Ethical issues related to comparative effectiveness research, or research that compares existing standards of care, have recently received considerable attention. In this paper we focus on how Ethics Review Committees should evaluate the risks of comparative effectiveness research. We discuss what has been a prominent focus in the debate about comparative effectiveness research, namely that it is justified when “nothing is known” about the comparative effectiveness of the available alternatives. We argue that this focus may be misleading. Rather, we should (...) focus on the fact that some experts believe that the evidence points in favor of one intervention, whereas other experts believe that the evidence favors the alternative. We will then introduce a case that illustrates this point, and based on that, discuss how ERCs should deal with such cases of expert disagreement. We argue that ERCs have a duty to assess the range of expert opinions and based on that assessment arrive at a risk judgment about the study under consideration. We also argue that assessment of expert disagreement is important for the assignment of risk level to a clinical trial: what is the basis for expert opinions, how strong is the evidence appealed to by various experts, and how can clinical trial monitoring affect the possible increased risk of clinical trial participation. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) shares many generalizability challenges with psychology. But the fields publish differently. AI publishes fast, through rapid preprint sharing and conference publications. Psychology publishes more slowly, but creates integrative reviews and meta-analyses. We discuss the complementary advantages of each strategy, and suggest that incorporating both types of strategies could lead to more generalizable research in both fields.

Access to legal information is fundamental to access to justice. Yet accessibility refers not only to making legal documents available to the public, but also rendering legal information comprehensible to them. A vexing problem in bringing legal information to the public is how to turn formal legal documents such as legislation and judgments, which are often highly technical, to easily navigable and comprehensible knowledge to those without legal education. In this study, we formulate a three-step approach for bringing legal knowledge (...) to laypersons, tackling the issues of navigability and comprehensibility. First, we translate selected sections of the law into snippets (called CLIC-pages), each being a small piece of article that focuses on explaining certain technical legal concept in layperson’s terms. Second, we construct a Legal Question Bank, which is a collection of legal questions whose answers can be found in the CLIC-pages. Third, we design an interactive CLIC Recommender. Given a user’s verbal description of a legal situation that requires a legal solution, CRec interprets the user’s input and shortlists questions from the question bank that are most likely relevant to the given legal situation and recommends their corresponding CLIC pages where relevant legal knowledge can be found. In this paper we focus on the technical aspects of creating an LQB. We show how large-scale pre-trained language models, such as GPT-3, can be used to generate legal questions. We compare machine-generated questions against human-composed questions and find that MGQs are more scalable, cost-effective, and more diversified, while HCQs are more precise. We also show a prototype of CRec and illustrate through an example how our 3-step approach effectively brings relevant legal knowledge to the public. (shrink)

This paper develops and tests a new conceptual model incorporating the indirect impact of two ethical ideologies (idealism and relativism) on Chinese consumers’ ethical judgments under four ethically problematic consumption situations (active benefit, passive benefit, deceptive practice, and no/indirect harm) through two cultural values (integration and moral discipline). Data from a large-scale online consumer survey in five major Chinese cities (_N_ = 1046) support most hypotheses. The findings are consistent with the postulated global impact of ethical ideology on forming an (...) individual’s beliefs and values and highlight the importance of a thorough understanding of the significant determinants of consumer ethics to promote ethically responsible consumption behaviors. This study also uses an emic approach to conceptualize and measure Chinese cultural values by using cultural constructs and measures that are designed explicitly in the Chinese context. (shrink)

The emergency department (ED) is a fast-paced, highly stressful environment where clinicians function with little or suboptimal information and where time is measured in minutes and hours. In addition, death and dying are phenomena that are often experienced in the ED. Current end-of-life care models, based on chronic illness trajectories, may be difficult to apply in the ED. A philosophical approach examining end-of-life care may help us understand how core medical and nursing values are embodied as care practices and as (...) ethical comportment. The integration of Aristotle's notions of phronesis and praxis with Merleau-Ponty's ontological notions of intentional arc and maximum grip in the context of the culture and practices of the ED offers a unique view of clinical and ethical practice at the end-of-life in the emergency setting. Caring for people at the end-of-life calls us to act virtuously based on previous experience, meanings and local practices. The maximum grip of the ultimate particulars of the situation combined with one's experiential and theoretical knowledge opens up situated possibilities for the expert clinician. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to show that there are actions which are non-intentional. An account is first given which links intentional and unintentional action to acting for a reason, or appropriate causation by an intention. Mannerisms and habitual actions are then presented as examples of behavior which are actions, but which are not done in the course of acting for a reason. This account has advantages over that of Hursthouse's "arational actions," which are allegedly intentional actions done for (...) no reason at all. Finally, one consequence of neglecting non-intentional action is discussed to illustrate its importance. (shrink)

This study empirically examines how Chinese executives perceive the role of guanxi and ethics played in their business operations. By factor-analyzing 850 valid replies collected from a comprehensive survey, the present study identifies three distinct ethics-related attitudes and two distinct guanxi-related attitudes for Chinese executives. The cluster analysis of the composite scores of these five attitudinal factors further indicates the existence of three distinct groups of Chinese executives that vary in their ethics and guanxi orientations. The three groups are unethical (...) profit seeker (UPS), anti-governance, guanxi-cultivator (AGGC), and apathetic executive (AE). The three groups are also found to be significantly different in such demographic characteristics as age and the ownership structure of the serving organization. Specifically, the inter-group comparison suggests that younger Chinese executives, and those working for privately-owned firms and joint ventures are more inclined to engage in unethical activities for profits. These findings provide useful insights for international investors to formulate their human resource and negotiation strategies in China. (shrink)

For two thousand years the Mencius was revered as one of the foundational texts of the Confucian canon, which formed the basis of traditional Chinese education. Today it commands considerable attention in current debates on "Asian values" raging in classrooms and boardrooms in both East Asia and the West. This volume, which represents the work of fifteen respected scholars of early Chinese thought and culture, is an especially timely effort to bring the Mencius under fresh scrutiny. Making use of recently (...) excavated manuscripts, the contributors approach the Mencius from novel perspectives, challenge established interpretations, and confront anew issues that continue to attract and divide students of this classic text. The famous Mencian doctrine of the "goodness" of human nature forms one main focus. Questions of context and interpretation bring into sharp relief key hermeneutical issues that surround the text. Does the Mencius present a coherent and systematically developed ethical teaching? Or should it be read as a composite work, comprising different layers of material that reflect different emphases and conflicting doctrines? Traversing contested territories and exploring new avenues of understanding, the essays presented here do not aim at settling debates; on the contrary, they afford ample opportunities for further discussion on the background, interpretation, and continued relevance of this classic of Confucian philosophy. Contributors: Roger T. Ames, Irene Bloom, A. Taeko Brooks, E. Bruce Brooks, Alan K. L. Chan, Kim-Chong Chong, Antonio S. Cua, Robert Eno, Jiuan Heng, Donald J. Munro, Ning Chen, David Nivison, Kwong-Loi Shun, Sor-Hoon Tan. (shrink)

Drawing on the general ethics and social psychology literature, this study presents a model to delineate the major factors likely to affect consumers’ intentions to bring their own shopping bags when visiting a supermarket (called “bring your own bags” or “BYOB” intention). The model is empirically validated using a survey of 250 Chinese consumers. Overall, the findings support the hypothesized direct influence of teleological evaluation and habit on BYOB intention, as well as that of deontological evaluation and teleological evaluation on (...) ethical judgment about the BYOB practice. Teleological evaluation exerts a much stronger influence on ethical judgment than does deontological evaluation. In addition, the findings reveal that consumers who perceive the BYOB practice to be more important are more inclined to rely on their ethical judgment to derive their BYOB intention. Academically, these findings provide some encouraging evidence for the application of general ethics theories to explain green consumption-related practices. Practically, the findings also suggest that a utilitarian approach (i.e., emphasizing the consequences of BYOB) may represent an effective means for the Chinese government to promote BYOB practice among consumers. (shrink)

For two thousand years the Mencius was revered as one of the foundational texts of the Confucian canon, which formed the basis of traditional Chinese education. Today it commands considerable attention in current debates on "Asian values" raging in classrooms and boardrooms in both East Asia and the West. This volume, which represents the work of fifteen respected scholars of early Chinese thought and culture, is an especially timely effort to bring the Mencius under fresh scrutiny. Making use of recently (...) excavated manuscripts, the contributors approach the Mencius from novel perspectives, challenge established interpretations, and confront anew issues that continue to attract and divide students of this classic text. The famous Mencian doctrine of the "goodness" of human nature forms one main focus. Questions of context and interpretation bring into sharp relief key hermeneutical issues that surround the text. Does the Mencius present a coherent and systematically developed ethical teaching? Or should it be read as a composite work, comprising different layers of material that reflect different emphases and conflicting doctrines? Traversing contested territories and exploring new avenues of understanding, the essays presented here do not aim at settling debates; on the contrary, they afford ample opportunities for further discussion on the background, interpretation, and continued relevance of this classic of Confucian philosophy. Contributors: Roger T. Ames, Irene Bloom, A. Taeko Brooks, E. Bruce Brooks, Alan K. L. Chan, Kim-Chong Chong, Antonio S. Cua, Robert Eno, Jiuan Heng, Donald J. Munro, Ning Chen, David Nivison, Kwong-Loi Shun, Sor-Hoon Tan. (shrink)

Are today’s wars different from earlier wars? Or do we need a different ethics for old and new wars alike? Unlike most books on the morality of war, this book rejects the ‘just war’ tradition, proposing a virtue ethics of war to take its place. Like torture, war cannot be justified. This book asks and answers the question: “If war is a very great evil, would a leader with courage, justice, compassion, and all the other moral virtues ever choose to (...) fight a war?” A ‘philosophy of co-existence’ is proposed which is much more restrictive than just war theory but not pacifist. War can be correctly chosen by a virtuous leader only in rare ‘supreme emergencies’ when faced with enemies as evil as Hitler. This virtue ethics approach to war is used to find new answers to difficult issues such as humanitarian intervention, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. (shrink)

An extrinsic desire is defined as a desire for something, not for its own sake, but for its supposed propensity to secure something else that one desires. I argue that the notion of ‘extrinsic desire’ is theoretically redundant. I begin by defining desire as a propositional attitude with a desirability characterization. The roles of desire and intention in practical reasoning are distinguished. I show that extrinsic desire does not have its own motivational role. I also show that extrinsic desire is (...) not needed for other roles besides motivation to carry out the means, and is not generated by reason. Finally, I argue that an account of extrinsic motivation in terms of intention is preferable to an account in terms of extrinsic desire. Because of the fundamental differences between extrinsic desire and intrinsic desire, it is more advantageous to distinguish between them as different kinds of mental states: intention and desire. (shrink)

This paper offers a brief historical survey of the development of analytic philosophy in Hong Kong from 1911 to the present day. At first, Western philosophy was a minor subject taught mainly by part-time staff. After the Second World War, research and teaching in analytic philosophy in Hong Kong began to grow and consolidate with the expansion of higher-education and the establishment of new universities. Analytic philosophy has been a significant influence on comparative and Chinese philosophy and played a crucial (...) role in the teaching and promotion of critical thinking. Analytic philosophers in Hong Kong are now active participants in the global philosophical community. We review the development of analytic philosophy across the major tertiary institutions in Hong Kong and discuss some of the future challenges faced by the discipline. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates the Hong Kong government's recent attempt to introduce cross-curricular themes into the school curriculum. It is agued that the policy failed to have a significant impact because many of its key elements defined the themes as marginal and dispensable. Moreover, the policy embodied a discourse which portrayed teachers as empowered and, consequently, as the primary source of problems of its implementation.

The Simple View (SV) holds that for someone to intentionally A, he must intend to A. Critics of SV point to intentional actions which, due to belief-conditions or consistency constraints, agents cannot intend. By recognizing species of intention which vary according to the agent's confidence in acting, I argue that the stringency of consistency constraints depends on the agent's confidence. A more sophisticated SV holds that the species of intending is related to the degree of intentionality of the action. Finally, (...) I show that where agents do what they believe impossible, without intending to do so, the action is not intentional. (shrink)

The debate between Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jürgen Habermas provides a fresh perspective from which Confucian philosophy may be approached. In this paper, focusing on the Lunyu (Analects), I argue that the sayings of Confucius reflect an essentially 'conservative' orientation, finding in tradition a reservoir of insight and truth. There is a critical dimension to it in that ethical reflection and self-cultivation would enable the individual to challenge particular claims of tradition. However, can self-cultivation transcend tradition as a whole and enable (...) the individual to effect radical change? Following the strategy of Habermas' critique of Gadamer, what happens if tradition is systemically corrupt? In this discussion, rather than taking tradition generally I will focus on the concept of ritual (li) to suggest how the Lunyu seeks to crystallise the wisdom of the past into an ethical guide. The conclusion I draw is in the main a Gadamerian one. Committed to a critical appropriation of tradition, Confucian philosophy seeks ethical renewal from within, on the premise that through incremental change self-cultivation can make a real difference in the quest for moral excellence. (shrink)

I argue that the moral distinction in double effect cases rests on a difference not in intention as traditionally stated in the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE), but in desire. The traditional DDE has difficulty ensuring that an agent intends the bad effect just in those cases where what he does is morally objectionable. I show firstly that the mental state of a rational agent who is certain that a side-effect will occur satisfies Bratman's criteria for intending that effect. I (...) then clarify the nature of the moral distinction in double effect cases and how it can be used to evaluate the moral blameworthiness of agents rather than the moral status of acts. The agent's blameworthiness is reduced not by his lack of intention but by his desire not to bring about the side-effect, and the 'counterfactual test' can be used to determine whether he desires the effect in acting. In my version, the DDE has its rationale in virtue ethics; it is not liable to abuse as the traditional version is; and it makes more plausible distinctions when applied to standard examples. (shrink)

My paper critiques the comparability requirement that practical reason is limited by the possibility of comparing alternatives. I describe methods of reasoning that are compatible with choice between incomparable options, and discuss a mistake about intention that supports the view that comparing alternatives is the only way to choose rationally. I then explain how a model of rational choice that prescribes the comparison of alternatives invents unacceptable concepts to make comparability possible. Finally, I criticize the assumption of the unity of (...) practical reason that requires that prudential and moral choices are both made by comparing alternatives. It turns out that moral conflicts that are intractable for those who reason with a method of comparison may be resolvable by using moral reasoning that does not involve the comparison of alternatives in terms of a comprehensive value. Making room for such forms of reasoning is preferable to denying incomparability. (shrink)

Increasingly, we live in an environment of our own making: a ‘world as design’ over the natural world. For more than half of the global population, this environment is also thoroughly urban. But what does a global urban condition mean for the human condition? How does the design of the city and the urban process, in response to the issues and challenges of the Anthropocene, produce new ethical categories, shape new moral identities and relations, and bring about consequences that are (...) also morally significant? In other words, how does the urban shape the ethical—and in what ways? Conversely, how can ethics reveal relations and realities of the urban that often go unnoticed? This book marks the first systematic study of the city through the ethical perspective in the context of the Anthropocene. Six emergent urban conditions are examined, namely, precarity, propinquity, conflict, serendipity, fear and the urban commons. (shrink)

Moral licensing theory suggests that observers may liberate actors to behave in morally questionable ways due to the actors’ history of moral behaviors. Drawing on this view, a scenario experiment with a 2 (high vs. low ethical)×2 (internal vs. external motivation) between-subject design (N = 455) was conducted in the current study. We examined whether prior ethical leader behaviors cause subordinates to license subsequent abusive supervision, as well as the moderating role of behavior motivation on such effects. The results showed (...) that when supervisors demonstrated prior ethical behaviors, subordinates, as victims, liberated them to act in abusive ways. Specifically, subordinates showed high levels of tolerance and low levels of condemnation towards abusive supervision and seldom experienced emotional responses to supervisors’ abusive behaviors. Moreover, subordinates tended to attribute abusive supervision, viewed as a kind of mistreatment without an immediate intent to cause harm, to characteristics of the victims and of the organization rather than of the supervisors per se. When supervisors behaved morally out of internal rather than external motivations, the aforementioned licensing effects were stronger. (shrink)

In re-examining the concepts of desire, intention, and trying, David K. Chan brings a fresh approach toward resolving many of the problems that have occupied philosophers of action for almost a century. This book not only presents a complete theory of human agency but also, by developing the conceptual tools needed to do moral philosophy, lays the groundwork for formulating an ethics that is rooted in a clear, intuitive, and coherent moral psychology.

This paper investigates the drivers and inhibitors of Internet privacy concern. Applying the Multidimensional Development Theory to the online environment, we identify the important factors under four dimensions—i.e., environmental, individual, information management, and interaction management. We tested our model using data from an online survey of 2417 individuals in Hong Kong. The results show that the factors under all four dimensions are significant in the formation of Internet privacy concern. Specifically, familiarity with government legislation, Internet knowledge, benefit of information disclosure, (...) privacy protection, and social presence reduce Internet privacy concern, while individuals’ previous privacy invasion experience, risk avoidance personality, and sensitivity of information requested by websites increase Internet privacy concern. We conducted an analysis of unobserved heterogeneity to confirm the significance of these factors. A follow-up moderation analysis shows that the individual factors moderate the effects of the information management factor and the interaction management factors. The findings provide an integrated understanding of the formation of Internet privacy concern. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss virtue ethics in relation to the rejection of the use of lethal violence. I argue that, given how I apply virtue ethics, a person of good character will have a very strong intrinsic desire to avoid the killing of another human being, so that only in rare circumstances where the alternative to violence is immensely evil would the use of violence to prevent the evil be the morally appropriate choice for the person to make. I (...) first give a brief summary of a neo-Aristotelian version of virtue ethics. Then I explain why I think that a virtuous agent would be strongly averse to killing human beings. I go on to show that this does not mean that such an agent would never use violence on others, only that she would be very reluctant to do so. The circumstances in which she would do so are rare, but cannot be ruled out. For instance, virtuous agents may in very limited cases kill in self-defense despite a strong aversion to killing. The circumstances in which killings take place are found most of all in war, so I close by discussing where the virtue ethics approach to war is positioned in relation to just war theory and pacifism. (shrink)

Decision-making is an integral part of business meetings in an organization. Research has suggested that a participant’s engagement in the decision-making process has direct relevance to his or her role in the team or organization. This study extends the investigation of communicative behavior in decision-making to a special meeting setting where all participants assume similar organizational roles and where there is no designated chair. In particular, it draws on conversation analytic methods and a recently developed framework of participant roles to (...) examine discursive strategies and discourse roles on a moment-by-moment basis in the process of consensus negotiation. Findings show that participants’ choices of discursive strategies and the display of discourse roles vary as the discussion proceeds. A limited range of discursive strategies and discourse roles are identified when the discussion fails to lead to consensus. Our analysis also suggests that certain discourse roles appear to have a greater impact on reaching consensus decisions. (shrink)

Uses connectionism (neural networks) to extract the "gist" of a story in order to represent a context going forward for the disambiguation of incoming words as a text is processed.

Children with autism spectrum disorder show marked difficulties in reading comprehension, a complex cognitive skill fundamental to successful daily functioning that is associated with core executive functions. However, the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying reading comprehension deficits in these children remain elusive. Twenty-one right-handed males with high-functioning ASD and 23 age-, IQ-, educational level-, sex- and handedness-matched typically developing individuals underwent a reading comprehension test and the semantic verbal fluency test that tapped core executive functions underlying reading comprehension during concurrent prefrontal functional (...) near-infrared spectroscopy measurement. Participants’ information processing efficiency was also assessed. High-functioning ASD children exhibited general reading comprehension [main effect of group: F = 7.58, p = 0.009], selective verbal fluency deficits [Group × category interaction: F = 4.90, p = 0.032] and slower processing speed. Regarding the hemodynamics of the prefrontal cortex, although ASD individuals showed comparable patterns of PFC brain activation to their healthy counterparts, lower PFC intrahemispheric [main effect of group: F = 11.36, p = 0.002] and interhemispheric [main effect of group: F = 7.79, p = 0.008] functional connectivity were evident during the semantic verbal fluency test. At the whole-group level, poorer reading comprehension performance was associated with poorer performance in the semantic verbal fluency test. Moreover, poorer semantic verbal fluency test performance was associated with slower information processing speed, which is associated with reduced left medial PFC functional connectivity. Abnormal intrahemispheric and interhemispheric prefrontal hypoconnectivity is associated with deficits in executive processes essential for reading comprehension in ASD. Our study has provided important implications for the neuropsychological and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying reading comprehension deficits in ASD. (shrink)

This book is a collection of articles on different aspects of university education in China since the late nineteenth century, addressing how far the ideal of modern university education, which has gradually been developed in the West since the age of European Enlightenment, was adopted or transformed by Chinese universities.

"In this collaborative effort by two leading scholars of modern Chinese history, Ming K. Chan and Arif Dirlik investigate how the short-lived National Labor University in Shanghai was both a reflection of the revolutionary concerns of its time and a catalyst for future radical experiments in education. Under the slogan "Turn schools into fields and factories, fields and factories into schools," the university attempted to bridge the gap between intellectual and manual labor which its founders saw as a central (...) problem of capitalism and which remains a persistent theme in Chinese revolutionary thinking... The authors bring to bear the perspectives of institutional and intellectual history on their examination of the structure and operation of the university, presenting new material on its faculty, curriculum, physical plant, and history. They demonstrate how the prominent features and problems of Chinese higher education during the early years of the Guomindang regime prefigure the Marxist program of the Cultural Revolution and continue to have an influence on revolutionary thinking in the situation of China today"--Jacket. (shrink)

Despite criticism that dignity is a vague and slippery concept, a number of international guidelines on bioethics have cautioned against research that is contrary to human dignity, with reference specifically to genetic technology. What is the connection between genetic research and human dignity? In this article, I investigate the concept of human dignity in its various historical forms, and examine its status as a moral concept. Unlike Kant's ideal concept of human dignity, the empirical or relational concept takes human dignity (...) as something that is affected by one's circumstances and what others do. I argue that the dignity objection to some forms of genetic research rests on a view of human nature that gives humans a special status in nature – one that is threatened by the potential of genetic research to reduce individuals to their genetic endowment. I distinguish two main philosophical accounts of human nature. One of these, the Aristotelian view, is compatible with the use of genetic technology to help humans realize their inherent potential to a fuller extent. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence tools used in employment decision-making cut across the multiple stages of job advertisements, shortlisting, interviews and hiring, and actual and potential bias can arise in each of these stages. One major challenge is to mitigate AI bias and promote fairness in opaque AI systems. This paper argues that the equal opportunity merit principle is an ethical approach for fair AI employment decision-making. Further, explainable AI can mitigate the opacity problem by placing greater emphasis on enhancing the understanding of (...) reasonable users and affected persons as to the AI output. Both the equal opportunity merit principle and explainable AI should be integrated in the design and implementation of AI employment decision-making systems so as to ensure, as far as possible, that the AI output is arrived at through a fair process. (shrink)

We describe a comprehensive framework for text un- derstanding, based on the representation of context. It is designed..

This chapter contains sections titled: A Naturalistic Account of Human Rationality Geography of Thought: A Tale of Two Versions Nisbett on Logic and Contradiction How Radical are East‐West Differences in Thinking Style? Some Implications for the Education of Critical Thinking Acknowledgements Notes References.