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Fear of life, fear of death, and fear of causing death form a combination that prevents reasoned changes in laws concerning end-of-life situations. This is shown systematically in this article using the methods of conceptual analysis. Prevalent fears are explicated and interpreted to see how their meanings differ depending on the chosen normative stance. When the meanings have been clarified, the impact of the fears on the motivations and justifications of potential legislative reforms are assessed. Two main normative stances are evoked. The first makes an appeal to individual self-determination, or autonomy, and the second to the traditional professional ethics of physicians. These views partly share qualifying elements, including incurability and irreversibility of the patient's medical condition, proximity of death, the unbearable nature of suffering, and issues of voluntariness further shade the matter. The conclusion is that although many motives to change end-of-life laws are admirable, they are partly contradictory, as are calls for autonomy and appeals to professional ethics; to a degree that good, principled legislative solutions remain improbable in the foreseeable future. ; Peer reviewed

Fear is fast becoming - if it has not already become - a central object of analysis for understanding today's politics. As fear is, supposedly, increasingly saturating our everyday lives, politicians and political strategists of all ideological stripes are rediscovering that fear is a handy tool in influencing voters. Our argument, however, is that rather than simply seeing the most recent exercise of a "politics of fear," our contemporary moment is distinguished by the emergence of "fear as politics". The paper argues that rather than fear acting as an expedient but ad hoc political tool, it has become the de facto essence of politics. Fear now provides the impetus and reason for politics, substituting other sources of legitimation of power such as democracy, justice, and the common good. The argument of the authors is being developed in a three-step process. Firstly - the authors argue - fear has become a projection of the political will aiming at changing existing order - that is to say that fear becomes the main reason and main motive for institutional / social change domestically and internationally. Secondly, fear cements power relations by creating a new "political dogma", a supra-ideology of sorts that being trans-ideological in spectrum (that is to say, "fear" becomes enclosed in every current ideology from populism to neo-conservatism), and shapes and restricts social imagination and political action. Thirdly - authors continue - fear provides alternative legitimization of state authority and action (that is to say that fear provides justification and sense of purpose for those in power). The authors have provided a set of interlocked ideas to show that fear can be rationalized, operationalized, that it is imbedded into diversified social strata, included into mainstream politics, politically utilized and form a bedrock of the new regnum (with a rationality based on fear) by whoever play politics.

Fear is among the most powerful of human feelings. Urban fear, the fear of being victims of crime and violence in urban space, particularly so. Urban fear shapes space and is in turn shaped by space. The relationship between fear and space has been studied in terms of three key dimensions: urban (geo)politics, or the political economies of security; otherness, the way social cleavages (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality) mediate the encounter in urban space; and space, the role of the built environment and (modernist) spatialities and urban planning. In line with the recent affective turn in social and cultural geography, the concept of landscapes of fear has provided a fruitful theoretical instrument to understand the co-constitution of emotions and practices in this field. By connecting the dimensions of (geo)politics, otherness, and space, the mobilization of the concept of landscape has allowed understanding how context-specific, yet trans-scalar, atmospheres of fear are (re)produced at the intersection of political-economic, socio-cultural, and technical factors. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

While urbanisation has always been welcomed as a driver to economic amelioration, it has also been criticised for raising expectations and complicating the lives of urban residents. With urban development, wellbeing is often compromised as income disparity increases, quality of life decreases. Of late, crime has been a major concern. Criminal activities have eroded the sense of urban wellbeing and caused the desertion of neighbourhoods. While the Malaysian government tries to achieve sustainable urban development by containing urban sprawl, crime is undoing these efforts. Interviews with residents in crime-prone areas show that many are increasingly threatened by criminal activities in their neighbourhoods and have shown high tendencies to move out of the neighbourhoods. Steps to contain this problem is by having neighbourhood-level security measures as well as heightened involvement in community safety initiatives

I inquire into the issue of how to evaluate fear appeals. I propose modifications to Douglas Walton's position in Scare Tactics: Arguments that Appeal to Fear and Threats that will help improve assessment of fear appeals in complex argumentation such as political discourse. Walton has argued for attending to the underlying practical inference structure involved in fear appeals as well as the type of dialogue in which they occur. I propose, first, that theorists understand the practical reasoning not in terms of an underlying inferential structure but rather as an account of how discourse strategies give fear appeals force; and, second, that theorists not deduce norms and standards from so-called dialogue types but rather explain how discourse strategies engage norms of argumentation that give fear appeals force. This approach generates a normative pragmatic theory of fear appeals that has more explanatory power than Walton's theory, because it explains how discourse strategies agents actually use engage norms of argumentation and are therefore compelling. I submit that compelling fear appeals are designed to show addressees (1) risks to themselves of not carefully assessing the fearful circumstances and (2) risks to the arguer of misjudging whether circumstances merit fear.

It is widely thought that electoral strategies fall into one of two camps. Either they play to fear of the alternative or they are based on the hope of a better tomorrow. This is simplistic but is nevertheless a useful frame of reference.In the US, perhaps the best example of the politics of hope was Ronald Reagan, whose sunny demeanour and promise of 'morning in America' won the votes of millions. Bill Clinton similarly swept to power in 1992 to the soundtrack of Fleetwood Mac's "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow".

Individual variation in behaviour adds another layer of complexity to studies of animal responses to fear and risk, but when individual responses are consistent, and correlated with other behaviours, these patterns can provide a structure that furthers our understanding. I interpret Beauchamp's review of vigilance and fear from the perspective of my own studies of elk personality. Wild elk responses to changing stimuli (benign or aversive) illustrate how personality is a key factor in explaining variation in vigilance and fear behavior. Personality even influences how wildlife can learn to assess risk and adjust their fear responses accordingly.

Currently artificial emotions are being extensively used in robots. Most of these implementations are employed to display affective states. Nevertheless, their use to drive the robot's behavior is not so common. This is the approach followed by the authors in this work. In this research, emotions are not treated in general but individually. Several emotions have been implemented in a real robot, but in this paper, authors focus on the use of the emotion of fear as an adaptive mechanism to avoid dangerous situations. In fact, fear is used as a motivation which guides the behavior during specific circumstances. Appraisal of fear is one of the cornerstones of this work. A novel mechanism learns to identify the harmful circumstances which cause damage to the robot. Hence, these circumstances elicit the fear emotion and are known as fear releasers. In order to prove the advantages of considering fear in our decision making system, the robot's performance with and without fear are compared and the behaviors are analyzed. The robot's behaviors exhibited in relation to fear are natural, i.e., the same kind of behaviors can be observed on animals. Moreover, they have not been preprogrammed, but learned by real interactions in the real world. All these ideas have been implemented in a real robot living in a laboratory and interacting with several items and people. ; The funds have been provided by the Spanish Government through the project called "A new approach to social robotics" (AROS), of MICINN (Ministry of Science and Innovation) and through the RoboCity2030- II-CM project (S2009/DPI-1559), funded by Programas de Actividades I+D en la Comunidad de Madrid and cofunded by Structural Funds of the EU.

Over the last three years Europe and North America have been hit by an unprecedented wave of terrorist attacks perpetrated by individuals motivated by jihadist ideology. Who are the individuals who have carried out these attacks? Were they born and raised in the West? Or were they an "imported threat", refugees and migrants? How did they radicalize? Were they well educated and integrated, or social outcasts? Did they act alone? What were their connections to the Islamic State? The answers to these and other questions have large implications for our understanding of the threat facing us and, consequently, help us design sounder policy solutions built on empirical evidence. This study, the first of its kind, seeks to analyze the demographic profile, radicalization trajectories and connections to the Islamic State of all the individuals who have carried out attacks inspired by jihadist ideology in North America and Europe in the three years since the proclamation of the caliphate in June 2014.

Over the last three years Europe and North America have been hit by an unprecedented wave of terrorist attacks perpetrated by individuals motivated by jihadist ideology. Who are the individuals who have carried out these attacks? Were they born and raised in the West? Or were they an "imported threat", refugees and migrants? How did they radicalize? Were they well educated and integrated, or social outcasts? Did they act alone? What were their connections to the Islamic State? The answers to these and other questions have large implications for our understanding of the threat facing us and, consequently, help us design sounder policy solutions built on empirical evidence. This study, the first of its kind, seeks to analyze the demographic profile, radicalization trajectories and connections to the Islamic State of all the individuals who have carried out attacks inspired by jihadist ideology in North America and Europe in the three years since the proclamation of the caliphate in June 2014.

A decline in the number of wars, genocides and human rights abuses over the past decade? The Human Security Report 2005 uncovers surprising trends in global conflict. ; Other UBC ; Unreviewed ; Other

Fear has long served elites. They rely on fear to keep and expand their privileges and control the masses. In the current crisis of the capitalist world system, elites in the United States, along with other central countries, promote fear of crime and terrorism. They shaped these fears so that people looked to authorities for security, which permitted extension of apparatuses of coercion like police and military forces. In the face of growing oppression, rebellion against elite hegemony remains possible. This book offers an analysis of the crisis and strategies for rebellion.

We tune in on fear to make it visible and detect its drifts. We collect verbal signals of coming fear burrowed in the crackles of political and other speeches by leading figures: Familiar words people use to express fear. From the EmoLex database (Mohammad and Turney in Comput Intel 29(3):436–465, 2013), we develop a computer-readable "Fear Index" to chase fear in the West. We aim a view from above to see how fear has changed, or hasn't. We first look how valid is the "Fear Index" on texts (fearful novels and historical documents) expected to display specific profiles of fear. Then trace the trend fear follows in speeches of European leaders. The "Fear Index" decreases in the speeches and documents of European political and economic spheres (President Donald Tusk—European Council—, President Mario Draghi—European Central Bank—, and the Global Trade Alert agency). The "Fear Index" spirals upwards among humanitarian leaders (Pope Francis, the Archbishop Justin Welby, and the International Committee of the Red Cross). We record no significant change in the trend of the "Fear Index" in the speeches of President Vladimir Putin. Humanitarian and political leaders changing in counterpoint prompt questions about empathy, or lack of that, in a now bipolar West.

We tune in on fear to make it visible and detect its drifts. We collect verbal signals of coming fear burrowed in the crackles of political and other speeches by leading figures: Familiar words people use to express fear. From the EmoLex database (Mohammad and Turney in Comput Intel 29(3):436–465, 2013), we develop a computer-readable "Fear Index" to chase fear in the West. We aim a view from above to see how fear has changed, or hasn't. We first look how valid is the "Fear Index" on texts (fearful novels and historical documents) expected to display specific profiles of fear. Then trace the trend fear follows in speeches of European leaders. The "Fear Index" decreases in the speeches and documents of European political and economic spheres (President Donald Tusk—European Council—, President Mario Draghi—European Central Bank—, and the Global Trade Alert agency). The "Fear Index" spirals upwards among humanitarian leaders (Pope Francis, the Archbishop Justin Welby, and the International Committee of the Red Cross). We record no significant change in the trend of the "Fear Index" in the speeches of President Vladimir Putin. Humanitarian and political leaders changing in counterpoint prompt questions about empathy, or lack of that, in a now bipolar West.

Amid debates about the "end of socialism" in the wake of the collapse of communism, it is argued that several of socialism's "ethical aims" might yet be revived within a market structure. G. A. Cohen (in Franklin, Jane [Ed], 1997) has objected to both "market-wise" liberalism or socialism on ethical grounds, arguing that they rely on self-interest - specifically, "greed & fear" - to motivate people. Here, his claims are addressed in a larger discussion of several other arguments against socialism, which are explored as reaffirmations of the "Mandevillian tradition," based on the early-18th-century writings of Bernard de Mandeville & his views on the necessity of vice (ie, self-interest) over virtue for the functioning of the good society; the views of Friedrich Hayek, David Hume, & Adam Smith are also examined. Two potential correctives to Cohen's moral concerns are suggested: (1) voluntary activity, & (2) gift giving; respectively, Robert Putnam's (1993) work on voluntary associations in Italy & Richard M. Titmuss's (1997 [1970]) research on blood donation in the US & UK explore these options in detail. K. Hyatt Stewart.