Marcus William Hunt argues that prepositional gratitude to God is metaphysically impossible. This is because a fitting target of prepositional gratitude should be able to be benefited in return. Having the maximum well-being, God cannot be benefited in return and fails to be a fitting target. This view is debatable as some argue that God’s well-being can be increased in some peculiar sense. This paper proposes that Zhu Xi (1130-1200), a Confucian philosopher in China, can offer some plausible perspective. The (...) ultimate reality in Zhu, while perfectly good itself, can be in a better state of being when it has more manifestations (namely, when humans fulfill their moral nature.) This can serve as a parallel to suggest alternative conceptualizations of God and of his well-being, which always guarantee his maximum well-being in an intensive sense, while allow for an increase in his well-being in an extensive sense. In other words, we can uphold God as perfectly good per se while admit his having varying degrees of external well-being, which can account for his relationship with things, especially human beings, in the world. (shrink)

Yat-hung Leung debates Chenyang Li’s view of harmony and benevolence in Confucian teachings: Which is the more fundamental and important value, and ultimate ideal? In The Confucian Philosophy of Harmony, Li delineates a distinctively Confucian conception of “deep harmony” as the basic ideal of Chinese culture and especially Confucianism. Leung questions that depiction of things, arguing that benevolence does and should hold that place of honor. Leung focuses his arguments against two claims: firstly, that harmony should (...) be understood as the supreme value in Confucian thought, and secondly, that the ideal of harmony is of greater value to us today than that of benevolence. Leung points out that in the influential texts and traditions of Confucian philosophy, benevolence is of higher value than harmony. He disputes both the representative nature of the texts Li relies on as well as Li’s portrayals of some of those texts. We more properly understand Confucian harmony and benevolence in the inverse relation, with harmony as the product of benevolence, and thereby come to see that the substantive action-guiding content of benevolence in fact has the greater value to contemporary life. (shrink)

Empathy is generally regarded as an emotional contagion between what one person feels and what another, the empathic person, comes to feel. This essay focuses on one aspect of the altruism/egoism debate involving empathy, that is, whether the empathy-induced motivation to help is egoistic, altruistic, or neither, and demonstrates that the philosophy of the Neo-Confucian Cheng Hao 程顥 can provide unique insights. By referring to Cheng's conceptions of empathy and oneness involved in his famous notions of benevolence and "ten thousand (...) things in one body", the present essay claims that the notions of egoism and altruism are inapplicable. It will introduce the notion of empathy in... (shrink)

This article focuses on the two types of conception of time, namely, the time of history and the time of ethics. The former is a conception of time that one views or situates one’s lifetime in or with history, whereas the latter a time of our personal lifetime interrupted by the intervention of the other and the accompanied ethical significance. This article argues that Classical Confucianism has interesting specifications of these two conceptions of time. In particular, it shows a correspondence (...) and interaction between the two. Then, it is not difficult to catch up with what our tradition has been aiming at through ethical practices, and the tradition in turn prompts us to be ethical. (shrink)

An accessible introduction to Confucian moral philosophy.

In this article, I argue that we can have a plausible account of the experience of practical necessity, namely, the experience that some action is necessitated for someone, by referring to the philosophy of Wang Yangming, a Neo-Confucian philosopher in Ming Dynasty China. The experience of practical necessity, according to Wang, can be of two kinds: general and particular, both having their bases on human nature and related to the fulfillment of the self. I argue that this account fares better (...) than the non-reductionist account and other reductionist accounts, including Christine Korsgaard’s, which explains the experience in terms of the constitution of the self. (shrink)

This article discusses the phenomenon of emotional ambivalence, especially in the moral context. After a nuanced classification of the phenomenon that facilitates accurate evaluation and treatment, it argues that Zhu Xi 朱熹 acknowledges the phenomenon and can provide insights particularly into cases that involve conflicting moral emotions. In light of Zhu, the criterion of motivational harmony rather than motivational unity can more pertinently account for the motivational state of the virtuous persons facing moral emotional ambivalences. This can avoid a certain (...) mystery concerning the status of the nonoptimal emotion and its motivation to action in some of those cases. (shrink)

Chenyang Li responds to Yat-hung Leung by pointing out Leung draws on three distinct notions of benevolence, or ren, none of which on its own is a serious contender against harmony as the concept of central importance to Confucian philosophy. Ren cannot be all three of these at once, and no particular conception of ren in fact has all these qualities. Li further clarifies that it is not his aim to establish that harmony is of exclusively highest (...) importance among Confucian concepts and values, but rather merely to restore its place among the various central Confucian values. He elaborates on the essential role harmony plays when one properly values the virtue of benevolence, which itself requires or implies harmony, specifically harmonious coordination, in its practice and realization. Finally, Li argues that we cannot see the Confucian conceptions of benevolence Leung champions as possessing more practical value for contemporary life than the Confucian conception of harmony, and identifies the fundamental grounds and motivation of Leung’s criticisms to lie in allegiance to Song-Ming neo-Confucian orthodoxy, which grounds itself in philosophically empty postulates. (shrink)

Abstract Objective Intuitive inquiry meditation is a unique form of Buddhist Zen/Chan practice in which individuals actively and intuitively utilize the cognitive functions to cultivate doubt and explore the concept of the self. This event-related potential (ERP) study aimed to investigate the neural correlates by which long-term practice of intuitive inquiry meditation induces flexibility in self-schema processing, highlighting the role of doubt and belief processes in this exploration. Methods Twenty experienced and eighteen beginner meditators in intuitive inquiry meditation were recruited (...) for this ERP study. The interactions of doubt and belief processes with concepts of the self and Buddha were investigated. A 128-channel electroencephalography (EEG) system was used to collect EEG data. The ERP data were processed and analyzed using EEGLAB. Results The data showed a double dissociation between beginners and experienced meditators (monks) in the concepts of the self and Buddha: intuitive inquiry meditation reduced the brain activity of beginners when viewing Buddha image but not when viewing a picture of themselves. However, in experienced meditators, intuitive inquiry meditation reduced brain activity when they viewed images of themselves but not when they viewed Buddha image. Further event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) analysis revealed that experienced meditators had a greater theta spectral power and higher intertrial coherence (ITC), indicating that they could more flexibly modulate ongoing cognitive processes than beginner meditators. Conclusion Intuitive inquiry meditation could help beginner meditators detach from the concept of Buddha but not from that of the self. However, in experienced meditators, the opposite was true. ERSP analysis showed that only experienced meditators exhibited significant alterations in brain activity dynamics during intuitive inquiry meditation, which might enable these practitioners to become spontaneously detached from the concept of the self. These findings revealed the neural mechanism by which long-term practice of intuitive inquiry meditation can influence the doubting process and its effect on self-schema processing. (shrink)

[Adapted from publisher-provided promotional materials by English Book Review Editor, Janny HC Leung]M. Catherine Gruber (2014) I’m Sorry for What I’ve Done: The Language of Courtroom Apologies. Oxford University Press, USA, ISBN: 978-0-19-932566-5This book examines 52 apologetic allocutions produced during federal sentencing hearings. The practice of inviting defendants to make a statement in their own behalf is a long-standing one and it is understood as offering defendants the opportunity to impress a judge or jury with their remorse, which could (...) be a factor in the sentence that is imposed. Defendants raised the topics of the offense, mitigation, future behaviour and the sentence in different ways and this book explores the pros and cons associated with the different strategies that they used. Based on corpus data, Gruber argues that the application of Austin’s (1962) performative–constative continuum reveals that offense-related utterances that fall closer to the constative end are.. (shrink)

The article presents a methodological update on the lexical profile of informal spoken English with the emphasis on movies, television programs, and soap operas. The study analyzed Mark Davies’s mega-corpora with data containing approximately 625 million words and employed Paul Nation’s comprehensive and up-to-date British National Corpus/Corpus of Contemporary American English wordlists. Data from the analyses showed that viewers would need a vocabulary knowledge at 3,000 and 5,000 words frequency levels to understand 95 and 98% of the words in scripted (...) dialogs, respectively. Soap operas were found to be less lexically demanding compared to TV programs and movies. Findings are expected to fill in the methodological gaps between vocabulary assessment and vocabulary profiling research. (shrink)

The present study analyzed the vocabulary profile of the News on the Web corpus, which contained 12 billion words from online newspapers and magazines in 20 countries to determine the vocabulary knowledge needed to reasonably understand online newspaper and magazine articles. The results showed that, in general, knowledge of the most frequent 4,000 word families in the British National Corpus/Corpus of Contemporary American English wordlist plus proper nouns, marginal words, transparent compounds and acronyms was necessary to gain 95% coverage for (...) the NOW corpus. However, when it came to the 98% coverage, online newspaper and magazine articles from different countries had relatively distinct lexical demands. In-depth analyses were carried out and the findings offered comprehensive insights into the issue. Implications for teaching and learning were also provided. (shrink)

Local item dependence is one of the most critical assumption in the Rasch model when it comes to the validity of a test. As the field of vocabulary assessment is calling for more clarity and validity for vocabulary tests, such assumption becomes more important than ever. The article offers a Rasch-based investigation into the issue of LID with the focus on the two popular formats of Vocabulary Levels Tests : multiple-choice and matching. A Listening Vocabulary Levels Test and an Updated (...) Vocabulary Levels Test were given to a single cohort of 311 university students in an English as a Foreign Language context. The analyses of raw score and standardized residuals correlations were conducted. The findings found no relationship between the 4-option, multiple-choice format of the LVLT and item local dependence. However, results from score and standardized residuals correlations analyses showed a strong link between the 3-item-per-cluster, matching format and item local dependence. The study calls for greater attention to the format of future vocabulary tests and support the use of meaning-recall formats in vocabulary testing. (shrink)

This paper aims at revealing the various meanings of schools as more than built physical environments from a geographical‐phenomenological (or ‘geo‐phenomenological’) perspective. This paper consists of five sections: the first explicates the meaning of ‘geo‐phenomenology’; the second reveals the meaning of ‘environment’ and a dialectics of strangeness and intimacy through geo‐phenomenological analysis; the third examines the meanings of environment as ‘space’ and ‘place’ and the act of naming as the process of constructing meaning between humans and environment; the fourth section (...) attempts to explore the meaning of conceiving school as a particular environment; and the final is the conclusion. (shrink)

Tu Weiming Tu Weiming is one of the most famous Chinese Confucian thinkers of the 20th and 21st centuries. As a prominent member of the third generation of “New Confucians,” Tu stressed the significance of religiosity within Confucianism. Inspired by his teacher Mou Zongsan as well as his decades of study … Continue reading Tu Weiming →.

In Heidegger’s Black Notebooks some ideas about political embodiment can be found, which have come under suspicion to justify the Third Reich’s race law. In the following article, the analysis and discussion of Heidegger’s political embodiment will firstly be traced back to the traditional understanding of the human as a “rational animal”, and will then look at how the “racial being” is subsequently developed and eventually transformed into political absolute subjectivism. Moreover, Heidegger’s in-depth explanation and critique on Nietzsche’s metaphysics, which (...) he views as having transformed human experiences to a metaphysical representation and thus misunderstanding human nature, will also be clarified. Through Heidegger’s critic on biologism, a profound disclosure which potentially imply an attack of the racism at his time can be shown. Furthermore, Heidegger’s thinking of Being as a kind of emancipation of European political embodiment will also be analyzed. Lastly, although Heidegger and Confucianism have different ideas of lived-body, both schools basically show the same fundamental understanding of human nature. In regard to this, their understanding of political embodiment, their similarities and divergences, will be elucidated. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate nonnormal modal systems in the vicinity of the Lewis system S1. It might be claimed that Lewis's modal systems (S1, S2, S3, S4, and S5) are the starting point of modern modal logics. However, our interests in the Lewis systems and their relatives are not (merely) historical. They possess certain syntactical features and their frames certain structural properties that are of interest to us. Our starting point is not S1, but a weaker logic S1 (S1 (...) without the schema [T]). We extend it to S1D, which can be considered as a deontic counterpart of the alethic S1. Soundness and completeness of these systems are then demonstrated within a prenormal idiom. We conclude with some philosophical remarks on the interpretation of our deontic logic. (shrink)

Ray and Cooper (2024) argue that bioethicists should take environmental justice seriously as a matter of health justice; as part of this project, they defend a legal right to a healthy environment....

We consider a setting where a decision maker’s uncertainty is represented by a set of probability measures, rather than a single measure. Measure-by-measure updating of such a set of measures upon acquiring new information is well known to suffer from problems. To deal with these problems, we propose using weighted sets of probabilities: a representation where each measure is associated with a weight, which denotes its significance. We describe a natural approach to updating in such a situation and a natural (...) approach to determining the weights. We then show how this representation can be used in decision making, by modifying a standard approach to decision making—minimizing expected regret—to obtain minimax weighted expected regret. We provide an axiomatization that characterizes preferences induced by MWER both in the static and dynamic case. (shrink)

Obstetric ultrasound is the well-recognized prenatal test used to visualize and determine the condition of a pregnant woman and her fetus. Apart from the clinical application, some businesses have started promoting the use of fetal ultrasound machines for nonmedical reasons. Non-medical fetal ultrasound (also known as ‘keepsake’ ultrasound) is defined as using ultrasound to view, take a picture, or determine the sex of a fetus without a medical indication. Notwithstanding the guidelines and warnings regarding ultrasound safety issued by governments and (...) professional bodies, the absence of scientifically proven physical harm to fetuses from this procedure seems to provide these businesses with grounds for rapid expansion. However, this argument is too simplistic because current epidemiological evidence is not synchronous with advancing ultrasound technology. As non-medical fetal ultrasound has aroused very significant public attention, a thorough ethical analysis of this topic is essential. Using a multifaceted approach, we analyse the ethical perspective of non-medical fetal ultrasound in terms of the expectant mother, the fetus and health professionals. After applying four major theories of ethics and principles (the precautionary principle; theories of consequentialism and impartiality; duty-based theory; and rights-based theories), we conclude that obstetric ultrasound practice is ethically justifiable only if the indication for its use is based on medical evidence. Non-medical fetal ultrasound can be considered ethically unjustifiable. Nevertheless, the ethical analysis of this issue is time dependent owing to rapid advancements in ultrasound technology and the safety issue. The role of health professionals in ensuring that obstetric ultrasound is an ethically justifiable practice is also discussed. (shrink)

Hawking, in his book, A Brief History of Time, concludes with a conditional remark: If we find a complete theory to explain the physical world, then we will come to understand God’s mind. With Goedel in mind, we can raise questions about the completeness of our scientific understanding and the nature of our understanding with regard to God’s mind. We need to ask about the higher order of our understanding when we move to knowing God’s mind. We go onto develop (...) these problems with Nietzsche’s thoughts on the death of God, and the emergence of super human intelligences. Then, we come to Buddha, a logical genius, to see how the Buddhistic enlightenment exemplifies the super human intelligence, as well as the higher order understanding in our knowledge of God’s mind. (shrink)

Insanity is identified with irrationality, while rationality is considered to be the mark of sanity. Yet we want to say that rationality could be the cause of insanity. We can see a subtle kind of insanity inherent in an institution believed to be highly rational. Rationality in an ideological belief also turns into rational insanity when the ideology itself works for the interest of the advantaged as a tool of deception. We believe in the rationality of open communication. We believe (...) that information technology has given us the most rational means for open communication. The Internet revolution or Internet democracy is expected to become the most rational means for the institutional goal of democracy. However the rationality of Internet communication has demonstrated a serious tendency to cause Internet insanity. We have been proud of being 'rational animals'. But now we are concerned because 'rational animal' could mean 'rational but animal-like' or 'rational but impulsive', which in turn could mean 'rational but violent' or 'rational but mad and insane'. Perhaps it is time for us to think seriously about the possibility of mass insanity through rational insanity, and seek the way beyond such rational insanity. (shrink)

Despite the growing interest in female expatriates, few empirical studies have focussed on corporate career development activities available to women. Given the faltering corporate support for female business expatriates in general, one may presume that such organizational activities are less available to women than to men. To test this proposition, a large number of Western female and male business expatriates assigned to Hong Kong responded to a mail survey. Controlling for differences between the two gender groups, three significant gender differences (...) were found, all indicating a lower availability of these corporate activities to women than to men, partially supporting expectations. These corporate career development activities were fast track programs, individual career counseling and career planning workshops. Implications of these findings for globalizing firms as well as for their female employees are discussed in detail. (shrink)

This book review symposium aims to open a space for discussions and questions responded to the book Education between Speech and Writing: Crossing the Boundaries of Dao and Deconstruction, which is...

This study examines the degrees of corporate disclosure and transparency of publicly listed companies in two emerging markets and analyzes corporatedisclosure practices as a function of specific firm characteristics. The analysis uses the disclosure and transparency scores extracted from a survey instrument designed to rate disclosure practices of publicly listed companies by using the OECD Corporate Governance Principles as an implicit benchmark. Empirical results show that financial characteristics explain some of the variation in the degrees of corporate disclosure for firms (...) in Hong Kong but not for firms in Thailand. Further, corporate governance characteristics, such as board size and board composition, show more significant associations with the degrees of corporate disclosure inThailand than in Hong Kong. The results are broadly consistent with the notion that good corporate governance leads to better corporate disclosure and transparency in less developed markets. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 114-116.

In this paper we investigate nonnormal modal systems in the vicinity of the Lewis system S1. It might be claimed that Lewis's modal systems are the starting point of modern modal logics. However, our interests in the Lewis systems and their relatives are not historical. They possess certain syntactical features and their frames certain structural properties that are of interest to us. Our starting point is not S1, but a weaker logic S1$^0$. We extend it to S1$^0$D, which can be (...) considered as a deontic counterpart of the alethic S1. Soundness and completeness of these systems are then demonstrated within a prenormal idiom. We conclude with some philosophical remarks on the interpretation of our deontic logic. (shrink)

Relationships with international students can be beneficial to higher education in terms of financial and human resources. For this reason, establishing and maintaining such relationships are usually pre-eminent concerns. In this study, we extended the application of the disconfirmation expectation model by incorporating components from subjective task value to predict the loyalty of international students toward their host countries. On a sample of 410 Vietnamese students enrolled in establishments of higher education in over 15 countries across the globe, we employed (...) structural equation model to construct the conceptual model. Our empirical findings revealed that while the roles of satisfaction and disconfirmation are still important as direct and indirect antecedents of international student loyalty, its most powerful predictors are the three components of subjective task value: attainment, utility and intrinsic. These insights result in a number of implications for actors on the higher ducation scene, such as heads of institutions and policy makers. (shrink)

We investigated how employees’ perceptions of ethical leadership affects different facets of work behavior. We also explored the effects of psychological ownership on this relationship. Data were collected from 456 workers from various industries in Taiwan over three time periods. Ethical leadership positively related to both psychological ownership of the job and organization. Specifically, we found that psychological ownership of the job positively predicted contextual performance and was negatively associated with counterproductive work behavior. Additionally we found psychological ownership for the (...) organization to be negatively associated with counterproductive work behavior for the organization. (shrink)

It is not uncommon for business institutions to position themselves as stakeholder-caring companies or organizations. However, there is little research on conceptualizing stakeholder-caring as a component of brand image. Through a theoretical lens of brand-consumer interactions, this paper introduces a new construct—stakeholder-caring image—and proposes a model that examines stakeholder-caring’s antecedents (integrity and courtesy) and its consequence (customer satisfaction). The two antecedents—integrity and courtesy—capture intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of brand-consumer interaction practice, respectively, while the consequence (customer satisfaction) is one important behavioral (...) outcome in marketing. The proposed model was tested with Hong Kong customers (n = 296) via a systematic survey. The data were analyzed using LISREL. Several measurement and structural models were constructed to test the proposed hypotheses. The findings reveal that the effect of integrity on customer satisfaction is mediated by a stakeholder-caring image. However, contrary to the conventional wisdom, we surprisingly find that courtesy is not effective to build a stakeholder-caring image. Managerially, this research offers guidance on how to develop stakeholder-caring image and subsequently increase customer satisfaction. In addition, we discuss the nuanced distinction between a stakeholder-caring image and related brand constructs, such as “sincerity” in Aaker’s (1997) brand personality framework. (shrink)

This article examines how ethical values are integrated into legal education in Hong Kong, a prominent financial hub in Asia. It focuses on two aspects of integration: the integrative use of prescriptive and experiential teaching methods and the integration of legal ethics education into the curricula of law schools. Effective implementation of legal ethics education in Hong Kong faces challenges due to inadequate commitment to the integrative approach in law schools. While integrating legal ethics education into the curriculum alone is (...) insufficient, there is also a lack of effective integration of prescriptive and experiential teaching methods. To address these needs and challenges, the article proposes a dedicated core course on legal ethics supported by seminars and workshops led by experienced practitioners. This approach aims to foster ethical conduct among law students, enhancing Hong Kong’s reputation as an Asian financial centre by cultivating a culture of ethical responsibility, which is vital for the development and sustainability of Hong Kong’s legal landscape. (shrink)