數十年來，學術界在西方建構的知識體系底下看似健康地成長茁壯，社會（科）學也不例外。但讓人難以理解的是，身為古典社會學三大家，且至今仍是全球最具影響力的學者韋伯（Max Weber）對於東方社會的描繪，與經驗事實並不相符，存在著巨大落差。更讓人不解的則是，東方（尤其是中國）知識份子奉韋伯之說法為圭臬，當他們面向西方時，讚嘆著歐洲經濟、科技，與社會思潮的進步，幾乎完全地 失去了批判能力；面向東方時，反而極具信心地全盤否定其傳統，並視之為進步的阻礙。 本書完整地將韋伯重要之著作、概念工具、歷史比較方法，以及對東方（特別是中國）的「理解」逐一詳實論證，期待讀者能從此書中得到些許啟發，進而修正過去被誤導的歷史觀與世界觀。.

This study examines whether Chinese complement coercion sentences with aspectual verbs will elicit processing difficulty during real-time comprehension. Complement coercion is a linguistic phenomenon in which certain verbs, requiring an event-denoting complement, are combined with an entity-denoting complement, as in The author started a book. Previous studies have reported that the entity-denoting complement elicited processing difficulty following verbs that require event argument compared with verbs that do not. While the processing of complement coercion has been extensively studied in Indo-European languages (...) such as English and German, it is relatively under-researched in Sino-Tibetan languages such as Mandarin Chinese. Given the fact that there are many linguistic elements behaving distinctly in the different language families, for instance, verbs with respect to their semantic properties and syntactic representations of the complement, it is meaningful to investigate whether or not the existing linguistic differences have any effect on the processing of complement coercion in Mandarin. With this research goal, we recorded self-paced reading time of 61 native Mandarin speakers to investigate the processing of the entity-denoting complement in sentences with three different verb types, as exemplified in 顾客开始/填写/查看这份问卷 gù-kè kāi-shǐ/tián-xiě/chá-kàn zhè-fèn wèn-juàn “The customer started/filled in/checked the questionnaire.” It was found that the entity noun complement elicited significantly longer reading times in coercion sentences than non-coercion counterparts. The results are compatible with the previous findings in English that complement coercion sentences impose processing cost during real-time comprehension. The study contributes empirical evidence to coercion studies cross-linguistically. (shrink)

There are generally two controversial issues over Kant's solution to the free will problem. One is over whether he is a compatibilist or an incompatibilist and the other is over whether his solution is a success. In this paper, I will argue, regarding the first controversy, that “compatibilist” and “incompatibilist” are not the right terms to describe Kant for his unique views on freedom and determinism; but that of the two, incompatibilist is the more accurate description. Regarding the second controversy, (...) I will argue that Kant's solution to the free will problem is not a success because his effort in making the effects of freedom part of the field of appearance has made his solution incoherent and ambiguous. Despite this, I argue that Kant's attempt to solve the free will problem is groundbreaking because he at least has separated freedom from the dominance of determinism. (shrink)

Argument by analogy has long been regarded as the characteristic way of arguing in ancient Chinese culture. Classic Chinese philosophers not only prefer to use analogy to argue for their own views, but also take efforts to theorize it in a systematic way. This paper aims to provide a careful study on the relevant ideas in ancient China in order to reconstruct the ancient Chinese theory of argument by analogy, and then to reveal some of its distinctive features through a (...) comparison with the Western counterpart account as developed by Aristotle. It is indicated that in ancient China analogical argument was conceived primarily as a way of arguing based on classification, with a unique mechanism of taking and giving according to kind. On that basis, it is argued that although such a characterization captures the logical structure of analogical argument in a similar way to Aristotle, the ancient Chinese theory stresses the foundational role of a particular notion of kind, thus makes the construction and application of analogical arguments become highly flexible and context-sensitive. Moreover, it is also contended that in ancient China the rationale of analogical arguments is explained from a general perspective of kind, relying upon the universal knowledge pertaining to the forming of kinds. Then it is further revealed that, unlike Aristotle who emphasizes the causal links between attributes in the physical world, ancient Chinese thinkers justify analogical argument by appealing to some normative metaphysical and epistemological principles. (shrink)

Mit der rekonstruierenden Textanalyse der Preisschrift über die Fortschritte der Metaphysik (1804) und der drei Kritiken hat der Autor den Begriff der „eigentlichen Metaphysik“ Kants zum Inhalt. Demnach wird die Hauptfrage der kantischen Metaphysik als die Frage nach der Möglichkeit der Erkenntnis von den übersinnlichen Prinzipien der Natur bestimmt. Die Grundmethode zur Kants Antwort auf diese Frage bezeichnet der Autor als „praktische Regulation der Natur“, in der die reine praktische Vernunft ihrem notwendigen Bedürfnis gemäß die reflektierende Urteilskraft dazu leitet, nach (...) dem System der praktisch postulierten Prinzipien (Gott, Freiheit und Unsterblichkeit) eine moralisch-zweckmäßigen Natur zu regulieren. Durch dieses methodische Verfahren zeichnet sich die kantische Metaphysikkonzeption aus, die ihrerseits aber auch auf die aristotelische Tradition zurückbezogen ist. Yuwei Xie promovierte in Philosophie an der Universität Heidelberg und arbeitet derzeit am Philosophischen Seminar der Sun Yat-sen Universität in Guangzhou, China. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte sind klassische deutsche Philosophie und Phänomenologie. (shrink)

This paper is to argue that conductive arguments could be understood from a rhetorical perspective. It contends that conductive arguments can be regarded as a particular mode of strategic maneuvering, rather than a new type of argument. Moreover, it demonstrates that the use of conductive arguments can be adequately analyzed and evaluated by adopting the theoretical tools developed in the extended Pragma-Dialectics.

The impact of bilingual education and bilingual experience on working memory has been an important and controversial issue in the field of psycholinguistics. Taking Chinese-English bilinguals as an example, this study aims to investigate the differences in emotional working memory between proficient and non-proficient bilinguals by using delayed matching-to-sample task paradigm and more complex n-back task in the context of emotion. The results show that proficient bilinguals have better performance on both of the two working memory tasks than non-proficient bilinguals, (...) and the advantage effects were more apparent under high memory load conditions. Besides, the negative emotion context has a positive impact on complex n-back tasks. This study supports the notion that bilingual experience can promote the development of an individual’s cognitive ability and enable individuals to possess more advantages in working memory even in the presence of emotional distractions. (shrink)

Based on its productionguideline, organic agriculture has set foritself the goals of minimizing all forms ofpollution and maintaining sustainability of thefarming system. By striving for these goals,organic farming meets the demands of anincreasing number of consumers who are criticalof conventional production methods. This papergives an overview of the present state of theart in the different issues. Possibilities ofand limitations in performing the self-aimedgoals under the basic standards of organicagriculture are discussed. Concerningenvironmental protection, in general, the riskof adverse environmental effects is (...) lower withorganic than with conventional farming methods,though not necessarily so; with reference tosoil fertility and nutrient management, organicfarming is suited to improve soil fertility andnutrient management markedly on the farm level;regarding biodiversity, comparison studies showthat organic farming has more positive effectson biodiversity conservation; in relation toproduct quality, under the basic standards oforganic farming, there is no sufficientevidence for a system-related effect on productquality due to the production method. (shrink)

The extent to which we generalize a novel property from a sample of familiar instances to novel instances depends on the sample composition. Previous property induction experiments have only used samples consisting of novel types (unique entities). Because real‐world evidence samples often contain redundant tokens (repetitions of the same entity), we studied the effects on property induction of adding types and tokens to an observed sample. In Experiments 1–3, we presented participants with a sample of birds or flowers known to (...) have a novel property and probed whether this property generalized to novel items varying in similarity to the initial sample. Increasing the number of novel types (e.g., new birds with the target property) in a sample produced tightening, promoting property generalization to highly similar stimuli but decreasing generalization to less similar stimuli. On the other hand, increasing the number of tokens (e.g., repeated presentations of the same bird with the target property) had little effect on generalization. Experiment 4 showed that repeated tokens are encoded and can benefit recognition, but appear to be given little weight when inferring property generalization. We modified an existing Bayesian model of induction (Navarro, Dry, & Lee, 2012) to account for both the information added by new types and the discounting of information conveyed by tokens. (shrink)

Architecture students have been reported to experience significant stress, yet little has been researched. This study aims to examine how architecture students experience and cope with stress. Twel...

Frequent human-media interaction via the electronic word-of-mouth platform, trust is acknowledged as an ongoing challenge. This study aimed to understand users' trust in the e-wom platform based on uses and gratifications theory and stimulus-organism-response paradigm. Utilitarian gratification was regarded as stimulus, social gratification and positive emotion as organism, and platform trust as response. Data was acquired from 268 users in China using a questionnaire survey, and the PLS-SEM was used to further analyze the results. The results indicated that there is (...) a hierarchy relationship between types of gratifications. That is, utilitarian gratification is a premise of social gratification. Moreover, sense of self-esteem and positive emotion have a mediating effect between perceived information quality and platform trust. Sense of social belonging and positive emotion have a mediating effect between perceived privacy protection and platform trust. This study not only broadened trust between human and media, but also purposed a hierarchy relationship of different types of gratifications in e-wom platform. (shrink)

This study constructs a formation model of customer well-being in customer experience with joy and customer satisfaction as mediating factors linking three critical factors—convenience, performance and relationship of customer experience with CWB. By collecting data from customers of retailing, the model was empirically tested. The results show that the three critical factors all have positive effects on CWB. Meanwhile, service performance has a direct effect on CWB. Joy plays a key role in the formation of CWB mediating the relationship between (...) the three critical factors and CWB. This study is the first in the literature to explore CWB from the perspective of customer experience with joy as an antecedent of CWB. It provides important implications for managers to enhance customer experience and CWB in the service setting. It also helps managers to pay attention to the role of customer joy in customer experience and make full use of it. (shrink)

Contractualist work in business ethics as well as in economic organization theory views opportunistic behaviors as problematic since they create economic harm and are often considered to violate ethical norms. Yet, much of the empirical literature on opportunism has adopted a rather simplistic definition of opportunistic behaviors as behaviors that violate formal and/or relational contracts and assumed that instances of opportunism can be unequivocally defined by simply referring to the content of contracts. The consequence of this assumption has been a (...) disregard for factors other than the content of contracts that may influence whether exchange partners judge an unexpected behavior they face during exchange relationships as opportunistic or not. The present investigation explores the factors that shape exchange partners’ subjective opportunism judgments through two vignette-based laboratory experiments. Results from the first experiment, where subjects were asked to take the perspective of a harmed party, show that opportunism judgments are influenced by the type of the behavior, type of the causal account provided for the behavior, perceived type of the exchange, and personality traits of the actor making the judgment. The second experiment, in which subjects were asked to take the perspective of the transgressor, demonstrates the influence of perspective. In particular, victims are more likely to assess a given unexpected behavior as opportunistic than transgressors, and their judgments do not relate to the underlying factors in the same way as the victims’ judgments. I discuss implications in terms of the governance of interfirm exchange relationships. (shrink)

Objective: Work stress is one of the urgent public health problems, which has aroused wide attention. In addition, work stress also has a negative impact on the development of enterprises. This study has three purposes: to understand the current status of working stress among couriers, to examine the association between work stress, job satisfaction and sleep quality of Chinese couriers, and to verify the mediating role of psychological capital.Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 3000 couriers in Beijing of China (...) from January to December 2019 using cluster stratified random sampling. Descriptive statistical analysis was used to describe demographic characteristics of respondents. Pearson correlation analysis was used to analyze the correlation among work stress, job satisfaction, sleep quality, and psychological capital. The mediating analysis was calculated role of psychological capital.Results: A total of 2831 participants were included in this study. The average score of work stress was 2.49 ± 0.76. Work stress was negatively correlated with job satisfaction, sleep quality, and psychological capital, respectively. The direct effect of work stress on job satisfaction is –0.223, and the total effect of work stress on job satisfaction is –0.267. The a*b*c’ is positive, indicating the mediating role psychological capital has in explaining the relationship between couriers’ work stress and job satisfaction. Moreover, psychological capital plays a mediating role between work stress and sleep quality among couriers.Conclusion: Couriers face certain work stress and should be paid attention to and psychological capital can effectively alleviate the work stress of couriers, so measures can be taken to improve it, promoting healthy development of employees and organizations. (shrink)

This book explores the place of the sophists within the Greek wisdom tradition, and argues against their almost universal exclusion from serious intellectual ...

Irresponsible research practices damaging the value of science has been an increasing concern among researchers, but previous work failed to estimate the prevalence of all forms of irresponsible research behavior. Additionally, these analyses have not included articles published in the last decade from 2011 to 2020. This meta-analysis provides an updated meta-analysis that calculates the pooled estimates of research misconduct and questionable research practices, and explores the factors associated with the prevalence of these issues. The estimates, committing RM concern at (...) least 1 of FFP and QRPs concern 1 or more QRPs, were 2.9% and 12.5%, respectively. In addition, 15.5% of researchers witnessed others who had committed at least 1 RM, while 39.7% were aware of others who had used at least 1 QRP. The results document that response proportion, limited recall period, career level, disciplinary background and locations all affect significantly the prevalence of these issues. This meta-analysis addresses a gap in existing meta-analyses and estimates the prevalence of all forms of RM and QRPs, thus providing a better understanding of irresponsible research behaviors. (shrink)

Extensive conflicts of interest at both individual and institutional levels are identifiable in scientific research and healthcare in China, as in many other parts of the world. A prominent new case from China is He Jiankui’s experiment that produced the world’s first gene-edited babies and that raises numerous ethical, political, socio-cultural, and transnational questions. Serious financial and other COI were involved in He’s genetic adventure. Using He’s infamous experiment as a case study, this paper explores the wider issue of financial (...) and other COI in scientific research and healthcare in China, especially institutional conflict of interest and policy-related COI. Taking a socio-ethical perspective, it examines China’s state policies and its massive efforts to transform and commercialize scientific research, the lack of policies and oversight mechanisms for regulating COI, as well as major ethical issues arising from COI including the undermining of public trust. Some practical suggestions are offered for institutional reform and institutional development so that COI, particularly ICOI, can be avoided or more effectively managed in scientific research in China. (shrink)

In the last 20 years, amid extensive social and economic reforms, China’s social structure and community life have changed considerably. A large number of social workers are needed to provide many more social services to community residents. The central government has issued many policies to rapidly develop human service organizations and increase the number of social workers. Thus, by the end of 2019, the number of social workers has reached more than 1.5 million in China. At the same time, local (...) governments have issued many policies to promote an increase in the number of social workers. According to statistics from the Chengdu Civil Affairs Bureau, from 2010 to 2021, the number of social workers in Chengdu City increased, remarkably, from 553 to 17,622. Although the number of social workers has increased rapidly, some problems still exist. According to a survey by the Chengdu Social Workers Association, the turnover rate of social workers has reached approximately 20% in Chengdu City in 2018. Therefore, we aim to determine what influences social workers’ job burnout. Through regression analysis and mediation effect tests, we found the following: First, when controlling for gender, age, education, and workday, social support of social workers had a significant negative impact on job burnout. Second, the mindfulness of social workers had a significant negative impact on job burnout. Third, the mindfulness of social workers played a mediating role between social support and job burnout. The mediating effect was −0.116. Fourth, among the three dimensions of social support, mindfulness played a partially mediating role in family support and other support. The mediating effect between other support, which is the support from leaders and colleagues, and job burnout was the strongest, with a mediating effect of −0.109. In other words, the support provided by agency leaders and colleagues can maximize the level of mindfulness of social workers, thereby reducing social workers’ job burnout most effectively. We can thus reduce social workers’ job burnout by improving their level of mindfulness and the social support for them in China. (shrink)