A SOCIOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL ANALYSIS OF DIGITAL RELIGION, WORSHIP AND PIETY IN CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIANITY IN NIGERIA

Religion has found its way to the digital space. Digital religion, worship and piety are becoming more conspicuous than ever in Christianity in Nigeria. This reality has raised a great deal of questions concerning the compatibility of religion and the cyberspace. The moral and community aspects of religion have also been somewhat thwarted and the academic study of religion became even more complex. This study interrogates the digital religion, worship and piety phenomenon in the light of Emile Durkheim's functional theory of religion and Jeremy Bentham's ethical theory, utilitarianism. This descriptive study garners data from focus group discussions, participant observation, interviews, and published literature, and adopts the inductive approach to research and analyzes data thematically. Findings show that the 2020 COVID-19 restrictions on physical contact heightened digital religion in Nigeria. A sociological and ethical analysis of the phenomenon of digital religion is instructive and reveals that digital religion is laced with a great deal of social and moral gains, as well as pitfalls. Digital religion also complicates the academic study of religion in contemporary times. To counter all these, this paper recommends, among other things, that caution should be taken in order not to make a total transition to digital religion, but rather use a hybridized form. Again, the paper recommends the deployment of rule utilitarianism in order to clearly define acceptable rules for digital religion, worship and piety, and scholars of religion should use the already available knowledge of digital methodologies to be able to better analyze the evolution of religion in contemporary times.

What Type of Person Should I Be? About the Appeal to Virtues in Public Health Interventions.

In line with how ethics has developed for the last three centuries, public health ethics has been widely dominated by a deontological as well as a utilitarian approach. The latter is a version of consequentialism, which states that maximizing utility is the primary goal of the majority of individuals or group action, while, on the other hand, virtue ethics, or at least the appeal to virtues, has been largely marginalized. The aim of this article is twofold. Firstly, we aim to highlight the political and ethical nature of public health interventions, often interpreted and presented as mere scientific enterprises. Secondly, we try to highlight the need to integrate or at least recognize the value of appeal to virtues in public health measures. The analysis will reference the Italian COVID-19 vaccination program as a case study. Initially, we will explore the political and ethical nature of any public health measure, using the implementation of the COVID-19 vaccination program in Italy as an example. Subsequently, we will illustrate the deontological approach to ethics, the utilitarian one, and the virtues one, focusing on the dynamic of the agent's perspective. Lastly, we will briefly analyze both the Italian COVID-19 vaccination program and the communication campaign that promoted it.

COVID-19, artificial intelligence, ethical challenges and policy implications.

As the COVID-19 outbreak remains an ongoing issue, there are concerns about its disruption, the level of its disruption, how long this pandemic is going to last, and how innovative technological solutions like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and expert systems can assist to deal with this pandemic. AI has the potential to provide extremely accurate insights for an organization to make better decisions based on collected data. Despite the numerous advantages that may be achieved by AI, the use of AI can be perceived differently by society, where moral and ethical issues may be raised, especially in regards to accessing and exploiting public data gathered from social media platforms. To better comprehend the concerns and ethical challenges, utilitarianism and deontology were used as business ethics frameworks to explore the aforementioned challenges of AI in society. The framework assists in determining whether the AI's deployment is ethically acceptable or not. The paper lays forth policy recommendations for public and private organizations to embrace AI-based decision-making processes to avoid data privacy violations and maintain public trust.

Spending Windfall ("Found") Time on Hedonic versus Utilitarian Activities

Consumers often gain extra free time unexpectedly. Given the increasing time pressure that consumers experience in their daily lives, it is important to understand how they spend windfall (or unexpected) free time, which we term found time. In a series of five laboratory experiments and naturalistic field studies, we found that consumers spend more of their free time on hedonic activities than on utilitarian activities when they gain the time unexpectedly (i.e. found time), but not when they know about the free time in advance. This pattern occurs consistently regardless of whether consumers gain the time from canceled work-related or leisure activities. In addition, our studies uncovered perceived busyness as a ubiquitous yet unexplored moderator for the windfall gain literature: the inclination to allocate found time to hedonic consumption decreases when consumers perceive themselves to be busy at the moment. We discuss several potential accounts for the effect of unexpectedness on time expenditure, including a perceived fit between the nature of found time (a fun windfall gain) and hedonic consumption, need for justification, and planning. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Consumer Research is the property of Oxford University Press / USA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Mental fatigue increases utilitarian moral judgments during COVID-19

This research investigated how mental fatigue is associated with moral judgments during the COVID-19 pandemic and studied the moderating effect of social support. We used self-report questionnaires to collect data from 4,042 people. We assessed peoples mental fatigue and social support during the pandemic, and designed nine moral dilemmas based on the background of COVID-19 to measure peoples moral judgments. The results showed that during the COVID-19 pandemic mental fatigue had a significant impact on moral judgments. Individuals with higher mental fatigue were more likely to make more utilitarian choices, while social support moderated the relationship between mental fatigue and moral judgments. When experiencing mental fatigue, individuals with low, compared to high, social support are more likely to rely on utilitarianism to make moral judgments.

The Coronavirus Pandemic Infects all, Even the Fundamental Right Guaranteed by the Constitution of India!

On January 27, 2020, shortly after our neighbouring states got affected, India too faced the brutality of two battles – The COVID-19 Crisis and the blurring of lines between Public Policy and Constitutional Rights. At the time of Independence, our forefathers gave us the Constitution, the fundamental document governing all the three organs of the state and regulating the forthcoming statutes. This supreme rule of law also had to face the adversity to bow in front of the crisis. The Research Paper focuses on the intersection of Disaster Management and the Constitution of India and their encroachment into Fundamental Rights. The angle of the paper would be to look at how the management or confinement of a disaster affects the fundamental rights guaranteed to the citizens of India. The direct or indirect violation of Right to Healthcare, Nutrition, Food, Privacy, Life, Personal Liberty, Equity, etc. These rights would be considered in light of the surveillance by the Arogya Set App, the atrocities of the prison inmates and people in Quarantine Centres, how the health records were more of public property now and not trade secrets, and how these Constitutional issues did not give space to the Disaster Management and Epidemic Disease Act the requisite breathing capability. In furtherance, how the judicial system of India put forward their views to effectively let the state machinery work but not at cost of the human rights via providing the recommendation of Compulsory Licensing for Pharmaceutical License. The paper also deals with how the state has a positive duty to act upon protecting the fundamental rights and thus making a more robust system to prevent the private players from making profits out of the death beds. The next chapter of the paper would delve into the jurisprudence of the Disaster Management Act which is the utilitarian theory i.e., the greatest good of all and the jurisprudence of the Constitution of India which essentially is the egalitarian theory promoting equity in the society. This understanding would make the researcher view as to which theory should ethically and legally have a priority over the other and if not then what are the boundaries of the grey area where these theories prevail. Towards the end, the researchers viewed how the lines have blurred between the public policy and the state guaranteed rights to the public at large and also poses the same question for the readers to brainstorm. © 2023 DMICS.

Moral, self-interested, and social motivation each predict compliance with social distancing rules: utilitarianism is an indirect positive predictor.

BACKGROUND: Social distancing rules have proven to be essential in reducing the spread of COVID-19. However, we can optimise these rules if we identify factors which predict compliance. Thus, in this study we investigated whether compliance with distancing rules is predicted by whether an individual is motivated by moral, self-interested, or social reasons. We also investigated the impact of an individual's utilitarian orientation both on compliance itself and on reasons for compliance. METHODS: Our sample consisted of 301 participants recruited from four US states - California, Oregon, Mississippi, and Alabama - who completed an anonymous online survey. Six vignettes describing hypothetical social distancing rules were developed for the study. Participants indicated (i) how likely they were to violate each hypothetical distancing rule, (ii) how morally wrong violating each rule would be, (iii) how much risk of contracting COVID-19 they would tolerate in order to violate each rule, and (iv) how much social condemnation they would tolerate in order to violate each rule. Based on these responses, we gauged each participant's overall degree of compliance with social distancing rules as well as the extent to which each participant's compliance is motivated by moral, self-interested, and social reasons. We also measured other variables that could affect compliance including personality, level of religiosity, and inclination to engage in utilitarian reasoning. Multiple regression and exploratory structural equation modelling were used to determine predictors of compliance with social distancing rules. RESULTS: We found that moral, self-interested, and social motivation each positively predicted compliance, with self-interested motivation being the strongest predictor. Furthermore, utilitarian orientation indirectly predicted compliance, with moral, self-interested, and social motivation as positive mediating factors. No controlled covariates (personality factors, religiosity, political orientation, or other background variables) predicted compliance. CONCLUSION: These findings have implications not only for the design of social distancing rules but also for efforts to ensure vaccine uptake. Governments need to consider how to harness moral, self-interested, and social motivation to promote compliance, perhaps by co-opting utilitarian reasoning, which positively influences these motivational forces.

The ethical dilemmas of risky decisions.

Even in a pandemic there seem to be inherent conflicts of interest between the individual and societal consequences of remedial actions and strategies. Actions taken in the sole interests of patients, as required by the Hippocratic oath, can have broadly inconvenient economic implications for the State. ("Average" benefits for a population can impose individual inconveniences for the vulnerable.). Understandably these decisions are not normally made explicitly and transparently by governments. This leads to seemingly illogical and inhumane strategies which are not understood and hence mistrusted and often ignored by the public. Vaccination sentiments on social media are often an unwanted symptom of this dilemma. This article outlines and discusses a number of examples of such situations with a focus on ethical aspects. It concludes that each case must be considered individually as to the issues that need to be weighed in these difficult decisions; and that there are no clear and universally acceptable ethical solutions. What can be learned from the COVID-19 crisis is that short term utilitarianism has consequences that in the eyes of the population are unacceptable. This lesson seems equally valid for cost benefit evaluations regarding other risks, such as from hazardous industries, flood defenses, and air transport. Decisionmakers and politicians can learn that persuasion only goes so far. In the end the people appear to prioritize in terms of deontology.

Applying Two-level Utilitarianism and the Principle of Fairness to Mandatory Vaccination during the COVID-19 Pandemic: the Situation in South Korea.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Korean society has sought to vaccinate most of its population. Consequently, the Korean government has attempted to make vaccination compulsory by promoting awareness of its benefits. The administration has pushed for mandatory vaccination by claiming that vaccination is more beneficial than harmful, based on a utilitarian view. However, this view is difficult to justify based on the two levels of utilitarianism presented by R. M. Hare. Compulsory vaccination cannot satisfy the universalizability, nor the satisfaction of preference, and exposes the difficulties of utilitarianism. In addition, mandatory vaccination is difficult to justify based on the perspective of fairness theory, that is, "justice as the fairness" of John Rawls and H. L. A. Hart's principle of fairness. From the point of view of Hare's utilitarianism and fairness theory, it has been shown that mandatory vaccination is not easily justified. In reality, the power of the state continues to strengthen, and we should examine this situation from a critical point of view.

Vaccine Hesitancy in Sub-Saharan Africa in the Context of COVID-19 Vaccination Exercise: A Systematic Review.

Presently, the COVID-19 vaccine is seen as a means to an end in light of other challenges, such as vaccine inequity. Through COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX), an initiative founded to guarantee fair and equitable distribution, vaccine hesitancy remains a critical component that needs to be addressed in sub-Saharan Africa. Utilizing a documentary search strategy and using the keywords and subject headings Utilitarianism and COVID-19 or Vaccine hesitancy and sub-Saharan Africa, this paper identified 67 publications from different databases (PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science), which were further screened by title and full text to achieve (n = 6) publications that were analyzed. The reviewed papers demonstrate that vaccine hesitancy occurs against a colonial backdrop of inequities in global health research, social-cultural complexities, poor community involvement and public distrust. All of these factors undermine the confidence that is crucial for sustaining collective immunity in vaccine programs. Even though mass vaccination programs are known to limit personal freedom, the exchange of information between healthcare professionals and citizens must be improved to encourage complete disclosure of vaccine information at the point of delivery. Moreover, addressing components of vaccine hesitancy should involve relying not on coercive public policies but on consistent ethical strategies that go beyond current healthcare ethics toward broader bioethics.

[School Closures - an Ethical Challenge]. / Schulschließungen als ethische Herausforderung.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led many countries around the world to take drastic measures. Regardless of the epidemiological impact, it is undisputed that these measures have had significant negative effects on scholastic attainment, psychosocial and physical health of children and adolescents. Given their consequences, such interventions evoke the question of their ethical justifiability. This article introduces the most common ethical theories and, building on them, discusses the ethical evaluation of the COVID-19-related school closures.

Consensual ideas for prioritizing patients: correlates of preferences in the allocation of medical resources

Five hundred adults indicated their preferences about the fairness and ethics of allocating scarce medical interventions. They also completed an IQ test, a measure of self-esteem and the extent to which they believed in a Just World, as well as General Conspiracy Theories. Results confirmed previous studies which showed a strong preference for the Utilitarian "saves most lives," followed by the Prioritization "sickest first" and "youngest first," preferences. Correlations and regressions indicated relatively few significant individual difference correlates of allocation preferences, with IQ being the major exception. Implications and limitations are discussed.

ETHICS, JUSTICE, AND PULMONARY REHABILITATION PAYMENT REFORM

BACKGROUND: Despite itsmany benefits, pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) is a severely underutilized service among marginalized populations because of low reimbursement rates. This is perpetuating systemic injustice and healthcare disparities. METHODS: The distribution of pulmonary rehabilitation was examined according to three frameworks in medical ethics for resource allocation: egalitarianism, utilitarianism, and distributive justice. RESULTS: Egalitarianism, the first bioethical framework for achieving justice, is based on the principle that all individuals are equal and therefore should have identical access to resources. PR is currently distributed in a manner that fails an egalitarian framework due to unequal access to PR among different population cohorts. A utilitarian approach to justice emphasizes maximizing overall benefits and “saving the most lives possible”. Poor access to PR means that outcomes are not currently maximized for patients with COPD and other respiratory conditions, thus failing the utilitarian model. A third approach, distributive justice, mandates that resources be allotted to those with the greatest need in a manner that does not infringe upon individual liberties. Allocation of PR in amanner consistent with distributive justice would provide PR to patients who have the most significant underlying disease and have been historically marginalized. Our current system fails the distributive justice framework as PR is more available to affluent populations. CONCLUSIONS: Utilization of and access to PR fails all three principles of justice. Additionally, inequities in PR access have worsened because of COVID-19 due to loss of employer-based insurance with rising unemployment and increased demand for PR. First, we recommend reforming and increasing PR reimbursement away from the bundled one-hour payment code, G0424. Second, we suggest that Medicaid coverage be extended for pulmonary telerehabilitation, and that this coverage apply to center-based, home-based, and web-based telerehabilitation. Finally, we advocate moving from fee-forservice to value-based payment systems. Our recommendations would not only lead to economic savings, but also to more equitable care for patients regardless of background, race, or socioeconomic status. PR represents an achievable means to provide affordable and high-quality care to more individuals, especially those from non-white and less affluent communities disproportionately affected by COPD, COVID-19, and other respiratory conditions. These proposals for payment reform would ensure the continued and increased adoption of PR and help transform the current system into one that achieves justice for historically marginalized patients. This is one small but important step in paving the future for equitable resource allocation in healthcare.

The Climate Exemption from the Office: the Environmental Case for Remote Working

International climate mitigation commitments for 2030 are insufficient to hold global warming below 1.5°C. To prevent climate change from crossing tipping points, everyone needs to play their part: citizens, businesses, and governments. Many employees could maintain an acceptable level of productivity by working from home and in doing so they could significantly reduce their GHG emissions. Data from the dramatic experience of the Covid-19 pandemic provide empirical support for both claims. The article questions whether companies are justified in forcing these workers to go back to the office. My answer is no. Therefore, I argue, using both utilitarian and deontological arguments, that it is part of a company’s CSR duties to provide employees with the climate exemption from the office, provided that this does not jeopardise the company’s market position. © 2022, Tipolito Subalpina. All rights reserved.

Utilitarianism on the front lines: COVID-19, public ethics, and the “hidden assumption” problem

How should we think of the preferences of citizens? Whereas self-optimal policy is relatively straightforward to produce, socially optimal policy often requires a more detailed examination. In this paper, we identify an issue that has received far too little attention in welfarist modelling of public policy, which we name the “hidden assumptions” problem. Hidden assumptions can be deceptive because they are not expressed explicitly and the social planner (e.g. a policy maker, a regulator, a legislator) may not give them the critical attention they need. We argue that ethical expertise has a direct role to play in public discourse because it is hard to adopt a position on major issues like public health policy or healthcare prioritisation without making contentious assumptions about population ethics. We then postulate that ethicists are best situated to critically evaluate these hidden assumptions, and can therefore play a vital role in public policy debates. © 2022 Sciendo. All rights reserved.

Digital Contact Tracking: a Threat to Civil Liberty or a Moral Obligation?

The paper focuses on the ethical dilemmas related to the technology of digital contact tracing (DCT). The author reviewed existing arguments and offers a new classification of approaches to this problem. Ethical justifications to implementation of DCT can be divided into utilitarian and conditional (deontological) approaches. The author tries to prove that the conditional approach is more effective, and it might become the basis for the ethical analysis of specific public health decisions. In conclusion, it demonstrates that the conditional (deontological) approach to the ethical justification of DCT might be used in the discussion about digital vaccination passports (DVP). © 2022, Russian Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Mandatory COVID-19 vaccination in human rights and utilitarianism perspectives

Departing from the mandatory vaccination had been debated and received a lot of rejection which has caused intense emotions. In this study, the authors tried to evaluate the mandatory regulation of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination from a human rights and utilitarianism perspective. By conducting normative research method, this study revealed that indeed the obligation that tends to be coercive for COVID-19 vaccination seems to violate individual human rights which each individual has the right to decide for themselves whether they want to participate in the program or not without coercion. However, mandatory vaccination is still justified, from a human rights perspective, to protect other people's rights not to be infected with infectious diseases. This is also in line with a utilitarian perspective that departs from the argument that vaccines provide a myriad of benefits for many people in the midst of a pandemic, therefore to create benefits for the majority of society, the mandatory COVID-19 vaccination is something that is needed. Even if necessary, both sanctions and punishments can be justified in utilitarianism to achieve the greatest utility for the society. © 2022, Intelektual Pustaka Media Utama. All rights reserved.

KANT IN THE TIME OF COVID

During the coronavirus pandemic, communities have faced shortages of important healthcare resources such as COVID-19 vaccines, medical staff, ICU beds and ventilators. Public health officials in the U.S. have had to make decisions about two major issues: which infected patients should be treated first (triage), and which people who are at risk of infection should be inoculated first (vaccine distribution). Following Beauchamp and Childress’s principlism, adopted guidelines have tended to value both whole lives (survival to discharge) and life-years (survival for years past discharge). This process of collective moral reasoning has revealed our common commitment to both Kantian and utilitarian principles. For Kant, respecting people’s rights entails that we ought to value whole lives equally. Therefore we ought to allocate resources so as to maximise the number of patients who survive to discharge. By contrast, the principle of utility has us maximise life-years so that people can satisfy more of their considered preferences. Although people are treated impartially in the utilitarian calculus, it does not recognise their equal worth. Subjecting Kantian ethics and utilitarianism to the process of reflective equilibrium lends support to the idea that we need a pluralistic approach that would accommodate our moral intuitions regarding both the equal value of whole lives and the additive value of life-years. © Altman M. C., 2022.

Treatment, Care, and Ethics

This chapter examines the ethical challenges of treating and caring for Covid patients. Healthcare professionals are at risks to be infected by SARS-CoV-2, and in all countries illness and death has affected them as well as their families. The ethical discussion focuses on whether professionals have a duty to treat and to care, when there is substantial personal risk, particularly when sufficient protective equipment is not available. Ethical issues also exist for patients. They can experience various kinds of harm as a result of having contracted an infectious disease, and as the result of being in isolation during treatment in the healthcare facility. Patients with other diseases are harmed because modalities of treatment and care are cancelled or postponed since priority is given to Covid patients. A further ethical concern relates to the difficulty to maintain ordinary standards of care in conditions of emergency. Specific attention is subsequently given to ethical questions of research. The only way to improve the treatment of Covid patients is sustained research to test and develop medication. Intensive public debate has emerged on the subject of triage. If resources, especially in intensive care, are limited, which patients will be selected for treatment, and which criteria are ethically justified? The last paragraph of this chapter will focus on end-of-life care, and the need to provide palliative care to seriously ill Covid patients. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Nudge Policies in COVID-19 Context: A Necessary Action or Ethical Dilemma?

Objetivo: o objetivo deste estudo é discutir os nudges no contexto pandêmico do SARS-CoV-2, retomando algumas reflexões sobre a ética e revisando-as sob o novo cenário imposto pela pandemia. Marco teórico: o arcabouço teórico da Economia Comportamental fundamentou a análise dos nudges, enquanto o utilitarismo, a deontologia e a ética das virtudes foram as teorias morais clássicas utilizadas para a reflexão dos aspectos éticos. Métodos: fizemos uma revisão da literatura sobre nudges e pesquisamos os últimos estudos sobre este assunto aplicados à mitigação da COVID-19. Na seção de discussão ética, referências clássicas são utilizadas para articular nudges com as seguintes teorias morais: utilitarismo, deontologia e ética das virtudes. Resultados: os resultados indicam que a tendência em termos de intervenção é enviar mensagens de nudge e aumentar o comprometimento, principalmente para direcionar um comportamento desejado e aumentar a adesão a políticas. Muitos experimentos não mostraram resultados significativos e alguns inconvenientes na aplicação de políticas indicam que os nudges devem ser revistos em cenários de crise, como em pandemias. Na discussão ética, três teorias morais podem justificar alguns aspectos dos nudges. Conclusões: este artigo mostrou algumas falhas e inconsistências tanto na teoria do nudge quanto na sua aplicação durante a pandemia, as quais podem ser resolvidas através da discussão de aspectos éticos. Sugerese que conectar estes problemas com as teorias morais pode ser uma solução para alguns impasses encontrados.Alternate :Objective: the aim of this study is to discuss nudges in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic context, bringing back some reflections on ethics and revising them in the light of the new setting imposed by the pandemic. Theoretical approach: the theoretical framework of Behavioral Economics was the basis for nudges' analysis, while utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics were the classic moral theories used to reflect on ethical aspects. Methods: we undertook a literature review about nudges searched through the latest studies about this subject applied to COVID-19 mitigation. In the ethical discussion section, we used classical references to articulate the nudge theory with the following moral theories: utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics. Results: our findings indicate that the trend intervention during the pandemic is 'nudging messages' and 'increase people's commitment,' mainly to nudge people toward the desired behavior and increase policy adherence. Many experiments did not show significant results, and some drawbacks in policies' applications indicate that nudges might be revised in crisis scenarios, such as a pandemic outbreak. The ethical discussion section relates three moral theories that justify some of the nudge's aspects. Conclusions: this paper showed some flaws and inconsistencies in nudge theory and its application during the pandemic that can be solved by discussing ethical aspects. We suggest that connecting these problems with moral views might be a solution for some deadlocks found in the nudge theory.