The point of Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinist example is to establish that one person, A, can acquire a right to use the body of another person, B, if and only if B performs some kind of affirmative act that gives A such a right. On her view, the reason it is permissible for you to unplug yourself from the violinist is that you did nothing to give the violinist a right to use your body: the violinist was plugged into you (...) without your consent. Thus it follows that the mere fact that A needs use of B's body to survive is not enough to give rise to a right in A to use B's body. Accordingly, Thomson concludes, the claim that the fetus has a right to life does not imply abortion is morally impermissible. (shrink)

This book provides a new and wide-ranging study of law's normativity, examining conceptual, descriptive and empirical dimensions of this perennial philosophical issue. It also contains essays concerned with, among other issues, the relationship between semantic and legal normativity; methodological concerns pertaining to understanding normativity; normativity and legal interpretation; and normativity as it pertains to transnational law. The contributors come not only from the usual Anglo-American and Western European community of legal theorists, but also from Latin American and Eastern European communities, (...) representing a diversity of perspectives and points of view – including essays from both analytic and continental methodologies. With this range of topics, the book will appeal to scholars in transnational law, legal sociology, normative legal philosophy concerned with problems of state legitimacy and practical rationality, as well as those working in general jurisprudence. It comprises a highly important contribution to the study of law's normativity. (shrink)

The Tao Te Ching by Laozi is the philosophical inception of all Chinese thoughts and concepts. As its disparate versions, it is very hard to backtrack to the very original meaning of the Tao Te Ching. There are three most important versions of the Tao Te Ching: the original Wang Bi's version, the silk book (versions A and B) and the Chu Jian version. The preferred version of Laozi is the original Wang Bi's version. This edition is mainly based on (...) Chu Jian and Version A of the silk book, with supplement of the text of Version B. If the supplement is incomplete, this book uses Wang Bi's version. Both Version A of the silk book and Chu Jian were before the Western Han Dynasty. It was the period when Laozi rescued the highest prestige and Confucianism was in the doldrums. They were not tampered with by the emperor and Confucianism. It is the intention of the author that readers should not believe in the correction and proofreading of Confucian scholars and materialist dialectics. (shrink)

There is no issue more central to the abortion debate than the controversial issue of whether the fetus is a moral person. Abortion-rights opponents almost universally claim that abortion is murder and should be legally prohibited because the fetus is a moral person at the moment of conception. Abortion-rights proponents almost universally deny the crucial assumption that the fetus is a person; on their view, whatever moral disvalue abortion involves does not rise to the level of murder and hence does (...) not rise to the level of something that should be legally prohibited.In this essay, I argue that, under dualist assumptions about the nature of mind, the fetus is not a person until brain activity has begun.i First, I argue it is a necessary condition for a thing to be a moral person that it is a self. Second, I argue it is a necessary condition for a fetus to be a self, under dualist assumptions, that there has been some electrical activity in the brain. I conclude that a dualist can take the position that abortion ought to be legally permitted at least until the beginning of brain activity in the fetus. (shrink)

It is commonly taken for granted that abortion is necessarily impermissible if the fetus is a person with a right to life. In her influential essay Judith Jarvis Thomson offers what I will call the violinist example to show that merely having a right to life does not in and of itself give rise in the fetus to a right to use the mother's body. On Thomson's view, if the fetus has a right to use the mother's body that precludes (...) terminating its life by means of an abortion, it is because the mother did something to give the fetus that right. Thus she concludes that the proposition that the fetus is a person does not imply that abortion is morally impermissible. (shrink)

The United Network for Organ Sharing recently changed the policy by which donor livers are allocated to liver failure patients in the United States. Formerly, all liver failure patients were characterized as status 1 and placed at the top of the transplant list. Under the new policy, only patients with liver failure due to acute illness () are eligible for status 1; patients with liver failure due to chronic liver disease () are characterized as status 2. Since donor organs are (...) allocated first to status 1 patients and then to status 2 patients, the new policy moves all CLF patients down on the waiting list relative to all ALF patients. This means that some livers that would have gone to CLF patients under the old policy will now go to ALF patients. Accordingly, while the new policy will likely increase the number of ALF patients saved, it will also increase the number of deaths among CLF patients waiting for a transplant. (shrink)

How, and how well, do people switch between exploration and exploitation to search for and accumulate resources? We study the decision processes underlying such exploration/exploitation trade‐offs using a novel card selection task that captures the common situation of searching among multiple resources (e.g., jobs) that can be exploited without depleting. With experience, participants learn to switch appropriately between exploration and exploitation and approach optimal performance. We model participants' behavior on this task with random, threshold, and sampling strategies, and find that (...) a linear decreasing threshold rule best fits participants' results. Further evidence that participants use decreasing threshold‐based strategies comes from reaction time differences between exploration and exploitation; however, participants themselves report non‐decreasing thresholds. Decreasing threshold strategies that “front‐load” exploration and switch quickly to exploitation are particularly effective in resource accumulation tasks, in contrast to optimal stopping problems like the Secretary Problem requiring longer exploration. (shrink)

In I argued that the UNOS policy of placing acute liver failure patients (ALF patients) above chronic liver failure patients (CLF patients) on the transplant list fails to satisfy the principles of utility and justice that ostensibly guide UNOS allocation policy. Further, I argued that physician discretion in evaluating ALF and CLF patients should be expandedthe distinction between acute liver failure and progression of chronic liver disease.

The point of Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinist example is to establish that one person, A, can acquire a right to use the body of another person, B, if and only if B performs some kind of affirmative act that gives A such a right. On her view, the reason it is permissible for you to unplug yourself from the violinist is that you did nothing to give the violinist a right to use your body: the violinist was plugged into you (...) without your consent. Thus it follows that the mere fact that A needs use of B's body to survive is not enough to give rise to a right in A to use B's body. Accordingly, Thomson concludes, the claim that the fetus has a right to life does not imply abortion is morally impermissible. (shrink)

Organizational leaders are eager to unlock the creative potential of followers. Yet, there is growing evidence that creativity can also have a dark side within organizations. Building on research linking creativity and unethical behavior, we develop the construct of creative unethicality—behavior that is both unethical and novel. We draw on social exchange theory to develop a model that identifies both why and when creative unethicality emerges within organizations. Specifically, we investigate the exchange dynamics through which creative support provided by empowering (...) leaders facilitates creative unethicality under conditions of high performance pressure. Across two multi-wave, multi-source field studies with employee-coworker and leader-subordinate dyads and an experimental study with a novel unethicality measure in a business simulation, we find convergent support for our theoretical model. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications for fostering creativity in organizations without simultaneously facilitating creative unethicality. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the major players operating on Al‐Saha Al‐Siyasia online community, which is by far the most widely spread political online community in Saudi Arabia receiving 20 million page views per month.Design/methodology/approachIn addition to using “focused” silent observation to observe Al‐Saha Al‐Siyasia over a period of three months and thematic content analysis to examine 2,000 topics posted to Al‐Saha Al‐Siyasia during the period of May‐June 2007, semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 15 key informants to (...) report their perceptions regarding Islamic fundamentalists, extremists and liberals, etc. on their forum.FindingsThe results of this study indicate that there are three main players operating in Al‐Saha Al‐Siyasia: Islamic fundamentalists, extremists, and liberals. Islamic fundamentalists who are the vast majority on this community use the forum as a medium to promote their image and defend their way of practising the religion. Extremists on the other hand, although their numbers in the forum are very small, use the forum as a medium to establish their credibility and the grounds for their actions. Finally, the liberals use the forum to communicate with the public, and advocate their plans for social reform, invite people to adopt a less strict version of Islam and adopt secularism as a way of life.Originality/valueThis paper continues the first comprehensive descriptive study of the size and influence of the Islamic fundamentalists, extremists, and liberals in their activities as online communities. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility and desirability of artificial intelligence by considering western literature on AI and Buddhist doctrine.Design/methodology/approachThe paper argues that these issues can best be considered examined from a variety of philosophical and religious viewpoints and that resolution of those issues depends on which point of view the questions are addressed from. There are a number of philosophical questions involving AI usually considered by philosophers: what is the definition of AI, what is a (...) status of an AI as compared with human intelligence, is there a legitimate purpose for creating AI; if so, what is that purpose? Buddhism is a religion that is deeply philosophical and, perhaps to the surprise of western readers, has a lot to say about the nature of human mind and human intelligence. Although Buddhism does not talk explicitly about AI, the richness of its philosophical views concerning human nature and the nature of the physical world sheds considerable light on the philosophical questions stated above.FindingsThe paper explains how Buddhist teaching would answer the four questions above.Originality/valueThe paper is the first to clarify the Buddhist position on AI, and perhaps represents the first attempt to explore the relationships between any major religion and the AI agenda. (shrink)

A significant body of research has emerged in order to better understand unethical behavior at work and how gender plays a role in the process. In this study, we look to add to this literature by exploring how perpetrator gender influences reactions to distinct types of unethicality. Rather than viewing unethical behavior as a unitary construct, where all forms of lying, cheating, and stealing are the same, we integrate theories and concepts from the criminal justice and moral psychology literatures to (...) categorize certain unethical behaviors as either impulsive or premeditated. Given the agentic nature of premeditated unethical behavior, we draw from role congruity theory to predict that women will be punished more severely than men for their role incongruous actions. Impulsive unethical behavior, on the other hand, will be less likely to elicit perceptions of congruity or incongruity, leading to less of a gender effect. Results from three studies sampling both undergraduates and working adults in the United States, Singapore, and South Korea showed that participants were more likely to associate premeditated unethical behavior with a male perpetrator because it was seen as less feminine, and female perpetrators who engaged in premeditated unethical behavior received more severe punishment than male perpetrators due to the perceived role incongruity of their actions. Implications are discussed as well as possible limitations and directions for future research. (shrink)

This thought-provoking book develops and elaborates on the artifact theory of law, covering a wide range of related theoretical and practical topics. Offering a range of perspectives that flesh out the artifact theory of law, it also introduces criticisms of previous formulations of the theory and inquires into its potential payoffs. Featuring international contributions from both noted and up-and-coming scholars in law and philosophy, the book is divided into two parts. The first part further explores and evaluates the concept of (...) law as an artifact and analyses the background and theoretical basis of the theory. The second part comprises three sections on legal ontology, semantics and legal normativity, specifically in relation to law's artifactual nature. Providing cutting-edge insights at the intersection of law and philosophy, this book will appeal to scholars and students in philosophy of law, empirical legal studies, social ontology and the philosophy of society. (shrink)

Working memory (WM) is a fundamental cognitive ability to support complex thought, but it is limited in capacity. WM training has shown the potential to make benefit for those in need. Many studies have shown the potential of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to transiently enhance WM performance by delivering low current to the brain cortex of interest via electrodes on the scalp. TDCS has also been revealed as a promising intervention to augment WM training in a few studies. However, (...) those few tDCS-paired WM training studies focused more on the effect of tDCS on WM enhancement and its transferability after training but paid less attention to the variation of cognitive performance during the training procedure. The current study attempted to explore the effect of tDCS on the variation of performance during WM training in healthy young adults. All the participant received WM training with the load-adaptive verbal N-back task for five days. During the training procedure, active/sham anodal high-definition tDCS (HD-tDCS) was used to stimulate the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). To examine the training effect, pre- and post-test were performed respectively one-day before and after the training sessions respectively. At the beginning of each training session, stable-load WM tasks were performed to examine the performance variation during training. Compared to the sham stimulation, higher learning rates of performance metrics during the training procedure were found when WM training was combined with active anodal HD-tDCS. The performance improvements (post-pre) of the active group were also found to be higher than those of sham group and were transferred to a similar untrained WM task. Further analysis revealed that the negative relation between the training improvements and baseline performance. These findings show the potential that tDCS may be leveraged as an intervention to facilitate WM training for those in need of higher WM ability. (shrink)

An interdisciplinary collection of papers (from German Studies, History, Education, Philosophy, Romance Studies, Theology) concentrating on Herder’s theological works. The topics covered range from Herder’s exegetical work to the issue of pantheism and his activities in the church and school life of Weimar.