Elizabeth A. McGibbon and Josephine B. Etowa, Anti-racist health care practice, Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2009, reviewed by Kathryn L. Mackay.

Virtue ethics is regarded as the key in search of moral excellence among corporations. Yet, there are limited works to empirically investigate what virtuous character morally good corporations is expected to exhibit in the course of business from the perspective of customers. To fill this gap, we argue that customers are to evaluate firm’s virtuous character using Confucian cardinal virtues (ren, yi, and li) and perceived virtuousness determines customer loyalty. We test this argument using a sample of 276 Hong Kong (...) Chinese. The result suggests that a corporation not only has to offer a good value and high quality to customers but also needs to develop and acquire virtuous character in retaining customer loyalty. Firm has to embrace ren, yi, and li as the primary business goal. In fact, they are not the means but the end in themselves. The continuous pursuit of these cardinal virtues at the firm level not only establishes proper corporate values but also enables a firm to act morally in the course of business. Such kind of firm is known as junzi corporation. (shrink)

Reading Westworld is the first volume to explore the cultural, textual and theoretical significance of the hugely successful HBO TV series Westworld. The essays engage in a series of original enquiries into the central themes of the series including conceptions of the human and posthuman, American history, gaming, memory, surveillance, AI, feminism, imperialism, free will and contemporary capitalism. In its varied critical engagements with the genre, narratives and contexts of Westworld, this volume explores the show’s wider and deeper meanings and (...) the questions it poses, as well considering how Westworld reflects on the ethical implications of artificial life and technological innovation for our own futurity. With critical essays that draw on the interdisciplinary strengths and productive intersections of media, cultural and literary studies, Reading Westworld seeks to respond to the show’s fundamental question; “Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?” It will be of interest to students, academics and general readers seeking to engage with Westworld and the far-reaching questions it poses about our current engagements with technology. (shrink)

To better illuminate aspects of stress that are relevant to the moral domain, we present a definition and theoretical model of “moral stress.” Our definition posits that moral stress is a psychological state born of an individual’s uncertainty about his or her ability to fulfill relevant moral obligations. This definition assumes a self-and-others relational basis for moral stress. Accordingly, our model draws from a theory of the self (identity theory) and a theory of others (stakeholder theory) to suggest that this (...) uncertainty arises as a manager faces competing claims for limited resources from multiple stakeholders and/or across multiple role identities. We further propose that the extent to which the manager is attentive to the moral aspects of the claims (i.e., moral attentiveness) moderates these effects. We identify several consequences of managerial moral stress and discuss theoretical, empirical, and practical implications of our approach. Most importantly, we argue that this work paves an important path for considering stress through the lens of morality. (shrink)

Academic misconduct is widespread in schools, colleges, and universities and it appears to be an international phenomenon that also spills over into the workplace. To this end, while a great deal of research has investigated various individual components such as, demographic, personality and situational factors that contribute to cheating, research has yet to examine why students help others cheat and which students are being asked to help others cheat. In this study, we investigated if the closeness of the relationship to (...) the individual requesting help in cheating to the individual being asked to help cheat, influenced the decision to help cheat. We also investigated if past cheating behavior predicted how an individual would respond to requests to cheat. Additionally, we sought to answer the following questions; whether minor cheating is more prevalent than serious cheating, what personality factors predict helping others cheat, who is helped, and how people rationalize helping others cheat. Results indicate minor cheating to be more prevalent, prudent personalities are less likely to have cheated or to help others cheat, individuals are more likely to help friends cheat than to help strangers, and past cheating behaviors is indicative of helping others to cheat. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

In their Target Article, “Promoting Ethical Payment in Human Infection Challenge Studies,” Lynch et al. propose a framework for ethical payment to research participants and apply it to the c...

The concept of projection from one space to another, with a consequent loss of information, can be seen in the relationships of gene to protein and language description to real situation. Such a transformation can only be reversed if extra external information is re-supplied. The genetic algorithm embodying this idea is now used in applied mathematics for exploring a configuration space. Such a dialectic – transformation back and forth between two kinds of description – extends the traditional Hegelian concept used (...) by Engels and others of change as resulting from a resolution of the conflict of two opposing tendencies and provides for evolution of the joint system. (shrink)

In the case discussion, ‘Equity in Public Health Ethics: The Case of Menu Labelling Policy at the Local Level’ , Mah and Timming state that menu labelling would ‘place requirements for information disclosure on private sector food businesses, which, as a policy instrument, is arguably less intrusive than related activities such as requiring changes to the food content’. In this commentary on Mah and Timming’s case study, I focus on discussing how menu-labelling policy permits governments to avoid addressing the heart (...) of the problem, which is high-calorie, high-sodium restaurant food. Menu labelling policy does not address food content in a way that is meaningful for change, instead relying on individuals to change their behaviour given new information. Besides having questionable efficacy, this raises concerns about moralizing food choices. (shrink)

Hospital systems commonly face the challenge of determining just ways to allocate scarce drugs during national shortages. There is no standardised approach of how this should be instituted, but principles of distributive justice are commonly used so that patients who are most likely to benefit from the drug receive it. As a result, clinical indications, in which the evidence for the drug is assumed to be established, are often prioritised over research use. In this manuscript, we present a case of (...) a phase II investigational trial of intravenous thiamine for delirium prevention in patients undergoing haematopoietic stem cell transplantation to emphasise several shortcomings in the overarching prioritisation of clinical over research uses of scarce drugs. Specifically, we present the following considerations: clinical use may not have stronger evidence than research use; a strong scientific rationale for research use may outweigh the claim for clinical indications in which there is weak evidence; treatment within the context of a clinical trial may be the standard of care; and research use may not only benefit patients receiving the treatment but also offers the prospect of improving future clinical care. In summary, we argue against allocation schemes that prohibit all research uses of scarce drugs and instead recommend that allocation schemes include a balanced approach that weighs risks and benefits of access to scarce drugs irrespective of the research versus clinical use designation. (shrink)

In this article, I focus on two problematic aspects of British health-promotion campaigns regarding feeding children, particularly regarding breastfeeding and obesity. The first of these is that health-promotion campaigns around “lifestyle” issues dehumanize mothers with their imagery or text, stemming from the ongoing undervaluing and objectification of mothers and women. Public health-promotion instrumentalizes mothers as necessary components in achieving its aims, while at the same time undermining their agency as persons and interlocutors by tying “mother” to particular images. This has (...) a double effect: first, it excludes mothers who do not fit the campaign picture of a mother; second, it encloses those who do fit the picture into an objectified image of motherhood that is defined by and subject to the dominant white, heteropatriarchal gaze. The second problem is that campaigns place unjustified demands on mothers, which stem from a misinterpretation of the maternal duty to benefit. I argue that nutrition-related health concerns regarding children are improperly framed as individual failures of maternal duty, rather than as failures of a system to function correctly. These arguments ultimately support shifting the focus of responsibility for issues around childhood nutrition away from mothers and back toward policymakers. (shrink)

It has been well documented that children perceive robots as social, mental, and moral others. Studies on child-robot interaction may encourage this perception of robots, first, by using a Wizard of Oz set-up and, second, by having robots engage in self-description. However, much remains unknown about the effects of transparent teleoperation and self-description on children’s perception of, and relationship formation with a robot. To address this research gap initially, we conducted an experimental study with a 2 × 2 between-subject design (...) in which 168 children aged 7–10 interacted with a Nao robot once. Transparency about the teleoperation procedure decreased children’s perceptions of the robot’s autonomy and anthropomorphism. Self-description reduced the degree to which children perceived the robot as being similar to themselves. Transparent teleoperation and self-description affected neither children’s perceptions of the robot’s animacy and social presence nor their closeness to and trust in the robot. (shrink)

This recent collection of essays, edited by Glen Pettigrove and Christine Swanton, presents interesting takes on virtues, old and new. Very much to the credit of the various authors and the editors...

In the ethics of public health, questions of virtue, that is, of what it means for public health to act excellently, have received little attention. This omission needs remedy first because achieving improvements in population-wide health can be in tension with goals like respect for the liberty, self-determination, or non-oppression of various individuals or groups. A virtue-ethics approach is flexible and well-suited for the kind of deliberation required to resolve or mitigate such tension. Public health requires practically wise and careful (...) thinking, which virtue ethics brings with it. Furthermore, too tight a focus on delivering outcomes in determining how public health should act has, in some cases, actually undermined its ability to achieve those consequences. However, the main concern about incorporating virtue into public health in a pluralistic society is likely to be that virtue is generally teleological, and we would surely need some widely agreed upon idea of something like flourishing or the common good for this to work. In this paper, I propose that for public health to express virtue in its work, it must express a commitment to justice as it goes about its business promoting and protecting the health of the population. Justice is both a contributor toward better health for groups in society, and a worthwhile goal in its own right. I will sketch an argument that justice as non-oppression – not merely health equity – is the right telos toward which excellent public health should aim in a pluralist society. (shrink)

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in English ; abstract also in Chinese. 本文介紹生物倫理學與公共健康倫理學領域，並描述兩者之間的關係；文章尾聲將展望公共健康倫理學論未來既廣泛又多變的方向。本文首先簡介公共健康倫理學的本質，以及如何把其與比之更廣闊的生物倫理學作出區分，因此 需要提出公共健康倫理學的定義，以助釐清公共健康倫理的重點。隨後，本文簡述公共健康倫理學文獻的一些最新進展，包括圍繞新冠病毒、大流行病、抗菌素抗藥性、「生活方式」疾病及正義等道德問題。本文同時論及就干預 公共健康的「合法範圍」所提出的觀點之間於政治及形而上學的角力。其後本文探討公共健康倫理學所面臨的挑戰，包括其複雜又多元的性質。而且公共健康實踐高度政治化，其政治化的原因是因為公共健康影響整個人口及社區 ，而很多關於公共健康的決策由政治人物而非公共健康專家所作出。此外，公共健康倫理也因為公共健康的範圍擴展至納入非政府公共健康行動者而面臨進一步的挑戰。本文最後闡述有關公共健康的一些未來方向，包括「公共健 康觀」的出現，以作為為人熟知的健康與社會問題的形而上學框架、把該領域的認知和道德基礎去殖民化以涵蓋更廣泛的知識，以及一些包括美德在内的公共健康倫理學的理論發展。筆者建議讀者把文章視為對公共健康倫理學領 域的一部分介紹，並鼓勵他們閲讀本文所引用的論文，並以這些論文作為進入所涵蓋主題的大量文獻之門徑。公共健康倫理學是一個相對年輕的領域，而該領域有著巨大的成長及發掘更多新概念的潛力。 This essay begins by introducing the fields of bioethics and public health ethics and describing the relationship between them. It ends with some glimpses into the wide-ranging and discourse-changing directions of the literature on public health ethics. To open, the paper describes the field of public health ethics and how it is differentiated from the wider field of bioethics. This requires a brief description of public health to (...) clarify the nature of public health ethics. The essay then provides a brief overview of a few recent developments in the public health ethics literature, including the moral issues raised by COVID-19 and pandemics, anti-microbial resistance, ‘lifestyle’ diseases and justice. The paper also touches on the political and metaphysical tensions in views on what counts as a ‘legitimate area’ of intervention for public health. The essay then turns to a couple of challenges in the field of public health ethics, specifically the complex and multi-disciplinary nature of the field and the fact that public health practice is a highly political area. Public health is political both in the sense that it affects entire populations or communities and in the sense that many decisions about public health are made by politicians rather than public health experts. A further challenge to public health ethics is the question of what counts as ‘public health’, as the scope has been broadened to include non-governmental public health actors. Finally, the essay describes some future directions for research in public health ethics, including ‘public health view’ becoming a metaphysical framing for familiar health and social issues and decolonising the epistemic and moral foundations of the field to include a wider set of knowledge sources and values. There are also some theoretical developments that integrate virtue into public health ethics. The reader should take this essay as a partial introduction to the field, and they are highly encouraged to read the papers that are cited here and to use those papers as a gateway into the large literature on the topics covered. Public health ethics is a relatively young field, with an enormous potential for growth and new ideas. (shrink)

Social robots and their interactions with children are becoming increasingly sophisticated, with the emergence of child-robot relationships as a likely result. However, adequate measurement instruments that tap into concepts associated with child-robot relationship formation are scarce. We aimed to develop three measures that can be used to assess children’s closeness to, trust in, and perceived social support from, a social robot. We established the validity and reliability of these measures among 87 Dutch children aged 7 to 11 years old. Because (...) of their shortness, the measures can efficiently be applied by scholars aiming to gain insight into the general process of child-robot relationship formation and its specific sub-processes, that is, the emergence of closeness, trust, and perceived social support. (shrink)

This paper expands the definition of gray-marketing to include some ethically problematic marketing activities and techniques used in personal selling in China. Based on this, a conceptual model of gray-marketing for a particular type of selling in which both the sellers and the buyers exhibit problematic ethics in an exchange and the associated hypotheses are developed and tested. The findings show that, first, the respondents have different ethical evaluations of different marketing practices used in personal selling such as giving and (...) accepting gifts, buying and accepting meals, and offering and accepting kickbacks. Some of these practices may not be considered unethical. Second, in terms of ethical assessment, gray-marketing practiced by buying agents is more unacceptable than when practiced by sales agents. Third, a person's ethical evaluation of gray-marketing behavior, empathy for gray-marketing, and belief that gray-marketing has serious consequences, significantly affects his inclination to use gray-marketing. This paper concludes with a discussion of some possible applications of our research findings. (shrink)

Focus on the evolutionary origins of musicality has been neglected relative to attention on language, so these new proposals are welcome stimulants. We argue for a broad comparative approach to understanding how the elements of musicality evolved, and against the use of overly simplistic evolutionary accounts.

We argue that Brandon and Carson's (1996) "The Indeterministic Character of Evolutionary Theory" fails to identify any indeterminism that would require evolutionary theory to be a statistical or probabilistic theory. Specifically, we argue that (1) their demonstration of a mechanism by which quantum indeterminism might "percolate up" to the biological level is irrelevant; (2) their argument that natural selection is indeterministic because it is inextricably connected with drift fails to join the issue with determinism; and (3) their view that experimental (...) methodology in botany assumes indeterminism is both false and incompatible with the commitment to discoverable causal mechanisms underlying biological processes. We remain convinced that the probabilism of the theory of evolution is epistemically, not ontologically, motivated. (shrink)

We argue that the set of humanly known mathematical truths (at any given moment in human history) is finite and so recursive. But if so, then given various fundamental results in mathematical logic and the theory of computation (such as Craig’s in J Symb Log 18(1): 30–32(1953) theorem), the set of humanly known mathematical truths is axiomatizable. Furthermore, given Godel’s (Monash Math Phys 38: 173–198, 1931) First Incompleteness Theorem, then (at any given moment in human history) humanly known mathematics must (...) be either inconsistent or incomplete. Moreover, since humanly known mathematics is axiomatizable, it can be the output of a Turing machine. We then argue that any given mathematical claim that we could possibly know could be the output of a Turing machine, at least in principle. So the Lucas-Penrose (Lucas in Philosophy 36:112–127, 1961; Penrose, in The Emperor’s new mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1994)) argument cannot be sound. (shrink)

Critics of clinical equipoise have long argued that it represents an overly permissive, and therefore morally unacceptable, mechanism for resolving the tensions inherent in clinical research. In particular, the equipoise requirement is often attacked on the grounds that it is not sufficiently responsive to the interests of individual patients. In this paper, we outline a view of equipoise that not only withstands a stronger version of this objection, which was recently articulated by Deborah Hellman, but also plays important roles in (...) clarifying the discussion. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 2 Seiten: 734-737.

The Research Center for Surgery (RCS) in Moscow is recognized as one of the largest and most prestigious surgical institutions in Russia. In this 400-bed facility more than 3,000 surgical procedures are performed annually, including heart, liver, and pancreas interventions and the reimplantation of limbs. The main focus of the research program at the RCS is on the transplantation of organs and reconstructive surgery. All procedures are free of charge to the patient.