The implications of religious identity for teaching ethics

Some debate exists about the degree to which one should merge one’s identities, particularly those with important normative content, with one’s teaching practices. This issue becomes particularly important for those with a religious identity who purposefully merge their identity with classroom practices. This article examines the qualitative answers of 328 Christian professors to a question addressing how they merge their Christian theological tradition with their ethical teaching in the classroom. We find that the answers demonstrate the identity merging takes place in multiple ways. For these professors, teaching consists of multiple sub-practices (e.g. discussion, lecturing, grading, etc.) that need to be guided by certain virtues and theological perspectives and justifications in order to develop the requisite goods. Indeed, both good teaching and their conception of the good cannot be separated from their identity.     

The study of behavioral ethics within organizations: A special issue introduction

Ethics has emerged as one of the most critical issues facing organizations. Given its importance, an extensive literature has evolved to understand the causes and consequences of (un)ethical decision making and behaviors in organizations. To date, much of this research has relied on research methods (e.g., experiments) that emphasize internal validity and control over external validity and generalizability. Although very informative, such studies frequently utilize samples that are not representative of working adults and their designs often fail to capture the contextual complexity that defines the day-to-day realities of organizational life. In this light, this special issue of Personnel Psychology encouraged scholars to investigate ethics within organizations and to offer rich theoretical explanations for why ethical failures and successes occur. The articles in this special issue address this important research agenda and make significant contributions to our understanding of ethics in organizations. Our introduction synthesizes these works, provides an overview of issues facing the broader behavioral ethics literature, and discusses areas for future research.     

The correlates of religion and state: an introduction

ABSTRACT

This volume examines the Religion and State Round 3 (RAS3) dataset which includes information of State Religion Policy (SRP) for 183 countries and self-governing territories between 1990 and 2014. This collection includes a general discussion of the dataset but most of the contributions take these data and use them to analyse the intersections between SRP and a wide range of phenomena including civil wars, terrorism, international conflict, attitudes towards religion and state, constitutional promises of religious freedom, and religious mobilisation. While this volume constitutes the formal primary presentation and analysis of the RAS3 dataset, it is intended to be the beginning of an ongoing discussion.     

Precarious life and the ethics of care: Subjectivity in an Indian religious phenomenon

This article relates certain figures of the subject in an emergent Indian pilgrimage. On the basis of ethnographic research and 15 in-depth interviews, I show that these religious subjectivities, phenomenologically immersed in highly precarious material conditions, are radically relational. Observations on the pilgrimage (en)counter the cognitivist assumptions of a body of scholarly opinion on contemporary religious practice. The analyst's attention to pilgrimage rituals and narratives traverses sociological, phenomenological, and psychoanalytic theories, and is, thereby, drawn to important questions of self, ethics, and time.     

Business ethics and computer ethics: The view from Poland

An Aristotelian approach to understanding and teaching business ethics is presented and defended. The newly emerging field of computer ethics is also defined in an Aristotelian fashion, and an argument is made that this new field should be called “information ethics”. It is argued that values have their roots in the life and practices of a community; therefore, morality cannot be taught by training for a special way of reasoning. Transmission of values and norms occurs through socialization — the process by which an individual absorbs not only values but also the whole way of life of his or her community. It follows that business ethics and information ethics can be considered kinds of socialization into a profession: role learning and acquiring a new self-identification. This way of understanding fields of applied ethics is especially important for their proper development in Central-Eastern Europe because of endemic factors which are the result of recent political developments there.     

Religion and development ethics in global perspective: a case study of a foreign Christian NGO in China

ABSTRACT

Much academic writing on religion and development tends to focus on the values, beliefs, and modes of operation of religious organizations to examine whether religion contributes ethically to development. A problem with such an approach is its disregard of the contested and evolving nature of religious participation in development in broader national and global contexts. What constitutes ethical religious contribution to development? How can we study the question sociologically? To answer these two questions, I develop Roland Robertson’s notion of the global field to present a framework for analyzing the dynamic interaction between religion and development ethics. In terms of methodological contribution, the framework proposed here prompts us dynamically to contextualize the issue of religious development ethics with reference to four components that make up the global field: the religious agent, the national society, the global civil society, and the global discourse on wellbeing and development. This means that, from an analytical perspective, what is proper or ethical in religious development ethics should not be construed in absolute terms, but in terms of degree and variation. I demonstrate the usefulness of such a contextual approach by drawing on research on ‘GMV’ (pseudonym for an international Christian medical professional services group actively engaged in community development) in China and examining the relationship between religious NGOs, the party-state, and evolving discursive practice of development in the country.     

From principles to principals: The new direction in medical ethics

Many alternatives or supplements to principalism seek to reconnect medical ethics with the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of the persons directly involved in ethically troublesome situations. This shift of attention, from deeds to doers, from principles to principals, acknowledges the importance of the moral agents involved in the situation — particular practitioners, patients, and families. Taking into account the subjective, lived experience of moral decision-making parallels recent efforts in the teaching of medicine to give the patient's subjectivity — his or her personal experience of being sick or disabled — epistemological parity with scientific medicine's objective, biomedically-oriented view of the person's sickness or disability.Moreover, the shift from principalism to principals signals a growing realization that ethical problems in the profession of medicine are inseparable from its practice. Philosophers and other humanists working in medicine should resist the temptation to institutionalize a professional role as solver of ethical problems, clarifier of values, or mediator of disputes and work instead to help practitioners practice medicine reflectively.     

The ethics of confidentiality: introduction

This essay aims to briefly summarise the collection of articles on confidentiality issues in psychology, and to highlight apparently conflicting opinions about the confidentiality rule. Conflicts are then analysed in terms of competing systems of ethics. Finally, the role for ethics education in psychology education and training is considered.     

The sacred second: religious moments in a Colombo marketplace

How does the marketplace of a busy city shape the religious practices of its shopkeepers? Combining historical and ethnographic research, this article examines the cosmopolitan past and present of Colombo’s Pettah neighbourhood. Its role as an Indian Ocean port resulted in a continual influx of new religious players, leaving its present pluralistic pantheon, from which shopkeepers (many of whom have made their own transoceanic journeys to work in other port cities like Dubai) can choose the saint or god best suited for their needs. Meanwhile, the pace of the marketplace has structured religious time accordingly; sacred moments are improvised sporadically among the bustle of the business day. Religious ritual is now part of the general pattern of marketplace routine, along with a number of other habits for passing time – unscheduled but expected activity, both personally meaningful and socially symbolic. In turn, religious performance can enhance market performance, instrumentalised in spur-of-the-moment sales techniques, lines between sacred and profane continually blurred.     

慈善文化与和谐社会建设的伦理思考

慈善文化在构建社会主义和谐社会的历史进程中,是一种重要的精神力量。本文旨在对慈善文化与和谐社会关系问题进行一些探讨,主要从慈善文化的内涵及理念、中西方慈善文化内容的比较、慈善文化在社会转型期的作用以及如何推进慈善文化建设等方面展开论述,以求在理论与实践上给予准确的把握。     

Christian counsellors' views on working with gay and lesbian clients: Integrating religious beliefs with counselling ethics

Thirty‐one counsellors who identified themselves as practising, committed Christians, returned completed questionnaires that investigated how they integrate their Christian beliefs with their professional ethical code when counselling gay and lesbian clients. It was found that although most respondents believed that they were able to accept gay and lesbian clients, a minority demonstrated incongruence in relation to members of this client group, and were judgmental about perceived gay/lesbian behavious. Counsellors who took a rational stance in their understanding of the Bible and Christianity expressed more open and accepting views. Counsellors with a literalist approach to the Bible appeared to be lacking in acceptance and were unaware that they may not be offering the core condition of respect to their gay or lesbian clients. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for supervision, research and practice.     

Introduction and overview: Global information ethics

This is an introduction to a set of papers on Computer Ethics from the conference ETHICOMP95. Taken as a whole, the collection of papers provides arguments and concepts to launch a new development in computer ethics: ‘Global Information Ethics’. A rationale for globalization is provided, as well as some early efforts which move in that direction. ETHICOMP95, an international conference on Computer Ethics, was held 28–30 March 1995 at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. Co-directors were Terrell Ward Bynum and Simon Rogerson.     

The ethics activities of the World Medical Association

Since its formation in 1947, the World Medical Association (WMA) has been a leading voice in international medical ethics. The WMA’s principal ethics activity over the years has been policy development on a wide variety of issues in medical research, medical practice and health care delivery. With the establishment of a dedicated Ethics Unit in 2003, the WMA’s ethics activities have intensified in the areas of liaison, outreach and product development. Initial priorities for the Ethics Unit have been the review of paragraph 30 of the Declaration of Helsinki, the expansion of the Ethics Unit section of the WMA website and the development of an ethics manual for medical students everywhere. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an international conference, “The Ethics of Intellectual Property Rights and Patents,” held in Warsaw, Poland on 23–24 April, 2004.     

The dilemma of ethics in engineering education

This paper briefly summarizes current thinking in engineering ethics education, argues that much of that ethical instruction runs the risk of being only superficially effective, and explores some of the underlying systemic barriers within academia that contribute to this result. This is not to criticize or discourage efforts to improve ethics instruction. Rather it is to point to some more fundamental problems that still must be addressed in order to realize the full potential of enhanced ethics instruction. Issues discussed will include: intellectual engagement versus emotional engagement; the gravitational pull of curricular structures; the nature of engineering faculty; and the “engineer-ization” of ethics. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the “Ethics and Social Responsibility in Engineering and Technology” meeting, New Orleans, 2003.     

Deciding to believe: The ethics and rationality of religious belief

This is the text of an Inaugural Lecture, given at the University of Auckland, 25th July, 1994. I am grateful to Stephen Davies, Fred Kroon and Alastair Anderson for helpful discussion on earlier drafts.     

Body pedagogics and the religious habitus: A new direction for the sociological study of religion

Sociological theory has been central to the modern study of religion. In the face of the global resurgence of religious phenomena, however, and the challenge this has presented for the assumptions that characterised much twentieth century sociology, there is a need for new theoretical models to make sense of religion today. This paper contributes to this task by building upon Durkheim's suggestion that religious social facts become fully efficacious only when internalised, and Luhmann's interest in sociological manifestations of ‘transcendence’ and ‘immanence’, in order to analyse religion as a thoroughly embodied phenomenon that can be understood through the study of religious body pedagogics. Having outlined the key steps involved in the analysis of body pedagogics, we illustrate the utility of this realist framework through an ideal-typical representation of Christianity and Islam and reflect, via a consideration of several objections that could be directed towards it, upon how this approach can deal with the complexities and contingencies of contemporary religion. In conclusion, it is suggested that this systematic body pedagogic focus on embodied commonalities and differences across diverse religious contexts offers a valuable basis upon which to engage critically with religion today.     

Cognitive templates for religious concepts: cross-cultural evidence for recall of counter-intuitive representations

Presents results of free-recall experiments conducted in France, Gabon and Nepal, to test predictions of a cognitive model of religious concepts. The world over, these concepts include violations of conceptual expectations at the level of domain knowledge (e.g., about 'animal' or 'artifact' or 'person') rather than at the basic level. In five studies we used narratives to test the hypothesis that domain-level violations are recalled better than other conceptual associations. These studies used material constructed in the same way as religious concepts, but not used in religions familiar to the subjects. Experiments 1 and 2 confirmed a distinctiveness effect for such material. Experiment 3 shows that recall also depends on the possibility to generate inferences from violations of domain expectations. Replications in Gabon (Exp. 4) and Nepal (Exp. 5) showed that recall for domain-level violations is better than for violations of basic-level expectations. Overall sensitivity to violations is similar in different cultures and produces similar recall effects, despite differences in commitment to religious belief, in the range of local religious concepts or in their mode of transmission. However, differences between Gabon and Nepal results suggest that familiarity with some types of domain-level violations may paradoxically make other types more salient. These results suggest that recall effects may account for the recurrent features found in religious concepts from different cultures.     

The ethics of secret diplomacy: a contextual approach

Under what conditions is secret diplomacy normatively appropriate? Drawing on pragmatic theories of political and ethical judgement, this paper argues that a three-dimensional contextual approach centred on actors' reasoning process offers an innovative and reliable analytical tool for bridging the ethical gap of secret diplomacy. Using the case of the US extraordinary rendition programme, the paper concludes that secret diplomacy is ethically unjustifiable when actors fail to invoke normatively relevant principles of justification, inappropriately apply them to the context of the case and when the actors' moral reasoning process suffers from deficient levels of critical reflection concerning the broader implications of secret engagements for diplomatic conduct.