Obstetric ultrasound is the well-recognized prenatal test used to visualize and determine the condition of a pregnant woman and her fetus. Apart from the clinical application, some businesses have started promoting the use of fetal ultrasound machines for nonmedical reasons. Non-medical fetal ultrasound (also known as ‘keepsake’ ultrasound) is defined as using ultrasound to view, take a picture, or determine the sex of a fetus without a medical indication. Notwithstanding the guidelines and warnings regarding ultrasound safety issued by governments and (...) professional bodies, the absence of scientifically proven physical harm to fetuses from this procedure seems to provide these businesses with grounds for rapid expansion. However, this argument is too simplistic because current epidemiological evidence is not synchronous with advancing ultrasound technology. As non-medical fetal ultrasound has aroused very significant public attention, a thorough ethical analysis of this topic is essential. Using a multifaceted approach, we analyse the ethical perspective of non-medical fetal ultrasound in terms of the expectant mother, the fetus and health professionals. After applying four major theories of ethics and principles (the precautionary principle; theories of consequentialism and impartiality; duty-based theory; and rights-based theories), we conclude that obstetric ultrasound practice is ethically justifiable only if the indication for its use is based on medical evidence. Non-medical fetal ultrasound can be considered ethically unjustifiable. Nevertheless, the ethical analysis of this issue is time dependent owing to rapid advancements in ultrasound technology and the safety issue. The role of health professionals in ensuring that obstetric ultrasound is an ethically justifiable practice is also discussed. (shrink)

Media guidelines on safe suicide-related reporting are within the suicide prevention armamentarium. However, implementation issues beleaguer real-world practice. This study evaluated the perspectives of the Malaysian media community, persons with lived experience of suicidal behavior, and mental health professionals on suicide-related reporting in terms of the impact, strategies, challenges, and the implementation of guidelines on safe reporting. Three focus group discussions of purposively sampled Malaysian media practitioners, PLE, and MHP were audio-recorded, transcribed, coded and thematically analyzed. Inclusion criteria were: English (...) fluency, no clinical depression or suicidal ideation, no recent previous suicide attempts or suicide bereavement. Three major themes emerged: Unsafe Reporting; Impact; and Safe Reporting. Most described current reporting as unsafe by being potentially triggering to media users and may contribute to contagion effect. Positive impacts identified included raised awareness toward suicide and its prevention. Unsafe reporting was attributed to inadequate awareness, knowledge, and guidance, lack of empathy and accountability, job-related factors, popularity-seeking, lack of monitoring and governance, and information source with unsafe content. Majority agreed on how suicide stories should be framed to produce a safe report. The media community diverged on how detailed a suicide story should be. Safe reporting challenges included difficulties in balancing beneficial versus harmful details, social media ubiquity and its citizen reporters. Participants suggested these safe reporting strategies: stakeholder engagement, educational approaches, improving governance and surveillance, and guidelines revision. Most acknowledged the relevance of guidelines but were unaware of the existence of local guidelines. Implementation challenges included the dilemma in balancing media industry needs vis-à-vis safe reporting requirements, stakeholder engagement difficulties and social media regulation. There is poor awareness regarding safe suicide-related reporting across all groups. PLE and MHP were negatively impacted by current unsafe messaging which aggravated trauma and grief reactions. Postvention support gaps for mental health professionals were highlighted. Safe reporting promotion strategies should include stakeholder engagement to increase awareness on minimizing Werther and maximizing Papageno effects. Strategic re-examination and dissemination of local media guidelines to address new media issues, and effective surveillance mechanisms, are crucial in sustainable improvement of safe reporting practices. (shrink)

This study explores the impact of teachers? perception of trust in colleagues on their sense of empowerment in Mainland China, with a particular focus on the mediating role of teacher efficacy. The results of a survey of 1646 teachers indicate that although teachers scored positively on trust in colleagues, efficacy and empowerment, they had relatively lower scores on general teaching efficacy (GTE) and participation in decision-making. Trust in colleagues was a significant predictor of teacher empowerment. In addition, personal teaching efficacy (...) had a significant mediation effect on the relationship between trust in colleagues and teacher empowerment, while GTE had not. These findings lead to some implications for understanding the nature of GTE and the relationship between trust and teacher empowerment. (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)

Background Speech understanding may rely not only on auditory, but also on visual information. Non-invasive functional neuroimaging techniques can expose the neural processes underlying the integration of multisensory processes required for speech understanding in humans. Nevertheless, noise (from fMRI) limits the usefulness in auditory experiments, and electromagnetic artefacts caused by electronic implants worn by subjects can severely distort the scans (EEG, fMRI). Therefore, we assessed audio-visual activation of temporal cortex with a silent, optical neuroimaging technique: functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Methods (...) We studied temporal cortical activation as represented by concentration changes of oxy- and deoxy-hemoglobin in four, easy-to-apply fNIRS optical channels of 33 normal-hearing adult subjects and 5 post-lingually deaf cochlear implant (CI) users in response to supra-threshold unisensory auditory and visual, as well as to congruent auditory-visual speech stimuli. Results Activation effects were not visible from single fNIRS channels. However, by discounting physiological noise through reference channel subtraction, auditory, visual and audiovisual speech stimuli evoked concentration changes for all sensory modalities in both cohorts (p<0.001). Auditory stimulation evoked larger concentration changes than visual stimuli (p<0.001). A saturation effect was observed for the audiovisual condition. Conclusions Physiological, systemic noise can be removed from fNIRS signals by reference channel subtraction. The observed multisensory enhancement of an auditory cortical channel can be plausibly described by a simple addition of the auditory and visual signals with saturation. (shrink)

This article seeks to consider the compatibility between the doctrine of the Trinity and the theory of the transcendental properties by offering a consideration of the notion of the ‘gift’ as a transcendental term. In particular, this article presents a re-reading of John Milbank’s influential theology of the gift through Colin Gunton’s project of developing ‘trinitarian transcendentals’. In addition to showing how Milbank’s notion of the gift could be systematically understood in terms of what Gunton calls a ‘trinitarianly developed (...) transcendental’ which nonetheless avoids many of the problems found in Gunton’s original project, this article argues understanding ‘gift’ as a transcendental term can not only provide us with new ways of reconceiving the relationship between the philosophy of transcendental properties and various traditional doctrines, it can moreover show us how the traditional and biblical names of the Holy Spirit as ‘the Gift’ and the Son as ‘the Word’ can offer new ways of developing distinctively trinitarian accounts of metaphysics. (shrink)

This article considers how the notions of ‘word’ and ‘conversation’ can contribute to contemporary developments in theological metaphysics by drawing on Christoph Schwöbel’s ontological rendition of Martin Luther’s theology. By way of reading Schwöbel’s theological ontology of conversation with reference to John Milbank’s theology of the gift, this article shows that Schwöbel’s conception of the Trinity as an eternal ‘conversation’ can be understood as an ontology of ‘word-exchange’ in a fashion similar to Milbank’s account of trinitarian ‘gift-exchange’. Moreover, the (...) article argues that Schwöbel’s Lutheran construal of creation as God’s ‘created words’ (verba creata) can present a transcendental account of ‘word’ or verbum which complements Milbank’s ontology of the gift or donum. By bringing to light these perhaps surprising convergences between Schwöbel’s Lutheran theology of ‘the word’ and Milbank’s Christian Neo-Platonic theology of ‘the gift’, this article highlights some of the often-overlooked metaphysical insights in Luther’s theology of the word, which can contribute not only to ecumenical theological dialogue, but also foster new perspectives and conversations for contemporary developments and discussions in theological metaphysics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Mahāyāna Reading of Chalcedon Christology:A Chinese Response to John KeenanPan-chiu LaiIntroductionThe Christological formula of Chalcedon, especially its use of the substantialist concepts such as ousia, hypostatsis, and so on, has long been a target of criticism in the history of Western Christian theology.1 Recently, Kwok Pui-lan, an Asian feminist theologian, has queried not only the language or way of thinking of traditional Western Christology, but also its (...) anthropocentric tendency. According to Kwok, "the majority of Asian people find it difficult to accept a savior in human form because of their cosmological sensibility."2 Kwok also thinks that the Chalcedonian expressions such as "fully God and fully man" or "two natures in one substance" are quite beyondthe understanding of the majority of the Asian people. The lengthy debate on the difference between homoousia and homoiousia is also irrelevant to the average Chinese, because there are no immediate Chinese equivalents to the terms such as "being" or "essence." According to Kwok, Buddhism, in contrast, characterizes the world as transient and impermanent without using the philosophical language such as "being" and "nonbeing."3 Kwok further notes that "The Buddhist tradition asserts that there is not one Buddha, but many Buddhas, and that everyone has the potential to attain Buddhahood. If we get away from the framework defined by a language of substance, we will not be fixated on a one-time incarnation."4 Kwok concludes that the anthropocentric perspective and the substantialist language of the Chalcedonian Creed represent a burden or obstacle that needs to be put aside. She even laments that "the church worldwide is still much under the yoke of the Chalcedonian captivity and Eurocentric theological formulations based on Western heritages."5 Kwok's comment seems to imply that the Buddhist way of thinking may offer a better alternative or a remedy to Chalcedonian Christology.In the contemporary Buddhist-Christian dialogue, John P. Keenan, when proposing a Mahāyāna theology, also offers a critique of Chalcedonian Christology.6 [End Page 209] Through a response to Keenan's discussion, this paper will examine these critiques and will attempt to reinterpret the Chalcedonian Christology from a Mahāyāna perspective.The Mahāyāna Theology of John KeenanIn proposing a Mahāyāna theology, Keenan assumes a Christian standpoint and tries to make use of Mahāyāna Buddhism for the service of Christianity. As Keenan himself frankly admits, his basic approach is to adopt "Mahāyāna Thought as Theologiae Ancilla, " which is the heading for the second part of his The Meaning of Christ. Keenan's strategy of arguing for a Mahāyāna theology is to identify the need of Christianity first, and then to argue in what way Mahāyāna Buddhism can help Christian theology to solve its own problems. According to Keenan's diagnosis, a fundamental problem of the Western Christian tradition is the detrimental separation of mysticism from doctrine. In his own words,It is argued here that, to date, the Christian West has been unable organically to relate its own mystic thinkers to its doctrinal, theoretical thinking. The reason for this inability was not simply, as Adolf von Harnack thought, the adoption and superimposition of Greek patterns of ontology upon the gospel. Rather it is an inability to differentiate that realm of Greek, logos-centered theory from the more primal realm of mystic awareness, an ability to understand the mind of faith in its polyvalent realms of meaning.7In the first part of the book (ch. 1-5), based on his review of the historical development of the Christian understanding of Christ, Keenan highlights the tremendous tension between the primal experience of "being in Christ" and the theoretical understanding of Christ.8 Keenan believes that the school of wisdom literature in the Old Testament has prepared the New Testament for an understanding of the meaning of Christ as God's wisdom. This wisdom comprises essentially God as Father (Abba) as well as the theology of the cross and resurrection. He further points out that early Christians, following the example of Jesus Christ, had direct experience of God as Father. Owing to the... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The background: correlative thinking Tian Wuxing (five elements) and yin‐yang (yin and yang) Dao Qi (stuff) Chinese Buddhism and the Buddhist view of nature.

While nothing justifies atrocity, many perpetrators manifest cognitive impairments that profoundly degrade their capacity for moral judgment, and such impairments, we shall argue, preclude the attribution of moral responsibility.

We can gain standing or mana in the world through cooperation (yin mana) or through competition (yang mana). Drawing on both Maori and Daoist ideas, the way of yin mana is explored, whereby all parties can gain through new and meaningful participatory activities.

In her creative new book, Mercedes Valmisa proposes that, in Chinese philosophy, efficacious agency should be understood as involving ‘adapting’ (yin因). She introduces a distinctive relational noti...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophical Meditations on Zen BuddhismWhalen LaiPhilosophical Meditations on Zen Buddhism. By Dale S. Wright. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xv + 227.As "philosophical meditations" on the Zen of Huang Po, Philosophical Meditations on Zen Buddhism by Dale S. Wright is an impressive work. Philosophers will appreciate it, for it well shows how far Zen studies in America have moved ahead since the days of D. T. Suzuki (...) and Alan Watts. Just as Bernard Faure has deconstructed "Suzuki Zen," Dale S. Wright has here de-romanticized John Blofeld's 1959 book on Huang Po, the third "house" in the Hung-chou lineage of Ma-tsu Tao-I, being the successor to Pai-chang and master to Lin-chi.Wright's "post-romantic" reading strives for relevance in contemporary discourse. Each of the chapters takes up a key topic that dovetails into the next and escalates from Textuality, Reading, Understanding, Language, Rhetoric, and History to Freedom, Transcendence, Mind, and Enlightenment. Concerning the first, Textuality, it is shown how Blofeld has taken the records of Huang Po as true and holistic—a view that has been disputed by modern scholarship, which details a complex history of accretion instead. Renouncing the former romance with its single portraiture, Wright accepts the critical approach. Huang Po exists, then, as a series of images projected by the respondent Zen community. Wright then recalls the Buddhist doctrine of "no-self" (in the context of there being no unchanging Huang Po) and notes how a number of masters in that mountain-based lineage were also named Huang Po. In short, whereas Bernard Faure has dissolved the early images of Bodhidharma into a number of literary skandhas (heaps), fragments that do not even add up to a pudgala (fictive whole), Wright finds these socially constructed images to be born out of (Buddhist) "dependent origination" vis-à-vis the Zen community.This leads to the next topic, on how one should read a text. Wary of Blofeld's strong belief, a hermeneutics of faith that is possibly masking modern, subjective bias and projections, Wright sees a need for critical distance while granting the text its own horizon or an "otherness" that engages the reader anew. All ten chapters follow this format of pitting point against counterpoint before ruminating on some lead gleamed from the repertoire of Buddhist doctrines. Some chapters are more subtle than others, but all work to jog the reader into a sudden recognition of some past prejudice while offering a fresh take on the material. The book, though not always easy, nonetheless deserves a close reading by any and all Zen enthusiasts.Wright's choice of target—Blofeld and Huang Po—is somewhat of an unexpected delight. As with Buberism in Hasidic studies, D. T. Suzuki has perpetuated a certain "Suzuki-ism" in the Zen field, but compared with Suzuki or even Watts, Blofeld is never known to be that independent a thinker as to deserve similar attention. An eclectic collector of Eastern esoterica, Blofeld's "romance" with the Orient is not always that reflective; sometimes he just reports what he was told, unvarnished. His "romanticism" is thus often second- or thirdhand. The introduction to his 1959 work is anything but aggressive; he sounds at times all too apologetic. But [End Page 631] precisely because of this, Wright is able to cite Blofeld and use him to get at a more general but pervasive set of European "romantic" assumptions about the Buddhist East and submit that to a coherent and intriguing critique. He also whets our appetite for a good, intellectual biography of Blofeld, which we do not have. We do not really get a good picture of Huang Po either—but then, asking for that might be chalked up to a yearning for "romance" or just wishful thinking. One longs for some middle ground.That is because, unlike Descartes' Meditations, which set forth a singular, modern rationality, Wright's postmodern Meditation cannot help but suggest just one way of dealing with the polysemy of the text. Perhaps some histoire de mentalité in the future can restore some sense of the significance of Huang Po the person and his historic hour. Maybe a different... (shrink)

Indian philosophy of Yoni-Linga may be examined as a parallel to the Chinese philosophy of “Yin-Yang.” This essay will compare the similarities and distinctions between the two kinds of dichotomies through a theoretical formulation: certain conceptual, analytical and cross-cultural perspectives. The study will be focused on semiologieal, aesthetical, ontological and theological comparisons between these two of the most famous pairs of conceptual antonyms which have been developed by later Sino-Hindu philosophies and theologies as human worldviews widened and deepened with Eastern (...) civilization. (shrink)

Reform of the federal income tax system has become a perennial item on the domestic policy agenda of the United States, although there is considerable uncertainty over specifics. Indeed the recent report of the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform recommended not one but two divergent policy directions. In Fundamental Tax Reform, top experts in tax policy discuss a wide range of issues raised by the prospect of significant tax reform, identifying the most critical questions and considering whether the (...) answers are known, unknown--or unknowable. The debates over tax reform usually concern the advantages and disadvantages of income-based taxation as opposed to any of the several alternative forms of consumption-based taxation. The book opens with chapters that discuss the strengths, weaknesses, and political feasibility of these options. Other chapters consider the effect of tax reform on businesses, especially their investment behavior, and include a discussion of possible problems in any transition to a consumption-based tax; international taxation issues arising in an era of globalization; and individual behavioral response to tax reform, including a view of the topic from the perspective of the relatively new field of behavioral economics. ContributorsRosanne Altshuler, Alan J. Auerbach, John W. Diamond, Harry Grubert, Arnold C. Harberger, Kevin A. Hassett, Thomas J. Kniesner, Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Edward J. McCaffery, Kathryn Newmark, David Rapson, Daniel Shaviro, Joel Slemrod, James P. Ziliak, George R. ZodrowDiscussants James Alm, Henry J. Aaron, Charles L. Ballard, Leonard E. Burman, Robert S. Chirinko, Robert D. Dietz, Malcolm Gillis, Roger H. Gordon, Jane G. Gravelle, Timothy S. Gunning, James M. Poterba, Thomas S. Neubig, Alan Viard, George Yin John W. Diamond is Edward and Hermena Kelly Fellow in Tax Policy and Adjunct Professor of Economics at the Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University. George R. Zodrow is Professor of Economics and Rice Scholar at the Baker Institute and International Research Fellow at the Centre for Business Taxation, Oxford University. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Prospects for a Mahāyāna Theology of EmptinessA Continuing DebateJohn P. KeenanTwo articles in recent issues of Buddhist-Christian Studies—Lai Pan-chiu’s “A Mahāyāna Reading of Chalcedon Christology: A Chinese Response to John Keenan” 1 (2004) and Thomas Cattoi’s “What Has Chalcedon to Do with Lhasa? John Keenan’s and Lai Pan-chiu’s Reflections on Classical Christology and the Possible Shape of a Tibetan Theology of Incarnation” 2 (2008)—discuss my book (...) The Meaning of Christ: A Mahāyāna Theology (1989),3 prompting me to add my voice to the conversation.In “A Mahāyāna Reading of Chalcedon Christology: A Chinese Response to John Keenan,” Lai Pan-chiu reads from the perspective of a Chinese Christian thinker my formulation of a Christology informed by Indian Mahāyāna philosophy. He would prefer to configure a rather different Mahāyāna theology, wherein the polarity expressed in traditional Chalcedonian theology would be reinvested in a Chinese Mahāyāna dynamic, with its ability to hold in creative tension what are often seen as exclusionary opposites. Lai proposes to take as leitmotif for this project the Chinese Mahāyāna theme of Buddha Nature (C. fóxìng ) and its Indian precursor of Tathāgatagarbha (Skt. “matrix of the Buddha”) thought. Although—for reasons I will discuss below—I would not myself choose this approach in writing Christology for a western audience, I certainly would commend Lai Pan-chiu’s effort to do so for a Chinese audience and beyond.In “What Has Chalcedon to Do with Lhasa? John Keenan’s and Lai Pan-chiu’s Reflections on Classical Christology and the Possible Shape of a Tibetan Theology of Incarnation,” Thomas Cattoi contends that Lai has not gone far enough in responding to The Meaning of Christ. Cattoi himself then proceeds with a critique of Mahāyāna theology that reveals both his own unwavering commitment to traditional ontological theology and his apparent disinterest in engaging Buddhist Mahāyāna philosophy in depth. He makes little or no reference to the Mahāyāna philosophical themes that I discuss in detail in The Meaning of Christ—themes that I then employ to enunciate a Mahāyāna Christology. Moreover, the alternative “Tibetan Christology” that Cattoi proffers in this article also appears to avoid any deep or detailed engagement [End Page 3] with Mahāyāna thought. He seems satisfied to employ Tibetan Buddhist terminology simply to reaffirm what we have long affirmed in the Greek, emphasizing the embodiment of Christ as the unicum, the one and only embodiment of God, and the transformation of the very fabric of the universe effected thereby.4 His Christology functions as a description of that transformation and, to my lights, leaves scant room for any Trinitarian theology of the Spirit. He argues against the notion that any discourse can empty the ontological claims of “the Christian position.” For him, only the ontological theology of our Greek ancestors is adequate—apparently culturally privileged because providentially inspired.I will address herein some of the many, often convoluted, issues raised, for these issues are basic to Mahāyāna theology and to critiques against its viability. I choose not to detail the many instances in which Thomas Cattoi misreads, mischaracterizes, and misrepresents my work; I must only trust that those who have read The Meaning of Christ are well aware that Cattoi’s characterizations of that book reflect neither its content nor its tone.5 I shall use this space instead to further clarify the shape of a Mahāyāna theology that employs the principal themes of Mādhyamika and Yogācāra, and will discuss in a more general way Cattoi’s fundamental inattentiveness to those themes and to the manner in which they inform Mahāyāna theology.6 I shall also discuss Lai Pan-chiu’s very interesting proposal for a Chinese Mahāyāna theology.Ontology and MahĀyĀna Realms of UnderstandingMahāyāna theology is not Cattoi’s “Mādhyamika dualism.”7 Mahāyāna theology does not represent a Buddhist “position,” but rather the emptiness of all... (shrink)

An understanding of the roles and representations of women in classical Chinese philosophy is here derived from central texts such as the Analects, the Lienu Zhuan, and the I Ching. We argue that the roles of women during the classical period of Chinese philosophy tended to be as part of the “inner,” working domestically as a housewife and mother. This will be shown from three passages from the Analects. Women were represented as submissive and passive, as with the qualities ascribed (...) to yin energy, and therefore as rightfully subordinate to men. However, despite representations of women in philosophy being thus at this time, there were exceptions, specific women who could take a male “outer” political role. The story of Ling Liang from the Lienu Zhuan suggests that although women being involved in “outer” affairs was looked down on, there were still women who would be and who would occasionally get praised for doing so. This shows that it was realised, explicitly or otherwise, that women were capable of taking those roles, but also that they were not allowed to take such roles at that time. (shrink)

The interconnections between self and surroundings in Daoist thought have been explored in the past in a variety of contexts. This paper, however, explores the Daoist version of the relational self from the general perspective of chaos theory and, more specifically, examines the role of the self in creating emergent form and dynamism in nature and society. The fractal self and world merge through the disciplined effort of the sage until the effort becomes effortless. Both self and world are transformed (...) and become one through the emergent moment. This moment represents a new opportunity for subsequent patterns, or attractors, to emerge. We suggest that the self folds itself into the world, creating and being created by a new attractor, or pattern, in the organization of nature, which we argue is Dao. Our current investigation addresses the following aspects of chaos theory and its relation to Daoism: (1) the Daoist notion of wuwei as perfect congruence; (2) yin and yang at the edge of chaos; (3) the emergent nature of the myriad things; and (4) a Daoist warning against fractal disconnections in the world. Finally, we conclude that the self has the potential to become the world. To approach this amplified condition, the self must dedicate itself to and risk open engagement with events across the complexity of nature. Through openly engaging the world, the self is transformed, leaving the world forever changed. (shrink)

CONTENTS: Walter Hopp: How to Think about Nonconceptual Content Jeff Yoshimi: Husserl on Psycho-Physical Laws Mark van Atten: Construction and Constitution in Mathematics Ronald Bruzina: Husserl's "Naturalism" and Genetic Phenomenology Andrea Staiti: Different Worlds and Tendency to Concordance: On Husserl's Phenomenology of Culture Rosemary R. P. Lerner : The Cartesian Meditations' Foundational Discourse: An Obsolete Project? Sebastian Luft: Lerner on Foundation, Person, and Rationality George Heffernan: The Phronimos, the Phainomena, and the Pragmata: Are We Responsible for the Things that Appear (...) to Us to Be Good for Us? Michael J. Sigrist: Husserl on God, Existence, and Transcendental Analysis Hans Pedersen: On Heidegger's Appropriation of Aristotle's Concept of Phronesis Ka-wing Leung: Heidegger on Animal and World Abraham Stone: On the Teaching of Virtue in Plato's Meno and the Nature of Philosophical Authority Michael Kelly: A Glimpse of Envy and its Intentional Structure Anne C. Ozar : The Value of a Phenomenology of the Emotions for Cultivating One's Own Character Review Essay Molly Brigid Flynn: The Agent of Truth: Reflections on Robert Sokolowski's Phenomenology of the Human Person (Noesis 2011). (shrink)

Some of the authors of the essays on Chinese philosophers prefer the pin yin system of romanization for Chinese names and words, while others prefer the Wade‐Giles system. Given that both systems are in wide use today, important names and words are given in both their pin yin and Wade‐Giles formulations. The author's preference is printed first, followed by the alternative romanization within brackets.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Has Chalcedon to Do with Lhasa? John Keenan’s and Lai Pai-chiu’s Reflections on Classical Christology and the Possible Shape of a Tibetan Theology of IncarnationThomas CattoiThe starting point of this paper is a critique of John Keenan’s so-called “Mahāyāna Christology” in The Meaning of Christ, in light of Lai Pai-chiu’s “Chinese” response to Keenan’s position. My argument is that Lai correctly construes the Chalcedonian definition as (...) a critique of Hellenist ontology, but fails to critique Keenan’s crucial contention that this same definition ratifies the subjugation of lived spiritual experience to abstract philosophical speculation. I also claim that Lai does not engage Keenan’s flawed use, in his constructive Christology, of the teaching of the Buddha-bodies, which in my opinion could provide an apposite template for the development of a Tibetan contextual Christology. My paper has a twofold purpose: on one hand, I sketch the contours of a possible Tibetan theology of incarnation; on the other hand, I offer a few methodological reflections on the role of classical doctrinal definitions in the development of new contextual theologies.The burden of this paper is to offer a few suggestions toward the formulation of a culturally contextual theology of incarnation, which uses the resources of Mahāyāna speculation on the embodiment of the Buddha. My starting point is Lai’s critique of Keenan’s well-known 1989 volume The Meaning of Christ, in which Keenan sets out to critique traditional Hellenist Chalcedonian Christology and argues for an alternative articulation of the hypostatic union based on the Mahāyāna teaching of the Buddha-bodies.1 Lai’s article revisits Keenan’s critique and argues that the Chalcedonian definition, far from canonizing the uncritical appropriation of a school of thought, evidences the profound limitations of philosophical discourse. Keenan’s underlying contention that traditional Christology subjects the Christian message to the strictures of alien categories is thus deconstructed, although Lai goes on to offer yet one more Christological synthesis based on the Chinese understanding of Buddha nature. In my paper I concur with Lai’s reading of Chalcedonian categories, which I regard [End Page 13] as more accurate and fruitful than Keenan’s, but I also argue that Lai fails to engage the totality of Keenan’s argument and therefore does not appreciate the deeper flaws in Keenan’s appropriation of the Buddhakāya teaching. My constructive suggestion toward the end of this paper is that such teaching could actually provide a most useful template for the development of a “Tibetan” theology of incarnation, which would remain in continuity with the Chalcedonian tradition, and yet resort to the linguistic and philosophical categories of the local culture.Theologians wishing to develop contextual articulations of Christian doctrine often meet considerable resistance, since their emphasis on the culturally contingent nature of traditional formulas is seen as a challenge to their continuing normative character. As early as 1969, Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity expressed serious reservations about the growing tendency to “de-Hellenize” Christian theology and strongly reasserted the enduring “providential” character of traditional Trinitarian and Christological formulas.2 At the same time, the development of a postcolonial Christianity in many Asian and African countries could not but call for inculturated expressions of the Christian faith that embedded the Christian message in the categories of the local culture. Theologian Stephen B. Bevans begins his work Models of Contextual Theology claiming that in the contemporary world, “the contextualization of [Christian] theology [...] is really a theological imperative.” 3 The understanding of theology as an objective and unchanging science of faith is thus superseded by a new approach that gives pride of place to the religious experience of the individual and the community where he or she lives, operates, and worships.4 Bevans’s call for a contextual theology views the “experience of the present” as the ultimately normative benchmark against which the “experience of the past” is assessed, in the search for a new synthesis rooted in a particular cultural and social location.5The development of new Christological formulas that use the resources of Asian Buddhist culture is thus possible only after the... (shrink)

本书包含了英美基本逻辑教程中应该包含的全部题材,用对话的形式对逻辑的应用、纯逻辑的训练等方面的问题进行了讲解。.

Does ‘remembering that p’ entail ‘knowing that p’? The widely-accepted epistemic theory of memory answers affirmatively. This paper purports to reveal the tension between ETM and the prevailing anti-luck epistemology. Central to my argument is the fact that we often ‘vaguely remember’ a fact, of which one plausible interpretation is that our true memory-based beliefs formed in this way could easily have been false. Drawing on prominent theories of misremembering in philosophy of psychology, I will construct cases where the subject (...) vaguely remembers that p while fails to meet the safety condition, which imply either that ETM is false or that safety is unnecessary for knowledge. The conclusion reached in this paper will be a conditional: if veritic epistemic luck is incompatible with knowledge, then ‘remembering that p’ does not entail ‘knowing that p’. (shrink)

In both the literal and metaphorical senses, it seemed as if 1970s America was running out of gas.

CHAPTER ONE Paving a Way for a Treatise Identity Those who are not of the philosophical persuasion may find it surprising that the Self appears to be such ...

Seeks to provide a new direction for the advancement of political theory. This essay deals with the uneasy relationship between liberty and equality; the nature of democracy and the formation of political consensus; and the weakness of our understanding of class.

本书是一本汇集古今中外法律名著经典论述并加以简单评点的书,传播先进的法治思想和理念,树立先进的、文明的执法理念。.

This new edition includes a substantial postscript by the author, in which he responds to thirty years of discussion, criticism and further work in the field to ...

[Adapted from publisher-provided promotional materials by English Book Review Editor, Janny HC Leung]M. Catherine Gruber (2014) I’m Sorry for What I’ve Done: The Language of Courtroom Apologies. Oxford University Press, USA, ISBN: 978-0-19-932566-5This book examines 52 apologetic allocutions produced during federal sentencing hearings. The practice of inviting defendants to make a statement in their own behalf is a long-standing one and it is understood as offering defendants the opportunity to impress a judge or jury with their remorse, which could (...) be a factor in the sentence that is imposed. Defendants raised the topics of the offense, mitigation, future behaviour and the sentence in different ways and this book explores the pros and cons associated with the different strategies that they used. Based on corpus data, Gruber argues that the application of Austin’s (1962) performative–constative continuum reveals that offense-related utterances that fall closer to the constative end are.. (shrink)