To understand the gaps between current bioethics education and the requirements of practicing nurses, a semistructured questionnaire was used to invite the directors of nursing departments at all 82 teaching hospitals in Taiwan to participate in this survey. The response rate was 64.6%. Through content analysis we obtained information about previous bioethical training, required themes and content, recommended teaching strategies, and difficulties with education and its application. The results suggest that Taiwanese nursing personnel need to be instilled with both self-cultivation (...) of morality and mental cultivation to acquire nursing virtues and the right attitudes toward bioethical issues. Good communication skills to prevent damage to the harmonious relationships between patients, their families and medical team members, policies that support the provision of systematic formal knowledge of ethics, small group training, and clarification of values were also shown to be important in bioethics education. (shrink)

Phenomenographic research about teachers’ conception of teaching has consistently revealed that teachers’ conception of teaching influence their classroom practices, which in turn shape students’ learning experiences. This paper reports teachers’ conceptions of teaching with regards to the use of interactive spherical video-based virtual reality in Chinese descriptive composition writing. Twenty-one secondary teachers in Hong Kong involved in an ISV-VR-supported Chinese descriptive writing program participated in this phenomenographic study. Analyses of the semi-structured interviews establish seven conception categories that are specifically related (...) to the use of ISV-VR for descriptive Chinese composition writing: offering students more observational opportunities; improving students’ writing skills; promoting students’ learning participation and motivation; shifting learning from teacher-centric to student-centric, enhancing collaborative learning among students; cultivating students’ positive values and moral character, and shaping students’ self-identity as “writers.” The concurrent and convenient access to the ISV-VR resources was for the teachers an enriched and supportive environment for them to cultivate students’ writer identity. In addition, it was discovered that the structural relationships of the conceptions may be better organized along three axes of continuum: conception’s orientation, teaching attention locus, and understanding of writing. These categories form a hierarchy from skill-oriented to community-oriented, and finally to identity-oriented conception. The findings may provide researchers and practitioners with novel insight into the teaching of composition writing in the contexts of L1 acquisition supported by virtual reality technology. (shrink)

Decolonial/anti-colonial Black, Indigenous and Mestiza feminist movements and scholar-activists foreground how the oft-touted apocalypse that the Covid-19 pandemic heralds is not new, nor does it signify the great rupture into chaos that those from within modernity-coloniality often claim it to be. Rather Covid-19 is preceded by and will be out-lived by the apocalyptic anti-life onto-epistemological logics that are foundational to the production of hetero-patriarchal capitalist- coloniality. However, one would commit the violence of reproduction of the epistemological logics and rationalities constitutive (...) of the current system if the story ended there. We have survived and our survival points to the urgent necessity and responsibility of social theory to listen to the story of the pandemic from a Black/Indigenous genealogy and to begin the sense-making of the Covid-19 pandemic, from prior to this particular virus, outside, against and beyond the politics of knowledge of critical social theory itself. Thus, I invite you to journey to an affirmative re-enfleshment of reason and theory-making in relation to and dialogue with Black, Indigenous, and subaltern Mestiza feminist movements in southwest Colombia and in southeast so-called Australia in the unceded lands of the Awabakal and the Worimi. I explore this through the metaphor, the materiality, the cosmology and the herstory of the mangrove swamps a knowing-being otherwise visible to the dehumanising gave of Whiteness and bring to thought three stories of a politics of knowledge of/as the Black/racialised and feminised body/flesh. To do this is to suggest that the co-creation of pathways which are life affirming and life making beyond and out of the post-Covid 19 conjuncture involves an epistemological-political project which decolonises and feminises the containments of reason and knowing being of coloniality/modernity. (shrink)

Determinism and unpredictability are compatible since deterministic flows can produce, if sensitive to initial conditions, unpredictable behaviors. Within this perspective, the notion of scenario to chaos transition offers a new form of predictability for the behavior of sensitive to initial condition systems under the variation of a control parameter. In this paper I first shed light on the genesis of this notion, based on a dynamical systems approach and on considerations of structural stability. I then suggest a link to the (...) figure of epigenetic landscape, partially inspired by a dynamical systems perspective, and offering a theoretical framework to apprehend developmental noise. (shrink)

Chaos, considered a generating principle since Hesiod, is the basis in which we think the existence of the body as a locus of wisdom - but also vulnerability. Language represents a shelter for this fragility, and its place in books molds the way to express wisdom as intelligibility which projects itself into said chaos. Books speak for trees and Earth for them, in this metaphor the idea of caring for the body is the same as caring for Earth. Human species (...) in contract with nature must protect it, for its own perpetuation. The house that shelters life is expressed philosophically in this essay joined to science and poetry. (shrink)

Many philosophers hypothesize that our concept of personal identity is partly constituted by the one-person-one-place rule, which states that a person can only be in one place at a time. This hypothesis has been assumed by the most influential contemporary work on personal identity. In this paper, we report a series of studies testing whether the hypothesis is true. In these studies, people consistently judged that the same person existed in two different places at the same time. This result undermines (...) some widely held philosophical assumptions, supports others, and fits well with recent discoveries on identity judgments about inanimate objects and non-human animals. (shrink)

In this essay I identify a type of linguistic phenomenon new to feminist philosophy of language: biased evaluative descriptions. Biased evaluative descriptions are descriptions whose well-intended positive surface meanings are inflected with implicitly biased content. Biased evaluative descriptions are characterized by three main features: (1) they have roots in implicit bias or benevolent sexism, (2) their application is counterfactually unstable across dominant and subordinate social groups, and (3) they encode stereotypes. After giving several different kinds of examples of biased evaluative (...) descriptions, I distinguish them from similar linguistic concepts, including backhanded compliments, slurs, insults, epithets, pejoratives, and dog whistles. I suggest that the traditional framework of Gricean implicature cannot account for biased evaluative descriptions. I discuss some challenges to the distinctiveness and evaluability of biased evaluative descriptions, including intersectional social identities. I conclude by discussing their social significance and moral status. Identifying biased evaluative descriptions is important for a variety of social contexts, from the very general and broad (political speeches) to the very particular and small (bias in academic hiring). (shrink)

This book addresses how people and organisations sometimes respond to uncertainty in making decisions. Those decisions are rooted in beliefs and behaviours that are not always rational, especially in response to perceived randomness, chaos and unexpected circumstances. The author uses a transdisciplinary approach to the study of superstition in the context of business and management, taking care to acknowledge that what is regarded as superstition to one person may well be constructed as a spiritual belief by another. Respect and sensitivity (...) in explicating individual and social constructions of spirituality is a core value in structuring the narrative of the text. The work also explores the interwoven relationships amongst superstition, religion, spirituality and empiricism and how cultural, political, economic and environmental factors are likely to influence organisations and those who are employed by them. Further, it examines the influence of beliefs related to topics such as feng shui, astrology, phrenology and the I Ching in recruitment. This comprehensive treatment of the role of superstition in business will advance the scholarly conversation on uncertainty in decision making. It points to the power of belief that defies empirical validation and how it can be used in a variety of contexts, such as the marketing of products and images to manipulate unwary consumers or inhibit the implementation of health advice in times of COVID-19. (shrink)

Feminism is sensational -- On being directed -- Willfulness and feminist subjectivity -- Trying to transform -- Being in question -- Brick walls -- Fragile connections -- Feminist snap -- Lesbian feminism -- Conclusion 1: A killjoy survival kit -- Conclusion 2: A killjoy manifesto.

_The Promise of Happiness_ is a provocative cultural critique of the imperative to be happy. It asks what follows when we make our desires and even our own happiness conditional on the happiness of others: “I just want you to be happy”; “I’m happy if you’re happy.” Combining philosophy and feminist cultural studies, Sara Ahmed reveals the affective and moral work performed by the “happiness duty,” the expectation that we will be made happy by taking part in that which (...) is deemed good, and that by being happy ourselves, we will make others happy. Ahmed maintains that happiness is a promise that directs us toward certain life choices and away from others. Happiness is promised to those willing to live their lives in the right way. Ahmed draws on the intellectual history of happiness, from classical accounts of ethics as the good life, through seventeenth-century writings on affect and the passions, eighteenth-century debates on virtue and education, and nineteenth-century utilitarianism. She engages with feminist, antiracist, and queer critics who have shown how happiness is used to justify social oppression, and how challenging oppression causes unhappiness. Reading novels and films including_ Mrs. Dalloway_, _The Well of Loneliness_, _Bend It Like Beckham_, and _Children of Men_, Ahmed considers the plight of the figures who challenge and are challenged by the attribution of happiness to particular objects or social ideals: the feminist killjoy, the unhappy queer, the angry black woman, and the melancholic migrant. Through her readings she raises critical questions about the moral order imposed by the injunction to be happy. (shrink)

Introduction: find your way -- Orientations toward objects -- Sexual orientation -- The orient and other others -- Conclusion: disorientation and queer objects.

The most popular uniting theme in feminist peace literature grounds women's peace work in mothering. I argue if maternal arguments do not address the variety of relationships different races and classes of mothers have to institutional violence and/or the military, then the resulting peace politics can only draw incomplete conclusions about the relationships between maternal work/thinking and peace. To illustrate this I compare two models of mothering: Sara Ruddick's decription of "maternal practice" and Patricia Hill Collins's account of racial-ethnic (...) women's "motherwork.". (shrink)

Shows how John Dewey’s visit to China from 1919 to 1921 influenced his social and political thought.

The debate on love's reasons ignores unrequited love, which—I argue—can be as genuine and as valuable as reciprocated love. I start by showing that the relationship view of love cannot account for either the reasons or the value of unrequited love. I then present the simple property view, an alternative to the relationship view that is beset with its own problems. In order to solve these problems, I present a more sophisticated version of the property view that integrates ideas from (...) different property theorists in the love literature. However, even this more sophisticated property view falls short in accounting for unrequited love's reasons. In response, I develop a new version of the property view that I call the experiential view. On this view, we love a person not only in virtue of properties shaped by and experienced in a reciprocal loving relationship, but also in virtue of perspectival properties, whose value can be properly assessed also outside of a reciprocal loving relationship. The experiential view is the only view that can account not only for reciprocated love's reasons, but also for unrequited love's reasons. (shrink)

Envy is almost universally condemned. But is its reputation warranted? Sara Protasi argues envy is multifaceted and sometimes even virtuous.

In this paper I present a novel taxonomy of envy, according to which there are four kinds of envy: emulative, inert, aggressive and spiteful envy. An inquiry into the varieties of envy is valuable not only to understand it as a psychological phenomenon, but also to shed light on the nature of its alleged viciousness. The first section introduces the intuition that there is more than one kind of envy, together with the anecdotal and linguistic evidence that supports it. The (...) second section proposes and explains in detail a definition of envy tout court. The third section presents a recurring distinction between behavioral tendencies of envy, which has been explained in two distinct ways, one mostly proposed by psychologists, the other discernible in the philosophical tradition. The fourth section argues that these models of explanation track two variables, whose interplay is responsible for the existence of the four envies. The fifth section illustrates four paradigmatic cases, and provides a detailed analysis of the phenomenology, motivational structure, and typical behavioral outputs of each. The paper ends with a brief discussion of the implications of the taxonomy for moral education. (shrink)

This paper begins with a contrast between two different views about whether the five sensory consciousnesses are accompanied by vikalpa. For the Abhidharmakośa, the five sensory consciousnesses are accompanied by the svabhāva-vikalpa whose nature is vitarka; but for Yogācāra, the five sensory consciousnesses are without that particular kind of svabhāva-vikalpa because vitarka is regarded as belonging merely to the mental consciousness. My hypothesis for explaining such difference is that Yogācāra assigns that particular kind of svabhāva-vikalpa to mental consciousness rather than (...) to the five sensory consciousnesses. I then look for possible functions of vitarka-vicāra that could map to svabhāva-vikalpa: (a) conceptual vitarka-vicāra in an unconcentrated state; (b) conceptual vitarka-vicāra in a concentrated state; (c) nonconceptual vitarka-vicāra in an unconcentrated state; (d) non-conceptual vitarka-vicāra in a concentrated state. I argue that the svabhāva-vikalpa in the Abhidharmakośa should map to (c) and (d), which in Yogācāra maps to mental perception (mānasapratyakṣa) stipulated by Dignāga. This refers to the discernment of the shape of a cognitive object in the foreground against the background. I end this paper with some general observations about why Yogācāra maps the svabhāvavikapla to the mental consciousness, and about the different senses covered by the Buddhist notion of vikalpa, which is broader than the sense of "conceptualization" as we now understand it. (shrink)

This book tackles the most difficult and profound open questions about life and its origins from an information-based perspective.

This is a defense of semantic conventionalism. Several strategies are used in the defense. In the introduction, I provide criteria for evaluating semantic theories in general. In the first chapter, I survey various types of conventionalism and identify the conventionalism to be defended. The allies for this conventionalism include Quine. In the second chapter, I show that other semantic theories, including holism, can be thought of as conventions. This is done through an appeal to metalanguages. But to understand metalanguages, it (...) seems the originators of the conventions must share styles of perception and conception. This ontological claim is confronted. Other genuinely competing theories of meaning are challenged. The third chapter defends this brand of semantic conventionalism against objections from Quine and Davidson. The fourth chapter defends against realist charges of inconsistency. (shrink)

The bulletin board system (BBS) significantly changed the production and transmission of knowledge in China’s information technology (IT). Launched in 1991, Chinese FidoNet (CFido) provided a virtual space for hobbyists to explore technology-for-fun and aggregated many future Chinese digital entrepreneurs, enabling them to experiment with business models and pursue open-source software with Chinese characters. CFido’s short history (1991–1998) also encapsulates the fast-changing dynamic between knowledge and its social context. CFido participants first perceived the BBS as a utopian “pure land” where (...) grassroots intellectuals could develop software and digital technologies, free from outside interests and interventions. Yet the beginning of government control of cyberspace, the boom of the IT industry and e-commerce, and the transition from the dial-up BBS to the Internet led the CFidoers to diverging positions about amateurs and ultimately brought CFido to an end. (shrink)

The paper suggests that we can usefully approach whiteness through the lens of phenomenology. Whiteness could be described as an ongoing and unfinished history, which orientates bodies in specific directions, affecting how they `take up' space, and what they `can do'. The paper considers how whiteness functions as a habit, even a bad habit, which becomes a background to social action. The paper draws on experiences of inhabiting a white world as a non-white body, and explores how whiteness becomes worldly (...) through the noticeability of the arrival of some bodies more than others. A phenomenology of whiteness helps us to notice institutional habits; it brings what is behind to the surface in a certain way. (shrink)

Structural proof theory is a branch of logic that studies the general structure and properties of logical and mathematical proofs. This book is both a concise introduction to the central results and methods of structural proof theory, and a work of research that will be of interest to specialists. The book is designed to be used by students of philosophy, mathematics and computer science. The book contains a wealth of results on proof-theoretical systems, including extensions of such systems from logic (...) to mathematics, and on the connection between the two main forms of structural proof theory - natural deduction and sequent calculus. The authors emphasize the computational content of logical results. A special feature of the volume is a computerized system for developing proofs interactively, downloadable from the web and regularly updated. (shrink)

This dissertation argues that the Yogâcāra Buddhism transmitted by the Indian translator Paramârtha (Ch. Zhendi 真諦) underwent a significant transformation due to the influence of his later Chinese interpreters, a phenomenon to which previous scholars failed to paid enough attention. I begin with showing two contrary interpretations of Paramârtha’s notion of jiexing 解性. The traditional interpretation glosses jiexing in terms of “original awakening” (benjue 本覺) in the Awakening of Faith and hence betrays its strong tie to that text. In contrast, (...) a contrary interpretation of jiexing is preserved in a Dunhuang fragment Taishō No. 2805 (henceforth abbreviated as T2805). The crucial part of this dissertation consists in demonstrating that T2805 and the Awakening of Faith represent two competing lineages of the interpreters of Paramârtha. The first clue is that modern scholars have voiced objection to the traditional attribution of the Awakening of Faith to Paramârtha. In addition, I discovered that striking similarities exist between T2805 and Paramârtha’s corpus with respect to terminology, style of phrasing, and doctrine. I further draw attention to the historical testimonies about two different doctrinal views held by Paramârtha’s interpreters. Therefore, I argue that there were two lineages in the name of Paramârtha’s disciples around 590 CE: the indirect lineage interpreted Paramârtha through the lens of the Awakening of Faith; and the direct lineage—represented by T2805—preserved Paramârtha’s original teachings but died out prematurely. Later Chinese Buddhist tradition mistakenly regards the indirect lineage as Paramârtha’s true heir and attributes the Awakening of Faith to Paramârtha. This implies that Paramârtha may have agreed with Xuanzang 玄奘 (600-664) much more than scholars used to assume. For example, Xuanzang’s characterization of the notion of “aboriginal uncontaminated seeds” looks very similar to how Paramârtha depicts jiexing. It also implies that we should distinguish the strong sense of the notion of “tathāgatagarbha” in the Awakening of Faith from its weak sense. The fact that even Vasubandhu endorses the weak sense of “tathāgatagarbha” strongly challenges the received wisdom that Yogâcāra and Tathāgatagarbha were two distinct and antagonistic trends of thought in India. (shrink)

Sara HeinSmaa rediscovers neglected passages of Le Duexi_me Sexe in her quest to follow Simone de Beauvoir's line of thinking. She finds the masterpiece to be grounded in the work of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty.

This book investigates the role of inference in argumentation, considering how arguments support standpoints on the basis of different loci. The authors propose and illustrate a model for the analysis of the standpoint-argument connection, called Argumentum Model of Topics. A prominent feature of the AMT is that it distinguishes, within each and every single argumentation, between an inferential-procedural component, on which the reasoning process is based; and a material-contextual component, which anchors the argument in the interlocutors’ cultural and factual common (...) ground. The AMT explains how these components differ and how they are intertwined within each single argument. This model is introduced in Part II of the book, following a careful reconstruction of the enormously rich tradition of studies on inference in argumentation, from the antiquity to contemporary authors, without neglecting medieval and post-medieval contributions. The AMT is a contemporary model grounded in a dialogue with such tradition, whose crucial aspects are illuminated in this book. (shrink)

In this article, we explore how deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices designed to “close the loop”—to automatically adjust stimulation levels based on computational algorithms—may risk taking the individual agent “out of the loop” of control in areas where (at least apparent) conscious control is a hallmark of our agency. This is of particular concern in the area of psychiatric disorders, where closed-loop DBS is attracting increasing attention as a therapy. Using a relational model of identity and agency, we consider whether (...) DBS designed for psychiatric regulation may require special attention to agency. To do this, we draw on philosophical work on relational identity and agency, connecting it with reports from people using first-generation DBS devices for depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. We suggest a way to extend a notion of relational agency to encompass neural devices. (shrink)

The most popular uniting theme in feminist peace literature grounds women's peace work in mothering. I argue if maternal arguments do not address the variety of relationships different races and classes of mothers have to institutional violence and/or the military, then the resulting peace politics can only draw incomplete conclusions about the relationships between maternal work/thinking and peace. To illustrate this I compare two models of mothering: Sara Ruddick's decription of "maternal practice" and Patricia Hill Collins's account of racial-ethnic (...) women's "motherwork.". (shrink)

Sometimes, we face choices between actions most likely to lead to valuable outcomes, and actions which put us in a better position to learn. These choices exemplify what is called the exploration/exploitation trade-off. In computer science and psychology, this trade-off has fruitfully been applied to modulating the way agents or systems make choices over time. This article extends the trade-off to belief. We can be torn between two ways of believing, one of which is expected to be more accurate in (...) light of current evidence, whereas the other is expected to lead to more learning opportunity and accuracy in the long run. Further, it is sometimes rationally permissible to choose the latter. The article breaks down the features of action which give rise to the trade-off, and then argues that each feature applies equally well to belief. This conclusion is an instance of a systematic, foreseeable way in which what is rational to believe now depends on what one expects to be doing in the future. That is, epistemic rationality fundamentally concerns time. (shrink)

Advancements in novel neurotechnologies, such as brain computer interfaces and neuromodulatory devices such as deep brain stimulators, will have profound implications for society and human rights. While these technologies are improving the diagnosis and treatment of mental and neurological diseases, they can also alter individual agency and estrange those using neurotechnologies from their sense of self, challenging basic notions of what it means to be human. As an international coalition of interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners, we examine these challenges and make (...) recommendations to mitigate negative consequences that could arise from the unregulated development or application of novel neurotechnologies. We explore potential ethical challenges in four key areas: identity and agency, privacy, bias, and enhancement. To address them, we propose democratic and inclusive summits to establish globally-coordinated ethical and societal guidelines for neurotechnology development and application, new measures, including “Neurorights,” for data privacy, security, and consent to empower neurotechnology users’ control over their data, new methods of identifying and preventing bias, and the adoption of public guidelines for safe and equitable distribution of neurotechnological devices. (shrink)

Understanding the meaning of a sentence is crucial for Buddhists because they put so much emphasis on understanding the verbal expressions of the Buddha. But this can be problematic under their metaphysical framework of momentariness, and their epistemological framework of multiple consciousnesses. This paper starts by reviewing the theory of five states of mind in the Yogācārabhūmi, and then investigates debates among medieval East Asian Yogācāra thinkers about how various consciousnesses work together to understand the meaning of a sentence. The (...) major differences between the various explanations proffered lie in the minimum number of types of consciousnesses involved, and the minimum linguistic marks cognized, in order for one to understand a sentence consisting of four Chinese characters. I show that in these disputes, two points are key: First, the role played by the mental consciousness that arises simultaneously with a sensory consciousness: that is to say, whether a sensory consciousness should still be regarded as essential for understanding, if the simultaneous mental consciousness also cognizes the same mark. Second, whether the syntactic structure of a sentence is taken into consideration: that is to say, whether there is a separate determination of understanding regarding each character, or there is no determination until one has heard two or more characters and takes them as a syntactically meaningful unit. (shrink)

Today intersectionality has expanded from being primarily a metaphor within structuralist feminist research to an all-encompassing theory. This article discusses this increasing dedication to intersectionality in European feminist research. How come intersectionality has developed into a signifier for ‘good feminist research’ at this particular point in time? Drawing on poststructuralist and postcolonial theory the authors examine key articles on intersectionality as well as special issues devoted to the concept. They interrogate the conflicts and meaning making processes as well as the (...) genealogies of the concept. Thus, the epistemology and ontology behind the ‘intersectional turn’ in feminist theory is the main concern here. The authors argue that the lack of ontological discussions has lead to its very popularity. Intersectionality promises almost everything: to provide complexity, overcome divisions and to serve as a critical tool. However, the expansion of the scope of intersectionality has created a consensus that conceals fruitful and necessary conflicts within feminism. (shrink)

I argue for the view that envy and jealousy are distinct emotions, whose crucial difference is that envy involves a perception of lack while jealousy involves a perception of loss. I start by noting the common practice of using ‘envy’ and ‘jealousy’ almost interchangeably, and I contrast it with the empirical evidence that shows that envy and jealousy are distinct, albeit similar and often co-occurring, emotions. I then argue in favor of a specific way of understanding their distinction: the view (...) that envy is a response to a perceived lack of a valuable object, while jealousy is a response to a perceived loss of a valuable object. I compare such a view with the most compelling alternative theories, and show that it accounts better for paradigmatic cases. I conclude by showing how the lack vs. loss model can handle complications: ambiguous cases, that is, when it is epistemically unclear whether one experiences lack or loss; hybrid cases, that is, when one seems to experience both lack and loss; and borderline cases, that is, when it is metaphysically unclear whether one experiences lack or loss. (shrink)