working with Crystal. I am so endlessly grateful for all she has done for me and I am so lucky to have her as a mentor and a coach.

~ Dr. Ellen Morello, PhD in Physical Therapy, S.W.A.T. Personal Empowerment Coach

Throughout this course, you will work closely with Professor of Coaching Izabela Viskupova, L.L.M., M.A., and The S.W.A.T. Institutes Founder, Crystal Andrus Morissette, in receiving all the the practical and theoretical guidance youll need in order to fully master your coaching skills.

Izabela Viskopova graduated with a Masters degree in Law at the Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. Later, she earned another Masters degree in Psychology, from the University of Glasgow, Scotland; she also holds a Certificate in Person-Centred Counselling from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland and is a Master Empowerment Coach certified by The S.W.A.T. Institute. Izabela also offers a weekly LIVE phone/webinar conversation where you can learn from, ask questions, and be fully supported in your studies.

Check out the extraordinary video testimonialssent into us from some of our graduates!

Our Personal Empowerment Coach Certification is composed of three modules:

The learning objective of the first module is to introduce the students to Empowerment Coaching and the basic tools of this specific coaching method. In this module, students will be invited to master the basic framework of Empowerment Coaching which includes:

This module takes the students in detail through the most crucial emotional levels on the Map of Empowerment such as Shame, Guilt, Apathy, Grief, Fear and Anger, while offering specific coaching strategies and interventions for each of these levels.

Module One offers a vast opportunity for the students to listen to practical examples of real life coaching sessions, which is an invaluable component of the program. Also included are video lectures on each emotional level, one live weekly call where students can chat with Professor Izabela, and a private Facebook Group for fellow student empowerment coaches to share, connect, and support each other.

Nearing the end of this module, students will also be introduced to the concept of Emotional Age (EA), which is the basis of Crystal Andrus Morissettes upcoming book, The Emotional Edge (Random House Publishing, December 29, 2015).

The objective of the second module is to build on the foundations laid out in Module One so that the students can further hone and expand their coaching skills.

This module also incorporates some of the more general topics in coaching such as how to structure the coaching sessions or how to build rapport with a client.

The aim of Module Two is also to prepare the students for some unexpected or more challenging circumstances in coaching such as coaching a client with a different cultural background or a client that has just lost someone they loved.

At the end of this module, students are invited to participate in the 12-Week TeleCourse: The Emotional Edge taught by Crystal Andrus Morissette in order to integrate their learnings, personally. Completion of the 12-Week TeleCourse is not mandatory in graduating with your Personal Empowerment Coach Certification.

The objective of the last module is to have the students do their own coaching and practice all the skills and techniques they have learned throughout the course while coaching their own clients. The clients will be provided by The S.W.A.T. Institute through the Mentorship Program that enables women from any part of the world to get free coaching. This is a beautiful opportunity for our students to hone their coaching skills.

Section 1: What you need to do to start your Practice Coaching

The objective of this section is to cover the logistics side of the coaching practice so that the coaches in training have everything set up and ready before they start their practice coaching.

Section 2: The Critique session

As soon as students have completed approximately half of their practice sessions (10-15 practice session), they select three of their calls and submit them to their Professor of Coaching who will review them and schedule a critique session with them. The objective of the critique session is to give them feedback on how they have been doing thus far.

Section 3: Final Exam Assignment

The objective of the Final Exam is to put everything together for the students both the practical as well as the theoretical side of the training. In order to do that, they are required to:

A new generation of women has emerged and I feel honored to be part of it. Unique women who have come together under a common call: to thrust the world forward while birthing a brighter humanity.

I proudly belong to a tribe of visionaries. They may call us insane, rebels, inspirational, powerful masters, guides or coaches we call ourselves: Simply Woman Accredited Trainers!

~ Loredana Thoenig

Every Tuesday, Crystal Andrus Morissette answers your questions and offers you strategies to your own challenges during a live call! You can write in or chat with her directly on the phone or Skype. Plus, you have two other opportunities each week to chat live with Professor Izabela and our Student Advisors! No matter where you live in the world, you will feel like you are close by, connected to, and supported by our entire institute. We are women empowering women!

Our Mentorship Coaches have all graduated from their Empowerment Coach Training at The S.W.A.T. Institute and are beginning to build their own coaching practice. Before they can graduate they must complete 30 practice hours. Our coaches have spent countless hours learning the empowerment process and this is the perfect way for them to refine their skills while women around the world get the support and empowerment they need at no charge. Its a true giveback and a beautiful win-win! Plus, our Mentorship Coaching Program offers our students and graduates lifelong coaching at no charge. Thats right! You have a slew of brilliant coaches at your fingertips, whenever you need a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on, or some kick-ass advice! Click here to learn more!

One of the most unique and special aspects of The S.W.A.T. Institute is our private forum where our students or as we call them siSTARs connect with, share, care, and support each other. No matter what is going on in their lives, each woman gets the loving advice, feedback, validation, and support she needs. We truly are a global coalition of empowered women!

Our five-day, full money-back guarantee allows you to take your time once you register to be certain this program is right for you!

Check out the extraordinary video testimonialssent in to us from some of our graduates!

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The Personal Empowerment Coach Certification - The S.W.A.T ...

Simon Lane | Yogscast Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia

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SimonReal Name

Simon Charles Lane

Honeydew, Honeybeard, Derek Smart, Alejandew

2008 (Co-Founder)

Yes

Creative Director at Yogscast Ltd, YouTube Content Producer at Yogscast Ltd

"See ya later, Shitlord(s)!"

Simon Lane, under the username Honeydew, is a founding member of the Yogscast, and runs the main Yogscast YouTube channel with Lewis Brindley. He is known for playing a dwarf in any situation he can. He is renowned for being a strongman, entertainer, astronaut and a budding musician.

Lewis and Simon have uploaded an enormous variety of content, such as Minecraft adventure maps and mini-games, Garry's Mod, indie games, and many collaborations. Some of Lewis and Simon's most popular Minecraft series include YogLabs, Jaffa Factory, JaffaQuest, Hole Diggers, Deep Space Mine, Lucky Block Challenge, and of course, Shadow of Israphel. When playing Minecraft he has a fondness of pigs, Jaffa Cakes, fire and things that explode.

Simon is the creative force behind The Yogscast, known as the singer of "Diggy Diggy Hole" and "The Man of a Thousand Voices, all of which sound oddly similar". Simons charm, wit and endearing silliness are unmatched. He is the co-founder of the Yogscast.

Simon has, on rare occasions, managed to hijack the BlueXephos channel on YouTube, enabling him to post content in which he is the central character. This content tends to be superficially innocent and light, but upon closer examination reveals a twisted, diabolical malevolence and passive aggressive Machiavellian instinct that can only mean Simon's ultimate goal for the Yogscast is total world domination. These videos generally fall into two basic yet far-reaching categories, which are: Simon Sings, and Simon Plays. The Simon Playsseries are simple Let's Play videos of various computer/console games such as Portal 2 [1]. While playing these games Simon would occasionally give the characters unique voices, with a narrative thread roughly maintained throughout the video. The Simon's Songs series of videos is a collection of brief musical interludes wherein Simon does his best vocal impersonation of a cat being used to clean a rug. These videos demonstrate Simon's mind at work, as he eventually arrives at the perfect understanding of the two key critical lyrical elements that have defined success for one of his favourite musical artists, Parry Grip. This culminates in what is bound to be one of the top music videos of 2011, Elephant Having A Wank. The actual category the video will fall into--best or worst of 2011--is still in doubt.

Simon took a hiatus from the Yogscast in March 2015, with a video explaining his sudden absence. In the video, he relates his hiatus to unspecified medical issues tied into an unexpected visit to the hospital. Although he was released from the hospital a few weeks later, it was claimed that he wanted to take some time off in order to recover before returning to actively working on video content. A further passing mention in a Yogscast vlog in June simply said that he was getting better and that his friends hoped he would be fully recovered soon. Simon returned to making YouTube videos on September 25, making his first appearance in 6 months in the first episode of Trials of Skobbels [2].

Despite returning to several series on the main channel, he had a diminished involvement with Yogscast projects during his recuperation throughout 2016. He then went on another hiatus in March 2017, returning on the 9th of June on the stream. However, after his last hiatus, Simon has appeared way less frequently on the main channel (in which he used to appear in almost every single video). Since then, he has been showing up mainly in the Chilluminati streams, in the Game Goblin series (with Tom), and in some GTA V and Trouble in Terrorist Town (TTT) videos.

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Hive: Donald Trump News, In-Depth Articles, Photos & Videos …

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Its impossible to know where to begin with the Donald, and you could write War and Peace and still not get close to describing the last six months of his 2016 presidential campaignas if theres a word that could possibly describe it. So lets just zero in on the money.

Im really rich, Trump declared while announcing his candidacy in June 2015. To prove it, he released a Summary of Net Worth balance sheet, indicating a net worth of $8,737,540,000. A month later he upwardly revised that figure to in excess of TEN BILLION DOLLARS. (The caps are his.)

Since then, a cottage industry of spreadsheet-diving journalists has worked itself into a lather trying to peg his real net worth. But without tax returns to go on, its really anybodys guess. Despite the all-caps figures Trump has dispensed, most estimates from the established financial-media outlets have been lower, FAR LOWER. Forbes put his net worth at $4.5 billion. Fortune postulated $3.7 billion, and later upped it to $3.9 billion. Bloomberg guessed it was closer to $2.9 billion.

In response to these wanton guesstimates, Trump instinctually fired back at the guesstimators. Forbes is a bankrupt magazine, doesnt know what theyre talking about. Fortune has no idea what my assets are and has totally lost its way. But the real sulfuric acid was reserved for the lowballers over at Bloomberg. As usual, Trump made it personal, even suggesting his friend, the former New York City mayor, might be jealous. Maybe Michael told them to do it, Trump speculated in the Daily Mail, because he always wanted to do what Im doing. Perhaps wisely, The New Yorkereven with its legendary phalanx of persnickety fact-checkerswouldnt venture any closer than just a back-of-the-envelope calculation of $2.56 billion, which shouldnt be taken too seriously.

In November, Trump was elected president of the United States in a shocking turn of events. He lost the popular vote by some two million ballots.

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Hive: Donald Trump News, In-Depth Articles, Photos & Videos ...

Amazon.com: Travel: Books: Europe, United States, Asia …

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Travel Books from Amazon.com

From useful travel guides to help you get around a new country or city to gorgeous travel writing and photography collections, Amazon.coms collection of travel books spans the globe to let you experience the joys of travel, whether you are out adventuring or vicariously enjoying from your armchair.

No matter where youre heading to, you can find helpful and insightful travel books covering both the southern and northern hemispheres, including the Polar Regions, Europe, Canada, Australia, South America, and Africa. Our vast selection is available in various formats. Ebook editions and pocket guide books are great for taking with you while travelling for quick references and look-ups. Or try listening to audio travel books while touring to create your own, personalized walking tour of a new city.

Our selection of travel books is sorted into convenient categories to make browsing and shopping quicker and easier. Filter for the travel guides to Asia, Central America, Mexico, and the South Pacific, or try filtering by format, author, language, shipping option, and condition for a more directed search. We also include customer reviews and ratings right on the page so you can see which travel guides have been the most useful to other travelers like you. Featuring travel books about adventure travel, food and lodging, specialty travel, and other information from popular series like DK Eyewitness Travel, Fodors, Frommers, and Lonely Planet, its easier than ever to plan your next journey.

Or if you prefer to experience the world of travel via the imagination, check out our collection of travel books, memoirs, and photography to enjoy the adventures of great travelers. From great titles like Cheryl Strayeds Wild, Elizabeth Gilberts Eat, Pray, Love, and Paul Therouxs The Last Train To Zona Verde: My Ultimate African Safari, you can traverse the globe and see into the fascinating lives of other cultures, all from the coziness of your chair.

It may be a small world after allyou can journey to all sorts of corners of the globe with travel books from Amazon.com.

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Amazon.com: Travel: Books: Europe, United States, Asia ...

The Posthuman 1st Edition – amazon.com

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"The Posthuman makes a vital contribution to feministscholarship across disciplines Braidottis reading ofcontemporary issues is out of the box: challenging, encouraging andinspiring."Feminist Review

"An important and generative step toward new theories andscholarship and a welcome addition to Braidottis alreadyformidable canon."H+ Magazine

"Shows remarkable clarity and concision even as it lays out highlytechnical, complexly theoretical, and deeply interdisciplinaryconcepts."Choice

''This is a rather startling work that requires heavyconcentration on the part of the reader to follow the brilliantthinking of the author. Rosi Braidotti, a contemporary philosopherand feminist theoretician, `makes a case for an alternative view onsubjectivity, ethics and emancipation and pitches diversity againstthe postmodernist risk of cultural relativism, while also standingagainst the tenets of liberal individualism.' Throughout her work,Braidotti asserts and demonstrates the importance of combiningtheoretical concerns with a serious commitment to producingsocially and politically relevant scholarship that contributes tomaking a difference in the world.''Grady Harp, Literary Aficionado

"This is an exciting and important text, full of intellectualbrilliance and insight. It will make a major mark."Henrietta L. Moore, University of Cambridge

"Braidotti's exhilarating survey of the constellation ofposthumanity is lucid, learned and provocative. It will be anessential point of reference in future debates about the centralphilosophical problem of our age."Paul Gilroy, Kings College London

"Debates over humanism and post-humanism have been fought overfrom feminist philosophy to literary theory and post-colonialstudies. This latest work by Rosi Braidotti presents us with aclear-headed glimpse of some of the hard choices we have before us.Braidotti knows the philosophy, cares about the politics, andempathizes with those who have been shoved aside in these brutallast hundred years. She shows us how feminism, technoscientificinfrastructure and political strands cross, sometimes withsparks."Peter Galison, Harvard University

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The Posthuman 1st Edition - amazon.com

How Quantum Computers Work

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A quantum computer is a computer design which uses the principles of quantum physics to increase the computational power beyond what is attainable by a traditional computer. Quantum computers have been built on the small scale and work continues to upgrade them to more practical models.

Computers function by storing data in a binary number format, which result in a series of 1s & 0s retained in electronic components such as transistors. Each component of computer memory is called a bit and can be manipulated through the steps of Boolean logic so that the bits change, based upon the algorithms applied by the computer program, between the 1 and 0 modes (sometimes referred to as "on" and "off").

A quantum computer, on the other hand, would store information as either a 1, 0, or a quantum superposition of the two states. Such a "quantum bit" allows for far greater flexibility than the binary system.

Specifically, a quantum computer would be able to perform calculations on a far greater order of magnitude than traditional computers ... a concept which has serious concerns and applications in the realm of cryptography & encryption. Some fear that a successful & practical quantum computer would devastate the world's financial system by ripping through their computer security encryptions, which are based on factoring large numbers that literally cannot be cracked by traditional computers within the lifespan of the universe. A quantum computer, on the other hand, could factor the numbers in a reasonable period of time.

To understand how this speeds things up, consider this example. If the qubit is in a superposition of the 1 state and the 0 state, and it performed a calculation with another qubit in the same superposition, then one calculation actually obtains 4 results: a 1/1 result, a 1/0 result, a 0/1 result, and a 0/0 result. This is a result of the mathematics applied to a quantum system when in a state of decoherence, which lasts while it is in a superposition of states until it collapses down into one state. The ability of a quantum computer to perform multiple computations simultaneously (or in parallel, in computer terms) is called quantum parallelism).

The exact physical mechanism at work within the quantum computer is somewhat theoretically complex and intuitively disturbing. Generally, it is explained in terms of the multi-world interpretation of quantum physics, wherein the computer performs calculations not only in our universe but also in other universes simultaneously, while the various qubits are in a state of quantum decoherence. (While this sounds far-fetched, the multi-world interpretation has been shown to make predictions which match experimental results. Other physicists have )

Quantum computing tends to trace its roots back to a 1959 speech by Richard P. Feynman in which he spoke about the effects of miniaturization, including the idea of exploiting quantum effects to create more powerful computers. (This speech is also generally considered the starting point of nanotechnology.)

Of course, before the quantum effects of computing could be realized, scientists and engineers had to more fully develop the technology of traditional computers. This is why, for many years, there was little direct progress, nor even interest, in the idea of making Feynman's suggestions into reality.

In 1985, the idea of "quantum logic gates" was put forth by University of Oxford's David Deutsch, as a means of harnessing the quantum realm inside a computer. In fact, Deutsch's paper on the subject showed that any physical process could be modeled by a quantum computer.

Nearly a decade later, in 1994, AT&T's Peter Shor devised an algorithm that could use only 6 qubits to perform some basic factorizations ... more cubits the more complex the numbers requiring factorization became, of course.

A handful of quantum computers has been built. The first, a 2-qubit quantum computer in 1998, could perform trivial calculations before losing decoherence after a few nanoseconds. In 2000, teams successfully built both a 4-qubit and a 7-qubit quantum computer. Research on the subject is still very active, although some physicists and engineers express concerns over the difficulties involved in upscaling these experiments to full-scale computing systems. Still, the success of these initial steps does show that the fundamental theory is sound.

The quantum computer's main drawback is the same as its strength: quantum decoherence. The qubit calculations are performed while the quantum wave function is in a state of superposition between states, which is what allows it to perform the calculations using both 1 & 0 states simultaneously.

However, when a measurement of any type is made to a quantum system, decoherence breaks down and the wave function collapses into a single state. Therefore, the computer has to somehow continue making these calculations without having any measurements made until the proper time, when it can then drop out of the quantum state, have a measurement taken to read its result, which then gets passed on to the rest of the system.

The physical requirements of manipulating a system on this scale are considerable, touching on the realms of superconductors, nanotechnology, and quantum electronics, as well as others. Each of these is itself a sophisticated field which is still being fully developed, so trying to merge them all together into a functional quantum computer is a task which I don't particularly envy anyone ... except for the person who finally succeeds.

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How Quantum Computers Work

Ethical Theories Summarized & Explained: Consequentialism …

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The purpose of this article is to explain different ethical theories and compare and contrast them in a way thats clear and easy for students to understand. There are three major categories of ethical systems that students typically learn about in philosophy classes: consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics. I will describe all of them briefly, then describe each one of them in more detail, pointing out their defining features and major variants. Ill then discuss the nature of Objectivist Ethical Egoism and how it compares and contrasts with each of these types of ethics.

The Ethical Theories: Brief Summary

Consequentialism names a type of ethical theory that judges human practices, like actions or rules, based on their consequences. Human practices that produce good consequences are morally right, while ones that produce bad consequences are morally wrong. Roughly speaking, a consequentialist says that you should do certain things, because those actions produce good consequences. By far the most common historical variantof consequentialism is Classic Utilitarianism. Classic Utilitarianism was advocated by such philosophers as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.

Deontology names a type of ethical theory that judges human practicesbased on whether they are consistent with certain duties that the theory holds as intrinsically moral. Consequences are irrelevant to a fully deontological theory. Deontological theories tend to focus on the motives of actions, and whether a given action was motivated by duty or something else. In many deontological theories, motivation by moral duty itselfrather than other factors, like self-interestis essential to an actions being morally right. An advocate of deontology says that you should do certain things, just because those things are the right things to do, (they align with duty.)The originator of deontology as a formal theoretical framework was the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Later advocates have included W.D. Ross, Robert Nozick and Christine Korsgaard.

Virtue ethics names a type of ethical theory that takes virtues of character, rather than individual actions or rules, as the most fundamentalethical concepts. Moral virtues like honesty, courage, integrity, temperance and generosity are takento be inherently good first, then actions are evaluated based on whether they express those virtues. That is, do the actions match what a virtuous person would do in those circumstances? Basically, a virtue ethicist says that you should do certain things, because they are examples of good character. Modern virtue ethics takes inspiration from the moral theories of Ancient Greek philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, (especially Aristotle.) Prominent advocates include Christine Swanton, Rosalind Hursthouse and Alasdair MacIntyre.

Objectivist Ethical Egoism, unlike the other terms here, names one specific theory. It takes human life as the abstract or general standard of moral evaluation. Roughly speaking, that which promotes human life is the good, that which damages or destroys it is the bad. Because Objectivism, the whole philosophy from which this ethics springs, views human life as fundamentally individualneeding to be lived, maintained and enhanced by each individual through his own actionObjectivist Ethical Egoism (OEE) takes each individuals own life as his own effective standard of value. That which promotes the individuals own life overall is the good for him, that which damages or destroys his own life is the bad for him.

But OEE does not simply say that actions that end up promoting your life are moral, and actions that end up damaging it are immoral. Objectivism holds that the fundamental job of morality is to guide human choices in the context in which they aremade. Objectivism accepts the obvious truth that humans are not omniscient, and so cannot predict all the exact consequences of their actions in advance. It says that the way humans gain general or conditional knowledgeknowledge thatcan be applied to predict future consequencesis by forming rational principles from empirical observation and experience. In the field of morality, this means derivingrational moral principles from experience. These principles are general statementsof fact that are then applied to particular situations to determine a proper course of action. Thus, OEE says that a chosen action is moral, if and only if it represents a proper application of a life-promoting moral principle to the acting individuals current circumstances.

Among the principles that OEE holds as true are the idea that the rational self-interests of individuals do not conflict, and that initiating force against others (murder, slavery, theft, etc.) is destructive not only to the victims lives, but also to the perpetrators.

Basically, Objectivist Ethical Egoism says that you should do certain things, because those things actually support and/or enrich your own life.OEE is Ayn Rands highly distinctive theory that is widely misinterpreted by academic philosophers and the general public. It has been advocated and explained by such philosophers as Leonard Peikoff, Tara Smith, Allan Gotthelf and Gregory Salmieri.I will discuss OEEs relationship with the three ethical categories, and whether it can be considered a memberof any of them, when I discuss it in more detail later in this essay.

Consequentialism

Jeremy Bentham

Consequentialism is a category that includes those ethical theories that judge human practices as morally right or wrong based on their consequences. (Practice here is used very broadly to includea specific action, a rule guiding actions, a motive guiding actions, or a virtue of character.) Consequentialist theories say that morally right practicesare those that tend to increase or maximize whatever is inherentlymorally good. (1) If apractice tends to produce more moral goodness than any alternative practicewould have, then it is a morally right practice. Consequentialist philosophers differ on whether practices that tend to increase that which is morally good, but increase it less than an available alternative practice, can be called morally right. Are practices that produce less goodness wrongpractices, or merely sub-optimal but permissible rightpractices? In any case, for a pure consequentialist, the practice that tends to maximize moral goodness is the morally best practice.

There are many different types of consequentialism that people can adopt. Consequentialist theories can be divided into types in threemajorways. The first way is in what exactly it is about human practices that is being morally evaluated. A theory can evaluate individual actionsthis is called act consequentialism. Or a theory can evaluate the rules by which someone actsthis is called rule consequentialism. Or a theory can evaluate the motives by which someone actsthis is called motive consequentialism. Or a theory can evaluate the character traitsone demonstrates when one actsthis is called virtue consequentialism.

The secondmajor way consequentialist theories can be divided is by whose consequences count as morally relevant. That is, what beings are directly morally relevant in evaluating the consequences of a practice.Is it all conscious creatures? Is it all humans? Is it a subgroup of humans? Is it only the agent? Or is it all humans except the agent? Respectively, these choices among beneficiaries can be called broad consequentialism, human-centered consequentialism, group chauvinism, consequentialist egoism, and consequentialist altruism. (2)

The thirdmajor way of dividing consequentialist theories, as far as I can tell, only makes sense when applied to act consequentialism. Act consequentialist theories can be dividedby the sort of consequences that are relevant to the evaluation of an act. Are actual consequences the relevant factor? Or is it the consequences that analysis would show are most probable at the time of the decision to act?Or is it the consequences that the acting person (the agent) actuallyforesaw at the time he acted? Or is it the consequences that were reasonably foreseeable by the agent? Or is it the consequences that the agent intended to occur? (These different sorts of consequences could be called different epistemic statuses.)

The reason philosophers may want to consider the alternatives to actual consequences as the relevant type, is that people are not omniscient and cant predict the future consequences of actions perfectly. So it doesnt necessarily seem right to morally judge a decision, that was made at a given time and with a limited state of knowledge, by all of the actual consequences that followed. It would seem that one is saying that a person whose action produced bad consequences due to factors outside his possible knowledge was acting immorally. So, with actual consequentialism, people will sometimes be judged as acting immorally because they are not infalliblepredictors of the future. This tends to go against common-sense ideas of what morality demands.

Once we select an option from each of the three above lists, we have a pretty good idea of what sort of consequentialist theory were discussing. But we still havent narrowed our selection down to a single theory. For that we need a separate theory of moral goodness, more technically called a value theory or axiology.

The ethical approachof consequentialism depends on the notion of producing morally good consequences. But the consequentialist approach, by itself, does not answer the question of what the moral good is. So specificconsequentialist theories are partly defined by what they believe to be morally good.

Moral goodness may be identified with pleasure, preference satisfaction, justice, beauty, knowledge, wisdom, honor, peace, etc. Or, in the case of what is called negative consequentialism, moral goodness may be associated with the lack of something. This could be pain, injustice, ugliness, etc.

Historically, the most common version of consequentialism wasClassic Utilitarianism. Classic Utilitarianism (CU) defines moral goodness as pleasurespecifically, the aggregate pleasure of all sentient creatures. This pleasure is also called subjective happiness. So a common statement encapsulating utilitarianism is that it advocates for the greatest happiness of the greatest number. In this theory, pain is held to be a negation of pleasure, so it would be counted as subtracting fromaggregate pleasure. This function of pleasure minus pain is generally called utility.

Classic Utilitarianism is a form of act consequentialism, soit is a persons individual actions that are judged morally as good or bad, according to whether their consequences tend toincrease or decrease utility. CU also takes the actual consequences for net utility as the morally relevant kind, rather than probable, foreseen, or intended consequences at the time of the action. And it clearly takes universal consequences as the relevant kind, since it evaluates actions according to their effects on aggregate human and animalutility.

Classic utilitarianism was advocatedwith some variationsby philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick. (It should be noted that the distinction between act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism was not well defined at the time these philosophers were active. So they were not explicit nor necessarily perfectly consistent about choosing one over the other.)

Act Consequentialism Table

Rule Consequentialism Table

Virtue Consequentialism Table

Motive Consequentialism Table

If we alter one parameter of CU, we can get a different theory. Instead of aggregate utility of all sentient creatures, we could count only the utility of the agent as morally relevant. This would generate a theory we could call Classic Utility Egoism.(As well see in more detail, this form of egoism is very different from Objectivist Ethical Egoism.)

If we also switch act consequentialism for virtue consequentialism, we get a category we could call Virtue Utility Egoism. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus would fit into this category rather nicely, since he regarded the pleasure of the agent as the good, and virtue as instrumental to that pleasure.

If we switch Classic Utilitarianism from act consequentialism to ruleconsequentialism, while keeping its other categories and its axiology, we get a theory that could be referred to as Classic RuleUtilitarianism.

Finally, if we take CU and only change its axiology, we get a different theory. If we no longer consider classic utility (pleasure minus pain) to be morally good, but instead consider the satisfaction of the preferences of conscious organisms to be good,we get an approximation of Peter Singers contemporary preference utilitarianism. (Peter Singer is a well-known Australian moral philosopher who teaches at Princeton University. It should be noted that he was a preference utilitarian prior to 2014, when he announced that he had switched to Classic Utilitarianism. See Footnote (3).)

It should be noted that different forms of consequentialism can be categorized and distinguished based on other criteria that I have not mentioned here. Most of these criteria can be considered part of the theories axiologiestheir varying explanations of what ismorally good. There are pluralistic theories, that hold that moral goodness cannot be reduced to one factor, like utility, but that it consists of more than one irreducible component. And there are also theories that attempt to hybridize different types of consequentialism with each other, or hybridize consequentialism with other types of ethical theories. For more detail on the various forms of consequentialism, you can see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) entry on Consequentialism.

Deontology

Immanuel Kant

A deontological theory judges human practices as morally right or wrong based on whether they are consistent with certain duties that the theory holds as intrinsically moral.

As a classof formal ethical theories, deontology has its origins in the ethical approach of the 18th-Century German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Kant described two types of ethical rules or imperatives: hypothetical and categorical. Hypothetical imperatives are rules that you follow in order to attain some goal. For example, if you always tell the truth to good people in order to have authentic, healthy, win-win relationships with them, this would be a hypothetical imperative: a policy for the sake of a goal. On the other hand, a categorical imperative is a rule thats followed for the sake of no other goal. It is followed just because a moral law commands it. For example, if you never lie to anyone, simply because its the right thing to do, regardless of any consequencesgood or badthat might follow, then you would be acting on a categorical imperative.

Kant believed that only categorical imperatives could properly be considered part of morality. And he argued that there was one and only one such imperative that could be rationally justified, which, in Kants philosophy, is called the Categorical Imperative. Kant first stated this rule as: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. This moral law, according to Kant, was supposed to prohibit murder, theft, lying to others, cheating, suicide, etc. Those acts that could be seen to violate the Categorical Imperative were morally prohibited, regardless of any good consequences that might be gained from committing them, or any bad consequences that might be avoided by committing them. (4) Kant held that, in order to have moral worththat is, to be good and praiseworthy from a moral standpointactions must be motivated by obedience to the moral law, (duty.) If someone does something in accordance with the moral lawsay telling the truthbut is motivated by the desire to have good relationships or to avoid being convicted of fraud, the action is not a morally rightaction. The action must be performed not merely according to duty, but from duty.

Some early followers of Kant, such as Friedrich Schiller, as well as many later critics up through the mid-20th Century, interpreted Kant as holding that actions must be motivated purely by duty to be unambiguously morally worthy or right. Most commentatorsfound this requirement implausible and overly austere. Starting around 1980, the dominant interpretation shifted, following an influential paperby Barbara Herman. It is more typical now to interpret Kant as saying that an action having other motives can have moral worth, if the persons motive of duty would be sufficient in itself to produce the proper action, and thus stands ready to override all other motives when they would produce an action not in accordance with the Categorical Imperative.

Theorists of deontology since Kant have taken his basic approachi.e. treating categorical moral duties as fundamental to normative ethicsand adaptedit to formulate their ownmoral theories. In the early-to-mid-20th Century, W.D. Ross developed a moral theory that, instead of appealing to one categorical imperative, appealed to five irreducibledeontic principlesthat were supposed to govern a persons obligations. From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, these are:

a duty of fidelity, that is, a duty to keep our promises; a duty of reparation or a duty to act to right a previous wrong we have done; a duty of gratitude, or a duty to return services to those from whom we have in the past accepted benefits; a duty to promote a maximum of aggregate good; and finally a duty of non-maleficence, or a duty not to harm others.

Ross supplemented his duty to promote a maximum of aggregate good with statements of what he considered to be intrinsic goods:virtue, knowledge, justice, and the pleasure of others, (not of oneself.) So this makes his ethical system a sort of combination of deontology and consequentialism: deontology at the base, with consequentialism added on as one of the duties.

SinceKants deontology includes only one irreducible categorical imperative, it can be called monist. Rosss deontology, in contrast, has more than one irreducible (basic) categorical imperative, so it can be called pluralist. (5)

Kants and Rosss ethical theories are both deontological theories that focus on the general obligations of the agent as a moral agent. (This means that individuals have duties to themselves based ontheir own agency.) These are called agent-centered deontological theories. On the other hand, some philosophers have theorized that human rights can be based on deontological imperatives. They see an agents rights as irreducible moral constraints on the actions of others toward that agent. (So this means thatindividuals have duties to others based on the agency of those others.) These sorts of theories are called patient-centered deontology.This sort of deontology is most oftendiscussedand advocated by academic libertarians, both right and left. Notable sourcesincludeRobert Nozick, Eric Mack,Michael Otsuka, and Hillel Steiner.

On the level of particular duties, bothagent-centered and patient-centered dutiesduties based on ones own agencyand duties based on the agency of othersare generally understood as being in the Kantian tradition, and are oftencontained together in deontologicaltheories. The difference between the two types of theories lies in where the overallfocus of the theory is: duties to self or duties to others. Typically, agent-centered theories like Kants include patient-centered duties, while patient-centered theories like Nozicks often dont include agent-centered duties.

Virtue Ethics

Aristotle

Instead of focusing primarily on the consequences of actions or duty fulfillment, virtue ethics takes virtuesqualities of moral characteras fundamental to the ethical life.

Modern virtue ethics got its start when Elizabeth Anscombe wrote her article, Modern Moral Philosophy in 1958. In this article, Anscombe expressed dissatisfaction with the utilitarian and deontological ethical theories of her day. She suggested that the ethical theories of the Ancient Greeks, such as those of Plato and Aristotle, could bethe most plausible and satisfactory ones, once they were more theoretically developed.

In the academic revival of virtue ethics that followed, Aristotles ethics became the most popular model for the basic concerns of the virtue ethicists. So to understand modern virtue ethics, it will help tremendously to understand Aristotles ethical views.

For Aristotle, a virtue is an excellence of a persons functioning in a certain area of life. It is a stable character trait that governs a persons actions in some respect. It is not a superficial habit or routine, but permeates every aspect of a persons character, including his emotions, desires and intuitions. The Greek term for such a virtue or excellence of character is arete, and this term is still sometimes used by virtue ethicists today.

Aristotle holds that every virtue is a meanan average or middle groundbetween two extremes which are both vices. So, for example, Aristotle believed that courage was a virtue and was a mean between the vices of cowardice and rashness. The virtue of courage consists of having the proper amount of the quality of confidence in ones character. Too little confidence, and the person is a coward. Too much confidence, and he is rash and foolish. In the practice of indulging in pleasures, temperance is the right amount of indulgence, where licentiousness is too much and insensibility is too little. Other qualities that Aristotle considers virtues, include truthfulness, magnanimity, modesty, and pride. (Pride meansactually being deserving of great things and knowing that one is, not unjustified arrogance.)

So how does one know the boundaries between too much or too little and the right amount? Well, Aristotle didnt think that ethics was an exact science, so he didnt think ethics could answer this directly. Aristotle thought that, in order to act within the boundaries of arete, a personneeds practical wisdom. The Greek term for this faculty isphronesis. (6)

A person who achieves virtue orarete in all the various areas of life, arrives at a condition often called happiness or flourishing. The Greek term for this condition is eudaimonia. Though eudaimonia is sometimes translated as happiness, it does not merely denote an emotional state or subjective feeling.A person in a state of eudaimonia is, according to Aristotle, living in a way that fulfills his natural potentialas a human being. He is living in harmony with his essential nature as a rational animal. Thus, eudaimonia is supposed to be a holistic condition of a person, potentially observable by others. (That is, eudaimonia is supposed to be an objective condition that encompasses both mindand body.)

Virtue ethicists today generally take this basic approach to ethics and make modifications. For virtue ethicists, eudaimonia is not a logically distinct consequence of being virtuous, but in fact consists of being virtuous. Anyone who thought eudaimonia could be treated as a distinct consequence ofarete, would not be a true virtue ethicist, but a virtue consequentialist, with eudaimonia as the moral good. So when a true virtue ethicist is asked what eudaimonia is, their full answer must include their favoredvirtues as being at least partially constitutive of it. This makes eudaimonia a moralized or value-laden concept, according to virtue ethicists, which must be derived from the virtues. Here, the virtues cannot be derived as the causal means toeudaimonia, because eudaimoniajust is the exercise of all the virtues, (perhaps with other conditionsadded.)

Virtue ethical theories can be divided into those thatare universalist and those thatare culturally contextualist. Universalist theories see virtues as applicable in the same basic form to all human beings, regardless of culture. These theories are like Aristotles in this respect. Proponents of universalist theories include Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hursthouse. Cultural contextualist theories see virtues as taking different forms depending oncultural tradition. Even if the virtues in different cultural contexts have the same name, like honesty or justice, they may well be different in theiressential content. The main proponent of this sort of theory has been Alasdair MacIntyre. (7)

There are various different views within virtue ethics about what the exact nature and meaningof the virtues is, and there are sometheorists whotakeinspiration for their theories from Plato and other ancients. Modern virtue ethics is a relatively young movement in the modern academic world. So it hasnt been explored, labeled and categorized to the degree that consequentialism and deontology have.

Objectivist Ethical Egoism

Objectivist Ethical Egoism (OEE) holds that human life is the abstract standard of value in morality. For each individual, who is making moral decisions and acting, this means his own life is his own standard of right and wrong.

OEE was developed by Ayn Rand, and further explicated by philosophers such as Leonard Peikoff, Harry Binswanger, Tara Smith, Darryl Wright, Allan Gotthelf and Gregory Salmieri.

OEE arises in the context of the whole fundamental philosophy that is Objectivism: that is, the Objectivist metaphysics and epistemology. OEE is the application of Objectivist epistemology to the fundamental problem of how to live as a human being in reality as it is.

Principles, Human Nature, and Morality

Objectivist epistemology holds that, in order to successfully predict the future (not exactly, but within certain parameters) human beings must observe the world with their senses and develop principles by reasoning on the basis of those observations. This holds whether the prediction is made in the fieldof the natural sciences, the humanities, or morality.

Rational principles are not mere rules. They are general statements of fact that, when combined with a situation and a goal, yield a normative guideline. So, for example, if I have a person on the surface of theEarth, the Newtonian principle of gravity tells me that I can put that person into a circular Earth orbit by launching him to a certain height at a certain speed and in a certain direction. If my goal is to do this, then I have my basic normative guideline: I should launch him at that height, speed and direction.

If you recall the section on deontology, you should recognize this sort of normative guideline as a hypothetical imperative, in Kants terminology: a normative guideline followed for the sake of a goal. According to Objectivism, all genuinely normative guidelinesthat is, all normative guidelines based in realityare hypothetical. This holds whether the normative guideline is in morality or some other field. Objectivism rejects categorical imperatives altogether as baseless.

As with physics and space flight, principles of chemistry normatively guide individuals action for successful chemical synthesis and characterization, principles of psychology guide action in the pursuit of mental health, principles of electronics guide action in the making of televisions and computers, etc. So what do principles of morality guide action in achieving? According to Objectivism, principles of morality guide action in the maintenance and promotion of ones own life, as a human being.

I hasten to addthat life, as it is used here, is not equivalent to being biologically living by having a beating heart, and promoting my life does not mean striving to maximize the length of time myheart is beating. Being comatose or in a vegetative state until one dies is not life in the relevant sense, and it cannot be sustained beyond a few days without the intervention of other humans, who are actually living and sustaining themselves as humans. The life as a human being for which moral principles are required, is a life of conscious value pursuit: that is, it is the deliberate choosing and thoughtful pursuit of goals that sustain oneself.

Humans cant survive like plants do, by rooting themselves into the ground and drawing nutrients from the soil. Nor can they survive by sheer emotions, drives and instincts, like other animals do. To survive for any significant length of time, humans have to think, plan, and obtain what they need using their minds. At the most rudimentary level, this can mean making tools and weapons, hunting animals and gathering fruit and vegetables. Or, atincreasingly advanced stages, it can mean subsistence farming, or producing and trading artisanal goods, meat and farm produce, or it can mean a modern industrial society with a division of labor between industrial farmers, steel producers, car manufacturers, transportation services, etc.

Humans survive by pursuing and achievingobjective values. Objective here does not mean mind-independent or agent-independent. It means based on facts of reality and not a matter of faith, personal whim or arbitrary convention. Objectivism understands that values are relational to each individual, but also that the relationship is a matter of fact, not a matter of faith or whims.

So, as a simple example, food is valuable to the person who is hungry. It only directly supports his life if he is the one to eat it. Food is not valuable in itself, apart from the needs of the hungry person. Yet it is not a matter of faith, whims, or convention that people need to eat to live; it is a matter of fact. (SeeValues Are Relational, But Not Subjective for a more detailed explanation of this point.)

The characteristic and necessary mode of human survival, which is self-sustaining action (i.e. pursuit of objective values) on the basis of thought, is the foundation of an objective account of human happiness, in Objectivism. This happiness is not merely a subjective assessment of ones own psychological state, but a state of consciousnessthat is the psychological aspectof living ones life as a human being. It is the experience of living well as a human being which can be called flourishing or, using Aristotles terminology, eudaimonia.

So here we see that Objectivism identifies eudaimonia with successful and sustainable life. It provides a solid theoretical foundation for Aristotles ultimate good. It clearly explains what eudaimonia means and gives it content in a way that is not dependent on assorted virtues of character as its irreducible foundation. It thus avoids the logical circle of: What are the virtues? The character traits that combine under auspiciousconditions to produce eudaimonia. What is eudaimonia? The state that is the combination of the virtues under auspicious conditions. For Objectivism, happiness is the mental experience of eudaimonia, which is surviving as a human, par excellence. It is the mental experience of engagingto the fullest of ones capacityin the sorts of actions that enable humans to survive and be healthy in the long term.

At this point, lets take a moment to observe an important issue:Earlier, I said that principles of morality guide action in the maintenance and promotion of ones own life. Yet all true principles can potentially be helpful in supporting and enhancing an individuals life. Principles of physics and electronics can enable the development of life-saving medical technology, the deployment of satellites for instant long-distance communication, etc. Principles of chemistry can enable the development of life-saving and life-enhancing pharmaceuticals. Principles of psychology can be used to improvea persons psychological health and help them lead a more fulfilled life. Etc.

So what actually differentiates moral principles from the principles of other fields? The Objectivist answer is first to note that moral principles are one subcategoryofphilosophical principles. Then we say that what differentiates philosophical principles is that, unlike the principles of other fields, the principles of philosophymust be utilized in some capacity by every human being, in the course of living a full human life. Morality is the branch of philosophy that deals withall freely chosen human actions. Basic moral principles apply to every free choice of action any person might make. So while principles of physics may be inapplicable and useless for a psychologist treating a patient, and principles of chemistry may be inapplicable for a student studying music, moral principles are applicable for everyone in virtually every waking moment, in every aspect of life where they are not being coercedby others. (8)

Moral principles are the principles that apply to all freely chosen actions as such, not just actions in the particular field of applied physics, or of music composition, or of applied psychology. Notice here that Im saying that normative morality is analogous to the applied fields of knowledge: applied physics, applied music theory, and applied psychology, but on a broader scale of application in ones life. So what is the field of knowledge that morality applies? The field of knowledge is fundamental human nature, which, in Objectivism, is understood to be a branch of metaphysics. In Objectivism, morality is applied metaphysics. It is the application of metaphysics to the chosengoal of living ones own flourishing, happy life. (9)

It was principles of fundamental human naturemetaphysicsthat I was discussing when I was explaining the concept of life and how humans cant survivelike plants or other animals, but must use their minds to live.

So now that we have a general idea of the nature of morality, in the Objectivist view, and moralitysconnection to Objectivist metaphysics and epistemology, lets discuss the content of Objectivist Ethical Egoism in more detail.

The Cardinal Values

So what does an individual need in order to engage in the sorts of actions that enable survival as a human in thelong-term? Objectivism holds that three cardinal values are needed by everyone in every waking moment: reason, purpose and self-esteem. The fundamental need of reason should be clear from what wasdiscussed earlier about human nature. It is the most basic value required for human life. One should do things that improve ones ability to reason, such as gaining knowledge and learning how to think. One should not do things that destroy ones ability to reason, such as abusing drugs or alcohol, or accepting things on sheer blind faith. One should avoid contradictions in ones thinking, since holding contradictory beliefs is the violation of reason.

Purpose is an aspect of reason, properly conceived. Holding it as a value emphasizes the need to treat reasoning as a means to goals, and not merely as an end in itself. Reasoning that is purely idle contemplation, with no further life-serving goal in view, is a detriment to life. (Please note here that intellectual goals can serve ones life in very indirect ways, as in many cases of increasing ones knowledge of highly abstract, theoretical topics.) In the Objectivist view, reasoning must be directed toward the production of knowledge that is ultimately used in reality in some fashion, in order to be worthwhile and genuine. All human thought and actions must be organized around some sort of reality-based purpose.

Self-esteem is the judgmentof ones own life and self as valuable. On the most basic level, humans need some amount of self-esteem for purposeful, life-sustaining action. This self-esteem is acquired through the judgmentexplicit or implicitthat one is capable of achieving happiness, and the knowledge that one fully intends to pursue that goal. A fuller self-esteem is gained as one actually achievesrational goalsand develops good character.

The Objectivist Virtues

According to Objectivism, these values are the fundamental goals one should pursue. They encompass many particular careers, hobbies, relationships and lifestyles. The fundamental means by which an individual pursues these goals are virtues. According to Objectivism, virtues are not fundamentally traits of character, (as virtue ethicists hold.) They are intellectual principles guiding action. If an individual consistently applies these principles in his life, then they can be automatized and can be said to form a basic part of the individuals character.

There is one fundamental virtue, according to Objectivism: rationality. Rationality is acting in accordance with ones reasoning to the best of ones ability. Being rational does not mean that an individual will be infallible. A fully rational individual may make mistakes in regard to facts, as well as in regard to methods of thinking (logic.) (10) An irrational person is one who doesnt consistently strive to be correct in every issue significant to his life. Irrationality is willfully turning away from facts and logic as ones guides to action. This may be done openly, through an appeal to something other than reason as a guide, such as faith, sheer intuition, emotion, or instinct, or it may be hidden by rationalizations, (thinking processes corrupted by emotionalism and/or dogma.)

The virtue of rationality, on its own, is very general, and so doesnt give people a lot of guidance in how to live moral lives. Thus, Objectivism breaks rationality down into six component virtues: honesty, independence, productiveness, integrity, justice and pride. Ayn Rand described each of these virtues as the recognition of certain fundamental facts about reality, human consciousness, and ones own nature as a human being:

Independence is your recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape itthat no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life

Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraudthat an attempt to gain a value by deceiving the mind of others is an act of raising your victims to a position higher than reality, where you become a pawn of their blindness, a slave of their non-thinking and their evasions, while their intelligence, their rationality, their perceptiveness become the enemies you have to dread and flee

Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existencethat man is an indivisible entity, an integrated unit of two attributes: of matter and consciousness, and that he may permit no breach between body and mind, between action and thought, between his life and his convictions

Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature

Productiveness isyour recognition of the fact that you choose to livethat productive work is the process by which mans consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit ones purpose

Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of mans values, it has to be earned

(Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, (50th Anniversary Ed.) p. 932-934)

Of course, when Rand says you cannot fake she does not mean that its impossible to attempt to fake. She means that you cannot fake and hope to live fully as a human being. Faking puts you on a path to self-destruction. The applicability of the virtues, as with all of morality, depends on an individual making the choice to live, in some form, explicit or implicit. The alternative to the choice to live, according to Objectivism, is to slip into self-destruction. Such self-destruction may be very slow, very fast, or somewhere in between, but if one does not choose to livethat is, to pursue self-sustaining values rationally, keeping ones own life as the ultimate goal of ones actionsthe decay toward death is inevitable:

Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choiceand the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be manby choice; he has to hold his life as a valueby choice; he has to learn to sustain itby choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtuesby choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

(Ayn Rand, The Objectivist Ethics in The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 23)

Lets look at a hypothetical example to see how the Objectivist virtues are necessary means tothe achievement of values.Lets say theres a young woman who has studied Objectivism and who wants to become an architect. She attends college atanarchitectural school.

She is honest and doesnt cheat, since this would undermine her competence as an architect and expose her to the risk of being caught and discredited and/or punished. Shestudies diligently to follow through with her plans, so she exhibits integrity. She is working toward a self-supporting life as an architect, so she exemplifies productiveness.Shes ambitious in her coursework, she doesnt try to skate by with the minimum, and she doesnt apologize for her excellence to others who may resent her for making them look bad. So she demonstratespride. She doesnt try to muddle throughby imitating or copying others, or by relying on them to do all the work in group projects. So she shows independence. She selects her study partners according to their ambition and ability in the class, rather than their need for help. To the extent she can, she selects her instructors according to her best judgment of their teaching abilities. So she acts onjustice.

Now if we contrast this woman with one who exhibits the opposite qualities, it should be fairly apparent who will tend to become an architect in a sustainable way, (what we would typically call a successful architect.) Someone who lacks the above virtues may be granted the temporary illusion of success by making friends and going along with a certain social crowd. But regardless of any false esteem granted by others, the reality will be that a continually dishonest, lazy and unambitious person will not actually be a successful architect.

The Harmony of Rational Interests

Objectivism holds that there are no conflicts of interests among rational individuals. The interests of rational individuals do not consist of short-range, out-of-context desires (whims.) Rather, they consist of goals that are the result of careful thought and planning. This means that rational interests cannot be served by pursuing self-contradictory goals, or effects without the requisite causes.

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Egoism: Examples and Definition | Philosophy Terms

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I. Definition

You may think you already know egoism; but youre probably thinking of egotismself-importance, or self-centeredness. In contrast, egoism is the philosophical view that human beings do, or should, always act for their own benefit. Both words are derived from the Latin word for I ego.

Egoism and egotism are quite different. For example, egotists often talk about themselves a lot, not listening to otherswhich makes people dislike them. In contrast, egoists might act very humbly, and pay attention to othersbecause its in their best interests to make people like them and want to treat them well. Egotism is a character trait; egoism is a philosophy.

Even so, you might think that egoists must secretly be egotistsand a lot of philosophers would agree with you. But the point is that egoism does not necessarily violate our usual notions of what is right and wrong. We will return to this questionof whether egoism implies immoralityin other sections.

In fact, some of our highest ideals in the Western worldindividual rights, freedom, and democracydepend on ideas similar to egoism. All of these philosophies depend on the idea that humans normally do or should pursue their own welfare and happiness. The problem, of course, is when your welfare conflicts with someone elsesanother point well discuss below.

But whether you think egoism is right or wrong depends a lot on what kind of egoism youre talking about. The two main kinds of egoism are quite different; descriptive egoism just claims that human being do always act for their own benefit; while normative egoism claims that we should always act for our own benefit.

The most popular variety of descriptive egoism is psychological egoism, which simply claims that whatever a human being does, the ultimate aim is self-benefit. If psychological egoism is correct, it means that even when people appear to act for others benefit, with no concern for themselveswhich is called altruismtheyre actually doing it for their own sake. It doesnt mean that anyone is necessarily trying to be deceptive, or pretending, to help others (although thats a possibility of course). Psychological egoists would say that people may act altruistically because it will be good for them in the long run, or because it makes them feel good when they do it.

There are at least two main categories of psychological egoismdesire-based and objective. The first says that humans are always doing what they desire. For example, even if you say you dont want to do your homework, you do choose to do it; you have the option to not do it, and suffer the consequences. So, you do desire to do your homeworkjust not for its own sake.

But, this kind of psychological egoism seems to be trivially true; it doesnt say why we make what choices we do.

Other kinds of psychological egoism are called objective because they claim that we are always pursuing certain objectives. Some say we always act for pleasure. Others argue that we always pursue whatever we think will bring us the most benefit.

But most philosophers have rejected psychological egoism. For one thing it is probably unprovable because it is a theory about our deepest motivationswhich are private. How could anyone prove whether you help an old lady across the street only for her sake, or because it makes you feel good about yourself? You may not be sure yourself which it is!

But that kind of example is another reason most philosophers reject psychological egoismbecause human beings really do sometimes act for the benefit of others without expecting to any reward for themselves. Altruism; well come back to this debate in section III.

Normative egoism is not about what humans do, but about what they should do. Two kinds of normative egoism are well known:

Ethical egoists may argue that you cannot know what is best for anyone but yourselfand so it is immoral to try. If you try to act in reference to other peoples interests, rather than your own, you can easily do things those people wouldnt want, mess up other peoples lives, or just violate their right to decide what happens to them, which would be immoral. Ethical egoists also might argue that human beings are dependent on one another for survival, so therefore, it is your moral obligation to take care of yourself first, so that others dont have toand so that you have the ability to take care of them. In other words, whats in your best interests is ultimately in everybodys best interests.

Which brings us to rational egoism, which assumes that we should act rationally, which is egoistically. The most famous rational egoist, the writer Ayn Rand, argued strongly against sacrificing ones own interests for others. She argued that not taking full advantage of ones own freedom is immoral because it opposes the natural fulfilment of human potential, which is the best thing for everyone in a society. For example, if I dont work as hard as possible for my own personal success, then I might fail to accomplish many things that would be good for the world.

Nevertheless, many philosophers feel that rational egoism cannot provide a basis for ethical behaviorthat it is, rather, a justification for amorality (no morality), which could be very dangerous.

In the big picture, its worth noting that egoism has been a characteristically Western philosophy since at least Aristotle. Although there were a few ancient Chinese thinkers who had egoistic ideas, in general, egoism is much harder to justify in Eastern thought, where the ego (the personal self) is an illusion that one should try to get over!

In the west, Aristotle is cited for his early contribution to egoism, in the Nicomachean Ethics, where he points out that one must act for ones own benefit in order to be a good friend, or a good citizenbecause you cant do any good for other people if youre not in good condition yourself. However, Aristotle was not really an egoist, because he believed that it was the primary value of helping others that justified helping oneself.

The main ideas of psychological egoism started popping up in Europe during the Reformation (17th century) such as in the writings of philosopher, Thomas Hobbes (see next section for a quote). Hobbes (and others) argued that all voluntary actions are, by definition, egoisticbecause they are voluntary. So, humans are always acting for their own sakes, whether they think so or not.

Many philosophers shared this view during the 18th century, supported by the rationalism of the time. But David Hume, in his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Appendix IIOf Self Love), set forth some well-known arguments against it. Hume said that psychological egoism denied the reality of such important human feelings as friendship, love, compassion, and gratitude. He also argued that there was no reason to try to reduce the diversity of human motivations to one simple thing. And he pointed out, as many have, that both humans and animals have been observed to act, instinctively for others sakes.

Early normative egoism is often associated with the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche whose ideas about freedom, the will, and the superman, certainly seem to support egoism, and have been used that way, but Nietzsche himself rejected egoism because, he said, being an egoist would have the opposite of the desired effect; it would set other people against you, which is bad for your own success.

The first philosophers to consider themselves egoists were Max Stirner and Henry Sidgwick in the 19th Century. But probably the most popular and controversial spokesperson for egoism was Ayn Rand, who set forth her arguments in The Virtue of Selfishness, and in novels such as Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Adapting some of Nietzsches rhetoric, Rand focused on rational egoism as a rejection of the sacrificial ethics of Christianity; she argued that it is wrong to sacrifice ones own interests for others because it is irrational: the actor must always be the beneficiary of his action and that man must act for his own rational self-interest. Thus, to her, ethical and rational egoism go together. Her perspective owes a lot to Nietzsches rejection of traditional morality and glorification of the individual will.

Over the past 30 years or so, egoism has faced stronger opposition than before because of scientific research showing that (a) humans and animals do have altruistic instincts, (b) selfish decisions are often not in your best interests, and (c) that altruistic behavior is consistent with evolution. When we were evolving, living in small tribes, most people lived around their many relatives, so doing things for others benefitaltruismcould actually spread ones own genes!

Egoism has always been a controversial theory, and we have sketched some of its debates in the previous sectionssuch as whether it can be moral or not, and whether it needs to be.

Another challenge to egoism is whether its even logically possible. Several philosophers have pointed out that it leads to self-contradictions and irresolvable conflicts. For example, Joseph Butler writes that it may be necessary to act un-selfishly in order to receive benefits, which makes egoism self-contradictory. However, we can get around this paradox by just saying that egoism is acting for long-term benefit.

A bigger problem for psychological egoism is that some behavior just doesnt seem egoistic in any sense. Say a soldier throws himself on a grenade to prevent others from being killed. Its hard to say how that could be in the soldiers selfish interests! Hes not going to benefit from it in the long run, or even be able to enjoy the feeling of being a good person. Egoists might argue that the soldier is deceiving himself if he thinks he acted selflessly; perhaps he was sub-consciously motivated to avoid feeling guilty if he didnt sacrifice himself. But then again, feeling that kind of guilt depends on having non-egoistic motivations, doesnt it? An egoist could also argue that since the soldier made a free decision to jump on the grenade, he was, by definition, following his own desires. However, that argument seems like a cop-out; it avoids resolving the question of why the soldier did it.

The major controversy about normative (ethical or rational) egoism is, of course, whether it can be truly ethical at all, since almost all people agree that an ethical system must encourage us to act for the benefit of other human beings. The main points of debate are whether it is desirable or possible to act selflessly, and whether rational selfishness is or is not really the best thing for others. The answers to these questions depend on answers to many other questions: how interdependent are human beings? Is individual freedom more important than social stability? Is individuality an illusion? So, this debate will doubtless not soon be settled!

Ethics has to recognize the truth, recognized in unethical thought, that egoism comes before altruism. The acts required for continued self-preservation, including the enjoyments of benefits achieved by such arts, are the first requisites to universal welfare. Unless each duly cares for himself, his care for all others is ended in death, and if each thus dies there remain no others to be cared for. Herbert Spencer

In this argument for ethical egoism, Herbert Spencer, a 19th century British philosopher, seems to echo Aristotles original justification for some degree of egoismthat a person needs to take care of their own needs and happiness before they can take care of others. Often accused of inconsistency, Spencer was an egoist who also believed that human beings have a natural sense of empathy and should care for each other, although at the same time, he believed that altruism was a relatively recent development in humans.

What interest can a fond mother have in view, who loses her health by assiduous attendance on her sick child, and afterwards languishes and dies of grief, when freed, by its death [the childs], from the slavery of that attendance? David Hume

Hume, a famous opponent of psychological realism, here gives an example that demonstrates several of his arguments against egoism. Hume pointed out that human beings have certain innate non-egoist instincts, such as the compulsion of a mother to sacrifice herself for her children. And even if she does so, selfishly, in order to feel good herself, that doesnt explain why she dies of grief after her child dies.

Altruism is the opposite of egoism the motivation or practice of doing things to benefit others, without expecting any benefit for oneself. However, most of the debates about egoism and altruism are not about whether its good to benefit others or not, which almost everyone agrees on, but whether egoism or altruism are actually beneficial, or even possible.

Just as psychological egoism could be rejected on the basis that its impossible to prove peoples motivations, many philosophers have questioned whether it is possible to prove altruistic motivations either. As descriptions of human nature, egoism and altruism seem to compete on equal grounds; you can pretty much always argue that any action was really motivated by egoism or really altruism, but you cant prove it.

As normative philosophies, about what people should do, most philosophers agree that ethical behavior is behavior which is good for people in generalso you might assume that altruism should win automatically. But there are some pretty good arguments that altruistic action depends on egoist motivations; you might not help that old lady cross the street if you didnt care about feeling good about yourself. And egoists may argue that its immoral to decide whats in other peoples best interests.On the side of altruism is the universal belief that morality means being good to others and the evidence that empathy, compassion, and altruism are natural instincts.

Many popular films feature egoist villainssociopaths who pursue their own gain without regard for others. But Heath Ledgers Joker in Christopher Nolans Dark Knight goes further. Late in the movie he actually sets up a version of The Prisoners Dilemmaa scenario from game theory which philosophers have used to explore the egoism versus altruism debate. The Joker intends to prove to all that his view of human naturepsychological egoismis true. He believes that one or both boats will try to blow up the other one in order to save their own lives, according to the Jokers rulesbut they refuse to cooperate, seemingly proving that humans are not entirely egoistic. Throughout the film, the Joker represents the egoist view as he repeatedly exploits his enemies egoism. But in the end, Batman supposedly demonstrates that altruism is real by taking the fall for a politician he doesnt even likefor the good of the people of Gotham.

Both of the Star Trek films featuring Khan, Captain Kirks worst enemy, explore the consequences of egoist versus altruist views. In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, we learn that Khans murderous anger towards humanity is partly a result of Captain Kirks earlier action of marooning Khan and his people on a then hospitable planetwhich later suffered an environmental disaster killing most of Khans people. This is a clear illustration of the ethical egoists claim that trying to act in others interests may be immoral. Furthermore, Kirks failure to check up on Khan on the planet suggests that Kirk was not really acting altruistically, but rather egoistically, supporting the views of psychological egoism. Meanwhile, Khan believes that he has a natural right to dominate, based on his superior intellect and strength, a view commonly associated with rational egoism and Ayn Rand. Of course in the end, Mr. Spock demonstrates altruism by sacrificing himself to save the rest of the Enterprise crew, repeating an idea clearly meant to prove that altruism is more rational than egoismthe needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

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Egoism: Examples and Definition | Philosophy Terms

Ethics | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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The field of ethics (or moral philosophy) involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior. Philosophers today usually divide ethical theories into three general subject areas: metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. Metaethics investigates where our ethical principles come from, and what they mean. Are they merely social inventions? Do they involve more than expressions of our individual emotions? Metaethical answers to these questions focus on the issues of universal truths, the will of God, the role of reason in ethical judgments, and the meaning of ethical terms themselves. Normative ethics takes on a more practical task, which is to arrive at moral standards that regulate right and wrong conduct. This may involve articulating the good habits that we should acquire, the duties that we should follow, or the consequences of our behavior on others. Finally, applied ethics involves examining specific controversial issues, such as abortion, infanticide, animal rights, environmental concerns, homosexuality, capital punishment, or nuclear war.

By using the conceptual tools of metaethics and normative ethics, discussions in applied ethics try to resolve these controversial issues. The lines of distinction between metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics are often blurry. For example, the issue of abortion is an applied ethical topic since it involves a specific type of controversial behavior. But it also depends on more general normative principles, such as the right of self-rule and the right to life, which are litmus tests for determining the morality of that procedure. The issue also rests on metaethical issues such as, "where do rights come from?" and "what kind of beings have rights?"

The term "meta" means after or beyond, and, consequently, the notion of metaethics involves a removed, or bird's eye view of the entire project of ethics. We may define metaethics as the study of the origin and meaning of ethical concepts. When compared to normative ethics and applied ethics, the field of metaethics is the least precisely defined area of moral philosophy. It covers issues from moral semantics to moral epistemology. Two issues, though, are prominent: (1) metaphysical issues concerning whether morality exists independently of humans, and (2) psychological issues concerning the underlying mental basis of our moral judgments and conduct.

Metaphysics is the study of the kinds of things that exist in the universe. Some things in the universe are made of physical stuff, such as rocks; and perhaps other things are nonphysical in nature, such as thoughts, spirits, and gods. The metaphysical component of metaethics involves discovering specifically whether moral values are eternal truths that exist in a spirit-like realm, or simply human conventions. There are two general directions that discussions of this topic take, one other-worldly and one this-worldly.

Proponents of the other-worldly view typically hold that moral values are objective in the sense that they exist in a spirit-like realm beyond subjective human conventions. They also hold that they are absolute, or eternal, in that they never change, and also that they are universal insofar as they apply to all rational creatures around the world and throughout time. The most dramatic example of this view is Plato, who was inspired by the field of mathematics. When we look at numbers and mathematical relations, such as 1+1=2, they seem to be timeless concepts that never change, and apply everywhere in the universe. Humans do not invent numbers, and humans cannot alter them. Plato explained the eternal character of mathematics by stating that they are abstract entities that exist in a spirit-like realm. He noted that moral values also are absolute truths and thus are also abstract, spirit-like entities. In this sense, for Plato, moral values are spiritual objects. Medieval philosophers commonly grouped all moral principles together under the heading of "eternal law" which were also frequently seen as spirit-like objects. 17th century British philosopher Samuel Clarke described them as spirit-like relationships rather than spirit-like objects. In either case, though, they exist in a spirit-like realm. A different other-worldly approach to the metaphysical status of morality is divine commands issuing from God's will. Sometimes called voluntarism (or divine command theory), this view was inspired by the notion of an all-powerful God who is in control of everything. God simply wills things, and they become reality. He wills the physical world into existence, he wills human life into existence and, similarly, he wills all moral values into existence. Proponents of this view, such as medieval philosopher William of Ockham, believe that God wills moral principles, such as "murder is wrong," and these exist in God's mind as commands. God informs humans of these commands by implanting us with moral intuitions or revealing these commands in scripture.

The second and more this-worldly approach to the metaphysical status of morality follows in the skeptical philosophical tradition, such as that articulated by Greek philosopher Sextus Empiricus, and denies the objective status of moral values. Technically, skeptics did not reject moral values themselves, but only denied that values exist as spirit-like objects, or as divine commands in the mind of God. Moral values, they argued, are strictly human inventions, a position that has since been called moral relativism. There are two distinct forms of moral relativism. The first is individual relativism, which holds that individual people create their own moral standards. Friedrich Nietzsche, for example, argued that the superhuman creates his or her morality distinct from and in reaction to the slave-like value system of the masses. The second is cultural relativism which maintains that morality is grounded in the approval of one's society - and not simply in the preferences of individual people. This view was advocated by Sextus, and in more recent centuries by Michel Montaigne and William Graham Sumner. In addition to espousing skepticism and relativism, this-worldly approaches to the metaphysical status of morality deny the absolute and universal nature of morality and hold instead that moral values in fact change from society to society throughout time and throughout the world. They frequently attempt to defend their position by citing examples of values that differ dramatically from one culture to another, such as attitudes about polygamy, homosexuality and human sacrifice.

A second area of metaethics involves the psychological basis of our moral judgments and conduct, particularly understanding what motivates us to be moral. We might explore this subject by asking the simple question, "Why be moral?" Even if I am aware of basic moral standards, such as don't kill and don't steal, this does not necessarily mean that I will be psychologically compelled to act on them. Some answers to the question "Why be moral?" are to avoid punishment, to gain praise, to attain happiness, to be dignified, or to fit in with society.

One important area of moral psychology concerns the inherent selfishness of humans. 17th century British philosopher Thomas Hobbes held that many, if not all, of our actions are prompted by selfish desires. Even if an action seems selfless, such as donating to charity, there are still selfish causes for this, such as experiencing power over other people. This view is called psychological egoism and maintains that self-oriented interests ultimately motivate all human actions. Closely related to psychological egoism is a view called psychological hedonism which is the view that pleasure is the specific driving force behind all of our actions. 18th century British philosopher Joseph Butler agreed that instinctive selfishness and pleasure prompt much of our conduct. However, Butler argued that we also have an inherent psychological capacity to show benevolence to others. This view is called psychological altruism and maintains that at least some of our actions are motivated by instinctive benevolence.

A second area of moral psychology involves a dispute concerning the role of reason in motivating moral actions. If, for example, I make the statement "abortion is morally wrong," am I making a rational assessment or only expressing my feelings? On the one side of the dispute, 18th century British philosopher David Hume argued that moral assessments involve our emotions, and not our reason. We can amass all the reasons we want, but that alone will not constitute a moral assessment. We need a distinctly emotional reaction in order to make a moral pronouncement. Reason might be of service in giving us the relevant data, but, in Hume's words, "reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions." Inspired by Hume's anti-rationalist views, some 20th century philosophers, most notably A.J. Ayer, similarly denied that moral assessments are factual descriptions. For example, although the statement "it is good to donate to charity" may on the surface look as though it is a factual description about charity, it is not. Instead, a moral utterance like this involves two things. First, I (the speaker) I am expressing my personal feelings of approval about charitable donations and I am in essence saying "Hooray for charity!" This is called the emotive element insofar as I am expressing my emotions about some specific behavior. Second, I (the speaker) am trying to get you to donate to charity and am essentially giving the command, "Donate to charity!" This is called the prescriptive element in the sense that I am prescribing some specific behavior.

From Hume's day forward, more rationally-minded philosophers have opposed these emotive theories of ethics (see non-cognitivism in ethics) and instead argued that moral assessments are indeed acts of reason. 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant is a case in point. Although emotional factors often do influence our conduct, he argued, we should nevertheless resist that kind of sway. Instead, true moral action is motivated only by reason when it is free from emotions and desires. A recent rationalist approach, offered by Kurt Baier (1958), was proposed in direct opposition to the emotivist and prescriptivist theories of Ayer and others. Baier focuses more broadly on the reasoning and argumentation process that takes place when making moral choices. All of our moral choices are, or at least can be, backed by some reason or justification. If I claim that it is wrong to steal someone's car, then I should be able to justify my claim with some kind of argument. For example, I could argue that stealing Smith's car is wrong since this would upset her, violate her ownership rights, or put the thief at risk of getting caught. According to Baier, then, proper moral decision making involves giving the best reasons in support of one course of action versus another.

A third area of moral psychology focuses on whether there is a distinctly female approach to ethics that is grounded in the psychological differences between men and women. Discussions of this issue focus on two claims: (1) traditional morality is male-centered, and (2) there is a unique female perspective of the world which can be shaped into a value theory. According to many feminist philosophers, traditional morality is male-centered since it is modeled after practices that have been traditionally male-dominated, such as acquiring property, engaging in business contracts, and governing societies. The rigid systems of rules required for trade and government were then taken as models for the creation of equally rigid systems of moral rules, such as lists of rights and duties. Women, by contrast, have traditionally had a nurturing role by raising children and overseeing domestic life. These tasks require less rule following, and more spontaneous and creative action. Using the woman's experience as a model for moral theory, then, the basis of morality would be spontaneously caring for others as would be appropriate in each unique circumstance. On this model, the agent becomes part of the situation and acts caringly within that context. This stands in contrast with male-modeled morality where the agent is a mechanical actor who performs his required duty, but can remain distanced from and unaffected by the situation. A care-based approach to morality, as it is sometimes called, is offered by feminist ethicists as either a replacement for or a supplement to traditional male-modeled moral systems.

Normative ethics involves arriving at moral standards that regulate right and wrong conduct. In a sense, it is a search for an ideal litmus test of proper behavior. The Golden Rule is a classic example of a normative principle: We should do to others what we would want others to do to us. Since I do not want my neighbor to steal my car, then it is wrong for me to steal her car. Since I would want people to feed me if I was starving, then I should help feed starving people. Using this same reasoning, I can theoretically determine whether any possible action is right or wrong. So, based on the Golden Rule, it would also be wrong for me to lie to, harass, victimize, assault, or kill others. The Golden Rule is an example of a normative theory that establishes a single principle against which we judge all actions. Other normative theories focus on a set of foundational principles, or a set of good character traits.

The key assumption in normative ethics is that there is only one ultimate criterion of moral conduct, whether it is a single rule or a set of principles. Three strategies will be noted here: (1) virtue theories, (2) duty theories, and (3) consequentialist theories.

Many philosophers believe that morality consists of following precisely defined rules of conduct, such as "don't kill," or "don't steal." Presumably, I must learn these rules, and then make sure each of my actions live up to the rules. Virtue ethics, however, places less emphasis on learning rules, and instead stresses the importance of developing good habits of character, such as benevolence (see moral character). Once I've acquired benevolence, for example, I will then habitually act in a benevolent manner. Historically, virtue theory is one of the oldest normative traditions in Western philosophy, having its roots in ancient Greek civilization. Plato emphasized four virtues in particular, which were later called cardinal virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. Other important virtues are fortitude, generosity, self-respect, good temper, and sincerity. In addition to advocating good habits of character, virtue theorists hold that we should avoid acquiring bad character traits, or vices, such as cowardice, insensibility, injustice, and vanity. Virtue theory emphasizes moral education since virtuous character traits are developed in one's youth. Adults, therefore, are responsible for instilling virtues in the young.

Aristotle argued that virtues are good habits that we acquire, which regulate our emotions. For example, in response to my natural feelings of fear, I should develop the virtue of courage which allows me to be firm when facing danger. Analyzing 11 specific virtues, Aristotle argued that most virtues fall at a mean between more extreme character traits. With courage, for example, if I do not have enough courage, I develop the disposition of cowardice, which is a vice. If I have too much courage I develop the disposition of rashness which is also a vice. According to Aristotle, it is not an easy task to find the perfect mean between extreme character traits. In fact, we need assistance from our reason to do this. After Aristotle, medieval theologians supplemented Greek lists of virtues with three Christian ones, or theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity. Interest in virtue theory continued through the middle ages and declined in the 19th century with the rise of alternative moral theories below. In the mid 20th century virtue theory received special attention from philosophers who believed that more recent ethical theories were misguided for focusing too heavily on rules and actions, rather than on virtuous character traits. Alasdaire MacIntyre (1984) defended the central role of virtues in moral theory and argued that virtues are grounded in and emerge from within social traditions.

Many of us feel that there are clear obligations we have as human beings, such as to care for our children, and to not commit murder. Duty theories base morality on specific, foundational principles of obligation. These theories are sometimes called deontological, from the Greek word deon, or duty, in view of the foundational nature of our duty or obligation. They are also sometimes called nonconsequentialist since these principles are obligatory, irrespective of the consequences that might follow from our actions. For example, it is wrong to not care for our children even if it results in some great benefit, such as financial savings. There are four central duty theories.

The first is that championed by 17th century German philosopher Samuel Pufendorf, who classified dozens of duties under three headings: duties to God, duties to oneself, and duties to others. Concerning our duties towards God, he argued that there are two kinds:

Concerning our duties towards oneself, these are also of two sorts:

Concerning our duties towards others, Pufendorf divides these between absolute duties, which are universally binding on people, and conditional duties, which are the result of contracts between people. Absolute duties are of three sorts:

Conditional duties involve various types of agreements, the principal one of which is the duty is to keep one's promises.

A second duty-based approach to ethics is rights theory. Most generally, a "right" is a justified claim against another person's behavior - such as my right to not be harmed by you (see also human rights). Rights and duties are related in such a way that the rights of one person implies the duties of another person. For example, if I have a right to payment of $10 by Smith, then Smith has a duty to pay me $10. This is called the correlativity of rights and duties. The most influential early account of rights theory is that of 17th century British philosopher John Locke, who argued that the laws of nature mandate that we should not harm anyone's life, health, liberty or possessions. For Locke, these are our natural rights, given to us by God. Following Locke, the United States Declaration of Independence authored by Thomas Jefferson recognizes three foundational rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Jefferson and others rights theorists maintained that we deduce other more specific rights from these, including the rights of property, movement, speech, and religious expression. There are four features traditionally associated with moral rights. First, rights are natural insofar as they are not invented or created by governments. Second, they are universal insofar as they do not change from country to country. Third, they are equal in the sense that rights are the same for all people, irrespective of gender, race, or handicap. Fourth, they are inalienable which means that I cannot hand over my rights to another person, such as by selling myself into slavery.

A third duty-based theory is that by Kant, which emphasizes a single principle of duty. Influenced by Pufendorf, Kant agreed that we have moral duties to oneself and others, such as developing one's talents, and keeping our promises to others. However, Kant argued that there is a more foundational principle of duty that encompasses our particular duties. It is a single, self-evident principle of reason that he calls the "categorical imperative." A categorical imperative, he argued, is fundamentally different from hypothetical imperatives that hinge on some personal desire that we have, for example, "If you want to get a good job, then you ought to go to college." By contrast, a categorical imperative simply mandates an action, irrespective of one's personal desires, such as "You ought to do X." Kant gives at least four versions of the categorical imperative, but one is especially direct: Treat people as an end, and never as a means to an end. That is, we should always treat people with dignity, and never use them as mere instruments. For Kant, we treat people as an end whenever our actions toward someone reflect the inherent value of that person. Donating to charity, for example, is morally correct since this acknowledges the inherent value of the recipient. By contrast, we treat someone as a means to an end whenever we treat that person as a tool to achieve something else. It is wrong, for example, to steal my neighbor's car since I would be treating her as a means to my own happiness. The categorical imperative also regulates the morality of actions that affect us individually. Suicide, for example, would be wrong since I would be treating my life as a means to the alleviation of my misery. Kant believes that the morality of all actions can be determined by appealing to this single principle of duty.

A fourth and more recent duty-based theory is that by British philosopher W.D. Ross, which emphasizes prima facie duties. Like his 17th and 18th century counterparts, Ross argues that our duties are "part of the fundamental nature of the universe." However, Ross's list of duties is much shorter, which he believes reflects our actual moral convictions:

Ross recognizes that situations will arise when we must choose between two conflicting duties. In a classic example, suppose I borrow my neighbor's gun and promise to return it when he asks for it. One day, in a fit of rage, my neighbor pounds on my door and asks for the gun so that he can take vengeance on someone. On the one hand, the duty of fidelity obligates me to return the gun; on the other hand, the duty of nonmaleficence obligates me to avoid injuring others and thus not return the gun. According to Ross, I will intuitively know which of these duties is my actual duty, and which is my apparent or prima facie duty. In this case, my duty of nonmaleficence emerges as my actual duty and I should not return the gun.

It is common for us to determine our moral responsibility by weighing the consequences of our actions. According to consequentialism, correct moral conduct is determined solely by a cost-benefit analysis of an action's consequences:

Consequentialism: An action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favorable than unfavorable.

Consequentialist normative principles require that we first tally both the good and bad consequences of an action. Second, we then determine whether the total good consequences outweigh the total bad consequences. If the good consequences are greater, then the action is morally proper. If the bad consequences are greater, then the action is morally improper. Consequentialist theories are sometimes called teleological theories, from the Greek word telos, or end, since the end result of the action is the sole determining factor of its morality.

Consequentialist theories became popular in the 18th century by philosophers who wanted a quick way to morally assess an action by appealing to experience, rather than by appealing to gut intuitions or long lists of questionable duties. In fact, the most attractive feature of consequentialism is that it appeals to publicly observable consequences of actions. Most versions of consequentialism are more precisely formulated than the general principle above. In particular, competing consequentialist theories specify which consequences for affected groups of people are relevant. Three subdivisions of consequentialism emerge:

All three of these theories focus on the consequences of actions for different groups of people. But, like all normative theories, the above three theories are rivals of each other. They also yield different conclusions. Consider the following example. A woman was traveling through a developing country when she witnessed a car in front of her run off the road and roll over several times. She asked the hired driver to pull over to assist, but, to her surprise, the driver accelerated nervously past the scene. A few miles down the road the driver explained that in his country if someone assists an accident victim, then the police often hold the assisting person responsible for the accident itself. If the victim dies, then the assisting person could be held responsible for the death. The driver continued explaining that road accident victims are therefore usually left unattended and often die from exposure to the country's harsh desert conditions. On the principle of ethical egoism, the woman in this illustration would only be concerned with the consequences of her attempted assistance as she would be affected. Clearly, the decision to drive on would be the morally proper choice. On the principle of ethical altruism, she would be concerned only with the consequences of her action as others are affected, particularly the accident victim. Tallying only those consequences reveals that assisting the victim would be the morally correct choice, irrespective of the negative consequences that result for her. On the principle of utilitarianism, she must consider the consequences for both herself and the victim. The outcome here is less clear, and the woman would need to precisely calculate the overall benefit versus disbenefit of her action.

Jeremy Bentham presented one of the earliest fully developed systems of utilitarianism. Two features of his theory are noteworty. First, Bentham proposed that we tally the consequences of each action we perform and thereby determine on a case by case basis whether an action is morally right or wrong. This aspect of Bentham's theory is known as act-utilitiarianism. Second, Bentham also proposed that we tally the pleasure and pain which results from our actions. For Bentham, pleasure and pain are the only consequences that matter in determining whether our conduct is moral. This aspect of Bentham's theory is known as hedonistic utilitarianism. Critics point out limitations in both of these aspects.

First, according to act-utilitarianism, it would be morally wrong to waste time on leisure activities such as watching television, since our time could be spent in ways that produced a greater social benefit, such as charity work. But prohibiting leisure activities doesn't seem reasonable. More significantly, according to act-utilitarianism, specific acts of torture or slavery would be morally permissible if the social benefit of these actions outweighed the disbenefit. A revised version of utilitarianism called rule-utilitarianism addresses these problems. According to rule-utilitarianism, a behavioral code or rule is morally right if the consequences of adopting that rule are more favorable than unfavorable to everyone. Unlike act utilitarianism, which weighs the consequences of each particular action, rule-utilitarianism offers a litmus test only for the morality of moral rules, such as "stealing is wrong." Adopting a rule against theft clearly has more favorable consequences than unfavorable consequences for everyone. The same is true for moral rules against lying or murdering. Rule-utilitarianism, then, offers a three-tiered method for judging conduct. A particular action, such as stealing my neighbor's car, is judged wrong since it violates a moral rule against theft. In turn, the rule against theft is morally binding because adopting this rule produces favorable consequences for everyone. John Stuart Mill's version of utilitarianism is rule-oriented.

Second, according to hedonistic utilitarianism, pleasurable consequences are the only factors that matter, morally speaking. This, though, seems too restrictive since it ignores other morally significant consequences that are not necessarily pleasing or painful. For example, acts which foster loyalty and friendship are valued, yet they are not always pleasing. In response to this problem, G.E. Moore proposed ideal utilitarianism, which involves tallying any consequence that we intuitively recognize as good or bad (and not simply as pleasurable or painful). Also, R.M. Hare proposed preference utilitarianism, which involves tallying any consequence that fulfills our preferences.

We have seen (in Section 1.b.i) that Hobbes was an advocate of the methaethical theory of psychological egoismthe view that all of our actions are selfishly motivated. Upon that foundation, Hobbes developed a normative theory known as social contract theory, which is a type of rule-ethical-egoism. According to Hobbes, for purely selfish reasons, the agent is better off living in a world with moral rules than one without moral rules. For without moral rules, we are subject to the whims of other people's selfish interests. Our property, our families, and even our lives are at continual risk. Selfishness alone will therefore motivate each agent to adopt a basic set of rules which will allow for a civilized community. Not surprisingly, these rules would include prohibitions against lying, stealing and killing. However, these rules will ensure safety for each agent only if the rules are enforced. As selfish creatures, each of us would plunder our neighbors' property once their guards were down. Each agent would then be at risk from his neighbor. Therefore, for selfish reasons alone, we devise a means of enforcing these rules: we create a policing agency which punishes us if we violate these rules.

Applied ethics is the branch of ethics which consists of the analysis of specific, controversial moral issues such as abortion, animal rights, or euthanasia. In recent years applied ethical issues have been subdivided into convenient groups such as medical ethics, business ethics, environmental ethics, and sexual ethics. Generally speaking, two features are necessary for an issue to be considered an "applied ethical issue." First, the issue needs to be controversial in the sense that there are significant groups of people both for and against the issue at hand. The issue of drive-by shooting, for example, is not an applied ethical issue, since everyone agrees that this practice is grossly immoral. By contrast, the issue of gun control would be an applied ethical issue since there are significant groups of people both for and against gun control.

The second requirement for an issue to be an applied ethical issue is that it must be a distinctly moral issue. On any given day, the media presents us with an array of sensitive issues such as affirmative action policies, gays in the military, involuntary commitment of the mentally impaired, capitalistic versus socialistic business practices, public versus private health care systems, or energy conservation. Although all of these issues are controversial and have an important impact on society, they are not all moral issues. Some are only issues of social policy. The aim of social policy is to help make a given society run efficiently by devising conventions, such as traffic laws, tax laws, and zoning codes. Moral issues, by contrast, concern more universally obligatory practices, such as our duty to avoid lying, and are not confined to individual societies. Frequently, issues of social policy and morality overlap, as with murder which is both socially prohibited and immoral. However, the two groups of issues are often distinct. For example, many people would argue that sexual promiscuity is immoral, but may not feel that there should be social policies regulating sexual conduct, or laws punishing us for promiscuity. Similarly, some social policies forbid residents in certain neighborhoods from having yard sales. But, so long as the neighbors are not offended, there is nothing immoral in itself about a resident having a yard sale in one of these neighborhoods. Thus, to qualify as an applied ethical issue, the issue must be more than one of mere social policy: it must be morally relevant as well.

In theory, resolving particular applied ethical issues should be easy. With the issue of abortion, for example, we would simply determine its morality by consulting our normative principle of choice, such as act-utilitarianism. If a given abortion produces greater benefit than disbenefit, then, according to act-utilitarianism, it would be morally acceptable to have the abortion. Unfortunately, there are perhaps hundreds of rival normative principles from which to choose, many of which yield opposite conclusions. Thus, the stalemate in normative ethics between conflicting theories prevents us from using a single decisive procedure for determining the morality of a specific issue. The usual solution today to this stalemate is to consult several representative normative principles on a given issue and see where the weight of the evidence lies.

Arriving at a short list of representative normative principles is itself a challenging task. The principles selected must not be too narrowly focused, such as a version of act-egoism that might focus only on an action's short-term benefit. The principles must also be seen as having merit by people on both sides of an applied ethical issue. For this reason, principles that appeal to duty to God are not usually cited since this would have no impact on a nonbeliever engaged in the debate. The following principles are the ones most commonly appealed to in applied ethical discussions:

The above principles represent a spectrum of traditional normative principles and are derived from both consequentialist and duty-based approaches. The first two principles, personal benefit and social benefit, are consequentialist since they appeal to the consequences of an action as it affects the individual or society. The remaining principles are duty-based. The principles of benevolence, paternalism, harm, honesty, and lawfulness are based on duties we have toward others. The principles of autonomy, justice, and the various rights are based on moral rights.

An example will help illustrate the function of these principles in an applied ethical discussion. In 1982, a couple from Bloomington, Indiana gave birth to a baby with severe mental and physical disabilities. Among other complications, the infant, known as Baby Doe, had its stomach disconnected from its throat and was thus unable to receive nourishment. Although this stomach deformity was correctable through surgery, the couple did not want to raise a severely disabled child and therefore chose to deny surgery, food, and water for the infant. Local courts supported the parents' decision, and six days later Baby Doe died. Should corrective surgery have been performed for Baby Doe? Arguments in favor of corrective surgery derive from the infant's right to life and the principle of paternalism which stipulates that we should pursue the best interests of others when they are incapable of doing so themselves. Arguments against corrective surgery derive from the personal and social disbenefit which would result from such surgery. If Baby Doe survived, its quality of life would have been poor and in any case it probably would have died at an early age. Also, from the parent's perspective, Baby Doe's survival would have been a significant emotional and financial burden. When examining both sides of the issue, the parents and the courts concluded that the arguments against surgery were stronger than the arguments for surgery. First, foregoing surgery appeared to be in the best interests of the infant, given the poor quality of life it would endure. Second, the status of Baby Doe's right to life was not clear given the severity of the infant's mental impairment. For, to possess moral rights, it takes more than merely having a human body: certain cognitive functions must also be present. The issue here involves what is often referred to as moral personhood, and is central to many applied ethical discussions.

As noted, there are many controversial issues discussed by ethicists today, some of which will be briefly mentioned here.

Biomedical ethics focuses on a range of issues which arise in clinical settings. Health care workers are in an unusual position of continually dealing with life and death situations. It is not surprising, then, that medical ethics issues are more extreme and diverse than other areas of applied ethics. Prenatal issues arise about the morality of surrogate mothering, genetic manipulation of fetuses, the status of unused frozen embryos, and abortion. Other issues arise about patient rights and physician's responsibilities, such as the confidentiality of the patient's records and the physician's responsibility to tell the truth to dying patients. The AIDS crisis has raised the specific issues of the mandatory screening of all patients for AIDS, and whether physicians can refuse to treat AIDS patients. Additional issues concern medical experimentation on humans, the morality of involuntary commitment, and the rights of the mentally disabled. Finally, end of life issues arise about the morality of suicide, the justifiability of suicide intervention, physician assisted suicide, and euthanasia.

The field of business ethics examines moral controversies relating to the social responsibilities of capitalist business practices, the moral status of corporate entities, deceptive advertising, insider trading, basic employee rights, job discrimination, affirmative action, drug testing, and whistle blowing.

Issues in environmental ethics often overlaps with business and medical issues. These include the rights of animals, the morality of animal experimentation, preserving endangered species, pollution control, management of environmental resources, whether eco-systems are entitled to direct moral consideration, and our obligation to future generations.

Controversial issues of sexual morality include monogamy versus polygamy, sexual relations without love, homosexual relations, and extramarital affairs.

Finally, there are issues of social morality which examine capital punishment, nuclear war, gun control, the recreational use of drugs, welfare rights, and racism.

James FieserEmail: jfieser@utm.eduUniversity of Tennessee at MartinU. S. A.

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Ethics | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Bitcoin Cash (BCC) : Everything You need to know about …

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I am sure if you are reading this, you might know about the current Bitcoin scaling issue. This issue is not new, but it seems like it is about to reach its climax.

Multiple users, miners, and developers are clinging to multiple solutions to solve the overarching Bitcoin scaling debate. And everyone is deciding which side to join in the chaotic situation of this upcoming Bitcoin fork.

Which side are you joining?

If you dont understand what I am talking about, check out the scaling debate and the fork issue here.

So here are some technical jargons you may have seen:

These dont help normal users and do little good. In my opinion, this has only led to a lot of the present daysFUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) in every Bitcoinersmind who doesnt understand these jargons.

So I thought of covering the latest on this Bitcoin drama without getting deep into these technical jargons for now. (Soon, I will publish a separate guide on all these jargons related to the BTC fork)

For now, you should just know that our original dearest- Bitcoin (BTC),which Satoshi Nakamoto created, is likely going to split on August 1, 2017.

The new split of Bitcoin will be called Bitcoin Cash.

Wondering what that is?

Bitcoin Cash is a new cryptocurrency denoted, as of now, as BCH.

A group of influential miners, developers, investors, and users who are against the agreed consensus (aka BIP-91 or SegWit2x) have decided to fork the original Bitcoin blockchain and create a new version called Bitcoin Cash.

The official Bitcoin Cashswebsite defines itself as:

Bitcoin Cash is peer-to-peer electronic cash for the Internet. It is fully decentralized, with no central bank and requires no trusted third parties to operate.

The official date and time for the fork is:

Fork Date: 2017-08-01 12:20 p.m. UTC

For your information, it will be a miner activated hard fork (aka MAHF) that will happen without the agreement of a majority of miners or hash power.

Bitcoin Cash will be a fork of the original Bitcoin blockchain with some changes and additional features here and there.

Mind you, these changes might look small and insignificant, but in reality, these small things have been the reason for a massive debate on Bitcoin scaling for many years.

1. New Name With a new name to Bitcoins offspring, i.e. Bitcoin Cash, it seems to appeal to a stratum of users who believe that Bitcoin should be a cash-like thing thats easy to exchange with minimal or no fees. Suffixing Cash to Bitcoin encourages this usage.

2. Block Size Limit Increase A certain group of users, miners, and developers have always advocated for a bigger block size in BTC. Now with Bitcoin Cash, they will start off with an immediate increase of the block size limit to 8MB.

3. Replay and Wipeout ProtectionIf and when BCH splits, they have a well thought out replay and wipeout protection plan for both chains. With this, everyone involved will have minimum disruptions and both the chains can peacefully coexistence from there.

4.New Transaction TypeAs part of the replay protection technology, Bitcoin Cash has introduced a new transaction type with additional benefits such as input value signing for improved hardware wallet security, and elimination of the quadratic hashing problem. (Source-https://www.bitcoincash.org/)

Websites from where you can buy Bitcoin Cash:

You may think that no one would support this new kid in the crypto market. But thats not true!

BCH is getting enough support from users, miners, and developers. And in reality, to start with, you only need support from these key players.

Moreover, it wouldnt be fair to dismiss a currency which has not yet been born and has yet to be traded in the market.

For your information, CoinMarketCap lists the futures options of Bitcoin Cash.

Notable Supporters (Exchanges, Mining Pools, and Wallets)

Together, these four pools in total make30% of the entire hash power, which is not small. So far, there is no official confirmation that they will be giving all of their hash power to BCH mining. But if that happens, BCH is here to stay.

Bitcoin Cash Wallets

Bitcoin Cash Exchanges

As the official website of Bitcoin Cash states:

All current Bitcoin holders will automatically own Bitcoin Cash. The existing ledger at the time of the split is preserved, thus users retain any balances they had before the split.

So it means that if you hold Bitcoins, after the split/fork, you will have both BTC and BCH balances; in other words,your coin holdings will double.

Wowowow double!!

You may think this is a good thing as your value will also double.

Note: Doubling of coins does not mean doubling of value. The value of both BTC and BCHwill be determined after the split based on demand/supply in the market and on user sentiments.

You do not need to do much, but you need to be updated and agile about all of this. If you want access to your BCH coins, you will require your private keys.

And heres the important part:Both of your coins (BTC and BCH) will have the same private keys.

Moreover, due to this fork/split, another problem called Replay Attacks, can happen.

Though,intheir FAQsection, Bitcoin Cash says that they have replay protection in place, but we are not sure how effective it is as it is still not been tested in live.

How is transaction replay being handled between the new and the old blockchain?

Bitcoin Cash transactions use a new flagSIGHASH_FORKID, which is non standard to the legacy blockchain. This prevents Bitcoin Cash transactions from being replayed on the Bitcoin blockchain and vice versa.

So to avoid replay attacks and access your BCH coins, we suggest you take care of the following things:

Order Ledger Nano S | Order Trezor from the official site

Predicting or commenting on the future of Bitcoin Cash is impossible.

The only certain future prediction as of now is that if you owned any Bitcoin before the forkon 2017-08-01 12:20 p.m. UTC, then you will surely have the same amount of BTC andBCH after the fork.

For more details on how you will be able to access BCH, keep an eye on our blog.

Note: This last part of the article is for advanced users who are aware of Bitcoins fork-ology terms. For non-technical users, I will be explaining terms such as Segwit2x, UASF, UAHF, etc. in an another article. For now, I have shared with you actionable things to avoid any loss in case a fork happens. So if you wish, you may skip this part.

Continuing forward ..on how we reached here!

Some of you who are aware of some dynamics of the BTC fork might be thinking why I am talking about this fork now. Well, we heard a few days back the news that BTC isnt splitting due to BIP 91 or SegWit2x or BIP 141 or whatever.

Well, that was true, and it is still sort of true. But, there was an another proposal on how to scale Bitcoin called BIP 148 (aka UASF) which intended to activate SegWit on August 1, 2017, without seeking the majority of miners by updating their full node software.

In response, Bitmain (and others) came up with a contingency plan to save some miners and users who otherwise would have gotten wiped out in case BIP 148 was activated. They called this plan a UAHF (user-activated hard fork). That means they will be supporting and implementing BCH.

But, as BIP 91 (the first part of SegWit2x) is already locked in and on the path of activation, it means that there would be no need for Bitmans contingency plan because BIP 148 wont be activated now. On the other hand, BIP 148s original aim is already being achieved by the activation of BIP 91 (or BIP 141 or SegWit2x), so there is no point, it seems, in activating it.

However, now it appears that this plan will still be carried out on August 1, 2017 because this group is fundamentally against the idea of SegWit (or SegWit2x) and sees a block size increase as the only option.

The only ray of hope to stop this fork seems to be that Bitcoin core developers, miners, users, etc. who voted in favor of BIP 91 need to suddenlyagreeonAugust 1 to reject SegWit and accept the increasing of block size to 8 MB. And believe me, this is very unlikely.

August 1st will be a historic day in the lifetime of Bitcoin and its users. If people find BCH more profitable and appealing, it could take off, or if it turns out to not offer anything useful to the world, it could just die an unnamed death.

But no one knows

So until that time, stay tuned at CoinSutra to keep with the Bitcoin revolution!

For further reading:

Continued here:

Bitcoin Cash (BCC) : Everything You need to know about ...

In Defense of Ayn Rand, Monster Under the Progressive Bed

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Liberals are constantly begging for more female authors and female lead characters in literature, but one woman author and philosopher remains stubbornly absent from progressive reading lists. Her name is Ayn Rand, and she is responsible for a theory called Objectivism, which holds that reality exists independently of consciousness and that rational self-interest is the proper moral purpose of life.

Of all the tiresomely self-satisfied rituals played out regularly in the liberal blogosphere, competitive Rand-hating is among the most fatuous and infuriating. But why do the chattering classes hate her so much? I sense that the reasons givenher alleged psychopathy, selfishness, lack of literary talent, and hypocrisy, among othersare much less compelling than the real motivations driving their criticisms.

Last week, the previously lost novel version of Rand's play Ideal was published. It is short, little more than a novella really, sparing readers passages like the infamous 100-page radio-hack exposition at the end of Atlas Shrugged. It's a thriller, set in Los Angeles about 80 years ago, in which golden-era heroine Kay Gonda, on the run from the police, attempts to find sanctuary with six of her most devoted fans.

To her horror, the men don't live up to their professed admiration by providing her a berth, which, as the story unfolds, becomes ever more depressing as we realize that most of us would probably behave the same way. The nature of celebrity has changed dramatically since the classic Hollywood period in which the novel's action takes place, but if Rihanna showed up at my front door, I'm not entirely sure I'd behave any better to her than the fans in Ideal do to Gonda.

This partially epistolary novel provides a secular account of a question more often posed by faith: If God showed up in disguise, would the faithful live up to their professed values, or would the encounter reveal a baser nature? Unlike Rand's later works, in which reason and faith are irreconcilable, these waters are muddied in Ideal, which describes its heroine in Virgin Marylike terms. Even the final revelation has, as one reviewer for the New Republic noted, a distinctively Christian virtuosic flourish to it.

According to Michael Paxton, who directed the world premiere of the play in 1989, Ideal gives readers an insight into Rand's state of mind in the early 1930s: Her first novel, We The Living, had been rejected by publishers for being "too intellectual," and the writer was struggling with odd jobs, having recently moved to the United States.

"It examines the artist's process," Paxton told me from his hotel room in North Carolina, where he was set to give a talk at the Ayn Rand Institute's Objectivist Summer Conference. "How do you be an artist and live in the world at the same time? It's amazing how, once you've lived a little in the world, you can really understand these characters and the issues they're dealing withnot being understood, thinking the world doesn't care whether you live or die."

His assessment is not universal. Perhaps predictably, the New York Times hated the play when it premiered off-Broadway in 2010, concluding that, "the show's clumsy mix of long bursts of theory and a laborious plot would test the endurance of even Alan Greenspan, a famous Rand admirer and veteran of long, boring meetings."

As a play, Ideal went unperformed for 60 years after its writing, and was never seen on stage in Rand's lifetime, though Paxton says that may have something to do with its practical demands: The play has 37 characters and tons of set changes. But he thinks it's worth the effort: "What's surprising about the play is that it has a lot of humour, and a lot of satire in how it makes fun of organized religion. It's subtle, and very funny."

The good news is the new edition also includes the entire play script. So you can gather 37 of your closest right-wing nutcase alliesor lefty culture jammers, as you preferand stage it yourself to find out.

Related: An Elegant Evening With Ayn Rand's Free-Market Revolutionaries

Ideal the novel, which Rand herself set aside as unsatisfactory, is less polished than the stage version, and, despite flashes of Randian flair, there is evidence that the author was still struggling to find her voice. Readers familiar with the Fountainhead will recognize the seeds of that work in this early effort. Thankfully, though, Ideal is not one of those works of juvenilia that ought to have remained lost.

Rand's critics, often humourless literalists, will find plenty in Ideal to gnaw on: There's the classically Randian was-it-rape-or-wasn't-it sex scene and a blisteringly heartless remark after a death that will have fans sniggering and detractors drumming up all the manufactured fury they can muster. And, yes, Rand's writing can be a bit... much.

But profound, existential loneliness, coupled with a Buffy the Vampire Slayeresque sense of ordained personal greatness is why so many cheerleaders for capitalism relate to Rand's lead characters, from Gonda to the Fountainhead's Dominique Francon.

Shoshana Milgram Knapp, an associate professor of English at Virginia Tech, said that these two characters are "to some extent reflections of Ayn Rand herself... Ayn Rand said that Dominique was herself in a bad mood." This is perhaps why Rand's literary agent, Alan Collins, said Ideal was a novel that only she could have written: In 1946, he wrote to Rand, "Had I come on a copy of this play in the midst of the Fiji Islands I would have had no doubt as to the authorship, as the writing, theme, and conception of the characters are uniquely yours."

Critics never pass up the opportunity to be cruel about Rand fans. "Rand's fan club has always been filled out not by committed literary critics but by insecure sulkers," the New Republic wrote. Given how many books Rand has sold, though, that's an awful lot of sulky people.

Let's be honest, though, Randroids are idiosyncratic, to put it mildly. In fact, and I say this with love, Objectivists are the most thin-skinned fandom in existence. The vaguest hint of implied criticism of their grande dame is enough to trigger endless tweetstorms, crossly worded blog posts, and YouTube commentary. Seriously: Bitcoin-obsessed cryptoanalysts, Directioners and even the Beyhive have nothing on these guys.

There's just one problem with all the preening and posturing this author is subjected to: In order to sneer at Rand, you have to read her. That's why you'll sometimes see ridiculous social media spectacles of angsty liberal bloggers and overwrought students burning copies of the Fountainhead. And just how many Vox bloggers have made it all the way through Atlas Shrugged ? The next time someone is rude about that novel in your earshot, ask him to name a single character besides John Galt and you'll see what I mean.

In a sense, Ayn Rand is a victim of her own totemic success. By appealing to such atavistic human drives, she has become shorthand for a whole range of gauche, aspirational working-class anxieties about other people that the liberal left likes to sneer at. Mock Ayn Rand and you are mocking the entire value system of the right-wing media, the Koch brothers, Wall Street, the Tea Party, and whomever else you don't likein a manner every bit as mean-spirited as anything Rand ever wrote.

Which is not to say that Ayn Rand was a particularly nice person in print. She is ruthlessly unforgiving in her mocking portraits of spoiled middle-class train wrecks. And if there's one thing earnest socialists hate, it's being mocked. Rand skewers the preoccupations and hypocrisies of metropolitan liberals with such ferocity that their only response is slack-jawed horror and social ostracism.

Another reason people get upset about Rand and sex is that her ideal intimate encounters always seem to be pseudo-rapes. Naturally, the sex-negative, authoritarian modern feminist movement gasps in shock at the suggestion that consensually ambiguous encounters might be thrilling for both parties. But I'm biased, because, reading between the lines, I think I have the same fantasies Rand does about arrogant, overbearing masculine men. And nothing quite gets me off like a Goldman Sachs quarterly earnings report.

History can be unkind to progressives, so their impotent fury is understandable. It has a habit of reminding us that, regardless of noble intentions, progressivism tends to make the world a worse place to live and further impoverish the poor. Rand predicted almost everything that ordinary people loathe about state-sponsored late capitalism, in particular the rampant corruption and bailout cronyism of an overweening government. Far from being pleased at the power Wall Street wields, if Rand were alive today she'd pull her hair out over the state of the state. Atlas Shrugged is no longer fanciful; if anything, it was a conservative prediction.

Rand's critics might argue that she appeals to the worst of human naturethat her writing plays on our jealousies, our insecurities, our most antagonistic impulses. Ayn Rand is right-wing porn: capitalism, self-reliance and self-interest at their most outrageously unapologetic. But that, of course, is what makes her so fabulously readable.

And she is readable, for all her well-advertised faults as a prose stylist. I don't mean to say that her prose shines with glistering metaphorobviously, it doesn'tbut her books do have that unputdownable quality of all great popular fiction. Even her critics admit that there's something about Rand's books you just can't turn away from, however clunky her writing. It's what she shares with Dan Brown and E. L. James, though, no doubt, both would hate the comparison.

Of course, the fact that Rand is so enduringly and phenomenally popular is what annoys people most about her (apart from her supposedly odious philosophies and thunderous rage, of course). She has sold more than 25 million copies of fiction works alone.

Rand was a woman who went "off script," so the left punished her with precisely the tactics it reserves the ultimate horror for when victims are political allies. Much hay was made during the GamerGate controversy about the criticism feminist Anita Sarkeesian received, and the undue attention given to game developer Zoe Quinn's relationships. But you do not need to look hard to find censorious snickering and some surprisingly detailed discussions of Ayn Rand's sex life.

Not that the woman herself would care. Rand never worried about critics because she simply didn't need them: Like the heroes in her books, she was anti-fragile, free to believe, say, and do what she pleased because she created something of value that those around her wished to trade for capital. And like Jon Stewart, she dresses up her fact as fiction, and so can get away with saying far more fiendishly wicked stuff than her ideological associates.

To put it another way, Rand recognized that politics is downstream from culture. So she went for the jugular as an author and philosopher, rather than fannying about treating the symptoms as a journalist or political commentator. Ideal is a fascinating early glimpse into how that realization began to take root in her mind.

Ayn Rand's great achievement, from a conservative point of view, present in embryonic form in Ideal, was to recognize that the battle for man's soul would be fought in the studios of Hollywood, the newsrooms of New York, and the lecture halls of Massachusetts, not in the stultifying round tables of Washington, DC. It's a lesson the GOP has yet to learn.

Milo Yiannopoulos is a British journalist and entrepreneur. Follow him on Twitter.

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In Defense of Ayn Rand, Monster Under the Progressive Bed

WhatsApp Updates Controls in India in an Effort to Thwart Mob Violence

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WhatsApp has announced plans to update how users forward content, presumably in an effort to address mob violence in India.

CHANGE IS COMING. Today, more than 1 billion people use the Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp to share messages, photos, and videos. With the tap of a button, they can forward a funny meme or send a party invite to groups of friends and family. They can also easily share “fake news,” rumors and propaganda disguised as legitimate information.

In India — the nation where people forward more WhatsApp content than anywhere else — WhatsApp-spread fake news is inciting mob violence and literally getting people killed. On Thursday, WhatsApp announced in a blog post that it plans to make several changes in an effort to prevent more violence.

Some of the changes will only apply to users in India. They will no longer see the “quick forward” button next to photos and videos that made that content particularly easy to send along quickly, without incorporating information about where it came from. They’ll also no longer be able to forward content to more than five chats at a time. In the rest of the world, the new limit for forwards will be 20 chats. The previous cap was 250.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM. Over the past two months, violent mobs have attacked two dozen people in India after WhatsApp users spread rumors that those people had abducted children. Some of those people even died from their injuries.

The Indian government has been pressuring WhatsApp to do something to address these recent bouts of violence; earlier on Thursday, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology threatened the company with legal action if it didn’t figure out some effective way to stop the mob violence.

The WhatsApp team, however, never mentions that violence is the reason for the changes in its blog post, simply asserting that the goal of the control changes is to maintain the app’s “feeling of intimacy” and “keep WhatsApp the way it was designed to be: a private messaging app.”

TRY, TRY AGAIN. This is WhatsApps’ third attempt in the last few weeks to address the spread of fake news in India. First, the company added a new label to the app to indicate that a message is a forward (and not original content from the sender). Then, they published full-page ads in Indian newspapers to educate the public on the best way to spot fake news.

Neither of those efforts has appeared to work, and it’s hard to believe the latest move will have the intended impact either. Each WhatsApp chat can include up to 256 people. That means a message forwarded to five chats (per the new limit) could still reach 1,280 people. And if those 1,280 people then forward the message to five chats, it’s not hard to see how fake news could still spread like wildfire across the nation.

READ MORE: WhatsApp Launches New Controls After Widespread App-Fueled Mob Violence in India [The Washington Post]

More on fake news: Massive Study of Fake News May Reveal Why It Spreads so Easily

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Malta Plans to Create the World’s First Decentralized Stock Exchange

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Malta has announced plans to created the world's first decentralized stock exchange

BLOCKCHAIN ISLAND. The tiny European nation of Malta is truly living up to its nickname of “Blockchain Island.” On Thursday, MSX (the innovation arm of the Malta Stock Exchange) announced a new partnership with blockchain-based equity fundraising platform Neufund and Binance, one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges). Their goal: create the first global stock exchange that’s both regulated and decentralized.

THE NEW SCHOOL. There are a lot of complex concepts at play here, so let’s break them down.

First, tokens. In the realm of cryptocurrency, a token is a digital asset on a blockchain, a ledger that records every time two parties trade an asset. A token can represent practically anything, from money to a vote in an election. Today, many blockchain startups raise funds by selling “equity tokens” through initial coin offerings (ICO).

When a person buys one of these equity tokens, they are essentially buying a percentage ownership of the startup. They can later use an online platform known as a cryptocurrency exchange to sell the tokens or buy more from other investors at any time, quickly and fairly cheaply.

Though various governments are starting to look into regulating tokens, the cryptocurrency realm is still largely unregulated, making it an enticing target for scammers.

THE OLD SCHOOL. Equity securities, also known as stocks, are similar to equity tokens. A person who buys stock in a company owns a percentage of that company. However, securities are not traded via 24-hour online exchanges — they’re bought and sold via stock exchanges, which are only open during certain hours. Navigating them often requires the help of middleman, such as a broker or lawyer, which could be costly.

A government agency typically regulates a nation’s securities and stock exchanges — in the United States, that agency is the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This regulation can protect investors from scams and ensure companies don’t try to swindle them.

TOKENIZED SECURITIES. Tokenized securities are a melding of these two worlds. They’re securities, and when they’re traded, a blockchain records the transaction. This combines the fast, cheap transactions associated with tokens with the protective oversight of securities.

Right now, there’s not a government-regulated, global platform hosting the trading of tokenized securities, and that’s the void the Malta team plans to fill with their decentralized stock exchange.

“We are thrilled to announce the partnerships with Malta Stock Exchange and Binance, that will ensure high liquidity to equity tokens issued on Neufund,” Zoe Adamovicz, CEO and Co-founder at Neufund, said in a press release. “It is the first time in history that security tokens can be offered and traded in a legally binding way.”

Experts estimate that the value of the world’s equity tokens could soar as high as $1 trillion by 2020. Malta’s project is still in the pilot stages, but if all the pieces for its decentralized stock exchange fall into place, the tiny European island could find itself at the center of that incredibly fruitful market.

READ MORE: Malta Paves the Way for a Decentralized Stock Exchange [TechCrunch]

More on tokens: Tokens Will Become the Foundation of a New Digital Economy

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3 Reasons Why We Might Return to The Moon

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we may see manned missions to the moon. Science, politics, and celestial cash grabs are at the forefront of why people want to go back.

Friday marks the 49th anniversary of the first time any human set foot on solid, extraterrestrial ground. The details are probably familiar: on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the Moon. It’s a rare privilege, even now: only ten other people have landed on the Moon and gone out for a stroll.

Just over three years later, humans walked on the Moon for the last time. Changing political and economic priorities meant NASA would no longer focus on sending people to the Moon. After all, we had already planted a flag, confirmed that the Moon wasn’t made of cheese, and played some golf. What else is left?

Well, it just so turns out that we might be heading back out there — and soon. President Trump has insisted on resuming manned Moon missions, despite the fact that it doesn’t match the public or scientific community’s desires for a space program (no one is quite sure where his determination stems from, but it doesn’t seem to have much more substance than a whim).

But there are some other, real reasons that we might want to send someone to the Moon. There’s science to be done, and money to be made. Let’s dig a little deeper and see what might be bringing us back to our lunar neighbor.

1) Trump really wants it to happen.

Last December, President Trump signed a directive indicating that NASA would prioritize human exploration to the Moon and beyond. Just imagine: a human setting foot on the Moon! Accomplishing such an impossible feat would show the rest of the world that America is capable of great things, which would really assert our dominance on the international stage!

So, assuming that President Trump knows we won the space race 43 years ago (he knows, right? right?) there might be other reasons why Trump wants more people to go visit. Maybe it’s a display of national achievement, maybe it’s to develop economic or military advantages. Either way, the White House is pushing hard for that giant leap.

2) Cash money.

A rare isotope called helium-3 could help us produce clean and safe nuclear energy without giving off any hazardous or radioactive waste. And it just so happens that the Moon has loads of the stuff (so does Jupiter, but that’s a bit harder to reach).

While a helium nuclear fusion reactor does not yet exist, many expect that helium-3 could be the missing piece — and whoever secures the supply would unlock riches to rival Scrooge McDuck.

Two years ago, the federal government gave a private company its blessing to land on the Moon for the first time. Moon Express, which also plans to dump human ashes on the Moon (read: litter) for customers who want an unconventional cremation, has the ultimate goal of establishing a lunar mining colony. According to the company’s website, Expedition “Harvest Moon” plans to have a permanent research station up and running by 2021. At that point, it will begin extracting samples and raw materials to send back to Earth.

This could lead to more and (maybe) better research into the moon’s history and makeup, especially since our supply of samples from the Apollo missions is so limited. But helium-3 is what Moon Express is really after. And they’re not the only ones — the Chinese government also has its eyes set on the Moon’s helium-3 supply.

In addition to opening space up to private mining operations, Trump has reached out to NASA in hopes that the agency’s technology could be used to launch mining rigs to the Moon and to asteroids.

But there’s a lot that needs to happen before the spacefaring equivalents of coal barons start selling space rocks. For instance, we need to figure out how to approach and land on an asteroid, and to set up at least semi-permanent bases and mining operations. But still, some companies some companies are forging ahead.

3) Science! slash, practice for Mars.

The government, along with multiple space-interested billionaires, have some well-publicized plans to colonize Mars. Their reasons range from: furthering scientific research, to exploring the cosmos for funsies, to saving humanity from, uh, something.

The Moon could play a vital role in those plans — as practice off-world destination, and as a celestial truck stop along the way.

In February, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said that setting up a colony on the Moon will be essential for future space exploration. Especially, he mentioned, so that it can serve as a refueling station. His logic seems to be based on the fact that the Moon exerts less gravitational force than the Earth, so landing and relaunching a refueled rocket would let that rocket explore farther into space.

Some have also proposed using a Moon base as practice for a Martian settlement, since they would be much closer to Earth — Moon-dwellers would only be three days from Earth, while human Martians would be eight months from home.

NASA’s Gateway mission, as Time reported, could give rise to lunar settlements within the next ten years. Gateway would function as a space station in orbit around the Moon, but would be capable of traveling to and from the surface. The expected Gateway timeline is controversial even within NASA, however, as some feel that its far too optimistic about when we might actually see results.

There are still too many unknowns and hazards for people in space settlements for such a program to succeed today. Even trying to simulate a Mars colony on Earth led to several unforeseen mental strains and complications.

But either way, ongoing exploration and research missions continue to radically change our understanding of the Moon.

“Ten years ago we would have said that the Moon was complete dry,” Ryan Zeigler, NASA’s curator of lunar samples from the Apollo missions, told Futurism. “Over the past ten years, new instruments and new scientists have shown this to not be the case, and that has had profound effects on the models that predict how the Earth-Moon system has formed,” he added.

Of course, there are financial reasons at the forefront the recent push for lunar exploration. But even if its just a pleasant side effect, we may get valuable new science out of these missions, too.

Read more about complications with NASA’s lunar plans: NASA Just Canceled Its Only Moon Rover Project. That’s Bad News for Trump’s Lunar Plans.

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Most Of NASA’s Moon Rocks Remain Untouched By Scientists

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we have only studied about 16 percent of the moon rocks taken during the Apollo missions. NASA's Apollo curator keeps them for future generations.

Forty-nine years ago this Friday, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the Moon. That day, they also became the first people to harvest samples from another celestial body and bring them back to Earth.

Over the course of the Apollo missions, astronauts collected about 2,200 individual samples weighing a total of 842 pounds (382 kg) for scientific study that continues today, NASA curator Ryan Zeigler told Futurism. Zeigler, who also conducts geochemical research, is responsible for overseeing NASA’s collection of space rocks from the Apollo missions, as well as those from Mars, asteroids, stars, and anywhere else other than Earth.

Scientists have only studied about 16 percent of all the Apollo samples by mass, Zeigler told Futurism. Within that 16 percent, just under one-third has been put on display, which Zeigler noted largely keeps the samples pristine. Another quarter were at least partially destroyed (on purpose) during NASA-approved research, and the rest have been analyzed in less destructive ways.

“Trying not to deplete the samples so that future scientists will still have the opportunity to work with them is definitely something we are considering,” says Zeigler. “Also, while I would consider the Apollo samples primarily a scientific resource (though as a scientist am obviously biased), it is undeniable that these samples also have significant historic and cultural importance as well, and thus need to be preserved on those grounds, too.”

The cultural reasons to preserve moon rocks, Zeigler says, are harder to define. But it’s still important to make sure future scientists have enough space rocks left to work with, especially since we can’t fully predict the sorts of questions they’ll try to answer using the Apollo samples, or the technology that will be at their disposal.

“Every decade since the Apollo samples came back has seen significant advances in instrumentation that have allowed samples to be analyzed at higher levels of precision, or smaller spatial resolution,” Zeigler says. “Our understanding of the Moon, and really the whole solar system, has evolved considerably by continuing studies of the Apollo samples.”

“Our understanding of the Moon, and really the whole solar system, has evolved considerably by continuing studies of the Apollo samples.”

In the last six years, Zeigler says that his curation team saw 351 requests for Apollo samples, which comes out to about 60 each year. Within those requests, the scientists have asked for about 692 individual samples per year, most of which weigh one to two grams each. Even if the researchers don’t get everything that they ask for, Zeigler says, most of the studies are at least partially approved, and he’s been loaning out about 525 samples every year. That comes out to just over 75 percent of what the scientists requested.

“So while it is true that significant scientific justification is required to get Apollo samples, and we (NASA, with the support of the planetary scientific community) are intentionally reserving a portion of the Apollo samples for future generations of scientists and scientific instruments to study, the samples are available to scientists around the world to study, and we are slowly lowering the percentage of material that is left,” Zeigler says.

Thankfully, about 84 percent of the Apollo samples are still untouched. That pretty much guarantees that the next generation of geologists and astronomers who try to decipher the Moon’s remaining secrets will have enough samples to fiddle with.

To read more on future lunar research, click here: Three Reasons Why We Might Return To The Moon

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Federal Agencies Propose Major Changes to Endangered Species Act

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A PROPOSAL. Species on the brink of extinction in the U.S. could soon have their government protections stripped from them.

On Thursday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) (the government agency that manages the U.S.’s fish, wildlife, and natural habitats) and National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (a scientific government agency that studies the world’s oceans, major waterways, and atmosphere) proposed revisions to the Endangered Species Act, a law designed to empower the federal government to protect threatened or endangered species.

The agencies propose making changes to three sections of the ESA — Section 4, Section 4D, and Section 7 — and the full explanations of the proposed changes are available to the public via a trio of Federal Register notices. If you don’t have time to sift through all 118 pages of Register notices, though, here’s a breakdown of the changes that could have the biggest impact.

THERE’S ALWAYS MONEY IN THE PROTECTED LAND. One potentially major change centers on removing language designed to ensure regulators make decisions about species/habits solely based on scientific factors, not economic ones.

The agencies propose removing “without reference to possible economic or other impacts of such determination” from the ESA because, they write, “there may be circumstances where referencing economic, or other impacts may be informative to the public.” As pointed out by The New York Times, this could make it easier for companies to obtain approval for potentially damaging construction projects, such as roads or oil pipelines.

Another major change centers on “threatened” species. These are currently defined as “any species which is likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future.”  But the proposal suggests giving the FWS the ability to define “foreseeable future” on a species-by-species basis. Today, threatened and endangered species receive more or less the same protections, but under the proposed changes, species newly classified as threatened wouldn’t automatically receive those protections.

PRAISE AND BACKLASH. The proposed changes quickly elicited an impassioned response from the public.

“For too long, the ESA has been used as a means of controlling lands in the West rather than actually focusing on species recovery,” Kathleen Sgamma, president of Western Energy Alliance, which lobbies on behalf of the oil and gas industry, told The New York Times. She added that she was hopeful the changes would “[help lift restrictions on] responsible economic activities on private and public lands.”

Environmental activists, however, see the changes as undercutting the purpose of the ESA: to protect endangered species.

“These proposals would slam a wrecking ball into the most crucial protections for our most endangered wildlife. If these regulations had been in place in the 1970s, the bald eagle and the gray whale would be extinct today,” Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit focused on protecting endangered species, said in a statement.

“Allowing the federal government to turn a blind eye to climate change will be a death sentence for polar bears and hundreds of other animals and plants,” he added. “This proposal turns the extinction-prevention tool of the Endangered Species Act into a rubber stamp for powerful corporate interests

Members of the public have 60 days to share their thoughts on the proposed changes with the government, though it’s hard to say what impact that might have. Ultimately, if environmental advocates are right, the U.S. could soon see a dramatic increase in the number of animals that move from endangered to outright extinct.

READ MORE: Law That Saved the Bald Eagle Could Be Vastly Reworked [The New York Times]

More on the Endangered Species Act: The War for Endangered Species Has Begun

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China Is Investing In Its Own Hyperloop To Clear Its Crowded Highways

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Chinese state-backed companies just made huge investments in U.S. based Hyperloop startups. But will it solve China's stifling traffic problems?

GRIDLOCK. China’s largest cities are choking in traffic. Millions of cars on the road means stifling levels of air pollution and astronomical commute times, especially during rush hours.

The latest move to address this urban traffic nightmare: Chinese state-backed companies are making heavy investments in U.S. hyperloop startups Arrivo and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, lining up $1 billion and $300 million in credit respectively. It’s substantial financing that could put China ahead in the race to open the first full-scale hyperloop track.

MAG-LEV SLEDS. Both companies are planning something big, although their approaches differ in some key ways. Transport company Arrivo is focusing on relieving highway traffic by creating a separate track that allows cars to zip along at 200 miles per hour (320 km/h) on magnetically levitated sleds inside vacuum-sealed tubes (it’s not yet clear if this will be above ground or underground).

Arrivo’s exact plans to build a Chinese hyperloop system have not yet been announced, but co-founder Andrew Liu told Bloomberg that $1 billion in funding could be enough to build “as many as three legs of a commercial, citywide hyperloop system of 6 miles to 9 miles [9.5 to 14.4 km] per section.” The company hasn’t yet announced in which city it’ll be built.

Meanwhile, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies has already made up its mind as to where it will plop down its first Chinese loop. It’s the old familiar maglev train design inside a vacuum tube, but instead it’s passengers, not their cars, that will ride along at speeds of up to 750 mph (1200 km/h). Most of the $300 million will go towards building a 6.2 mile (10 km) test track in Guizhou province. According to a press release, this marks the third commercial agreement for HyperloopTT after Abu Dhabi and Ukraine from earlier this year.

A PRICEY SOLUTION. Building a hyperloop is expensive. This latest investment hints at just how expensive just a single system could be in the end. But providing high-speed alternatives to car-based transport is only one of many ways to deal with the gridlock and traffic jams that plague urban centers. China, for instance, has attempted to tackle the problem by restricting driving times based on license plates, expanding bike sharing networks, and even mesh ride-sharing data with smart traffic lights.

And according to a recent report by Chinese location-based services provider AutoNavi, those solutions seem to be working: a Quartz analysis of the data found that traffic declined by 12.5 and 9 percent in Hangzhou and Shenzhen respectively, even though the population grew by 3 and 5 percent.

MO’ MONEY, MO’ PROBLEMS. There are more hurdles to overcome before hyperloop can have a significant impact in China. There is the cost of using the hyperloop system — if admission is priced too high (perhaps to cover astronomical infrastructure costs), adoption rates may remain too low to have a significant effect.

The capacity of a maglev train system would also have to accommodate China’s  growing population centers. That’s not an easy feat— HyperloopTT’s capusles have to squeeze through a four meter (13 feet) diameter tube and only hold 28 to 40 people at a time, and there are 3 million cars in Shenzhen alone.

We don’t know yet whether China’s hyperloop investments will pay off and significantly reduce traffic in China’s urban centers. But bringing new innovations to transportation in massive and growing cities — especially when those new innovations are more environmentally friendly — is rarely a bad idea.

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