Buddhist Studies. Selected Essays of J. W. de Jong. Ed. Gregory Schopen. Asian Humanities Press-a division of Lancaster-Miller Publishers, Berkeley, California 1979. ix+717 pp. $35.00.

We emphasize the feature of Webb's presentation that bears most directly on contemporary research with real animals. Many neuroscience modelers erroneously conclude that a model that performs like an animal must have achieved this goal through processes analogous with those used by the animal. A simulation failure justifies rejecting a model, but success does not justify acceptance. However, an important benefit of models, successful or otherwise, is to stimulate new research.

Derek Parfit's “reductionist” account of personal identity (including the rejection of anything like a soul) is coupled with the rejection of a commonsensical intuition of essential self-unity, as in his defense of the counter-intuitive claim that “identity does not matter.” His argument for this claim is based on reflection on the possibility of personal fission. To the contrary, Simon Blackburn claims that the “unity reaction” to fission has an absolute grip on practical reasoning. Now David Lewis denied Parfit's claim that (...) reductionism contravenes common sense, so I revisit the debate between Parfit and Lewis, showing why Parfit wins it. Is reductionism about persons then inherently at odds with the unity reaction? Not necessarily; David Velleman presents a reductionist theory according to which fission does not conflict with the unity reaction. Nonetheless, relying on the distinction between person level descriptions of first-person states and the first-person perspective itself, I argue that Velleman's theory does not eliminate fission-based conflict with the unity reaction. Footnotesa * Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the philosophy departments at Rutgers University and Bowling Green State University. I am indebted to many members of these audiences, and to the other contributors to this volume, for their comments—especially Frank Arntzenius, Michael Bradie, David Copp, John Finnis, Jerry Fodor, Brian Loar, Barry Loewer, Colin McGinn, Fred Miller, Mark Moyer, David Oderberg, Marya Schechtman, David Schmidtz, David Sobel, and Sara Worley. Special thanks to David Sanford. I am also grateful to graduate students in my seminar at Bowling Green during the spring of 2003, for urging me to take seriously the grip of the unity reaction; I am especially grateful for the comments of Nico Maloberti, Jonathan Miller, John Milliken, Robyn Peabody, Jennifer Sproul, Jessica Teaman, and Sherisse Webb. (shrink)

This paper addresses the notorious logic and semantic difficulties encountered by Lévinas in articulating his ethics of alterity. Tracing the philosophical genesis of this question in Descartes and Heidegger, it recognises Lévinas's claim that there can be no ontological foundation for ethics because ontology would reduce ethics to a form of mathematical ratio. Lévinas is unwilling to deny his phenomenological experience of a desire for goodness and unable to deny his despair at his ontological alienation from the good and so (...) he is driven to seek an irrational link between the human being and a metaphysical ‘good beyond being’. Retrieving an ancient gnostic neo-Platonist working of the same problem from the work of Hans Jonas, the paper reconsiders Lévinas's reading of Plato, specifically his understanding of Socrates’ exposition of erosin the Phaedo, in order to illustrate how his ethics of alterity may allow the human being to refer irrationally to the good beyond being. (shrink)

We seek to change the conversation about brain death by highlighting the distinction between brain death as a biological concept versus brain death as a legal status. The fact that brain death does not cohere with any biologically plausible definition of death has been known for decades. Nevertheless, this fact has not threatened the acceptance of brain death as a legal status that permits individuals to be treated as if they are dead. The similarities between “legally dead” and “legally blind” (...) demonstrate how we may legitimately choose bright-line legal definitions that do not cohere with biological reality. Not only does this distinction bring conceptual coherence to the conversation about brain death, but it has practical implications as well. Once brain death is recognized as a social construction not grounded in biological reality, we create the possibility of changing the social construction in ways that may better serve both organ donors and recipients alike. (shrink)

The question "When are research risks reasonable in relation to anticipated benefits?" is at the heart of disputes in the ethics of clinical research. Institutional review boards are often criticized for inconsistent decision-making, a problem that is compounded by a number of contemporary controversies, including the ethics of research involving placebo controls, developing countries, incapable adults and emergency rooms. If this pressing ethical question is to be addressed in a principled way, then a systematic approach to the ethics of risk (...) in research is required. Component analysis provides such a systematic approach. (shrink)

Special moral, regulatory, and scientific questions surround the inclusion of children in health-related research. These questions arise from a fundamental moral tension between the obligation to expose children to research participation to ensure that they share in the benefits that arise from it and the obligation to protect them from the harms associated with their inappropriate involvement in research. This tension is felt in the development of moral and regulatory frameworks for the protection of child research subjects and in the (...) implementation and interpretation of these frameworks by institutional review boards. (shrink)

Researchers are developing a fertility preservation technique?testicular tissue cryopreservation (TTCP)?for prepubescent boys who may become infertile as a result of their cancer treatment. Although this technique is still in development, some researchers are calling for its widespread use. They argue that if boys do not bank their tissue now, they will be unable to benefit from any therapies that might be developed in the future. There are, however, risks involved with increasing access to an investigational procedure. This article examines four (...) methods of expanding access to TTCP: (1) expansion of institutional review board (IRB)-approved research trials; (2) offering TTCP as an innovative procedure in hospitals; (3) offering TTCP as a standard practice in hospitals; and (4) commercialization of TTCP. The ethical and practical implications of each are evaluated through a comparison with umbilical cord blood banking (UCBB), a technology that has achieved widespread use based on similar claims of future benefit. (shrink)

The value relevance of corporate social responsibility performance disclosures for financial markets participants remains uncertain despite advances in the literature and the recent proliferation of CSR disclosures around the world. Using an experimental approach involving MBA students at universities in the United States and Lebanon, we study the value relevance of CSR disclosures by testing whether they affect participants’ personal portfolio management investment decisions. We also examine whether the degree to which the CSR disclosures affect these decisions is influenced by (...) corporate governance quality. To examine these issues, we examine the effect of environmental performance on investment decisions in Experiment 1, and the effect of labor performance on investment decisions in Experiment 2. Results from both experiments show that investment decisions are affected by CSR performance. Analysis shows that governance strength exerts a marginal effect on the investment decision only when CSR performance is strong. Lebanese participants appear to be more sensitive to weak performance than U.S. participants. Overall, our findings extend the CSR disclosures literature by documenting the value relevance of CSR performance for financial markets participants’ decision making. These findings also extend the governance literature by documenting that consistent with attribution theory, the effects of governance quality are contingent upon the information and decision context, and that efforts to decontextualize governance may be counterproductive. (shrink)

The existing EELS literature has usefully identified the scope of ethical issues posed by pharmacogenetic and pharmacogenomic research. The time has come for in-depth examination of particular ethical issues. The involvement of racial and ethnic communities in pharmacogenetic and pharmacogenomic research is contentious precisely because it touches upon the science and politics of studying racial and ethnic difference. To date, the ethics literature has not seriously taken account of the fact that such research impinges upon the interests of communities, and (...) that taking such interests seriously requires that we both protect and empower communities in research. We propose a framework that rests upon the recognition that communities are heterogeneous human associations and differing policies are appropriate for differing communities. Community consent and consultation and community consultation alone are neither appropriate nor required for all pharmacogenetic and pharmacogenomic research. Rather, application of these policy protections must take into account particulars of both planned research and the communities involved. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the ethical issues surrounding information systems practice with a view to encouraging greater involvement in this aspect of IS research. Information integrity relies upon the development and operation of computer-based information systems. Those who undertake the planning, development and operation of these information systems have obligations to assure information integrity and overall to contribute to the public good. This ethical dimension of information systems has attracted mixed attention in the IS academic (...) discipline. Design/methodology/approach The authors are a multidisciplinary team providing a rich, diverse experience which includes professional and information ethics, management information systems, software engineering, data repositories and information systems development. Each author has used this experience to review the IS ethics landscape, which provides four complimentary perspectives. These are synthesised to tease out trends and future pointers. Findings It is confirmed that there is a serious lack of research being undertaken relating to the ethical dimension of the Information Systems field. There is limited crossover between the well-established multidisciplinary community of Computer Ethics research and the traditional Information Systems research community. Originality/value An outline framework is offered which could provide an opportunity for rich and valuable dialogue across the two communities. This is proposed as the starting point for a proactive research and practice action plan for information systems ethics. (shrink)

A twenty‐person working group convened to discuss the ethical and policy considerations of the controversial intervention called “growth attenuation,” and if possible to develop practical guidance for health professionals. A consensus proved elusive, but most of the members did reach a compromise.

A twenty‐person working group convened to discuss the ethical and policy considerations of the controversial intervention called “growth attenuation,” and if possible to develop practical guidance for health professionals. A consensus proved elusive, but most of the members did reach a compromise.

Business schools around the globe are seeking effective ways of incorporating business ethics into their programs (Melé 2008, Swanson 2004). Indications from both the market and accrediting bodies suggest best-practice programs will include ethics education. However, the debate continues as to whether meaningful learning is best achieved through stand-alone ethics experiences or via an integrated theme across the program of study (Tesfayohannes & Driscoll 2010, Wilhelm 2005). While many examples of required ethics-experiences can be found, to date, there is only (...) one business school that we are aware of that has implemented a required full-term postgraduate ethics course based on the Giving Voice To Values (GVV) (Gentile 2008) philosophy and content.The purpose of this article is to share the tacit knowledge gained in the authors’ experience of implementing such a course at the University of Western Australia’s Business School. (shrink)

Controversies about the diagnosis and meaning of brain death have existed as long as the concept itself. Here we review the historical development of brain death, and then evaluate the various attempts to justify the claim that patients who are diagnosed as brain dead can be considered dead for all legal and social purposes, and especially with regard to procuring their vital organs for transplantation. While we agree with most commentators that death should be defined as the loss of integration (...) of the functioning of the organism as a whole, we conclude that patients diagnosed as brain dead have not, in fact, lost this integrated functioning. We close with reflections on the implications of this conclusion generally and particularly with regard to organ transplantation, and briefly make reference to alternative approaches to justifying the procurement of transplantable organs that do not depend upon a flawed approach to the diagnosis of death. (shrink)

Virtue theorists have recently been focusing on the important question of how virtues are developed, and doing so in a way that is informed by empirical research from psychology. However, almost all of this recent work has dealt exclusively with the moral virtues. In this paper, we present three empirically-informed accounts of how virtues can be developed, and we assess the merits of these accounts when applied specifically to intellectual (or epistemic) virtues.

Business schools around the globe are seeking effective ways of incorporating business ethics into their programs. Indications from both the market and accrediting bodies suggest best-practice programs will include ethics education. However, the debate continues as to whether meaningful learning is best achieved through stand-alone ethics experiences or via an integrated theme across the program of study. While many examples of required ethics-experiences can be found, to date, there is only one business school that we are aware of that has (...) implemented a required full-term postgraduate ethics course based on the Giving Voice To Values philosophy and content.The purpose of this article is to share the tacit knowledge gained in the authors’ experience of implementing such a course at the University of Western Australia’s Business School. (shrink)

The enduring failure of financial institutions to identify and deal with risk events continues to have serious repercussions, whether in the form of small but significant losses or major and potentially far-reaching scandals. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines an innovative version of the classic dictator game to inform prosocial tendencies with the survey-based Theory of Planned Behaviour, we examine the risk-escalation behaviour of individuals within a large financial institution. We discover evidence of purely selfish behaviour that explains the lack (...) significance in pressure to adhere to the Subjective Norms of colleagues around intention to report risks. A finding that has potentially important implications for efforts to instil a high-error management climate and incentivise risk reporting within organisations where risk, if ignored or unchecked, could ultimately have consequences that extend far beyond the institutions themselves. (shrink)

Rachlin's substantive points about the relationship between altruism and self-control are obscured by simplistic and outdated portrayals of evolutionary psychology in relation to learning theory.

This article is intended as a critique of recent theorizations of sexuality and desire, which have led performative theorists to contend that gender is an effect of discourse, and sex an effect of gender. It results from informal discussions between the three authors on the mechanisms through which sexuality gets objectified in modernity. The ideas of influential Western thinkers are confronted with field data on sexuality - as lived and imagined - that the authors have been gathering in Amazonian societies, (...) Trinidad, and on the Internet. Ethnographic data and Western theories about the nature of eroticism are used to argue that the utopian definition of sexuality as sexual desire and will to identity is too divorced from the mundane - love, domesticity and reproduction in a broad sense - and based on a too limited sphere of social experience. Consequently, to apply this definition to how and why humans engage in sexual activity leads to erroneous generalizations. For when encountered ethnographically, sexuality consists of practices deeply embedded in relational contexts. The article concludes with the proposition that debates about the possibilities of human sexuality and of its political intervention will make no significant progress unless we stop repeating that `sexuality is socially constructed', and start looking at the ways in which it is lived as part of everyday social life. (shrink)

We demonstrate that different categories of software raise different ethical concerns with respect to whether software ought to be Free Software or Proprietary Software. We outline the ethical tension between Free Software and Proprietary Software that stems from the two kinds of licenses. For some categories of software we develop support for normative statements regarding the software development landscape. We claim that as society's use of software changes, the ethical analysis for that category of software must necessarily be repeated. Finally, (...) we make a utilitarian argument that the software development environment should encourage both Free Software and Proprietary Software to flourish. (shrink)