Purpose: We aimed to find out the distributed functional connectome of white matter in patients with functional dyspepsia.Methods: 20 patients with FD and 24 age- and gender-matched healthy controls were included into the study. The functional connectome of white matter and graph theory were used to these participants. Two-sample t-test was used for the detection the abnormal graph properties in FD. Pearson correlation was used for the relationship between properties and the clinical and neuropshychological information.Results: Patients with FD and healthy (...) controls showed small-world properties in functional connectome of white matter. Compared with healthy controls, the FD group showed decreased global properties. Four pairs of fiber bundles that are connected to the frontal lobe, insula, and thalamus were affected in the FD group. Duration and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index positively correlated with the betweenness centrality of white matter regions of interest.Conclusion: FD patients turned to a non-optimized functional organization of WM brain network. Frontal lobe, insula, and thalamus were key regions in brain information exchange of FD. It provided some novel imaging evidences for the mechanism of FD. (shrink)

This study aimed to investigate the effect of perfectionistic concerns on mobile phone addiction and the mediating role of academic procrastination, as well as the moderating role of causality orientations. A cross-sectional sample of 625 Chinese college students completed measures of PC, AP, causality orientations, and MPA. We analyzed the survey data using structural equation modeling in Mplus 8.0. PC was positively related to MPA. In addition, AP partially mediated this association. The hypothesized moderating effect of autonomous orientation and controlled (...) orientation was not supported. Impersonal orientation moderated the second stage of the mediating effect of AP on the PC–MPA link in that the mediating effect was positive when impersonal orientation was high, while the mediating effect was not significant when impersonal orientation was low. The findings confirm the importance of investigating how individual difference contributes to MPA. The implications of the findings for relieving MPA or preventing college students from developing MPA are also discussed deeply and thoroughly. (shrink)

There has been much research into teacher beliefs about teaching and learning as seen in the general teacher education literature. In the field of language teacher education, this line of research has been evolving, with the recent trend being streamlined into “teacher cognition” as a generic or umbrella term. Despite increasing amounts of research output so far, research into foreign language teachers’ cognitions about their own teaching and decision-making is still insufficient, particularly with regard to university-level English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teachers in (...) China. Drawing on Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory, this qualitative research focused on EFL teachers’ cognitions about form-focused instruction in Chinese university settings. It intended to discover how teachers’ cognitions changed when they were expected to teach in actual classrooms and what factors contributed to these changes. Data collected from four teacher-participants through semi-structured interviews, classroom observations and follow-up stimulated recall interviews showed participants’ support forfocus-on-forminstruction, which means they not only paid attention to the grammatical form of the language but also to the meaning it is intended to convey. However, data also showed that the teacher-participants shifted fromfocus-on-formtofocus-on-formSinstruction in actual teaching, which suggests that they might have realized the challenges of carrying out teaching activities surroundingfocus-on-formand would like to take an easier approach by only teaching the grammar of the language byfocusing on formS. Such incongruences are interpreted with reference to a plethora of sociocultural factors including traditional Chinese thinking and institutional expectations. The implications of the findings for stakeholders in universities, including faculty members, students, and curriculum developers in similar contexts, are also discussed. (shrink)

As a NP-hard problem that needs to be solved in real time, the dynamic task allocation problem of unmanned aerial vehicle swarm has gradually become a difficulty and hotspot in the current planning field. Aiming at the problems of poor real-time performance and low quality of the solution in the dynamic task allocation of heterogeneous UAV swarm in uncertain environment, this paper establishes a dynamic task allocation model that can meet the actual needs and uses the binary wolf pack algorithm (...) to solve it, so as to propose a dynamic task allocation method of heterogeneous UAV swarm in uncertain environment. In this method, a dynamic mechanism of attacking while searching and priority attacking of important targets is designed. A dynamic task allocation model of multitarget, multitask, heterogeneous multiaircraft platform and multiconstraint is established based on the target cost-effectiveness ratio and task execution time window. In addition, one-dimensional 0–1 coding method is adopted to encode the task allocation scheme. Furthermore, the wolf pack algorithm is introduced in brief. This paper focuses on the BWPA with the good computational robustness and strong global search ability to solve the dynamic allocation model. According to the simulation results, the designed task allocation method not only has good adaptability to the change of target and UAV number, as well as good stability and scalability, but also can effectively solve the dynamic task allocation problem of heterogeneous UAV swarm in unknown environment. Therefore, the established model and solution method can provide a useful reference for task allocation and other related problems. (shrink)

To obtain effective fusion results of multi source evidences with different importance, an evidence fusion method with importance discounting factors based on neutrosopic probability analysis in DSmT framework is proposed. First, the reasonable evidence sources are selected out based on the statistical analysis of the pignistic probability functions of single focal elements. Secondly, the neutrosophic probability analysis is conducted based on the similarities of the pignistic probability functions from the prior evidence knowledge of the reasonable evidence sources. Thirdly, the importance (...) discounting factors of the reasonable evidence sources are obtained based on the neutrosophic probability analysis and the reliability discounting factors of the real-time evidences are calculated based on probabilistic-based distances. Fourthly, the real-time evidences are discounted by the importance discounting factors and then the evidences with the mass assignments of neutrosophic empty sets are discounted by the reliability discounting factors. Finally, DSmT+PCR5 of importance discounted evidences is applied. Experimental examples show that the decision results based on the proposed fusion method are different from the results based on the existed fusion methods. Simulation experiments of recognition fusion are performed and the superiority of proposed method is testified well by the simulation results. (shrink)

Mind perception entails ascribing mental capacities to other entities, whereas moral judgment entails labeling entities as good or bad or actions as right or wrong. We suggest that mind perception is the essence of moral judgment. In particular, we suggest that moral judgment is rooted in a cognitive template of two perceived minds—a moral dyad of an intentional agent and a suffering moral patient. Diverse lines of research support dyadic morality. First, perceptions of mind are linked to moral judgments: dimensions (...) of mind perception (agency and experience) map onto moral types (agents and patients), and deficits of mind perception correspond to difficulties with moral judgment. Second, not only are moral judgments sensitive to perceived agency and experience, but all moral transgressions are fundamentally understood as agency plus experienced suffering—that is, interpersonal harm—even ostensibly harmless acts such as purity violations. Third, dyadic morality uniquely accounts for the phenomena of dyadic completion (seeing agents in response to patients, and vice versa), and moral typecasting (characterizing others as either moral agents or moral patients). Discussion also explores how mind perception can unify morality across explanatory levels, how a dyadic template of morality may be developmentally acquired, and future directions. (shrink)

The psychological and neurobiological processes underlying moral judgement have been the focus of many recent empirical studies1–11. Of central interest is whether emotions play a causal role in moral judgement, and, in parallel, how emotion-related areas of the brain contribute to moral judgement. Here we show that six patients with focal bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a brain region necessary for the normal generation of emotions and, in particular, social emotions12–14, produce an abnor- mally ‘utilitarian’ pattern of (...) judgements on moral dilemmas that pit compelling considerations of aggregate welfare against highly emotionally aversive behaviours (for example, having to sacrifice one person’s life to save a number of other lives)7,8. In contrast, the VMPC patients’ judgements were normal in other classes of moral dilemmas. These findings indicate that, for a selective set of moral dilemmas, the VMPC is critical for normal judgements of right and wrong. The findings support a necessary role for emotion in the generation of those judgements. (shrink)

Illness -- Loneliness -- Violation -- Love.

本书介绍了经济伦理学的冲撞与整合、历史的探源、利己与利他、自律与他律、公平交易、公平分配等八章内容。.

本书以政治科学的基础理论为核心,以当代思想和思维水平为支持,批判性地系统阐述了基础理论研究在政治知识求取中的重要地位和作用,涉及政治科学的学科论、范式论、方法论和范畴论四个论题,指出回归基础理论的研究 是当今政治科学繁荣的根本途径。.

This paper argues that in daycare centres in France, where children are cared for from four months to age three, the competence of female staff members is usually denied and unvalued vis à vis the expert opinions. The paper highlights empirical research on early childhood and gender, providing pragmatic access to children's languages of desire, a language mostly ignored. Incorporating the ideas of Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, the paper draws upon the conceptualization of Fernand Deligny who took care of autistic (...) children in mapping what he called ‘lines of wandering’, an idea that shows how desire can become accessible. In the present ‘society of control’ which Deleuze analyses and which coexists with Foucault's discipline and biopower, such lines of flight enable the emergence of a new narrative for young children's desire, and for the competence of the female staff members in their departure from the highway of normalization. (shrink)

国家哲学社会科学创新基地浙江大学语言与认知研究中心研究成果中国博士后科学基金资助.

国家哲学社会科学创新基地浙江大学语言与认知研究中心研究成果中国博士后科学基金资助.

Motion pose capture technology can effectively solve the problem of difficulty in defining character motion in the process of 3D animation production and greatly reduce the workload of character motion control, thereby improving the efficiency of animation development and the fidelity of character motion. Motion gesture capture technology is widely used in virtual reality systems, virtual training grounds, and real-time tracking of the motion trajectories of general objects. This paper proposes an attitude estimation algorithm adapted to be embedded. The previous (...) centralized Kalman filter is divided into two-step Kalman filtering. According to the different characteristics of the sensors, they are processed separately to isolate the cross-influence between sensors. An adaptive adjustment method based on fuzzy logic is proposed. The acceleration, angular velocity, and geomagnetic field strength of the environment are used as the input of fuzzy logic to judge the motion state of the carrier and then adjust the covariance matrix of the filter. The adaptive adjustment of the sensor is converted to the recognition of the motion state. For the study of human motion posture capture, this paper designs a verification experiment based on the existing robotic arm in the laboratory. The experiment shows that the studied motion posture capture method has better performance. The human body motion gesture is designed for capturing experiments, and the capture results show that the obtained pose angle information can better restore the human body motion. A visual model of human motion posture capture was established, and after comparing and analyzing with the real situation, it was found that the simulation approach reproduced the motion process of human motion well. For the research of human motion recognition, this paper designs a two-classification model and human daily behaviors for experiments. Experiments show that the accuracy of the two-category human motion gesture capture and recognition has achieved good results. The experimental effect of SVC on the recognition of two classifications is excellent. In the case of using all optimization algorithms, the accuracy rate is higher than 90%, and the final recognition accuracy rate is also higher than 90%. In terms of recognition time, the time required for human motion gesture capture and recognition is less than 2 s. (shrink)

Around the world, private and public organizations use software called legal expert systems to compute taxes. This software must comply with the laws they are designed to implement. As such, a bug or an error in a program that leads to tax miscalculations can have heavy legal and democratic consequences. However, increasing evidence suggests that some legal expert systems may not comply with the law. Moreover, traditional software development processes mean that legal expert systems are difficult to adapt to the (...) continuous flow of new legislation. To prevent further software decay and to reconcile these systems with the growing demand for algorithmic transparency, we argue that there is a need for a new development process for legal expert systems. This new system must be built to comply with the law, in particular the GDPR. It must also respect democratic transparency. For these reasons, we present a solution built by lawyers and computer scientists: C atala, a new programming language coupled with a pair programming development process. (shrink)

Despite the bombardment of AI ethics frameworks (AIEFs) published in the last decade, it is unclear which of the many have been adopted in the industry. What is more, the sheer volume of AIEFs without a clear demonstration of their effectiveness makes it difficult for businesses to select which framework they should adopt. As a first step toward addressing this problem, we employed four different existing frameworks to assess AI ethics concerns of a real-world AI system. We compared the experience (...) of applying the AIEFs from the perspective of (a) a third-party auditor conducting an AI ethics risk assessment for the company, and (b) the company receiving the audit outcomes. Our results suggest that the feel-good factor of doing an assessment is common across the AIEFs that can take anywhere between 1.5 and 20 h to complete. However, each framework provides different benefits (e.g., issue discovery vs. issue monitoring) and is likely best used in conjunction with one another at different stages of an AI development process. As such, we call on the AI ethics community to better specify the suitability and expected benefits of existing frameworks to enable better adoption of AI ethics practice in the industry. (shrink)

This paper argues that in daycare centres in France, where children are cared for from four months to age three, the competence of female staff members is usually denied and unvalued vis à vis the expert opinions. The paper highlights empirical research on early childhood and gender, providing pragmatic access to children's languages of desire, a language mostly ignored. Incorporating the ideas of Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, the paper draws upon the conceptualization of Fernand Deligny who took care of autistic (...) children in mapping what he called ‘lines of wandering’, an idea that shows how desire can become accessible. In the present ‘society of control’ which Deleuze analyses and which coexists with Foucault's discipline and biopower, such lines of flight enable the emergence of a new narrative for young children's desire, and for the competence of the female staff members in their departure from the highway of normalization. (shrink)

PurposeThe primary angle-closure glaucoma is an irreversible blinding eye disease in the world. Previous neuroimaging studies demonstrated that PACG patients were associated with cerebral changes. However, the effect of optic atrophy on local and remote brain functional connectivity in PACG patients remains unknown.Materials and MethodsIn total, 23 patients with PACG and 23 well-matched Health Controls were enrolled in our study and underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. The regional homogeneity method and functional connectivity method were used to evaluate the (...) local and remote brain functional connectivity. Moreover, support vector machine method was applied to constructing PACG classification model.ResultsCompared with the HC, PACG patients showed increased ReHo values in right cerebellum _8, left CER_4-5, and right CER_8. In contrast, PACG patients showed decreased ReHo values in the bilateral lingual gyrus /calcarine /superior occipital gyrus and right postcentral gyrus. The ReHo value exhibited an accuracy of 91.30% and area under curve of 0.95 for distinguishing the PACG patients from HC.ConclusionOur study demonstrated that the PACG patients showed abnormal ReHo value in the cerebellum, visual cortex, and supplementary motor area, which might be reflect the neurological mechanisms underlying vision loss and eye pain in PACG patients. Moreover, the ReHo values can be used as a useful biomarker for distinguishing the PACG patients from HCs. (shrink)

ObjectivesSeveral studies have examined the effects of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on associative memory (AM) but findings were inconsistent. Here, we aimed to test whether twice-daily rTMS could significantly improve AM.MethodsIn this single-blind, sham-controlled experiment, 40 participants were randomized to receive twice-daily sham or real rTMS sessions for five consecutive days (a total of 16,000 pulses). The stimulation target in left inferior parietal lobule (IPL) exhibiting peak functional connectivity to the left hippocampus was individually defined for each participant. Participants (...) completed both a picture-cued word association task and Stroop test at baseline and 1 day after the final real or sham rTMS session. Effects of twice-daily rTMS on AM and Stroop test performance were compared using two-way repeated measures analysis of variance with main factors Group (real vs. sham) and Time (baseline vs. post-rTMS).ResultsThere was a significant Group × Time interaction effect. AM score was significantly enhanced in the twice-daily real group after rTMS, but this difference could not survive the post hoc analysis after multiple comparison correction. Further, AM improvement in the twice-daily real group was not superior to a previously reported once-daily rTMS group receiving 8,000 pulses. Then, we combined the twice- and once-daily real groups, and found a significant Group × Time interaction effect. Post hoc analysis indicated that the AM score was significantly enhanced in the real group after multiple comparisons correction.ConclusionOur prospective experiment did not show significant rTMS effect on AM, but this effect may become significant if more participants could be recruited as revealed by our retrospective analysis. (shrink)

Climate change and farming malpractices are harmful to the globe's productive soil and biodiversity, thereby posing a hazard to the survival of future generations. Innovative technologies provide continuous smart conservation solutions, such as regenerative farming, to confront the ongoing climate crisis and maintain biodiversity. Albeit, regenerative farming has the potential to conserve climate change by upgrading the soil's organic materials and reinstating biodiversity leading to carbon attenuation. However, a critical problem remains concerning adapting conservation farming practices that can assist low-income (...) farmers. In this scenario, theoretical-driven communication campaigns are critical for addressing individuals' resistance to innovation. Thereby, this research uncovers the moderating influence of the numerous communication tools in determining the adoption of regenerative farming through diminishing farmers' resistance to innovation. The study employed a cross-sectional design vis-à-vis a survey method. A sample of 863 farmers participated by responding to the self-administrated questionnaire. In line with prior theories, the study's results identified that communication campaigns such as public service advertisements and informative scientific documentaries could reduce the resistance to innovation that increases the attitude toward the adoption of regenerative farming with varied intensity. Besides, informational support also remained a significant contributor in determining the intention to adopt regenerative farming. This specifies that implanting habits of conservation farming requires the initiation of communication campaigns using different media content. These results may be advantageous for policymakers to influence farmers' intentions to adopt regenerative farming. (shrink)

本书内容包括:论计算机网络犯罪现状、民法中的法律行为概念之界定、浅论国家控制力与行政法改革、从国际法谈两岸关系等。.

A professor’s experience of attending the 17th annual Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education (RECE) Conference on pedagogies of hope demonstrates her desire to experiment on an immanent plane. As she looks back on her past experiences of depression, working in a revolutionary psychiatric clinic, experiencing a near catatonic state, and an action research study of women in early childhood education at the precipice of an immanent plane, the reader is led on their own journey to consider deeply the differences between transcendence (...) and immanence. In the end, the author’s story of returning from a catatonic state through bodily movements and triumph in human relationships and connections demonstrates how one moves out of his or her own disconnection between mind and body. Further, the meaning in the experiences of the action research project - the phenomenon - occurs when a misrepresented group of early childhood workers discovers their own power and voice in overcoming transcended expertise. They rise in immanence like the Humpty Dumpties that needed to exchange and word their new agency, connecting in a worldwide rhizome (image of thought). Finally, the reconceptualists in early childhood education are asked to take in these experiences and play with them in order to resist transcendence and to determine their own outcome as an organization. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 12, Special Edition May 2012. (shrink)

Understanding and solving the psychological health problems of college students have become a focus of social attention. Complex networks have become important tools to study the factors affecting psychological health, and the Gaussian graphical model is often used to estimate psychological networks. However, previous studies leave some gaps to overcome, including the following aspects. When studying networks of subpopulations, the estimation neglects the intrinsic relationships among subpopulations, leading to a large difference between the estimated network and the real network. Because (...) of the high cost, previous psychological surveys often have a small sample size, and the psychological description is insufficient. Here, the intrinsic connections among multiple tasks are used, and multitask machine learning is applied to develop a multitask Gaussian graphical model. The psychological networks of the population and subpopulations are estimated based on psychological questionnaire data. This study is the first to apply a psychological network to such a large-scale college student psychological analysis, and we obtain some interesting results. The model presented here is a dynamic model based on complex networks which predicts individual behavior and provides insight into the intrinsic links among various symptoms. (shrink)

When we judge an action as morally right or wrong, we rely on our capacity to infer the actor's mental states. Here, we test the hypothesis that the right temporoparietal junction, an area involved in mental state reasoning, is necessary for making moral judgments. In two experiments, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation to disrupt neural activity in the RTPJ transiently before moral judgment and during moral judgment. In both experiments, TMS to the RTPJ led participants to rely less on the (...) actor's mental states. A particularly striking effect occurred for attempted harms : Relative to TMS to a control site, TMS to the RTPJ caused participants to judge attempted harms as less morally forbidden and more morally permissible. Thus, interfering with activity in the RTPJ disrupts the capacity to use mental states in moral judgment, especially in the case of attempted harms. (shrink)

American Political Science Association Meeting, New Orleans, 1985. Belew, R. K. "E,volut,ioi1. Leariiing, and Culture: Computational Metaphors for Adaptive Algorithms? Complex Systems 4 (1990}: 11-49. Banner, J. T. The Evolution of Culture in Animals. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univcrsitv Press. 1980.

The product market competition has become a global challenge for business organizations in the challenging and competitive market environment in the influx of the COVID-19 outbreak. The influence of products competition on organizational performance in developed economies has gained scholars’ attention, and numerous studies explored its impacts on business profitability. The existing studies designate mixed findings between the linkage of CSR practices and Chinese business firms’ healthier performance in emerging economies; however, the current global crisis due to the coronavirus has (...) made product market completion fierce, which ultimately affects business firms’ performance. This study focuses on this logical global challenge, investigates the rationale, and examines product-market completion impact on firms’ performance operating in the Chinese markets. The study collected data from the annual reports of Chinese business organizations with A-share listing and registered with the database of China Stock Markets and Accounting Research. The study employed a Generalized Method of Moment technique and investigated the connection between product market competition and Chinese firm performance. The empirical analysis of this study highlights the conclusion that market competition positively and significantly affected business firms’ performance. This study specified that product market competition play a dynamic and indispensable role in achieving healthier firm performance in the Chinese markets. This study provides valuable insights on practical implications and future research directions for the scholars to draw interesting results with new study models. (shrink)

As a general concept, aesthetic education and art education are connected; to a certain extent, the two can be taken as one or two sides of the same coin. However, the specific questions involved are how they are connected and how to connect them in teaching practice. To answer these questions, I define aesthetic education as more general and theoretical and define art education as less general and more practical, that is, teaching students to read art works. Exploring the answers (...) to the first question, this essay offers an examination of an important aesthetic concept in Chinese art theory, inscape, and relates it to the teaching of how to read Chinese landscape painting. On the one hand, this aesthetic concept... (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2018 Heft: 221 Seiten: 199-218.

When we evaluate moral agents, we consider many factors, including whether the agent acted freely, or under duress or coercion. In turn, moral evaluations have been shown to influence our (non-moral) evaluations of these same factors. For example, when we judge an agent to have acted immorally, we are subsequently more likely to judge the agent to have acted freely, not under force. Here, we investigate the cognitive signatures of this effect in interpersonal situations, in which one agent (“forcer”) forces (...) another agent (“forcee”) to act either immorally or morally. The structure of this relationship allowed us to ask questions about both the “forcer” and the “forcee.” Paradoxically, participants judged that the “forcer” forced the “forcee” to act immorally (i.e. X forced Y), but that the “forcee” was not forced to act immorally (i.e. Y was not forced by X). This pattern obtained only for human agents who acted intentionally. Directly changing participants’ focus from one agent to another (forcer vs. forcee) also changed the target of moral evaluation and therefore force attributions. The full pattern of judgments may provide a window into motivated moral reasoning and focusing bias more generally; participants may have been motivated to attribute greater force to the immoral forcer and greater freedom to the immoral forcee. (shrink)

Studies of normal individuals reveal an asymmetry in the folk concept of intentional action: an action is more likely to be thought of as intentional when it is morally bad than when it is morally good. One interpretation of these results comes from the hypothesis that emotion plays a critical mediating role in the relationship between an action’s moral status and its intentional status. According to this hypothesis, the negative emotional response triggered by a morally bad action drives the attribution (...) of intent to the actor, or the judgment that the actor acted intentionally. We test this hypothesis by presenting cases of morally bad and morally good action to seven individuals with deficits in emotional processing resulting from damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC). If normal emotional processing is necessary for the observed asymmetry, then individuals with VMPC lesions should show no asymmetry. Our results provide no support for this hypothesis: like normal individuals, those with VMPC lesions showed the same asymmetry, tending to judge that an action was intentional when it was morally bad but not when it was morally good. Based on this finding, we suggest that normal emotional processing is not responsible for the observed asymmetry of intentional attributions and thus does not mediate the relationship between an action’s moral status and its intentional status. (shrink)

This study examines the mediating role of rumination, state anger, and blame attribution, and the moderating role of trait forgiveness in the relationship between workplace harassment intensity and revenge among employed students at a medium-sized Midwestern U.S. university and full-time employees from various industries in Shanghai, China. We tested the proposed model using techniques described by Hayes. Results within both samples suggested that workplace harassment intensity is positively associated with both major and minor revenge. Results of multiple mediation tests showed (...) that state anger and blame attribution mediated the relationships between workplace harassment intensity and both types of revenge behavior. Furthermore, trait forgiveness moderated the relationship between blame attribution and major revenge. (shrink)

Is the basis of criminality an act that causes harm, or an act undertaken with the belief that one will cause harm? The present study takes a cognitive neuroscience approach to investigating how information about an agent’s beliefs and an action’s conse- quences contribute to moral judgment. We build on prior devel- opmental evidence showing that these factors contribute differ- entially to the young child’s moral judgments coupled with neurobiological evidence suggesting a role for the right tem- poroparietal junction (RTPJ) (...) in belief attribution. Participants read vignettes in a 2 2 design: protagonists produced either a negative or neutral outcome based on the belief that they were causing the negative outcome (‘‘negative’’ belief) or the neutral outcome (‘‘neutral’’ belief). The RTPJ showed significant activation above baseline for all four conditions but was modulated by an interaction between belief and outcome. Specifically, the RTPJ response was highest for cases of attempted harm, where protag- onists were condemned for actions that they believed would cause harm to others, even though the harm did not occur. The results not only suggest a general role for belief attribution during moral judgment, but also add detail to our understanding of the inter- action between these processes at both the neural and behavioral levels. (shrink)

Based on recordings of spontaneous speech of ethnically Chinese Singaporeans who have received an English-medium education, this is a study of the indigenized Singaporean variety of English.

Moral intuitions are strong, stable, immediate moral beliefs. Moral philosophers ask when they are justified. This question cannot be answered separately from a psychological question: How do moral intuitions arise? Their reliability depends upon their source. This chapter develops and argues for a new theory of how moral intuitions arise—that they arise through heuristic processes best understood as unconscious attribute substitutions. That is, when asked whether something has the attribute of moral wrongness, people unconsciously substitute a different question about a (...) separate but related heuristic attribute (such as emotional impact). Evidence for this view is drawn from psychology and neuroscience, and competing views of moral heuristics are contrasted. It is argued that moral intuitions are not direct perceptions and, in many cases, are unreliable sources of evidence for moral claims. (shrink)

Moral judgments, whether delivered in ordinary experience or in the courtroom, depend on our ability to infer intentions. We forgive unintentional or accidental harms and condemn failed attempts to harm. Prior work demonstrates that patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex deliver abnormal judgments in response to moral dilemmas and that these patients are especially impaired in triggering emotional responses to inferred or abstract events, as opposed to real or actual outcomes. We therefore predicted that VMPC patients would deliver (...) abnormal moral judgments of harmful intentions in the absence of harmful outcomes, as in failed attempts to harm. This prediction was confirmed in the current study: VMPC patients judged attempted harms, including attempted murder, as more morally permissible relative to controls. These results highlight the critical role of the VMPC in processing harmful intent for moral judgment. (shrink)