Ethical Overtones Research Articles

Beyond body and gravity: hybridity and technology in S.B. Divya’s Machinehood

ABSTRACT Donna Haraway views being a cyborg rather than a ‘goddess’ desirable. This feminist slogan can be seen in terms of the democratising power of a hybrid identity facilitated by technology as a substantial alternative to traditional notions of gendered identity. This paper aims to study S. B. Divya’s 2021 novel Machinehood to analyse how technology and identity are tied up in the context of the novel. The paper benefits from the insights from critical posthumanism by analysing how the transformation into a cyborg is problematised by the moral and ethical overtones facilitated by dakinis (mythological figures in Buddhism). While providing tactical advantage, cyborg may become the negation of one’s gender and flesh. The cyborg has been viewed as a capitalist desire. Thus, a cyborg society benefits from the transformative acts that resist such erasure and preserve one’s sense of identity rooted in their body.

Doers of Torah: Lights from the Targumim and Their Implication for Jas 1.22

In this article, I argue that the phrase ‘doers of the word’ in Jas 1.22 is derived from the Hebrew expression הרותה ישוע‎ or the Aramaic one אתירוא ידבע‎. Both phrases possess an identical meaning that remained stable over time, functioning almost as technical terms. The first one is found in some Pesharim from Qumran while the second appears in the Targumim. In both corpora, the phrase is consistently found in contexts of judgment (often implying a division within the elect people between those who remained faithful to God and those who did not) and bears strong ethical overtones. Most of these passages are eschatologically oriented and present the ‘doers of the law’ as closely related to the Messiah. I suggest that the expression found in James still carries the overtones of the original phrase it translates.

Mixed-ownership reform of SOEs and ESG performance: Evidence from China

Practicing the paradigm for sustainable environment, society, and governance (ESG) in the mixed-ownership reform (MOR) of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is a new opportunity for emerging economies to participate in global governance. Therefore, the impact of the MOR on the ESG performance system of SOEs was studied from different measurement perspectives using the panel data (2009-2020) of 643 listed SOEs in China. The results show that the MOR significantly improves the comprehensive ESG performance and that in different branches of SOEs, especially SOEs with large capital scale, large numbers of employees, low degree of financialization, and high environmental sensitivity. In addition, mechanism analysis results show that MOR could stimulate ESG performance through the dual-resource path of capital and labor. However, the management greatly increases its incomes from the improved payroll cost, widening the salary gap within SOEs and leaving the social stratification trap. Further analysis found that the “tunneling” behavior by state-owned major shareholders during the MOR have a U-shaped or J-shaped influence on ESG performance in multiple fields. At the same time, the incentives for ESG performance by non-state shareholders were weakened by financialization, while their appointed directors, supervisors, and senior executives (ADSE) did not stop the behavior of transforming the economy from substantial to fictitious. This paper not only provides empirical evidence on sustainable practices of SOE reforms in countries with emerging economies but also digs deeper into the root causes of risks and resistance. These studies with moral and ethical overtones are overlooked by scholars and stakeholders concerned with MOR.

THE CONCEPT OF UTILITARIANISM IN THE SHORT STORY “THE ONES WHO WALK AWAY FROM OMELAS” IN “THE WIND'S TWELVE QUARTERS” BY URSULA KROEBER LE GUIN

This study examines the concept of utilitarianism presented in the short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" in "The Wind's Twelve Quarter" by Ursula K. Le Guin. Through an ethical approach in sociology literature, this study aims to analyze the ethical implications of collective action in achieving general happiness in Omelas. Through analysis of the sociology of literature, this study reveals the social practices of utilitarianism presented in the story. In utilitarianism through ethical theory developed by philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, argues that a good action is an action that produces as much happiness as possible for as many people as possible. In the context of this short story, society has collectively chosen to maintain general happiness by ignoring the fate of the oppressed individual. This raises deep ethical questions about the justice and morality of emotional action. This study also analyzes the attitudes of individuals who choose to leave Omelas. This action shows disapproval of the principle of utilitarianism which sacrifices one individual for the sake of broad happiness. The attitude of individuals who dare to walk raises ethical overtones about our responsibilities to society and individuals. Through an analysis of ethical theory in a literary sociology approach, this study concludes that "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" pushes to limit the ethical boundaries of utilitarianism and change moral compromises in achieving peace. The social and psychological implications of this story awaken our awareness of the moral dilemmas associated with emotional action and raise deep ethical questions about human values ​​and justice.
 Keywords: Utilitarianism, Sociology of Literature, Ethics

The Shift in Research Priorities of the Later Greek Philosophy

The later Greek philosophy existed during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. These philosophical thoughts saw new changes in a new social history context, and this change was mainly manifested in the decline of natural philosophy and its ethical overtones. This paper explores the specific reasons for this shift, starting from its social roots. The paper provides an in-depth analysis of the manifestations of ethicalisation by taking the philosophy of Epicureanism and Stoicism as examples to deepen the reader s understanding of this general trend and explicitly analyses the differences and commonalities between different schools of the ethical philosophy. The paper also explores the academic values and historical influences of the later Greek philosophy in the long history of philosophy. The author argues that interpreting the causes and significance of the shifts in philosophy will not only help to sort out the development of Western philosophy, but also bring inspiration and significance to the development of philosophy today.

Sustaining Livelihoods or Saving Lives? Economic System Justification in the Time of COVID-19.

An ongoing debate in the United States relating to COVID-19 features the purported tension between containing the coronavirus to save lives or opening the economy to sustain livelihoods, with ethical overtones on both sides. Proponents of opening the economy argue that sustaining livelihoods should be prioritized over virus containment, with ethicists asking, “What about the risk to human life?” Defendants of restricting the spread of the virus endorse saving lives through virus containment but contend with the ethical concern “What about people’s livelihoods and individual freedoms?” A commonly held belief is that political ideology drives these differential preferences: liberals are more focused on saving lives, whereas conservatives favor sustaining livelihoods with no additional government intervention in the free-market economy. We examine these lay beliefs among US residents in four studies and find that economic system justification (ESJ), an ideology that defends the prevailing economic system when under threat, is a reliable psychological predictor beyond political ideology. Specifically, compared to those who scored low on ESJ, people who scored high on ESJ judged China as more justified in downplaying the spread of virus to protect its interest in the global free-market economy, supported in-person over online learning, viewed shelter in place as less desirable, and perceived the opening of the Texas economy as more legitimate. We also find that multiple psychological mechanisms might be at work—resistance to market interventions, perceived legitimacy of opening the economy, perceived seriousness of the health crisis, and violation of human rights.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10551-022-05091-4.

Building Relationships and Resolving Conflicts: Infusing Critical Thinking into Workplace Practices

As we are now living in a world characterized as a “new normal,” nothing is more important than leaders who are adept at critical thinking enabling them to enhance their businesses by making judicious decisions while remaining sensitive to the needs of their employees. When talking about critical thinking, often neglected is the descriptor “critical.” Among other things, “critical” means significant, vital, essential, and analytical, and involving skillful judgment as to truth and merit. From the point of view of commonsense, “critical” may also imply an effort to see a problem or situation clearly and truthfully in order to make fair judgments and wise decisions. Thus, critical thinking is more than learning to use specific thinking skills deemed necessary for business and everyday life. A critical thinker will have a sense of ethics governing his or her decision making and business acumen. Consequently, critical thinking necessitates life-long learning, experience, developing one’s intuitions, and above all, being creative, flexible-minded, sensitive to one’s environment, as well as being trusted and fair-minded. The ethical overtones of becoming a critical thinker are obvious making critical thinking and essential component of values-based leadership.

Three‐dimensional Printing in Anatomy Education: Assessing Potential Ethical Dimensions

New technological developments have frequently had major consequences for anatomy education, and have raised ethical queries for anatomy educators. The advent of three-dimensional (3D) printing of human material is showing considerable promise as an educational tool that fits alongside cadaveric dissection, plastination, computer simulation, and anatomical models and images. At first glance its ethical implications appear minimal, and yet the more extensive ethical implications around clinical bioprinting suggest that a cautious approach to 3D printing in the dissecting room is in order. Following an overview of early groundbreaking studies into 3D printing of prosections, organs, and archived fetal material, it has become clear that their origin, using donated bodies or 3D files available on the Internet, has ethical overtones. The dynamic presented by digital technology raises questions about the nature of the consent provided by the body donor, reasons for 3D printing, the extent to which it will be commercialized, and its comparative advantages over other available teaching resources. In exploring questions like these, the place of 3D printing within a hierarchical sequence of value is outlined. Discussion centers on the significance of local usage of prints, the challenges created by regarding 3D prints as disposable property, the importance of retaining the human side to anatomy, and the unacceptability of obtaining 3D-printed material from unclaimed bodies. It is concluded that the scientific tenor of 3D processes represents a move away from the human person, so that efforts are required to prevent them accentuating depersonalization and commodification.

Meaningful Involvement in Collections: Should Ethics or the FDCPA Govern?

This Note will explain and analyze the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and its case law. It will also discuss the interplay between the FDCPA case law and its ethical overtones. To understand the basis of this issue, Part II of this Note will begin by briefly developing the history and background of the FDCPA and discuss specific sections of the law designed to protect debtors from abusive debt collection practices. Notably, these sections relate to the prevention of improper practices for misleading debtors, and are the focus of the lawsuits that this Note will discuss. Accordingly, Part III will briefly discuss what a dunning letter is and the similarities of the two standards of review used by the federal courts of appeals to determine whether a dunning letter is misleading. Part IV of this Note will discuss the judicially created doctrine of “meaningful involvement” and how the federal courts have allowed attorneys to include an appropriate disclosure of the level of involvement. Part V of this Note will discuss the Ethics Opinion in detail and its resulting impact on disclaiming attorney involvement. Specifically, this Note will address the direct conflict between the Ethics Opinion and federal case law, which allows attorneys to disclaim their involvement when sending an initial communication under the FDCPA. Finally, Part VI will propose a solution to resolve the conflict between the varying case law and the ethical issues presented.

The ethics of our inquiry: an interview with Hank Greely.

Sooner or later most scientists encounter a problem with ethical overtones. It could be as simple as what data to discard before submitting a paper or a question of authorship, but sometimes the quandary emerges from the very core of an experiment or in the application of newfound know-how to “advance” our society.

Moral Imagination And Ethics For The Accounting Professional

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The accounting professional, whether s/he be in the private or public sector, faces many situations in his/her day-to-day activities that require thoughts and actions that have ethical overtones. One needs only look at the Enron situation to verify this idea. While the accounting profession has long had established codes of ethical conduct, these codes are by no means the be all and end all of ethical decision-making. So while accounting professionals can certainly refer to and use the relevant code of ethics for a particular situation, it is clear that these by themselves are not usually sufficient in depth and detail to solve all but the most straightforward, if there is such a thing, situations. To address most ethical situations calls for thinking far beyond the tenets of a code of ethics. It requires significant intellectual capacities and specific skills. Specifically, it requires moral imagination.</span></span></p>

Запад и Все Остальные

SUMMARY: In this article, Stephen Howe examines the series of approaches, topics of investigation, and methodologies that are loosely connected under the rubric of “new imperial history.” He stresses that to some, it means primarily cultural, as opposed to political or economic, histories of empire. Others use the term mainly to refer to ecological history. Still others mean primarily histories informed by feminism and gender studies, or by literary theories of colonial discourse and postcoloniality. Howe composes a “map” of the “new imperial history” by critically examining these approaches and the contradictions between them, along with what is not included as “new imperial history” by those who use the label. He shows that what intends, or proclaims itself, to be an integrative, barrier-dissolving body of work has instead sometimes seemed to produce new schisms and antagonisms. As Howe’s analysis shows, the idea of the new imperial history has already occasioned a remarkable number of negative polemics – often extremely heated ones, with strong political and/or ethical overtones. In the main part of the article Howe sketches the basic lines of these debates. They include methodological and epistemological disputes, inter- and intradisciplinary ones (especially those between “traditional” historians and social scientists on the one hand, colonial and postcolonial cultural theorists on the other), and directly political ones.

Genetic Counseling for Thalassemia in the Islamic Republic of Iran

The response of groups to pressing medical problems cannot be predicted on theoretical grounds. An example is the program for the control of beta-thalassemia in Iran, a country with a tradition of inbreeding and a conservative religious culture, and in which thalassemia is common. Thalassemia is largely treatable, but the treatment is lifelong and onerous and creates a serious economic burden for the individual family and for the national health budget. The genetics are simple, and inexpensive screening tests are available to identify carriers. An Iranian program requiring mandatory premarital screening was started in 1997, and between 1998 and 2005 the laws of the country were modified to permit abortion of affected fetuses. The story of this effort indicates how a country with a social system very different from that of the United States responded to a medical problem with significant ethical overtones. The Iranian experience supports the optimistic view that societies can react to pressing problems with pragmatic rather than theoretical solutions.

Cracking the Code of Genocide: The Moral Psychology of Rescuers, Bystanders, and Nazis during the Holocaust

What turns neighbors into genocidalists? Why do some stand by, while others risk their lives to help? A narrative analysis of interviews with rescuers, bystanders, and Nazi supporters during World War II focuses attention on self‐image, worldview, and cognitive categorization as critical influences. Rescuers, bystanders, and Nazis demonstrated dramatically different self concepts, yet identity constrained choice for all groups. A critical aspect of identity is relational: the sense of self in relation to others. Worldview, canonical expectations, and idealized cognitive models are critical determinants, with the ethical importance of values emanating not from particular values but from the integration of these values into the speaker's sense of self. Finally, cognitive categorization carries strong ethical overtones. The dehumanization that spurs perpetrators and the sense of moral salience that drives rescuers work through the cognitive classification of “the other.”

The Ethics of Infection Control: Philosophical Frameworks

Recent developments that are relevant to the ethics of infection control include the patient safety movement, the appearance of new diseases (notably, severe acute respiratory syndrome) that pose threats to healthcare workers, data confirming the suspicion that infection control measures such as isolation may compromise patient care, and, in philosophy, renewed interest in virtue ethics and communitarianism. We review general ethical frameworks and relevant vocabulary for infection control practitioners and hospital epidemiologists. Frameworks for the ethics of infection control resemble those of public health more than those of clinical medicine but embrace elements of both. The optimum framework, we suggest, takes into account a virtue-based communitarianism. The virtue ethics movement stresses the need to consider not only rules and outcomes but also the character of the individual(s) involved. Communitarianism emphasizes the well-being and values of local communities, best determined by shared, democratic decision making among stakeholders. Brief discussions of 15 consecutive cases illustrate the extent to which the daily practice of infection control poses problems heavily freighted with ethical overtones.

Constructions of self: ethical overtones in surprising locations

Little discussion has occurred in the health profession literature with respect to how the “self” is constructed, despite the imagination and attention it has garnered from philosophers and theorists in...

Comparative Ethics

The authors compiled seven true-to-life hotel-employee situations with potentially ambiguous ethical overtones. The scenarios involved stealing; sharing company secrets; racism; sexual harassment; violating hotel policies (two); and lying. Hotel managers and college students rated how ethical they considered the employees' actions to be in each scenario. Stealing money was roundly condemned, for instance, but the other assessments were not unanimous. In general, students were less likely than managers to view a situation as very unethical, although all the situations were viewed as unethical in some measure by both groups.

Regulating research: A tale of two technologies

This paper challenges the widely held view that research activities are impaired by the imposition of any form of governmental regulation. Research on topics which raise ethical concerns requires guidelines or rules along with an administrative apparatus in order for significant levels of research activity to be undertaken. This regulatory framework can emerge only after the ethical issues are addressed. Thus, there is a direct connection between the resolution of ethical issues and the production of new scientific information. Two research areas which have strong ethical overtones are compared. In the case of recombinant DNA technology, consideration of ethical issues has led to the establishment guidelines and a regulatory apparatus and has made possible the vigorous development of this field. In the reproductive technologies, such as in vitro fertilization, the failure to confront the ethical dilemmas in the US has prevented guidelines from being established and has severely handicapped the development of research programs. Other countries, such as the UK, by taking account of the ethical issues have been able to create policies thatpermit research to proceed.

The Moral and Ethical Significance of TIT FOR TAT

TIT FOR TAT (TFT) is the familiar strategy of returning like for like, good for good, bad for bad. Recently Robert Axelrod has shown this rule to be remarkably effective in promoting co-operation among egoists.1Nevertheless, it has been morally denigrated, most notably in the Sermon on the Mount but also by the modern patron of TFT, Anatol Rapoport:Of the contingent strategies, Tit-for-tat elicits consistently the most cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma. Obviously, it would be fatuous to interpret this result as a vindication of the “eye-for-an-eye” principle. The success of Tit-for-tat may be no more than that of a simple reinforcement schedule in à two-choice situation, devoid of ethical overtones.

The House of Mirth: Readers Respond

Readers have consistently responded to Edith Wharton's novel The House of Mirth (1905) in a voice with strong ethical overtones.1 Critics in 1905, granting Wharton her place in the American pantheon, nevertheless wrote negative reviews attacking the novels implicit morality. Illustrative of their moral posture, they identified Lily Bart as a frivolous belle and understood her failure to marry as the natural result of her flawed character. Although time and assumptions had changed when some sixty-five years later in the early 1970s, feminist scholars resurrected the novel and labelled it a feminist classic, again interpretations rested on moral grounds. Feminists proclaimed Lily a heroine of the movement2 and called her failure to marry a noble commentary on women's economic position within marriage. As these examples suggest, such interpretations represent two sides of the same coin: although contradictory, they assume the same things about literature and attend to identical issues in the novel. In counterpoint to the moral questions, persistent problems of structure and narrative technique arise within the critical tradition. Is there a way to understand the recurring moral interpretations of The House of Mirth in light of these dimensions? Can an interpretation be offered that reconciles the novel's moral dimen? sions with its artistic structure? Let us turn to a brief analysis of the 1905 reception of The House of Mirth, highlighting some of the characteristic issues in readers' responses to this novel.3