In the United States, a series of survey studies have been done to examine corporate managers' views of business ethics and various business practices (Baumhart, 1961; Brenner and Molander, 1977; Vitell and Festervand, 1987). This paper is a replication study conducted in Japan of those American studies. The results of the study suggest that Japanese managers tend to be more situational in their ethical orientation than Americans. The results also show that the company policy on ethics is the most important (...) factor influencing Japanese managers' ethical decisions. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper studies abduction in abstract argumentation frameworks. Given an argument, an agent verifies whether the argument is justified or not in its argumentation framework. If the argument is not justified in the argumentation framework, the agent seeks conditions to explain the justification state by hypothesising arguments in the universal argumentation framework. We formulate such abductive reasoning in argumentation semantics and provide its computation in logic programming. We also apply abduction to enforcement and simple dialogue games in argumentation frameworks.

In this article, we first study abduction in human dialogues. Given an utterance, objective abduction produces a hearer’s belief that could explain the utterance, while subjective abduction produces a hearer’s belief that could explain the belief state of a speaker. Different types of abduction are formulated using propositional epistemic logic. We next consider conversational implicature used as pragmatic inference in speech acts. Two conflicting implicatures, Q-implicature and I-implicature, are formulated and contrasted with abduction. We also argue how speakers could use (...) abduction or conversational implicature for the purpose of misleading hearers. (shrink)

The principle-based approach is a methodology to classify and analyse argumentation semantics. In this paper we classify seven of the main alternatives for argumentation semantics using a set of new robustness principles. These principles complement Baroni and Giacomin’s original classification and deal with the behaviour of a semantics when the argumentation framework changes due to the addition or removal of an attack between two arguments. We distinguish so-called persistence principles and monotonicity principles, where the former deal with the question of (...) whether a labelling or extension of an argumentation framework under a given semantics persists after a change, and the latter with the question of whether new labellings or extensions are created after a change. We furthermore show in which sense labelling-based and extension-based semantics lead to subtly different principles and results. Our results can be used for choosing a semantics for a particular application, or to guide the search for new argumentation semantics, but they have been used also in the design of algorithms. (shrink)

A series of survey studies on corporations' institutionalization of ethics has been done in the U.S. and Japan. Among them, one Japanese study suggests that company policy is the most influential factor in managers' ethical decision-making and behavior. This empirical evidence suggests that, in Japan, company efforts to institutionalize ethics are effective in improving business behavior. The author examines this by describing three case studies of Japanese managers' ethical decision-making.

While Economic and Business Ethics has already attracted increasing attention in East Asia, a comprehensive survey of Economic and Business Ethics has never been done in this region. This study investigates the current status of Economic and Business Ethics as field of teaching, training and research in the East Asia region, particularly in China, Japan, and Korea. Based on multiple approaches that include questionnaire surveys, desktop analysis, and personal observation, this article reports on the current state of training, teaching, and (...) research in the field of Economic and Business Ethics in the three countries. It also discusses similarities and differences with regard to these themes among the countries studied. (shrink)

In Hollis’ paradox, A and B each chose a positive integer and whisper their number to C. C then informs them, jointly, that they have chosen different numbers and, moreover, that neither of them are able to work out who has the greatest number. A then reasons as follows: B cannot have 1, otherwise he would know that my number is greater, and by the same reasoning B knows that I don’t have 1. But then B also cannot have 2, (...) otherwise he would know that my number is greater (since he knows I don’t have 1). This line of reasoning can be repeated indefinitely, effectively forming an inductive proof, ruling out any number – an apparent paradox. In this paper we formalise Hollis’ paradox using public announcement logic, and argue that the root cause of the paradox is the wrongful assumption that A and B assume that C’s announcement necessarily is successful. This resolves the paradox without assuming that C can be untruthful, or that A and B are not perfect reasoners, like other solutions do. There are similarities to the surprise examination paradox. In addition to a semantic analysis in the tradition of epistemic logic, we provide a syntactic one, deriving conclusions from a set of premises describing the initial situation – more in the spirit of the literature on Hollis’ paradox. The latter allows us to pinpoint which assumptions are actually necessary for the conclusions resolving the paradox. (shrink)

生命が今こそ、語り直されなくてはならない!文明論、歴史、メタ科学、経済批判、生権力の視点から。.

Social Conformity and Response Bias Revisited: The Influence of "Others" on Japanese Respondents This study was undertaken to investigate the impact of other respondents' answers on individual responses in survey studies. The study employed four different conditions and manipulated the direction and the level of social pressure. The results have confirmed that social desirability bias hugely impacts individual answers. It was found that respondents are seven times more likely to choose a socially unacceptable option if majority of the preceding respondents (...) also have chosen the same option. Additionally, the existence of an interviewer during data collection was found to be a factor pressuring respondents to give more socially acceptable responses. (shrink)

Whole eye transplantation (WET) remains experimental. Long presumed impossible, recent scientific advances regarding WET suggest that it may become a clinical reality. However, the ethical implications of WET as an experimental therapeutic strategy remain largely unexplored. This article evaluates the ethical considerations surrounding WET as an emerging experimental treatment for vision loss. A thorough review of published literature pertaining to WET was performed; ethical issues were identified during review of the articles.

The present volume is the latest example of what scholars of Japanese philosophy have been up to in recent years. The papers collected here, most of them presented at conferences held in Barcelona and Nagoya during 2016, have been arranged in four thematic parts. The first two parts cover the history of Japanese philosophy, as their topics extend from premodern thinkers to twentieth century philosophers; the last two parts focus on Nishida and Watsuji respectively.