ObjectivesAcupuncture therapy has been used for cognitive impairment-related diseases, however, there are still few studies on the overall trend of acupuncture therapy on cognitive impairment based on bibliometric analysis. The purpose of this study was to explore the research trend of the impact of acupuncture on cognitive impairment in the past 15 years, analyze the research trends and hotspots, and provide new ideas and theoretical basis for future research directions.MethodsFrom the Web of Science Core Collection, the relevant literature on the (...) treatment of cognitive impairment with acupuncture from 2007 to 2022 was retrieved. Then, based on the CiteSpace and VOSviewer software of the Java platform, the cooperation between countries and institutions in this field, the co-citation of journals and documents, and the cooperation between authors and authors, etc. were analyzed. In addition, the co-occurrence and burst analysis of keywords are also carried out, and a visual knowledge map is drawn.ResultsAs of August 08, 2022, a total of 394 records related to the treatment of cognitive impairment with acupuncture were identified. The analysis results show: The number and rate of annual publications have steadily increased, with some fluctuations from year to year. The countries that contribute the most to this field are China and the USA. Among them, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine and Capital Medical University are tied for first place in terms of the number of published papers. Tao Jing is the most prolific author and the number one cited author.ConclusionsThe number of publications on acupuncture for cognitive impairment is expected to increase rapidly in future research, suggesting a bright future for the field. Future research hotspots will focus on pain, injury, protocol, diagnosis, guidelines, etc. It is also necessary to strengthen cross-regional and cross-country cooperation among various academic groups. (shrink)

Digitized information and network have made an enormous impact on the music and movie industries. Internet piracy is popular and has greatly threatened the companies in these industries. This study tests Hunt-Vitell’s ethical decision model and attempts to understand why and how people share unauthorized music files with others in the peer-to-peer (P2P) network. The norm of anti-piracy, the ideology of free software, the norm of reciprocity, and the ideology of consumer rights are proposed as four deontological norms related to (...) using P2P systems. The model is tested using a scenario survey with four alternatives; the results indicate that the deontological norm of anti-piracy is not a main factor in affecting P2P users’ ethical considerations regarding sharing files with others. This finding suggests that to protect their property rights, record companies should try to realize the consumer benefits brought via new digital and network technology, instead of simply declaring their intellectual property and resisting the innovations resulting from new technologies. (shrink)

Due to the development of information technology, music piracy has become an escalating problem. This study attempts to employ the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the social identity theory to investigate the antecedents of downloading pop music illegally from the Internet, the relationship between the intention to illegally download music and the intention to buy music, and the moderating effects of idolatry. Data were collected from 350 teenagers in Northern Taiwan through questionnaire interviews conducted in city centers where teenagers (...) gather. The results of partial least squares (PLS) analyses reconfirm the explanatory power of the TPB model with regard to the pop music illegal downloading behavior. However, it is interesting to note that the intention to illegally download music does not have a significant influence on the intention to buy music. This finding contradicts our common intuitions. Further analyses also reveal that idolatry moderates the relationship between the intention to illegally download music and the intention to buy music. For teenagers with high idolatry, a higher music downloading intention results in a lower buying intention. One possible explanation is the price of music CDs. Several interviews were also held to verify our results. Implications and a discussion are then provided. (shrink)

This research used the embodied approach to analyse the pain experiences of 25 heterosexually married Israeli-Jewish women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments for a first pregnancy. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to allow the women to openly discuss issues concerning their perceptions of pain. Research findings show that the women’s pain perceptions dictated two distinct categories of discourse. The first category of discourse surfaced in the accounts of 14 of the interviewees. Women belonging to this category expressed their willingness to (...) “do everything for a child”. These women insisted on silencing pain and considered it to be irrelevant. They refused to locate bodily pains at the centre of their experience, fearing that this would delay their goal of reproducing. The second discourse of pain emerged from the accounts of 11 interviewees. This discourse was associated with women’s motivation to maintain an active dialogue with painful experiences. They obstinately sought to direct internal attentiveness to what was happening inside their bodies. This approach enabled them to define body boundaries and form an active negotiation with the authority treating their bodies. The research findings suggest that women who share the same socio- cultural environment (Israeli pronatalism) and physical circumstances (the inability to conceive) have varied and wideranging interpretations of pain. It seems that medical authorities can benefit the understanding of pain by providing new support resources to women undergoing IVF treatments. (shrink)

Like many fields, bioethics has been constrained to thinking to race in terms of colorblindness, the idea that ideal deliberation would ignore race and hence prevent bias. There are practical and ethically significant problems with colorblind approaches to ethical deliberation, and important reasons why race is ethically relevant. Future discourse needs to understand how and why race is relevant in bioethics.

Background: Cognitive impairment is one of the core symptoms of schizophrenia, which is considered to be significantly correlated to prognosis. In recent years, many studies have suggested that metabolic disorders could be related to a higher risk of cognitive defects in a general setting. However, there has been limited evidence on the association between metabolism and cognitive function in patients with early-stage schizophrenia.Methods: In this study, we recruited 172 patients with early-stage schizophrenia. Relevant metabolic parameters were examined and cognitive function (...) was evaluated by using the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB) to investigate the relationship between metabolic disorder and cognitive impairment.Results: Generally, the prevalence of cognitive impairment among patients in our study was 84.7% (144/170), which was much higher than that in the general population. Compared with the general Chinese setting, the study population presented a higher proportion of metabolic disturbance. Patients who had metabolic disturbance showed no significant differences on cognitive function compared with the other patients. Correlation analysis showed that metabolic status was significantly correlated with cognitive function as assessed by the cognitive domain scores (p < 0.05), while such association was not found in further multiple regression analysis.Conclusions: Therefore, there may be no association between metabolic disorder and cognitive impairment in patients with early-stage schizophrenia.Trial Registration: Clinicaltrials.gov, NCT02880462. Registered August 26, 2016. (shrink)

Enterprise Network has increasingly gained popularity in academia. Over the past few decades, a substantial amount of EN studies have been published in China. Drawing upon a sample of 603 papers retrieved from the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index database between 1998 and 2020, this study aims to delve into the status quo, knowledge base, research focus, and evolutionary trends of EN research in China. A multifaceted bibliometric analysis was performed using CiteSpace. The findings mainly indicate that the research on (...) EN in China has a clear development context, and the research content gradually changes from macro to micro. In addition to foreign Social Network theories, the research results of domestic scholars have become the basic knowledge in this field. The research includes these topics: the conceptualization of EN, EN as indicators of enterprise development, EN’s impact on start-ups, mechanisms of EN’s effect and governance of EN. The potential direction for future research has been identified as the integration between EN and other forms of networks, and the structure of EN. (shrink)

Like many fields, bioethics has been constrained to thinking to race in terms of colorblindness, the idea that ideal deliberation would ignore race and hence prevent bias. There are practical and e...

The wave function in quantum mechanics presents an interesting challenge to our understanding of the physical world. In this paper, I show that the wave function can be understood as four intrinsic relations on physical space. My account has three desirable features that the standard account lacks: it does not refer to any abstract mathematical objects, it is free from the usual arbitrary conventions, and it explains why the wave function has its gauge degrees of freedom, something that are usually (...) put into the theory by hand. Hence, this account has implications for debates in philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science. First, by removing references to mathematical objects, it provides a framework for nominalizing quantum mechanics. Second, by excising superfluous structure such as overall phase, it reveals the intrinsic structure postulated by quantum mechanics. Moreover, it also removes a major obstacle to ``wave function realism.''. (shrink)

We propose a new modal logic endowed with a simple deductive system to interpret Aristotle's theory of the modal syllogism. While being inspired by standard propositional modal logic, it is also a logic of terms that admits a (sound) extensional semantics involving possible states-of-affairs in a given world. Applied to the analysis of Aristotle's modal syllogistic as found in the Prior Analytics A8-22, it sheds light on various fine-grained distinctions which when made allow us to clarify some ambiguities and obtain (...) a completely consistent system and prove all of the modal syllogisms considered valid by Aristotle. This logic allows us also to make a connection with the axioms of modern propositional modal logic and to perceive to what extent these are implicit in Aristotle's reasoning. Further work will involve addressing the question of the completeness of this logic (or variants thereof) together with an extension of the logic to include a calculus of relations (for instance the relational syllogistic treated in Galen's Introduction to Logic) which Slomkowsky has argued is already found in the Topics. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In this comprehensive exploration of the concept of God, Beckwith examines the historical, philosophical, and theological aspects of belief in a deity. Drawing on sources from across cultures and time periods, he presents a nuanced and thought-provoking analysis of this fundamental aspect of human experience. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of (...) America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The editor's introduction discusses Clarence I. Lewis's conceptual pragmatism when compared with post-empiricist epistemology and argues that several Cartesian assumptions play a major role in the work, not unlike those of Logical Positivism. The suggestion is made that the Cartesian legacy still hidden in Logical Positivism turns out to be a rather heavy ballast for Lewis’s project of restructuring epistemology in a pragmatist key. More in detail, the sore point is the nature of inter-subjectivity. For Lewis, no less than (...) for the Logical Positivists at the time of the Protocols Controversy and Husserl in the Cartesian Meditations, this is a problem without a solution. The reason is that all these philosophers are apparently unable to realize that the existence of a plurality of knowing subjects cannot be treated at once both as a speculative problem and a methodological one. Lewis, thanks to his pragmatist approach both comes closer to the right answer and offers an even more naïve unsatisfactory solution to the pseudo-problem under discussion. The fact that he has clear in mind that inter-subjectivity means not only a plurality of linguistic utterances but also a co-existence of different kinds of practical behaviour. Eventually, the very idea of mind, the key-idea in the book, suffers from the above mentioned tension. In fact, if inter-subjective communication and action is considered at a methodological level, the very idea of mind would not need an analysis, and no kind of ‘reflexive’ analysis. Methodology might be limited to a ‘naïve’ level where the existence of the world and a plurality of subjects be taken as a bedrock of uncritically accepted evidence. Philosophical reflection on ultimate evidence, instead, would take a different approach, maybe the one Wittgenstein was putting into practice in the same years when Mind and the world order was written, namely it would be bound to question the very meaning of the idea of ‘mind’ as an undue fiction – the same carried out by Descartes – when he assumed the Cogito to be at once a body of self-evident truths and a thing or substance, the familiar Platonic idea of psyche or soul. (shrink)

The largest group of migrants in Germany is the Turkish people, many of whom have low skills levels, are Muslim, and are slow to integrate themselves into their host communities. German immigration policy has been significantly revised since the early 1990s, and a new Immigration Act came into force in 2005, containing more inclusive stances on citizenship and integration of migrants. There is a strong rhetoric of acceptance and open doors, within certain parameters, but the gap between the rhetoric and (...) practice is still wide enough to allow many migrants, particularly women, to fall through it. Turkish-Muslim women bear the brunt of the difficulties faced once they have arrived in Germany, and many of them are subject to domestic abuse, joblessness and poverty because of their invisibility to the German state, which is the case largely because German immigration policy does not fully realise a role and place for women migrants. The policy also does not sufficiently account for ethnic and cultural identification, or limitations faced by migrants in that while it speaks to integration, it does not fully enable this process to take place effectively. Even though it has made many advances in recent years towards a more open and inclusive immigration policy, Germany is still a 'reluctant' country of immigration, and this reluctance stops it from making any real strides towards integrating migrants fully into German society at large. The German government needs to take a much firmer stance on the roles of migrant women in its society, and the nature of the ethnic and religious identities of Muslim immigrants, in order to both create and implement immigration policy that truly allows immigrants to become full and contributing members to German social and economic life, and to bring it in line with the European Union's common directives on immigration. (shrink)

In his Knowledge and Belief (1962), Hintikka establishes his system of epistemic logic with the KK (Knowing that One Knows, in symbols, Kp→KKp) principle (KK for short). However, his system of epistemic logic and the KK principle are grounded upon his strong notion of knowledge, which requires that knowledge is infallible, that is, it makes further inquiry pointless, and becomes ‘discussion-stopper’; knowledge implies truth, to wit, cognitive agents will not be mistaken in their knowledge; cognitive agents will be ‘perfect logicians’, (...) i.e. they have infinitive capability of logical inference. Hintikka calls the argument for KK from the strong notion of knowledge as the ‘transcendental argument’ for KK. Obviously, the strong notion of knowledge is far away from our ordinary conception of knowledge; based on such a strong sense of knowledge, epistemic logic has met the problem of logical omnipotence, and is difficult to apply in our ordinary cognitive practice. Moreover, there is no close connection of the KK principle with internalism or externalism. (shrink)

Drawing on the core values of western civilization, the author refines the counterparts in Chinese civilization, summarized as four core principles: duty before freedom, obedience before rights, community before individual, and harmony before conflict. Focusing on guoxue or Sinology as the basis of his approach, the author provides detailed explanations of traditional Chinese values. Recent scholars have addressed the concept of guoxue since the modern age, sorting through it and piecing it together, which has produced an extremely abundant range of (...) information. However, given that the concepts and theories involved have been left largely unanalyzed, this book develops a theoretical treatment of them in several important respects. First, it analyzes the mindset of guoxue, examining the dominant ideas and values of the era from which the term "guoxue" arose, focusing on its connection to early changes and trends in society and culture, and distinguishing three key phases of development. Past scholars mainly had in mind the range of objects studied in guoxue when defining it, and what this book underscores is the meaning of guoxue as a modern body of research. Secondly, it assesses several phases in the modern evolution of the body of guoxue research from the beginning to the end of the 20th century, id est, ending with the later phase of the National Heritage movement. Third and lastly, the book explores the various main modes of modern guoxue, which correspond step by step with the evolutionary phases of guoxue research. (shrink)

Jin Yuelin (1895?1984), a Chinese logician and philosopher, is greatly influenced by Hume's and Russell's philosophies. How should we respond to Hume's problem of induction? This is an important clue to understand Jin's whole philosophical career. The first section of this paper gives a brief historical review of Russell and Jin. The second section outlines Hume's skeptical arguments against causality and induction. The third section expounds Russell's justification of induction by discussing his views on Hume's skepticism, causality, principle of induction, (...) and empirical postulates. The fourth section clarifies Jin's justification of induction by discussing his critique of Hume's epistemology and his arguments for the reliability of causality and the eternal truth and apriority of the principle of induction. The final section compares Jin's justification of induction with Russell's and concludes that there are similarities and differences between their projects and that both their attempts fail. This paper takes the similar responses to the problem of induction by Jin and Russell to demonstrate the communication that there has been between Chinese philosophers and the Western ones. (shrink)

This work has aimed to investigate the consumers’ green product purchase attitudes and behavioral intention during COVID-19 pandemic. Data was collected through a survey method of 503 consumers in Malaysia. Data were analyzed using the partial least square method. The findings revealed that fear of COVID-19 pandemic has a significant impact on green product behavioral intention. Green product literacy, green product orientation, and social influence have a significant influence on green product purchase attitudes. The results also indicated that consumers’ green (...) product purchase attitudes mediate the effect of green product literacy, green product orientation, and social influence on behavioral intention. The findings of this work will provide strategically relevant references to green marketers and retail managers in the understanding of consumers’ green product purchase attitudes and green product behavioral intention during the ongoing uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

This study aims to investigate the moderating effect of the board chair's role on the relationship between board human capital and firm performance. Board human capital has been regarded as a valuable asset that enhances firm performance. Especially, the board chair plays a crucial role in developing this high-echelon human capital. This study utilises a set of longitudinal data to examine 275 firms in Taiwan. The result indicates that board human capital is positively related to firm performance, and the individual (...) human capital of the board chair represents a moderating effect on the relationship between board human capital and performance. (shrink)

There are two problematic assumptions in Kripke’s semantic argument against descriptivism. Assumption 1 is that the referential relation of a name to an object is only an objective or metaphysical relation between language and the world; it has nothing to do with the understanding of the name by our linguistic community. Assumption 2 is that descriptivism has to hold that, if name a has its meaning and the meaning is given by one description or a cluster of descriptions, the description (...) should supply a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for determining what a designates; and that it is possible for us to find out such a setof conditions. Emphasizing the sociality, intentionality, conventionality and historicity of language and meaning, this paper rejects Assumption 1, and argues that Assumption 2 is an unfair interpretation of descriptivism, and it is not necessary for descriptivists to hold Assumption 2. This paper finally concludes that Kripke’s semantic argument against descriptivism fails. (shrink)

There are two problematic assumptions in Kripke’s semantic argument against descriptiv­ism. Assumption 1 is that the referential relation between a name and its bearer is only a metaphysical relation between language and the world; it has nothing to do with our public linguistic practice. Assumption 2 is that if name N has its meaning and the meaning is given by one description or a cluster of descriptions, the description(s) should supply the necessary and sufficient condition for determining what N designates; (...) it is possible for us to find out such a condition for fixing the referent of N. Emphasizing the sociality, conventionality and historicity of language and meaning, this paper criticizes Assumption 1 and Assumption 2, and concludes that Kripke’s semantic argument fails. (shrink)

Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson have argued that to evaluate the funniness of a joke based on the consideration of whether it is morally appropriate to feel amused commits the “moralistic fallacy.” We offer a new and empirically informed reply. We argue that there is a way to take morality into consideration without committing this fallacy, that is, it is legitimate to say that for some people, witty but immoral jokes can fail to be funny because they are immoral. In (...) our account, one has an intramural moral reason not to feel amused if one focuses on the moral feature itself of a joke rather than the moral consequence implied in one’s reaction to the joke. When one judges a joke as not funny because of the intramural moral reason, one is in a negative emotional state with high arousal, for example, moral disgust or anger. This state is psychologically incompatible with amusement. That one has an intramural reason not to feel amused thus implies that one does not have a reason to feel amused. Moral consideration thus plays an indirect and appropriate role in the evaluation of the funniness of a joke. (shrink)

This study attempts to answer the question why Confucianism, the dominant “teaching” among the Three Teachings, is not a religion in contemporary China, unlike the other two “teachings,” Buddhism and Daoism. By examining this phenomenon in the social-historical context, this study finds its origin in Orientalism. The Orientalist conceptualization of religion became part of the New Culture discourse at the turn of the twentieth century. While China has undergone tremendous social changes over the past century, the old discourse remains.

We consider two ways one might use algorithmic randomness to characterize a probabilistic law. The first is a generative chance* law. Such laws involve a nonstandard notion of chance. The second is a probabilistic* constraining law. Such laws impose relative frequency and randomness constraints that every physically possible world must satisfy. While each notion has virtues, we argue that the latter has advantages over the former. It supports a unified governing account of non-Humean laws and provides independently motivated solutions to (...) issues in the Humean best-system account. On both notions, we have a much tighter connection between probabilistic laws and their corresponding sets of possible worlds. Certain histories permitted by traditional probabilistic laws are ruled out as physically impossible. As a result, such laws avoid one variety of empirical underdetermination, but the approach reveals other varieties of underdetermination that are typically overlooked. (shrink)

First published in Paris in 1511, _The Praise of Folly _has__enjoyed enormous and highly controversial success from the author’s lifetime down to our own day.__It has__no rival, except perhaps Thomas More’s _Utopia, _as the most intense and lively presentation of the literary, social, and theological aims and methods of Northern Humanism. Clarence H. Miller’s highly praised translation of _The Praise of Folly, _based on the definitive Latin text, echoes Erasmus’ own lively style while retaining the nuances of the original (...) text. In his introduction, Miller places the work in the context of Erasmus as humanist and theologian. In a new afterword, William H. Gass playfully considers the meaning, or meanings, of folly and offers fresh insights into one of the great books of Western literature. _Praise for the earlier edition:_ “An eminently reliable and fully annotated edition based on the Latin text.”—_Library Journal_ “Exciting and brilliant, this is likely to be the definitive translation of _The Praise of Folly _into__English.”—Richard J. Schoeck. (shrink)

Jin Yuelin’s logical and philosophical thought was deeply influenced by the philosophy of Bertrand Russell. The same influence existed also in the case of his view on truth, which was considerably close to the views maintained by Russell in his phase of logical atomism. In their investigations, Russell and Jin not only focused on similar topics, but also occupied similar philosophical positions, such as realism in the domain of ontology, empiricism in epistemology, and the correspondence theory in the domain of (...) the theory of truth. Nevertheless, Jin Yuelin’s view on truth was not only a mere imitation or recapitulation or even plagiarized copy of Russell’s, but also contained innovations and characteristics of its own. Jin, for example, emphasized certain general characteristics of truth, including the notion of truth as a relational quality, that truth is not a matter of degree, and that it is relative neither to time and space nor to the different types of knowledge. By so doing, Jin underlined the objectiveness, reliability, and transcendence of true propositions. By arguing that the correspondence theory of truth possessed strong foundations in common sense, Jin set out to defend the role of common sense in philosophy and science, maintaining that the former cannot be completely eliminated and arguing against the notion that any modification of a part of common sense would ultimately be founded on yet another segment of common sense. Moreover, Jin delivered his own response against the theory of the gap between “subject and object/the internal and the external,” which had been used to question the correspondence theory of truth, proposing a variety of cognitivist theory, which defined facts as “the given” (datum) that has been received and arranged. Most importantly, facts are cognitive constructs created on the basis of “the given” and encapsulate both subjectiveness and objectiveness. Jin Yuelin was a modern Chinese philosopher who had achieved profound erudition in both Chinese and Western thought, and, above all, an independent an profoundly original thinker. (shrink)

While jurisprudence in the United States has been cast in the general mode of the English common law, modifications over time have produced enough significant variations that American law has a distinctive quality. To illustrate: The exclusionary rule in criminal cases prohibiting the use of evidence (even from reliable witnesses) acquired through illegal search, is not followed in Britain—or, for that matter, in Canada, Germany, and Israel. The punitive-damage concept (PD) in tort law is also a jurisprudential novelty. Punitive damages (...) are imposed in addition to compensatory awards given to tort victims to warn manufacturers and sellers to be careful in their safety and marketing practices. PDs are society's warning signals: Seller beware! Because they are one of society's ways to protect itself, PDs have recently been considered as fines which, to prevent excesses, should be under the rubric of the Eighth Amendment.This essay introduces new elements into the discussion on torts by hypothesizing (1) PDs are fines which belong to the public purse; (2) that expenditures from the public purse should be given to local organizations (like orphanages and inner-city hospitals) which provide vital services for those unable to pay; and (3) that the victim (or the victim's survivor) has a right to designate what local organizations should benefit from his or her punitive-damage awards.The hypotheses require reexamination of the concepts of citizenship, community, and work, respectively.Tort law is an integral part of the American law of injuries, a body of judicial doctrine and legislation and a set of legal arrangements that also include compensation systems and safety legislation. It would have been unthinkable as recently as twenty-five years ago that the tort system would become a source of bitter contention. Today, however, it generates sharp rhetoric and dramatic proposals for change to address its contested problems, as well as strong views in favor of continuing the system essentially intact so as not to disturb its contended benefits. (shrink)

While jurisprudence in the United States has been cast in the general mode of the English common law, modifications over time have produced enough significant variations that American law has a distinctive quality. To illustrate: The exclusionary rule in criminal cases prohibiting the use of evidence (even from reliable witnesses) acquired through illegal search, is not followed in Britain—or, for that matter, in Canada, Germany, and Israel. The punitive-damage concept (PD) in tort law is also a jurisprudential novelty. Punitive damages (...) are imposed in addition to compensatory awards given to tort victims to warn manufacturers and sellers to be careful in their safety and marketing practices. PDs are society's warning signals: Seller beware! Because they are one of society's ways to protect itself, PDs have recently been considered as fines which, to prevent excesses, should be under the rubric of the Eighth Amendment.This essay introduces new elements into the discussion on torts by hypothesizing (1) PDs are fines which belong to the public purse; (2) that expenditures from the public purse should be given to local organizations (like orphanages and inner-city hospitals) which provide vital services for those unable to pay; and (3) that the victim (or the victim's survivor) has a right to designate what local organizations should benefit from his or her punitive-damage awards.The hypotheses require reexamination of the concepts of citizenship, community, and work, respectively.Tort law is an integral part of the American law of injuries, a body of judicial doctrine and legislation and a set of legal arrangements that also include compensation systems and safety legislation. It would have been unthinkable as recently as twenty-five years ago that the tort system would become a source of bitter contention. Today, however, it generates sharp rhetoric and dramatic proposals for change to address its contested problems, as well as strong views in favor of continuing the system essentially intact so as not to disturb its contended benefits. (shrink)

The fiscal imbalance between the central and local governments under fiscal centralization may motivate local governments to pass tax burdens on firms. The causal identification of the tax system reform and the sustainable export innovation behavior of firms are of great significance. This study uses the income tax sharing policy of China to examine the impact of fiscal centralization on the sustainable export innovation behavior of firms. We find that this tax reform has significantly inhibited the increase of the export (...) value-added rate of firms, and has an increasing trend with the share ratio between the Central Government and the local government. Moreover, this effect mainly comes from the crowding-out effect of imported intermediate goods on domestic intermediate goods. The tests show that the above conclusions are consistent with the general logic of local governments. When they face greater downward fiscal pressure, they will further pass the tax burden on local firms and force the firms to promote their export performance to expand the tax base. This short-sighted behavior of replacing “quality improvement” with “quantity increase” is an important factor that affects the sustainable export innovation behavior of firms and the climb in the global value chain. (shrink)

A multilingual thesaurus’ development needs the appropriate methodological considerations not only for linguistics, but also cultural heterogeneity, as demonstrated in this report on the multilingual project of the Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) in the Chinese language, which has been a collaboration between the Academia Sinica Center for Digital Culture and the Getty Research Institute for more than a decade. After a brief overview of the project, the paper will introduce a holistic methodology for considering how to enable Western art (...) to be accessible to Chinese users and Chinese art accessible to Western users. The conceptual and structural issues will be discussed, especially the challenges of developing terminology in two different cultures. For instance, some terms shared by Western and Chinese cultures could be understood differently in each culture, which raises questions regarding their locations within the hierarchical structure of the AAT. Finally, the report will provide cases to demonstrate how the Chinese-Language AAT language supports online exhibitions, digital humanities and linking of digital art history content to the web of data. (shrink)

The common law's approach in the law of unjust enrichment is to enumerate specific «unjust factors» as permissible causes of action in claims for restitution. This approach has come under attack, inter alia, for being unnecessarily complicated. The claim is that the civilian approach, with its single ground of absence of legal cause for the transfer, is preferable since the operative unjust factor in any particular case is irrelevant to the restitutionary response. In defence of the common law's approach, this (...) article tenders four aspects of the restitutionary response which, it is claimed, are illuminated by reference to the nature, context, and effect of the operative unjust factor in any particular case. They are: (i) the availability of the defence of change of position; (ii) the justifiability of certain «bars» on rescission and the permissible mode of mutual restitution on rescission; (iii) the appropriate measure of enrichment where restitution is, or must be, effected in money; and (iv) two possible justifications for the controversial remedy of partial rescission. (shrink)

To me, becoming attached to Dushu was a "historical event" of no mean significance, because doing so has ever since profoundly affected my academic career.

The pandemic has catalysed to hasten the wider use of virtual hearings in international arbitration. However, the promotion of virtual hearings in international commercial dispute resolution was more complex than commonly thought due to the highlighted concerns of cybersecurity and breach of confidentiality in arbitration. The worries against the wide use of virtual hearings cannot stand because technological innovations can largely improve and solve this. However, virtual arbitration hearings may not be common post-COVID times. Technology shapes how people behave, interact, (...) grow, and develop in their relationships with others and wider communities. Yet greater immersion in the digital world undoubtedly creates new challenges and can adversely affect human-to-human interactions. There is very little scientific study on the psychological impacts of virtual hearings on arbitrators, witnesses and counsels. It is too early to assess its effectiveness from the user's perspective until the much-needed scientific data is released. Virtual hearings are unlikely to replace in-person ones necessary for more complex and high-value disputes requiring greater interaction and personal connection. Strategically, international arbitration is a private initiative-orientated, flexible, and market-driven dispute resolution mechanism. The parties are best positioned to choose the hearing format after balancing off. (shrink)

In this study, we propose and test the relationship between CSR and firm financial performance, how this relationship differs between firms led by CEOs with political connections and those led by CEOs without political connections, and how this relationship differs between state-owned firms and nonstate-owned firms. Based on a sample of 1645 Chinese listed firms during the period 2011 and 2020 (inclusive), we find that CSR has an inverted U-shaped relationship with firm financial performance. As the level of CSR increases (...) from slight to moderate, CSR is positively related to firm performance; as the level of CSR increases from moderate to great, CSR is negatively related to firm financial performance. Additionally, we find that this inverted U-shaped relationship differs between firms led by CEOs with political connections and those led by CEOs without political connections and differs between state-owned firms and nonstate-owned firms. That is, both the synergic effect (positive effect) of CSR on firm financial performance when the level of CSR is low and the competitive effect (negative effect) of CSR on firm financial performance when the CSR is high are more pronounced for firms led by CEOs without political connections and nonstate-owned firms than for firms led by CEOs with political connections and state-owned firms. The theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Over the last decades, education has shifted more clearly to a learner-centered understanding, including particularly constructivism, leaving little room conceptually for a substantive role for the teacher. This article develops a Levinasian framework for understanding the teacher as other. It begins by exploring the spatial metaphors of Levinas’s idea of the teacher as transcendent but shifts to Levinas’s idea of time as instants (durations) that come to the ego as a gift from the future. The article employs these temporal metaphors (...) to understand better the transcendence of the teacher. (shrink)

Self-serving leadership is a form of unethical leadership behavior that has destructive effect on its targets and the overall organization. Adopting a social cognition perspective, this study expands our knowledge of its adverse effect and the way to mitigate the effect. Integrating two sub-theories of social cognition, we propose a theoretical model wherein self-serving leadership hinders team creativity through psychological safety as well as knowledge hiding, with task interdependence acting as a contextual condition. Results from a sample of 107 R&D (...) teams revealed that self-serving leadership not only reduced team psychological safety, but also induced team knowledge hiding, both of which ultimately affected team creativity. The presence of high task interdependence buffered the destructive effect of self-serving leadership on team creativity via team psychological safety as well as the indirect effect via knowledge hiding. (shrink)

This paper compares the idea of embodied reasoning by Confucian Tu Wei-Ming and Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor. They have similar concerns about the problems of secular modernity, that is, the domination of instrumental reason and disembodied rationality. Both of them suggest that we have to explore a kind of embodied moral reasoning. I show that their theories of embodiment have many similarities: the body is an instrument for our moral knowledge and self-understanding; such knowledge is inevitably a kind of bodily (...) knowledge. I will also demonstrate how the differences between their theories can be mutually enriched. While Taylor has provided a philosophical account of the foundation of moral epistemology, Tu’s emphasis of ritual practice and the integration of knowing, doing and being seems to offer a more fully embodied understanding of the moral self. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of propositional absurdity and investigates its connection to falsity. I propose that instances of absurdity just are cases of what I call maximal abnormality. In light of the works of Smith (2016) and Pietroski and Rey (1995) on normic conditionals which link normality to explanatory demands, I suggest that absurdity also has a close tie with explanations (more precisely, the lacking thereof). Interesting consequences follow under such an account – first, I argue that we should (...) see absurdity as ceteris paribus guide to falsehood – what is absurd is expected to be false, unless further evidence suggests otherwise; second (and relatedly), when further evidence indeed suggests otherwise, absurd propositions would not cease to be absurd. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of propositional absurdity and investigates its connection to falsity. I propose that instances of absurdity just are cases of what I call maximal abnormality. In light of the works of Smith (2016) and Pietroski and Rey (1995) on normic conditionals which link normality to explanatory demands, I suggest that absurdity also has a close tie with explanations (more precisely, the lacking thereof). Interesting consequences follow under such an account – first, I argue that we should (...) see absurdity as ceteris paribus guide to falsehood – what is absurd is expected to be false, unless further evidence suggests otherwise; second (and relatedly), when further evidence indeed suggests otherwise, absurd propositions would not cease to be absurd. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of propositional absurdity and investigates its connection to falsity. I propose that instances of absurdity just are cases of what I call maximal abnormality. In light of the works of Smith (2016) and Pietroski and Rey (1995) on normic conditionals which link normality to explanatory demands, I suggest that absurdity also has a close tie with explanations (more precisely, the lacking thereof). Interesting consequences follow under such an account – first, I argue that we should (...) see absurdity as ceteris paribus guide to falsehood – what is absurd is expected to be false, unless further evidence suggests otherwise; second (and relatedly), when further evidence indeed suggests otherwise, absurd propositions would not cease to be absurd. (shrink)

Bringing together speeches given at the Institute's annual King Day convocation, this book celebrates two decades of commitment by MIT to honoring the memory and furthering the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. In reading these speeches, one catches in reflection twenty years of turmoil and change, some positive (including an increasing number of speakers drawn from the ranks of MIT's African-American alumni/ae) but much negative, in which Dr. King's dream has been a continuing beacon for action. Speakers have included (...) leaders who are prominent both nationally and in the local (Boston/Cambridge) community, in accordance with Dr. King's dual emphasis on global and local issues. The book closes with Coretta Scott King's twentieth-anniversary address in 1994. The 1995 speech by A. Leon Higginbotham is included as an appendix. (shrink)

With a population of over 1.3 billion, China is the most populous country in the world. It is facing an acute aging population problem, with a projected 440 million residents over age 60 and 101 million over age 80 by 2050. Furthermore, rapid industrialization and urbanization in China have resulted in serious air pollution and associated public health problems, including an increase in respiratory diseases and cancers. These and other demographic trends have generated concerns about the cost of health care (...) and its impact on population health. In recent years, the Chinese government has invested heavily in the fields of translational research and biobanking with the hope that research in both fields can yield effective solutions to improve the public’s health and quality of life. The establishment of national biobanks was identified as a major initiative needed for the biomedical industry in the 12th Five-Year National Development Plan of Strategic Emerging Industries promulgated by the State Council in 2012. (shrink)

PurposeThyroid-associated ophthalmopathy is a vision threatening autoimmune and inflammatory orbital disease, and has been reported to be associated with a wide range of structural and functional abnormalities of bilateral hemispheres. However, whether the interhemisphere functional connectivity of TAO patients is altered still remain unclear. A new technique called voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity combined with support vector machine method was used in the present study to explore interhemispheric homotopic functional connectivity alterations in patients with TAO.MethodsA total of 21 TAO patients and 21 (...) wellmatched healthy controls, respectively, underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning in the resting state. We evaluated alterations in the resting state functional connectivity between hemispheres by applying VMHC method and then selected these abnormal brain regions as seed areas for subsequent study using FC method. Furthermore, the observed changes of regions in the VMHC analysis were chosen as classification features to differentiate patients with TAO from HCs through support vector machine method.ResultsThe results showed that compared with HCs, TAO patients showed significantly lower VMHC values in the bilateral postcentral gyrus, lingual gyrus, calcarine, middle temporal gyrus, middle occipital gyrus and angular. Moreover, significantly decreased FC values were found between the right postcentral gyrus/lingual gyrus/calcarine and left lingual gyrus/cuneus/superior occipital gyrus, left postcentral gyrus/lingual gyrus/calcarine and right lingual gyrus/ middle temporal gyrus, right middle temporal gyrus and left cerebellum-8/lingual gyrus/middle occipital gyrus/supplementary motor area, left middle temporal gyrus and right middle occipital gyrus, right middle occipital gyrus/angular and left middle temporal pole. The SVM classification model achieved good performance in differentiating TAO patients from HCs.ConclusionThe present study revealed that the altered interhemisphere interaction and integration of information involved in cognitive and visual information processing pathways including the postcentral gyrus, cuneus, cerebellum, angular, widespread visual cortex and temporal cortex in patients with TAO relative to HC group. VMHC variability had potential value for accurately and specifically distinguishing patients with TAO from HCs. The new findings may provide novel insights into the neurological mechanisms underlying visual and cognitive disorders in patients with TAO. (shrink)

It has been assumed that at the whole organismal level, the mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (ROS) production is proportional to the oxygen consumption. Recently, a number of researchers have challenged this assumption, based on the observation that the ROS production per unit oxygen consumed in the resting state of mitochondrial respiration is much higher than that in the active state. Here, we develop a simple model to investigate the validity of the assumption and the challenge of it. The model highlights (...) the significance of the time budget that mitochondria operate in the different respiration states. The model suggests that under three physiologically possible conditions, the difference in ROS production per unit oxygen consumed between the respiration states does not upset the proportionality between the whole animal ROS production and oxygen consumption. The model also shows that mitochondrial uncoupling generally enhances the proportionality. (shrink)