Online research in philosophy

This study empirically examines how Chinese executives perceive the role of guanxi and ethics played in their business operations. By factor-analyzing 850 valid replies collected from a comprehensive survey, the present study identifies three distinct ethics-related attitudes and two distinct guanxi-related attitudes for Chinese executives. The cluster analysis of the composite scores of these five attitudinal factors further indicates the existence of three distinct groups of Chinese executives that vary in their ethics and guanxi orientations. The three groups are unethical (...) profit seeker (UPS), anti-governance, guanxi-cultivator (AGGC), and apathetic executive (AE). The three groups are also found to be significantly different in such demographic characteristics as age and the ownership structure of the serving organization. Specifically, the inter-group comparison suggests that younger Chinese executives, and those working for privately-owned firms and joint ventures are more inclined to engage in unethical activities for profits. These findings provide useful insights for international investors to formulate their human resource and negotiation strategies in China. (shrink)

Increasingly, taxonomies are being developed and used by industry practitioners to facilitate information interoperability and retrieval. Within a single industrial domain, there exist many taxonomies that are intended for different applications. Industry specific taxonomies often represent the vocabularies that are commonly used by the practitioners. Their jobs are multi-faceted, which include checking for code and regulatory compliance. As such, it will be very desirable if industry practitioners are able to easily locate and browse regulations of interest. In practice, multiple sources (...) of government regulations exist and they are often organized and classified by the needs of the issuing agencies that enforce them rather than the needs of the communities that use them. One way to bridge these two distinct needs is to develop methods and tools that enable practitioners to browse and retrieve government regulations using their own terms and vocabularies, for example, via existing industry taxonomies. The mapping from a single taxonomy to a single regulation is a trivial keyword matching task. We examine a relatedness analysis approach for mapping a single taxonomy to multiple regulations. We then present an approach for mapping multiple taxonomies to a single regulation by measuring the relatedness of concepts. Cosine similarity, Jaccard coefficient and market basket analysis are used to measure the semantic relatedness between concepts from two different taxonomies. Preliminary evaluations of the three relatedness analysis measures are performed using examples from the civil engineering and building industry. These examples illustrate the potential benefits of regulatory usage from the mapping between various taxonomies and regulations. (shrink)

T he nine papers of this Supplement on these significant issues and important ideas are closely accentuated and critically discussed by well-established specialists, philosophers and historians, from various relevant disciplines of study.

Today, modern large-scale production has created a real life world for people. People's life is so greatly dominated by production that we can say people's life is the life being produced. The basic features of modern life are: First, modern lifestyle is a consumptionism-oriented lifestyle. Consumption has become the main content of modern life. As a result, it is very difficult to distinguish life from consumption. People have changed into consumers. Second, modern lifestyle is a lifestyle of the generalization of (...) commodity logic. Commodity logic has pulled whole society onto the track of the commodity production. People's life is inevitably dominated by the commodity logic, resulting in the prevalence of materialism and money worship. Third, modern lifestyle is a highly homogenized lifestyle,eliminating the possible development of individual personality. The main problems of modern life are: First, lack of conscious reflection of life, People have been lost in a fake sense of happiness. People indulge in a fake sense of happiness created by consumption without any selfconsciousness. Second, lack of correct self-understanding, People have been lost in formal personality. The expressions of formal personality are lack of serious rational thinking. Third, lack of the concern about the transcendent dimension of life, People have been lost in the present dimension of life. People's life has been filled with all kinds of consumergoods and illusions that evoke. Therefore, no room has been left for transcendent issues, such as, the meaning of life. (shrink)

In Mainland China, due to dominant status and decisive function of Marxism philosophy, philosophy has developed as the state ideology since the foundation of People’s Republic of China in 1949. However, since the 1990s the humanities and social sciences have been experiencing an obvious academic turn in Mainland China. The event first set in with a debate on academic norms and with the debate the academic norms have gradually become the mainstreamin Mainland China. In accordance with the division of disciplines (...) in Mainland China, philosophy as the first-level discipline is subdivided into eight second-level disciplines: Marxist philosophy, Chinese philosophy, foreign philosophy, logic, ethics, aesthetics, religion, and philosophy of science and technology. Roughly speaking, aesthetics, ethics and Marxist philosophy have a remarkable turn, while others just have a weak one. The turn signifies the achievement of the academic autonomy of philosophy in China; and the turn also means that philosophy scholars have realized their transition to professional status. (shrink)

Increasingly, taxonomies are being developed and used by industry practitioners to facilitate information interoperability and retrieval. Within a single industrial domain, there exist many taxonomies that are intended for different applications. Industry specific taxonomies often represent the vocabularies that are commonly used by the practitioners. Their jobs are multi-faceted, which include checking for code and regulatory compliance. As such, it will be very desirable if industry practitioners are able to easily locate and browse regulations of interest. In practice, multiple sources (...) of government regulations exist and they are often organized and classified by the needs of the issuing agencies that enforce them rather than the needs of the communities that use them. One way to bridge these two distinct needs is to develop methods and tools that enable practitioners to browse and retrieve government regulations using their own terms and vocabularies, for example, via existing industry taxonomies. The mapping from a single taxonomy to a single regulation is a trivial keyword matching task. We examine a relatedness analysis approach for mapping a single taxonomy to multiple regulations. We then present an approach for mapping multiple taxonomies to a single regulation by measuring the relatedness of concepts. Cosine similarity, Jaccard coefficient and market basket analysis are used to measure the semantic relatedness between concepts from two different taxonomies. Preliminary evaluations of the three relatedness analysis measures are performed using examples from the civil engineering and building industry. These examples illustrate the potential benefits of regulatory usage from the mapping between various taxonomies and regulations. (shrink)

Featuring contributions from the world's most highly esteemed Asian philosophy scholars, this important encyclopedia covers the complex and increasingly influential field of Chinese thought, from earliest recorded times to the present day. Including coverage on the subject previously unavailable to English speakers, the Encyclopedia sheds light on the extensive range of concepts, movements, philosophical works, and thinkers that populate the field. It includes a thorough survey of the history of Chinese philosophy; entries on all major thinkers from Confucius to Mou (...) Zongsan; essential topics such as aesthetics, moral philosophy, philosophy of government, and philosophy of literature; surveys of Confucianism in all historical periods (Zhou, Han, Tang, and onward) and in key regions outside China; schools of thought such as Mohism, Legalism, and Chinese Buddhism; trends in contemporary Chinese philosophy, and more. The 187 entries are written by more than seventy-five of the world's leading specialists in the study of Asian thought, and include contributions from Roger T. Ames, Joanne D. Birdwhistell, Alan Chan, Chung-Ying Cheng, Hsueh-li Chung, Kai-wing Chow, Antonio S. Cua, Carine Defoort, Pei-jung Fu, and many others. The first Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy in the English language, this unique volume is highly readable as well as authoritative, making it valuable at a variety of levels. This resource will enrich the studies of undergraduate survey students, general readers with an interest in Chinese thought and culture, Asian studies or philosophy students, and graduate-level researchers. (shrink)

This paper tries to show that ontology is one of the important tendencies in the future philosophy. The author thinks that ontology as the basic spirit makes philosophy be different from other subjects. Ontology originates from people’s examination to essence of the world. However, ancient long-term argument couldn’t get any clear conclusion. So philosophers gradually understand that ontology is connected with epistemology. If we want to make a good explanation to ontology, we must return to check ourselves cognition. And the (...) epistemology turns into the main stream of the philosophy Since Descartes. But this doesn’t mean ontology being disappeared. It only tends from the stage to background. In fact, the discussion of the linguistic philosophy still belongs to epistemology. As a whole, we can say philosophy really goes though one negative development. According to dialectic, negation of negation is a universal law. The philosophy has to undergo another inevasible reform and return to ontology again. Many contemporary philosophers have regarded this and begin to do it effectively. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of interpersonal influence on personal software piracy, also known as softlifting. A laboratory experiment with 54 subjects was conducted, in which each subject was told to participate in a software quality evaluation exercise. However, a ploy was carried out to measure the subjects intention in software piracy under different levels of group pressure and financial gains. The results are interesting. On the intention of softlifting, both group pressure and financial gains (...) are significant determinants. The interaction of group pressure and financial gains is also significant: when group pressure is toward pirating software, financial gains is not a relevant factor; whereas when group pressure is toward purchasing, financial gains becomes a dominant factor in softlifting intention. A further survey (with 216 college students from two public universities in Taiwan) designed to investigate the relationship between consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence (Bearden et al., 1989) and softlifting intention/behavior. A path analysis demonstrated that normative influence was related to softlifting intention, yet information influence effect was marginal. The effect of normative influence on softlifting behavior was mainly mediated by softlifting intention. Implications are also discussed. (shrink)