The major dilemma of defining Chinese folk religion was that it could be defined neither by its belief contents nor characteristics, as these might also be found in other religious traditions. The fact that it did not involve any authoritative doctrine, scripture or institution has also made treating it as a religion problematic. To solve the problem, I survey the major theories proposed by both Western and Chinese scholars concerned with the methodological issues of defining this nameless religion, and develop (...) an alternative approach that can distinguish Chinese folk religion from any other existing religious tradition. Basically, this approach eliminates the limitations of two existing models by defining Chinese folk religion on two aspects simultaneously. I also conclude that Chinese folk religion, based on the sociological perspective, can be seen as a religion, and should be taken into consideration while developing certain theological models. (shrink)

Background:Suicide remains an important cause of premature deaths and draws much media attention. However, unsafe reporting and portrayal of suicides by the media have been associated with increased risk of suicidal behavior. Current evidence suggests that media capacity-building could potentially prevent suicide. However, there are still knowledge gaps in terms of a lack of data on effective strategies for improving awareness and safe reporting of suicide-related media content. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a workshop conducted with members (...) of the media community on the safe reporting of suicide-related content.Methods:An interventional single-arm pre and post pilot study was conducted on a sample of the Malaysian media community recruited through purposive and snowball sampling. The media safe reporting workshop was conducted by a suicide prevention expert with a media industry background. Thirty participants completed a self-reported evaluation questionnaire on their awareness and knowledge of reporting on suicide-related media content; before and after the interventional workshop.Results:There was a significant difference between the total scores before and after the intervention, with a large effect size. Post-intervention scores were significantly improved in 8 items, namely those related to the reporting of: (i) the content of any suicide note; (ii) headlines with methods of suicide; (iii) headlines with the location of suicide; (iv) cases of suspected suicide despite the unconfirmed cause of death; (v) suicide news to cater to readers’ interests; (vi) cause of suicide; (vii) details of the location of suicide; and (viii) the negative impact to media community when reporting suicide stories. In particular, there was an improvement in the majority of items for people from the media community with no lived experience of suicidal behavior.Conclusion:The media safe reporting workshop is a potentially effective intervention for improving awareness and knowledge measures relating to safe reporting on suicide among the media community, with a more pronounced effect in those without lived experience of suicidal behavior. Limitations in the sample size, generalizability, short-term evaluation, and lack of a control group warrant future larger, longer-term controlled, and more representative studies. (shrink)

This study investigates metaphoric gestures in face-to-face conversation. It is found that gestures of this kind are mainly performed in the central gesture space with noticeable and discernable configurations, providing visible evidence for cross-domain cognitive mappings and the grounding of conceptual metaphors in people's recurrent bodily experiences and in what people habitually do in social and cultural practices. Moreover, whether metaphorical thinking is conveyed by gesture exclusively or along with metaphoric speech, the manual enactment of even conventional metaphors manifests dynamism (...) in communicating metaphors. Metaphoric gestures can provide salient, additional information about the aspect of the conceptualization which is the speaker's focus of attention in real-time multimodal communication. (shrink)

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

The present study claims that the use of spontaneous gestures can contribute to accomplishing coherence in sequential conversational exchanges. Three types of speech-accompanying gestures were analyzed in Chinese conversation. Based on the syntactic-semantic relation with the co-occurring utterance, the first type is associated with words that do not convey explicit meaning; the second type is associated with covert constituents; the third type does not have any linguistic affiliates. They suggest different ways in which gesture adds information to the propositional content (...) of the associated utterance or to the content of the speech event under discussion. They also play a role in achieving conversational coherence: on the part of the speaker, it is only by using the various types of gesture that a current speaker can make the message to be conveyed in the utterance complete. On the part of the next speaker, the recognition and negotiation with the former speaker of the gestured information is a way to acknowledge or confirm mutual knowledge. The collaborative efforts contribute to the coherence of the talk in the subsequent interaction. (shrink)

The study investigates the manifestation of the “IDEA-IS-AN-ENTITY” metaphor across the linguistic and manual modalities by the use of the object gesture in daily conversation, to understand the relationship between metaphorical conceptualization and the context of use. Two types of the entity metaphor were distinguished: “cross-modal entity metaphor” and “gesture-only entity metaphor.” For the former, the metaphor was expressed by metaphorical speech and the object gesture simultaneously. Among all of the 67 cross-modal instances, a wide variety of idea was represented (...) as referring, characterizing, and quantifying referents in speech. Manually, the object gesture was configured in numerous ways. The way the object gesture was configured reveals the facet of the metaphorical conceptualization the speaker focuses on during speaking, and the details about the real-time thinking of a metaphorical object in discourse. For the gesture-only entity metaphor, it was manifested in the single modality of gesture. Among all of the 73 gesture-only instances, the object gesture depicted a stretch of talk as discrete object mainly by configuring a spatial boundary with curled fingers. Metaphor of this type attests that the thinking of phrasal-clausal ideas as entities is as common as that of lexical ideas as entities in conversation. Importantly, the object gesture bears out the emergence of a phrasal or clausal idea being conceptualized as object in natural discourse. Together, the findings demonstrate the inseparability of metaphorical conceptualization from cognition and the context of use. (shrink)

The development of commercial revenue streams allows traditional nonprofit organizations to increase financial certainty in response to the reduction of traditional funding sources and increased competition. In order to capture commercial revenue-generating opportunities, traditional nonprofit organizations need to deliberately transform themselves into social enterprises. Through the theoretical lens of institutional entrepreneurship, we explore the institutional work that supports this transformation by analyzing field interviews with 64 institutional entrepreneurs from UK-based social enterprises. We find that the route to incorporate commercial processes (...) and convert traditional nonprofit organizations into social enterprises requires six distinct kinds of institutional work at three different domains; these are—“engaging commercial revenue strategies”, “creating a professionalized organizational form”, and “legitimating a socio-commercial business model”. In elaborating on social entrepreneurship research and practice, we offer a comprehensive framework delineating the key practices contributing to the transformation from traditional nonprofit organizations to social enterprises. This extends our understanding of the ex-ante strategy of incorporating commercial processes within social organizations. Furthermore, the identification of these practices also offers an important tool for scholars in this field to examine the connection of each practice with different ethical concerns of social entrepreneurship in greater depth. (shrink)

According to the perceptual theory of emotions, emotions are perceptions of evaluative properties. The account has recently faced a barrage of criticism recently by critics who point out varies disanalogies between emotion and paradigmatic perceptual experiences. What many theorists fail to note however, is that many of the disanalogies that have been raised to exclude emotions from being perceptual states that represent evaluative properties have also been used to exclude high-level properties from appearing in the content of perception. This suggests (...) that emotions are perceptions of high level properties and perceptual theorists can marshal the arguments used by proponents of high-level perception to defend the perceptual theory. This paper therefore defends an account of emotion as high-level perception. (shrink)

Max Schelers Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsches Kritik an der christlichen bzw. christlich inspirierten Moral ist Gegenstand dieser Untersuchung. Darin lasst sich Schelers phanomenologisches Verstandnis der Liebe erschliessen, das einerseits Nietzsches Kritik apologetisch zwingend beantwortet und andererseits das Gedankengut Nietzsches aufgreift. Schelers Anlehnung an Nietzsche zeigt sich deutlich in seinem Kampf gegen den modernen Altruismus, gegen den Scheler mit ausserster Scharfe das christliche Verstandnis der Liebe abgrenzt. Daruber hinaus entwickelt der Autor in seinem Buch Schelers Verstandnis der Liebe weiter in Hinsicht auf (...) die christliche Soteriologie, die dadurch erheblich bereichert werden kann.". (shrink)

Deficits in the ability to read the emotions of others have been demonstrated in mental disorders, such as dissociation and schizophrenia, which involve a distorted sense of self. This study examined whether weakened self-referential source memory, being unable to remember whether a piece of information has been processed with reference to oneself, is linked to ineffective emotion recognition. In two samples from a college and community, we quantified the participants’ ability to remember the self-generated versus non-self-generated origins of sentences they (...) had previously read or partially generated. We also measured their ability to read others’ emotions accurately when viewing photos of people in affect-charged situations. Multinomial processing tree modelling was applied to obtain a measure of self-referential source memory that was not biased by non-mnemonic factors. Our first experiment with college participants revealed a positive correlation between correctly remembering the origins of sentences and accurately recognising the emotions of others. This correlation was successfully replicated in the second experiment with community participants. The current study offers evidence of a link between self-referential source memory and emotion recognition. (shrink)

Using the Lascar inequalities, we show that any finite rank δ-closed subset of a quasiprojective variety is definably isomorphic to an affine δ-closed set. Moreover, we show that if X is a finite rank subset of the projective space P n and a is a generic point of P n , then the projection from a is injective on X. Finally we prove that if RM = RC in DCF 0 , then RM = RU.

One area of focus in contemporary debates on the Zhuangzi is whether the text endorses some kind of skepticism. For example, in chapter 2, Wang Ni expresses doubt toward "benevolence and rightness" and "the paths of right and wrong." He refuses to claim that there is something of which all things will agree to be right. However, the text repeatedly employs terms like "great knowledge" or "authentic knowledge", which hint at something endorsed or exalted by the text, if not right (...) in itself. Therefore, scholars have been trying to reconcile two sides of the Zhuangzi: the "guru" and the "skeptic."1 In the literature, scholars have refined their interpretation by differentiating skepticism into... (shrink)

Why would God make us ask for some good He might supply, and why would it be right for God to withhold that good unless and until we asked for it? We explain why present defences of petitionary prayer are insufficient, but argue that a world in which God makes us ask for some goods and then supplies them in response to our petitions adds value to the world that would not be available in worlds in which God simply supplied (...) such goods without our asking for them. This added value, we argue, is what we call ‘partnership with God’. (shrink)

The paper presents an exploratory attempt to analyse self‐reported leniency toward software piracy systematically, using an approach based on empirical factors, rather than ethical factors. The empirical factors studied were: social acceptance of software piracy; the cost of original software; urgency of the subject's need for software; availability of original software; knowledge of computer software copyright law; gender; monthly household income; and education level. It provides new insights to software companies and government officials who are developing programmes to promote the (...) concept of anti‐piracy among software consumers. This is also the first exploratory research to study the interaction effects among factors influencing the reported leniency towards software piracy, at the individual level. (shrink)

The paper presents an exploratory attempt to analyse self‐reported leniency toward software piracy systematically, using an approach based on empirical factors, rather than ethical factors. The empirical factors studied were: (i) social acceptance of software piracy; (ii) the cost of original software; (iii) urgency of the subject's need for software; (iv) availability of original software; (v) knowledge of computer software copyright law; (vi) gender; (vii) monthly household income; and (viii) education level. It provides new insights to software companies and government (...) officials who are developing programmes to promote the concept of anti‐piracy among software consumers. This is also the first exploratory research to study the interaction effects among factors influencing the reported leniency towards software piracy, at the individual level. (shrink)

The myriad of negative effects brought about by the incarceration of a family member have consistently been demonstrated in research. However, previous works have tended to focus on the perspectives of family members separately, rather than exploring the dynamic relationships within the family as an entire unit. Moreover, such research is still limited in the Chinese cultural context. Thus, the current study aimed to examine the applicability of the Family Process Theory on a small sample of Chinese fathers who were (...) imprisoned and have returned to their communities, conceptualizing the challenges faced by their families under the theoretical elements of rules of transformation, rituals, ambiguous loss and boundary ambiguity. A total of 17 participants were recruited through the assistance of service organizations, and data were collected via semi-structured interviews. As congruent with the theory, inmates’ families were found to come across problems particularly in the transitioning phase and establishment of new rituals, while ambiguity surrounding the incarceration and the blurred role of the father led to problems with fatherhood identity both during and after the incarceration. Recommendations are made, in line with these findings and the suggestions of ex-prisoners, for services to have more of a focus on preserving the integrity of inmates’ families. Given the right circumstances, families can even serve as a motivator for incarcerated fathers to improve themselves and mature, leveraging the important supportive role of the family and the fear of again being separated from one’s family as effective deterrents to recidivism. (shrink)

We commonly appeal to emotions to explain human behaviour: we seek comfort out of grief, we threaten someone in anger and we hide in fear. According to the standard Humean analysis, intentional action is always explained with reference to a belief-desire pair. According to recent consensus, however, emotions have independent motivating force apart from beliefs and desires, and supplant them when explaining emotional action. In this paper I provide a systematic framework for thinking about the motivational structure of emotion and (...) show how it is consistent with the Humean analysis. On this picture, emotions are not reducible to beliefs and desires, instead their primary motivational force comes from their role as modulators of desires—they control the strength of our occurrent desires. Emotions therefore motivate actions through the belief-desire system instead of overriding it. (shrink)

The Zhuangzi is a collection of ancient Chinese anecdotes and fables that serves as a foundational Daoist text. The style in which it is written is significant because it obscures rather than reveals the text’s philosophic positions. If the text cannot be translated into plain language while preserving its content, as the Mozi or the Mencius generally can be, then the writing style is not merely rhetorical. The style is itself indispensable to the content. In this study, I analyse a (...) linguistic device mentioned in the Zhuangzi and use it to reflect the text’s writing style—namely, “goblet words”. I argue that various logical forms of goblet words defy the act of fixing a definite answer in any conceptual distinction or disputation. The forms, which include dilemmatic questions, oxymora and double denial, all serve to preserve indeterminacy. Reading goblet words may affect readers by making them more open-minded towards distinctions. However, readers cannot ascertain that the text’s authors produced this effect intentionally. Therefore, the text may cause readers to be open-minded while the authors remain free of commitment. (shrink)

This paper brings the intellectual tools of cognitive science to bear on resolving the “paradox of the active user” [Interfacing Thought: Cognitive Aspects of Human–Computer Interaction, Cambridge, MIT Press, MA, USA]—the persistent use of inefficient procedures in interactive tasks by experienced or even expert users when demonstrably more efficient procedures exist. The goal of this paper is to understand the roots of this paradox by finding regularities in these inefficient procedures. We examine three very different data sets. For each data (...) set, we first satisfy ourselves that the preferred procedures used by some subjects are indeed less efficient than the recommended procedures. We then amass evidence, for each set, and conclude that when a preferred procedure is used instead of a more efficient, recommended procedure, the preferred procedure tends to have two major characteristics: (1) the preferred procedure is a well‐practiced, generic procedure that is applicable either within the same task environment in different contexts or across different task environments, and (2) the preferred procedure is composed of interactive components that bring fast, incremental feedback on the external problem states. The support amassed for these characteristics leads to a new understanding of the paradox. In interactive tasks, people are biased towards the use of general procedures that start with interactive actions. These actions require much less cognitive effort as each action results in an immediate change to the external display that, in turn, cues the next action. Unfortunately for the users, the bias to use interactive unit tasks leads to a path that requires more effort in the long run. Our data suggest that interactive behavior is composed of a series of distributed choices; that is, people seldom make a once‐and‐for‐all decision on procedures. This series of biased selection of interactive unit tasks often leads to a stable suboptimal level of performance. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn contrast to his contemporaries who take the heart–mind as the ruler of a person, Zhuangzi suggests that one’s action is guided by the spirit. Questions arise as one articulates the function of spirit and its relationship with the heart–mind. In this article, I articulate the relationship between heart–mind and spirit to show three points: first, spirit is a kind of qi 氣 that can be tied or run smoothly, or rather the mechanism triggered by the functioning of smooth qi. (...) This reading brings the skill passages together with the fasting of heart–mind passage. Second, the proceeding of spirit admits no fixed ways and is not confined to any particular organ or faculty, so it avoids the problem of self-assertion mentioned in Qiwulun. Third, the proceeding of spirit implies that one’s practice takes as many particularities of the context as possible into account, so the person has a higher chance to reduce conflict in interacting with things and other people and bring out their p.. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper examines the idea of xing 性 in Guo Xiang's Commentary on the Zhuangzi in order to show the distinctiveness of Guo's thought. I argue that, for Guo, xing is individualized and subject to no external standard, not even to the "normal" condition proposed by the primitivists in the Zhuangzi. Regarding the debate about xing's changeability, I argue that one's xing can change over time, even by learning, although this change is constrained within certain boundaries. The individualization of xing (...) and the need of holding to one's boundaries serve to explain the emergence of social norms, which can and should be established in a way that respects different xing. This dynamic between individuality and social organization contributes to our thinking about fundamental tensions in human life. (shrink)

The attitude toward li 利 is often identified as a key difference between the Mencius 孟子 and the Mozi 墨子. A common view is that for the Mencius, rightness (yi 義) and li are incompatible; but for the Mozi they are not necessarily so. In this paper I argue that the Mencius and the Mozi are in broad agreement on the issue of li, and their attitudes toward li are not as different as may seem at first glance. If we (...) take a finer-grained understanding of li in two ways, namely the self-regarding li and the other-regarding li, then both the Mencius and the Mozi would criticize the former but encourage the latter. The term li in the Mencius has a range of meanings, and it is not clear whether the Mencius actually opposes all li-pursuing activities. Mencius would agree with Mozi that, at least in some cases, one is obligated to seek li for others. Furthermore, despite their criticism of self-regarding li, both Mencius and Mozi allow that in some cases it is morally permissible to act from the motive of self-regarding li, as long as this motive coexists with the motive of rightness. That is, self-regarding li and rightness are not always mutually exclusive, even for Mencius, who seems to be more critical of li. (shrink)

In Chinese pre-Qin period, Mohism was the first school that challenged Confucianism. A common view is that Mohists attacked Confucianism by proposing jian ai, often translated as “universal love,” that opposes Confucian “graded love”. The Confucian-Mohist debate on ethics is often regarded as a debate between Mohist “universal love,” on the one hand; and Confucian emphasis on family and kinship, on the other. However, it is misleading to translate jian ai as “universal love,” as it distorts our understanding of the (...) debate. The word jian in classical Chinese means “inclusive,” not “impartial”. The Jian Ai chapters in the Mozi do not object to the idea that our moral practices ought to vary according to our relationship with others and their social positions. Furthermore, Mohist jian ai was not proposed in the first instance to refute Confucian ideas. The Confucian-Mohist debate should not be understood as a battle between nepotism and excessive insistence on impartiality, because both of them advocate that we should care for people in general and that we should maintain close relational ties. (shrink)

1. It is common knowledge among scholars who are familiar with the Zhuangzi that Guo Xiang’s 郭象Commentary (henceforth the Commentary)1 written in the Xuanxue 玄學 era exerts tremendous influence on e...

Shun argues that the distinction made between emotions experienced from the first-person perspective and those from the third-person perspective does not capture our everyday emotional experience. My proposal is that even if we accept this claim, first- and third-person perspective taking is still crucial in the development of our emotional psychology. This is so in two respects. First, the features of intimacy and impartiality that mark adult emotional response are a product of a developmental process that involves perspective taking. Second, (...) perspective taking is a crucial part of refining and developing virtuous emotional responses. (shrink)

The "I Ching" had an important influence on Tokugawa Shinto. First, it played a crucial role in the discussion of Confucian-Shinto relations; many Tokugawa Confucians and Shintoists used it to uphold the doctrine of the unity of Confucianism and Shinto, and Shintoists and scholars of National Learning (kokugaku) used it for its metaphysical and divinational value. Second, scholars of National Learning transformed it from a Confucian classic into a Shinto text, claiming that it was the handiwork of a Japanese deity.

Japanese agricultural scholarship reached its peak in the Tokugawa period (1603-1868). Most of its representative works were imbued with the Chinese metaphysical doctrine of yin-yang-wu-hsing. They used the ideas of yin-yang, wu-hsing, yun-ch'i, hexagrams, and feng-shui extensively to develop their views and to explain various practices. There were two different attitudes towards Chinese concepts among Tokugawa scholars. Some regarded Chinese ideas as universal principles, and faithfully introduced them to Japan, whereas some were faced with the problem of national identity and (...) attempted to accommodate Chinese metaphysical principles to Japanese agriculture. This article examines the adoption of the yin-yang-wu-hsing doctrine in Tokugawa agriculture through a careful and critical textual study of several major Tokugawa writings. (shrink)

Three distinct but related questions can be asked about the meaningfulness of one's life. The first is 'What is the meaning of life?', which can be called 'the cosmic question about meaningfulness'; the second is 'What is a meaningful life?', which can be called 'the general question about meaningfulness'; and the third is 'What is the meaning of my life?', which can be called 'the personal question about meaningfulness'. I argue that in order to deal with all three questions we (...) should start with the personal question. There is a way of understanding the personal question which allows us to answer it independently of any consideration of the cosmic question, but which nonetheless helps us see why the cosmic question should be dismissed as a bad question. Besides, a recommendable answer to the general question can be derived from my understanding of how the personal question should be answered. Two notions are essential to my account, namely, the notion of identities and the notion of a biographical life. And the account can be epitomized in this enticing way: a person's life is meaningful if it contains material for an autobiography that she thinks is worth writing and others think is worth reading. (shrink)