The child was 2 years, 8 months old and weighed 25 pounds, one-fifth the weight of her mother, for whom she was to be the bone marrow donor. The mother had suffered a relapse of acute myelogenous leukemia; her physicians recommended a bone marrow transplant. The child was the closest human leukocyte antigen match and thus the best donor candidate for her mother's transplant.

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.

Justice system reform is being implemented in Japan. The number of attorneys ( bengoshi ) has substantially increased and concerns have been raised about the impact on the profession's quality and ethics. The profession has called for a slowdown in the increase. Does the increase really adversely affect legal ethics in Japan? Should the pace of the reform be slowed down, from the perspective of maintaining legal ethics? This paper begins to answer these questions through empirical analysis of (1) whether (...) there is an increase in cases of ethical concerns; and (2) whether such an increase (if any) is caused by the increase in bengoshi . The paper then investigates whether there is an over-supply of bengoshi . It concludes with a discussion of the negative impact that a slowdown of the increase may have on access to justice and the bengoshi profession's (ethical) responsibilities. (shrink)

Projects that challenge students to practice service leadership for civic improvement can address the aim of developing civic-mindedness in undergraduates. We conducted two qualitative studies. First, we investigated the learning experiences of four teams of undergraduate business students, who undertook semester-long course-embedded service-learning projects in partnership with four Hong Kong-based social enterprises. The students described five modes of civic engagement as project purposes, mentioned applying six types of service leadership practice for civic improvement, and described eight types of developmental outcome (...) within the domain of civic-mindedness. Comparisons suggested that besides relational support through training and guidance, empowering infrastructure, opportunities to exercise autonomy, and opportunities to demonstrate competence, three project-related features that varied between projects were important in fostering civic-mindedness. These were direct contact with grassroots-based beneficiaries; the experience of making a tangible difference; and linking the campus with the wider community. A second qualitative study indicated that course-embedded team projects with these features that were undertaken in mixed teams that included freshman and senior year business students fostered civic-mindedness for both categories of student. (shrink)

Environmental eco-centrism, the claim that all members of the biosphere are ontologically and axiologically equal, presents a challenge to traditional ethical conceptions of the special status of humanity. Confucian and Kantian ethics approach this topic, and its application to other animals, in different ways: Confucianism employs stories that promote insight into the importance of sincerity and compassion to all animals, including non-human ones; Kant employs abstract reasoning to argue that non-human animals deserve respect because we humans share their basic nature. (...) We argue that, taken together, these two approaches preserve what is most important in eco-centrism, but without sacrificing human dignity in the process. (shrink)

A large body of research links testosterone and cortisol to male-male competition. Yet, little work has explored acute steroid hormone responses to coalitional, physical competition during middle childhood. Here, we investigate testosterone, dehydroepiandrosterone, androstenedione, and cortisol release among ethnically Chinese boys in Hong Kong, aged 8–11 years, during a soccer match and an intrasquad soccer scrimmage, with 63 participants competing in both treatments. The soccer match and intrasquad soccer scrimmage represented out-group and in-group treatments, respectively. Results revealed that testosterone showed (...) no measurable change. DHEA increased during both treatments in the majority of participants and the degree of change had no relation to independent variables or covariate measures. Most boys experienced androstenedione increases during match play, but no significant differences during the intrasquad soccer scrimmage competitions. The magnitude of change differed significantly between treatments and was positively associated with age. These latter findings suggest boys’ androstenedione responses may be sensitive to competitor type. For most subjects, cortisol significantly increased during match play, decreased during the intrasquad soccer scrimmage, and differed significantly between treatments, suggesting each treatment promoted a different psychological state among competitors. Cortisol/DHEA molar ratio decreased during the intrasquad scrimmage, suggestive of a more relaxed mental state. These data shed new light on potential proximate mechanisms associated with coalitional competition among prepubescent boys, with relevance to adrenarche and life history theory. (shrink)

This book is a rich blend of analyses by leading experts from various cultures and disciplines. A compact introduction to a complex field, it illustrates biotechnology's profound impact upon the environment and society. Moreover, it underscores the vital relevance of cultural values. This book empowers readers to more critically assess biotechnology's value and effectiveness within both specific cultural and global contexts.

This study examines the relationship between procedural justice and employee job insecurity, and the boundary conditions of this relationship. Drawing upon uncertainty management theory and ethical leadership research, we hypothesized that procedural justice is negatively related to job insecurity, and that this relationship is moderated by ethical leadership. We further predicted that the moderating relationship would be more pronounced among employees with a low power distance orientation. We tested our hypotheses using a sample of 381 workers in Macau and Southern (...) China. The results support all of our hypotheses. The implications of these results for research and practice are discussed. (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)

Set aside fanciful doomsday speculations about AI. Even lower-level AIs, while otherwise friendly and providing us a universal basic income, would be able to do all our jobs. Also, we would over-rely upon AI assistants even in our personal lives. Thus, John Danaher argues that a human crisis of moral passivity would result However, I argue firstly that if AIs are posited to lack the potential to become unfriendly, they may not be intelligent enough to replace us in all our (...) jobs. If instead they are intelligent enough to replace us, the risk they become unfriendly increases, given that they would not need us and humans would just compete for valuable resources. Their hostility will not promote our moral passivity. Secondly, the use of AI assistants in our personal lives will become a problem only if we rely on them for almost all our decision-making and motivation. But such a (maximally) pervasive level of dependence raises the question of whether humans would accept it, and consequently whether the crisis of passivity will arise. (shrink)

Research on innovation often highlights analogies from sources outside the current problem domain as a major source of novel concepts; however, the mechanisms underlying this relationship are not well understood. We analyzed the temporal interplay between far analogy use and creative concept generation in a professional design team's brainstorming conversations, investigating the hypothesis that far analogies lead directly to very novel concepts via large steps in conceptual spaces . Surprisingly, we found that concepts were more similar to their preceding concepts (...) after far analogy use compared to baseline situations . Yet far analogies increased the team's concept generation rate compared to baseline conditions. Overall, these results challenge the view that far analogies primarily lead to novel concepts via jumps in conceptual spaces and suggest alternative pathways from far analogies to novel concepts. (shrink)

The question, ‘can Africa deal with a postcoloniality without reference to the colonising metropole?’ neglects that Africa must deal with many powers that were not colonisers. Dealing with China requires a relationship outside the period of formal colonial rule, and requires a new cosmopolitanism that can be difficult, yet vibrant.

This paper argues that substantive ethical rules serve a critical ethical function, even in those cases where we should deviate from those rules. Assuming that the rules are valid provides decision-makers with the context essential to reaching a well-justified decision. Recognizing this helps to reconcile two attractive but incompatible positions regarding the evaluation of healthcare ethics consultants. The first position is that ethical rules can validly be used to evaluate the quality of consultants’ advice, ensuring conformity to standards promoted by (...) a significant portion of medical ethicists. The second position—the message of ethical particularism—is that we should not evaluate consultants according to strict rules, since good ethical advice may deviate from even the most carefully wrought moral rules. Steering a path between these extremes, I argue that we should evaluate the quality of consultations by examining whether consultants have communicated the relevant ethical rules to participants as ethical presumptions. In communicating presumptions, a consultant provides an indispensable ingredient to ethical decision-making, while leaving open the possibility that the ethical course of action involves violating the very ethical rules that one should presume. (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)

ABSTRACT Lewtas [2017] recently articulated an argument claiming that emergent conscious causal powers are impossible. In developing his argument, Lewtas makes several assumptions about emergence, phenomenal consciousness, categorical properties, and causation. We argue that there are plausible alternatives to these assumptions. Thus, the proponent of emergent conscious causal powers can escape Lewtas’s challenge.

Post COVID-19 infections resulting in long COVID symptoms remain persistent yet neglected in healthcare priorities. Although long COVID symptoms are expected to decline after some time, many people continue to endure its debilitating effects affecting their daily lives. The diversity of characteristics amongst long COVID patients adds to the complexity of communicating personal health predicaments to healthcare providers. Recent research towards building an evidence base for long COVID with the aim of delivering responsive healthcare interventions for long COVID patients has (...) utilised datasets generated from wearable devices. This paper examines the prospects presented by wearable devices for long COVID patients and physicians. It highlights distinct ethical and legal challenges arising from their use in practice. Several recommendations aiming to support their usage amongst long COVID patients are outlined for future research using wearable devices for long COVID treatment. (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)

For the role of utilitarianism in the ethics of war and peace, Shaw suggests there is a Utilitarian War Principle (UWP) and argues that the principles of the just war theory should be treated as intermediate principles that are subordinated to UWP. He also argues that the state should be the primary legitimate authority to wage war and holder of the right of national defense. I argue that the utilitarian approach should be specifically linked with contingent pacifism, a new understanding (...) of pacifism from within the just war tradition, and the utilitarian contingent pacifism only endorses individual self-defense but not national defense. This finding is not only theoretically important but has practical implications for the debate on Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. Utilitarian contingent pacifism supports the idealist position that Article 9 is morally significant because it makes Japan a pioneer of the new kind of pacifism. (shrink)

With a view to addressing the moral concerns about the use of donor siblings, the Policy Statement of the American Academy of Pediatrics - Children as Hematopoietic Stem Cell Donors (the Policy) has laid out the criteria upon which tissue harvest from a minor would be permissible.

C.I. Lewis never completed his final project on ethics. There are a few short papers published based on lectures that he has given in the 1950s, and a vast amount of draft materials that he was working on up until the time of his death in 1964. But his ultimate life project, the final book on ethics, never came to fruition. From the materials available, it seems that even towards the end of his life, Lewis was still adjusting and refining (...) his view on how to answer the question “What is right?” That said, it is clear that the core arguments remain consistent throughout his works and draft manuscripts. The main goal of this paper is to reconstruct from the available materials the overall ethical framework Lewis was working towards; and to present the key arguments that lie at the heart of his ethical theory. In doing so, I will also attempt to show that Lewis’s pragmatic conception of the a priori developed in the 1920s actually plays a critical role in grounding his entire ethical view. This paper concludes with a brief evaluation of how well the argument based on a pragmatic a priori fares against the moral skeptic. (shrink)

It was a common practice of the Chinese official historiographers to employ pseudo-historical, semi-fictional source materials alongside the factual, ascertainable data in their narratives for prescribed political or didactic purposes despite their commitment to the time-honored principles of truth and objectivity in the Confucian-oriented traditional historiography. The intrusion of these non-historical elements in the imperial historical records illustrates, therefore, the adaptability of the source materials representing the popular tradition of the masses for the uses of the great tradition, and the (...) propensity of the reciprocal exchanges between the expressions of the Confucian literati and the less cultured populace in historical compositions. Drawing on a textual analysis of the T'ai-tsu shih-lu, the reign chronicle of the Ming founder Chu Yüan-chang, who rose from a humble peasant to the imperial throne in 1368, this essay examines the historical circumstances and historiographical devices by which the factual records were commingled with the non-historical materials in the accounts of the dynasty founding. It shows how the historiographers synthesized the pseudo-historical expressions in the popular tradition with the deliberately fabricated falsehoods of their own doing to conjure up an inflated portrait of the Ming founder, transforming him from an illiterate, beggar mendicant monk and rebel leader into the topoi of a righteous hero, dynasty founder and exemplar ruler in traditional official historiography. It also shows that apart from the historiographers' penchant for conformity to the established conventions, the exaggerated portrait of the Ming founder in the T'ai-tsu shih-lu was a product of a historiographical revision undertaken on order of the third emperor Yung-lo, fourth son of T'ai-tsu, aiming at legitimizing his usurpation of the throne from his nephew the imperial successor Chien-wen in a palace rebellion of 1402. Lastly, it shows how the early Ming revision of the records of the rise of T'ai-tsu inspired a cycle of bizarre legends about the early years of the dynasty founding in later official and private writings, and how a case study of such historiographical process may add to our understanding of the continuous interactions between the expressions of the élite and mass heritages in the making of the Chinese intellectual and cultural traditions. (shrink)

The legitimacy of embryo research, use, and destruction is among the most important issues facing contemporary bioethics. In the preceding paper, Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu took up an argument of John Harris and tried to find some new ways of avoiding its dramatic consequences. They noted that: “John Harris has argued that if … it is morally permissible to engage in reproduction … despite knowledge that a large number of embryos will fail to implant and quickly die, then … (...) it is morally permissible to produce embryos for other purposes that involve killing them, for instance, to harvest stem cells” and suggest that this argument fails. (shrink)