China is establishing its corporate governance structures by emulating the stylized Anglo-American model. However, the country does not yet have the necessary formal and informal institutions, or the financial infrastructure to make these structures work effectively. Corruption, stock market manipulation, tax cheating, fraudulent dealing, all manners of plundering of state assets and the lack protection of shareholders' rights are some of the more conspicuous manifestations of the ethical issues that have emerged in this mismatch. This study shows how these issues (...) arise in the context of the characteristics of country's economic and corporate governance development. It evaluates various potential policy responses that may be implemented to improve governance effectiveness and diminish the damage from those problems. (shrink)

This is a story of everyday people, probably not very much unlike you or me. The young man of this story did not have any idea how his life was to be shaped by the experiences that occurred, or rather the adventure that befell him as he found his soul mate. The danger and mystery that entrapped them as they struggled to stay alive while they faced the evil and greed that stolen money, kidnapping, and attempted murder caused. Their lives (...) became anything but a dull and mundane existence, it became an adventure of a lifetime. Fresh from the battles of the war in Iraq, Joseph O Mally's enlistment in the United States Air Force was up. Back at his home base in Germany he had taken an in country discharge with plans for a little rest and relaxation' as he visited England, Scotland and Northern Ireland where he would sightsee and enjoy life before he returned home to the States to settle down. During his R and R' he found the woman of his dreams and thought his life to be as perfect as humanly possible, but instead stolen money and death awaited them, insuring that if they did manage to live through the ordeal, they would remember this vacation' for the rest of their lives.. however long that might be! The adventure that befalls Joseph Nguyên O Mally and Caiside Tharp Breasail weaves a tale of a magnificent romance that requires character that is born of courage, honorable actions, and a true attempt to be the type of person God would have them to be in spirit, body, and soul. Their adventure is global since it takes them to three different continents on this planet. The adventure begins here but the ending waits in.. the unknown! (shrink)

Space tourism is an emerging field where few people have direct experience. However, considering the potential in the near future, it is beneficial to better understand how related information influences people’s attitudes about this new form of tourism. Employing information-processing-based Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 361 respondents consuming content related to space tourism on Chinese social media, we found that induced happiness and impression are positively associated with willingness to try space tourism. Information authenticity positively moderates (...) these two associations. Our findings emphasize three aspects of information during the processes of reception and filtering: meaning, intensity, and trust. Since promotional materials for space tourism rely heavily on mental simulations rather than objective feedback, creative uses of digital technology are advantageous. However, precautions must be taken to prevent exploitation, such as false advertising, exaggeration, and emotional manipulation. (shrink)

T'ang Chün-i's early work Ai-ching chih fu-yin (Gospel of love) has been much neglected by T'ang scholars. This essay argues that this text is not a caprice, and that it marks an important stage in T'ang's life and studies. Furthermore, in the history of Chinese philosophy, it is probably the first book ever written on the philosophy of love.

Our study examines how a company’s engagement in corporate social responsibility influences word of mouth about the company on Twitter, particularly during a service delay. We use the airline industry as the study context. On the popular social medium Twitter, people post tweets about airline services and raise concerns about service delays when flights are delayed, canceled, or diverted. Drawing on the literature on legitimacy and the halo effect, we argue that a company’s CSR engagement enhances its corporate image, which (...) in turn, influences WOM about the company on Twitter. We predict and find that airlines with better CSR engagement receive more positive word of mouth and less negative word of mouth on Twitter. We also find that service delays reduce PWOM and increase NWOM, with the additional finding that the positive relationship between service delays and NWOM is less strong for airlines with better CSR engagement. We conduct additional analyses to investigate the effects of environmental, social, and governance CSR on PWOM and NWOM. Our study has practical implications in informing companies about the benefits of CSR engagement in relation to public opinion during service delays. (shrink)

Extant literature suggests a positive correlation between social trust (also called generalized trust) and life satisfaction. However, the psychological pathways underlying this relationship can be complex. Using the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF), we examined the influence of social trust in a high-violence environment. Employing Bayesian analysis on a sample of 1237 adults in Cali, Colombia, we found that in a linear relationship, generalized trust is positively associated with life satisfaction. However, in a model including the interactions between trust and education (...) level as well as between trust and socioeconomic status, generalized trust is found to be negatively associated with life satisfaction. In this non-linear relationship, both education level and socioeconomic status have moderating effects against the negative association between generalized trust and life satisfaction. In other words, less educated people living in worse socioeconomic conditions are more likely to have lower life satisfaction when they have higher levels of social trust. In contrast, highly educated people living in better socioeconomic conditions are more likely to have higher life satisfaction when they have higher levels of social trust. Due to the facilitating function of trust in information processing, lowering the rigor of the filtering system in a high-violence social environment will likely put an individual at risk. Based on our findings, we suggest that policymakers should consider the impacts of social contexts when advocating for increasing social trust. We also recommend that researchers carefully examine the psychological mechanism underlying an observed association before making suggestions for policymaking. (shrink)

Cheating is widely considered a condemnable behavior in society and a big problem in the educational system. In this study, we employ the information-processing-based Bayesian Mindsponge Framework to explore deeper the subjective cost-benefit evaluation involving the perceived value of cheating. Conducting Bayesian analysis on 493 university students from Germany, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, and Japan, we found that students who have more positive attitudes toward cheating are more likely to cheat. However, a higher capability of cognitive reflection acts as a moderator (...) that negates the above effect. Re-evaluation of prior thoughts allows for more accurate assessments of the associated risks and possible costs, which help reduce the probability of carrying out cheating behavior. As rapid technological advancement may introduce new and efficient cheating methods, a better understanding of the psychology of cheating in students can help schools prepare better countermeasures. (shrink)

The increasing number of immigrants in Canada has led to more nursing students for whom English is an additional language (EAL). Limited language skills, cultural differences, and a lack of support can pose special challenges for these students and the instructors who teach them. Using a qualitative research methodology, in‐depth interviews with fourteen EAL nursing students and two focus group interviews with nine instructors were conducted. In this paper, the instructors' perspectives are presented. Data acquired from the instructors suggest that (...) the challenges experienced by EAL students and instructors reside in a lack of awareness and support at the institutional and structural levels rather than solely on capacities of individual EAL students or instructors. From this study, identification of supportive activities for nurse educators and education sector decision makers emerged. (shrink)

The postulate that events in peripheral vision enhance activity in the “fixate center” is called into question. An alternative explanation is used to account for the “remote distractor effect.” It is pointed out that a critical element of the model is missing.

Extant literature suggests a positive correlation between social trust (also called generalized trust) and life satisfaction. However, the psychological pathways underlying this relationship can be complex. Using the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF), we examined the influence of social trust in a high-violence environment. Employing Bayesian analysis on a sample of 1237 adults in Cali, Colombia, we found that in a linear relationship, generalized trust is positively associated with life satisfaction. However, in a model including the interactions between trust and education (...) level as well as between trust and socioeconomic status, generalized trust is found to be negatively associated with life satisfaction. In this non-linear relationship, both education level and socioeconomic status have moderating effects against the negative association between generalized trust and life satisfaction. In other words, less educated people living in worse socioeconomic conditions are more likely to have lower life satisfaction when they have higher levels of social trust. In contrast, highly educated people living in better socioeconomic conditions are more likely to have higher life satisfaction when they have higher levels of social trust. Due to the facilitating function of trust in information processing, lowering the rigor of the filtering system in a high-violence social environment will likely put an individual at risk. Based on our findings, we suggest that policymakers should consider the impacts of social contexts when advocating for increasing social trust. We also recommend that researchers carefully examine the psychological mechanism underlying an observed association before making suggestions for policymaking. (shrink)

In this article Mr Tam Dalyell mp uses extracts from the speech1 he made in the House of Commons on 11 December 1974 to reiterate his reasons for persisting in his attempts to have formulated in law the right of hospitals to take such organs from a dead person as might be useful unless before death potential donors (all of us) had stated that they did not consent. Details of those objecting would be registered on a central computer.

In the trust-health relationship, how trusting other people in society may promote good health is a topic often examined. However, the other direction of influence – how health may affect trust – has not been well explored. In order to investigate this possible effect, we employed Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics to go deeper into the information processing mechanisms underlying the expressions of trust. Conducting Bayesian analysis on a dataset of 1237 residents from Cali, Colombia, we found that general health (...) status is positively associated with generalized trust, but recent experiences of illnesses/injuries have a negative moderating effect. Personalized trust is largely unchanged across different general health conditions, but the trust level becomes higher with recent experiences of illnesses/injuries. Psychophysiological mechanisms of increasing information filtering intensity toward unfamiliar sources during a vulnerable state of health is a plausible explanation of found patterns in generalized trust. Because established personal relationships are reinforced information channels, personalized trust is not affected as much. Rather, the results suggest that people may rely even more on loved ones when they are in bad health conditions. This exploratory study shows that the trust-health relationship can be examined from a different angle that may provide new insights. (shrink)

This paper is based on a study of museum visitors’ experience of paintings: in particular, the experience of adult non-art specialists. Phenomenology, a form of inquiry that seeks to articulate lived experience, provided the philosophical and methodological framework for the study. Descriptions and themes relating to the experience of paintings were generated from interviews conducted with eight participants. These themes were categorized into two major areas: the articulated aspects and the non-articulated aspects. The former refers to aspects that people can (...) articulate when they describe their experience. For example, they talk about the formal qualities of paintings, related textual information, and the museum environment. The latter refers to aspects that people cannot articulate. For example, they have difficulty in expressing their feelings, their relationship with time, and an understanding of the role of the body. This paper focuses on the aspects that museum visitors cannot articulate when they describe their experience. This inarticulateness provides insights into certain overlooked features of the experience: the embodied nature of the experience, the way time is experienced, and the viewer’s feelings about paintings. The paper ends with a discussion of the implications of the study for art educators. It is suggested that teachers should prepare students in ways that will enable them to make use of their various cognitive, social and cultural frameworks in experiencing works of art. (shrink)

Precognition is an anomaly in information transmission and interpretation. Extant literature suggests that paranormal beliefs and gender may have significant influences on this unknown information process. This study examines the effects of these two factors, including their interactions, on precognition performance by employing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics. Using Bayesian analysis on secondary data of 60 participants, we found that men may have higher chances to score a hit in a precognition task compared to women. Interestingly, stronger beliefs in (...) the paranormal may decrease the success probability in performing precognition tasks. Considering the interactions between the two factors, the effect of paranormal beliefs on precognition task performance is stronger in men than women. Using mindsponge-based reasoning, we argue that paranormal beliefs may increase the interference of imagination in the reception of hypothetical precognitive information. Women tend to rely more on intuition, which may lessen the interference effect of imagination on hypothetical psi reception. Based on the findings, we suggest that researchers should be careful when assessing participants’ psi potential for experiments. We also demonstrate some advantages of utilizing the BMF in parapsychological research. (shrink)

Suppose a diner says, 'Can you pass the salt?' Although her utterance is literally a question (about the physical abilities of the addressee), most would take it as a request (that the addressee pass the salt). In such a case, the request is performed indirectly by way of directly asking a question. Accordingly this utterance is known as an indirect speech act. On the standard account of such speech acts, a single utterance constitutes two distinct speech acts. On this account (...) then, 'Can you pass the salt?' is both a question and a request. In a provocative essay, Rod Bertolet argues that there are no indirect speech acts. According to Bertolet, 'Can you pass the salt?' is only a question. It is a question that merely functions as a request (without also being one). In this paper we respond to Bertolet's skeptical argument. Appealing to Searle's theory of speech acts and to certain features of linguistic communication, we argue that, despite Bertolet's challenge, there is good reason to countenance indirect speech acts. (shrink)

A lively debate in the literature on moral progress concerns the role of practical reasoning: Does it enable or subvert moral progress? Rationalists believe that moral reasoning enables moral progress, because it helps enhance objectivity in thinking, overcome unruly sentiments, and open our minds to new possibilities. By contrast, skeptics argue that moral reasoning subverts moral progress. Citing growing empirical research on bias, they show that objectivity is an illusion and that moral reasoning merely rationalizes pre-existing biased moral norms. In (...) this article, I argue that both the rationalists and the skeptics fail to understand fully the role of practical reasoning by focusing exclusively on moral reasoning to the neglect of social reasoning. In the first half of the article, I argue against the skeptics by vindicating moral reasoning. I identify a Democratic Model of moral reasoning which is reliable and effective in overcoming bias. In the second part of the article, I argue against the rationalists. Drawing on a paradigmatic case of moral progress, i.e., the British abolition of the slave trade, I illustrate that moral reasoning, even when sound, is insufficient to motivate progressive action. The explanation for this puzzling phenomenon is not that the moral norm against cruelty is inert, as skeptics might suggest. Rather, it is that the moral norm against cruelty was overridden by the social norm of slavery which was tied to the British joint commitments to freedom and national honour. The debate between rationalists and skeptics centers around the moral rationality of human action, failing to recognize that human action is in fact primarily about social rationality. I defend a joint commitment account of social rationality, and offer a novel Communitarian Model of social reasoning which follows the logic of social rationality to revise social norms. I defend the reliability and efficacy of the Communitarian Model of social reasoning by applying it to the abolitionist social movement to show how Britons gave fellow Britons social reasons grounded in their joint commitments to freedom and national honour to end slavery. (shrink)

Since the outbreak of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), tremendous efforts have been made by scientists, health professionals, business people, politicians, and laypeople around the world. Covid-19 vaccines are one of the most crucial innovations that help fight against the virus. This paper attempts to revisit the Covid-19 vaccines production process by employing the serendipity-mindsponge-3D creativity management theory. Vaccine production can be considered an information process and classified into three main stages. The first stage involved the processes of absorbing information (...) (e.g., digital data and open science) and rejecting unhelpful information (e.g., misinformation and fake news) for effectively acquiring useful insights. Useful insights were later employed by experts, enterprises, governments, and international organizations through interdisciplinary coordinated efforts for developing vaccines within a short period. Finally, the appearance of multiple types of vaccines enabled more strategic options for vaccine distribution and administration. Findings from this vaccine creativity management process could be used as critical lessons for further improvements of vaccination programs. (shrink)

Due to the lack of a standard definition for the concept of corporate social responsibility, various discourse communities have assigned different meanings to it. Based on the intermedia agenda setting theory, this study examines the extent to which CSR-related news releases published by the two electricity providers in Hong Kong have influenced press coverage over a 6-year period between 2006 and 2011. A total of 202 news releases and 1,045 news articles were content-analyzed based on the following mutually exclusive categories (...) of CSR-related news events: operations, education, community, products and services, recognition, environment, and donations and sponsorships. This study found that operations-related and products and services-related news releases were more likely to be reported in the press. Recognition-related news releases were the least likely to be reported. Based on the findings, this study posits that two criteria would determine whether a CSR-related news release is likely to be covered in the press: the extent to which the news events are relevant to the core operations of the corporations and the extent to which the news events make an impact on society. (shrink)

Food prices are a daily concern in many households’ decision-making, especially when people want to have healthier diets. Employing Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 710 Indonesian citizens, we found that people from wealthier households are less likely to have concerns about food prices. However, the degree of health considerations in food consumption was found to moderate against the above association. In other words, people of higher income-based social classes may worry more about food prices if they (...) care more about the health impacts of their food choices. These findings provide more insights for policymakers on the psychological aspects of promoting the balance between finance and health in food consumption. (shrink)

Philosophy is presented in a wide range of forms, none of which can be convincingly claimed to be the “genuine” one. Historically speaking, there is not one “proper” way of doing philosophy, evidencing what may be called the social contingency of philosophy. This paper aims to provide a “critical” philosophy of today, in the Kantian sense of a philosophy that reflects on the conditions of its possibility, and thereby acknowledges the limitations they impose. Conceptually, our approach is grounded in Niklas (...) Luhmann’s social systems theory, in which “functional differentiation” and “second-order observation” are two crucial characteristics of modern society. The paper discusses how presentations of philosophy align themselves with the second-order observation mechanisms of the specific social systems in which they are “hosted.” This paper deals in particular with two such systems: academics and social media. These forms of presenting philosophy produce two different kinds of philosophy presenters: the expert and the influencer. (shrink)

Understanding how healthcare responsibility is distributed will give insight on how health‐care is delivered and how members of a society are expected to practice health‐care. The raising cost of health‐care has resulted in restructuring of the existing Canadian healthcare system toward a system that controls costs by placing more healthcare responsibility on the individual. This shift might create more difficulty for immigrants and refugees to obtain equitable health‐care and put blame on them when they experience illness. This paper is drawn (...) from the results of a larger qualitative study exploring Vietnamese Canadian women's breast cancer and cervical cancer screening practices. Interview data were gathered from 15 Vietnamese Canadian women and six healthcare providers. We will demonstrate that (a) despite the strong influence of individualism, Vietnamese women and their healthcare providers value both individual liberty and the interrelationship between individual and society; (b) limited funding and unequal distribution of healthcare resources impacted how immigrant and refugee women practice health‐care. Thus, motivating and fostering immigrant and refugee women's healthcare practice require both individual and institutional effort. To foster immigrant and refugees’ healthcare practices, healthcare policy makers and providers need to consider how to distribute healthcare resources that meet immigrants’ and refugees’ healthcare needs in the most equitable way. (shrink)

In many animal species, the early development of the embryo follows a stereotypic pattern of cell cleavage, lineage allocation and generation of tissue asymmetry leading to delineation of the body plan with three primary embryonic axes. The mammalian embryo has been regarded as an exception and primary body axes of the mouse embryo were thought to develop after implantation. However, recent findings have challenged this view. Asymmetry in the fertilised oocyte, as defined by the position of the second polar body (...) and the sperm entry point, can be correlated with the orientation of the animal–vegetal and the embryonic–abembryonic axes in the preimplantation blastocyst. Studies of the pattern of morphogenetic movement of cells and genetic activity in the peri‐implantation embryo suggest that the animal–vegetal axis of the blastocyst might presage the orientation of the anterior–posterior axis of the gastrula. This suggests that the asymmetry of the zygote that is established at fertilisation and early cleavage has a lasting impact on the delineation of body axes during embryogenesis. BioEssays 23:508–517, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Bataille published two monographs on painting in 1955: one on Lascaux, the other on Manet. The text on Lascaux bears the subtitle The Birth of Art, and it would be natural to think that, as Steven Ungar suggests, Manet represented for Bataille “the birth of a modernist painting.” No doubt Manet’s importance comes from the fact that he, more than any of his contemporaries, was the first to break decidedly with traditional painting and thus inaugurated a new era of art. (...) And yet, why this singular interest in Manet? Is this “birth” of modern painting anything comparable to that other birth which is the birth of art itself? At Lascaux, art coincides with the birth of man—of Homo sapiens—in that it is man coming to have consciousness of himself. This birth of art, as Blanchot says, is a “perpetual birth,” a birth in which “art is revealed to be such that it can change infinitely and can ceaselessly renew itself, but cannot improve.” Why, then, is this other birth at the other end of history? Is it simply a rebirth of art in the sense of a constant renewal of its own possibilities? What importance does modern art have in the history of Western painting? (shrink)

M. xanthus has a complex multicellular lifestyle including swarming, predation and development. These behaviors depend on the ability of the cells to achieve directed motility across solid surfaces. M. xanthus cells have evolved two motility systems including Type‐IV pili that act as grappling hooks and a controversial engine involving mucus secretion and fixed focal adhesion sites. The necessity for cells to coordinate the motility systems and to respond rapidly to environmental cues is reflected by a complex genetic network involving at (...) least three complete sets of chemosensory systems and eukaryotic‐like signaling proteins. In this review, we discuss recent advances suggesting that motor synchronization results from spatial oscillations of motility proteins. We further propose that these dynamics are modulated by the action of multiple upstream complementary signaling systems. M. xanthus is thus an exciting emerging model system to study the intricate processes of directed cell migration. BioEssays 30:733–743, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Throughout history, the generation, exercise, and dissemination of knowledge are fraught with dangers, the root causes of which are traceable to the definition of authority relations. The authors compare Greek myths and Chinese legends, setting the stage for a metarelational analysis of authority relations between teacher and students and between scholar-teachers and political rulers in Confucian-heritage cultures. These two relations are rooted in ideological conservatism. They are related in a higher-order relation or metarelation: Political control and the definition of the (...) teacher-student relationship reinforce each other in consolidating authoritarian values. Thus, ideological conservatism shapes educational philosophy and socialization. It conflicts with present demands for creativity in the service of knowledge-based economies. Hence, a major issue in cultural change to be addressed concerns the dilemma between maintaining authoritarian control and enhancing creativity. (shrink)

After employing the mindsponge mechanism and 3D information process of creativity to explain the serendipity process in previous chapters, we realize that it may be helpful to delve into the relations between serendipity and the formulation of new values and information connections through non-linear processes. Thus, this chapter summarizes some preliminary attempts to use non-linear information processes to explain serendipity. We also briefly mention the benefits of information exchange among members of social groups and explain this approach.

There is a widely recognized dilemma of political epistemic trust. While the public needs to rely on the testimonies of epistemic authorities (e.g. politicians, policymakers, and scientists), it is risky to do so. One source of risk is self-interest. Epistemic authorities are prone to abuse the trust placed in them by misinforming the public for material and social gain. To reap the benefits of trust and mitigate the risk of abuse, liberal political theorists adopt the strategy of cultivating vigilant trust. (...) By enhancing epistemic vigilance and epistemic autonomy, trust is both constrained and intellectualized. This chapter rejects this strategy for two reasons. First, it is undesirable. By over-intellectualizing trust, such an approach deprives trust of its important epistemic and social benefits. Second, it is unnecessary. The risk of abuse is exaggerated. The strategy fails to appreciate that epistemic authorities in virtue of their social roles are typically governed by the social norm of epistemic trustworthiness, not self-interest. The chapter concludes by suggesting an alternative strategy of cultivating trustworthiness. It seeks to strengthen epistemic authorities’ responsiveness to the social norm of epistemic trustworthiness, thereby improving epistemic trust without over-intellectualizing it. It is further outlined how liberal-democratic institutions can implement it. (shrink)

This study examines how the match between personal and firm-level values regarding environmental responsibility affects employee job satisfaction and creativity and contributes to three literature streams [i.e., social corporate responsibility, creativity, and person–environment fit]. Building on the P–E fit literature, we propose and test environmental orientation fit versus nonfit effects on creativity, identifying job satisfaction as a mediating mechanism and regulatory pressure as a moderator. An empirical investigation indicates that the various environmental orientation fit conditions affect job satisfaction and creativity (...) differently. More specifically, environmental orientation fit produces greater job satisfaction and creativity when the employee and organization both demonstrate high concern for the environment than when both display congruent low concern for the environmental. Furthermore, for employees working in organizations that fit their personal environmental orientation, strong regulatory pressure to comply with environmental standards diminishes the positive fit effect on job satisfaction and creativity, while regulatory pressure does not affect the job satisfaction and creativity of employees whose personal environmental orientation is incongruent with that of the organization. (shrink)