Some bioethicists argue that conscientious objectors in health care should have to justify themselves, just as objectors in the military do. They should have to provide reasons that explain why they should be exempt from offering the services that they find offensive. There are two versions of this view in the literature, each giving different standards of justification. We show these views are each either too permissive (i.e. would result in problematic exemptions based on conscience) or too restrictive (i.e. would (...) produce problematic denials of exemption). We then develop a middle ground position that we believe better combines respect for the conscience of healthcare professionals with concern for the duties that they owe to patients. Our claim, in short, is that insofar as objectors should have to justify themselves, they should have to do it according to the standard that we defend rather than according to the standards that others have developed. (shrink)

This special issue marks the culmination of Hypatia's twenty-fifth anniversary year. We kicked off the celebration of Hypatia's quarter century as an autonomous journal with a conference, "Feminist Legacies/Feminist Futures," which drew close to 150 attendees—a capacity crowd, and more than twice what we'd expected in the planning stages! The conference provided an opportunity to reflect on how Hypatia came to be and how it has shaped feminist philosophy.

In this paper, i provide an introduction to development ethics and make some observations about integral human development. i argue that although there is very little dialogue between these two traditions, they have a lot of common ground, and can helpfully inform one another. International development ethics is a largely secular field concerned with ethical reflection on the ends and means of development. i discuss four levels of ethical reflection: meta-ethical, normative, practical, or applied, and personal or integral. The first (...) three of these levels are well established in philosophical ethics. i introduce the fourth with the hope of encouraging more discussion of how individuals engaged in the theory and practice of development ethics ought to navigate the various spheres of their own lives. This last stage of ethical reflection and action can benefit greatly from work done in integral human development. Integral human development is integral in at least two ways: development is not simply economic development, but development the whole person, including social, political, creative, spiritual, etc., and development is the development of every person, whether the person is a marginalize peasant or a powerful élite. i explain why this second way of integration is both less discussed and more radical than the first. Resumen En este artículo, ofrezco una introducción a la ética del desarrollo y hago algunas observaciones sobre el desarrollo humano integral. Sostengo que, aunque hay muy poco diálogo entre estas dos tradiciones, tienen mucho terreno común y pueden ayudarse mutuamente. La ética del desarrollo internacional es un campo ampliamente secular que se ocupa de la reflexión ética sobre los fines y los medios de desarrollo. Discuto cuatro niveles de reflexión ética: meta-ético, normativo, práctico, o aplicado, y personal o integral. Los tres primeros de estos niveles están bien establecidos en la ética filosófica. Presento el cuarto con la esperanza de fomentar una mayor discusión sobre cómo los individuos involucrados en la teoría y la práctica de la ética del desarrollo deben navegar por las diversas esferas de sus propias vidas. Esta última etapa de reflexión y acción ética puede beneficiarse enormemente del trabajo realizado en el desarrollo humano integral. El desarrollo humano integral es integral en al menos dos maneras: el desarrollo no es simplemente desarrollo económico, sino el desarrollo de toda la persona, incluyendo social político, creativo, espiritual etc., y el desarrollo es el desarrollo de cada persona, sea la persona un campesino marginado o una de la ponderosa elite. Explico por qué esta segunda forma de integración es menos discutida y más radical que la primera. (shrink)

Louis-Joseph Lebret (1897–1966) was a progenitor and co-founder of ‘development ethics’ as a self-declared field of research, public conversation and activism. He comprehensively articulated the fu...

This paper examines the attribution to Eckhart of the unpublished collationes contained in the MS Bernkastel-Kues, Bibliothek des St. Nikolaus-Hospitals 21. Eckhart’s authorship was excluded by Koch, but is plausible from the point of view of the history of the manuscript tradition. The paper announces the discovery of a series of similar collationes in a Lüneburg manuscript of Franciscan origin and highlights, through the edition of the texts relating to Advent, some parallels between both works, probably depending on the use (...) of a common source. (shrink)

Along with the development of new technologies applied to a smartphone, the frequency that users interact with their phones also increased, leading to more impacts on human behaviors.

Integral human development is a human-centered development perspective that originated from Catholic social teaching. The perspective holds that authentic development is development that makes every person “more human.” Although it is seldom named in the literature, integral human development has had considerable influence on notions of authentic development, and in turn, development ethics. In this short chapter, I provide a brief explanation of the origins and implications of the conceptual foundations of integral human development both within and beyond the Catholic (...) Church. I argue that integral human development offers a truly radical participatory approach to human development. I briefly raise and respond to some concerns about agency, civic liberty, and integral human development’s connection to the Catholic Church. I conclude with a short explanation of integral human development in practice. (shrink)

We argue that the core social being system is unlike other core systems in that it participates in frequent, widespread learning. As a result, the social being system is less constant throughout the lifespan and less informationally encapsulated than other core systems. This learning supports the development of the precursors of bias, but also provides avenues for preempting it.

Agro-ecological innovations aim at promoting sustainable agricultural practices that have long term benefits. However, farmers rarely adopt beneficial innovations in agro-ecology despite expressing an understanding of the benefits and a desire to do so. It has been argued that the farmers lack sufficient knowledge to implement complex innovations. We believe that in many cases such knowledge is necessary, but is ultimately insufficient for complex innovation adoption. We argue that in addition to knowledge and a desire to adopt an innovation, many (...) farmers require a collaborative relation with an ally. We call this method the Alliance Approach to innovation. This approach is modeled after the therapeutic Alliance Approach at work in cognitive and behavioral sciences. We argue that using the Alliance Approach will not only prove effective in helping farmers adopt complex agro-ecology innovations, but also a better fit for the human centered development of capability approach human development, as it is likely to enhance both the well-being and agency of the farmers. (shrink)

Drawing inspiration om Joseph T. O’Connell’s work on socio‐cultural integration, this pa‐ per connects the notion of ‘deep equality’ with two broad lessons that can be taken om O’Connell’s approach that pertain to the study of religious diversity in contemporary life. The rst is the recognition of the amorphous nature of religious identity, and the second is the necessity to search for models of socio‐cultural integration in the face of di erence. These lessons are valuable in providing an alternative discourse (...) of diversity that moves away om problematisation to collaboration. Słowa kluczowe: ; ; ; ; ; ; ;;;. (shrink)

International development theorists and practitioners agree that human empowerment is a necessary part of good development. This agreement is encouraging because attention and resources are being directed towards the important goal of empowering the oppressed. It is problematic because the agreement is relatively superficial and masks some deep and important disagreements about the goals and means of development theory, policy, and practice. Chapters One and Two compare the dominant economic growth approach to development with the capability approach, a relatively new (...) alternative. I determine that the capability approach offers a more complete and therefore, superior concept of empowerment. Chapter Three considers Thomas Pogge’s argument for the conclusion that the praise and attention the capability approach receives cannot be justified. I explain that Pogge’s argument is based on a misunderstanding of crucial aspects of the capability approach, including the important role of empowerment. Chapters Four and Five provide detailed consideration of the role of empowerment within both Amartya Sen’s and Martha Nussbaum’s versions of the capability approach. I conclude that although neither scholar consistently uses the term empowerment, the concept of empowerment – both as agency and as capability-set expansion – plays a robust role on both versions of the approach. Moreover, I make the controversial suggestion that many of the differences between Sen and Nussbaum are more a matter of style than substance. Chapter Six considers the concern that Sen does not do enough to engage the role of institutionalized power in generating inequalities that prevent individuals from being empowered. I conclude that despite valuable contributions, Sen fails to provide a complete account of empowerment issues. However, this is not a fatal flaw. Considering both Sen’s contributions, and the fact that the approach is well suited to accommodate a more complete understanding of institutionalized power and of empowerment for development (for example, Naila Kabeer’s Social Relations Approach), it is clear that Sen and the capability approach have offered valuable steps towards a complete concept of empowerment. (shrink)

This study aims to determine driving factors significantly influencing the purchase intention and to identify impediments creating the intention –behavior gap regarding organic food consumption in Vietnam. The chosen driving factors affecting the organic food purchase intention in this study are health benefits, environmental awareness, and social norms, whereas trust, price, and convenience as well as availability are investigated as deterrent factors of the link between intention and behavior. A structured online questionnaire with snow-balling sampling method was distributed to collect (...) a representative sample of 466 Vietnamese consumers nationwide. A five-point likert scale was used for the level of approval for 36 statements. Statistical tools of SPSS 22.0 including descriptive analysis, principal component analysis, and multiple regression analysis models were used for data analysis. The results showed that health benefits, environmental awareness, and social norms were facilitators of organic food purchase intention. Although high intention to purchase organic foods was identified in Vietnam, it was not translated into actual purchase behavior. The main barriers for the inconsistency were premium price and low availability of organic products or inconvenience to buy in the market. Lack of trust insignificantly impacted on organic food choices among Vietnamese consumers in this study. These empirical findings and suggestions are beneficial for all players across supply chains. (shrink)

Bài viết xác định các yếu tố có tác động lớn tới rủi ro tài chính tại các doanh nghiệp sản xuất niêm yết trên sàn chứng khoán Việt Nam dựa trên phương pháp chọn biến LASSO và xây dựng mô hình học máy dự báo rủi ro tài chính. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy, mô hình LASSO đã xác định 5 chỉ số tài chính ảnh hưởng đến rủi ro tài chính mà các doanh nghiệp rủi ro gặp (...) phải trong suốt 5 năm (2017-2021) gồm: Hệ số khả năng thanh toán ngắn hạn (Tài sản ngắn hạn/Nợ ngắn hạn); Số vòng quay tổng tài sản (Doanh thu thuần/Tổng tài sản); ROA (Lợi nhuận sau thuế/Tổng tài sản); Tỷ lệ Nợ dài hạn trên Tổng tài sản; Tỷ lệ Nợ ngắn hạn trên Tổng nợ phải trả. Mạng nơron nhân tạo (Artificial Neural Network - ANN) cho thấy, Hiệu quả cao nhất trong việc dự đoán tình hình rủi ro tài chính. Từ đó, đề xuất một số giải pháp và chính sách cho các doanh nghiệp. [By LASSO variable selection method and machine learning to predict financial risk, the paper aims to discover factors that have a major impact on financial risk in manufacturing enterprises listed on the Vietnamese stock exchange. Research results indicates that the LASSO model identifies 5 financial indicators affecting financial risks which risky businesses faced during 5 years (2017-2021), they are Short-term solvency ratio (Short-term assets/Short-term liabilities); Total asset turnover (Net revenue/Total assets); ROA (Profit after tax/Total assets); Long-term debt to total asset ratio; Short-term debt to total debt ratio. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) shows the highest efficiency in predicting financial risk. From those finding, the paper proposes some solutions and policies for businesses.]. (shrink)

Thời gian qua, Phú Yên đã có nhiều hoạt động thúc đẩy “ngành công nghiệp không khói” phát triển. Trong phạm vi bài viết này, tác giả phân tích tiềm năng và thực trạng phát triển du lịch tỉnh Phú Yên, từ đó đề xuất một số giải pháp nhằm phát triển du lịch Phú Yên trong thời gian tới.

Three recent research reports by Topping and Trickey, by Fair and colleagues, and by Gorard, Siddiqui and Huat See have produced data that support the conclusion that a Philosophy for Children program of one-hour-per-week structured discussions has a marked positive impact on students. This article presents data from a follow up study done three years after the completion of the study reported in Fair et al.. The data show that the positive gains in scores on the Cognitive Abilities Test were (...) still present and had not faded after three years. Given the strength of these confirmations of the positive durable impact of the P4C program of structured discussions and given the relatively low cost of implementing the P4C program, it is recommended that it become a standard part of the school curriculum. (shrink)

The nationwide economic reform in 1986 transformed Vietnam from a centrally planned economy to a socialist-oriented market economy. Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial spirits within the populace are suggested to fuel the structural changes. Despite the importance of entrepreneurship in Vietnam’s economy, studies in Vietnam mainly pay attention to the practical aspects of entrepreneurial activities and neglect the cognitive and theoretical aspects of entrepreneurship. Thus, the current study employs the information-processing perspective of the Mindsponge Theory to explore how entrepreneurs’ knowledge accumulation can (...) affect their perceived likelihood of business success. Bayesian analysis indicates that business-related experience positively affects entrepreneurs’ business success likelihood. Greater willingness/readiness to transform thinking, acting, and beliefs can improve the business success of entrepreneurs who study others’ failures carefully. However, for entrepreneurs who perceive learning from others’ failures as unnecessary, higher willingness/readiness to transform diminishes their chance of success. Based on these findings, we recommend Vietnamese entrepreneurs accumulate knowledge through experience, learning, and an open mind for better decision-making and innovation creation capabilities. However, the learning process should be selective. (shrink)

La reseña se traduce de su original "A novel perspective on thinking about thinking: Review of Mindsponge Theory".

Some of the central questions that have been explored by Latin American and Latinx philosophers are questions of metaphilosophy. "Metaphilosophy" refers to philosophical reflections on the nature of philosophy itself. For example, we might ask: What is the purpose of doing philosophy? How does philosophy compare and contrast with other disciplines, such as science, theology, or literature? And what is the best way of categorizing the different kinds and traditions of philosophy? These are philosophical questions about philosophy as an activity (...) and as a discipline. In this chapter, we discuss some ways that Latin American and Latinx philosophers have addressed these and other metaphilosophical issues. Our focus will be on the following questions: What are the defining characteristics of Latin American philosophy and Latinx philosophy? Do they constitute distinctive traditions of philosophy, and if so, what is especially valuable about these traditions? (shrink)

In the trust-health relationship, how trusting other people in society may promote good health is a topic often examined. However, the other direction of influence – how health may affect trust – has not been well explored. In order to investigate this possible effect, we employed Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics to go deeper into the information processing mechanisms underlying the expressions of trust. Conducting Bayesian analysis on a dataset of 1237 residents from Cali, Colombia, we found that general health (...) status is positively associated with generalized trust, but recent experiences of illnesses/injuries have a negative moderating effect. Personalized trust is largely unchanged across different general health conditions, but the trust level becomes higher with recent experiences of illnesses/injuries. Psychophysiological mechanisms of increasing information filtering intensity toward unfamiliar sources during a vulnerable state of health is a plausible explanation of found patterns in generalized trust. Because established personal relationships are reinforced information channels, personalized trust is not affected as much. Rather, the results suggest that people may rely even more on loved ones when they are in bad health conditions. This exploratory study shows that the trust-health relationship can be examined from a different angle that may provide new insights. (shrink)

Background: Critically ill patients often require complex clinical care by highly trained staff within a specialized intensive care unit (ICU) with advanced equipment. There are currently limited data on the costs of critical care in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). This study aims to investigate the direct-medical costs of key infectious disease (tetanus, sepsis, and dengue) patients admitted to ICU in a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam, and explores how the costs and cost drivers can vary between the (...) different diseases. -/- Methods: We calculated the direct medical costs for patients requiring critical care for tetanus, dengue and sepsis. Costing data (stratified into different cost categories) were extracted from the bills of patients hospitalized to the adult ICU with a dengue, sepsis and tetanus diagnosis that were enrolled in three studies conducted at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in HCMC from January 2017 to December 2019. The costs were considered from the health sector perspective. The total sample size in this study was 342 patients. -/- Results: ICU care was associated with significant direct medical costs. For patients that did not require mechanical ventilation, the median total ICU cost per patient varied between US$64.40 and US$675 for the different diseases. The costs were higher for patients that required mechanical ventilation, with the median total ICU cost per patient for the different diseases varying between US$2,590 and US$4,250. The main cost drivers varied according to disease and associated severity. -/- Conclusion: This study demonstrates the notable cost of ICU care in Vietnam and in similar LMIC settings. Future studies are needed to further evaluate the costs and economic burden incurred by ICU patients. The data also highlight the importance of evaluating novel critical care interventions that could reduce the costs of ICU care. (shrink)

The water scarcity crisis is becoming more severe across the globe and recycled water has been suggested as a feasible solution to the crisis. However, expanding the use of potable and recycled public water has been hindered by public acceptance. Previous studies suggest threat perception and trust of provided information have positive linear relationships with recycled water acceptance. However, given the complex filtering role of trust in the human mental process, we argue that the effects of threat perception and trust (...) may have non-linear relationships with acceptance of recycled water for drinking. To support and validate this argument, we employed Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics on 726 Spanish residents. We found that individuals more concerned about water shortage are less likely to accept using recycled water for drinking if their trust in the water quality and safety is low. Meanwhile, people more concerned about water shortage are more likely to accept using recycled water for drinking if they trust the water quality and safety. The findings suggest the non-linear relationships between threat perception, trust, and recycled water acceptance while validating mindsponge-based reasoning. Moreover, the results also highlight the importance of trust in influencing the mental process’s outcome: recycled water acceptance. (shrink)

Nghiên cứu nhằm tìm hiểu mối quan hệ giữa Chánh niệm tiêu dùng, Trải nghiệm thương hiệu, Gắn kết thương hiệu và Niềm tin thương hiệu ngành công nghệ thông tin tại TP. Hồ Chí Minh. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy, Trải nghiệm thương hiệu tác động lên Niềm tin thương hiệu; Niềm tin thương hiệu tác động lên Gắn kết thương hiệu; Chánh niệm tiêu dùng tác động lên Gắn kết thương hiệu. Kết quả nghiên cứu cũng đóng (...) góp vào dòng các nghiên cứu về Trải nghiệm thương hiệu và đặc biệt là khái niệm Chánh niệm tiêu dùng, góp phần phát triển và ổn định thang đo kế thừa cho thị trường nghiên cứu Việt Nam. Nghiên cứu còn là bằng chứng thực nghiệm cho khái niệm nghiên cứu tương đối mới trong thị trường nghiên cứu về Chánh niệm trong tiêu dùng. (shrink)

It has been said that all philosophy begins with a set of concerns and a set of intuitions. With this idea in mind, we ask: Would it be helpful to understand Mexican-American philosophy as a kind of philosophy that begins with the concerns and intuitions of the Mexican-American community? On this view, what distinguishes Mexican-American philosophy is the orientation from which the philosophical investigation proceeds. Such an orientation is shaped by the experiences and relationships that are characteristic of those who (...) identify as Mexican-American. We offer a list of concerns and intuitions that we suggest are widely held by the Mexican-American community. Focusing on questions surrounding linguistic assimilation in the U.S., we illustrate how beginning from these particular starting points might alter the way we think about philosophical issues. (shrink)

The study aims to determine the socio-demographic and debt profile of the public-school teachers in the Schools Division of Aklan, Philippines, their reasons on acquiring debt and perceived ways to avoid debts. This study utilized descriptive correlational research design utilizing a researcher-made instrument on socio-demographic profile, pattern of expenditures, debt profile covering the type of debts, total cost of debts, reasons for having debts and perceived ways to manage debts. The data gathered were tabulated and analyzed using the IBM Statistical (...) Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 26. The take-home pay of the teachers was only more than half of their gross income. Most of the spouses of the married teachers were employed but many of them have relatively lower income. Their monthly family income was higher than the reported average family income for 2022 and their expenditures are also relatively higher than the average family expenditures in provinces for 2022. Almost one-half of the income of the teachers was used to pay their debts – both thru automatic payroll deduction and thru personal transactions. The bigger the household size, the higher the expenditure because there were more needs and there were many people consuming commodities. The higher the family income, the bigger the expenditure since lifestyle often adjusts with income. Young; married teachers; those occupying higher position and longer tenure have higher cumulative debts. Increase in family expenditure could cause increase in the number of debts as linked to the Theory of Reasoned Action and Theory of Planned Behavior. High regard for education, health, and safety triggered teachers to have debts, which can only be avoided thru better money and lifestyle management and having additional source of income. (shrink)

Effective altruists (EAs) seek to persuade the globally wealthy to donate a proportion of their income to do good, and specifically to donate it to those charit.

Nowadays a lot of new financial instruments for SMEs innovation projects are getting more popular in the business environment. A great number of them are traditional like credit loans at the same time we can observe the appearance of innovative ones. Variable set of financial instruments generalized on fig.1. This classification is giving by Organiztion of Economic Cooperation and Development ( OECD). As we can see from the fig.1 the classification is based on risk approach. For further research it is (...) needed to сlarify these definitions. Firstly, asset based finance is the method of assigning structured turnaround capital and term loans, disbursement of debit portfolio, stocks, machines, funds, and / or real estate. This type of finding is suitable for SMEs beginners, refinancing existing loans, growth financing, mergers and acquisitions. (shrink)

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a new technique in marketing where the marketer tries to develop long term relationship with the customers to develop them as life time customers. This research check the impact of customer relationship management activities on bank’s customer retention in The Nainital Bank Ltd.,Vikasnagar . For the purpose of study, a sampling analysis was conducted among (400) customers selected with the help of a structured questionnaire. (370) questionnaires were usable. Statistical answers give support on the high (...) positive relationship between customer relationship management (CRM) and customer satisfaction. Thus, this paper aims to identify the reasons for the customers to prefer The Nainital Bank Ltd. at Vikasnagar. Further, this paper focuses the service provided by the staff in the bank. This paper is an attempt to find out CRM role in The Nainital bank Ltd. Few recommendations were suggested from this study were to create an awareness of loan facility, internet banking and locker service. (shrink)

The paper reviewed financial resources which is a critical factor and component of Business Process Re-engineering in achieving academic performance of higher education institutions in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The objective of the study is to examine whether financial resources can contribute to improving and achieving academic performance of higher education institutions in general and students in particular. The study used a systematic literature review and content analysis was to establish the relationship between financial resources and academic performance. The (...) key findings are grouped in three dimensions: 1) financial resources; 2) budget and funding/financial model; 3) tuitions fees, scholarship and loans provision. The study found consistent evidence to show that there is a significant and positive relationship between financial resources and performance of higher education institutions. The study concluded that higher education sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo needs a radical change and fundamental rethinking in improving educational budget processes to meet the needs of the institutions, provision of scholarship and loans processes to students mainly those from poor background and designing innovative financial/funding model to sustain educational institutions. The study is based on academic capitalism theory. The recommendations were made based on the findings of the study. -/- . (shrink)

The aim of the 17 original papers here is to summarize and analyze Wittgenstein's thought. At the time these were being written, the Oxford/Intelex CDROM ($2040 on Amazon but available thru interlibrary loan and steeply discounted on the net) with 20,000 some pages of W's nachlass was not yet available, and only those fluent in German and willing to find and slog thru the incomplete Cornell microfilm were able to examine it. To this day it much of it remains (...) untranslated from the German typescripts and handwritten manuscripts. I note this at the outset as W's untranslated or unpublished writings often shed crucial light on his thought and few to this day have made substantial use of them. In addition there are huge problems with translation of his early 20 th century Viennese German into modern English. One must be a master of English, German, and Wittgenstein in order to do this and very few are up to it. Several of the current authors note unfortunate translation errors in the only available English editions and I have seen similar comments countless times. As is well known, W's thought changed dramatically between the publication of the Tractatus (TLP) in 1922 and the Philosophical Investigations(1953). The continuity or lack thereof between his early and late work is the subject of a vast literature and is taken up here by several authors. Ishiguro on the picture theory and Mounce on the logical system in TLP are good, but for me the endless discussions of exactly how he was mistaken in his early work is of as little interest as the mistakes in most previous philosophy. Ammereller on Intentionality is a good, if prosaic, summary of (mostly) the early and middle W on belief and interpretation which, like virtually everyone, totally fails to give an adequate overview of W's pioneering work. In giving the general outline of our innate evolutionary psychology (ie, roughly our personality) and showing how this describes behavior, W represents a major milestone in human thought. There are unmistakeable indications of this even in his early writings (eg, see p 40, 49-58 here) and it has been documented by Hacker (eg, see his paper in The New Wittgenstein) and others but without any comprehensive account to date.Overall an exceptional book for introducing W to a general philosophical audience. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019). (shrink)

(Conference proceedings 2014) This presentation (International Development Ethics Association, July 2014) considers economic vulnerability, exploring the risk of deprivation of necessary resources due to a complex and rarely discussed vulnerability that arises from hope. Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological account of French petit-bourgeois aspiration in The Social Structures of the Economy has recently inspired Wendy Olsen to introduce the term “aspiration paradox” to characterize cases wherein “a borrower's status aspirations may contribute to a situation in which their borrowings exceed their capacity to (...) repay,” leaving the individual much the worse, due to an aspiration to betterment. If such financial opportunities were not made available to these people – if some were denied loans due to a careful assessment of their vulnerability – would they be better off? We should seriously consider that they might be. I will hazard the straightforwardly paternalistic suggestion that limiting access to lending to those who are vulnerable to their aspirations can be a just policy. Because aspiration paradox is a cross-cultural phenomenon, and because lending frequently involves asymmetries in mathematical education between borrowers and lenders, I hope to elude at least some of the charges of colonialism that have gained a stronger purchase on adaptive preference arguments. (shrink)

A dynamic epistemic logic is presented in which the single agent can reason about his knowledge stages before and after announcements. The logic is generated by reinterpreting multi agent private announcements in a single agent environment. It is shown that a knowability principle is valid for such logic: any initially true ϕ can be known after a certain number of announcements.

According to the Ought-Implies-Can principle (OIC), an agent ought to perform a certain action only if the agent can perform that action. Proponents of OIC interpret this supposed implication in several ways. Some argue that the implication in question is a logical one, namely, entailment. Some think that the relation between ‘ought’ and ‘can’ is a relation of presupposition. Still others argue that ‘ought’ conversationally implicates ‘can’. Opponents of OIC offer a variety of counterexamples in an attempt to show that (...) there are cases in which an agent ought to perform a certain action even though she cannot perform that action. Such counterexamples often involve either culpable or nonculpable inability. In cases of culpable inability, the agent renders herself unable to fulfill an obligation. For example, a student is unable to submit a paper on the due date because she procrastinated until it became too late to write a paper by the assigned deadline. In cases of non-culpable inability, the agent somehow becomes unable to fulfill an obligation, through no fault of her own. For example, an agent becomes unable to pay back a loan to a bank because she was robbed on her way to the bank. This paper attempts to offer counterexamples to OIC of a sort different from the one discussed by opponents of OIC so far. If these counterexamples are correct, then they seem to suggest that there are cases in which an agent has an obligation to perform an action even though she may not be able to perform that action, and thus OIC is false. In other words, ‘ought’ does not imply ‘can’. (shrink)

In the study of modal and nonclassical logics, translations have frequently been employed as a way of measuring the inferential capabilities of a logic. It is sometimes claimed that two logics are “notational variants” if they are translationally equivalent. However, we will show that this cannot be quite right, since first-order logic and propositional logic are translationally equivalent. Others have claimed that for two logics to be notational variants, they must at least be compositionally intertranslatable. The definition of compositionality these (...) accounts use, however, is too strong, as the standard translation from modal logic to first-order logic is not compositional in this sense. In light of this, we will explore a weaker version of this notion that we will call schematicity and show that there is no schematic translation either from first-order logic to propositional logic or from intuitionistic logic to classical logic. (shrink)

The ongoing explosion of interest in artificial intelligence is fueled in part by recently developed techniques in machine learning. Those techniques allow automated systems to process huge amounts of data, utilizing mathematical methods that depart from traditional statistical approaches, and resulting in impressive advancements in our ability to make predictions and uncover correlations across a host of interesting domains. But as is now widely discussed, the way that those systems arrive at their outputs is often opaque, even to the experts (...) who design and deploy them. Is it morally problematic to make use of opaque automated methods when making high-stakes decisions, like whether to issue a loan to an applicant, or whether to approve a parole request? Many scholars answer in the affirmative. However, there is no widely accepted explanation for why transparent systems are morally preferable to opaque systems. We argue that the use of automated decision-making systems sometimes violates duties of consideration that are owed by decision-makers to decision-subjects, duties that are both epistemic and practical in character. Violations of that kind generate a weighty consideration against the use of opaque decision systems. In the course of defending our approach, we show that it is able to address three major challenges sometimes leveled against attempts to defend the moral import of transparency in automated decision-making. (shrink)

Cuộc khủng hoảng 2007-2008 nổ ra ở Hoa Kỳ kéo theo sự lao dốc của các thị trường chứng khoán các nước cho thấy tồn tại tác động lan truyền từ thị trường này sang thị trường khác. Mục tiêu của bài nghiên cứu nhằm kiểm tra mức độ lan truyền trong tỷ suất lợi nhuận và độ biến động tỷ suất lợi nhuận từ các thị trường chứng khoán phát triển (Hoa Kỳ và Nhật Bản) đến tám thị trường (...) các nước mới nổi (Ấn Độ, Trung Quốc, Indonesia, Hàn Quốc, Malaysia, Philippines, Đài Loan, Thái Lan) và Việt Nam. Nghiên cứu sử dụng các biến ngoại sinh là cú sốc từ thị trường Mỹ và Nhật Bản và hiệu ứng ngày trong mô hình ARMA(1,1)-GARCH(1,1) trên dữ liệu của các nước mới nổi khu vực châu Á và Việt Nam nhằm đánh giá tác động lan truyền. Nghiên cứu đưa ra một số kết quả như sau. Thứ nhất, hiệu ứng ngày tồn tại trên sáu trong số chín thị trường chứng khoán được nghiên cứu, ngoại trừ Ấn Độ, Đài Loan và Philippines. Thứ hai, tồn tại tác động lan truyền trong tỷ suất lợi nhuận giữa các thị trường với mức độ khác nhau, trong đó, Hoa Kỳ có tác động mạnh hơn đến thị trường Malaysia, Philippines và Việt Nam; ngược lại, Nhật Bản có hiệu ứng lan truyền cao hơn đến thị trường Trung Quốc, Ấn Độ, Hàn Quốc và Thái Lan; đối với thị trường Indonesia, hiệu ứng lan truyền từ Hoa Kỳ và Nhật Bản là tương đương. Cuối cùng, nghiên cứu không tìm thấy bằng chứng về hiệu ứng lan truyền trong độ biến động từ thị trường Hoa Kỳ và Nhật Bản đến các thị trường mới nổi khu vực châu Á và Việt Nam... (shrink)

Abstract: Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) are the financial services established for the specific target to enabling community, particularly poor people to access loans having lack of access to conventional banking and related services. Worldwide the sector started since 1770’s. In Tanzania, it kicked off in 1991 after the enactment of BFIA and SACCOS Act in 1991. This research was conducted in Singida District in 2018 comprising a sample size of 88 respondents from ten SACCOS. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected. (...) The study employed case study method intended to assess the factors that affect the growth of Micro-finance Institutions in Tanzania. The study found that the growth of MFIs is affected by the following factors; Capacity in managing finances and loans and adhering to financial policies and guidelines. Others include competent personnel, appropriate training to key staff, loan follow up, corruption, and access of members to business training. Similarly, the availability of Technical support to SACCOS, Availability of sources of Business Capital, Level of knowledge on sustainability, Risk management, Training related to the members, challenges of business competition, Macroeconomic factors including inflation, Financial Sector Reforms and Development of Microfinance Policy, affect MFIs. Further the study found that the challenges affecting the performance of the growth of MFIs are within the capacity of the MFIs stakeholders. Henceforth, the study urges all stakeholders to play a pertinent role to enhance effective performance of MFIs. (shrink)

The Sorting Society: The Ethics of Genetic Screening and Therapy. Edited by Loane Skene & Janna Thompson, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2008.

A classic debate concerns whether reasonableness should be understood statistically (e.g., reasonableness is what is common) or prescriptively (e.g., reasonableness is what is good). This Article elaborates and defends a third possibility. Reasonableness is a partly statistical and partly prescriptive “hybrid,” reflecting both statistical and prescriptive considerations. Experiments reveal that people apply reasonableness as a hybrid concept, and the Article argues that a hybrid account offers the best general theory of reasonableness. -/- First, the Article investigates how ordinary people judge (...) what is reasonable. Reasonableness sits at the core of countless legal standards, yet little work has investigated how ordinary people (i.e., potential jurors) actually make reasonableness judgments. Experiments reveal that judgments of reasonableness are systematically intermediate between judgments of the relevant average and ideal across numerous legal domains. For example, participants’ mean judgment of the legally reasonable number of weeks’ delay before a criminal trial (ten weeks) falls between the judged average (seventeen weeks) and ideal (seven weeks). So too for the reasonable num- ber of days to accept a contract offer, the reasonable rate of attorneys’ fees, the reasonable loan interest rate, and the reasonable annual number of loud events on a football field in a residential neighborhood. Judgment of reasonableness is better predicted by both statistical and prescriptive factors than by either factor alone. -/- This Article uses this experimental discovery to develop a normative view of reasonableness. It elaborates an account of reasonableness as a hybrid standard, arguing that this view offers the best general theory of reasonableness, one that applies correctly across multiple legal domains. Moreover, this hybrid feature is the historical essence of legal reasonableness: the original use of the “reasonable person” and the “man on the Clapham omnibus” aimed to reflect both statistical and prescriptive considerations. Empirically, reasonableness is a hybrid judgment. And normatively, reasonableness should be applied as a hybrid standard. (shrink)

Drawing a sample of 135 successful African immigrant-owned businesses, this paper sets out to investigate how their owners acquired the necessary capital for start-up and growth thereafter. The paper was designed within the quantitative and qualitative research paradigms, in which a triangulation of three methods was utilised to collect and analyze the data. The paper revealed that although African immigrants are characteristically at a disadvantage when it comes to accessing capital from formal financial institutions, this does not stop them from (...) pursuing entrepreneurial activities. At the start-up stage, they typically resort to personal savings, business credit, family credit, and loans from informal financial institutions. According to the ability to raise capital, we found that a varying range of start-up capital was utilised, which tended to vary across the different ethnic groups studied. Once started, we found that the sources of additional finance available to these immigrants did not change significantly. They conventionally turned to friends, co-ethnics and self-help financial associations to ‘feed’ their need for further funding. (shrink)

Predictive algorithms are playing an increasingly prominent role in society, being used to predict recidivism, loan repayment, job performance, and so on. With this increasing influence has come an increasing concern with the ways in which they might be unfair or biased against individuals in virtue of their race, gender, or, more generally, their group membership. Many purported criteria of algorithmic fairness concern statistical relationships between the algorithm’s predictions and the actual outcomes, for instance requiring that the rate of (...) false positives be equal across the relevant groups. We might seek to ensure that algorithms satisfy all of these purported fairness criteria. But a series of impossibility results shows that this is impossible, unless base rates are equal across the relevant groups. What are we to make of these pessimistic results? I argue that none of the purported criteria, except for a calibration criterion, are necessary conditions for fairness, on the grounds that they can all be simultaneously violated by a manifestly fair and uniquely optimal predictive algorithm, even when base rates are equal. I conclude with some general reflections on algorithmic fairness. (shrink)

Thị trường carbon toàn cầu đã trở thành một yếu tố quan trọng trong cuộc chiến chống biến đổi khí hậu, cung cấp cơ hội cho các chính phủ, doanh nghiệp và tổ chức giảm lượng khí thải khí nhà kính. Tuy nhiên, với sự gia tăng về tầm quan trọng của thị trường carbon, sự phức tạp trong quản lý nó cũng tăng lên. Một trong những thách thức lớn mà thị trường carbon phải đối mặt là sự tồn (...) tại của nhiều tiêu chuẩn đa dạng và đôi khi xung đột với nhau. Mặc dù các tiêu chuẩn này được phát triển để phục vụ các bên liên quan cho mục tiêu khác nhau, nhưng chúng cũng tạo ra sự hỗn loạn, làm giảm hiệu suất và gây ra các vấn đề tiềm ẩn. Bài viết này sẽ xem xét các vấn đề xung quanh sự tồn tại quá nhiều tiêu chuẩn trên thị trường carbon và thảo luận về sự cần thiết của việc hài hòa hóa chúng một cách hợp lý hơn. (shrink)

Algorithms wield increasing control over our lives—over the jobs we get, the loans we're granted, the information we see online. Algorithms can and often do wield their power in a biased way, and much work has been devoted to algorithmic bias. In contrast, algorithmic neutrality has been largely neglected. I investigate algorithmic neutrality, tackling three questions: What is algorithmic neutrality? Is it possible? And when we have it in mind, what can we learn about algorithmic bias?

The access-to-justice movement broadly concerns the extent to which people have the ability to resolve legally actionable problems. To the extent that individuals seek resolution through civil litigation, they can be disadvantaged by their unmet need for legal services, particularly in high-stakes cases and complicated areas of law. In part, this is because legal services and litigation are cost-prohibitive, especially for indigent plaintiffs. As a result, these individuals are priced out of litigation and, by extension, unable to use law to (...) seek justice. I propose an innovative legal intervention to this problem called “compensatory preliminary damages,” which builds from the work of Gideon Parchomovsky and Alex Stein. I argue that preliminary damages should function as compensatory awards for harm to a plaintiff’s ability to access justice, rather than a contingency loan that might make indigent plaintiffs worse off than before if they lose. As compensatory awards, preliminary damages address a defendant’s liability for a plaintiff’s prospective litigation costs that inequitably affect the plaintiff’s ability to access justice. In short, given a suitable connection between the underlying harms of the case and the plaintiff’s resources to meet their legal needs, the litigation costs that plaintiffs must face to litigate should, in some cases, be compensable. To seek such compensation, I propose that plaintiffs would have to plead, among other things, that their alleged injuries have resulted in various barriers to accessing justice, but that the hardship to the plaintiff and the balance of equities favor shifting the cost to access justice onto the defendant. By awarding such damages, courts make plaintiffs whole for harm to their access to justice that is not conditional on a decision after the merits or their final recovery for the injuries alleged. As such, the award would not need to be repaid. -/- . (shrink)

Entrepreneurship plays an indispensable role in the economic development and poverty reduction of emerging economies like Vietnam. The rapid development of technologies during the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) has a significant impact on business in every field, especially in the innovation-focused area of entrepreneurship. However, the topic of entrepreneurial activities with technology applications in Vietnam is under-researched. In addition, the body of literature regarding entrepreneurial finance tends to focus on advanced economies, while mostly neglecting the contextual differences in developing (...) nations. Therefore, this research contributes to these topics by investigating the main characteristics of a high potential market for entrepreneurs in Vietnam, which is the English language training market (ELTM). It also aims at indicating the impacts of technology on the entrepreneurial firms within this market, with an emphasis on financing sources. To answer the research questions, this study employs a qualitative analysis and conducts 12 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs and researchers in the field. The key findings in our study highlight the main contributing factors to the growth of the market, both universally and context-specific for a developing nation like Vietnam. It also lists the leaders in each market segment and the industry’s potential profit margin. The results also show that most entrepreneurs in the ELTM utilized private sources of finance rather than external ones, such as bank loans. It again confirms the idea from previous works that even with the rapid development of the economic and technological landscape, entrepreneurial activities in general barely benefit from additional sources of funding. However, it also points out the distinct characteristics of the ELTM that may influence these financing issues; for example, English training services usually collect revenues from customers before delivering their classes. This is of advantage for entrepreneurs in this area and helps significantly reduce the financial barriers. These findings, which are among the first attempts to contribute to a better understanding of entrepreneurial opportunities in the Industry 4.0 in Vietnam, provide valuable insights for policymakers and entrepreneurs, as well as investors. (shrink)

John Schlitpacher (†1482), who was prior of Melk in the 15th century, encouraged both the circulation of manuscripts at his Abbey and their transcription, even in abbreviated form to the benefit of the Abbey School students. This article looks at the sources and diffusion of texts to and from Melk Abbey in that period, examining the case of a codex purchased by Nicholas of Cusa, registered in his Library as no. 58, and subsequently loaned to the monks in Melk to (...) be copied. It contained the Scala Paradisi by John Climacus and the De spiritualibus deliciis by John of Dambach. In the article, I underline that both of these works, copied in codex 58, were in accordance with John Gerson’s theological approach, which was prevalent in Melk at that time. Moreover, I confirm that there are doctrinal similarities between the two works mentioned above and two, hitherto, unedited writings by Schlitpacher from the same period – the treatise De ascensionibus cordis, which is a summary of the De spiritualibus ascensionibus by Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen, and another entitled De felicitate beatorum (or De gaudiis electorum). (shrink)

People sometimes knowingly undermine the achievement of their own goals by, e.g., playing the lottery or borrowing from loan sharks. Are these agents acting irrationally? The standard answer is “yes.” But, in a recent award-winning paper, Jennifer Morton argues “no.” On her view, the norms of practical reasoning an agent ought to follow depend on that agent’s resource context (roughly, how rich or poor they are). If Morton is correct, the orthodox view that the same norms of practical rationality (...) apply to all agents needs revision. I argue that Morton’s arguments fail on empirical and philosophical grounds. What’s at stake? If Morton is correct, poverty relief agencies ought to re-design their incentives so resource-scarce agents can rationally respond to them. If I’m correct, resource-scarce agents do act irrationally in the cases under discussion, and we shouldn’t be shy about saying so. Instead of declaring them rational, we should try to understand the causes of their irrational behavior and help them better succeed by their own lights. (shrink)

Many of the benefits and burdens we might experience in our lives — from bank loans to bail terms — are increasingly decided by institutions relying on algorithms. In a sense, this is nothing new: algorithms — instructions whose steps can, in principle, be mechanically executed to solve a decision problem — are at least as old as allocative social institutions themselves. Algorithms, after all, help decision-makers to navigate the complexity and variation of whatever domains they are designed for. In (...) another sense, however, this development is startlingly new: not only are algorithms being deployed in ever more social contexts, they are being mechanically executed not merely in principle, but pervasively in practice. Due to recent advances in computing technology, the benefits and burdens we experience in our lives are now increasingly decided by automata, rather than each other. How are we to morally assess these technologies? In this chapter, I propose a preliminary conceptual schema for identifying and locating the various injustices of automated, algorithmic social decision systems, from a broadly liberal perspective. (shrink)

Ethical banking is a system of banking where a bank is concerned with the social impact of its activities. In case of India, ethics based banking is having a robust banking network which caters to all the segments of the society while being conscious of the holistic wellbeing of the economy. In this essay I have dealt with the ethical issue of whether we would be justified in blaming the agriculture and the SME for the growing Non-performing Assets (NPAs) in (...) Indian banks. (shrink)

This thesis contains three studies which provide theoretical analysis and empirical evidence on the decision-making of farm households under shocks and imperfect markets in Vietnam. The first study attempts to investigate the effects of the 2007-08 global food crisis on the investment, saving and consumption decisions of household producers by using the panel data of the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey (VHLSS), covering 2006 and 2008. The results show that the high food prices had a positive effect on only fixed (...) asset investments in the period of the crisis. When the price shocks are incorporated in the financial conditions, the findings reveal that the effects of household incomes, loans obtained and land sizes matter. The second study uses the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) of 2010 to assess the determinants of chemical fertiliser adoption for rice cultivation, and effects on productivity and household welfare. The analysis implements both nonparametric (propensity score matching) and parametric (instrumental variables) approaches. The findings show determinants affecting decision of adoption differ from those affecting decision of adoption intensity. The results show unsurprisingly positive impact on outcomes, but focus on advantage of using parametric approach to estimate these impacts. The third study employs a sub-sample from the 2008 VHLSS that is restricted to rural areas and to children from 10 to 14 years old to explore the relationship between farmland and the employment of children on their family’s farm. The hypothesis is tested in three models (the Tobit, Heckit and double-hurdle models), in which the dependent variables are examined for two stages of decision-making, including the probability of participation and the extent of participation. Empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that child labour increases in land-rich households and decreases in land-poor households. (shrink)