This paper is for the purpose of clarify that perception is a conscious act through Bergson’s theory of images and perception in Matter and Memory. And yet this ‘act’ is not a pure action of consciousness or of sprit, which is transcendental from the reality and composes or recomposes it. That is, our perception is not pure knowledge. A pure conception is unconscious one, which takes place infinitely within the system of matter that is an ‘aggregate of images’ in which (...) all the elements act and react upon one another according to the law of nature. This system is excentric. On the contrary, the consciousness comes into being in themoment when these unlimited actions/reactions are limited and with choice, that is, when the passage from the ‘immediate’ to ‘useful’ in done. Therefore an activity of consciousness is already a practice of life. However, this perception as act reveals at the same time a proper capacity to subject/being, in that it forms a realm of subjectivity and creates its own field of perception, which are not reducible to the movement or nature of matter, so are different system from matter, every moment through memory. (shrink)

A few years ago no one would have suspected that the well‐known disorder of connective tissue, Marfan syndrome, could be caused by mutations in a recently discovered extracellular component, fibrillin. Likewise, nobody would have predicted that fibrillin represents a small family of proteins that are associated with several pheno‐typically overlapping disorders. The fibrillins are integral constituents of the non‐collagenous microfibrils, with an average diameter of 10 nm. These aggregates are distributed in the extracellular matrix of virtually every tissue. Microfibrillar bundles (...) provide the external coating to elastin in elastic fibers, and serve an anchoring function in non‐elastic tissues. At higher resolution, individual microfibrils have a “beads‐on‐a‐string” appearance resulting from the head‐to‐tail polymerization of multiple fibrillin aggregates. Structurally, fibrillin contains a series of repeated sequences homologous to the epidermal growth factor calcium‐binding motif. Characterization of fibrillin mutations in Marfan syndrome patients, together with the elucidation of the structure of the fibrillin proteins, have provided new insights, and raised new questions, about the function of the 10 nm microfibrils. For example, it is possible that the fibrillins, in addition to serving a structural function, might also be involved in regulating cellular activities and morphogenetic programs. It is fitting that the long search for the Marfan syndrome gene has brought a novel group of proteins to the forefront of extracellular matrix biology. (shrink)

Acknowledging separable factors underlying negative symptoms may lead to better understanding and treatment of negative symptoms in individuals with schizophrenia. The current study aimed to test whether the negative symptoms factor (NSF) of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) would be better represented by expressive and experiential deficit factors, rather than by a single factor model, using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Two hundred and twenty individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders completed the PANSS; subsamples additionally completed the Brief Negative Symptom (...) Scale (BNSS) and the Motivation and Pleasure Scale—Self-Report (MAP-SR). CFA results indicated that the two-factor model fit the data better than the one-factor model; however, latent variables were closely correlated. The two-factor model’s fit was significantly improved by accounting for correlated residuals between N2 (emotional withdrawal) and N6 (lack of spontaneity and flow of conversation), and between N4 (passive social withdrawal) and G16 (active social avoidance), possibly reflecting common method variance. The two NSF factors exhibited differential patterns of correlation with subdomains of the BNSS and MAP-SR. These results suggest that the PANSS NSF would be better represented by a two-factor model than by a single-factor one, and support the two-factor model’s adequate criterion-related validity. Common method variance among several items may be a potential source of measurement error under a two-factor model of the PANSS NSF. (shrink)

Malaysia had its first four patients with COVID-19 on 25 January 2020. In the same week, the World Health Organization declared it as a public health emergency of international concern. The pandemic has since challenged the ethics and practice of medicine. There is palpable tension from the conflict of interest between public health initiatives and individual’s rights. Ensuring equitable care and distribution of health resources for patients with and without COVID-19 is a recurring ethical challenge for clinicians. Palliative care aims (...) to mitigate suffering caused by a life-limiting illness, and this crisis has led to the awareness and urgency to ensure it reaches all who needs it. We share here the palliative care perspectives and ethical challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia. (shrink)

The counseling process involves attention, emotional perception, cognitive appraisal, and decision-making. This study aimed to investigate cognitive appraisal and the associated emotional processes when reading short therapists' statements of motivational interviewing (MI). Thirty participants with work injuries were classified into the pre-contemplation (PC,n= 15) or readiness stage of the change group (RD,n= 15). The participants viewed MI congruent (MI-C), MI incongruent (MI-INC), or control phrases during which their electroencephalograms were captured. The results indicated significant Group × Condition effects in the (...) frontally oriented late positive complex (P600/LPC). The P600/LPC's amplitudes were more positive-going in the PC than in the RD group for the MI congruent statements. Within the PC group, the amplitudes of the N400 were significantly correlated (r= 0.607–0.649) with the participants' level of negative affect. Our findings suggest that the brief contents of MI statements alone can elicit late cognitive and emotional appraisal processes beyond semantic processing. (shrink)

Recent corporate disgraces and corruption have heightened concerns about ethically questionable behavior in business. The construct of ethically questionable behavior is an under-portrayed area of management field research, and deserves further studying, especially in sales positions. This study uses four variables from the human resource management field to explain the ethically questionable behavior of sales representatives in the pharmaceutical industry. These variables include frame pattern, commission structure, behavior control type, and marketing norm perceptions. This work uses a 2  2 (...)  2  2 subject experimental design, and 328 fully completed questionnaires for logistic regression analysis. Results suggest that a medical representative in a loss frame, in a high commission structure, in loose behavior control, and in a low perception of marketing norm, is more likely affected by heuristic biases and make an ethically questionable choice. (shrink)

Recent corporate disgraces and corruption have heightened concerns about ethically questionable behavior in business. The construct of ethically questionable behavior is an under-portrayed area of management field research, and deserves further studying, especially in sales positions. This study uses four variables from the human resource management field to explain the ethically questionable behavior of sales representatives in the pharmaceutical industry. These variables include frame pattern, commission structure, behavior control type, and marketing norm perceptions. This work uses a 2  2 (...)  2  2 subject experimental design, and 328 fully completed questionnaires for logistic regression analysis. Results suggest that a medical representative in a loss frame (compared with a gain frame), in a high commission structure (compared with a low commission structure), in loose behavior control (compared with strict behavior control), and in a low perception of marketing norm (compared with a high perception of marketing norm), is more likely affected by heuristic biases and make an ethically questionable choice. (shrink)

At the end of the 1920s, Tanganyika Territory experienced several serious rodent outbreaks that threatened cotton and other grain production. At the same time, regular reports of pneumonic and bubonic plague occurred in the northern areas of Tanganyika. These events led the British colonial administration to dispatch several studies into rodent taxonomy and ecology in 1931 to determine the causes of rodent outbreaks and plague disease, and to control future outbreaks. The application of ecological frameworks to the control of rodent (...) outbreaks and plague disease transmission in colonial Tanganyika Territory gradually moved from a view that prioritised 'ecological interrelations' among rodents, fleas and people to one where those interrelations required studies into population dynamics, endemicity and social organisation in order to mitigate pests and pestilence. This shift in Tanganyika anticipated later population ecology approaches on the African continent. Drawing on sources from the Tanzania National Archives, this article offers an important case study of the application of ecological frameworks in a colonial setting that anticipated later global scientific interest in studies of rodent populations and rodent-borne disease ecologies. (shrink)

Sleep quality, personality, and cognitive load potentially increase second language writing anxiety and subsequently affect SLW achievement. This study investigates the predictions of sleep quality, personality, and cognitive load toward SLW anxiety and achievement in a computer-based test. Participants included 172 voluntary undergraduates majoring in English as foreign language. SLW anxiety in a computer-based test, sleep disturbance, personality and cognitive load was assessed with the SLW Anxiety Inventory, Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index, Type-D Personality, and cognitive load questionnaires. A structural equation (...) modeling approach was applied to examine the interdependence among the observed variables. An adequate-fit SLW anxiety model was built. The structural model showed that sleep disturbance, social inhibition personality, and computer-induced cognitive load were significant predictors of SLW anxiety in a computer-based test. Subsequently, SLW anxiety in a computer-based test and computer-induced cognitive load were significant negative predictors of computer-based SLW achievement. (shrink)

In reviewing the contents of the first to five speakers, we back up to the United States in writing "real and reasonable method" when the issues faced in: scientific research methods than in the general concept Concept in humanities research methods; and people in the academic literature on the low-order. We first consider how the amount of Dilthey and Heidegger deal with these issues. Ⅰ. Natural sciences and humanities approach argue Dilthey tried to explain the expression of human literature, there (...) is a independent but equally effective method of theoretical foundation. In German, Geisteswissenschaften range widely from the arts and sociology. The rise of hermeneutics, Dilthey, in his famous thesis, the mean deep to begin with Homer to explain the hope臘who traveled through Roman times and hope臘. However, Dilthey still seek to achieve "universal and effective " results, which makes him turn to the scientific method. Heidegger's teacher, Hu stopper Seoul , rather than with the mathematical background of the humanities, to use phenomenology to philosophy as a "rigorous science ". Conversely, neural science and philosophy with Heidegger humanities background. This makes Heidegger's hermeneutics of Dilthey and his interest. Heidegger was a critic of scientific objectivity, and even have commentaries description: "Scientists do not think" . His search for the source of the problem of modernity to Descartes who, because of Cartesian subjectivity of the world as a projection. Ⅱ. Up to the U.S. desire to restore the respect for human studies of up to U.S. desire to restore respect for the human sciences, but he does not find the key steps in Dilthey, but in Heidegger's "Art works of origin >. Ⅲ. Up to the United States after the Western aesthetic of Kant's critique of Gadamer to use his real art of management for the new hole to criticize the police after Kant the aesthetic development. This is the "true management and methods" section of the important elements. Ⅳ. Heidegger in breakthrough in the art lecture on Heidegger, providing up to restore the emphasis on the United States who required breakthrough in the planning literature. Ⅴ. Methods exist regardless hermeneutics the implications of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics can be seen as a new understanding of the analysis, so that his exposure to critical science and humanities in the nature of the two methods. Ⅵ. The universality of hermeneutics Gadamer in the "real and reasonable method" after the publication of a thesis advocated, he analyzed the universality of understanding can be applied in science and humanities in the training. Regardless of this guide provide us some background to explore the "real management and methods" in the 14 key concepts, these concepts will be in the seventh, eight speakers presented. After reviewing the content of Lectures 1-5, we turn to the issue that Gadamer was confronting when he wrote Truth and Method: the general sense of the superiority of scientific methods of research over humanistic methods, and the lower status of the humanities in academe . We first consider this issue in Dilthey and Heidegger. Section Ⅰ: The Contest over Methods in the Natural and Human Sciences Dilthey attempted to articulate a separate but equally valid methodological basis for interpretation in the humanities. In Germany, the range of the Geisteswissenschaften was wide, from art to sociology. In his famous essay on the rise of hermeneutics, Dilthey started, significantly, with the Greek interpreters of Homer and moved up through Greek and Roman times. Nevertheless, Dilthey was still seeking to achieve "universally valid" results , which moved him in the direction of scientific methods. Heidegger's teacher, Husserl, had a background in mathematics rather than the humanities and wanted to use phenomenology to make philosophy into a "rigorous science." Heidegger, in contrast, had a humanistic background in theology and philosophy and especially Greek philosophy. This caused him to be interested in Dilthey and his hermeneutics. Heidegger was a critic of scientific objectivity and once even remarked, "The scientist does not think." He traced the problems of modernity back to Descartes, who saw the world as a projection of his subjectivity. Section Ⅱ. Gadamer's Desire to Restore Respect to the Human Studies Gadamer desired to restore re spect to the human sciences, but he found the decisive step for doing so not in Dilthey but in Heidegger's The Origin of the Work of Art. Section Ⅲ: Gadamer's critique of Western aesthetics since Kant Gadamer used his new insight into the truth of art to criticize the development of aesthetics since Kant. This is a major element in the first section of Truth and Method. Section Ⅳ: Heidegger's Breakthrough in "The Origin of the Artwork" Heidegger's lectures on art offered Gadamer the breakthrough he needed in his project of restoring respect to the humanities. Section Ⅴ: The Implications of an Ontological Hermeneutics for Method Gadamer's new philosophical hermeneutics as an analysis of understanding put him in a position to criticize method per se in both the sciences and humanities. Section Ⅵ: The Universality of Hermeneutics In an essay published after Truth and Method Gadamer moved toward asserting the universality of his analysis of understanding as applying both to scientific disciplines and to the humanities. Understanding here was understanding universally, in general, in all respects. With this introduction we have some background for exploring the fourteen key concepts in Truth and Method itself that will be presented in lectures 7 and 8. (shrink)

BackgroundInstitutions, funding agencies and publishers are placing increasing emphasis on good research data management (RDM). RDM lapses in medical science can result in questionable data and cause the public’s confidence in the scientific community to crumble. A fledgling medical school in a young university in Singapore has mandated every funded research project to have a data management plan (DMP). However, researchers’ adherence to their DMPs was unknown until the school embarked on routine data auditing. We hypothesize that research data auditing (...) improves RDM awareness, compliance and reception in the school.MethodsWe conducted surveys with research PIs and researchers before and after data auditing to evaluate differences in self-reported RDM awareness, compliance and reception. As it is mandatory to deposit research data in a central data repository system in the school, we tracked data deposition by each laboratory from 2 weeks before to 3 months after data auditing as a marker of actual RDM compliance.ResultsResearch data auditing had an overall positive effect on self-reported RDM awareness, compliance and reception for both research PIs and researchers. Research PIs agreed more that RDM was important to scientific reproducibility, were more aware of proper RDM, had higher RDM strength in their laboratories and were more compliant with the DMP. Both research PIs and researchers believed data auditing helped them to be more compliant with data deposition in the repository. However, data auditing had no significant impact on laboratories’ data deposition rates over time, which could be due to the short sampling period.ConclusionsResearch PIs and researchers generally felt that data auditing was effective in improving RDM practices. It helped to evaluate their RDM practices objectively, propose corrective actions for RDM lapses and spread awareness of the university’s data management policies. Our findings corroborated other studies in medical research, geosciences, engineering and ethics that data auditing promotes good RDM practices. Hence, we recommend research institutions worldwide to adopt data auditing as a tool to reinforce research integrity. (shrink)

Creativity is an important 21st Century skill that enhances students’ ability to see new opportunities, confront new challenges, and adapt flexibly to the changing study, work and life situations. To nurture students with strong self-efficacy in creative thinking is as important as the contexts and strategies involved in its application. But how to develop sustainable interventions to promote students’ self-efficacy in creativity is a long-lasting challenge. This study presents a simple and relatively cost-effective instructional intervention, i.e., self-assessment mind maps, and (...) examines its effect on students’ self-efficacy in creativity, self-efficacy in learning English, and academic performance in English language tests. A pretest-posttest non-equivalent design was adopted for the experimental and control groups of students in a Hong Kong primary school in 2021/22 Spring semester. The results show that students from the experimental group significantly outperformed those from the control group on self-efficacy in creativity after the intervention. However, the intervention did not improve students’ self-efficacy and test performance in English learning. The findings demonstrate the potential of self-assessment mind maps as an effective and sustainable instruction intervention to promote students’ higher-order abilities. This study sheds light on designing sustainable instructional strategies for empowerment in creativity. (shrink)

Piracy is the greatest threat facing the music industry worldwide today. This study developed and empirically tested a model examining the antecedents of consumer attitude and behavioral intention toward music piracy behavior. Two types of music piracy behavior, unauthorized duplication/download and pirated music product purchasing, were examined. Based on a field survey in Taiwan, the results showed that attributive satisfaction, perceived prosecution risk, magnitude of consequence, and social consensus are very important in influencing customers attitude and behavioral intention toward two (...) types of music piracy behavior. In addition, singer/band idolization can affect the attitude and behavioral intention in the case of pirated music product purchasing. Perceived proximity was found to affect the attitude and behavioral intention in the case of pirated music product purchasing. However, it only influenced behavioral intention in the case of unauthorized duplication/download. (shrink)

This study aims to disclose how the magnetic resonance imaging neuroimaging approach has been applied in education studies, and what kind of learning themes has been investigated in the reviewed MRI neuroimaging research. Based on the keywords “brain or neuroimaging or neuroscience” and “MRI or diffusion tensor imaging or white matter or gray matter or resting-state,” a total of 25 papers were selected from the subject areas “Educational Psychology” and “Education and Educational Research” from the Web of Science and Scopus (...) from 2000 to 2019. Content analysis showed that MRI neuroimaging and learning were studied under the following three major topics and nine subtopics: cognitive function, science education, and brain development. As for the type of MRI neuroimaging research, the most frequently used approaches were functional MRI, followed by structural MRI and DTI, although the choice of approach was often motivated by the specific research question. Research development trends show that the neural plasticity theme has become more prominent recently. This study concludes that in educational research, the MRI neuroimaging approach provides objective and empirical evidence to connect learning processes, outcomes, and brain mechanisms. (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)

Rationale: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the hippocampus is proposed for enhancement of memory impaired by injury or disease. Many pre-clinical DBS paradigms can be addressed in epilepsy patients undergoing intracranial monitoring for seizure localization, since they already have electrodes implanted in brain areas of interest. Even though epilepsy is usually not a memory disorder targeted by DBS, the studies can nevertheless model other memory-impacting disorders, such as Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Methods: Human patients undergoing Phase II invasive monitoring for (...) intractable epilepsy were implanted with depth electrodes capable of recording neurophysiological signals. Subjects performed a delayed-match-to-sample (DMS) memory task while hippocampal ensembles from CA1 and CA3 cell layers were recorded to estimate a multi-input, multi-output (MIMO) model of CA3-to-CA1 neural encoding and a memory decoding model (MDM) to decode memory information from CA3 and CA1 neuronal signals. After model estimation, subjects again performed the DMS task while either MIMO-based or MDM-based patterned stimulation was delivered to CA1 electrode sites during the encoding phase of the DMS trials. Each subject was sorted (post hoc) by prior experience of repeated and/or mild-to-moderate brain injury (RMBI), TBI, or no history (control) and scored for percentage successful delayed recognition (DR) recall on stimulated vs. non-stimulated DMS trials. The subject’s medical history was unknown to the experimenters until after individual subject memory retention results were scored. Results: When examined compared to control subjects, both TBI and RMBI subjects showed increased memory retention in response to both MIMO and MDM-based hippocampal stimulation. Furthermore, effects of stimulation were also greater in subjects who were evaluated as having pre-existing mild-to-moderate memory impairment. Conclusion: These results show that hippocampal stimulation for memory facilitation was more beneficial for subjects who had previously suffered a brain injury (other than epilepsy), compared to control (epilepsy) subjects who had not suffered a brain injury. This study demonstrates that the epilepsy/intracranial recording model can be extended to test the ability of DBS to restore memory function in subjects who previously suffered a brain injury other than epilepsy, and support further investigation into the beneficial effect of DBS in TBI patients. (shrink)

As the aging population, including frail older people, continues to grow in Mainland China, quality of life and end-of-life care for frail older people has attracted much attention. Advance care planning is an effective way to improve end-of-life care for people with advanced diseases, and it is widely used in developed countries; however, it is a new concept in Mainland China. The effects of advance care planning and its acceptability in Mainland China are uncertain because of its culture-sensitive characteristics. The (...) objective of this article is to discuss the serious social issue of caring for frail older people and illustrate the possibility of implementing advance care planning in nursing homes in Mainland China through a review of relevant literature, which will focus on legislation, healthcare system engagement, public engagement, and cultural issues. Recommendations to promote and implement advance care planning include choosing nursing homes as a proper setting, establishing an ethical climate, and enhancing public awareness. (shrink)

Background: Healthcare workers in the front line of diagnosis, treatment, and care of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 are at great risk of both infection and developing mental health symptoms. This study aimed to investigate the following: whether healthcare workers in general hospitals experience higher mental distress than those in psychiatric hospitals; the role played by religion and alexithymic trait in influencing the mental health condition and perceived level of happiness of healthcare workers amidst the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic; (...) and factors that influence the resilience of healthcare workers at 6 weeks' follow-up.Methods: Four-hundred and fifty-eight healthcare workers were recruited from general and psychiatric hospitals, and 419 were followed-up after 6 weeks. All participants filled out the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale, five-item Brief-Symptom Rating Scale, and the Chinese Oxford Happiness Questionnaire.Results: Under the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, 12.3% of frontline healthcare workers in general hospitals reported having mental distress and perceived lower social adaptation status compared with those working in psychiatric hospitals. Christians/Catholics perceived better psychological well-being, and Buddhists/Taoists were less likely to experience mental distress. The results at 6 weeks of follow-up showed that the perceived lower social adaptation status of general hospital healthcare workers was temporary and improved with time. Christian/Catholic religion and time had independent positive effects on psychological well-being; however, the interaction of Christian/Catholic religion and time had a negative effect.Conclusions: Collectivism and individualism in the cultural context are discussed with regard to alexithymic trait and Buddhist/Taoist and Christian/Catholic religious faiths. Early identification of mental distress and interventions should be implemented to ensure a healthy and robust clinical workforce for the treatment and control of the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

The ‘happy fish’ dialogue is one of the best-known and heatedly debated passages of the Zhuangzi. Scholars have constructed different interpretations of the dialogue. Some argue that this dialogue expresses the idea of living at ease and enjoying life as it is; some refer to the idea of anti-anthropocentrism, while others reconstruct the dialogue as certain epistemological debates. This paper examines the connotations of ‘fish’, ‘water’, and ‘river’ in early Chinese political discourses and reads the political connotations in the dialogue (...) between Zhuangzi and Huizi. This can lead to an alternative interpretation, which is that, at its core, this passage is a dialogue between these two men on politics and their political careers. (shrink)

The scholar Jin Tian-zhu (1690 ~ 1765) was a Muslim of the Hui 回 ethnic group in the Qing dynasty who adhered to Islamic traditions handed down from generation to generation. In Qing Zhen Shi Yi, Jin Tian-zhu attempts to combine Confucianism and Islam through a simple comparison of their rituals. Jin Tian-zhu expresses his respect for Allah by attesting Allah’s existence and insisting that humans should obey Allah. He admits that in reality, besides Allah, the ruler is also clearly (...) an object of loyalty. In addition, he asserts that it is basic propriety for Muslims to be filial to their parents and that the scope of practice of filial piety must also apply to their ancestors beyond their parents. Jin Tian-zhu further expands his view of zhongxiao 忠孝 by asserting that the ultimate Muslim interest is in renlun 人倫, which he believes must be rectified. (shrink)

An interdisciplinary study of postmodern ethics and literary criticism from the perspective of Chan/Seon/Zen Buddhism, this book combines the tradition of Western metaphysics and its contact with Asian thought, contemporary Western thought, Buddhism, Taoism, and literary criticism.

Abstractabstract:This study examines the origin and religious roots of taegyo, Korean traditional prenatal education, and raises concerns about potential negative impacts of contemporary taegyo practice from feminist and disability perspectives. Taegyo has been accepted without much criticism due to its deep integration into prenatal care culture, and most existing literature focuses on taegyo's positive impacts on fetal health and development from scientific or nursing perspectives. This article analyzes a 19th-century taegyo manual, Taegyo Singi, and Seon and Won Buddhist literatures (...) on taegyo in order to understand the religio-cultural concepts and contexts of taegyo. The article then discusses the potential downsides of taegyo practice today, considering its patriarchal, mother-blaming, ablest roots in Korean history and culture. The author raises concerns about social oppression, the control of women's bodily autonomy, and the disproportionate responsibility burden that taegyo places on Korean women. The article concludes with suggestions for future research and for well-balanced taegyo practice. (shrink)

Le sujet de l’article est la situation actuelle de la recherche internationale sur le Cusain et ses perspectives pour l’avenir. Au cours du xxe siècle, la recherche internationale sur Nicolas de Cues a connu une expansion énorme. L’édition historique-critique de son œuvre est achevée. Aujourd’hui, il existe des centres sur le Cusain pas seulement en Allemagne, au Japon et aux États-Unis, mais aussi aux Pays-Bas, en Italie, en Argentine, en Russie et en France. à l’échelle mondiale, beaucoup de thèses de (...) doctorat sont écrites sur Nicolas de Cues, sans parler des nombreux articles le concernant. à l’occasion du 25e anniversaire de l’American Cusanus Society en mai 2008 à Kalamazoo, le philosophe américain Clyde Lee Miller a étudié la recherche sur Nicolas de Cues sous quatre angles différents que l’article reprend pour esquisser les futures perspectives de la recherche sur le Cusain. (shrink)

Totalitarianism is perhaps unanimously regarded as one of the greatest political evils of the last century and has been the grounds for much of Anglo-American political theory since. Confucianism, meanwhile, has been gaining credibility in the past decades among sympathizers of democratic theory in spite of criticisms of it being anti-democratic or authoritarian. I consider how certain key concepts in the classical Confucian texts of the Mencius and the Xunzi might or might not be appropriated for ‘legitimising’ totalitarian regimes. Under (...) an Arendtian approach to understanding totalitarianism, it is precisely an unproblematised relation to a normative History and Nature that underlies the potential compatibility or incompatibility. I argue against a longstanding prejudice that if any form of Confucianism would be totalitarian, it would have to be Xunzian. Against this, I hope to show that if any form of Confucianism would be totalitarian, it might well be a naturalistic Mencian Confucianism instead of a constructivist Xunzian one. (shrink)

Are counterfactuals with true antecedents and consequents automatically true? That is, is Conjunction Conditionalization: if (X & Y), then (X > Y) valid? Stalnaker and Lewis think so, but many others disagree. We note here that the extant arguments for Conjunction Conditionalization are unpersuasive, before presenting a family of more compelling arguments. These arguments rely on some standard theorems of the logic of counterfactuals as well as a plausible and popular semantic claim about certain semifactuals. Denying Conjunction Conditionalization, then, requires (...) rejecting other aspects of the standard logic of counterfactuals, or else our intuitive picture of semifactuals. (shrink)

Ugar and Malele write that generic machine learning (ML) technologies for mental health diagnosis would be challenging to implement in sub-Saharan Africa due to cultural specificities in how those conditions are diagnosed. For example, they say that in South Africa, the appearance of ‘schizophrenia’ might be understood as a type of spiritual possession, rather than a mental disorder caused by a brain dysfunction. Hence, a generic ML system is likely to ‘misdiagnose’ persons whose symptomatology matches that of schizophrenia in the (...) South African context. The authors thus claim that ‘a generic or universal design cannot be effective given the heterogeneity of value judgements in defining what mental health disorders are in different contexts’.1 Should we take this to mean that ML systems ‘should not be designed with a generalised perception of mental disorders,’1 as the authors suggest? On the contrary, my view is that generic ML can be useful, with the caveat that issues of cultural sensitivity may engender translational challenges in various national and cultural contexts. Yet, if it can be demonstrated that a generic ML system can reliably and accurately pick up on shared symptomatologies across cultures despite what any individual or community might believe about their actual causes, this aspect is surely the function and value of diagnostic ML which we should take to matter. Cultural gaps in aetiological understandings of mental health conditions make it all the more important to advance generic ML as a calibrating diagnostic tool. In this commentary, therefore, I will endeavour to make a case for generic ML in mental healthcare. ### Aetiological (mis)understanding across cultures The fundamental complexity to which Ugar and Malele direct our attention is the fact that mental health conditions are attributed to variable causal explanations, rather than a …. (shrink)

False consciousness requires a general explanation for why, and how, oppressed individuals believe propositions against, as opposed to aligned with, their own well-being in virtue of their oppressed status. This involves four explanatory desiderata: belief acquisition, content prevalence, limitation, and systematicity. A social constructionist approach satisfies these by understanding the concept of false consciousness as regulating social research rather than as determining the exact mechanisms for all instances: the concept attunes us to a complex of mechanisms conducing oppressed individuals to (...) mistake social understandings of themselves as natural self-understandings—the limits lie where these overlap (sometimes), or are entirely absent. (shrink)

Shun Kwong-loi argues that the distinction between first- and third-person points of view does not play as explanatory a role in our moral psychology as has been supposed by contemporary philosophical discussions. He draws insightfully from the Confucian tradition to better elucidate our everyday experiences of moral emotions, arguing that it offers an alternative and more faithful perspective on our experiences of anger and compassion. However, unlike the distinction between first- and third-person points of view, Shun’s descriptions of anger and (...) compassion leave unarticulated what would be necessary to differentiate these responses from non-moral responses. Here, I make a friendly suggestion on how this explanatory gap might be filled, providing complementary grounding for Shun’s observations by way of K. C. Bhattacharyya’s phenomenological analysis of feeling. It fills the gap by means of a gradation in the possible depth of emotional responses found in the a priori structure of a feeling experience for any subject. The payoff of such a comparison between Shun’s explication of Confucian moral psychology and Bhattacharyya’s explication of rasa theory is not only a possible phenomenological grounding for the former but also a potential way to articulate a missing ethics in Bhattacharyya’s thought. (shrink)

Dorothy Edgington’s work has been at the centre of a range of ongoing debates in philosophical logic, philosophy of mind and language, metaphysics, and epistemology. This work has focused, although by no means exclusively, on the overlapping areas of conditionals, probability, and paradox. In what follows, I briefly sketch some themes from these three areas relevant to Dorothy’s work, highlighting how some of Dorothy’s work and some of the contributions of this volume fit in to these debates.