Independent philosopher Lee (recently of the U. of Manchester) attends to the deeper implications of ecologically insensitive technology beyond its polluting effects. Contrasting modern with premodern worldviews provides the context for exploring how new sciences like biotechnology require an expanded environmental ethos encompassing both the biotic and the abiotic. The author considers misconceived the notions of nature as either a work of art or a mere social construct per some postmodern thinking. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

According to the no-miracle argument, scientific realism is the only view that does not render the predictive success of scientific theories miraculous. Against the no-miracle argument, selectionists argue that the predictive success of scientific theories is a product of them being subject to a selection process that weeds out predictively unsuccessful theories. Against selectionism, I argue that the selectionist explanation is not an alternative to the realist one. More precisely, I draw on a standard framework in behavioral biology, known as (...) “Tinbergen’s four questions,” and argue that selectionism and realism are aimed at answering different questions and that they are complementary to each other, instead. (shrink)

In spring, summer and autumn 2020, one abiding argument against controlled human infection studies of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines has been their impact on local communities. Leading scientists and bioethicists expressed concern about undue usage of local residents’ direly needed scarce resources at a time of great need and even about their unintended infection. They recommended either avoiding CHI trials or engaging local communities before conducting any CHIs. Similar recommendations were not made for the alternative—standard phase III field trials of these same (...) vaccines. We argue that the health effects of CHI studies on local residents not participating in the study tend to be smaller and more positive than those of field trials. That is all the more so now that tested vaccines are being rolled out. Whether or not local community engagement is necessary for urgent vaccine studies in the pandemic, the case for its engagement is stronger prior to field trials than prior to CHI studies. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have recently proposed several alleged cases of “knowledge from falsehood,” i.e., cases of inferential knowledge epistemised by an inference with a false crucial premise. This paper examines such cases and argues against interpreting them as cases of knowledge from falsehood. Specifically, I argue that the inferences in play in such cases are in no position to epistemise their conclusions.

The instrumental benefits of firm’s CSR activities are contingent upon the stakeholders’ awareness and favorable attribution. While social media creates an important momentum for firms to cultivate favorable awareness by establishing a powerful framework of stakeholder relationships, the opportunities are not distributed evenly for all firms. In this paper, we investigate the impact of CSR credentials on the effectiveness of social media as a stakeholder-relationship management platform. The analysis of Fortune 500 companies in the Twitter sphere reveals that a higher (...) CSR rating is a strong indicator of an earlier adoption, a faster establishment of online presence, a higher responsiveness to the firm’s identity, and a stronger virality of the messages. Incidentally, the higher CSIR rating is also found to be associated with the stronger virality. Our findings also suggest that socially responsible firms can harvest proactive stakeholders’ participation without investing more resources. As the first study that conceptualizes the social media as a proponent of CSR, this paper contends that “being socially responsible” makes more practical sense for firms with the rise of social media. (shrink)

The last century saw two great revolutions in genetics the development of classic Mendelian theory and the discovery and investigation of DNA. Each fundamental scientific discovery in turn generated its own distinctive technology. These two case studies, examined in this text, enable the author to conduct a philosophical exploration of the relationship between fundamental scientific discoveries on the one hand, and the technologies that spring from them on the other. As such it is also an exercise in the philosophy of (...) technology. (shrink)

Several authors have recently argued against intellectualism, the view that one’s epistemic position with respect to p depends exclusively on one’s truth-relevant factors with respect to p. In this paper, I first examine two prominent arguments for the anti-intellectualist position and find both of them wanting. More precisely, I argue that these arguments, by themselves, are underdetermined between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. I then manifest the intuitive plausibility of intellectualism by examining the ordinary conversational pattern of challenging a claim.

Exploring the philosophical foundation of modern medicine this book explains why it possesses the characteristics it does, accounting for both its strengths as well as its weaknesses.

This book makes Classical Chinese Medicine intelligible to those who are not familiar with the tradition and who may choose to dismiss it off-hand or to assess it negatively. Keekok Lee uses two related strategies: arguing that all science and therefore medicine cannot be understood without excavating its philosophical presuppositions and showing what those presuppositions are in the case of CCM compared with those of biomedicine.

In the literature of environmental philosophy, the single most potent argument that has been made against the claim that nature may possess intrinsic value in any objective sense is the Humean thesis of projectivism and its associated view that human consciousness is the source of all values. Theorists, in one way or another, have to face up to this challenge. For instance, J. Baird Callicott upholds this Humean foundation to modern Western philosophy. However, by distinguishing between the source and locus (...) of value, he makes it possible to argue that nature is the locus of intrinsic value without at the same time compromising the thesis that human consciousness is the source of all values. On the other hand, Holmses Rolston, III, another eminent environmental philosopher, criticizes the distinction as well as challenges the Humean foundation itself. In this article, I attempt to resolve the disagreement between Callicott and Rolston over this particular distinction, thereby doing justice to the insights which each theorist, undoubtedly, has brought to bear on the issue of intrinsic value, at least as far as individual organisms is concerned. However, I am also critical of both for having failed to draw out the full implications behind certain crucial distinctions that should be made about the notion of intrinsic value itself. (shrink)

Counterfactuals are inherently ambiguous in the sense that the same counterfactual may be true under one mode of counterfactualization but false under the other. Many have regarded the ambiguity of counterfactuals as consisting in the distinction between forward-tracking and backtracking counterfactuals. This is incorrect since the ambiguity persists even in cases not involving backtracking counterfactualization. In this paper, I argue that causal modeling semantics has the resources enough for accounting for the ambiguity of counterfactuals. Specifically, we need to distinguish two (...) types of causal manipulation, which I call “intervention” and “extrapolation” respectively. To intervene in a causal model M is to change M’s structural equations in some specific ways, while to extrapolate M is to change the value assignment of M’s variables in some specific ways. I argue that intervention and extrapolation offer a natural explanation for the ambiguity of counterfactuals. (shrink)

In the literature of environmental philosophy, the single most potent argument that has been made against the claim that nature may possess intrinsic value in any objective sense is the Humean thesis of projectivism and its associated view that human consciousness is the source of all values. Theorists, in one way or another, have to face up to this challenge. For instance, J. Baird Callicott upholds this Humean foundation to modern Western philosophy. However, by distinguishing between the source and locus (...) of value, he makes it possible to argue that nature is the locus of intrinsic value without at the same time compromising the thesis that human consciousness is the source of all values. On the other hand, Holmses Rolston, III, another eminent environmental philosopher, criticizes the distinction as well as challenges the Humean foundation itself. In this article, I attempt to resolve the disagreement between Callicott and Rolston over this particular distinction, thereby doing justice to the insights which each theorist, undoubtedly, has brought to bear on the issue of intrinsic value, at least as far as individual organisms is concerned. However, I am also critical of both for having failed to draw out the full implications behind certain crucial distinctions that should be made about the notion of intrinsic value itself. (shrink)

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers reported a surprising trend in disease outcomes: men were more likely to require hospitalization and die from COVID-19 than women. Researchers looked to sex-linked biology to explain these disparities, hypothesizing innate sex differences in immune function, suggesting the use of estrogens or androgen-suppressants as therapy, and even pushing for sex-specific vaccine strategies. Leading bioethicists like Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel at the University of Pennsylvania recently described the sex disparity in COVID-19 outcomes as "the unsolved mystery" (...) of the... (shrink)

The authors work in a variety of clinical ethics consultation services (CECSs) that employ a range of methods and approaches. This article discusses the approach to ethics consultation at the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine and describes the development and transformation of the authors’ CECSs. It discusses how one CECS shifted from a nascent program with only fifty consultations a year to a vibrant, heavily staffed service with five hundred ethics consultations a year.

Through corporate social responsibility activities, a firm can develop the capability for managing and benefiting from stakeholder relationships. This study refers to such a capability as stakeholder influence capacity. In a host country, locally sourcing parts and/or materials can generate economic value and improve social welfare. Moreover, local sourcing provides opportunities for a foreign firm to apply and advance SIC while closely interacting with host-country stakeholders. Accordingly, we expect that a firm, having gained SIC through CSR activities in its home (...) country, will be more likely to source parts and/or materials in the host country. We also expect that the relationship between SIC and host-country sourcing is conditional upon a foreign firm’s intangible resources and liabilities of foreignness. Our empirical analysis, using Korean datasets, supports the positive relationship between CSR and local sourcing. We find that this positive relationship is more pronounced either when the firm is committed to technology development or when its home and host countries are geographically or culturally distant. (shrink)

Large-scale social media services have been challenged due to their lack of ethical principles, which has resulted in allegations of user manipulation such as propagation of fake news related to COVID-19 vaccination and biased algorithmic curations that lead to social polarization. We studied current social media community guidelines and conducted a systematic literature review to identify the core values needed for the establishment of guidelines for responsible social media services. Through expert interviews, a framework and guidelines are proposed for each (...) of three areas: protecting privacy, raising awareness, and controlling abuse. We present each set of guidelines with executable principles and relevant design interventions that practitioners can use to offer responsible social media services. Our expert interviews surfaced tensions between the three areas that need to be addressed in developing responsible social media, such as privacy vs. sharing information, pseudonymity vs. safety, and spreading information vs. safety. (shrink)

Although shared decision-making is a standard in medical care, unilateral decisions through process-based conflict resolution policies have been defended in certain cases. In patients who do not stand to receive proportional clinical benefits, the harms involved in interventions such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation seem to run contrary to the principle of non-maleficence, and provision of such interventions may cause clinicians significant moral distress. However, because the application of these policies involves taking choices out of the domain of shared decision-making, they face (...) important ethical and legal problems, including a recent challenge to their constitutionality. In light of these concerns, we suggest a re-conceptualization of informed non-dissent as an alternative approach in cases where the application of process-based policies is being considered. This clinician-directed communication model still preserves what is valuable in such policies and salvages professional integrity, while minimising ethical and legal challenges. (shrink)

To resolve the lottery paradox, the “no-justification account” proposes that one is not justified in believing that one's lottery ticket is a loser. The no-justification account commits to what I call “the Harman-style skepticism”. In reply, proponents of the no-justification account typically downplay the Harman-style skepticism. In this paper, I argue that the no-justification reply to the Harman-style skepticism is untenable. Moreover, I argue that the no-justification account is epistemically ad hoc. My arguments are based on a rather surprising finding (...) that the no-justification account implies that people living in Taiwan typically suffer from the Harman-style skepticism. (shrink)

We construct a causal-modeling semantics for both indicative and counterfactual conditionals. As regards counterfactuals, we adopt the orthodox view that a counterfactual conditional is true in a causal model M just in case its consequent is true in the submodel M∗, generated by intervening in M, in which its antecedent is true. We supplement the orthodox semantics by introducing a new manipulation called extrapolation. We argue that an indicative conditional is true in a causal model M just in case its (...) con- sequent is true in certain submodels M∗, generated by extrapolating M, in which its antecedent is true. We show that the proposed semantics can account for some important minimal pairs nicely and naturally. We also prove a theorem showing under what conditions intervention and extrapolation will yield the same result, and thus explain how counterfactual and indicative conditionals would behave in a causal-modeling semantics. (shrink)

A comparison of the literatures on how infants represent generic object classes, gender and race information in faces, and emotional expressions reveals both common and distinctive developments in the three domains. In addition, the review indicates that some very basic questions remain to be answered regarding how infants represent facial displays of emotion, including (a) whether infants form category representations for discrete classes of emotion, (b) when and how such representations come to incorporate affective meaning, (c) the developmental trajectory for (...) representation of emotional expression at different levels of inclusiveness (i.e., from broad to narrow or narrow to broad?), and (d) whether there is superior discrimination ability operating within more frequently experienced emotion categories. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that our initial intuitions regarding knowledge attributions in stakes-shifting cases (e.g., Cohen’s Airport) are best explained by standards variantism, the view that the standards for knowledge may vary with contexts in an epistemically interesting way. Against standards variantism, I argue that no prominent account of the standards for knowledge can explain our intuitions regarding stakes-shifting cases. I argue that the only way to preserve our initial intuitions regarding such cases is to endorse position variantism, the view (...) that one’s epistemic position may vary with contexts in an epistemically interesting way. Some had argued that epistemic position is incompatible with intellectualism. In reply, I point out that position variantism and intellectualism are compatible, if one’s truth-relevant factors with respect to p can vary with contexts in an epistemically interesting way. (shrink)

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)

With increasing attention on the role of parenting stress on family functioning and children’s development, one area that has been neglected is how such relations differ across cultures. Although sometimes viewed as homogeneous, Asian countries often have markedly different belief systems. Cross-cultural studies require instruments that have been validated in different socio-cultural contexts. The widely used parenting stress index-short form has been used in several locations. However, results regarding its factorial structure have been mixed. Furthermore, there are only a few (...) cross-cultural comparison studies. This study examined the factorial structure of an abridged version of the PSI-SF with data from Hong Kong and Thailand. The results from confirmatory factor analyses indicated that, in both cultures, a three-factorial structure provides the best model fit. Furthermore, we found evidence for partial metric invariance, suggesting that the test scores can be compared directly. Tests for convergent and discriminant validity revealed that the three factors were correlated with parent general distress, authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive parenting behaviors, in both cultures. These findings suggest that the abridged PSI-SF can provide a meaningful comparison of parenting stress between Hong Kong and Thailand. (shrink)

The dominant position of e-commerce is especially being articulated in the retailing industry once again due to several constraints that the world faces in the COVID-19 pandemic era. In this regard, this study explores the significant role of trust transfer and the moderating effect of consumers’ neurotic traits in the framework of trust-satisfaction-repurchase intention in the e-commerce context based on a survey with 406 Korean e-commerce consumers. Moreover, a prediction-oriented segmentation technique combined with structural equation models was utilized to reveal (...) consumers’ probable hidden heterogeneous characteristics. The outcomes of the global model SEM analysis indicate that offline-online trust transference occurs in e-commerce, and the conveyed trust significantly influences satisfaction and consumers’ repeat purchase intention through satisfaction. Neuroticism also has significant positive effects on trust transfer in the global model. However, results in three subgroups generated by POS show heterogeneous characteristics that considerably differed from the global model test results. The implications from this study will be beneficial to field practitioners in the e-commerce industry in addressing the importance of trust transfer, negative neurotic traits as well as heterogeneous aspects of consumers. (shrink)

A comparison of the literatures on how infants represent generic object classes, gender and race information in faces, and emotional expressions reveals both common and distinctive developments in the three domains. In addition, the review indicates that some very basic questions remain to be answered regarding how infants represent facial displays of emotion, including (a) whether infants form category representations for discrete classes of emotion, (b) when and how such representations come to incorporate affective meaning, (c) the developmental trajectory for (...) representation of emotional expression at different levels of inclusiveness (i.e., from broad to narrow or narrow to broad?), and (d) whether there is superior discrimination ability operating within more frequently experienced emotion categories. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis contribution argues that Bohr's notion of complementarity can be traced back to the Laozi which he would have read. In Chinese philosophy, polar contrasts such as yin and yang are not regarded as mutually exclusive; they are co-present, existing as a harmonious Whole. Such a conception of metaphysics and logic stood Bohr in good stead for characterising quantum phenomena which are at once both wave and particle. His notion of complementarity bears witness to the possibility of communication and understanding (...) between two different philosophical approaches and scientific traditions—this account adds to Lloyd's concept of semantic stretch. (shrink)

In this book, Keekok Lee asks the question, "what is an animal, and how does our treatment of it within captivity affect its status as a being ?" This ontological treatment marks the first such approach in looking at animals in captivity. Engaging with the moral questions of zoo-keeping (is it morally justified to keep a wild animal in captivity?) as well as the ontological (what is it that we conserve in zoos after all? A wild animal or its shadow?), (...) Lee develops her own original hypothesis, centred around the concept of "immuration"--defining this in contrast to domestication--and thereby provides a unique addition to the growing body of work on animal ethics. (shrink)

Popper Proposed the criterion of falsifiability as a solution to the problem of demarcation i.e. of distinguishing science from pseudo-science and not, as many of his contemporaries in the Vienna Circle mistook it to be, a solution to the quite different problem with which they themselves were preoccupied, viz. of providing a criterion of meaning to distinguish the meaningful from the meaningless. While the positivists were concerned to damn metaphysics and exalt science, by identifying the empirically verifiable with the meaningful, (...) Popper was concerned to separate science from scientism, to damn astrology and to extol astronomy. In other words his preoccupation belongs not to the philosophy of language but to the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Philosophers have long analyzed the truth-condition of counterfactual conditionals in terms of the possible-worlds semantics advanced by Lewis [13] and Stalnaker [23]. In this paper, I argue that, from the perspective of philosophical semantics, the causal modeling semantics proposed by Pearl [17] and others (e.g., Briggs [3]) is more plausible than the Lewis-Stalnaker possible-worlds semantics. I offer two reasons. First, the possible-worlds semantics has suffered from a specific type of counterexamples. While the causal modeling semantics can handle such examples with (...) ease, the only way for the possible-worlds semantics to do so seems to cost it its distinctive status as a philosophical semantics. Second, the causal modeling semantics, but not the possible-worlds semantics, has the resources enough for accounting for both forward-tracking and backtracking counterfactual conditionals. (shrink)