This paper reports on the long-term effectiveness of a non-formal co-curricular educational program based on a campus ecogarden at a Hong Kong university in developing pro-sustainability awareness, attitudes and behavior among undergraduate students. This service-based, nature-based experiential learning program, termed the Ecogarden Farmer and Biodiversity Surveyor, has been running at the university since 2015. The program is divided into two consecutive phases: a training phase comprising various learning activities and a successive internship phase consisting of the all-round practical tasks involved (...) in managing the garden. A retrospective evaluation of the program using phenomenographic approach and content analysis was adopted to reveal the diversity of students’ learning experience, as the indicators of the success of the program. Of 112 participants from 4 cohorts, 32 completed online questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews were successfully conducted with twelve participants, three from each of the four cohorts. The results indicated that the program’s outcomes could be categorized into five themes. Most outcomes fit into the theme ‘an increase in knowledge and skill level,’ followed by ‘rise in environmental awareness,’‘facilitation of personal growth,’ and ‘enhancement of career development.’ Many structural experiences revealed may suggest the success of the program. The longer the participants had participated in the program, the more in-depth and diversified reflection of the senior participants relating to personal development were mentioned. This study provides critical insights into the validity of retrospective program evaluation for assessing the long-term impact of EfS programs by introducing a cross-sectional study of different cohorts as a serial time-point sampling strategy. (shrink)

The present essay aims to throw light on the study of dialectical thinking from a cultural-historical perspective. Different forms of dialectic are articulated as ideal types, including the Greek dialectic, the Hegelian dialectic, the contemporary German negative dialectic, the Chinese dialectic, and the Indian negative dialectic. These influential cultural products in the history of the East and the West, articulated as ideal types, serve as constellations that could facilitate further empirical studies on dialectical thinking. An understanding of the complexity of (...) these constellations reveals the pitfalls of investigating dialectical thinking without an appropriate conceptualization of the research target. With the ideal types of dialectic as "figure," and Vygotsky's thesis of the cultural-historical origin of higher psychological processes as "ground," we explore possibilities for further lines of inquiry on dialectical thinking. Adhering to the Scribnerian multilevel scheme that reconstructs Vygotsky's thesis, and returning to the core ideas of Vygotsky himself, we discover new, meaningful questions about the study of dialectical thinking. In the research area of "culture and cognition," consideration of a cultural-historical perspective appears to be both necessary and promising. (shrink)

PurposeThis study aims to describe the adverse events following immunization of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in cancer patients/survivors associated with their psychological distress.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted to assess AEFIs after the receipt of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in cancer patients/survivors attending a university hospital in Malaysia. Psychological distress was measured using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale before and after the first and second doses of COVID-19 vaccine.ResultsA total of 217 complete responses were received. Compared with before vaccination, both HADS Anxiety and HADS (...) Depression scores were significantly reduced after the first and second dose of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Most of the participants had mild-or-moderate systemic and local AEFIs, with the most common being pain at the injection site, tiredness, and headache for both the first and second doses of the vaccine. Positive correlations between the total AEFI score and HADS-A and HADS-D scores were observed after the first dose of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Similarly, positive associations were observed between the total AEFI score and HADS-A and HADS-D scores after the second dose of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.ConclusionMild-to-moderate AEFIs found in this study help address vaccine hesitancy in cancer patients/survivors. Receiving the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine had a positive effect on decreasing psychological distress in cancer patients/survivors. High severity of an AEFI was associated with higher anxiety and depressive symptoms. (shrink)

Insightful ideals on the subtle and dynamic relation between the person and the environment have been expressed by Vygotsky, Lewin, Bronfenbrenner and Stern. Carefully following their intricate dialogue reveals that their ideas are mutually enriching. The present essay aims to revitalize this intricate dialogue, and to show how it converges to supply rich meaning to the concept of personal space-time totality. With a view to an empirical study of the personal space-time totality, a four-phase inquiry is proposed, which is essentially (...) a refined co-construction between the subject and the researcher. It is suggested that such a co-construction can be meaningfully integrated into research areas such as autobiographical and narrative studies, commonsense psychology, and optimal human development. (shrink)

Based on a newly conceptualized notion of the dialogical self, achieved by integrating Bakhtin's philosophical anthropology and Karmiloff-Smith's Representational Redescription model into the existing notion proposed by Hermans and colleagues, the present study focuses on examining the role of The Ox-Herding Pictures in cultivating the dialogical self. Methodologically, this study adopted the cultural-historical perspective and microdevelopmental approach of Vygotsky. In-depth case studies consisting of six interrelated phases of interviews and written responses were conducted. The results show that such a unique (...) cultural sign had different mediation effects upon subjects of different backgrounds. Two examples of considerable mediation effects are presented in more detail. A hermeneutical examination of this cultural object switched to a kind of self-representation in all cases, while the self-representation of all subjects developed from a less explicit to a more explicit level. Development of the dialogical self was characterized by its diversity in form and richness regarding content. (shrink)

In response to the increasingly acknowledged power of metaphor upon everyday and scientific thinking, the present essay aims to revitalize the metaphoric process in commonsense psychology from the interaction view perspective. As prerequisites, a historical review of the "man-the-scientist" metaphor inherited in commonsense psychology, and a situation analysis of its dormant state are attempted. With metaphorical imagination, a holistic-paradigmatic view of personal theories is postulated on the basis of new knowledge in the philosophy and history of science, namely, the Duhem (...) - Quine (holism) thesis and Kuhn's paradigmatic perspective of scientific activities. To optimize the metaphoric process, deliberations are made on the similarities as well as the differences between the principal subject (i.e. everyday activities) and the subsidiary subject (i.e. scientific activities). It is shown that the "man-the-scientist" metaphoric process can be far-reaching and dialectic in nature, resulting in fresh perspectives for understanding both everyday and scientific activities. The focus of the present essay lies in elaborating a more sophisticated view on personal theories, and in calling for a non-reductionist approach to the investigation of commonsense psychology. (shrink)

The present study aimed to conduct a cross-cultural comparison of creative thinking among Chinese middle school students from the rice- and wheat-growing areas in China through the lens of the rice theory, which postulates that there are major psychological differences among the individuals in these agricultural regions. Differences in cultural mindsets and creativity between the rice group and the wheat group were identified using the Chinese version of the Auckland Individualism and Collectivism Scale and the Test for Creative Thinking–Drawing Production, (...) respectively. Interesting findings were obtained. The results of latent mean analyses indicate that the rice group showed significantly more collectivism and adaptive creativity than the wheat group but less individualism and innovative and boundary-breaking creativity. However, the two groups showed no significant differences in their overall creative performance, as reflected in the TCT–DP composite score. Moreover, results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that collectivism was positively related to adaptive creativity but negatively related to innovative and boundary-breaking creativity; however, a reverse pattern was found for individualism. These findings enrich the discourse regarding the rice theory and shed important light on the effect of culture on creativity. (shrink)

Background Adherence to ethical guidelines and regulations and protecting and respecting the dignity and autonomy of participants by obtaining a valid informed consent form (ICF) prior to participation in research are crucial; The subjects did not add signatures next to the corrections made to signatures or dates on the ICF, Multiple signatures in other fields, ICF missing/missing signature, Incorrect ICF version Signed after modification, Correction tape used to correct signature, Impersonated signature, Non-research-member signature, however, ICFs are often not properly completed, (...) which must be addressed. This study analyzed ICF signing errors and implemented measures to reduce or prevent these errors. Methods We used the plan–do–check–act (PDCA) cycle to help improve the correctness and validity of ICF signing. Results Interim and final reports from January 2016 to February 2020 including 363 ICFs were studied. The total proportion of correct ICF signatures (200, 83.3%) following the PDCA intervention was significantly higher than that before the intervention (P < 0.05). Analysis of the types of signing error demonstrated that signature errors were significantly reduced after the intervention, particularly for subjects did not add signatures next to the corrections made to signatures or dates on the ICF (16, 6.7%) and impersonated signature (0; P < 0.05). Conclusions The proportions of other error types—multiple signatures in other fields, missing or unsigned ICF, incorrect signature order, incorrect ICF version, use of correction tape to correct signature, and non-medical profession members signing the ICF—did not differ significantly. (shrink)

It is a received view of the post-Fregean predicate logic that a universal statement has no existential import and thus does not entail its particular (existential) counterpart. This paper takes issue with the view by discussing the trespasser case, which has widely been employed for supporting the view. The trespasser case in fact involves a shift of context. Properly understood, the case provides no support for the received view but rather suggests that we rethink the ‘quantity view’ of the existential (...) import of quantifiers. (shrink)

The present study examined gender differences in the distribution of creative abilities through the lens of the greater male variability hypothesis, which postulated that men showed greater interindividual variability than women in both physical and psychological attributes. Two hundred and six undergraduate students in Hong Kong completed two creativity measures that evaluated different aspects of creativity, including: a divergent thinking test that aimed to assess idea generation and a creative problem-solving test that aimed to assess restructuring ability. The present findings (...) extended the research of greater male variability in creativity by showing that men generally exhibited greater variance than women in the overall distribution of the creativity scores in both divergent thinking and creative problem solving, despite trivial gender differences in mean scores. The findings further enriched the discourse of the greater male variability hypothesis by showing interesting domain-specific gendered patterns: greater male variability was more likely to occur in figural forms of creativity, with larger effect sizes, when compared to the variability in verbal forms of creativity; and mixed gendered patterns were found in the upper tails of the creativity score distribution with respect to the verbal domain but not the figural one, despite greater male representation being consistently observed in the lower tail of the distribution. Possible underlying mechanisms and implications were discussed. (shrink)

It has been suggested that a reporting channel administered by a third-party may represent a stronger procedural safeguard of anonymity and avoids the appearance of impropriety. This study examines whistleblowing intentions among lower-tier employees, specifically examines whether an externally-administered reporting channel increases whistleblowing intentions compared to an internally-administered one. In contrast to the findings of an earlier study by Kaplan et al. :273–288, 2009), our results suggest that whistle-blowing intentions are higher when the reporting channel is administered externally than when (...) it is administered internally. We also find that an externally-administered reporting channel mitigates the negative effect of bystanders on whistleblowing intentions. Implications are discussed. (shrink)

Denton and Hockx present thirteen essays treating a variety of literary organizations from China's Republican era . Interdisciplinary in approach, the essays are primarily concerned with describing and analyzing the social and cultural complexity of literary groupings and the role of these social formations in literary production of the period.

There are a number of recent attempts to introduce Confucian values to the ethical analysis of technology. These works, however, have not attended sufficiently to one central aspect of Confucianism, namely Ritual (‘Li’). Li is central to Confucian ethics, and it has been suggested that the emphasis on Li in Confucian ethics is what distinguishes it from other ethical traditions. Any discussion of Confucian ethics for technology, therefore, remains incomplete without accounting for Li. This chapter aims to elaborate on the (...) concept of Confucian Li and discuss its relevance to ethics of technology. Particularly, by referring to Li’s communicative, formative, and aesthetic function, I formulate an approach to ethics of technology with an emphasis on community, performance, and the aesthetic and demonstrate how this approach proceeds with the ethical analysis of technology. In doing so, I attempt to answer the question: why Confucianism matters in ethics of technology. (shrink)

The view defended is one sense externalist on the relation between moral reasons and motivation: A's having a moral reason to do X does not necessarily imply that A has a motivation that would support A's doing X via some appropriate deliberative route. However, it is in another sense externalist in holding that there are the kind of moral reasons there are only if the relevant motivational capacities are "generally present" in human beings, if not in all individuals. The process (...) of socialization is an attempt to embed the recognition of what we have moral reason to do in the intentional content of one's feelings. E.g., learning that about others' suffering embeds their suffering as a reason to help in the intentional content of incipient compassionate feelings. This endows the reason with motivational efficacy while conferring further direction to the feelings in ways that shape us for social cooperation. (shrink)

I thought the paper by Kai-yee Wong and Chris Fraser was fascinating and insightful. Two things I especially appreciated are the clarity with which they summarize my views. I think they are quite fair and accurate. Second, I appreciate their suggestion that the way to deal with the practical problem of weakness of will has much to do with the role of the Background in shaping our actions. I think they are especially on the right track when they say (...) that the improvement of Background skills may actually narrow the range of real options for action, (p. 21) nonetheless, they do not decrease freedom. As they say, “It is a process of strengthening the self, and the agent is likely to experience the concomitant restriction of ‘live’ options not as a limitation but as strength of character.” (p. 21). That seems to me very much on the right track. What they are suggesting, and it is a powerful addition to my own writings, is that we should not just think of the Background as facilitating languages, games and social practices generally, but for morality as well (p. 23). (shrink)

AbstractEmployee whistleblowing via social media channels represents a very high risk to corporate reputation and can potentially lead to litigation and financial loss, especially when the message goes viral. This research examines the effect of social media strategy and social media policy on employees’ sensitivity to the high risk of whistleblowing via social media. We study the effect across employee gender and across two social media misconducts (information leaking and online venting). Our results indicate that the impact of social media (...) strategy and social media policy on employees’ sensitivity differs between gender and across the two cases. In the information leaking case, social media strategy, social media policy and gender jointly influence employee sensitivity to the risk of whistleblowing via social media channels. In the online venting case, gender has a main effect on that sensitivity. Our study has implications for the role of social media in management control systems and adds to the literature on whistleblowing. Our findings also have practical implications related to the use of social media strategy and policies. (shrink)

This paper is to inform the recent situations of work by the foreign domestic workers (FDWs) in Hong Kong through the lens of Covid-19. Through the interviews with seven informants — two employers and five FDWs, stories describing the changes in their working conditions, rights and entitlement, and the contextual environment related to the impacts of Covid-19 were collected. They were analysed through three theoretical tools — visibility/invisibility, mobility/immobility, and work boundary. The findings show that under the Covid-19 crisis, the (...) FDWs experienced more hardships and struggles in both the home country and host country. The paradoxes of visibility/invisibility and mobility/immobility together with blurred work boundary were found in their experience of work, rights and entitlement, and the contextual environment. On one hand, the employers’ power of controlling FDWs has increased, but the agency to resist by the FDWs has decreased making them to turn to more passive means of resistance which could harm the FDWs’ physical and mental health and wellbeing. (shrink)

The present study investigates the dynamics of emotional processing and awareness using an affective facial priming paradigm in conjunction with a multimodal assessment of awareness. Key facial primes are visually masked, and are presented for brief and extended durations. Using a preference measure, we examine whether the effects of the primes differ qualitatively . We show that: unconscious affective priming with faces emerges strongly in initial presentations and diminishes rapidly with repetition; conscious affective priming also emerges strongly in initial presentations, (...) however it persists in strength with repetition; and in contrast to other reports on the salience of negative stimuli, happy faces appear more salient than sad faces when presented outside awareness. We discuss the limits and extensions of unconscious affective priming with faces, and consider several methodological and conceptual questions concerning emotional processing out of awareness. (shrink)

This is a critical discussion of Paul Humphreys's fusion view of emergence, focusing on the basal loss feature of his ontology. The discussion yields some general morals for special science ontology.

This paper starts by investigating Ackermann's interpretation of finite set theory in the natural numbers. We give a formal version of this interpretation from Peano arithmetic (PA) to Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with the infinity axiom negated (ZF−inf) and provide an inverse interpretation going the other way. In particular, we emphasize the precise axiomatization of our set theory that is required and point out the necessity of the axiom of transitive containment or (equivalently) the axiom scheme of ∈-induction. This clarifies the (...) nature of the equivalence of PA and ZF−inf and corrects some errors in the literature. We also survey the restrictions of the Ackermann interpretation and its inverse to subsystems of PA and ZF−inf, where full induction, replacement, or separation is not assumed. The paper concludes with a discussion on the problems one faces when the totality of exponentiation fails, or when the existence of unordered pairs or power sets is not guaranteed. (shrink)

The representation of physics problems in relation to the organization of physics knowledge is investigated in experts and novices. Four experiments examine the existence of problem categories as a basis for representation; differences in the categories used by experts and novices; differences in the knowledge associated with the categories; and features in the problems that contribute to problem categorization and representation. Results from sorting tasks and protocols reveal that experts and novices begin their problem representations with specifiably different problem categories, (...) and completion of the representations depends on the knowledge associated with the categories. For, the experts initially abstract physics principles to approach and solve a problem representation, whereas novices base their representation and approaches on the problem's literal features. (shrink)

Although the same environmental regulations apply to all regions in China, legal enforcement can be different due to local economic development priorities. There is still a lack of knowledge about how regional disparities affect the operating performance results of the implementation of corporate environmental management practices, thus providing little information for foreign companies when they invest and develop their production base in China. To fill this research gap, this paper collects data from the Fortune 500 Chinese firms to investigate the (...) moderating role of regional disparities in affecting the performance results of corporate environmental management efforts based on the institutional theory. The disclosed corporate environmental responsibility practices serve as proxy to represent corporate environmental management practices. Content analysis approach was applied to collect and analyze CER practices published in the corporate reports of Chinese manufacturers. The results show that CER has a positive impact on operating income, while regional disparities influence the relationship between CER and corporate operating income. Specifically, CER and operating income are positively related in Eastern China; on the contrary, they are negatively related in Western China. This paper adds to the body of knowledge about environmental discrepancies in the same emerging economy, and provides insights for systematic consideration in terms of the issues of government environmental regulations and corporate environmental strategies. (shrink)

Using professional accountants as respondents in Hong Kong, this study strives to develop a model to depict the effect of ethical reasoning on the relationships between guanxi and auditors; behaviour in an audit conflict situation. The results of the study found that (1) there is a significant relationship between an auditor's ethical judgement and one's moral cognitive development; (2) there is a relationship between an auditor's ethical judgement and the existence of guanxi; and (3) the impact of guanxi on an (...) auditor's judgement is depending on the level of ethical reasoning. (shrink)

Hegel’s famous criticism of Laozi in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, has been a center of controversy in comparative philosophy. It is often regarded as an example of the unfair treatment of Chinese philosophy by its Western counterpart, that the West is measuring the East according to its own standard, imposing on the latter its understanding of what philosophy should be, passing judgment on China that it has no mature philosophy, or, if it has, that it is still (...) in an unsophisticated, primitive stage. However, there has been little serious and detailed discussion about Hegel’s argument in this important and representative document in the dialogue between Western and Chinese philosophy. Most of the .. (shrink)

The practice of covertly administering medication is controversial. Although condemned by some as overly paternalistic, others have suggested that it may be acceptable if patients have permanent mental incapacity and refuse needed treatment. Ethical, legal, and clinical considerations become more complex when the mental incapacity is temporary and when the medication actually serves to restore autonomy. We discuss these issues in the context of a young man with schizophrenia. His mother had been giving him antipsychotic medication covertly in his soup. (...) Should the doctor continue to provide a prescription, thus allowing this to continue? We discuss this case based on the “four principles” ethical framework, addressing the conflict between autonomy and beneficence/non-maleficence, the role of antipsychotics as an autonomy restoring agent, truth telling and the balance between individual versus family autonomy. (shrink)

The Chinese ethical tradition has often been thought to oppose Western views of the self as autonomous and possessed of individual rights with views that emphasize the centrality of relationship and community to the self. The essays in this collection discuss the validity of that contrast as it concerns Confucianism, the single most influential Chinese school of thought. Alasdair MacIntyre, the single most influential philosopher to articulate the need for dialogue across traditions, contributes a concluding essay of commentary. This is (...) the only consistently philosophical collection on Asia and human rights and could be used in courses on comparative ethics, political philosophy and Asian area studies. (shrink)

In post-Gricean pragmatics, communication is said to be successful when a hearer recovers a speaker’s intended message. On this assumption, proposals for ‘what is said’ – the semantic, propositional meaning of a speaker’s utterance – are typically centred around the content the speaker aimed to communicate. However, these proposals tend not to account for the fact that speakers can be deliberately vague, leaving no clear proposition to be recovered, or that a speaker can accept a hearer’s misconstrual even though the (...) speaker didn’t intend it. In such cases, identifying ‘what is said’ is more contentious, even though communication is arguably no less successful. Building on recent interactionist approaches to meaning, this chapter offers a proposal for ‘what is said’ that can account for cases of ‘imperfect’ communication in which the recovery of a speaker’s intention goes awry. This involves taking ‘what is said’ as the co-constructed meaning that the speaker and hearer jointly agree on, giving ‘grounded meanings’ – those mutually and manifestly accepted into the discourse by speaker and hearer – higher precedence in a theory of communication than simply the speaker’s intended meaning. In such cases, rather than speaker and hearer converging at the level of explicit utterance content, communication is expected to be successful as long as the hearer recovers a proposition which is compatible with the speaker’s higher-order discursive goal. The hearer’s uptake is then allowed to override the content of the speaker’s intended meaning in the process of negotiating ‘what is said’. (shrink)

We show that the N₀-categorical structures produced by Hrushovski's predimension construction with a control function fit neatly into Shelah's $SOP_n $ hierarchy: if they are not simple, then they have SOP₃ and NSOP₄. We also show that structures produced without using a control function can be undecidable and have SOP.

This chapter contains sections titled: References Further reading.

The anthropological turn, which Pannenberg decisively and successfully executed in the early 1980s, has provided his latest ethical argumentation with an extra dimension and increased depth. Pannenberg now believes that ethics has its foundations in anthropology rather than directly in dogmatics. The ethical as a common concern of all humankind must not be isolated and made independent of metaphysics and religion. For only then can the claim of universal validity for ethics be sustained, which in turn Pannenberg sees as the (...) condition of its binding nature for Christians. Our awareness of moral obligations would become vague when it cannot be clarified in terms of any universally valid norms. Our final verdict on Pannenberg's new approach, however, must await greater clarity on whether his universal moral claim can withstand the potent challenge arising in today's increasingly pluralistic world; otherwise, his latest methodology would only bring him from the historicist fringe to the anthropologist margin. (shrink)

This paper aims at engaging Kant’s and Schelling’s theories of time in dialogue. It begins with Schelling’s famous criticism of Kant’s theory of time in his Weltalter (Ages of the World). It will examine this question from four main perspectives, namely the unity of time; time and a unitary object of experience;subjectivity of time; and the problem of infinity of time. It will show that Schelling’s criticism may instigate some fundamental reflections on Kant’s theory oftime, the relation between objective and (...) subjective time, and the possibilities of connecting Kant’s different meanings of time in his first Critique. Further, it willshow that despite the fundamental differences between Kant’s and Schelling’s philosophical systems, some of Schelling’s ideas about time may have their earlier expressions in Kant. While Schelling has gone further and radicalized some insights from Kant in his own version of idealism, his criticism of Kant may find possible responses from the latter’s first Critique. (shrink)

In this paper we provide a philosophical analysis of the Hard Problem of consciousness and the implications of conceivability scenarios for current neuroscientific research. In particular, we focus on one of the most prominent neuroscientific theories of consciousness, integrated information theory (IIT). After a brief introduction on IIT, we present Chalmers’ original formulation and propose our own layered view of the hard problem, showing how 2 separate issues can be distinguished. More specifically, we argue that it’s possible to disentangle a (...) core problem of consciousness from a layered hard problem, the latter being essentially connected to Chalmers’ conceivability argument. We then assess the relation between the Hard Problem and IIT, showing how the theory resists conceivability scenarios, and how it is equipped to face up to the hard problem in its broadest acceptation. (shrink)