This paper uses the Process Dissociation Procedure to explore whether people can acquire unconscious knowledge in the serial reaction time task [Destrebecqz, A., & Cleeremans, A. . Can sequence learning be implicit? New evidence with the Process Dissociation Procedure. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8, 343–350; Wilkinson, L., & Shanks, D. R. . Intentional control and implicit sequence learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30, 354–369]. Experiment 1 showed that people generated legal sequences above baseline levels under exclusion (...) instructions. Reward moved exclusion performance towards baseline, indicating that the extent of motivation in the test phase influenced the expression of unconscious knowledge. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed that even with reward, adding noise to the sequences or shortening training led to above-baseline exclusion performance, suggesting that task difficulty and the amount of training also affected the expression of unconscious knowledge. The results help resolve some current debates about the role of conscious awareness in sequence learning. (shrink)

This paper discusses Eastern European Marxists’ consideration of science and technology concerning aesthetic dimensions. Different from most of Western Marxists who take negative or dystopian attitudes towards modern science and technology from the aesthetic utopian perspective, those Marxists who come from countries such as Hungary, Yugoslav, Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Bulgaria or Romania, which once belonged to the socialist camp, under the influence of Soviet and Western culture, pay attention to the complicated tension between science-technology and aesthetics. In this paper, (...) I probe into these notions by reading György Lukács, Budapest School, Romanian theorists and the Yugoslav Praxis Group, which are divided into four key points: basic nature of science in contrast with arts; modern tension of culture between science and arts; the possibility of scientific aesthetics; and development of arts in the world of technology. There is a dialectical understanding of science and technology here which contributes to contemporary recognition of science and technology from the point of view of neo-humanism, not only in aesthetics but also human existence. This is relevant to theoretical reflection on the present and future Chinese socialist aesthetics. (shrink)

This paper offers a short history of Agnes Heller’s relationship to China through three aspects: imaginative aesthetic enjoyment, real encounters with Chinese cultural spectacles and actual audiences, and the construction of an academic community through creative dialogue. These discussions suggest that Heller felt at home in China. Although Heller has passed away, a home for us remains in her work through remembering her and engaging further with her writings.

The conceptual and methodological contributions of Marxist aesthetics from Eastern European countries like Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and East Germany were productive and significant despite various hurdles faced concerning institutionalization, legitimization and differing theoretical abuses. In its mode of inquiry and discursive practices, Eastern European Marxist aesthetics is both similar and dissimilar to its Western, Soviet, Russian and Chinese counterparts. The specificity here is the function of a unique geographical and socio-historical context, as well as interaction with other (...) contemporary paradigms of thought. The innovative impulses of Eastern European Marxist aesthetics affected six scholarly domains: aesthetics of praxis, theory of realism, critique of modernity, semiotics, theory of genre and cultural theory. This paper provides a general survey of the intellectual achievements of Eastern European Marxist aesthetics across these six domains and will show how this theoretical tradition has influenced the modern history of ideas. (shrink)

Past research suggests that spiritual leadership plays a pivotal role in enhancing employee job performance, yet we have little understanding of how and when spiritual leadership enhances employee job performance. The present study explores how and when spiritual leadership promotes job performance by examining relational energy as a mediator and leader integrity and relational energy differentiation as boundary conditions. We tested the theoretical model with data gathered across three phases over 12 months from 497 employees and their supervisors in 108 (...) groups. Results showed that the positive relationship between spiritual leadership and job performance was mediated by relational energy. Moreover, we found that leader integrity amplified the mediated relationship between spiritual leadership and employee job performance via relational energy. In contrast, relational energy differentiation weakened this mediated relationship. (shrink)

H. L. A Hart complained about the ambiguity of legal positivism, and proposed a definition that refers to particular explications of the concept of law, to certain theories of legal interpretation, to particular views on the moral problem of a duty to obey the law, and to a sceptical position with regard to the meta-ethical issue of the possibility of moral knowledge. It is said to be restricted to the Thesis of Separation — the contention that there is no necessary (...) connection between law and morals. In this chapter, the Separation Thesis is discussed even further, and has three shortcomings identified: first, that it has been vacillating between object-level contentions about moral qualities of the law; that the precise logical relation between both levels has never been properly accounted for; and that the question of necessary relations between morality and law hinges crucially on the presupposition that the very concept of law itself does not unravel into different sets of convenient stipulations from different epistemological angles, each of which renders the question of such necessary relations trivial. The Separation Thesis is also identified as having two versions: the Fallibility Law and the Neutrality Law. (shrink)

The modern doctor-patient relationship displays a patient-centred, mutual-participation characteristic rather than the former active-passive or guidance-cooperation models in terms of medical decision making. Respecting the wishes of patients, amounting to more than mere concern for their welfare, has become the feature central to certain modern bioethics theories. A group of ethical principles such as respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice has been proposed by bioethicists and widely adopted by many medical societies as an ethical guide to how doctors, in (...) their daily practice, should treat their patients. However, seeing patients as persons who are rational, self-conscious beings capable of valuing their own lives, and who are consequently entitled to the liberty and rights to choose for themselves, is in general the backbone of Western bioethical principles.Since Confucian philosophy has long been a representative of the East-Asia cultural tradition and Confucian bioethics has recently been developed as a theory of applied ethics, examining Confucius's idea of “persons” may shed some light on the current bioethical debates. Confucius's concept of persons, which is best interpreted via his theories of “chun-tze”, (the morally ideal person) encapsulating a two-dimensional approach, (the “autonomous person” and the “relational person”), provides a more comprehensive model regarding what a person is and how he/she should be treated. This two-dimensional approach sees a person not only as a rational, autonomous agent but also as a relational, altruistic identity whose self actualisation involves incessant participating in and promoting of the welfare of his fellow persons. Hence this may balance the current bioethical trend whereby “respect for autonomy” often triumphs. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The ongoing Sino-U.S. trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies has since 2018 attracted much attention from the international media. This study used the approach of corpus-assisted discourse studies to compare how leading English-language newspapers from each side—The New York Times and China Daily — discursively constructed this issue. The findings indicated that while NYT tended to profile the trade conflict as a ‘war’ in line with mainstream hard-line ideologies that emphasize China’s presumed threat to national security of (...) the U.S., CD sought to dial down the rhetoric and showed a preference for defining the matter as a ‘friction’, consistent with the tenet of ‘pragmatic nationalism’ endorsed by the Communist Party of China. Accordingly, the two newspapers framed the causes, moral evaluation/consequences, and treatment of the issue in congruence with their respective dominant metaphors by means of various linguistic patterns. These differences are interpreted with regard to each side’s underlying ideologies and national interests. (shrink)

György Márkus, as a leading member of the Budapest School led by György Lukács in Hungary, is closely concerned with aesthetics. His final unfinished writings in political exile in Sydney were focused on the question of modern cultural autonomy. From the 1960s to the new century, from Budapest to Sydney in Australia, he established a new form of Neo-Marxist aesthetics on the basis of critical theory drawn from Lukács to the Frankfurt School. His aesthetics includes three dimensions: an aesthetics of (...) praxis, a reconstruction of Lukács’s aesthetics and a theory of aesthetic modernity. His aesthetics is characteristic of analytic philosophy, especially ‘categorical analysis’. It shifts from philosophical aesthetics in the Hungarian period, which is based on an ontological foundation, that is, materialist phenomenology, to social or sociological aesthetics in the Australian period concerning social modernity, institution, constitution, culture, and so on. This is a turn from a philosophical paradigm to a structural one as regards aesthetics, which indicates a break with Lukács’s late return in the early 1960s to Hegelian inspired Ontology of Social Being. Márkus is strictly and essentially an essayist in fragments, who distinguishes himself from the other members of the Budapest School in this way. Ironically, this genre is once again influenced by the young Lukács’s aesthetics. (shrink)

Islamic philosophy; Muslim theology; Islam; doctrines.

This project was undertaken to ascertain the perceptions of a group of Taiwan’s fourth-year bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) students regarding death and help expected from nurses during the dying process. Within the Chinese culture, death is one of the most important life issues. However, in many Chinese societies it is difficult for people to reveal their deepest feelings to their significant others or loved ones. It was in this context that this project was developed because little is known (...) about how Taiwan’s nursing students perceive death and the dying process. Using an open-ended, self-report questionnaire, 110 senior BSN students recorded their thoughts on: (1) their fears before physical death; (2) afterlife destinations; and (3) the help they would expect from nurses when dying. The data were analyzed using a three-layer qualitative thematic analysis. The students’ reported needs during the dying process were directed towards three main goals: (1) help in reaching the ‘triple targets of individual life’; (2) help in facilitating in-depth support so that both the dying person and significant others can experience a blessed farewell; and (3) help in reaching a destination in the afterlife. The results support the belief of dying as a transition occurring when life weans itself from the mortal world and prepares for an afterlife. (shrink)

Plagiarism is a problematic issue in universities across the globe (Curtis & Vardanega, 2016 ). This study explored the relationship between negative emotionality and positive attitudes toward plagiarism through the mediation of academic self-efficacy and self-control. Negative emotionality was examined as three components: stress, anxiety, and depression. Self-report surveys were completed by 454 university students to investigate the relationship between negative emotionality and positive attitudes toward plagiarism, as well as the mediating role of academic self-efficacy and self-control in this relationship. (...) The hierarchical multiple regression found that negative emotionality significantly predicted positive attitudes toward plagiarism over and above age and gender (i.e., where male students and younger students were more likely to plagiarise). Furthermore, three mediation analyses showed that academic self-efficacy and self-control mediate the relationship between positive attitudes toward plagiarism and each component of negative emotionality. Considering these results, subsequent research should investigate whether implementing strategies that alleviate stress, anxiety, and depression could increase academic self-efficacy and self-control, which in turn, could then reduce positive attitudes toward plagiarism. (shrink)

In business ethics research, little is known about why and how employees engage in unethical behavior, especially unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) and unethical pro-family behavior (UPFB). Based on cognitive-affective personality system theory and conservation of resources theory, this study aims to explore the mechanisms underlying the effects of workplace bullying, as a negative event, on UPB (Study 1) and UPFB (Study 2). In Study 1, workplace bullying negatively correlated with UPB where emotional exhaustion and organization-oriented moral disengagement played chain-mediating roles (...) in this relationship. In Study 2, workplace bullying positively correlated with UPFB where emotional exhaustion and family-oriented moral disengagement played chain-mediating roles in the relationship. In both studies, perceived forgiveness climate, as a conditional factor, was found to weaken the positive impact of workplace bullying on both emotional exhaustion and the chain-mediating effect of emotional exhaustion and moral disengagement in the relationship between workplace bullying and UPB/upfb. Overall, this study explains why, how, and when employees exhibit UPB and UPFB. The implications for theory and practices that could enable organizations to reduce employees’ unethical behavior are discussed. (shrink)