In the present study, we examine the interactive effect of vowels on Mandarin fricative sibilants using a passive oddball paradigm to determine whether the HEIGHT features of vowels can spread on the surface and influence preceding consonants with unspecified features. The stimuli are two pairs of Mandarin words contrasting in vowel HEIGHT. Each word in the same pair was presented both as standard and deviant, resulting in four conditions. In line with the Featurally Underspecified Lexicon model, asymmetric patterns of processing (...) were found in the [su] ∼ [ʂu] word pair where both the MMN and LDN components were more negative in /su/[ʂu] than in /ʂu/[su], suggesting the spreading of the feature [HIGH] from the vowel [u] to [ʂ] on the surface. In the [sa] ∼ [ʂa] pair, however, symmetric negativities were observed as there is no conflict between the surface feature [LOW] from [a] to [ʂ] and the underlying specified feature [LOW] of [s]. These results confirm that not all features are fully specified in the mental lexicon: features of vowels can spread on the surface and influence surrounding unspecified segments. (shrink)

Six-month-old infants discriminate between large sets of objects on the basis of numerosity when other extraneous variables are controlled, provided that the sets to be discriminated differ by a large ratio (8 vs. 16 but not 8 vs. 12). The capacities to represent approximate numerosity found in adult animals and humans evidently develop in human infants prior to language and symbolic counting.

Based on the institutional theory, this article attempts to examine two consecutive questions regarding the impact of various factors on corporate decision in environmental information disclosure (EID): (1) whether or not to disclose; and (2) the level of disclosure. The relevance of these factors is empirically tested using data collected from publicly listed manufacturing companies from 2006 to 2008 in China. Some interesting findings appear. We find that firms that are state-owned, those that operate in environmentally sensitive industries, those having (...) more industrial peers engaged in EID, and those with better reputation are more likely to disclose environmental information. When it comes to the content of EID, variables that attempt to capture external institutional pressures exhibit either no or weak explanatory power. Only the variable of organizational image and reputation is demonstrated to have a significant impact on both the act and the content of EID. This study provides a snapshot of the dialogues between constituencies in the organizational field and EID development. (shrink)

A number of philosophers of language have proposed that people do not have conceptual access to‘bare particulars’, or attribute‐free individuals (e.g. Wiggins, 1980). Individuals can only be picked out under some sortal, a concept which provides principles of individuation and identity. Many advocates of this view have argued that object is not a genuine sortal concept. I will argue in this paper that a narrow sense of‘object’, namely the concept of any bounded, coherent, three‐dimensional physical object that moves as a (...) whole (Spelke, 1990) is a sortal for both infants and adults. Furthermore, object may be the infant's first sortal and more specific sortals such as cup and dog may be acquired later in the first year of life. I will discuss the implications for infant categorization studies, trying to draw a conceptual distinction between a perceptual category and a sortal, and I will speculate on how a child may construct sortal concepts such as cup and dog. (shrink)

The stock market’s reaction to information disclosure of environmental violation events (EVEs) is investigated multi-dimensionally for Chinese listed companies, including variables such as pollution types, information disclosure sources, information disclosure levels, modernization levels of the region where the company locates, ultimate ownership of the company, and ownership held by the largest shareholder. Using the method of event study, daily abnormal return (AR) and accumulative abnormal return (CAR) are calculated under different event window for examining the extent to which the stock (...) market responds to the EVEs. Furthermore, statistical significance of the difference in stock market reaction is compared between event firms with different characteristics. The relationship between CAR and its impact factors is examined by multivariate analysis. The findings reveal that the average reduction in market value is estimated to be much lower than the estimated changes in market value for similar events in other countries, demonstrating that the negative environmental events of Chinese listed companies currently have weak impact on the stock market. (shrink)

We have empirically examined the relationship between top executives’ turnover and the corporate environmental responsibility by identifying the influence of ten specific turnover reasons resulting in the chairman’s departure and two important types of chairman’s succession. Using a sample of 782 manufacturing listed companies across 3 years in China, we find that the corporate environmental responsibility is negatively associated with the involuntary and negative turnover (i.e., dismissal, health and death, and forced resignation) and positively associated with improving corporate governance, and (...) not associated with the normal turnover (i.e., retirement and contract expiration) and the types of chairman’s succession (i.e., independence, and internal or external promotion). Our study significantly contributes to research in environmental disclosure by revealing the relationship between chairman’s turnover and the corporate environmental responsibility. A feasible way is suggested to regulators and other stakeholders in monitoring or assessing the possible abnormality of environmental responsibility when firms experience involuntary and negative chairman’s turnover in the emerging economies. (shrink)

The current study examines the relationship between financialization, managers’ incentives, and the enterprise’s innovation. Based on the principal-agent and incentive theories, this study proposes a research model with two management incentives as moderating variables between financialization and the enterprise’s innovation. First, we analyze the direct relationship between financialization and the enterprise’s innovation. Second, we examine the moderating effect of managers’ equity incentive and compensation incentives on the relationship between entity financialization and the enterprise’s innovation in high-tech/non-high-tech enterprises and state-owned and (...) non-state-owned enterprises. This study covers the most recent updated data from both A-share listed companies in the Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchange in China from 2009 to 2019. This study’s finding indicates a significant negative impact of entity financialization and the enterprise’s innovation. It means that the entity financial has a significant “crowding-out” effect on the enterprise’s innovation. This study also confirms that management incentives cannot effectively suppress a “crowding-out” impact of entity financialization on firm innovation because of the principal-agent severe problem in financialization. Finally, considering the heterogeneities of property rights and degrees of dependence on the enterprise’s innovation, a “crowding-out” effect of entity financialization on the enterprise’s innovation is more significant in high-tech and state-owned enterprises. Managers’ equity incentive significantly affects the enterprise’s innovation in high-tech enterprises, while the managers’ compensation incentive affects the enterprise’s innovation in state-owned enterprises. Our study could help the enterprise to improve the company manager’s incentive and provide the optimal assets allocation to improve the enterprise’s innovation ability. Lastly, this study provides significant policies and recommendations for the public sector high-tech enterprise and private sector high-tech enterprises. Moreover, policies and recommendations are fruitful for the public sector non-high-tech enterprise and private sector non-high-tech enterprise. (shrink)

In his "The Status of ‘the Negation of the Negation’ in Mao Zedong's Philosophical Thought", Comrade He Zuorong indicates that Comrade Mao Zedong possessed a profound understanding of the essence of the law of the "negation of the negation" , and that he applied it in guiding the Chinese revolution; the law of the "negation of the negation" thus deserves its important position in Mao's philosophical thought. I agree with this conclusion. However, I find it difficult to subscribe to some (...) of He Zuorong's opinions. I will proceed to elaborate my own views, and if they contain inappropriate points then I invite He Zuorong and other comrades to criticise them. (shrink)

Effective medical innovation is a common goal of policymakers, physicians, researchers, and patients both in the private and public sectors. With the recent slowdown in approval of new transformative prescription drugs, many have looked back to the “golden years” of the 1980s and 1990s when numerous breakthrough products emerged. We conducted a qualitative study of innovators directly involved in creation of groundbreaking drugs during that era to determine what made their work successful and how the process of conducting medical innovation (...) has changed over the past 3 decades. Transcripts were analyzed using standard coding techniques and the constant comparative method of qualitative data analysis to identify the positive features of and challenges posed by the past and present therapeutic innovation environments . Interviewees emphasized the continued central role played by individuals and the institutions they were a part of in driving innovation. In addition, respondents discussed the importance of collaboration between individuals and institutions to share resources and expertise. Strong underlying basic science was also cited to be a major contributing factor to the success of an innovation. The climate for modern-day medical innovation involves a greater emphasis on patenting in academia, difficulty negotiating the technology transfer process, and funding constraints. Regulatory demands or reimbursement concerns were not commonly cited as factors that influenced transformative innovation. This study suggests that generating future transformative innovation will require a simplification of the current technology transfer process, continued commitment to basic science research, and policy changes that promote meaningful collaboration between individuals from disparate institutions. (shrink)

The discovery and development of new therapeutics has always been central to improving health worldwide. However, there is ongoing concern regarding the current state of medical innovation. Output from the pharmaceutical industry has been criticized for not being “transformative,” that is, offering substantial improvements in patient outcomes over existing therapeutics. While the cost of drug development continues to rise, breakthrough therapies remain elusive and one half of Phase 3 studies fail. Venture capital, a traditional source of funding for new breakthrough (...) biomedical innovations, has decreased investment by 30% in the biotechnology and medical device sectors from 2007 to 2013. Stakeholders question whether the new drugs approved each year by the FDA —many criticized as marginal improvements over existing therapies — justify the enormous investment. (shrink)

The processing of words in sentence reading is influenced by both information from sentential context and information from previewing upcoming words, but how both effects interact during online reading is not clear. In this study, we tested the interaction of predictability effect and the preview effect in predicting reading processing. In the experiment, sentence constraint was controlled using all high-constraint sentences as materials. We manipulated both the predictability of the target word in the sentence and the semantic relationship between the (...) preview word and the target word as predictors of the semantic preview effect. The results showed that the semantic preview effect was present only when the target word had low-predictability in the sentence but was not observed when the target word had high-predictability in the sentence. The results suggest that contextual information in reading can modulate the pre-activation of words and thus influence whether the preview word has a priming effect. The results of this study provide further evidence that reading comprehension involves an interactive system of processing multiple sources of information at multiple levels. (shrink)

Domination is a structural complexity of chemical molecular graphs. A dominating set in a graphG=V,Eis a subsetS⊆Vsuch that each vertex inV\Sis adjacent to at least one vertex inS. The domination numberγGof a graphGis the minimum size of a dominating set inG. In this paper, computer-aided approaches for obtaining bounds for domination number on torus graphs are here considered, and many new exact values and bounds are obtained.

The subtle and complex relation between Confucianism and modern democracy has long been a controversial issue, and it is now again becoming a topical issue in the process of political modernization in contemporary China. This paper argues that there are some quite basic early Confucian values and principles that are not only compatible with democracy, but also may become the theoretic foundation of modern democracy in China. Early Confucianism considers 'the people's will' as the direct representative of 'Heaven's will', with (...) which it legitimizes political power. Confucian theory of 'human nature is good' endorses equal potential good for every man. These principles can be used in reasoning towards a system of democracy. In terms of decision-making, the Confucian 'Doctrine of the Mean' accords with certain democratic principles. The independent personality and committed individualism advocated by early Confucianism is a required civic merit in a democratic society. These fundamental Confucian principles, through contemporary hermeneutics, may provide a philosophic grounding for democracy and support the construction of a democratic system with a Chinese dimension. To get democracy rooted in the spirit of traditional Chinese culture will benefit the healthy and smooth development of democracy in China. (shrink)

We present in this paper an axiomatization of Belnap and Perloff's stit theory (a logic of "seeing to it that") with a single agent. The idea of the proof is to apply the notion of companion sets--the same notion as used in another paper by the author that showed the decidability of stit theory with a single agent and Refref equivalence.

How do we become moral persons? What about children's active learning in contrast to parenting? What can children teach us about knowledge-making more broadly? Answer these questions by delving into the groundbreaking ethnographic fieldwork conducted by anthropologists Arthur and Margery Wolf in a martial law era Taiwanese village (1958-60), marking the first-ever study of ethnic Han children. Jing Xu skillfully reinterprets the Wolfs' extensive fieldnotes, employing a unique blend of humanistic interpretation, natural language processing, and machine-learning techniques. Through a lens (...) of social cognition, this book unravels the complexities of children's moral growth, exposing instances of disobedience, negotiation, and peer dynamics. Writing through and about fieldnotes, the author connects the two themes, learning morality and making ethnography, in light of social cognition, and invites all of us to take children seriously. This book is ideal for graduate and undergraduate students of anthropology and educational studies. (shrink)

The field of eSports is undergoing a process of developing and evolving with irresistible forces. The process witnesses the ever-refreshing and hybrid meanings and definitions of Sports and eSports in the digital era of technology empowerment and advancing artificial intelligence. This paper calls us to re-construct the meanings and sporting values of eSports, re-evaluate the eSports landscape, going beyond the debate ‘Are eSports Sports?’ and move to re-examine the contextual nature and values of Sports and eSports, as well as their (...) interweaving relationships in contemporary society. It is of significance to explore the way in which the intelligent embodiment of eSports and the virtualisation of traditional sports integrate with each other, offering the potential for fitness and physical exercises and practices in real and virtual spaces. Meanwhile, crucial digital ethics issues are emerging in the field of eSports, potentially challenging and alerting the eSports industry to take timely measurements to maintain the Sport’s integrity. (shrink)

This paper aims to discuss the concept of class in the works of Liu Shipei, a Chinese revolutionary intellectual. When discussing the ethnic revolution of Manchuria, Liu first included class in the description of Chinese system, ethics and Chinese society. After he crossed to Japan and accepted the anarchist revolutionary ideas of hardliners, he used class as a broad synonym for hierarchical society and various inequalities. After understanding and recognizing the Marxist class struggle thought, Liu turned his attention to China. (...) Liu started from the issue of Chinese people’s livelihood to find the subject and object of China’s anarchic class revolution. Class became the concept carrier of his narration of class revolution, and its semantic domain was further expanded. Through the analysis, we can see that Liu’s understanding and use of the concept of class is closely related to his revolutionary ideas, and changes accordingly. (shrink)

: This paper aims to discuss the concept of class in the works of Liu Shipei, a Chinese revolutionary intellectual. When discussing the ethnic revolution of Manchuria, Liu first included class in the description of Chinese system, ethics and Chinese society. After he crossed to Japan and accepted the anarchist revolutionary ideas of hardliners, he used class as a broad synonym for hierarchical society and various inequalities. After understanding and recognizing the Marxist class struggle thought, Liu turned his attention to (...) China. Liu started from the issue of Chinese people’s livelihood to find the subject and object of China’s anarchic class revolution. Class became the concept carrier of his narration of class revolution, and its semantic domain was further expanded. Through the analysis, we can see that Liu’s understanding and use of the concept of class is closely related to his revolutionary ideas, and changes accordingly. (shrink)

This paper sketches the antilogism of Christine Ladd-Franklin and historical advancement about antilogism, mainly constructs an axiomatic system Atl based on first-order logic with equality and the wholly-exclusion and not-wholly-exclusion relations abstracted from the algebra of Ladd-Franklin, with soundness and completeness of Atl proved, providing a simple and convenient tool on syllogistic reasoning. Atl depicts the empty class and the whole class differently from normal set theories, e.g. ZFC, revealing another perspective on sets and set theories. Two series of Dotterer (...) and the theorem proved by Russinoff are re-characterized in antilogistic formulas corresponding to the square of opposition and twenty-four moods of syllogism. Then the restricted equivalence between two forms of antilogism and minimal inconsistency is built up, implying the internal connection between antilogisms and minimal inconsistency and leaving two related conjectures not proved. Besides, this paper provides a new explanation for the reason why contrariety, subcontrariety, and subalternation and the nine special moods require the non-empty assumption. (shrink)

Ironically, specific compilations regarding the dialectical materialist principle of the negation of the negation cannot be found in the corpora of Comrade Mao Zedong. And yet, in his life of valiant struggle for the Chinese revolution and socialist construction, the law informed to great effect Mao's investigations of and attempts to transform China. Not only are these thoughts encapsulated in numerous essays and speeches, they are also naturally reflected therein. However, some foreigners maintain that Mao Zedong's thought "paid no heed (...) to this law, either theoretically or practically". Such is not just ignorance, it is nothing but nonsense. To be sure, his later treatment of dialectics was marred by his perceptual deviations vis-à-vis the law of the negation of the negation. However, in light of his affirmation and application of, and elucidations on the law of the negation of the negation, this was but a somewhat non-harmonious finale to a "majestic" symphony. (shrink)

ObjectiveThis systematic review aims to make a mixed comparison of interventions for kinesiophobia and individuals with musculoskeletal pain.MethodsA comprehensive search strategy was conducted in the database of PubMed, MEDLINE, and Web of Science with the inclusion criteria: randomized controlled design; patients with musculoskeletal pain as participants; treatments protocols of kinesiophobia as interventions or comparisons; the score of Tampa Scale Kinesiophobia as outcome measures. A network meta-analysis was used to synthesize the data after checking the model consistency. The risk of bias (...) was assessed by the Cochrane Collaboration Risk of Bias Assessment Tool.ResultsThirty-one studies were included in this review after a comprehensive search strategy with a low risk of bias and good consistency. According to the results of the network meta-analysis, a multi-modal treatment protocol had the highest probability to become the best choice in dealing with kinesiophobia caused by musculoskeletal pain, whereas psychological treatment protocols also showed a potentially positive effect on musculoskeletal pain-induced kinesiophobia.ConclusionMulti-modal protocols could be recommended as the preferred option when dealing with kinesiophobia caused by musculoskeletal pain. However, it is still worth mentioning that there are also potentially positive therapeutic effects of psychological interventions. Since the concept of kinesiophobia is based on the fear-avoidance model, the psychological mechanism should be paid enough attention to during treatment.Registration NumberCRD42021286450. (shrink)

“Epistemic safety” refers to an epistemic status in which the subject acquires true beliefs without involving epistemic luck. There is a tradition of cashing out safety-defining modality in terms of possible world semantics, and even Julian Dutant's and Martin Smith's normalcy-based notions of safety also take this semantics as a significant component of them. However, such an approach has to largely depend on epistemologists’ ad hoc intuitions on how to individuate possible worlds and how to pick out “close” worlds. In (...) contrast, I propose a probabilistic approach to safety to maximally preclude the preceding type of ad hoc-ness. The main idea is as follows: Each epistemic vignette wherein a subject S holds a true belief p has to be evaluated by a safety-ascriber, hence, S holds a true belief p safely iff according to the safety-ascriber's evaluation, the probability of the occurrence of the truth-maker of p is above a pre-fixed “safety threshold”. My theory will be applied to Lottery Cases, Gettierized Cases and Skeptical Cases to test the scope of its applicability. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas has argued that the passion of hope is the movement of the sensitive appetite and the first of the irascible passion. The first part of the article aims to explore the cause and the mechanism of the passion of hope, and tries to clarify the relationship between the passion of hope and the perception. In human beings, it is possible that the passion of hope is caused by false judgement of the perception, which will lead to the result (...) of false hope. In Aquinas’s argument, the problem of false hope could be solved through the moral virtue and the prudence. In the second part of this article, the aim is to analyse how the virtue of magnanimity, humility and the prudence work impact on the passion of hope and perfect it.Contribution: This research concentrates on the topic of the passion of hope of Thomas Aquinas, and provides a new perspective on the understanding of the relationship between the passion and the virtue. (shrink)

In the context of China’s supply-side structural reform and the concept of green development, we introduce the energy and environmental factors into the analytical framework of the total factor productivity of the logistics industry and use the Global Malmquist–Luenberger index method to analyze the evolution trend and heterogeneity of green TFP in the logistics industry of 30 provinces in China from 2003 to 2017. The results show that, firstly, the green TFP and traditional TFP of China’s logistics industry are both (...) on the rise and the absence of energy and environmental factors will lead to the overestimation of TFP of the logistics industry. Whether it is green TFP or traditional TFP, the main source of its growth is technical progress. Secondly, there is obvious regional heterogeneity in green TFP of logistics industry. Under the three regional division standards, the average annual growth rate of green TFP is from high to low in the order of eastern, western, and central regions. Under the eight regional classification standards, the eastern coastal economic zone, the southern coastal zone, the northern coastal zone, the northeast region, the middle reaches of the Yellow River, the southwest region, the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and the northwest region are in order from high to low. Thirdly, there is obvious interprovincial heterogeneity in green TFP of the logistics industry. The highest growth rate of green TFP is in Zhejiang, followed by Jiangsu and Guangdong, and the slowest growth rate is in Chongqing. The technical progress of logistics industry in most provinces contributes more to the growth of green TFP. Fourthly, the differences of green TFP in the three regions of the east, center, and west are shrinking, which may be σ convergence, but the differences among the three regions are expanding. Compared with the existing literature, this paper applies the measurement framework of green TFP to China’s logistics industry and investigates the regional and provincial heterogeneity of green TFP in logistics industry. The conclusions are significant to understand and grasp the heterogeneity of green TFP growth in China’s logistics industry under environmental constraints and how to promote the development of green logistics in China. (shrink)

Background Based on the principle of informed consent, doctors are required to fully inform patients and respect their medical decisions. In China, however, family members usually play a special role in the patient’s informed consent, which creates a unique “doctor-family-patient” model of the physician-patient relationship. Our study targets young doctors to investigate the ethical dilemmas they may encounter in such a model, as well as their attitudes to the family roles in informed consent. Methods A questionnaire was developed including general (...) demographic characteristics, the fulfillment of the obligation to fully inform, who will be informed, and the ethical dilemmas in decision-making. We recruited a total of 421 doctors to complete this questionnaire, of which 368 met the age requirements for this study. Cross tabulation and Pearson’s chi-squared test were used to analyze the differences between types of patients for categorical variables, and a p-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results Our data shows that only 20 doctors (5.40%) stated “informing the patient alone is sufficient” when it comes to informing patients of their serious conditions. The rest of the participants would ensure that the family was informed. When facing elderly patients with decision-making capacity, the data was statistically different (3.8%; P < 0.001) The primary reason for ensuring that family members be informed differs among the participants. In addition, when family members asked doctors to conceal the patient’s medical condition for the best interests of patients, 270 doctors (73.4%) would agree and cooperate with the family. A similar proportion (79.6%) would do so when it comes to elderly patients. Conclusions (1) Chinese doctors pay extra attention to informing the patient’s family, which may not be in the patient’s best interests. (2) Chinese doctors treat adult (but not elderly) patients and elderly patients differently when it comes to informing family members. (3) When family members request that doctors withhold information from patients “in the best interest of the patient,” the majority choose to comply with the request, although this may cause them distress. (shrink)

The virtual display of products in e-commerce brings new problems of information asymmetry, and the overload of digital information also increases the difficulty of consumers' purchasing decisions. The real-time interaction between the streamer and the consumer during live streaming e-commerce will promote consumers' understanding of the product, reduce information asymmetry, and increase consumers' purchase intention. However, why do people trust the untouchable and unfamiliar streamers from live streaming e-commerce to purchase online? To understand this phenomenon, based on the perspective of (...) the information asymmetry theory and parasocial relationship theory, this research identified how social capital affected purchase intention in live streaming e-commerce. Through a questionnaire survey of live viewers, the purchase intention model constructed by empirical testing was used. The findings showed that the streamer's professionalism, the reciprocal expectation of live streaming, and the viewer's parasocial relationship could effectively increase the viewer's purchase intention. The occurrence of a streamer's negative public events could significantly reduce the viewer's purchase intention. The scale of live streaming and the streamer's commitment had no significant impact on the viewer's purchase intention. Trust played an intermediary role between the streamer's professionalism and parasocial relationship and the viewer's purchase intention. (shrink)

ABSTRACT To have a coherent picture of Wang Chong’s Lunheng is difficult. Some of Lunheng’s chapters obviously show Wang’s hostility to a large part of the folklore (including the social institutions based on it) and traditional philosophical texts. In some other chapters, however, Wang appears to be more sympathetic to the social institutions related to folk religious beliefs. Esther Sunkyung Klein & Colin Klein attempt to explain this prima facie inconsistency in terms of ‘piecemeal non-reductionism’, which roughly means that Wang (...) would take any testimonial belief for granted until he can find a defeater of such a belief. But this explanation merely depicts Wang as a defeater-seeker rather than a thinker looking for philosophical grounds of his claims in a more positive manner. In contrast, in this paper, I intend to attribute the following epistemological thesis to Wang: A testimonial belief taken from classics or folklore will be judged as unjustified if the knowledge attributor finds a non-negligible defeater of it, and such an attributor would feel more sympathetic to the target belief if it can be at least prima facie justified in the light of analogical reasoning. (shrink)

To have a coherent picture of Wang Chong’s Lunheng is difficult. Some of Lunheng’s chapters obviously show Wang’s hostility to a large part of the folklore (including the social institutions based...

Starting with Jaakko Hintikka’s seminal work, epistemic logic has now grown up to a huge academic industry. When we look back to its history, however, there is a practical paradox. While Hintikka’s original purpose was to facilitate epistemological discussion, most subsequent work of epistemic logic has been done outside of philosophy, and has been ignored by most mainstream epistemologists. At the current point, one might naturally wonder, does epistemic logic still have something to do with epistemology? Along with Hintikka and (...) a growing number of formal epistemologists, we believe the answer is “yes”. Contemporary epistemology has largely focused on the goal of providing an analysis of knowledge and an answer to skepticism. To avoid skepticism, many epistemologists prefer to define knowledge in terms of evidence and relevant alternatives. A typical saying is that “in order to know that p, one only needs evidence to eliminate all relevant alternatives, rather than all alternatives”. We see such a project as perfectly congenial to the spirit of Hintikka’s epistemic logic. In this paper, we propose an epistemic logic to deal with evidence and relevant alternatives explicitly, and extend EREL to its dynamic version to investigate how different notions of knowledge behavior with the decrease and increase of relevant alternatives. To illustrate its philosophical application, we provide a new formalization of the so called factivity problem of epistemic contextualism. We conclude with some remarks on further developments of our framework. (shrink)

In the current dialogue of “science and religion,” it is widely assumed that the thoughts of Darwinists and that of atheists overlap. However, Jerry Fodor, a full-fledged atheist, recently announced a war against Darwinism with his atheistic campaign. Prima facie, this “civil war” might offer a chance for theists: If Fodor is right, Darwinistic atheism will lose the cover of Darwinism and become less tenable. This paper provides a more pessimistic evaluation of the situation by explaining the following: Fodor’s criticism (...) of adaptationism (as the backbone of Darwinism), viz., his refutation of any counterfactual-supporting laws on the macro-evolutionary level, implies that a law-maker is dispensable on this level. This will either encourage skepticism against the omniscience (at least that concerning the future of macro-evolution) of the Creator, or render the notion of God less appealing. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide a framework for accounting for the self, based on a reconstruction of Galen Strawson’s “theory of SESMETs,” or the Pearl view, with Barry Dainton’s continuous consciousness thesis. I argue that the framework I provide adequately accounts for the self and is preferable to solely adopting either Strawson’s or Dainton’s theory. I call my reconstruction the “Necklace” view of the self.

Using Natural Language Processing tools, the current study explores the evolution of objectivity practice in terms of attitude injection. Adopting the indicator of moral loading under the Moral Foundation Theory framework, it examined the moral judgments embedded in 20,679 culture war news articles published in five major U.S. newspapers from 1980 to 2021. Our findings revealed a distinct mixed journalistic liberal pattern and an apparent paradox in objectivity practice: the less moral judgments, the more liberal tendencies, which could be caused (...) by journalists’ watchdog role and the increase of liberal components in U.S. democracy. We then argue that the performance of traditional objectivity has remained robust, especially when accounting for the degree to which moral judgments can be attributed to source quotations. The study contributes to the literature by bridging moral psychology and the enactment of journalistic norms, applying MFT to evaluate degrees of objectivity in news. (shrink)

This study examines whether the chief executive officer’s poverty experience has an impact on firms’ corporate social responsibility. We find that firms’ CSR performance increases with CEOs’ poverty experience; specifically, firms with CEOs who experienced early-life poverty are associated with more socially responsible activities and fewer socially irresponsible activities, such as on-the-job consumption, and are more associated with key stakeholder-related rather than community-related CSR. We further find that the positive relationship between the CEO’s poverty experience and CSR strengthens for well-educated (...) or powerful CEOs. Our evidence is consistent with our conjecture that CEOs who experienced early-life poverty have stronger compassion and prosocial psychology. Consequently, these CEOs are more willing to make long-term investments in socially beneficial activities, leading to better CSR performance, which further confirms the altruistic motivation of CSR. (shrink)