Firms located in communities in which people are, on average, more trusting enjoy some benefits in terms of the power of CEO contracts. We present two pieces of empirical evidence to support this claim: (1) higher average trust in a county is associated with “flatter” executive contracts and (2) when an exogenous shock occurs (such as a scandal involving an important social institution), both trust and contracting move in similar directions. We obtain the first result in a panel specification and (...) the second in a “difference-in-difference” specification that uses the revelation of sex scandals involving the Catholic Church across different U.S. localities. (shrink)

Beginning with an exploration into the question of what war is, War and Warfare Since 1945 provides a chronological analysis of military history since the end of World War II extending through to an analysis of the limits of modern warfare in the nuclear age with the purpose of examining why war occurs and how it is carried out. The book concludes with an investigation into modern war and speculation on the changing face of warfare."--Provided by publisher.

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, 'middle ground (MG)'. Like almost all fallacies, MG is prevalent because it closely resembles a non‐fallacious way of reasoning. In many disputes, especially when there is a spectrum of opinions, the truth often lies somewhere in between the most extreme views on either side. The fallacy is committed by people who don't listen to the reasons that have been offered by each side to defend their theories – they (...) simply assume that the truth is in the middle. The fallacy is the result of intellectual laziness. Fortunately, this is an easy fallacy to avoid. Simply keep in mind the fact that merely because someone asserts a theory, especially an extreme theory, this does not by itself provide evidence for any conclusion at all. (shrink)

Democracy has been a flawed hegemony since the fall of communism. Its flexibility, its commitment to equality of representation, and its recognition of the legitimacy of opposition politics are all positive features for political institutions. But democracy has many deficiencies: it is all too easily held hostage by powerful interests; it often fails to advance social justice; and it does not cope well with a number of features of the political landscape, such as political identities, boundary disputes, and environmental crises. (...) Although democracy is valuable it fits uneasily with other political values and is in many respects less than equal to the demands it confronts. In this volume prominent political theorists and social scientists present original discussions of such central issues. Democracy's Values deals with the nature and value of democracy, particularly the tensions between it and such goods as justice, equality, efficiency, and freedom. (shrink)

Xiu zhen xu yu (wai pian) -- Tan Lao sui gan -- Yin shi yang zhen.

Safeguarding GenAI models against threats and aligning them with security requirements is imperative yet challenging. This chapter provides an overview of the security landscape for generative models. It begins by elucidating common vulnerabilities and attack vectors, including adversarial attacks, model inversion, backdoors, data extraction, and algorithmic bias. The practical implications of these threats are discussed, spanning domains like finance, healthcare, and content creation. The narrative then shifts to exploring mitigation strategies and innovative security paradigms. Differential privacy, blockchain-based provenance, quantum-resistant algorithms, (...) and human-guided reinforcement learning are analyzed as potential techniques to harden generative models. Broader ethical concerns surrounding transparency, accountability, deepfakes, and model interpretability are also addressed. The chapter aims to establish a conceptual foundation encompassing both the technical and ethical dimensions of security for generative AI. It highlights open challenges and lays the groundwork for developing robust, trustworthy, and human-centric solutions. The multifaceted perspective spanning vulnerabilities, implications, and solutions is intended to further discourse on securing society’s growing reliance on generative models. Frontier model security is discussed using Anthropic proposed approach. (shrink)

Contemporary society involves a number of different persons, groups, and ways of life that are deeply divided and very often opposed on fundamental matters of deep concern. Today, many contemporary philosophers regard this 'fact of diversity' as a problem that needs to be addressed when assessing the principles employed to organize society. In this paper, I discuss the fact of diversity, as it is understood by the notion of reasonable pluralism, and explain why it is thought by some to challenge (...) the stability of a society's political morality. I examine the leading attempt to offer an account of the stability of a political morality and I argue that John Rawls's attempt to account for the stability of Justice as Fairness fails for reasons applicable to all political moralities because the very notion of a stable political morality is implausible. Diversity, as reasonable pluralism understands it, is not a problem that can be solved either by identifying a stable political morality or by modifying a political morality in some way that will make it more stable. Instead, the fact of diversity indicates only that disagreements on all aspects of society's organization, including its organizing principles and matters of value, is a permanent feature of social life that cannot be ignored, wished away, or solved. (shrink)

This chapter deals with one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called 'the gambler's fallacy (GF)'. GF is committed in the context of random, unconnected events. When (by chance) a certain outcome occurs very often in one period of time, the fallacious reasoner assumes that the opposite outcome will be more likely to occur in the future to “even out” the results. As with most fallacies, GF is prevalent because it is similar to a kind of good reasoning. This (...) chapter considers a case of flipping coin to understand this concept. GF covers situations where the results are based on chance. In a game of skill, for example, a streak may indicate the superiority of one player or team or it may cause the other players to adjust their strategy to stop the currently successful run. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Van Inwagen's First Formalization.

From birth to 15 months infants and caregivers form a fundamentally intersubjective, dyadic unit within which the infant’s ability to recognize gender/sex in the world develops. Between about 18 and 36 months the infant accumulates an increasingly clear and subjective sense of self as female or male. We know little about how the precursors to gender/sex identity form during the intersubjective period, nor how they transform into an independent sense of self by 3 years of age. In this Theory and (...) Hypothesis article I offer a general framework for thinking about this problem. I propose that through repetition and patterning, the dyadic interactions in which infants and caregivers engage imbue the infant with an embodied, i.e., sensori-motor understanding of gender/sex. During this developmental period (which I label Phase 1) gender/sex is primarily an intersubjective project. From 15 to 18 months (which I label Phase 2) there are few reports of newly appearing gender/sex behavioral differences, and I hypothesize that this absence reflects a period of developmental instability during which there is a transition from gender/sex as primarily inter-subjective to gender/sex as primarily subjective. Beginning at 18 months (i.e., the start of Phase 3), a toddler’s subjective sense of self as having a gender/sex emerges, and it solidifies by 3 years of age. I propose a dynamic systems perspective to track how infants first assimilate gender/sex information during the intersubjective period (birth to 15 months); then explore what changes might occur during a hypothesized phase transition (15 to 18 months), and finally, review the emergence and initial stabilization of individual subjectivity-the period from 18 to 36 months. The critical questions explored focus on how to model and translate data from very different experimental disciplines, especially neuroscience, physiology, developmental psychology and cognitive development. I close by proposing the formation of a research consortium on gender/sex development during the first 3 years after birth. (shrink)

Aristotle’s Prior Analytics is probably the earliest existing systematic philosophical writing on a syllogistic system and theory of logic. In this work, Aristotle introduces the categorical syllogistic, consisting of three figures and fourteen valid moods. This paper proposes that Aristotle distinguishes a general notion of syllogisms from a more technical notion of syllogisms. Syllogisms that belong to the categorical syllogistic fall under Aristotle’s technical notion of syllogisms that must satisfy two conditions: (1) a conclusion follows necessarily from the premises, and (...) (2) the premises derive a conclusion that necessarily follows from them in regard to attributing the major extreme to the minor. (shrink)

如果孔孟生活在我們的時代， 他們對21世紀的重大問題與挑戰，會提出什麼看法？ 孔孟對變動劇烈恍如漩渦的21世紀， 特別是處於新冠病毒肆虐的現代人， 會以何種倡議，讓人的「自我」能夠安身立命， 在黯兮慘悴中仍能持守「不動心」的境界？ 孔孟思想是中華文化的主流思想，也是我們現代人從事各種思考，包括政治、社會、經濟、文化、個人生命等面向的重要文化資源。中國與亞洲的崛起，對世界局勢影響深遠，是本世紀最重要的劃時代事件之一，孔孟思想也重新 獲得世界各國知識界的重視。歐美學界都在爭取儒學的發言權，儼然已成為國際學術界的新趨勢。 《深叩孔孟》並不是傳統的、以背誦為主的經典研讀；而是從21世紀出發為思考，與孔孟進行心靈的對話，厚植我們在現世參與文明對話的本土思想資源。 本書是黃俊傑教授在臺灣大學講授「深叩孔孟」通識課程的講稿，一共分為十二講，每講均附閱讀作業、延伸閱讀、思考問題、關鍵詞、本講內容架構圖，方便讀者自學參考。.

STUDYING RELIGION in its many aspects is profoundly important to understanding our cultural diversity, our history, and our values. If religion is at the heart of every culture, it is imperative that we seek to know more about its influence in our lives and its place in our world. These six inaugural lectures, delivered by Sterling McMurrin from 1992 to 1994, introduce and discuss religion in various aspects. Subsequent volumes featuring the work of invited lecturers will continue to present (...) the very best scholarship on religion. (shrink)

There is an eminent tradition of thought that sees in the phenomenon of time something contradictory. This tradition has been recently revived by some contemporary proponents of dialethism – the view that there are true contradictions. In this paper, I will contribute to this line of thinking by tracing the first steps of a dialethic account of time-consciousness. In particular, I will argue that the experiential flow of time can be accounted for in the framework of an intentionalist approach to (...) temporal perception if we conceive of time-consciousness as a quasi-multiplicity, i.e., a multiplicity of non-self-identical parts, hence the embrace of dialethism. Section 1 introduces dialethism, discusses Priest's dialethic theory of motion and time, and motivates the project of a dialethic account of time-consciousness. Section 2 introduces the intentionalist approach to time-consciousness and distinguishes pure intentionalism from sense-data intentionalism; both subscribes to a certain Principle of Simultaneous Awareness but interprets it differently. In Sect. 3, I offer an in-depth analysis of this principle and identify its core as the requirement of self-unification, i.e., the requirement that time-consciousness unifies itself in flowing without any higher-order act of unification. Section 4 then argues that pure intentionalism can satisfy this requirement by embracing dialethism. I conclude by noting how the dialethic account of time-consciousness incorporates a central extensionalist insight within an intentionalist outlook. (shrink)

Controversies surrounding social media platforms have provided opportunities for institutional reflexivity amongst users and regulators on how to understand and govern platforms. Amidst contestation, platform companies have continued to enact projects that draw upon existing modes of privatized governance. We investigate how social media companies have attempted to achieve closure by continuing to set the terms around platform governance. We investigate two projects implemented by Facebook (Meta)—authenticity regulation and privacy controls—in response to the Russian Interference and Cambridge Analytica controversies surrounding (...) the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Drawing on Goffman’s metaphor of stage management, we analyze the techniques deployed by Facebook to reinforce a division between what is visible and invisible to the user experience. These platform governance projects propose to act upon _front-stage data relations:_ information that users can see from other users—whether that is content that users can see from “bad actors”, or information that other users can see about oneself. At the same time, these projects relegate _back-stage data relations_—information flows between users constituted by recommendation and targeted advertising systems—to invisibility and inaction. As such, Facebook renders the user experience actionable for governance, while foreclosing governance of back-stage data relations central to the economic value of the platform. As social media companies continue to perform platform governance projects following controversies, our paper invites reflection on the politics of these projects. By destabilizing the boundaries drawn by platform companies, we open space for continuous reflexivity on how platforms should be understood and governed. (shrink)

美感教育的實施，不可避免必須面對「不同主體之間的美感」可能存在殊異性的問題，本書試圖立於互為主體性的基礎，論述一種「共鳴美感」的新視野，並描繪出臺灣美感教育的未來可能新願景。首先，筆者先透過美感教育相 關議題之探討，析論推動美感教育可能面臨的潛在難題與挑戰，其次，針對問題而論述出一種「共鳴美感經驗」之理念，以作為解決構想；最後，透過實際個案來闡述「共鳴美感」在課程教學中的可能樣貌，包含：以「共鳴」的 「共感性」作為「美育課程實踐」的核心；以「共鳴」的「協同性」作為「教學藝術體現」的策略；以「共鳴」的「他者性」作為形塑「自我主體認同」之途徑。.

Self-deception may be a natural consequence of active goal operation instead of an adaptation for negotiating the social world. We argue that because autonomous goal programs likely drove human judgment and behavior prior to evolution of a central executive or “self,” these goal programs can operate independently to attain their desired end states and thereby produce outcomes that “deceive” the individual.

Objects: With the advent of genetic technologies, many genetic/metabolic disorders can be detected asymptomatically but might be untreatable, and the benefits and risks of screening for them are not fully known. The purpose of this study is to explore current practice with regard to the parental consent process in newborn screening .Design: Staff in 23 obstetric clinics/hospitals that conduct NBS in one city of southern Taiwan were interviewed. Using content analysis, 15 interview transcripts, eight completed questionnaires, and other relevant documents (...) from the 23 clinics/hospitals were analysed to reveal the framework of the parental consent process in NBS in southern Taiwan.Main measures: Three categories—informed consent, informed dissent, and no informed/consent—were developed to analyse the parental consent process in NBS.Results: The parental consent procedures in NBS and the quality of the information provided before obtaining consent vary widely. Because the traditional NBS was incorporated into routine paediatric practices in most clinics/hospitals, the most frequently encountered consent model is “informed dissent” and “no informed/consent” ; while an “informed consent” model is the frequent model for screening rare metabolic/genetic disorders.Conclusions: Specific guidelines to regulate the parental consent process for NBS are essential. Further studies should investigate parental responses to NBS, taking these as the basis on which to establish an informed consent model in Taiwan. (shrink)

Prior research on workplace ostracism and helping behavior has yielded mixed results. This study integrates social learning theory and social role theory by constructing a multilevel model to examine the relationship between supervisor ostracism and helping behavior that focuses on the mediating role of coworker ostracism and the moderating role of subordinate gender. Using a two-wave, multisource approach, data were collected from 382 employees and 43 immediate team leaders in four business corporations in Guangxi Province, China. The results of path (...) analysis reveal that supervisor ostracism has a cross-level effect on helping behavior through the mediating role of coworker ostracism. Furthermore, the positive direct effect of supervisor ostracism on coworker ostracism and the negative cross-level indirect effect of supervisor ostracism on helping behavior via coworker ostracism was stronger for men than women. These findings expand and deepen our understanding of the ostracism field. (shrink)

The era of sustainable transformation has witnessed an increase in corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure waves. Using Chinese A-share listed companies from 2016 to 2021 as a sample, this study adopted textual analysis and machine-learning techniques to analyze ESG reports and explore the imitation behavior of ESG disclosures in emerging Chinese markets for the first time. The results show imitation behavior exists in corporate ESG disclosures from the perspective of group association. Regarding the imitation object, enterprises tend to (...) choose the peer average level as a reference rather than the best enterprise in the same industry, which reveals the inherent law that enterprises' ESG disclosures are satisfied with compliance rather than championship. In terms of effects, the ESG-mimetic isomorphic pressure has no incremental information effect but has an efficiency optimization effect. Furthermore, the imitation intensity and impact effects of ESG disclosure behavior exhibit heterogeneity owing to differences in properties, sales growth rates, and external attention. This study expands the motivation for corporate ESG disclosure behavior and enriches the empirical evidence for institutional isomorphism. (shrink)

For more than fifty years, Sterling M. McMurrin served as one of the preeminent intellectual voices of the LDS community. From his beginnings as an Institute of Religion instructor to U.S. Commissioner of Education, and from a professor of philosophy to U.S. Envoy to Iran, he showed by example how personal and institutional morality can be defended.In a series of candid discussions with Jack Newell, McMurrin reveals his ability to reconcile freedom and conscience. In a spirit of repartee and (...) friendship, writes Boyer Jarvis in the foreword, Newell probes, challenges, and constantly draws McMurrin out as he... reflects upon his wide-ranging ideas and experiences. Rich in insight and humor, this remarkable dialogue captures the sweep and depth of McMurrin's thoughts as Newell engages him in discussing his approaches to philosophy, education, and religion.Among the qualities that characterized McMurrin's life and mind, explains Newell, perhaps the most notable is the freedom with which he has spoken his views on both the sacred and the profane. His intellectual integrity -- coupled as it almost always is with his humane instincts and innate fairness -- has simultaneously confounded and earned the respect of critics. (shrink)