Although children’s negative affectivity is a temperamental characteristic that is biologically based, it is framed within and shaped by their emotional environments which are partly created by maternal emotion expressivity in the family. Children, in turn, play a role in shaping their family emotional context, which could lead to changes in mothers’ emotion expressivity in the family. However, these theorized longitudinal bidirectional relations between child negative affectivity and maternal positive and negative expressivity have not been studied from toddlerhood to early (...) school-age. The current study utilized a cross-lagged panel model to examine the reciprocal relations between children’s negative affectivity and maternal expressivity within the family over the course of early childhood. Participants were 140 mother–child dyads. Mothers reported the positive and negative expressivity in the family and children’s negative affectivity in toddlerhood, preschool, and school-age. Maternal negative expressivity and child negative affectivity at T1 were significantly correlated. Maternal negative expressivity at T1 significantly predicted child negative affectivity at T3. Children’s negative affectivity at T2 significantly predicted mothers’ negative expressivity at T3. Mothers’ positive expressivity was not related to children’s negative affectivity at any of the three time points. The findings demonstrate the reciprocal relations between children’s negative affectivity and maternal negative expressivity in the family, suggesting the importance of the interplay between child temperament and maternal expressivity within the family emotional context. (shrink)

This research examined whether the non-conscious activation of an implicit appraisal concept could affect responses associated with the corresponding emotion as predicted by appraisal theories. Explicit and implicit emotional responses were examined. We focused on implicit unfairness and its effect on anger. The results show that subliminal activation of implicit unfairness affected implicit anger responses but not explicit anger feelings . The non-conscious effect of implicit unfairness was specific to anger, as no effect on sadness, fear, and guilt was found.

Vampire stories and folklores have originated from a range of sources; however, it is rather certain that the repulsive but attractive vampiric monster images in present popular culture are primarily derived from Anne Rice’s novel Interview with the Vampire. That being said, it was around the end of the eighteenth century that vampires first invaded the popular literary world, with literary vampires growing noticeably more powerful and perpetual than any of their monstrous predecessors in the years since the publication of (...) John Polidori’s successful short story The Vampyre in 1819. Due to associated aesthetic transformations, vampirism itself has become increasingly popular, to the extent that it now commands some followers who even worship vampiric rituals and lifestyles in spite of there being no solid, physical evidence of actual vampires, but rather only literary and imaginary examples of the creatures. In order to grasp how this fascination with vampires has turned into a quasi-religious phenomenon and ideology, a proper investigation of vampiric mechanisms and aesthetics should be empirical in nature. Utilizing Interview with the Vampire as an example due to its clearly substantial influence on current vampire imagery, this article examines how the paradoxical interchange between aversion and attraction plays its role in the visceral religion of the vampire-immersed world. (shrink)

A cross-sectional study to ascertain what the Singapore population would regard as material risk in the anaesthesia consent-taking process and identify demographic factors that predict patient preferences in medical decision-making to tailor a more patient-centered informed consent. A survey was performed involving patients 21 years old and above who attended the pre-operative evaluation clinic over a 1-month period in Singapore General Hospital. Questionnaires were administered to assess patients’ perception of material risks, by trained interviewers. Patients’ demographics were obtained. Mann–Whitney U (...) test and Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance was used. Statistical significance was taken at p < 0.05. Four hundred fourteen patients were eligible of which 26 refused to participate and 24 were excluded due to language barrier. 364 patients were recruited. A higher level of education, being employed and younger age group are factors identified in patients who wanted greater participation in medical decisions. Gender, marital status, type of surgery, and previous surgical history did not affect their level of participation. The complications most patients knew about were Nausea, Drowsiness and Surgical Wound Pain. Patients ranked Heart Attack, Death and Stroke as the most significant risks that they wanted to be informed about in greater detail. Most patients wanted to make a joint decision with the anaesthetist, instead of letting the doctor decide or deciding for themselves. Discussion with the anaesthetist is the preferred medium of communication compared to reading a pamphlet or watching a video. Age and educational level can influence medical decision-making. Despite the digital age, most patients still prefer a clinic consult instead of audio-visual multimedia for pre-operative anaesthetic counselling. The local population appears to place greater importance on rare but serious complications compared to common complications. This illustrates the need to contextualize information provided during informed consent to strengthen the doctor-patient relationship. (shrink)

Discourses between Ayōttitācar, 1845-1914 and Ma. Ciṅkāravēlu,1860-1946 on Buddhism. These were published in Tamilan̲, Tamil magazine, published between 1907-1914.

Discourses between Ayōttitācar, 1845-1914 and Ma. Ciṅkāravēlu,1860-1946 on Buddhism. These were published in Tamilan̲, Tamil magazine, published between 1907-1914.

草莓蛋糕上的一層厚厚糖霜會讓人聯想起什麼？是粉白世界裡的鮮紅嬌客？火與冰的映照？又或僅止是表象般的「草莓上的一層糖霜」？每個人的想像皆有不同，也無分對錯，我們不必追問烘焙的創作動機或主題，畢竟切蛋糕的 人的感受才最重要。 英加登說「作品是藝術家與觀賞者的共同產品。」草莓蛋糕如此，文學、藝術品更是如此。然而，觀賞者是如何感受？又是受到何種因素影響？不僅只是由「感受是主觀的。」、「每個人的感覺不同。」等等浮泛說詞所構成，本 書由波蘭現象學家英加登、德國文學接受美學奠基者姚斯與伊塞爾所研討的的美學詮釋理論，解開「有些作品始終在不同時空受到尊崇，有些卻得等到作者逝世甚至隔了數百年才重新獲得世人青睞，而有些作品只能冰冷冷得放在 書櫃，直到永遠被遺忘？」這個看似簡單，實則艱難的謎題。.

本书是林美玫教授结合美国宗教史、近现代中国史、美国圣公会教会史、中美关系史、差传学等的学术训练, 分析十九世纪美国圣公会中国差会的男、女传教士们如何面对在华发展传教事业的挣扎与突破的一本专论.

你是在追求信仰？還是被迷信束縛？ 本書共分九章，先以宏觀與求真的角度，剖析信仰的層層迷思，再闡述宗教的誕生與演化，並證明宗教的經典與文物皆是人為的著作，更沒有所謂的「神的指示」，而天堂與地獄更是經不起科學的驗證。最末進一步地論述現代科 技揭穿了許多偽造的神蹟，以及我們應該如何善用科學來瞭解自然現象和對鬼神的疑惑。全書從人文、哲學、社會、考古、心理、物理、化學、腦神經等科學角度，解析信仰並破除迷信，以釐清真相與幻影。本書作者曾任科學月 刊社理事長與總編輯，以科學及人文的角度，檢視所謂的「神蹟」！.

A treatise on living a rich life from a Chinese point of view advocates a pursuit of self enjoyment through humor, joy, creativity, conversation, reading, nature appreciation, balanced inaction, and other non-material activities.

The longstanding philosophical orthodoxy on counterfactuals holds, in part, that counterfactuals with metaphysically impossible antecedents are indiscriminately vacuously true. Drawing on a number of examples from across scientific practice, I argue that science routinely treats counterpossibles as non-vacuously true and also routinely treats other counterpossibles as false. In fact, the success of many central scientific endeavors requires that counterpossibles can be non-vacuously true or false. So the philosophical orthodoxy that counterpossibles are indiscriminately vacuously true is inconsistent with scientific practice. I (...) argue that this provides a conclusive reason to reject the orthodoxy. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

While there is a significant amount of discussion in philosophy on the ethics of wildlife conservation, there is relatively less discussion on the justice of conservation. By the “justice of conservation”, I mean the question of what we owe to fellow human beings with respect to conservation goals and practices. The goal of this paper is two-fold: first to highlight the justice-gap in the morality of wildlife conservation and, second, to frame and propose two dimensions of global conservational justice for (...) further discussion. Specifically, I suggest the need for a more equitable conservation to address the problem of distributive unfairness in global conservation practices, and the need to “decolonize” conservation to ensure more deliberative fairness in how global conservation problems and solutions are determined. (shrink)

This article clarifies the relationship between moral personhood and moral management in ethical leadership from a Confucian perspective. Drawing from four Confucian classics, this study integrates the leader’s ethical values and activities undertaken to promote virtues in followers. The harmonisation of moral personhood and moral management is facilitated by two cardinal Confucian beliefs: innate human nature and moral self-cultivation. From a Confucian viewpoint, all human beings are endowed with a good nature that enables them to become virtuous persons and leaders. (...) Ethical leaders subdue their selfish desires and extend their natural moral feelings of true goodness, righteousness, propriety and wisdom to others. Moral personhood and moral management are inseparable because to cultivate oneself morally is to help others to become moral persons. By synthesising moral personhood and moral management, a Confucian worldview of ethical leadership contributes to leadership studies in two main ways: safeguarding against the leader’s abuse of power, and advancing organisational change through path-shaping. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming our world: today machines not only can mimic human actions but out-perform human agents in many activities, including learning and thinking. AI offers revolutionary solutions and new possibilities in transportation, business, communication, medicine, law, and other domains. While some welcome this brave new world, others fear the threats AI pose to people’s livelihoods, social relations, individuality, freedom, and perhaps even the very survival of the human species. No doubt some of this existential angst is exaggerated, (...) but AI does raise questions for our understanding of the world and ourselves that require serious reflection, including questions about adequacy of education in various aspects. This chapter offers, from the perspectives of John Dewey’s Pragmatism as well as Confucianism, some reflections on the role of the humanities in education in response to the opportunities and challenges of the development and widespread use of AI. It shows that Dewey and Confucius share similar views regarding the humanistic purpose of education and their philosophies of education offer arguments for why humanities education will be relevant, if not more important, when many jobs we are familiar with become obsolete. Their attitudes toward the economic motive in education will help us rethink the meaning of work in a “world without work.” At the same time, they offer a critical evaluation of contemporary humanities education, which have failed to realize their visions of personal cultivation and growth. Among its failings is the continued dichotomy between the humanities and the sciences. In the age of AI, it has become even more vital to integrate them to avoid science and technology from becoming materialistic and anti-human while the humanities become merely literary and without any means to transform the world. (shrink)

In this essay, I draw upon Ellen J. Langer’s notions of mindlessness and mindfulness to identify and delineate Confucius’ views on mindfulness. Langer’s theory exemplifies a social-cognitive approach to mindfulness which is a prominent orientation in the extant research. I argue that Confucius, like Langer, rejects mindlessness that is characterised by an over-reliance on automatic responses based on past knowledge and experiences. Furthermore, Confucius supports Langerian mindfulness by underlining the importance of a flexible mindset that is demonstrated through making novel (...) distinctions, appreciating new perspectives and being sensitive to the context. But Confucius’ formulation of mindfulness goes beyond Langer’s by advocating the setting of one’s heart-mind on learning and the application of virtues. A Confucian interpretation of mindfulness debunks an East-West dichotomy on mindfulness and illustrates the harmonisation of the cognitive, affective, moral and social dimensions of mindfulness. (shrink)

As social media becomes increasingly popular, human subjects researchers are able to use these platforms to locate, track, and communicate with study participants, thereby increasing participant retention and the generalizability and validity of research. The use of social media; however, raises novel ethical and regulatory issues that have received limited attention in the literature and federal regulations. We review research ethics and regulations and outline the implications for maintaining participant privacy, respecting participant autonomy, and promoting researcher transparency when using social (...) media to locate and track participants. We offer a rubric that can be used in future studies to determine ethical and regulation-consistent use of social media platforms and illustrate the rubric using our study team’s experience with Facebook. We also offer recommendations for both researchers and institutional review boards that emphasize the importance of well-described procedures for social media use as... (shrink)

Modern Western medical individualism has had a significant impact on health care in China. This essay demonstrates the ways in which such Western-style individualism has been explicitly endorsed in China’s 2010 directive: The Basic Norms of the Documentation of the Medical Record. The Norms require that the patient himself, rather than a member of his family, sign each informed consent form. This change in clinical practice indicates a shift toward medical individualism in Chinese healthcare legislation. Such individualism, however, is incompatible (...) with the character of Chinese familism that is deeply rooted in the Chinese ethical tradition. It also contradicts family-based patterns of health care in China. Moreover, the requirement for individual informed consent is incompatible with numerous medical regulations promulgated in the past two decades. This essay argues that while Chinese medical legislation should learn from relevant Western ideas, it should not simply copy such practices by importing medical individualism into Chinese health care. Chinese healthcare policy is properly based on Chinese medical familist resources. (shrink)

This essay draws on classical Confucian intellectual resources to argue that the person who emerges from a head transplant would be neither the person who provided the head, nor the person who provided the body, but a new, different person. We construct two types of argument to support this conclusion: one is based on the classical Confucian metaphysics of human life as qi activity; the other is grounded in the Confucian view of personal identity as being inseparable from one’s familial (...) relations. These Confucian ideas provide a reasonable alternative to the currently dominant view that one’s personal identity “follows” one’s head. Together, these arguments imply that head transplantation is ethically inappropriate. (shrink)

The desire-satisfaction theory of welfare says that what is basically good for a subject is the satisfaction of his desires. One challenge to this view is the existence of quirky desires, such as a desire to count blades of grass. It is hard to see why anyone would desire such things, and thus hard to believe that the satisfaction of such desires could be basically good for anyone. This suggests that only some desires are basically good when satisfied, and that (...) desire satisfactionists owe us an account of which desires these are, and why. In "Quirky Desires and Well-Being," Donald Bruckner proposes such an account: a desire is welfare-relevant (i.e., such that its satisfaction would be basically good for its subject) if and only if and because its subject could describe its object in a way that makes it comprehensible what about the object attracts him or appeals to him. We are inclined to view quirky desires as welfare-irrelevant because we assume that their objects cannot be described in such a way. But if there were a quirky desire whose object could be so described by the subject whose desire it is, then this desire would be relevant to that subject's welfare. I will argue that while Bruckner's view delivers plausible verdicts about the cases to which it is meant to apply, its account of what makes a desire welfare-relevant is unmotivated and implausible. Desire satisfactionists can retain what is plausible about his view while endorsing a better explanation of why welfare-relevant desires have that status if they accept the following account instead: a desire is welfare-relevant if and only if and because something about its object attracts, or appeals to, the subject who has the desire. (shrink)

A sequent calculus S for the variety tqBa of all topological quasi-Boolean algebras is established. Using a construction of syntactic finite algebraic model, the finite model property of S is shown, and thus the decidability of S is obtained. We also introduce two non-distributive variants of topological quasi-Boolean algebras. For the variety TDM5 of all topological De Morgan lattices with the axiom 5, we establish a sequent calculus S5 and prove that the cut elimination holds for it. Consequently the decidability (...) of S5 is established. Furthermore, this proof-theoretic method is applied to some subvarieties of TDM5. (shrink)