In the United States, final amendments to the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects (“the Common Rule”) were published on January 19, 2017, and they will take effect on January 21, 2019. One of the most widely discussed provisions is that for the first time, federal regulations governing research with humans authorize the use of broad consent for future, unspecified research on individually identifiable biospecimens and associated data. Many questions have been raised about broad consent, including what effect (...) it will have on research and whether it adequately protects the interests of research participants.There are lessons to be learned for the U.S. and other countries by looking to countries that already have experience with broad consent for biobank collection and with the storage and subsequent use of the biospecimens and data. This article describes how broad consent works in five countries—Canada (in Quebec), Israel, Nigeria, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom—and with different types of biobanks: national biobanks, federated biobanks, and regional biobanks. Evaluating the provisions and challenges of the broad consent approaches in these countries can inform policies for this increasingly used approach to biobank regulation. (shrink)

Recent data indicate that under a specific posthypnotic suggestion to circumvent reading, highly suggestible subjects successfully eliminated the Stroop interference effect. The present study examined whether an optical explanation could account for this finding. Using cyclopentolate hydrochloride eye drops to pharmacologically prevent visual accommodation in all subjects, behavioral Stroop data were collected from six highly hypnotizables and six less suggestibles using an optical setup that guaranteed either sharply focused or blurred vision. The highly suggestibles performed the Stroop task when naturally (...) vigilant, under posthypnotic suggestion not to read, and while visually blurred; the less suggestibles ran naturally vigilant, while looking away, and while visually blurred. Although visual accommodation was precluded for all subjects, posthypnotic suggestion effectively eliminated Stroop interference and was comparable to looking away in controls. These data strengthen the view that Stroop interference is neither robust nor inevitable and support the hypothesis that posthypnotic suggestion may exert a top-down influence on neural processing. (shrink)

Recent data indicate that under a specific posthypnotic suggestion to circumvent reading, highly suggestible subjects successfully eliminated the Stroop interference effect. The present study examined whether an optical explanation could account for this finding. Using cyclopentolate hydrochloride eye drops to pharmacologically prevent visual accommodation in all subjects, behavioral Stroop data were collected from six highly hypnotizables and six less suggestibles using an optical setup that guaranteed either sharply focused or blurred vision. The highly suggestibles performed the Stroop task when naturally (...) vigilant, under posthypnotic suggestion not to read, and while visually blurred; the less suggestibles ran naturally vigilant, while looking away, and while visually blurred. Although visual accommodation was precluded for all subjects, posthypnotic suggestion effectively eliminated Stroop interference and was comparable to looking away in controls. These data strengthen the view that Stroop interference is neither robust nor inevitable and support the hypothesis that posthypnotic suggestion may exert a top-down influence on neural processing. (shrink)

Unfounded—conspiracy and health—beliefs about COVID-19 have accompanied the pandemic worldwide. Here, we examined cross-nationally the structure and correlates of these beliefs with an 8-item scale, using a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. We obtained a two-factor model of unfounded (conspiracy and health) beliefs with good internal structure (average CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.05, SRMR = 0.04), but a high correlation between the two factors (average latent factor correlation = 0.57). This model was replicable across 50 countries (total N = 13,579), (...) as evidenced by metric invariance between countries (CFI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.06, SRMS = 0.07) as well as scalar invariance across genders (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03) and educational levels (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03). Also, lower levels of education, more fear of COVID-19, and more cynicism were weakly associated with stronger conspiracy and health beliefs. The study contributes to knowledge about the structure of unfounded beliefs, and reveals the potential relevance of affective (i.e., fear of COVID-19) and cognitive (i.e., cynicism) factors along with demographics, in endorsing such beliefs. In summary, we obtained cross-cultural evidence for the distinctiveness of unfounded conspiracy and health beliefs about COVID-19 in terms of their structure and correlates. (shrink)

The articles in this collection were all selected from the first five volumes of the Journal of Dialectics of Nature published by the Chinese Academy of Sciences between 1979 and 1985. The Journal was established in 1979 as a comprehensive theoretical publication concerning the history, philosophy and sociology of the natural sciences. It began publication as a response to China's reform, particularly the policy of opening to the outside world. Chinese scholars began to undertake distinctive, original research in these fields. (...) This collection provides a cross-section of their efforts during the initial phase. To enable western scholars to understand the historical process of this change in Chinese academics, Yu Guangyuan's `On the Emancipation of the Mind' and Xu Liangying's `Essay on the Role of Science and Democracy in Society' have been included in this collection. Three of the papers included on the philosophy of science are discussions of philosophical issues in cosmology and biology by scientists themselves. The remaining four are written by philosophers of science and discuss information and cognition, homeostasis and Chinese traditional medicine, the I Ching (Yi Jing) and mathematics, etc. Papers have been selected on the history of both classical and modern science and technology, the most distinctive of which are macro-comparisons of the development of science in China and the west. Some papers discuss the issue of the demarcation of periods in the history of science, the history of ancient Chinese mathematics, astronomy, metallurgy, machinery, medicine, etc. Others discuss the history of modern physics and biology, the history of historiography of science in China and the history of regional development of Chinese science and technology. Also included are biographies of three post-eighteenth-century Chinese scholars, Li Shanlan (1811-1882), Hua Hengfang (1833–1902), and Cai Yuanpei (1868–1940), who contributed greatly to the introduction of western science and scholarship to China. In addition, three short papers have been included introducing the interactions between Chinese scholars and three great western scientists, Niels Bohr, Norbert Wiener, and Robert A. Millikan. (shrink)

The visual system is known to extract summary representations of visually similar objects which bias the perception of individual objects toward the ensemble average. Although vision plays a large role in guiding action, less is known about whether ensemble representation is informative for action. Motor behavior is tuned to the veridical dimensions of objects and generally considered resistant to perceptual biases. However, when the relevant grasp dimension is not available or is unconstrained, ensemble perception may be informative to behavior by (...) providing gist information about surrounding objects. In the present study, we examined if summary representations of a surrounding ensemble display influenced grip aperture and orientation when participants reached-to-grasp a central circular target which had an explicit size but importantly no explicit orientation that the visuomotor system could selectively attend to. Maximum grip aperture and grip orientation were not biased by ensemble statistics during grasping, although participants were able to perceive and provide manual estimations of the average size and orientation of the ensemble display. Support vector machine classification of ensemble statistics achieved above-chance classification accuracy when trained on kinematic and electromyography data of the perceptual but not grasping conditions, supporting our univariate findings. These results suggest that even along unconstrained grasping dimensions, visually-guided behaviors toward real-world objects are not biased by ensemble processing. (shrink)

This book is a collection of articles on different aspects of university education in China since the late nineteenth century, addressing how far the ideal of modern university education, which has gradually been developed in the West since the age of European Enlightenment, was adopted or transformed by Chinese universities.

The tsunami effect of the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting many aspects of scientific activities. Multidisciplinary experimental studies with international collaborators are hindered by the closing of the national borders, logistic issues due to lockdown, quarantine restrictions, and social distancing requirements. The full impact of this crisis on science is not clear yet, but the above-mentioned issues have most certainly restrained academic research activities. Sharing innovative solutions between researchers is in high demand in this situation. The aim of this paper is (...) to share our successful practice of using web-based communication and remote control software for real-time long-distance control of brain stimulation. This solution may guide and encourage researchers to cope with restrictions and has the potential to help expanding international collaborations by lowering travel time and costs. (shrink)

Ruiping Fan responds to Ho Chuen Kwan by arguing that Kwan’s criticisms are grounded in liberal individualist presumptions and misrepresent traditional Confucian teachings. Confucian morality and its value of harmony do not imply self-determination; rather, authentically Confucian views support family determination: for important individual issues, both the individual and the family possess moral authority and hold a veto right in decisions. This is a middle-way position, as it rejects not only individual determination but also parental domination. Fan admits that his (...) notion of Confucian family determination is not found directly in the classical texts, but believes broader understanding of the importance of the family in Confucian teachings supports his notion, as do the ritual practices recorded in classical texts. Fan argues also that Kwan draws a false contrast between familial decision making and the subject’s own determination of what is good and right: in Confucian tradition, family determination is itself precisely how we find and follow the proper way. Moreover, a distinctively Confucian value of liberty is embedded within traditional notions of harmony; this Confucian conception of harmonious liberty contrasts with liberal tradition’s self-initiating conception of liberty, while also avoiding the opposite extreme of family authoritarianism imposed by compulsory laws. Confucian familial decision making is neither paternalistic nor democratic, but rather harmonious. (shrink)

Notions of unknown truths and unknowable truths are important in formal epistemology, which are related to each other in e.g. Fitch’s paradox of knowability. Although there have been some logical research on the notion of unknown truths and some philosophical discussion on the two notions, there seems to be no logical research on unknowable truths. In this paper, we propose a logic of unknowable truths, investigate the logical properties of unknown truths and unknowable truths, which includes the similarities of the (...) two notions and the relationship between the two notions, and axiomatize this logic. (shrink)

The ‘Wu xing’ belongs to Guodian bamboo slips texts, which were buried around 300 BCE and excavated in 1993. Its relation with Mengzi is widely investigated. Yet how it is philosophically related to Xunzi receives little attention. In this article, I illustrate a neglected relation between ‘Wu xing’ and Xunzi, by elucidating how shan 善 (goodness) is first raised in ‘Wu xing’ and developed by Xunzi into a concrete idea. Both ‘Wu xing’ and Xunzi propose that shan exists in action, (...) which boils down to the harmonious unity of the mind and body, and to secure the ideal relation between the mind and body requires constant learning and practicing, particularly, of rituals. Learning and practicing not only lead one to realize shan, but eventually to become a consummate practitioner of rituals, to use Xunzi’s words, to become a sage. (shrink)

Unfounded—conspiracy and health—beliefs about COVID-19 have accompanied the pandemic worldwide. Here, we examined cross-nationally the structure and correlates of these beliefs with an 8-item scale, using a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. We obtained a two-factor model of unfounded (conspiracy and health) beliefs with good internal structure (average CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.05, SRMR = 0.04), but a high correlation between the two factors (average latent factor correlation = 0.57). This model was replicable across 50 countries (total N = 13,579), (...) as evidenced by metric invariance between countries (CFI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.06, SRMS = 0.07) as well as scalar invariance across genders (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03) and educational levels (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03). Also, lower levels of education, more fear of COVID-19, and more cynicism were weakly associated with stronger conspiracy and health beliefs. The study contributes to knowledge about the structure of unfounded beliefs, and reveals the potential relevance of affective (i.e., fear of COVID-19) and cognitive (i.e., cynicism) factors along with demographics, in endorsing such beliefs. In summary, we obtained cross-cultural evidence for the distinctiveness of unfounded conspiracy and health beliefs about COVID-19 in terms of their structure and correlates. (shrink)

Xuantong 玄同 (tentatively translated as dark oneness) is a unique Daoist idea that represents an ideally mental and physical state as a result of cultivation. However, owing to limited context in the Laozi, there is no consensus on the interpretation of xuantong. Contemporary studies have also neglected xuantong’s evolution in early texts and assumed a homogeneous understanding, and hence, failed to provide a nuanced account. In this article, I investigate how xuantong evolves from the Guodian Laozi to the Huainanzi and (...) Wenzi. I argue that although xuantong may originate from the Laozi, it is in the Wenzi that a coherent theory of xuantong is accomplished. This theory advocates an orderly process of cultivation that covers internal mental states, external acts, and integration with the whole universe. The cultivation would eventually lead people to adopt an undifferentiated perspective on, and reach oneness with, all things in the universe. (shrink)

Parental participation has gained significant attention in environmental psychology, which has revealed a need for an instrument that can measure parental participation with children regarding environmental issues. The present study met this need by validating the parental participation in the environment scale. This process began with 45 Chinese parents participating in an individual interview and group discussions, which helped generate a list of eighteen parent-child environmental activities. The activities were then modified and validated in the current study with a diverse (...) group of 969 parents recruited from six major Chinese cities. Both score structure evidence and generalizability evidence were obtained within this sample, and psychometric tests suggested a single factor construct with nine items. Once the PPE scale was revised, it showed measurement invariance across the parent who responded to the items, across the child’s primary caregiver, across the family’s living region, as well as across the family’s income group. Finally, evidence based on relations to other variables showed a relationship among parents’ PPE, pro-environmental behavior, and connectedness with nature. As a result, the study provided a novel measure to assess pro-environmental socialization via parental participation. (shrink)

As the representative of Chinese classical works, the Analects represents a source of difficulty in both understanding and interpretation of Confucian philosophy. Confucian philosophy as a philosophy of creativity and otherness is closely related with the social and cultural values in society. Therefore, the study of Confucian philosophy in the Analects cannot be separated from the descriptive study of the effects of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, contexts, language use, and the effects of language use (...) on society. This article attempts to explore how the meaning of Confucian philosophy in the Analects is interpreted and accepted by Western readers through complex social semiotic interactions. The article focuses on the interpretation of Confucian philosophy as a reflection of cultural assumptions, values and prohibitions, and the manipulation of the social semiotic resources in the process of understanding, translation, and acceptance of Confucian philosophy in the Analects through a discussion of its original text, different versions and the reasons behind the social semiotic activities. The article concludes with a consideration of significant social semiotic interactions that influence the translator’s interpretation and reader’s acceptance of Confucian philosophy so as to facilitate intercultural understanding. (shrink)

Owing to the proliferation of rumors on social media, it is necessary to disseminate debunking information to minimize the harm caused by them. Using content analysis, sentiment analysis, and regression analysis, this study examined the mediating role of follower count in the relationship between the debunker’s identity and sharing behavior, and it explored the relationship between the text sentiment of debunking information and sharing behavior based on data on the spread of three rumors that circulated extensively on social media. Using (...) an ordinary account as a reference, we found that the mediating or suppression effect of follower count in the relationship between debunker’s identity and sharing behavior was significant. The three test identities had more followers than the ordinary account, which resulted in a significant positive effect on the number of reposts. The debunker’s identity did not have a positive effect on the sharing of debunking information when controlling for mediating variables. Debunking information with emotional overtones was shared more widely compared with information with neutral emotions, and the dominant emotional polarity was different in the three different rumors. These findings can contribute to the generation of debunking information content, which can aid in the development of effective communication strategies and improvement in the efficiency of crisis management. (shrink)

Xuantong 玄同 (tentatively translated as dark oneness) is a unique Daoist idea that represents an ideally mental and physical state as a result of cultivation. However, owing to limited context in the Laozi, there is no consensus on the interpretation of xuantong. Contemporary studies have also neglected xuantong’s evolution in early texts and assumed a homogeneous understanding, and hence, failed to provide a nuanced account. In this article, I investigate how xuantong evolves from the Guodian Laozi to the Huainanzi and (...) Wenzi. I argue that although xuantong may originate from the Laozi, it is in the Wenzi that a coherent theory of xuantong is accomplished. This theory advocates an orderly process of cultivation that covers internal mental states, external acts, and integration with the whole universe. The cultivation would eventually lead people to adopt an undifferentiated perspective on, and reach oneness with, all things in the universe. (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)

In the context of China’s supply-side structural reform and the concept of green development, we introduce the energy and environmental factors into the analytical framework of the total factor productivity of the logistics industry and use the Global Malmquist–Luenberger index method to analyze the evolution trend and heterogeneity of green TFP in the logistics industry of 30 provinces in China from 2003 to 2017. The results show that, firstly, the green TFP and traditional TFP of China’s logistics industry are both (...) on the rise and the absence of energy and environmental factors will lead to the overestimation of TFP of the logistics industry. Whether it is green TFP or traditional TFP, the main source of its growth is technical progress. Secondly, there is obvious regional heterogeneity in green TFP of logistics industry. Under the three regional division standards, the average annual growth rate of green TFP is from high to low in the order of eastern, western, and central regions. Under the eight regional classification standards, the eastern coastal economic zone, the southern coastal zone, the northern coastal zone, the northeast region, the middle reaches of the Yellow River, the southwest region, the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and the northwest region are in order from high to low. Thirdly, there is obvious interprovincial heterogeneity in green TFP of the logistics industry. The highest growth rate of green TFP is in Zhejiang, followed by Jiangsu and Guangdong, and the slowest growth rate is in Chongqing. The technical progress of logistics industry in most provinces contributes more to the growth of green TFP. Fourthly, the differences of green TFP in the three regions of the east, center, and west are shrinking, which may be σ convergence, but the differences among the three regions are expanding. Compared with the existing literature, this paper applies the measurement framework of green TFP to China’s logistics industry and investigates the regional and provincial heterogeneity of green TFP in logistics industry. The conclusions are significant to understand and grasp the heterogeneity of green TFP growth in China’s logistics industry under environmental constraints and how to promote the development of green logistics in China. (shrink)

Divergences and controversies are inevitable in the discussion of freedoms and rights, especially in the matter of reproduction. The Chinese first social egg freezing lawsuit raises the question: is the freedom to freeze eggs for social reasons justified because it is an instance of reproductive rights? This paper accepts social egg freezing as desirable reproductive freedom, but following Harel's approach and considering two theories of rights, the choice and interest theories of rights, we argue that social egg freezing is not (...) a reproductive right because one cannot justify a right or an instance of rights via merely describing the function of those instances that have been justified as right, that is, the choice theory lacks justifying normativity. Since reserving fertility and a suspension from reproduction do not serve reproductive ends per se, the sufficient reason for demanding social egg freezing as a right should be found in other ends rather than in right‐to‐reproduce, that is, the interest theory denies the demand as a right‐to‐reproduce. Permitting it on any grounds without guaranteeing adequate and accessible resources, especially in light of cross‐border reproductive care, raises serious questions about reproductive equality and violates the idea of reproductive rights. Therefore, any ground for social egg freezing should be weighed against whether more pressing reproductive needs, specifically those that are justified as rights, have been met. It would be social progress to shoulder these burdens for the vulnerable and then allow social egg freezing—if right‐to‐reproduce were not the only privilege of the few. (shrink)

(Winner of The Res Publica Essay Prize) This article defends a moderate version of state perfectionism by using Gerald Gaus’s argument for liberal neutrality as a starting point of discussion. Many liberal neutralists reject perfectionism on the grounds of respect for persons, but Gaus has explained more clearly than most neutralists how respect for persons justifies neutrality. Against neutralists, I first argue that the state may promote the good life by appealing to what can be called “the qualified judgments about (...) the good life,” which have not been considered by liberal perfectionists including Joseph Chan and Steven Wall. Then I clear up several possible misunderstandings of these judgments, and argue that: (a) moderate perfectionism does not rely on controversial rankings of values and is committed to promoting different valuable ways of life by pluralistic promotion; and (b) moderate perfectionism requires only an indirect form of coercion in using tax money to support certain moderate perfectionist measures, which is justifiable on the grounds of citizens’ welfare. Thus, I maintain that moderate perfectionism does not disrespect citizens, and is not necessarily unfair to any particular group of people. It is, in fact, plausible and morally important. The defence of moderate perfectionism has practical implications for the state’s policies regarding art development, drug abuse, public education, and so on. (shrink)

In this paper, we axiomatize the negatable consequences in dependence and independence logic by extending the systems of natural deduction of the logics given in [22] and [11]. We prove a characterization theorem for negatable formulas in independence logic and negatable sentences in dependence logic, and identify an interesting class of formulas that are negatable in independence logic. Dependence and independence atoms, first-order formulas belong to this class. We also demonstrate our extended system of independence logic by giving explicit derivations (...) for Armstrong's Axioms and the Geiger-Paz-Pearl axioms of dependence and independence atoms. (shrink)

A proposition is noncontingent, if it is necessarily true or it is necessarily false. In an epistemic context, ‘a proposition is noncontingent’ means that you know whether the proposition is true. In this paper, we study contingency logic with the noncontingency operator? but without the necessity operator 2. This logic is not a normal modal logic, because?→ is not valid. Contingency logic cannot define many usual frame properties, and its expressive power is weaker than that of basic modal logic over (...) classes of models without reflexivity. These features make axiomatizing contingency logics nontrivial, especially for the axiomatization over symmetric frames. In this paper, we axiomatize contingency logics over various frame classes using a novel method other than the methods provided in the literature, based on the ‘almost-definability’ schema AD proposed in our previous work. We also present extensions of contingency logic with dynamic operators. Finally, we compare our work to the related work in the fields of contingency logic and ignorance logic, where the two research communities have similar results but are apparently unaware of each other’s work. One goal of our paper is to bridge this gap. (shrink)

Aldo Leopold was a pragmatist in the vernacular sense of the word. Bryan G. Norton claims that Leopold was also heavily influenced by American Pragmatism, a formal school of philosophy. As evidence, Norton offers Leopold's misquotation of a definition of right (as truth) by political economist, A.T. Hadley, who was an admirer of the philosophy of William James. A search of Leopold's digitised literary remains reveals no other evidence that Leopold was directly influenced by any actual American Pragmatist or by (...) Pragmatism (although he may have been indirectly influenced by Pragmatism early in his career). A 1923 reference, by Leopold, to Hadley and Hadley's putative definition of truth, cited by Norton, is dripping with irony. Leopold, as he matured philosophically, regarded a profound cultural shift from anthropocentric dominionism and consumerism to an evolutionary-ecological worldview and an associated non-anthropocentric 'land ethic' to be necessary for successful and sustainable conservation. Hadley espoused a brutal form of Social Darwinism and his philosophy, as expressed in the book of Hadley's that Norton cites, is politically reactionary, militaristic and unconcerned with conservation. Leopold's mature philosophy and Hadley's – far from consonant, as Norton claims – are diametrically opposed. (shrink)

This work offers a systematic interpretation of the problematics of disinterest in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. It examines Kant's thesis that the judgement of taste is free of considerations of morality or utility. Dahan Fan carefully traces Kant's differentiation between the agreeable, the good, and the beautiful, thus casting the relationship between the interests of reason and aesthetic disinterest in a new light.

Inspired by the application of CycleGAN networks to the image style conversion problem Zhu et al., this paper proposes an end-to-end network, DefogNet, for solving the single-image dehazing problem, treating the image dehazing problem as a style conversion problem from a fogged image to a nonfogged image, without the need to estimate a priori information from an atmospheric scattering model. DefogNet improves on CycleGAN by adding a cross-layer connection structure in the generator to enhance the network’s multiscale feature extraction capability. (...) The loss function was redesigned to add detail perception loss and color perception loss to improve the quality of texture information recovery and produce better fog-free images. In this paper, the novel Defog-SN algorithm is presented. This algorithm adds a spectral normalization layer to the discriminator’s convolution layer to make the discriminant network conform to a 1-Lipschitz continuum and further improve the model’s stability. In this study, the experimental process is completed based on the O-HAZE, I-HAZE, and RESIDE datasets. The dehazing results show that the method outperforms traditional methods in terms of PSNR and SSIM on synthetic datasets and Avegrad and Entropy on naturalistic images. (shrink)

In an era when individuality has been increasingly emphasized, the development of science and technology has provided technical support for the realization of individuation. However, in an examination-oriented education system, the education model has not attached sufficient importance to individuality. The modern education industry focuses much on the massive production of college degree holders. Student’s unique talents are mostly neglected, and their personality and creativity are not given due consideration in the teaching process. It is time to emphasize individualized teaching (...) and learning in the contemporary paradigm of education. Taoist wisdom of individuality, pluralism, and diversity has great philosophical value and practical revelation to the modern education. Thus, an eastern perspective on the understanding of individualized teaching and learning is presented. The author argues that a university should not be an industrial factory, but a nurturing garden where students’ nature as humans are understood and their individual differences are respected. Some Taoist transformative paradigms for the future pedagogies are proposed in the hope of provoking arguments and exploring the future of higher education in an age of disruption. Finally, some Taoist practices for a better understanding of individualized teaching and learning are introduced. (shrink)

This essay deploys the joint lenses of branding and space to examine the hegemonic operation of the Apple brand in the global culture industry. It does so by analyzing China’s ‘fake Apple Store’ event in 2011, which began with an American expat blogger’s discovery and subsequently caught the attention of global news media. While copying the look of an official Apple Store, these retailers displayed and sold genuine products originally assembled in China. Probing the cultural logic that gave rise to (...) the event, I argue that China’s ‘fake’ Apple Store emblematizes the power relations and subject positions that emanate from Apple’s global hegemony. The Apple Store, as a branded environment, is best seen as a heterotopia whose interpellating mechanism relies on the extensive-intensive character of the intellectual property rights regime. While China’s copycat Apple Store can be seen as an attempt at a production of sameness, the ‘user-generated’ charge of its ‘fakery’ stems from the ‘distributed’ power of the Apple brand, which operates through a production of difference. Even though the varied responses to the event reveal the contradiction within Apple’s extensive global reach, it more importantly points to a condition wherein consumer turned ‘prod-user’ subjects act as self-enlisted agents who work to perpetuate the brand’s design-intensive value regime. While the spectacle of ‘Chinese fakery’ manifests the ideological work of IPR in naturalizing the distinction between the copy and the fake, the extensive-intensive operation of the brand, embodied by the Apple Store, also undermines the ability of consumer subjects to meaningfully engage the ‘Chinese reality’ that is manufacturing labor. (shrink)

As a conservation policy advocate and practitioner, Leopold was a pragmatist (in the vernacular sense of the word). He was not, however, a member of the school of philosophy known as American Pragmatism, nor was his environmental philosophy informed by any members of that school. Leopold's environmental philosophy was radically non-anthropocentric; he was an intellectual revolutionary and aspired to transform social values and institutions.

Truth-telling to competent patients is widely affirmed as a cardinal moral and biomedical obligation in contemporary Western medical practice. In contrast, Chinese medical ethics remains committed to hiding the truth as well as to lying when necessary to achieve the family's view of the best interests of the patient. This essay intends to provide an account of the framing commitments that would both justify physician deception and have it function in a way authentically grounded in the familist moral concerns of (...) Confucianism. It reflects on the moral conditions and possibilities for sustaining a Confucian understanding of truth-telling and consent in mainland China. (shrink)

Recording and manipulating neuronal ensemble activity is a key requirement in advanced neuromodulatory and behavior studies. Devices capable of both recording and manipulating neuronal activity brain-computer interfaces should ideally operate un-tethered and allow chronic longitudinal manipulations in the freely moving animal. In this study, we designed a new intracortical BCI feasible of telemetric recording and stimulating local gray and white matter of visual neural circuit after irradiation exposure. To increase the translational reliance, we put forward a Göttingen minipig model. The (...) animal was stereotactically irradiated at the level of the visual cortex upon defining the target by a fused cerebral MRI and CT scan. A fully implantable neural telemetry system consisting of a 64 channel intracortical multielectrode array, a telemetry capsule, and an inductive rechargeable battery was then implanted into the visual cortex to record and manipulate local field potentials, and multi-unit activity. We achieved a 3-month stability of the functionality of the un-tethered BCI in terms of telemetric radio-communication, inductive battery charging, and device biocompatibility for 3 months. Finally, we could reliably record the local signature of sub- and suprathreshold neuronal activity in the visual cortex with high bandwidth without complications. The ability to wireless induction charging combined with the entirely implantable design, the rather high recording bandwidth, and the ability to record and stimulate simultaneously put forward a wireless BCI capable of long-term un-tethered real-time communication for causal preclinical circuit-based closed-loop interventions. (shrink)

Operators can be compared in at least two respects: expressive strength and deductive strength. Inspired by Hintikka’s treatment of question embedding verbs, the variations of noncontingency operator, and also the various combinations of modal operators and Boolean connectives, we propose a logic with strong noncontingency operator as the only primitive modality. The novel operator is deductively but not expressively stronger than both noncontingency operator and essence operator, and expressively but not deductively weaker than the necessity operator. The frame-definability power of (...) this new logic is in between standard modal logic and noncontingency logic. A notion of bisimulation is proposed to characterize this logic within standard modal logic and first-order logic. Axiomatizations over various frame classes are presented, among which the minimal logic is related to the treatment of an alternative semantics of the agreement operator proposed by Lloyd Humberstone. (shrink)

This essay argues that the Chinese Mental Health Act of 2013 is overly individualistic and fails to give proper moral weight to the role of Chinese families in directing the process of decision-making for hospitalizing and treating the mentally ill patients. We present three types of reactions within the medical community to the Act, each illustrated with a case and discussion. In the first two types of cases, we argue that these reactions are problematic either because they comply with the (...) law but undermine the patient’s interests by refusing the family’s request to have the patient hospitalized, or violate the law by hospitalizing patients in response to the real concerns of their families. In the third type of situation, psychiatrists inappropriately encourage families to produce evidence of the patient’s behavior that is harmful to self or others in order legally to commit the patient. Each of these problems, we conclude, should be tackled by supplementing Article 30 of the Act with the stipulation that a psychiatrist may authorize the involuntary hospitalization of a patient, who is not at risk of causing physical harm to self or others, with the consent of all major family members. Drawing on the deeply culturally embedded moral traditions of Confucian medical familism, this proposal would facilitate the proper treatment of a significant number of Chinese mentally ill patients under the care of their families. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore an intriguing view of definable numbers proposed by a Cambridge mathematician Ernest Hobson, and his solution to the paradoxes of definability. Reflecting on König’s paradox and Richard’s paradox, Hobson argues that an unacceptable consequence of the paradoxes of definability is that there are numbers that are inherently incapable of finite definition. Contrast to other interpreters, Hobson analyses the problem of the paradoxes of definability lies in a dichotomy between finitely definable numbers and not finitely definable (...) numbers. To bypass this predicament, Hobson proposes a language dependent analysis of definable numbers, where the diagonal argument is employed as a means to generate more and more definable numbers. This paper examines Hobson’s work in its historical context, and articulates his argument in detail. It concludes with a remark on Hobson’s analysis of definability and Alan Turing’s analysis of computability. (shrink)

Under the clear and thoughtful editorship of Ruiping Fan, The Renaissance of Confucianism in Contemporary China provides new and highly substantive insights into the emergence of a renewed, relevant, and perceptively engaged Confucianism in 21st century China. Through the vibrantly diverse essays contained in this volume, and in cogent overview through Fan’s introduction, one learns that Confucianism is thoroughly misunderstood, if it is seen only through Western lenses. It cannot be absorbed into that rights-based “global” discourse that has been the (...) West’s troubled inheritance from the Enlightenment. Extraordinarily thoughtful Chinese voices are found in this volume that converse with each other in serious and revealing ways. Should genuine exchange continue to develop between Western thinkers and Chinese Confucians, The Renaissance of Confucianism in Contemporary China will surely be an indispensable pathway into those core issues, moral and social, that will unavoidably be encountered as China and the West advance further into the 21st century. -/- -/- Stephen A. Erickson, Professor of Philosophy and the E. Wilson Lyon Professor of the Humanities, Pomona College, USA -/- -/- The Renaissance of Confucianism in Contemporary China features an important school of Confucianism in Mainland China today, “Political Confucianism,” powerfully articulated by Jiang Qing, author of the leading article in this volume. “Political Confucianism” is unique: on the “Political” side, it rejects many core values of liberalism, the dominant political ideology in the West; and on the “Confucianism” side, it rejects the one-sided emphasis on the inner sageliness of “New Confucianism” developed in Hong Kong and Taiwan in the last century. In this volume, the programmatic essay by Jiang Qing is followed by penetrating essays, either further expanding on or critically examining various themes of Jiang’s original essay, by eminent scholars, many of whom are committed Confucians themselves. The volume concludes with an informative biography of Jiang Qing. It is a must-read for anyone who is interested in learning about the situation of Confucianism in contemporary China in particular and about Confucianism or contemporary China in general. -/- -/- Yong HUANG, Chief Editor, Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy -/- This is the most important recent study of Chinese culture and political theory. It offers a rich insight into the renaissance of authentic Confucian commitments in contemporary China and the foundationally different moral and political direction that it proposes for China’s future. The essays Fan brings together tie the power of China’s rich past to the prospect of a China quite different from what the West envisages. It is a “must-read” for anyone seeking to understand China in the 21st century. -/- -/- David Solomon, W.P. and H.B. White Director of the Center for Ethics and Culture, University of Notre Dame. (shrink)

In Fan's 2019 article, “Symmetric Contingency Logic with Unlimitedly Many Modalities”, it is left as an open question in Fan (2019b) how to (completely) axiomatize contingency logic over the class of symmetric and transitive frames, and conjectured that is the desired axiomatization. In the current article, we show that the conjecture is false, and then propose a desired axiomatization, thereby answering the open question. Beyond these results, we also present a family of axiomatizations of contingency logic over Kripke frames.

This empirical study explores the effect of cultural intelligence (CQ) on migrant workers’ innovative behavior, as well as the mediating role of knowledge sharing on the CQ-innovative behavior relationship. Besides, it also examines the extent to which the mediating process is moderated by climate for inclusion. Using survey data collected from Chinese migrant workers and their supervisors working in South Korea (n = 386), migrant workers’ CQ is found to positively impact their innovative behavior through enhanced knowledge sharing. However, it (...) is observed that this indirect relationship is significant, only for migrant workers in a strong climate for inclusion. Thus, these findings reveal the underlying mediation and moderation mechanism and consequently unveil the important role of migrant workers’ CQ in shaping their behavior. This study provides insightful and practical implications to a multicultural organization, where culturally diverse migrant workers work together. (shrink)

This article proposes the axiomatizations of contingency logics of various natural classes of neighborhood frames. In particular, by defining a suitable canonical neighborhood function, we give sound and complete axiomatizations of monotone contingency logic and regular contingency logic, thereby answering two open questions raised by Bakhtiari, van Ditmarsch, and Hansen. The canonical function is inspired by a function proposed by Kuhn in 1995. We show that Kuhn’s function is actually equal to a related function originally given by Humberstone.

A stuyd of the philosophy of the Chinese philosopher Thome Fang 方东美。.

Everybody knows that the Revolution of 1911 was an anti-imperialist and antifeudal democratic revolution led by the revolutionary and democratic group of the bourgeoisie in the period of the old democratic revolution in China. The leader of that revolution was Sun Yat-sen, and the guiding ideology was his old Three People's Principles. It is well known that Chairman Mao has made a series of scientific appraisals of these facts, but the newspapers and magazines controlled by the anti-Party clique of Wang (...) Hung-wen, Chang Ch'un-ch'iao, Chiang Ch'ing and Yao Wen-yuan openly oppose Chairman Mao's scientific appraisals, betraying the fundamental principles of Marxism, distorting the Revolution of 1911 as a struggle between Confucians and Legalists, and replacing Sun Yat-sen as the standard-bearer of the revolution with Chang T'ai-yen, who played first an active and then a devastating role in the revolution. All this is part of the clique's attack on the Party in order to usurp the Party, seize power, restore capitalism and fabricate the "history" of the struggle between the Confucians and the Legalists. (shrink)

This study examines the effect of teaching ethics and the form of code of ethics on auditors’ ethical decision making. We draw upon Rest’s decision-making model and Hunt and Vitell’s theory of marketing ethics to assist us with this examination. We use accounting students as substitutes for auditors in this study to enhance its internal validity as students are “subjects who would not already have detailed knowledge and experience of the Code”. The research method includes a survey and an experiment (...) in the study. A between-subjects survey design with a sample of 271 students and a within-subjects experimental design with a sample of 146 students are used. A confirmatory factor analysis is conducted before other statistical methods are performed. Our results show that teaching codes of ethics improves accounting students’ awareness of audit independence issues and their ethical judgments and intentions. However, the form of a code of ethics does not make any significant difference in terms of the participants’ awareness of audit independence and their ethical judgments and intentions. Our study contributes to the debate on the effectiveness of principles-based versus rules-based codes of ethics and the importance of teaching ethics in non-Western economies. (shrink)