The study aimed at investigating the neural mechanism of business moral decision-making. 15 participants were presented with a set of 96 dilemmas in business situation. Participants were required to decide between option 1 (more utilitarian decision for self benefit) and 2 (ethical decision for fairness or institution). ERPs were recorded to a slide displaying the letter 1 and 2 when subjects w...

This paper compares two ways of formalising defeasible deontic reasoning , both based on the view that the issues of connicting obligations and moral dilemmas should be dealt with from the perspective of nonmonotonic reasoning. The rst way is developing a special non-monotonic logic for deontic statements. This method turns out to have some limitations, for which reason another approach is reco...

In this paper we question whether the concept of "genetic privacy" is a contradiction in terms. And, if so, whether the implications of such a conclusion, inevitably impact on how society comes to perceive privacy and responsibility generally. Current law and ethical discourse place a high value on self-determination and the rights of individuals. In the medical sphere, the recognition of patie...

Responding to a preceding article by Michael J. Newton ("Moral dilemmas in surgical training: intent and the case for ethical ambiguity"), Downie comments on three of Newton's themes. He agrees that trainees should engage in ethical self-appraisal but cautions that introspection is inappropriate at the time of an operation. Regarding Newton's downplaying of philosophical analysis in medical e...

Berkeley held that the moral duty of mankind was to obey God's laws; that--since God was a benevolent Creator--the object of His laws must be to promote the welfare and flourishing of mankind; and that, accordingly, humans could identify their moral duties by asking what system of laws for conduct would in fact tend to promote that object. This position--which is akin to that of 'rule' Utilitar...

Moral theory is an important guide to bioethical decision-making, but it can confuse and mislead those who offer ethical advice to clinicians and researchers, delaying decisions that must be made in a timely fashion. In this paper I examine the ways moral theory can lead bioethicists astray. Absent a sensitivity to the empirical realities of ethical problems, moral theory 1) contributes to the ...

Can people accurately predict how they will act in a moral dilemma? Our research suggests that in some situations, they cannot, and that emotions play a pivotal role in this dissociation between behavior and forecasting. In the current experiment, individuals in a moral action condition cheated significantly less on a math task than participants in a forecasting condition predicted they themsel...

Social dilemmas specify situations in which (local) egoistic utility optimization prevents achieving the (global) common good of a group. Tragically, in such dilemmas local optimization also reduces the payoff for the individual optimizer. Although social dilemmas essentially reflect inter-individual contexts (conflicting interests, moral attitudes, etc.), innerindividual dilemmas apparently sh...

In the political arena, lesbian and gay issues have typically been contested on grounds of human rights, but with variable success. Using a moral developmental framework, the purpose of this study was to explore preferences for different types of moral arguments when thinking about moral dilemmas around lesbian and gay issues. The analysis presented here comprised data collected from 545 studen...

This study investigated the temporal dynamics of emotional and cognitive processing underlying decision-making in moral judgment. Thirty-seven participants were presented with a set of 60 dilemmas varying in whether killing one individual was an intended means to save others (instrumental dilemmas) or a foreseen but unintended consequence (incidental dilemmas). Participants were required to dec...