Resumen: como la moral más importante del pueblo chino, la piedad filial es una parte importante de la cultura tradicional china y ocupa una posición importante en la historia china. El concepto de piedad filial se originó en la dinastía pre - qin, se desarrolló en las dinastías Xia y Shang y prevaleció en la dinastía Zhou Occidental. Confucio primero propuso el concepto de “piedad filial” en el confucianismo. Combinó la “piedad filial” con la “benevolencia” y enumeró el contenido específico (...) de la “piedad filial”. El pensamiento de piedad filial de Mencio también es una herencia del pensamiento de sus predecesores, que combina la piedad filial con ideas como la “teoría de la bondad sexual” y la “política del rey”. También propuso el estándar de “piedad filial”, que es un mayor desarrollo de la “piedad filial” en la dinastía pre - qin. Este artículo intenta comenzar con el pensamiento de piedad filial de algunos representantes del confucianismo pre - qin, analizar el contenido, el desarrollo y la influencia del pensamiento de piedad filial, y analizar el papel y la importancia de la “piedad filial” en la sociedad actual. (shrink)

A large and growing body of literature has investigated the role of teachers’ agency in their career trajectories. However, far too little attention has been paid to English as a Foreign Language teachers’, especially female EFL teachers’, professional agency for their career development in the Chinese higher education setting. To address this gap, this study explores female EFL teachers’ professional agency from a self-discrepancy theory perspective, namely, how the participating teachers have perceived discrepancies in their professional development and how they (...) have enacted their professional agency to realize sustainable development. Based on a metaphor investigation of 167 teachers and interviews with nine of them, the current study found that there are certain discrepancies between female EFL teachers’ self-guides and actual selves concerning their professional identity construction; female EFL teachers’ professional agency is manifested in the continuum of iteration, practical evaluation, and projectivity processes, as well as in the entity of personal and environmental factors; and 3) female EFL teachers’ professional agency and gender identity are closely intertwined with each other. This study can offer implications for teacher agency research and female teachers’ sustainable development at large. (shrink)

The level of organizational self-esteem of employees, whether on the production line or as managers or directors of enterprises, does not only correlate with individual performance but has also become a key factor in determining the completion of team core tasks. Based on the theory of self-consistency, this study explores the correlation between negative workplace gossip and employees’ organizational self-esteem by revealing the intermediary role of workplace exclusion and poor-order atmosphere. A survey of 228 employees from enterprises in Shandong and (...) Shanghai showed that negative workplace gossip exerted a significant negative impact on employees’ organizational self-esteem, suggesting that negative workplace gossip reduces employees’ organizational self-esteem in the context of Chinese organizations. In addition, workplace exclusion exerted a complete intermediary effect between negative workplace gossip and employees’ organizational self-esteem, and poor-order atmosphere perception played a partial intermediary role. This study uncovers the black box that negative workplace gossip affects employees’ organizational self-esteem and has a strong enlightening significance for management practice. (shrink)

To improve the accuracy of the multiple channel integration quality evaluation, this paper proposes a comprehensive evaluation method using the nonlinear autoregressive exogenous model and constructs an index system. First, the entropy method is used to determine the objective weight of each indicator. The indicators used in this paper are process consistency, information consistency, emotional value, procedural value, service structure transparency, online result value, business relevance, and online purchase intention. Second, an improved gray relational analysis algorithm is used to obtain (...) the comprehensive gray relational degree between the above eight indicators’ standard samples and the tested samples. Then, this study uses the dataset preprocessed with the GRA algorithm for training the NARX model. Then, this study uses the trained model to evaluate the quality of multiple channel integration comprehensively. Next, this study uses standardized methods to quantify the evaluation results to provide new ideas and theoretical guidance for teaching traditional retailers to use the advantages of multiple channels to expand their online business. This paper uses 50,000 consecutive samples of a product for 3 months as a dataset in the experimental part. Through the GRA method and the NARX model, the comprehensive gray relational degree between the test sample and the ideal sample is obtained, and the results are quantified. Experiments show that, compared with the GRA method, this paper’s method has a higher degree of fit between the output value and the target value. (shrink)

Scholarly interest in employees’ voluntary pro-environmental behavior has begun to emerge. While this research is beginning to shed light on the predictors of workplace pro-environmental behavior, our understanding of the psychological mechanisms linking the various antecedents to employees’ environmentally responsible behavior and the circumstances under which any such effects are enhanced and/or attenuated is incomplete. The current study seeks to fill this gap by examining: the effects of perceived corporate social responsibility on employees’ voluntary pro-environment behavior; an underlying mechanism that (...) links CSR perceptions to these behaviors; and a boundary condition to these relationships. Data from 183 supervisor-subordinate dyads employed in large- and medium-sized casinos and hotels in Guangdong China and Macau revealed that employees’ corporate social responsibility perceptions indirectly affect their engagement in voluntary pro-environmental behavior through organizational identification, and these effects are stronger for employees high in empathy. (shrink)

From reviews of the hardback edition: a deep study of 20th century field ... of the conceptual origins and development of twentieth century field theories, ...

Using Chinese listed companies as research setting, this paper constructs a measure of corporate competing culture through textual analysis on firms’ management discussion and analysis disclosures, and examines the impact of corporate competing culture on environmental investment. The results show that competing culture has a significant and positive impact on firms’ environmental investment, and the results remain robust to a battery of robustness tests. Moreover, the mediating analysis indicates that competing culture promotes corporate environmental investment through enhancing firms’ internal control (...) quality. Furthermore, the heterogeneity results show that the positive impact of corporate competing culture on environmental investment is more pronounced in firms with larger size, stronger corporate governance, in high-polluting industry, and located in less developed regions. Our findings shed light on the importance of corporate competing culture and provide practical implications for corporate sustainable development. (shrink)

In this paper, a 3D jerk chaotic system with hidden attractor was explored, and the dissipativity, equilibrium, and stability of this system were investigated. The attractor types, Lyapunov exponents, and Poincare section of the system under different parameters were analyzed. Additionally, a circuit was carried out, and a good similarity between the circuit experimental results and the theoretical analysis testifies the feasibility and practicality of the original system. Furthermore, a robust feedback controller was designed based on the finite-time stability theory, (...) which guarantees the synchronization of 3D jerk master-slave system in finite time and asymptotically converges to the origin. Finally, we also give verification for the discussion in this paper by numerical simulation. (shrink)

As the national awareness of health keeps deepening, online health communities have achieved rapid development. Users’ participation is critically important to the sustainable development of OHCs. Nevertheless, users usually lack the motive for participation. Based on the social capital theory, this research examines factors influencing users’ participation in OHCs. The purpose of this research is to find out decisive factors that influence users’ participation in OHCs, enrich the understanding of users’ participation in OHCs, and help OHCs address the issue of (...) sustainable development. The research model was empirically tested using 1277 responses from an online survey conducted in China. Data was analyzed using the structural equation modeling. We found informational support and emotional support to have significant direct effects over the structural capital, relational capital and cognitive capital of OHCs. Meanwhile, it is observed that relational capital and cognitive capital degree have a significant influence on knowledge acquisition and knowledge contribution of OHCs. For researchers this study provides a basis for further refinement of individual models of users’ participation. For practitioners, understanding the social capital is crucial to users’ knowledge acquisition and knowledge contribution that achieve high participation in OHCs. (shrink)

As an important branch of applied anthropology, business anthropology has developed well in China in the recent past. This has attracted the attention of not only the academic society but also of industrial and commercial circles. This article illustrates the emergence and the development of business anthropology in China, and affirms the work of Chinese pioneers in this branch of cultural anthropology. It elaborates on what contemporary management and anthropological scholars have contributed to promote business anthropology in that country. Moreover, (...) it expounds, from various perspectives, on the role that business anthropology can play for/in China. China is a large country developing at an astonishing speed. Chinese society is transforming from a traditional agricultural and pre-industrial phase into a post-industrial and commercial phase. Therefore, the development of business anthropology in China is promising. (shrink)

This research explores how consumers respond to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in China with a multiproduct, comparative survey. Empirical results conclude that (1) Chinese consumers, who show a high level of awareness and trust of CSR, are more likely to transform a good CSR record into positive corporate evaluation, product association, and purchase intention; (2) Consumer responses to CSR vary across different product categories. Those firms selling experience products (vs. search and credence products) are more likely to gain consumers' positive (...) product associations and purchase support through CSR practices; and (3) The relationships between consumer demographics and their CSR responses are not linear, and those consumers with a middle level of age and income would respond to CSR more positively. Managerial implications are provided. (shrink)

Research investigating the intricacies of how self-regulated writing strategies are used in a finely focused area of the second language writing process is still lacking. This study takes a mixed-methods approach to explore Chinese English as a Foreign Language learners’ use of self-regulated writing strategies when revising based on automated, peer, and teacher feedback in an online EFL writing context. Thirty-six Chinese university learners filled in three questionnaires. In addition, four learners followed a think-aloud protocol while revising and responding to (...) a stimulated recall interview to provide further data. The results revealed that learners employed an array of self-regulated writing strategies to attain their feedback revision goals. Learners used more cognitive strategies when revising based on automated feedback compared with peer and teacher feedback and more motivational strategies when revising based on teacher feedback. The think-aloud data and stimulated recall interviews coincided with the quantitative findings. Textual analysis revealed that feedback type and quantity were associated with self-regulated writing strategy use. (shrink)

This article intends to discover the function of phantasia for phronesis. Its main idea is that the practically wise person has the right sort of phantasia associated with the right kind of pleasure and pain and that through the medium of pleasure and pain phronesis and phantasia become connected. First, I examine what Aristotle means when he says that phronesis is a special kind of practical perception which is concerned with ethical particulars. Second, I illustrate the function of phantasia, especially (...) deliberative phantasia, for the ethical agent based on the essential proposition that phantasia has a motivational force based on its representation of things as objects of desire. The virtuous man has the right kind of practical phantasia and phantasmata in the sense that things appear to him as good or pleasurable in the way they are really so. Finally, I argue that natural phantasia and phantasmata which we possess from birth need to be transformed by the practical intellect so that they might acquire moral values; and the pleasure which the virtuous man takes in doing good actions consolidates his virtuous characters so that he can act out of a settled and steadfast dispositions. (shrink)

The failure of the statist models of socialism poses a challenge to socialists in conceiving a feasible non-statist model. In taking up the challenge, guided by Marx’s ideas that socialism will be the outcome of the struggles of the working classes in response to their capitalist conditions of existence; and its two pillars are “social property” and “conscious social regulation,” which ensure its superiority over capitalism, the defining feature of the contemporary financial capitalism together with Marx’s two concepts underlying the (...) two pillars are taken into consideration, and a framework of socializing economic activities grounding a non-statist model of socialism is suggested, whose ontological foundation and operational logic, guided by socialist norms and regulated by the Marxian associations, are different from that of capitalism. (shrink)

Motivated by the developments in contemporary mathematical physics and the related interpretive and historiographical works on these developments, a structuralist and historically constitutive and constructive approach to scientific realism (SHASR) is proposed to address the challenges Thomas Kuhn raised against scientific realism, and to remove the defects of the currently available dissatisfactory responses the structuralists put forward to the challenges. The paper shows that SHASR productively exploits the insights from both Kuhn’s historicism and his critics’ structuralism, while avoids the traps (...) in both traditions. Then, after a brief comparison between SHASR and the increasingly popular neo-Kantian post-Kuhnian philosophy of science recommended and defended by Michael Freedman and some others, it concludes with a big picture about the science-world relationship derived from the notion of emergence conceptualized within the framework of SHASR, whose bearings on the Kantian question of the phenomenal - noumenal relationship are worth further explorations. (shrink)

In Toward a Good Society, the authors theorize a mutually empowering and growth-fostering society. They begin this journey in relational psychology, then depart along nine paths reconstructed from nine classic social science theories. This leads them to propose a new Golden Rule as simple as it is profound.

Patients requiring deep brain stimulation due to intracerebral metallic foreign substances have not been reported elsewhere in the world. Additionally, the long-term effects of metallic foreign bodies on deep brain stimulation are unknown. A 79-year-old man with a 5-year history of Parkinson's disease reported that, 40 years ago, while playing with a pistol, a metallic bullet was accidentally discharged into the left brain through the edge of the left eye, causing no discomfort other than blurry vision in the left eye. (...) DBS was performed due to the short duration of efficacy for oral medication. Because the bullet was on the left subthalamic nucleus electrode trajectory and the patient's right limb was primarily stiff, the patient received globus pallidus interna -DBS implantation in the left hemisphere and STN-DBS implantation in the right hemisphere. During a 6-month postoperative follow-up, the patient's PD symptoms were effectively managed with no noticeable discomfort. (shrink)

The topics of serious leisure and subjective well-being have been discussed extensively in previous research. It is generally acknowledged that people prefer to experience deeper satisfaction and happiness through serious participation in leisure-time physical activities. However, it is essential to examine the relationship between serious leisure and subjective well-being in an urban setting as well as the mediating effect of leisure satisfaction. Data were collected from 447 recreational runners at the 2018 Wuxi International Marathon event in China. The study results (...) showed that serious leisure was positively associated with leisure satisfaction and subjective well-being, that leisure satisfaction was positively associated with subjective well-being, and that leisure satisfaction completely mediated the relationship between serious leisure and subjective well-being. Running group membership significantly affected the path from serious leisure to leisure satisfaction, while other demographic variables (e.g., gender and education) did not moderate any paths. These results help explain the intricate relationship between serious leisure and subjective well-being and offer theoretical and managerial implications for serious leisure. (shrink)

The temporal structure of behavior contains a rich source of information about its dynamic organization, origins, and development. Today, advances in sensing and data storage allow researchers to collect multiple dimensions of behavioral data at a fine temporal scale both in and out of the laboratory, leading to the curation of massive multimodal corpora of behavior. However, along with these new opportunities come new challenges. Theories are often underspecified as to the exact nature of these unfolding interactions, and psychologists have (...) limited ready-to-use methods and training for quantifying structures and patterns in behavioral time series. In this paper, we will introduce four techniques to interpret and analyze high-density multi-modal behavior data, namely, to: (1) visualize the raw time series, (2) describe the overall distributional structure of temporal events (Burstiness calculation), (3) characterize the nonlinear dynamics over multiple timescales with Chromatic and Anisotropic Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis (CRQA), (4) and quantify the directional relations among a set of interdependent multimodal behavioral variables with Granger Causality. Each technique is introduced in a module with conceptual background, sample data drawn from empirical studies and ready-to-use Matlab scripts. The code modules showcase each technique’s application with detailed documentation to allow more advanced users to adapt them to their own datasets. Additionally, to make our modules more accessible to beginner programmers, we provide a “Programming Basics” module that introduces common functions for working with behavioral timeseries data in Matlab. Together, the materials provide a practical introduction to a range of analyses that psychologists can use to discover temporal structure in high-density behavioral data. (shrink)

BackgroundMedical professionalism has been developing in the Peoples’ Republic of China as one way to better address perennial and new challenges in healthcare in an ever-changing society. Among many recent developments in this area is promotion by the national Chinese Medical Doctor Association of the principles and values contained in the international document, “Medical Professionalism in the New Millennium: A Physician Charter.”ObjectiveTo discover Chinese physicians’ attitudes toward and understanding of medical professionalism.MethodologyThe authors distributed a self-reporting questionnaire that included 34 statements (...) and four case scenarios concerning the general principles of medical professionalism: the primacy of patients’ welfare, respect for patients’ autonomy, promotion of social justice, and professional self-regulation. The questionnaire included controversial issues such as the role of the family in decision making and reporting medical errors. A total of 2,966 practicing physicians, randomly selected from the Chinese Medical Association database, were surveyed, and 1,198 valid questionnaires were returned. Our sample covered 23 provinces and 51 cities throughout the Peoples’ Republic of China.ResultsMore than 80 percent of the physicians who responded agreed that the physician-patient relationship should be a relationship of trust founded on professional altruism, and that informed consent is necessary. More than 95 percent agreed that physicians should promote professional self-regulation as well as social justice. More than half agreed with the principle of the primacy of patients’ welfare (62.8 percent), and that physicians have a responsibility to report medical errors and incompetent colleagues (51.0 percent). In certain cases, a great majority of Chinese physicians favored familism and paternalism.LimitationsThe study does not include data on how Chinese physicians practice medical professionalism, or the perspectives of physicians working in smaller cities and in rural areas.ConclusionsBased on responses to the survey, Chinese physicians strongly support the majority of the fundamental principles and responsibilities of medical professionalism, including dedication, altruism, social justice, self-regulation, and informed consent. However, their support for the primacy of patients’ welfare as a general principle, and the physician’s responsibility to report medical errors and incompetent colleagues, is relatively low. To help advance medical professionalism in the People’s Republic of China, professional development programs and medical ethics education should not only emphasize the general principles involved, but also formulate guidelines on how these principles can be carried out in practice. (shrink)

The ever-debated question of triage and allocating the life-saving ventilator during the COVID-19 pandemic has been repeatedly raised and challenged within the ethical community after shortages propelled doctors before life and death decisions. The British Medical Association’s ethical guidance highlighted the possibility of an initial surge of patients that would outstrip the health system’s ability to deliver care “to existing standards,” where utilitarian measures have to be applied, and triage decisions need to maximize “overall benefit” In these emergency circumstances, triage (...) that “grades according to their needs and the probable outcomes of intervention” will prioritize or eliminate patients for treatment, and health professionals may be faced with obligations to withhold or withdraw treatments to some patients in favour of others. This piece is a response and extension to articles published on the manner of involvement for ethics and ethicists in pandemic triage decisions, particularly examining the ability and necessity of establishing triage committees to ameliorate scarce allocation decisions for physicians. (shrink)

Contingent reinforcement behavior is generally regarded as one of the key elements of being a “good” leader, yet the question of what happens when this behavior is absent has received little attention in past empirical research. Drawing upon self-regulation theory, we develop and test a model that specifies the effects of leader reward omission on employes’ deviant behavior. Using the data of 230 workers from two manufacturing companies located in South China collected across three time points, we find that leader (...) reward omission is positively associated with deviant behavior. Moreover, the indirect effects of leader reward omission on employes’ deviant behavior are mediated by moral disengagement. Our study also reveals that Machiavellianism can aggravate the positive effect of leader reward omission on moral disengagement, and subsequently exacerbate the indirect effect on employes’ deviant behavior. Taken together, our findings reveal the consequences of leader reward omission, and the importance of examining subordinate self-regulation under the lack of positive reinforcement. (shrink)

Background Healthcare professionals, especially professional nurses, experience various types of moral suffering due to inevitable ethical conflicts. Moral resilience is recently proposed as a resource to address moral suffering. However, there is no tool to measure moral resilience in Chinese professional nurses. Aim This study aimed to translate the Rushton Moral Resilience Scale (RMRS) into Chinese and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of RMRS (Chi-RMRS). Research design A methodological and descriptive research design. Participants and research context A (...) convenience sample of 411 Chinese professional nurses was recruited through an online survey platform between February and March 2023. Ethical considerations This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committees of the University and hospitals involved. Results The RMRS was translated and culturally adapted into a Chinese version. Neither floor nor ceiling effects were observed. The scale-level content validity index (CVI) was 0.922 with the item-level CVIs ranging from 0.833 to 1.000. The explanatory factor analysis (EFA) generated a three-factor structure for the Chi-RMRS, and the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) demonstrated the three-factor structure with factor loadings for each item ranging from 0.42 to 0.80. The scale-level Cronbach’s α coefficient was 0.811 with each dimension ranging from 0.717 to 0.821, and composite reliability (CR) coefficient for the overall scale was 0.920, with each dimension varying from 0.739 to 0.824. The standard error of measurement (SEM) and smallest detectable change (SDC) were 3.522 and 9.763, respectively. Discussion The Chi-RMRS is able to measure moral resilience of Chinese professional nurses, and has good validity and reliability. It can be used in research and practice to determine the level of moral resilience, thus helping nursing managers to monitor the status of Chinese professional nurses, then develop interventions to maintain the well-being of professional nurses and to ensure quality of care. (shrink)

It is the continuity between epistemology and empirical science that the naturalism in contemporary philosophy of science emphasizes. After its individual and social dimensions, the philosophy of scientific practice takes a stand on naturalism in order to observe complex scientific activities through practice. However, regarding the naturalism’s problem of normativity, the philosophy of scientific practice today has deconstructed more than it has constructed.

The coupled growth of population aging and international migration warrants attention on the methods and solutions available to adult children living overseas to provide distance caregiving for their aging parents. Despite living apart from their parents, the transnational informal care literature has indicated that first-generation immigrants remain committed to carry out their filial caregiving obligations in extensive and creative ways. With functions to remotely access health information enabled by emergency, wearable, motion, and video sensors, remote monitoring technologies (RMTs) may thus (...) also allow these international migrants to be alerted in sudden changes and remain informed of their parent’s state of health. As technological solutions for caregiving, RMTs could allow independent living for older persons while any unusual deviations from normal health patterns are detected and appropriately supported. With a vignette of a distance care arrangement, we engage with concepts such as filial piety, in-absentia caregiving distress, and the social exchange theory, as well as the upholding of shifting cultural ideals to illustrate the complex dynamic of the satisfaction and quality of the informal caregiving relationship. This paper extends the traditional ethical issues in technology-aided caregiving, such as autonomy, privacy, and justice, to be considered within the context of distance care. We also posit newer ethical considerations such as consent in power imbalances, harm to caregivers, and stigma. These known and new ethical issues aim to encourage further ethically conscious design and use of RMTs to support distance care for older persons. (shrink)

This paper investigates links between social capital and symbolic capital and responsible entrepreneurship in the context of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The source of the primary data was 144 ‘Business Profiles’, written by the owner-managers of small businesses in application for a Small Business Awards competition in 2005. Included in each of these narratives were claims relating to the firms’ contributions to wider society, relationships with customers, employees and stakeholders. These narratives were coded and classified in a framework drawn (...) from Nahapiet and Ghoshal’s (1998, Academy of Management Review 23(2), 242–266) categorisation of social capital. The analysis revealed a range of strategic orientations towards the development of social and symbolic capital, along a conceptual continuum ranging from being responsible for oneself to being responsible for others. Overall, the evidence demonstrates the significance of the power inherent in the social relations of SMEs as a force for ethical behaviour, and suggests that normative theories of the development of social capital may provide ‘competitive advantage’ through responsible behaviour for small business in the global economy. (shrink)

This study explores the status quo regarding the interface between marketing, social and environmental issues, culture and consumers, and strategic management by integrating sustainability. A qualitative display network technique, based on the bibliometric methodology of co-citation analysis, was applied to examine research clusters. An integrative review was conducted to explain the connections within these clusters. To evaluate potential patterns among the studies through citations, different sets of relationships among applicable sustainability theories in marketing practice were paired in different sets and (...) analyzed. After mapping the scientific structure of journal publications and intellectual linkages, six cluster groups emerged, reflecting the important role of marketing in linking sustainability, society, environment, consumers, and corporate sustainable development. This study contributes to social and marketing research and corporate sustainability practice by categorizing the intellectual structural network within various streams and indicating the influence of social and cultural notions on consumer-focused sustainable marketing. (shrink)

A multiphase study tested a proposed mediated moderation model for the joint effects of ethical pressure and power distance orientation on accountants’ ethical judgments of earnings management. Results based on a sample of 354 accountants from China indicated that the relationship between ethical pressure and ethical judgments of earnings management is contingent on the accountants’ power distance orientation. That is, the relationship between ethical pressure and ethical judgments of earnings management was stronger for accountants with a high power distance orientation. (...) The results also demonstrated that ethical beliefs in support of the company serve as a mediator for the interaction effect of ethical pressure and power distance orientation on the outcome. These results are discussed in terms of viewing earnings management as a form of unethical pro-organizational behavior which can be effectively investigated within the framework of the person-situation interactionist model. (shrink)

At this stage of evolution of our discipline, philosophy of science, there seems no single great theme that has attracted the attention of most practitioners in the field. Rather, scholarly works in the field are quite diffused. Traditional topics, such as reductionism and the unity of science, remain to be carefully examined from various perspectives. The debate over realism versus instrumentalism, although dismissed by some as uninteresting and unproductive, is still taken by many active scholars as vital in our understanding (...) of the nature of scientific theories and in our appraisal of scientific enterprise. Of course, the new spirit of our times has also shown itself, sometimes in the discussion of some major theses in the post-empiricist philosophy of science, such as incommensurability, underdetermination and constructivism, on the basis of detailed examination of scientific materials, other times in the shift of the attention from static aspects of science, such as theory justification and the nature of explanation, to more dynamic aspects, such as negotiations within a scientific community and its function and role in the development of science. Even more to the point in this regard is the great attention paid to the place science has occupied in modernity, the defect of modernist understanding of science and its possible remedy. Not surprisingly, this current state of affairs in our field has also manifested in the essays collected in this volume of contributions to the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy. Thus, an inspection of these essays, although it will not provide us with a focus of the discipline, may give us some sense as to what is going on in the field. (shrink)