Modern consumers face a dramatic rise in web-based technological advancements and have trouble making rational and proper decisions when they shop online. When they try to make decisions about products and services, they also feel pressured against time when sorting among all of the unnecessary items in the flood of information available on the web. In this sense, they need to use consumer decision-making creativity to make rational decisions. However, unexplored research questions on this subject remain. First, in what ways (...) do task difficulty and time constraints affect visual attention on exploitative and exploratory activities differently? Second, how does the location of the reference influence the level of visual attention to exploitative and exploratory activities depending on affordance theory? Third, how do exploratory and exploitative activities affect CDMC? Eye-tracking experiments were conducted with 70 participants to obtain relevant metrics such as total fixation duration, fixation count, and visit count to answer these research questions. Our findings suggest that task difficulty influences exploitative activity, whereas time constraint is related to the exploratory activity. The result of the location of hints aligns with the affordance theory for the exploitative activity. Besides, exploratory activity positively affected CDMC, but exploitative activity did not show any effect. (shrink)

This book reconsiders the relationship between aesthetics and theological ethics. The primary question it seeks to answer is whether artistic creativity is a morally relevant activity. Drawing on the work of Jonathan Edwards and Thomas Aquinas, Choi argues that the arts are the cultural medium through which we can better understand what is morally possible, and that aesthetic objects can serve as snapshots of a particular community's perspectives on the good life. Art, in other words, offers glimpses not only (...) into competing moral visions within society but also the extent to which these contested moral views are understood. The arts, in Choi's view, provide a way of assessing the limits and possibilities of moral reasoning, the contextuality of moral discernment, and the need for moral thinking that is dialogical and dialectical. (shrink)

This essay provides an interpretation of Jonathan Edwards's moral thought that calls attention to the motif of perception in his conception of true virtue. The aim is to illumine the extent to which Edwards's virtue ethics can be included in and contribute to prevailing approaches to virtue in contemporary theological ethics. To advance this proposal, this essay attends to the question of moral agency that Edwards's reflections on charity, the new spiritual sense, and religious affections raise. This procedure offers an (...) acute sense of the significance of perception for Edwards's virtue ethics, which in turn allows for a constructive Edwardsean entry into current theological discussions on the narrative character of virtue. (shrink)

As postcolonial approaches in the studies of religion have challenged liberal-secular presuppositions in addressing non-Western forms of life, there has been a growing concern to examine the normative presuppositions of postcolonial approaches in the field of religious ethics. This paper addresses how Charles Taylor, Talal Asad, and Homi Bhabha show their normative concerns for addressing the interstitial existence of ethnic-religious minorities, negoriating between their subaltern religions and the inclusive-but-exclusive potential of the liberal secular frame of integration. These thinkers raise normative (...) critiques of the spatiotemporal and moral frameworks of liberal, secular integration while suggesting thgeir own normative visions for transforming the existing form of liberal secular democracy. They reveal different models in their normative critiques and visions: Taylor suggests a postsecular and dialogical model, while Asad sets forth an antisecular traditionalist model and Bhabha a pro-secular and vernacular one. (shrink)

This volume honors Lisa Cahill's 45 years of teaching Christian ethics at Boston College. With contributions from most of the doctoral students she directed during her career, it provides an interpretive overview of Cahill's specific contributions to Christian ethics.

Abstract:In reference to Pierre Hadot's idea of spiritual exercises, this essay examines how Zhiyi suggests his unique vision of spiritual exercises for therapeutic transformation. Though the recent interest in Madhyamaka spiritual exercises has focused on the implication of non-duality for moral-psychological transformation and self-cultivation, more research is needed on the issue of contradiction in spiritual exercises, which can also relate to the recent concern for dialetheism and the pragmatics of contradiction in Tiantai studies. This essay traces how dialectic contradiction and (...) its pragmatic uses underlie Zhiyi's non-dualistic spiritual exercises, examining his unique philosophical vision of the middle and its effects on therapeutic transformation, which is to be cultivated through various meditative techniques. (shrink)

This essay proposes an ethics of spirituality as a post-secular question by tracing the legacy of Schleiermacher in Charles Taylor’s account. Given the recent interest in spirituality as a matter of each individual’s perspective and orientation, it is important to explore whether spirituality involves an ethics of spirituality. This question resonates with the ethics of belief in James-Clifford debates and its recent discussions on the non-propositional aspect of belief and its ethical implications for oneself and others. The paper addresses how (...) Schleiermacher and Taylor suggest the ethics of spirituality that demands authentic spirituality and reciprocal communication and recognition, while revealing differences concerning interactions with the institutional church, civil religion, and the civic-cultural frame of rationality and utility. (shrink)

When Western Christianity came to Asia, it merged with Eastern religions and histories and developed very differently in different places. Today Asian women in each country build up very unique images of God. They practice Eastern forms of worship and liturgical rites, and do indigenized theologies. They simultaneously try to find their own ways of naming, imaging, believing in and communicating with their own God. Korean Christianity has inherited many images of God from Western Christian doctrines and theologies. However, when (...) it meets and merges with Koreanized Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shamanism, some of the images of God in Christianity are transformed and re-imagined in Korean women's social cultural and religious contexts. As an Asian woman, especially a Korean woman, I would like to introduce one of the many Asian women's theologies, Korean women's images of God. It cannot represent all Asian women's ways of doing theologies, but it will give some clues to show how Asian women do theologies in their own context. In particular, I will examine three images of God that demonstrate how Western Christianity and Eastern religions meet and are transformed in Korean Christian women's living contexts. (shrink)

The goal of the current chapter is to discuss how counterfactual thinking serves a more general sense-making function and to delineate the mechanisms by which this may occur. To demonstrate the meaning as sense-making function of counterfactual thinking, we (Lindberg & Markman, 2012) selected a historical event that was likely to be compelling to most student participants, yet not one with which most students would be familiar. This allowed for the manipulation of event details for the purpose of examining underlying (...) cognitive mechanisms believed to influence the sense-making process. Two sets of studies were conducted. The current work lends further support for the sense-making function of counterfactual thinking. (shrink)

What constitutes a good life? A hedonist’s answer to this question is rather simple— more pleasure, less pain. While hedonism was previously a widely accepted belief, it now suffers from several crucial objections. A challenge particularly vexing to hedonists is the Philosophy of Swine: could it be possible that our lives may be less than that of a theoretical swine? In this essay, I argue that lifetime hedonism, the view of hedonism concerned with one’s total lifelong well-being, does not survive (...) this objection. In particular, I will refute the counterarguments that modern-day hedonist, Ben Bramble, presents against the Philosophy of Swine objection. (shrink)

Scholars have long recognised the interest of the Stoics' thought on geometrical limits, both as a specific topic in their physics and within the context of the school's ontological taxonomy. Unfortunately, insufficient textual evidence remains for us to reconstruct their discussion fully. The sources we do have on Stoic geometrical themes are highly polemical, tending to reveal a disagreement as to whether limit is to be understood as a mere concept, as a body or as an incorporeal. In my view, (...) this disagreement held among the historical Stoics, rather than simply reflecting a doxographical divergence in transmission. This apparently Stoic disagreement has generated extensive debate, in which there is still no consensus as to a standard Stoic doctrine of limit. The evidence is thin, and little of it refers in detail to specific texts, especially from the school's founders. But in its overall features the evidence suggests that Posidonius and Cleomedes differed from their Stoic precursors on this topic. There are also grounds for believing that some degree of disagreement obtained between the early Stoics over the metaphysical status of shape. Assuming the Stoics did so disagree, the principal question in the scholarship on Stoic ontology is whether there were actually positions that might be called "standard" within Stoicism on the topic of limit. In attempting to answer this question, my discussion initially sets out to illuminate certain features of early Stoic thinking about limit, and then takes stock of the views offered by late Stoics, notably Posidonius and Cleomedes. Attention to Stoic arguments suggests that the school's founders developed two accounts of shape: on the one hand, as a thought-construct, and, on the other, as a body. In an attempt to resolve the crux bequeathed to them, the school's successors suggested that limits are incorporeal. While the authorship of this last notion cannot be securely identified on account of the absence of direct evidence, it may be traced back to Posidonius, and it went on to have subsequent influence on Stoic thinking, namely in Cleomedes' astronomy. (shrink)

This article discusses three policy ideas that address the limitations of the traditional welfare state: universal basic income (UBI), universal basic services (UBS), and the social economy. As a lens from which to evaluate these policy alternatives, we develop a concept of active citizenship as an interactive and recursive process between people’s equal political influence and the institutional conditions in which they are placed. While the social policy discourse on active citizenship has centred on the debate between increasing individual responsibilities (...) or enhancing people’s capabilities, our conception recentres the political dimension of active citizenship as people’s capacity, not only to exercise individual self-determination, but also collective self-determination over shared conditions. We conclude that, in addition to the conditions for security and autonomy, opportunities for organised social cooperation are necessary to achieve a virtuous cycle between people’s political influence and the institutions that support it. (shrink)

Ideological indoctrination is explicit and pervasive in China, with the school curriculum used to mould the spirit and character of adolescents, fulfilling ideological and political purposes. But the exact content varies over time. Comparing two versions of textbooks published in 1997 and 2005, this paper depicts the continuities and change in the curricular discourses centred on the notion of ‘good citizen’. While keeping the official status of socialism and the Party leadership untouched, the new textbooks soften the presentation and packaging (...) of the ideological content, very much in tandem with the soft authoritarianism practised since the post‐Deng era when China has been deeply involved in the processes of marketisation, liberalisation and globalisation. The new textbooks also adopt a stance of greater reconciliation with human rights and global citizenship. While being granted more autonomy and rights, young citizens are still expected to shoulder the mission of national revival and socialist modernisation—very much derived from official policies. (shrink)

Incremental implicit theories are associated with a belief regarding it is possible to improve one’s intelligence or ability through efforts. Previous studies have demonstrated that incremental implicit theories contributed to better academic achievement and positive youth development. Our study aimed to examine whether incremental implicit theories of morality significantly influenced change in students’ engagement in voluntary service activities. In our study, 54 Korean college students for Study 1 and 180 Korean 8th graders for Study 2 were recruited to conduct two (...) two-wave studies. We surveyed participants’ implicit theories of morality and participation in voluntary service activities. The effect of implicit theories of morality on change in service engagement was analyzed through regression analysis. In Study 1, the moral growth mindset significantly moderated longitudinal change in service engagement. In Study 2, the moral growth mindset significantly influenced engagement in art-related activities, while it significantly moderated change in engagement in youth-related activities. (shrink)

What are the effects of word-by-word predictability on sentence processing times during the natural reading of a text? Although information complexity metrics such as surprisal and entropy reduction have been useful in addressing this question, these metrics tend to be estimated using computational language models, which require some degree of commitment to a particular theory of language processing. Taking a different approach, this study implemented a large-scale cumulative cloze task to collect word-by-word predictability data for 40 passages and compute surprisal (...) and entropy reduction values in a theory-neutral manner. A separate group of participants read the same texts while their eye movements were recorded. Results showed that increases in surprisal and entropy reduction were both associated with increases in reading times. Furthermore, these effects did not depend on the global difficulty of the text. The findings suggest that surprisal and entropy reduction independently contribute to variation in reading times, as these metrics seem to capture different aspects of lexical predictability. (shrink)

BackgroundAn increasing number of studies utilize intracranial electrophysiology in human subjects to advance basic neuroscience knowledge. However, the use of neurosurgical patients as human research subjects raises important ethical considerations, particularly regarding informed consent and undue influence, as well as subjects’ motivations for participation. Yet a thorough empirical examination of these issues in a participant population has been lacking. The present study therefore aimed to empirically investigate ethical concerns regarding informed consent and voluntariness in Parkinson’s disease patients undergoing deep brain (...) stimulator (DBS) placement who participated in an intraoperative neuroscience study.MethodsTwo semi-structured 30-minute interviews were conducted preoperatively and postoperatively via telephone. Interviews assessed participants’ motivations for participation in the parent intraoperative study, recall of information presented during the informed consent process, and participants’ postoperative reflections on the research study.ResultsTwenty-two participants (mean age = 60.9) completed preoperative interviews at a mean of 7.8 days following informed consent and a mean of 5.2 days prior to DBS surgery. Twenty participants completed postoperative interviews at a mean of 5 weeks following surgery. All participants cited altruism or advancing medical science as “very important” or “important” in their decision to participate in the study. Only 22.7% (n = 5) correctly recalled one of the two risks of the study. Correct recall of other aspects of the informed consent was poor (36.4% for study purpose; 50.0% for study protocol; 36.4% for study benefits). All correctly understood that the study would not confer a direct therapeutic benefit to them.ConclusionEven though research coordinators were properly trained and the informed consent was administered according to protocol, participants demonstrated poor retention of study information. While intraoperative studies that aim to advance neuroscience knowledge represent a unique opportunity to gain fundamental scientific knowledge, improved standards for the informed consent process can help facilitate their ethical implementation. (shrink)

The most valuable finding of my first sightseeing trip was that medieval Europe was the seat of Christendom and that Christianity defines the West. I was amazed to see that Europe reveals so much of its past. I had not had such an experience in the United States, where I had lived as a student and then as a professor of economics.As I glimpsed the West, I found myself rediscovering Confucian civilization and how much I am still Confucian, although I (...) was born into a Presbyterian family in Korea. But then, Korea is the most Confucian country. Curious about the West since my first trip, whenever I can I have toured Europe in search of the meaning of the West.While travelling in Europe, my mind often jumps back to my early life in Korea and Japan. I am struck by the vivid contrast in appearance between medieval European towns and Asian towns, which were grey and as flat as pancakes. Medieval towns are stony and solid. Nothing is flimsy. Shaped by spires, domes, and towers, a European town's silhouette rises and falls like a stock market graph. Europeans obviously loved the vertical emphasis. A traveller can see either a soaring church tower or a castle keep miles away on the horizon. Churches predominate, as if to emphasize that the main business of the town is the worship and glorification of God. (shrink)

With the expansion of clientele’s demographics and international transactions, many law firms began to open doors to non-mainstreamers—minority lawyers to join the legal workforce. Decades have passed and the inequality in compensation between minority and non-minority attorneys is still one of the most controversial issues in the legal profession. Based on human capital and labor discrimination theory, we examine the productivity and compensation differences between minority attorneys and non-minority counterparts. The sample consists of 554 firm-year observations of the 200 largest (...) U.S law firms from 2013 to 2016. We use OLS with clustered standard errors by year. We find minority partners are more likely to provide relatively routine and template-based services, which do not command fee premium, which results in low productivity of minority partners. We find that minority partners are compensated less than their non-minority counterparts after controlling for productivity. This paper aids in the understanding of diversity in the workplace and the effect of diversity on a firms’ productivity and the type of services to provide. Also, this paper has implications on the compensation gap between minorities and their non-minority counterparts. (shrink)

With the expansion of clientele’s demographics and international transactions, many law firms began to open doors to non-mainstreamers—minority lawyers to join the legal workforce. Decades have passed and the inequality in compensation between minority and non-minority attorneys is still one of the most controversial issues in the legal profession. Based on human capital and labor discrimination theory, we examine the productivity and compensation differences between minority attorneys and non-minority counterparts. The sample consists of 554 firm-year observations of the 200 largest (...) U.S law firms from 2013 to 2016. We use OLS with clustered standard errors by year. We find minority partners are more likely to provide relatively routine and template-based services, which do not command fee premium, which results in low productivity of minority partners. We find that minority partners are compensated less than their non-minority counterparts after controlling for productivity. This paper aids in the understanding of diversity in the workplace and the effect of diversity on a firms’ productivity and the type of services to provide. Also, this paper has implications on the compensation gap between minorities and their non-minority counterparts. (shrink)

This study explores how and when ethical leadership predicts three forms of team-level creativity, namely team creativity, average of member creativity, and dispersion of member creativity. The results, based on 230 members of 44 knowledge work teams from Chinese organizations, showed that ethical leadership was positively related to team creativity and average of member creativity but was negatively related to dispersion of member creativity. Consistent with the predictions of uncertainty reduction theory, psychological safety climate mediated the relationship between ethical leadership (...) and the three forms of team-level creativity. Furthermore, supervisor support for creativity positively moderated the effect of ethical leadership on psychological safety climate and the indirect effects of ethical leadership on the three forms of team-level creativity through psychological safety climate. The analysis offers significant theoretical and practical implications on ethical leadership and creativity in organizations. (shrink)