The construct of moral intensity, proposed by Jones (1991), was used to predict the extent to which individuals were able to recognize moral issues. We tested for the effects of the six dimensions of moral intensity: social consensus, proximity, concentration of effect, probability of effect, temporal immediacy and magnitude of consequences. A scenario-based study, conducted among business individuals in Singapore, revealed that social consensus and magnitude of consequences influenced the recognition of moral issues. The study provided evidence for the effects (...) of temporal immediacy. There was marginal support for the impact of proximity and probability of effect but no evidence that concentration of effect influenced recognition of moral issues. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results for researchers and organisational practitioners. (shrink)

This study examines the extent to which business students from Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan react differently to ethical dilemmas involving employees, supervisors, customers, suppliers, and business rivals. The empirical results show that the national origin of the students does have an impact on their reactions to particular ethical dilemmas. In addition, the results indicate that controlling for the problem of social desirability response bias is important to ensure the validity of the empirical findings.

Does greater knowledge help or hinder one’s ability to coordinate with others? While individual expertise can reveal a suitable focal point to converge on, ‘blissful’ ignorance may systematically bias decisions towards it through mere recognition. Our experiment finds in favour of the former possibility. Both specific and general knowledge are significantly associated with success in four of five coordination problems as well as over all. Our analysis suggests that more knowledgeable participants are better able to identify focal decision alternatives because (...) they are aware of more such alternatives and possess more relevant information about each. (shrink)

A biography of the foremost Christian humanist of the Renaissance who devoted his life to uplifting man's condition through faith, reason, and education.

A model of corporate ethics and social responsibility (CESR) was developed and empirically tested among Chinese business undergraduates in Hong Kong and Singapore. As predicted, it was found that CESR beliefs were negatively related to Machiavellianism and two Confucian concepts, guanxi (interpersonal connections) and mianzi (face). CESR beliefs were also lower among Hong Kong than Singaporean youths. The negative effects of guanxi, mianzi, and Machiavellianism were more pronounced for the Hong Kong than Singapore sample. Implications of these findings are discussed (...) and directions for future research suggested. (shrink)

The development of the CRISPR gene editing technique has been hyped as a technique that could fundamentally change scientific research and its clinical application. Unrecognized is the fact that it joins other technologies that have tried and failed under the same discourse of scientific hype. These technologies, like gene therapy and stem cell research, have moved quickly passed basic research into clinical application with dire consequences. Before hastily moving to clinical applications, it is necessary to consider basic research and determine (...) how CRISPR/Cas systems should be applied. In the case of single gene diseases, that application is expected to have positive impacts, but as we shift to more complex diseases, the impact could be unintentionally negative. In the context of common disabilities, the level of genetic complexity may render this technology useless but potentially toxic, aggravating a social discourse that devalues those with disabilities. This paper intends to define the issues related to disability that are associated with using the CRIPSR/Cas system in basic research. It also aims to provide a decision tree to help determine whether the technology should be utilized or if alternative approaches beyond scientific research could lead to a better use of limited funding resources. (shrink)

Ryan Darby, Judith Edersheim, and Bruce Price (DEP) argue that patients with Behavioral-Variant Frontotemporal Dementia have intact moral knowledge. In effect, they assume a motivational externalist understanding of moral knowledge. We question this by probing the cases they present as evidence for their position.

This article argues for an understanding of the scream at the nexus of a pre-verbal, imperceptible and inaudible operation. The work of Jean-François Lyotard describes a figure that breaks with figurative, illustrative and narrative forms, and takes up an operative function. In aesthetic terms, this operative figure – the figure of the matrix of desire – is what Lyotard describes as “seeing” rather than “vision”. That is, a child-like look that does not recognise the world by which it might master (...) it, but which desires to surpass limited existence, to lose oneself and to desire everything incompossibly. “Seeing”, in other words, is an opening of the self to the world in the original sense of aisthesis. Such an opening describes a masochistic jouissance inasmuch as this is an eroticism that has no mastery in dialectical terms or in verbal expression. This article will examine the screaming, howling, whooping and wailing of characters in Marco Ferreri's La Grande Bouffe (1973) to understand the appearance of masochistic jouissance in cinema. (shrink)

This paper proposes that Levinas's philosophy of alterity and infinitude based upon the ethical relation between Self and Other - is both profound and limited in its ability to account for social practice. Instead of simply accepting the common criticism of Levinas, however, that he places an intolerable ethical burden of infinitude upon human relations, this paper aims to move beyond this impasse by placing Levinas's metaphysics within a frame that privileges the dynamic between the Self and the Other as (...) a socially oriented, participative practice of teaching and learning. It is suggested that Etienne Wenger's work on the emergence of identity as a constant negotiation between the Others and the Self provides a conceptual framework for how business ethics may be owned, negotiated and learned within organizational communities without sacrificing the horizon of infinitude bestowed upon us by Levinas's ethical philosophy. Finally, the practical implications of such a comparative approach for the teaching of alterity in business ethics are discussed. (shrink)

This paper proposes that Levinas's philosophy of alterity and infinitude – based upon the ethical relation between Self and Other – is both profound and limited in its ability to account for social practice. Instead of simply accepting the common criticism of Levinas, however, that he places an intolerable ethical burden of infinitude upon human relations, this paper aims to move beyond this impasse by placing Levinas's metaphysics within a frame that privileges the dynamic between the Self and the Other (...) as a socially oriented, participative practice of teaching and learning. It is suggested that Etienne Wenger's work on the emergence of identity as a constant negotiation between the Others and the Self provides a conceptual framework for how business ethics may be owned, negotiated and learned within organizational communities without sacrificing the horizon of infinitude bestowed upon us by Levinas's ethical philosophy. Finally, the practical implications of such a comparative approach for the teaching of alterity in business ethics are discussed. (shrink)

In “Punishing Intentions and Neurointerventions”, Birks and Buyx (2018) provide a novel argument on why the use of mandatory neurointerventions on convicted criminals is morally objectionable “in a...

This paper presents the critical role of corporate responsibility in the sustainability of health care programs in lower income communities mostly located in the rural areas. The Leaders for Health Program (LHP)—a tri-partite partnership between the Philippine Department of Health, the Health Unit of the Ateneo de Manila University Graduate School of Business, and Pfizer Philippines, Inc.—is an innovative approach focusing on health promotion and education as the cornerstone for community development. LHP adopts a systemic and comprehensive approach that takes (...) into consideration all the major stakeholders in health, especially in rural communities. This paper aims to support the viability of education as the main catalyst for community empowerment and self-sufficiency. (shrink)

For the most part, the primary driver for international businesses in establishing operations in other countries is the reduction of overall operating costs. Host countries, especially developing nations, welcome multinational corporations (MNCs) because of the perceived economic benefits that international businesses can bring to their local communities. Surprisingly, one of the most understudied, under-analyzed, and sometimes even completely neglected factors when international businesses consider setting up shop in other countries is the local culture of their chosen destination country. This paper (...) substantiates the thesis that international businesses should adapt their corporate practices to the local cultures in which they operate to achieve effective and superior businessperformance. The paper goes further in identifying corporate practices that were adapted or revised by international businesses to respond to the culture of local communities in the Philippines. (shrink)

Background The Constitutional Court of South Korea declared that an abortion ban was unconstitutional on April 11, 2019. The National Health Care System will provide abortion care across the country as a formal medical service. Conscientious objection is an issue raised during the construction of legal reforms. Methods One hundred sixty-seven perioperative nurses responded to the survey questionnaire. Nurses’ perception about conscientious objection, support of legislation regarding conscientious objection, and intention to object were measured. Logistic regression was used to explore (...) the factors associated with support of the legislation and the intention to conscientiously object. Results Only 28.8% of the responding nurses were aware of health care professionals’ conscientious objection. The majority felt that patients’ rights should be prioritized over health care professionals’ conscientious objection. On the other hand, 45.8% supported the legislation on conscientious objection to abortion, and 42.5% indicated a willingness to refuse to participate in an abortion case if conscientious objection was permitted. Religion, awareness of conscientious objection, and prioritizing of nurses’ right to conscientious objection were significantly associated with supporting the legislation. Moreover, religion and prioritizing nurses' rights were significantly associated with the intention to conscientiously object. Conclusions This study provides information necessary for further discussion of nurses’ conscientious objection. Nursing leaders, researchers, and educators should appeal to nurses and involve them in making policies that balance a women's right to non-discrimination and to receiving appropriate care with nurses' rights to maintain their moral integrity without compromising their professional obligation. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 310—311. Writing Death . Jeremy Fernando, foreword by Avital Ronell. Den Haag: Uitgeverij. 2011 ISBN: 978-90-817091-0-1 Rite and ceremony as well as legend bound the living and the dead in a common partnership. They were esthetic but they were more than esthetic. The rites of mourning expressed more than grief; the war and harvest dance were more than a gathering of energy for tasks to be performed; magic was more than a way of commanding forces of nature (...) to do the bidding of man; feasts were more than a satisfaction of hunger. Each of these communal modes of activity united the practical, the social, and the educative in an integrated whole having esthetic form.(1) Jeremy Fernando’s Writing Death is a sensitive attempt at exploring the depths and heights to which the processes of mourning can take us. Death, as an absence, renders all gestures (for what is mourning but a gesture with many faces) surrounding it at once as a possibility and an impossibility. Fernando poses questions that often elude the mourner and the mourned—the same, and different—by raising the specter of subject and object; by compelling the examination of what it actually means to mourn; and most crucially, by considering the very status of possibility itself that the act of mourning foregrounds. Mourning, he reminds us, is premised upon memory (remembrance, recollection), the shadow of forgetting upon which is perpetually cast—the inextricability between memory and forgetting haunts the living more than it does the dead. And if grief has anything to do with it, mourning can quite easily be mistaken for an attempt to remember in order to forget; an attempt, in other words, to deny death, deny the one thing that confirms mortality. As if living has anything to do with it. What, then, of writing death? It becomes an unceasing process of locating—and addressing—possibility itself: the passing as possibility; loss as possibility; impossibility as, and of, naming this possibility. In confronting the passing on, it is possible, nay inevitable, to move on, move away from the site of loss, of grief. All the while, we forget, Fernando reminds us, that mourning has little to do with the dead, and a whole lot to do with the living, the mourning self. Here, he echoes Dewey’s consolidation of rituals and ceremonies, of the dead and of the living, all as parts of a larger unity, of a social, public gesture meant to sate a private need: In trying to “get over it,” are we trying to get over ourselves? Or more than that: are we trying to get over the fact that we can never quite get over ourselves? (Fernando, 77) As if guilt has anything to do with it. And “it” continues to be the point that he is driving at, driving towards. “It” is the possibility and impossibility, death and life, memory and forgetting, lost and cherished. “It” is what eludes mourning, eludes attempts to overcome grief. Nonetheless, move on, he must. And Fernando does this in fewer moves than a 12-step program—hardly therapeutic, but intellectually satisfying. Writing Death attends to some of the pertinent aspects of the act of mourning—both as gesture and as meditation: eulogy, distress (call), tears, and the question of how (beyond ritual, beyond sentimentality) to mourn. And what’s love got to do with it? Everything and nothing. Mourning, after all, is an articulation of love, but it is also one that forces the mourner to be selective, as with myth-making, in the recollection: Remembering only ever occurs in exception to memory—quite possibly in betrayal of a memory. In this way, each remembrance is a naming of that memory, a naming of something as memory, bringing with it an act of violence. (40) Mourning is thus not only an act of fictionalizing, it is also an act of reading, to continually be compelled to respond to another, all the while keeping vigil against a reconceptualization of the dead, without, therefore, misreading the dead. This can only be done, Fernando argues, by all the while “maintaining the otherness of the other. After all, one must try not to forget that one cannot be too close—space is needed—to touch.” (82) There is also tacit acknowledgement that doing so foregrounds the fact that the selectivity of memory becomes exclusive, and concretizes into a singularity, thus negating the multi-dimensionality of a life lived – and thus killing the already dead. Writing Death is framed by two eulogies—or the approximations of eulogies; approximation because both foreground and call into question the eulogy as a genre. The first is Avital Ronell’s foreword to the book, remembering Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe; the second is Fernando’s own response to the passing of a mentor, Jean Baudrillard. Both are not merely attempts to philosophize their way out of the act of mourning. Both are in fact deeply moving pieces that remind us of the emotional possibilities that may reside within any intellectual undertaking, that the latter need not be cold and devoid of feelings. And whereas Writing Death does not attempt to make any philosophical claim for humanism, the underlying wistfulness of both pieces does suggest that there is a proper place for deep-seated human response to death. We can (and the book does) intellectualize and problematize the acts of mourning and grieving, but these do not diminish the fact that we mourn and grieve. And, framing Writing Death as the two eulogies do, Jeremy Fernando perhaps finally, and inadvertently, names “It”—it is, above everything else, Human. August, 2011 Singapore NOTES (1) Dewey, John. Art as Experience . New York: Perigee, 1934. (shrink)

Can computer and information technology (IT), widely used in the development of livestock health and production, be of any benefit for Third World farmers and institutions? And if so, how can they be implemented on a large scale? The authors try to answer these and related questions based on experiences with computerized dairy herd health and production programs in Costa Rica. They conclude that IT is becoming a key instrument in the planning and operation of modern extension services and on-farm (...) research for meeting the farmers' increasing needs for information and for enhancing their ability to manage the available resources efficiently. IT enables private sector extension services provided by farmer groups and advisors to give farmers access to information that they previously lacked. These services facilitate bottom-up planning. Where IT does not allow the farmer or extension agent to solve the problem, IT can be used to articulate the problem for researchers or policy makers to address. For low-resource smallholders, access to IT can be provided through local farmer organizations. At the institutional level, IT is giving a strong impulse to the improvement of on-farm research, teaching programs, institutional and disciplinary cooperation, regional networking, and to a better linkage with the productive sector. (shrink)

Social movements often impose nontrivial costs on others against their wills. Civil disobedience is no exception. How can social movements in general, and civil disobedience in particular, be justifiable despite this apparent wrong-making feature? We examine an intuitively plausible account—it is fair that everyone should bear the burdens of tackling injustice. We extend this fairness-based argument for civil disobedience to defend some acts of uncivil disobedience. Focusing on uncivil environmental activism—such as ecotage (sabotage with the aim of protecting the environment)—we (...) argue that some acts of uncivil disobedience can be morally superior to their civil counterparts, when and because such acts target people who are responsible for environmental threats. Indeed, insofar as some acts of uncivil disobedience can more accurately target responsible people, they can better satisfy the demands of fairness compared to their civil counterparts. In some circumstances, our argument may require activists to engage in uncivil disobedienceeven whencivil disobedience is available. (shrink)

Much of the neuroimaging research has focused on how mathematical operations are performed. Although this body of research has provided insight for the refinement of pedagogy, there are very few neuroimaging studies on how mathematical operations should be taught. In this article, we describe the teaching of algebra in Singapore schools and the imperatives that led us to develop two neuroimaging studies that examined questions of curricular concerns. One of the challenges was to condense issues from classrooms into tasks suitable (...) for neuroimaging studies. Another challenge, not particular to the neuroimaging method, was to draw suitable inferences from the findings and translate them into pedagogical practices. We describe our efforts and outline some continuing challenges. (shrink)

Much of the neuroimaging research has focused on how mathematical operations are performed. Although this body of research has provided insight for the refinement of pedagogy, there are very few neuroimaging studies on how mathematical operations should be taught. In this article, we describe the teaching of algebra in Singapore schools and the imperatives that led us to develop two neuroimaging studies that examined questions of curricular concerns. One of the challenges was to condense issues from classrooms into tasks suitable (...) for neuroimaging studies. Another challenge, not particular to the neuroimaging method, was to draw suitable inferences from the findings and translate them into pedagogical practices. We describe our efforts and outline some continuing challenges. (shrink)

Anthropology has long been interested in human diets. The main objective of this article is to introduce the perspective of cultural anthropology about food in culture, and the way by which food embodies the relevant sociocultural significances. The case studies chosen cover the study of the Chinese in Malaysia, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as studies conducted in the Asia and Pacific Islands. The short review in this article aims to provide some ideas and case studies about the (...) interrelationship between food and culture. The anthropological perspective of food in different cultures may provide an insight into the study of Overseas Chinese and help to expand it to a wider concern on a variety of human activities. In this way, the writer believes t he study of Overseas Chinese can mark its particularity, research value and potential in world academia. (shrink)

I review José Medina's The Epistemology of Protest: Silencing, Epistemic Activism, and the Communicative Life of Resistance, and raise some questions about the felicity, legitimacy and civility of protest.

This article addresses learning in desktop virtual worlds where students role play for professional education. When students role play in such virtual worlds, they can learn some knowledge and skills that are useful in the physical world. However, existing learning theories do not provide a plausible explanation of how performing non-verbal virtual world actions (e.g. performing a virtual chest examination in a virtual hospital) can lead to the learning of the physical world equivalent. Some theories are particularly implausible because they (...) claim that students learn to perform physical world actions by acting on the virtual world in an embodied way. This is implausible because learning requires a high degree of correspondence between the learning performance and the target performance, and there is insufficient physical correspondence between the performance of a virtual world action where students click on a mouse to make the avatar take actions and the physical-world equivalent where students perform the action with their own body. In this article, we use Austin’s speech act theory to provide a more plausible theory of learning in virtual worlds. We show how non-verbal virtual-world actions performed by avatars can function as performatives and as performatives, they can correspond sufficiently to physical world actions to explain how performing non-verbal virtual-world actions can lead to physical world learning. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is set to transform healthcare. Key ethical issues to emerge with this transformation encompass the accountability and transparency of the decisions made by AI-based systems, the potential for group harms arising from algorithmic bias and the professional roles and integrity of clinicians. These concerns must be balanced against the imperatives of generating public benefit with more efficient healthcare systems from the vastly higher and accurate computational power of AI. In weighing up these issues, this paper applies the deliberative (...) balancing approach of the Ethics Framework for Big Data in Health and Research. The analysis applies relevant values identified from the framework to demonstrate how decision-makers can draw on them to develop and implement AI-assisted support systems into healthcare and clinical practice ethically and responsibly. Please refer to Xafis et al. in this special issue of the Asian Bioethics Review for more information on how this framework is to be used, including a full explanation of the key values involved and the balancing approach used in the case study at the end of this paper. (shrink)

What should we do about “tainted” public commemorations? Recent events have highlighted the urgency of reaching a consensus on this question. However, existing discussions appear to be dominated by two naïve opposing views – to remove or preserve them. My aims in this essay are two-fold. First, I argue that the two views are not naïve, but undergirded by concerns with securing self-respect and with the character of our engagement with the past. Second, I offer a qualified defence of vandalising (...) tainted commemorations. The defence comprises two parts. I consider two prominent suggestions – to install counter-commemorations and to add contextualising plaques – and argue that they are typically beset with difficulties. I then argue that in some circumstances, constrained vandalism is a response to tainted commemorations which effectively adjudicates the demands of the two opposing views. (shrink)

The term, "objectionable commemorations”, refers to a broad category of public artefacts – such as, and especially, memorials, monuments and statues – that are regarded as morally problematic in virtue of what or whom they honour. In this regard, they are a special class of public artefacts that are subject to public contestation. In this paper, we survey the general ethical and political issues on this topic. First, we categorise the arguments on offer in the literature, concerning the objectionable nature (...) of such commemorations. Second, we review common political responses to objectionable commemorations. Finally, we identify fruitful areas for further philosophical inquiry on this topic. (shrink)

ABSTRACT With the controversial ethical issues on the creation of human embryos through cloning for therapeutic research, which holds more promise for medical breakthroughs that the world could ever imagine and the acknowledgement by many scientists that this biotechnology may not lead in the near future to therapies; this country report discusses the approach Singapore takes on human stem cell research, interjected with the authors’ own arguments and suggestions especially on research compensation injuries, an often neglected important issue. International comparative (...) viewpoints taken by the major countries in the world are also included in the appendix. (shrink)

Faith (Islam); liberty; religious aspects; Islam.

Other (Philosophy); Islamic civilization.

A number of artificial intelligence systems have been proposed to assist users in identifying the issues of algorithmic fairness and transparency. These AI systems use diverse bias detection methods from various perspectives, including exploratory cues, interpretable tools, and revealing algorithms. This study explains the design of AI systems by probing how users make sense of fairness and transparency as they are hypothetical in nature, with no specific ways for evaluation. Focusing on individual perceptions of fairness and transparency, this study examines (...) the roles of normative values in over-the-top platforms by empirically testing their effects on sensemaking processes. A mixed-method design incorporating both qualitative and quantitative approaches was used to discover user heuristics and to test the effects of such normative values on user acceptance. Collectively, a composite concept of transparent fairness emerged around user sensemaking processes and its formative roles regarding their underlying relations to perceived quality and credibility. From a sensemaking perspective, this study discusses the implications of transparent fairness in algorithmic media platforms by clarifying how and what should be done to make algorithmic media more trustable and reliable platforms. Based on the findings, a theoretical model is developed to define transparent fairness as an essential algorithmic attribute in the context of OTT platforms. (shrink)