Welfare biology is the study of living things and their environment with respect to their welfare (defined as net happiness, or enjoyment minus suffering). Despite difficulties of ascertaining and measuring welfare and relevancy to normative issues, welfare biology is a positive science. Evolutionary economics and population dynamics are used to help answer basic questions in welfare biology: Which species are affective sentients capable of welfare? Do they enjoy positive or negative welfare? Can their welfare be dramatically increased? Under plausible axioms, (...) all conscious species are plastic and all plastic species are conscious (and, with a stronger axiom, capable of welfare). More complex niches favour the evolution of more rational species. Evolutionary economics also supports the common-sense view that individual sentients failing to survive to mate suffer negative welfare. A kind of God-made (or evolution-created) fairness between species is also unexpectedly found. The contrast between growth maximization (as may be favoured by natural selection), average welfare, and total welfare maximization is discussed. It is shown that welfare could be increased without even sacrificing numbers (at equilibrium). Since the long-term reduction in animal suffering depends on scientific advances, strict restrictions on animal experimentation may be counter-productive to animal welfare. (shrink)
In 1990, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a consent order to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). The order decreed the AICPA to lessen its longstanding ethics code which had until then banned the receipts of commissions, referral fees and contingent fees. The FTC alleged that the AICPA banned receipt of the fees as an attempt to restrain trade (FTC, 1990).In the present study, we sought to determine if CPAs'' preference for bans on commissions, referral fees and (...) contingent fees is related to their moral reasoning whereby CPAs perceive the bans to serve as a means of resolving ethical issues. While determining this matter cannot prove whether the bans did or did not actually result in restrained trade, it can offer insight into the perceived ethical importance to CPAs of the overturned rules. Based on a random sample of AICPA members and using Rest''s Defining Issues Test (DIT) to measure moral reasoning, we did not find a CPA''s moral reasoning to be related to his/her preference for ethics rules which ban commissions, referral fees or contingent fees. However, our results did indicate that most CPAs prefer banning commissions, referral fees and contingent fees, with those CPAs holding a higher financial stake in public accounting, namely partners, favoring banning referral fees and contingent fees significantly less than CPAs with a lesser stake. Further, we noted a significant negative relationship between financial stake and moral reasoning. These results seem to suggest that self-interest among CPAs may influence their moral reasoning.Further study is needed to examine the relationship between self-interest of CPAs and their moral reasoning. If self-interest clouds moral judgments made by CPAs, capital markets are in danger. Rendering an independent audit opinion must exclude self-interest. (shrink)
Against the standard interpretation that Hegel's idealism, in particular speculative logic, should be understood as an extension of Kant's transcendental idealism, I argue that Hegel's Logic should be understood as a logic of actuality (Wirklichkeit). Rather than seeking to determine the necessary and merely formal conditions and categories for the knowledge of any possible object, speculative logic is the immanent and active process of determining the truth of actual objects and actuality itself. Through a discussion of the status of the (...) transition between the Phenomenology and the Logic, as well as a detailed reading of Hegel’s treatment of the modal categories in the Doctrine of Essence, I seek to show how speculative logic offers a way to think the unity of a thing and its conditions without reverting to pre-critical metaphysics. By breaking down the traditional distinctions between actuality, possibility, necessity, and contingency, as well as demonstrating the necessity of contingency in the activity of thinking, I suggest that Hegel provides us with the categories necessary for a new understanding of the relation between thought and reality beyond the Kantian frame. (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)
Drawing on strategic choice theory, we investigate the influence of CEO leadership styles and personal attributes on the implementation of organizational diversity management practices. Specifically, we examined CEO transformational and transactional leadership in relation to organizational diversity practices and whether CEO social values and age may moderate these relationships. Our results suggest that transformational leadership is most strongly associated with the implementation of diversity practices. Transactional leadership is also related to the implementation of diversity management practices when either CEO social (...) values or age are relatively high. These findings extend previous work examining predictors of diversity management in organizations and highlight the central role that organizational leaders may play in the successful implementation of these practices. (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.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the salient factors influencing consumers’ attitudes and usage intentions towards pirated software. Using the Theory of Planned Behaviour, this study investigates the relationships between three sets of factors, i.e. personal, social and perceived behavioural control onto attitudes towards pirated software. Through a multiple regression, only personal factors have shown significant relationship with attitudes towards software piracy. Further results from this study have supported that favourable attitudes towards pirated software is likely to result (...) in stronger intentions to use pirated software. It was found that computer proficiency acts as a predictor for intentions towards pirated software, rather than a moderator as originally postulated. (shrink)
This volume, an assemblage of essays previously published in the Journal of Chinese Philosophy, conveniently and strategically brings together some of the trenchant interpretations and analyses of the salient, structural aspects of the philosophy of the Yijing. They reveal how the ancient Classic offers a graphically vivid and conceptually dynamic dramaturgy of the ways in which the natural world works in conjunction with the human one. Its cosmological architectonics and philosophical worldview continue to have enormous purchase on our current imagination, (...) even though readerly imperatives and responses have rendered this classic into a text of multiple significances, catering to pluralistic readerships and clienteles. Nonetheless, the essays in this volume lay bare some of the original authorly visions and insights of the Yijing, clearly showing that their apparent truthfulness to our cosmic and human conditions inspire philosophical and even theological questions. The Yijing's authorial designs of the eight trigrams and hexagrams, which encapsulate the primordial state of homo-cosmic phenomena and situations, together with the yin-yang forces and the dao, are taken for granted as integers in a grand universal equation, factored out to represent a ceaselessly changing cosmos in which heaven, earth and humanity commingle, such that the whole and unity can be found in the individual and the opposite, and vice versa. (shrink)
The lack of attention to sustainability, as a concept with multiple dimensions, has presented a developmental gap in green marketing literature, sustainability, and marketing literature for decades. Based on the established premise of customer–corporate (C–C) identification, in which consumers respond favorably to companies with corporate social responsibility initiatives that they identify with, we propose that consumers would respond similarly to companies with sustainability initiatives. We postulate that consumers care about protecting and preserving favorable economic environments (an economic dimension of sustainability) (...) as much as they care about natural environments. Thus, we investigate how two sustainability dimensions (i.e., environmental and economic) and price can influence consumer responses. Using an experimental method, we demonstrate that consumers favor sustainability in both dimensions by giving positive evaluations of the company and purchase intent. In addition, consumers respond more negatively to poor company sustainability than to high company sustainability. In comparison, consumers respond more negatively to the company’s poor commitment to caring for the environment than to the company’s poor commitment to economic sustainability. We also find that consumers do not respond favorably to low prices when they have information about the firm’s poor environmental sustainability. Finally, we find support for an interaction effect between consumer support for sustainability and corporate sustainability; that is, consumers evaluate a company more favorably if the company shares the consumers’ social causes. Overall, we conclude, from our empirical study, support for the idea that consumers do respond to multiple dimensions of sustainability. (shrink)
Japanese agricultural scholarship reached its peak in the Tokugawa period (1603-1868). Most of its representative works were imbued with the Chinese metaphysical doctrine of yin-yang-wu-hsing. They used the ideas of yin-yang, wu-hsing, yun-ch'i, hexagrams, and feng-shui extensively to develop their views and to explain various practices. There were two different attitudes towards Chinese concepts among Tokugawa scholars. Some regarded Chinese ideas as universal principles, and faithfully introduced them to Japan, whereas some were faced with the problem of national identity and (...) attempted to accommodate Chinese metaphysical principles to Japanese agriculture. This article examines the adoption of the yin-yang-wu-hsing doctrine in Tokugawa agriculture through a careful and critical textual study of several major Tokugawa writings. (shrink)
This study examined individual difference characteristics as predictors of business students’ attitudes toward sustainable business practices. Three types of predictors were considered: personal values, individualism–collectivism, and leadership styles. Data were collected from 248 business students attending a mid-sized university in western United States using self-reported questionnaires. Few gender differences were present. Hierarchical regression analyses, controlling for personal demographic characteristics, indicated that business students scoring higher on Rokeach’s social value scale, collectivism, and transformational leadership also reported more positive attitudes toward sustainable (...) business practices. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)
This paper draws on the economics of ethical compliance model to examine the association between ethical reasoning, perceived risk of detection, perceived levels of penalties and Chinese auditors'' ethical behavior in an audit conflict situation. Using 53 Chinese auditors from Shenzen as subjects, and a survey questionnaire, this study found that there is a significant negative association between ethical reasoning and the likelihood of unethical behavior and that this negative association is weaker for auditors who perceive higher risks of detection.
After reviewing the compelling case for separability (`social welfare is a separable function of individual utilities'), an argument is advanced for utilitarianism (defined as `social welfare is the unweighted sum of individual utilities'). Basically, a compelling individualism-type axiom leads us to (social welfare as an) unweighted sum (of individual utilities), given separability.
The cement industry is one of the most energy-intensive industries and among the largest CO2 emitters. Cement industry emissions in China have attracted particular attention, due to the country’s rapid growth. Yet few local Chinese cement companies have corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, and even fewer have environmentally related CSR programs. This paper studies the environmentally related CSR practices in mainland China of two companies: Lafarge, a multinational cement company, and Shui On, a Hong Kong-based construction company and developer. We (...) are interested in examining if there are differences in their environmentally related CSR practices, especially those related to emissions, in industrialized countries and Hong Kong on the one hand andin mainland China on the other—given that environmental regulations on the mainland are lax and an awareness of global climate change is largely nonexistent. Our intention is to investigate the influence of the CSR practices of multinational enterprises (MNEs) on the local Chinese cement industry, because they could be regarded as an effective vehicle to improve CSR awareness and practice in the Chinese cement industry and to help alleviate the industry’s impact on global climate change. We found that beneficial knowledge transfer from MNEs to local companies has not gone beyond improving production technology and management methods to the point of influencing CO2 emissions. Lafarge China and Shui On Cement announced a joint venture partnership during the course of our case study, and we examine whether this venture may have an impact on emission-related CSR practices in the Chinese cement industry. (shrink)
The "I Ching" had an important influence on Tokugawa Shinto. First, it played a crucial role in the discussion of Confucian-Shinto relations; many Tokugawa Confucians and Shintoists used it to uphold the doctrine of the unity of Confucianism and Shinto, and Shintoists and scholars of National Learning (kokugaku) used it for its metaphysical and divinational value. Second, scholars of National Learning transformed it from a Confucian classic into a Shinto text, claiming that it was the handiwork of a Japanese deity.
This study replicates and extends previous work by Oppenheimer and Wiesner [1990, Sex discrimination: Who is hired and do employment equity statements make a difference? Proceedings of the 11th Annual Conference of the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada, Personnel and Human Resources Division], and examined the effects of minority qualifications on hiring decisions, the effects of employment equity directives when minority candidates are less qualified and the effects of different types and strengths of employment equity directives on hiring decisions. The (...) results indicate that when employment equity is in place, people are increasingly more likely to hire underrepresented group members, to the extent that they are more qualified. Men appear to be treated in a positively biased manner, and are more likely to be hired when they are less qualified. Women are less likely to be hired when they are under-qualified, and in the absence of employment equity directives or when there is a suggestion that women are underrepresented. Moreover, when employment equity directives are strengthened, there appears to be a subtle backlash for women but not for men. (shrink)
The goal of this study was to construct a valid new instrument to measure the effect of moral intensity on managers' propensity to manage earnings. More specifically, this study is a pilot study of the impact of moral intensity on financial accountants' propensity to manage earnings. The instrument, once validated, will be used in a full-study of managers in the hotel industry. Different ethical scenarios were presented to respondents in the survey; each ethical scenario was designed in both high or (...) low moral intensity form, to reflect the importance of the moral dilemma at hand. The results were analysed by factor analysis. The findings of this study have positively validated the instrument, with three of the five moral intensity components identified as having appropriate eigenvalues. This indicates that they have a significant influence in the study. The first factor captures the social consensus dimension and one scenario of the proximity dimension. The second factor indicates an interaction between the temporal immediacy and the magnitude of consequences dimension. The third dimension is probability of effect and one scenario of the proximity dimension. In addition, t-tests indicated that the manipulation of high and low conditions within each scenario were also successful. One limitation of the study might be the use of undergraduate accounting students as manager proxies, although prior evidence suggests use of accounting students as proxies is a valid approach in this type of study. This is a highly novel project as most prior studies have focussed on moral intensity and the general ethical decision-making process. (shrink)
"I have a tree, which grows here in my close, / That mine own use invites me to cut down, / And shortly I must fell it" (Shakespeare 2001, 168)—Timon's lament, which in Shakespeare's rendition occurs shortly before its utterer's demise "upon the beached verge of the salt flood" (2001, 168) beyond the perimeter of Athens, is an indictment of the nature that Timon finds unable to escape. Having given away his wealth in misguided generosity to a host of parasitic (...) sycophants, Timon turns misanthropic when his "friends" reject his requests for help in kind to repay his debts, eventually exiling himself from the city with the intent of sustaining himself on nothing but water and roots. Yet he soon finds that removing .. (shrink)
We study the Turing degrees which contain a real of effective packing dimension one. Downey and Greenberg showed that a c.e. degree has effective packing dimension one if and only if it is not c.e. traceable. In this paper, we show that this characterization fails in general. We construct a real $A\leq_T\emptyset''$ which is hyperimmune-free and not c.e. traceable such that every real $\alpha\leq_T A$ has effective packing dimension 0. We construct a real $B\leq_T\emptyset'$ which is not c.e. traceable such (...) that every real $\alpha\leq_T B$ has effective packing dimension 0. (shrink)
Reasoning almost always occurs in the face of incomplete information. Such reasoning is nonmonotonic in the sense that conclusions drawn may later be withdrawn when additional information is obtained. There is an active literature on the problem of modeling such nonmonotonic reasoning, yet no category of method-let alone a single method-has been broadly accepted as the right approach. This paper introduces a new method, called sweeping presumptions, for modeling nonmonotonic reasoning. The (...) main goal of the paper is to provide an example-driven, nontechnical introduction to the method of sweeping presumptions, and thereby to make it plausible that sweeping presumptions can usefully be applied to the problems of nonmonotonic reasoning. The paper discusses a representative sample of examples that have appeared in the literature on nonmonotonic reasoning, and discusses them from the point of view of sweeping presumptions. (shrink)
Chung-yingâs project of onto-hermeneutics draws in order to shed light on the relations between ontology and epistemology in the hermeneutic act. In the process, not only will we be thinking with Cheng and some Western hermeneutic theorists, but we will also be thinking through history by examining the Confucian act of reading. To the extent that any hermeneutic exercise, in accordance with Chengâs construal, cannot merely be a disembodied act of theoretical knowing but is also moral effort that entails personal (...) cultivationâor, in Heideggerâs and Gadamerâs terms, Bildungâits espousal and its practice necessarily embody a larger conception of culture. In fact, precisely in terms of the intimate engagement with culture, Confucian insights, filtered through Chengâs onto-hermeneutic lenses, may have much to offer contemporary hermeneutics. (shrink)
The cement industry is one of the most energy-intensive industries and among the largest CO2 emitters. Cement industry emissions in China have attracted particular attention, due to the country’s rapid growth. Yet few local Chinese cement companies have corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, and even fewer have environmentally related CSR programs. This paper studies the environmentally related CSR practices in mainland China of two companies: Lafarge, a multinational cement company, and Shui On, a Hong Kong-based construction company and developer. We (...) are interested in examining if there are differences in their environmentally related CSR practices, especially those related to emissions, in industrialized countries and Hong Kong on the one hand andin mainland China on the other—given that environmental regulations on the mainland are lax and an awareness of global climate change is largely nonexistent. Our intention is to investigate the influence of the CSR practices of multinational enterprises (MNEs) on the local Chinese cement industry, because they could be regarded as an effective vehicle to improve CSR awareness and practice in the Chinese cement industry and to help alleviate the industry’s impact on global climate change. We found that beneficial knowledge transfer from MNEs to local companies has not gone beyond improving production technology and management methods to the point of influencing CO2 emissions. Lafarge China and Shui On Cement announced a joint venture partnership during the course of our case study, and we examine whether this venture may have an impact on emission-related CSR practices in the Chinese cement industry. (shrink)
On-cho Ng (2008). Preface. In Zhongying Cheng & On Cho Ng (eds.), The Imperative of Understanding: Chinese Philosophy, Comparative Philosophy, and Onto-Hermeneutics: A Tribute Volume Dedicated to Professor Chung-Ying Cheng. Global Scholarly Publications.score: 30.0
Tian-tai Buddhism and Hua-yan Buddhism can be viewed as the two most philosophically important schools in Chinese Buddhism. The Tian-tai school was founded by Zhi-yi (Chih-i) (538-597 A.D.). The major Buddhist text endorsed by this school is the Lotus Sutra, short for “the Sutra of the Lotus Blossom of the Subtle Dharma.” Hua-yan Buddhism derived its name from the Hua-yan Sutra, translated as “The Flower Ornament Scripture” or as “The Flowery Splendor Scripture.”1 The founder of the Hua-yan school was a (...) Chinese monk named Du-shun (557-640 A.D.). The second patriarch of Hua-yan is Zhi-yan (602-668 A.D.), who studied with Du-shun. However, it is generally acknowledged that the real founder of Hua-yan Buddhism is its third patriarch, Fa-zang (643-712 A.D.). He introduced the division of “the Realm of Principle” and “the Realm of Things,”2 which was developed by Hua-yan’s fourth patriarch Cheng-guan (738-839? A.D.) into the defining thesis for Hua-yan Buddhism – the “four dharma realms”: the Realm of Principle, the Realm of Things,3 the Realm of the Noninterference between Principle and Things, and the Realm of the Noninterference of All Things. (shrink)
This essay attempts a paradigmatic comparison between the fourfold worldview of Hua-yen Buddhism and the postmodern philosophy of Jean-François Lyotard. Employing a tension between centripetal and centrifugal forces as a structural underpinning of these two philosophies, the essay illuminates the liberating nature of Hua-yen Buddhism and postmodern thought together with the shadow of skepticism involved in endorsing a vision for a poly-lingual existence. Despite human beings' desire for a totalitarian vision hidden in every aspect of our (...) discourse, Hua-yen Buddhism and postmodern thought demand us to envision the world of the 'inconceivable' in which the diversity of existence raises its own voice beyond the regulating force of our society. (shrink)
This essay is an attempt to sketch out two contrasting notions of freedom in the Zhuangzi and the Xunzi . I argue that to understand the classical Chinese formulations of freedom we should look at the concept of hua 化 (transformation or to transform). It is a kind of freedom that highlights the moral and/or spiritual transformation of the self and its entailments on the connection between the self and various domains of relationality. The Zhuangzian hua is the transformation of (...) the self in such a way that the self becomes supremely attuned to the complexity of the world and can thus navigate various domains of relationality with extraordinary grace, ease, and efficacy. The Xunzian hua is the transformation of the self so that the self can extend its relationality to include the entire world and transform it from a raw and uncouth world to a civilized one through ritual practices. (shrink)
If, after a century of analysis there is a turn to synthesis, Hua-Yan and Whitehead will become important resources. Especially given the radical difference of their historical contexts, their similarity is striking, but they differ on time. Whitehead is clear that relations to the future always differ in kind from those to the past, and Theravada Buddhist agree. But Hua-yan is open to a greater symmetry in enlightened experience.
Abbreviations Works by Alfred North Whitehead 1) Adventures of Ideas. New York: Macmillan Co., 1967 AI 2) Concept of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971 CN 3) Modes of Thought. New York: Macmillan Co., 1968 MT 4) Process ...
The Venerable Master's vision was as vast as the Dharma Realm, and he taught and transformed all beings without regard to path of rebirth, country, ethnic origin, religion, and so forth. There are two countries, however, where he had special affinities in this life: China and the United States. Although the majority of his disciples are Chinese, history will probably remember him primarily for his work in bringing the teachings of the Buddha to the people of the West.
