The COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020 has changed the conventional learning mode for most students at schools all over the world, and the e-learning at home has become a new trend. Taking Chinese college students as the research subject and drawing on the stimulus–organism–response model, this paper examines the relationship between the peer referent, perceived closeness, and perceived control and the learning engagement. Using data from 377 college students who have used e-learning, this study shows that perceived closeness, (...) perceived control, and peer referents in e-learning have a positive effect on the self-efficacy and well-being of students, thus improving students’ enthusiasm for learning. Our intent is to assist researchers, instructors, designers, and others in identifying effective methods to conceptualize and measure student engagement in e-learning. (shrink)

McTaggart’s argument for the unreality of time was first published in the 1908 article “The Unreality of Time,” and a revised version appeared in the 1927 book The Nature of Existence. I argue that these two versions are significantly different. The second construction of the argument is important because it neutralizes a compelling objection. McTaggart’s initial argument tries to show that the conception of an A-series is self-contradictory. A natural objection is that the apparent contradiction can be resolved by making (...) clear that an event has incompatible A-properties only successively. McTaggart anticipates and responds to the objection. My main contention is this: McTaggart’s initial response to the objection fails, but in the second construction of his argument he succeeds in showing that the contradiction cannot be resolved in the way suggested by the objection. I also explain why the second construction has been overlooked for so long. (shrink)

I propose and argue for an account of humility in Zhuangzi, which I call perspectival humility. In the opening of the article, I will present a view of humility found in pre-Qin Confucian texts; then, I will explain the idea of Zhuangist humility, which provides a contrast to Confucian humility. Zhuang Zhou does not think that any ideas of right and wrong can be absolutely correct. People must see that their beliefs may not be absolutely correct, and should always consider (...) alternative perspectives. Those who recognise the limitations of their perspective are led to perspectival humility. Moreover, perspectival humility encourages people to learn extensively and to harmonise the differences between other perspectives. The Zhuangist approach takes various perspectives into account and is an inclusive notion of humility that prompts people to appreciate different ways of life, engages in harmonious social relationships, and preserves cultural diversity. (shrink)

Neuropsychiatrist Michael T. H. Wong argues that the notions of soul, mind, brain, self and consciousness are no longer adequate on their own to explain humanity. He formulates a “third discourse” that brings philosophy neuroscience theology and psychiatry together as an innovative multilayered narrative for the person in the twenty-first century.

Since the announcement and establishment of the Oversight Board (OB) by the technology company Meta as an independent institution reviewing Facebook and Instagram’s content moderation decisions, the OB has been subjected to scholarly scrutiny ranging from praise to criticism. However, there is currently no overarching framework for understanding the OB’s various strengths and weaknesses. Consequently, this article analyses, organises, and supplements academic literature, news articles, and Meta and OB documents to understand the OB’s strengths and weaknesses and how it can (...) be improved. Significant strengths include its ability to enhance the transparency of content moderation decisions and processes, to effect reform indirectly through policy recommendations, and its assertiveness in interpreting its jurisdiction and overruling Meta. Significant weaknesses include its limited jurisdiction, limited impact, Meta’s control over the OB’s precedent, and its lack of diversity. The analysis of a recent OB case in Ethiopia shows these strengths and weaknesses in practice. The OB’s relationship with Meta and governments will lead to challenges and opportunities shaping its future development. Reforms to the OB should improve the OB’s control over its precedent, apply OB precedent to currently disputed cases, and clarify the standards for invoking OB precedent. Finally, these reforms provide the foundation for an additional improvement to address the OB’s institutional weaknesses, by involving users in determining whether the OB’s precedent should be applied to decide current content moderation disputes. (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)

The aim of this paper is to situate the early Indian (Nikāya) Buddhist notion of karmic causation within the mental causation discourse in the Western analytic tradition, which concerns causal transactions involving mental events, such as desires, beliefs, and intentions, whether the transactions are between mental events, or between mental events and physical events. Karmic causation involves actional causes, in concert with non-actional causes, and their experiential effects on the actor, in concert with non-experiential effects. The problems generated by karmic (...) causation in Buddhism overlap with those generated by mental causation in the Western analytic tradition. They include how the mental aspects relate to the physical aspects of the self, sense perception, and action, as well as how the mental and physical aspects of an actional cause relate to the experiential and non-experiential aspects of an effect on the actor. -/- To make sense of mental causation, it is crucial to understand a cluster of associated concepts such as causation, the self, sense perception, and action. Similarly, to make sense of karmic causation, it is crucial to understand a cluster of associated concepts such as dependent arising (paṭiccasamuppāda), the fivefold laws of nature (pañca-niyāma), the five aggregates (pañca-khandha), the six sense bases (Saḷayatana), action (karma), and results (vipāka). I shall discuss these concepts under the headings of causation, the self, sense perception, and action before I move on to address karmic causation in the context of the mental causation debate. (shrink)

In this book, David B. Wong defends an ambitious and important new version of moral relativism. He does not espouse the type of relativism that says anything goes, but he does start with a relativist stance against alternative theories such that there need not be only one universal truth. Wong proposes that there can be a plurality of true moralities existing across different traditions and cultures, all with one core human question as to how we can all live (...) together. (shrink)

Global engineering ethics is the engineering ethics’ response to globalization. It plays a major role in the received narrative about the need for a global engineering ethics, which is often illustrated by stories of some engineers A (of culture X) who interact with people or organizations of culture Y, and as a result encounter conflicts between their (i.e. culture X’s) ethical values and culture Y’s ethical values that generate ethical conundrums to the engineers. Global engineering ethics is thus needed to (...) help engineers to navigate through these ethical conundrums. However, the received narrative is insufficient in attending to the different nature and scope of ethical challenges for engineers and engineering practices in a globalized context, or so I shall argue. To understand these differences, I elaborate three basic presuppositions that create the need for global engineering ethics and explain their various interpretations. These presuppositions will then form the basis of my discussion of current approaches to global engineering ethics. I also argue that global engineering ethics is not merely reactive but also proactive, but the existing approaches have paid insufficient attention to the proactive dimension of global engineering ethics. So, I will end this chapter by arguing for the importance of the proactive dimension and exploring what it demands from engineers and engineering practices. (shrink)

I argue that it is a main theme of Davidson's theory of interpretation that interpretive charity implies the impossibility of massive disagreement. There is clear textual support for that. I then argue that from the first-person point of view of a full-blooded interpreter, the theme must be accepted; and that is precisely why Davidson accepts it. If massive disagreement between speaker and interpreter seems to us easy to imagine, it is only because the imagination involved is third-personal and not full-blooded.

Qualifying post-Westphalian sovereign statehood as a 'power' as argued for in Hendrik Berkhoff's political theology, this book addresses the decades-long theological-spiritual debate between Christian realism and Christian pacifism in U.S. foreign policy and global Christian circles. It approaches the debate by delving into the pacifist Anabaptist political theology and delineates empirically how sovereign statehood in post-colonial Africa and Asia has fallen into the hands of the devil Satan, as a 'fallen power' in the Foucaultian terms of power structures, techniques and (...) episteme. While the book offers intervention schemes and options, it holds that Christian statecraft remains the source of hope to effectively address a number of serious global issues. By extension, the book is thus an invitation to ignite debates on the suitability of Christian statecraft and the nexus between spirituality and world politics, making it especially interesting for scholars and students in the fields of International Politics, Politics of Asian and African States, Post-colonial Studies and Political Theology.. (shrink)

The argument for metaethical relativism, the view that there is no single true or most justified morality, is that it is part of the best explanation of the most difficult moral disagreements. This Element discusses the latest arguments in ethical theory in an accessible manner, with many examples and cases.

In contrast to standard possible worlds semantics, possible worlds in a two-dimensional semantic framework play two kinds of roles, rather than just one. This allows the framework to assign two kinds of intensions to expressions, rather than just one. Its fruitful use in explicating modal operators and the meanings of referential expressions like indexicals has led to two-dimensional accounts that seek to revive the Fregean conception of meaning, or more specifically the descriptivist view of reference, which has fallen into disrepute (...) due to intense criticisms, most famously, by Saul Kripk’s seminal work Naming and Necessity (1972). This entry provides a critical overview of the two most prominent of such accounts, proposed by Frank Jackson and David Chalmers. Unfortunately, there is not space to describe either account in detail, so I rely largely on brief descriptions and plenty of references to primary and secondary sources. More importantly, I rely on focusing on how the accounts explain the phenomenon of necessary a posteriori identity that Kripke’s well-known examples (such as ‘Hesperus is Phosphorus’) have brought to light. Focusing on and structuring our discussions around this phenomenon is by no means just an expository convenience. These cases are of central importance in themselves. They epitomize a large part of the contribution of Naming and Necessity to the theory of reference. This is why section 2 outlines Kripke’s critique of the Fregean theory of referential expressions and section 3 explains rigid designation and identity statements. Section 4 discusses rigidification and the notion of a world considered as actual, leading to the introduction of two-dimensional functions in Section 5. I discuss, finally, Frank Jackson’s and David Chalmers’ two-dimensionalism in Sections 6 and 7. Section 8 makes a few critical remarks on Jackson’s handling of the semantic argument. I conclude (Section 8) by discussing the important distinction between semantics and metasemantics. (shrink)

Untruthfulness is surprisingly common in the U.S. military even though members of the profession are loath to admit it. Further, much of the deception and dishonesty that occurs in the profession of arms is actually encouraged and sanctioned by the military institution. The end result is a profession whose members often hold and propagate a false sense of integrity that prevents the profession from addressing -- or even acknowledging -- the duplicity and deceit throughout the formation. It takes remarkable courage (...) and candor for leaders to admit the gritty shortcomings and embarrassing frailties of the military as an organization in order to better the military as a profession. Such a discussion, however, is both essential and necessary for the health of the military profession"--Publisher's web site. (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 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)

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.

The topic of this thesis is about one of the simplest linguistic expressions in our natural languages, names. The debate about the meaning of names has a longstanding history in philosophy of language. One camp, as known as Millianism, maintains that a name only contributes its referent to the meaning of sentence which contains it, and the other camp, as known as Descriptivism, maintains that a name is disguised definite description. My thesis aims to contribute to this continuing debate. Millianism, (...) which holds that a name n only contributes its referent to the meaning of the sentence which contains it, seems to have problem in explaining the cognitive role of names. For, it seems intuitive true that a rational person will take ‘Superman is Superman’ and ‘Clark Kent is Superman’ to have different meaning, even though the names have the same referent. Also, if we substitute co-referring names in belief ascriptions, e.g. ‘Lois believes that Superman flies’ and ‘Lois believes that Clark Kent flies’, their truth-values appear to change. The intuitions as such come into conflict with Millianism, and appear to show that the view is false. In this thesis, I will examine two Millian responses to the above problems. I shall criticize a response famously defended by Salmon and (early-)Soames, and to defend a version of Millianism proposed by Soames, which, while holding that a name only contributes its referent to the meaning of a sentence which contains it, allows a speaker to assertively utter these sentences and belief ascriptions to assert something beyond the meaning of them. So, the meaning of the two sentences ‘Superman is Superman’ and ‘Clark Kent is Superman’ is just the same; and, the belief ascriptions ‘Lois believes that Superman flies’ and ‘Lois believes that Clark Kent flies’ do not differ in truth-value. But, a speaker can assert something in fact different in meaning or truth-value via these sentences and ascriptions. In the thesis, I shall show that this version of Millianism is preferable to the one defended by Salmon and (early-)Soames. (shrink)

Confucian Ethics in Western Discourse brings Chinese philosophers into dialogue with contemporary moral philosophers, identifying how ancient Chinese philosophy can contribute to Western discussions of moral philosophy. Covering the characteristics and significance of the Confucian ethical tradition, this study introduces the main concepts, discusses differing perspectives of moral dilemmas and closely examines whether Confucian ethics should be considered as virtue ethics in the Western tradition. Through analysis of the meaning of virtues in Confucian ethics it draws comparison with virtues in (...) Aristotlelian moral philosophy, and offers an in-depth review of the thought of Cheng Brothers in the Song Dynasty, shedding light on current ethical issues. With careful textual studies and philosophical perceptiveness, Confucian Ethics in Western Discourse connects ancient Chinese thought and contemporary problems in Western philosophy. (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)

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)

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 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)

Consumer society engenders a peculiar set of existential conditions, but it is often neglected in analyses of technology. The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate a way to examine technology through the set of existential conditions in consumer society, and, at the same time, argue for its importance in normative analyses of technology. Particularly, this chapter argues against a specific pattern of argument against technology to be inadequate in isolation of an analysis of consumer society. In this respect, philosophers (...) and other researchers interested in normative issues on technology in consumer society can benefit enormously from social theory of consumption. (shrink)