As postcolonial approaches in the studies of religion have challenged liberal-secular presuppositions in addressing non-Western forms of life, there has been a growing concern to examine the normative presuppositions of postcolonial approaches in the field of religious ethics. This paper addresses how Charles Taylor, Talal Asad, and Homi Bhabha show their normative concerns for addressing the interstitial existence of ethnic-religious minorities, negoriating between their subaltern religions and the inclusive-but-exclusive potential of the liberal secular frame of integration. These thinkers raise normative (...) critiques of the spatiotemporal and moral frameworks of liberal, secular integration while suggesting thgeir own normative visions for transforming the existing form of liberal secular democracy. They reveal different models in their normative critiques and visions: Taylor suggests a postsecular and dialogical model, while Asad sets forth an antisecular traditionalist model and Bhabha a pro-secular and vernacular one. (shrink)

Abstract:In reference to Pierre Hadot's idea of spiritual exercises, this essay examines how Zhiyi suggests his unique vision of spiritual exercises for therapeutic transformation. Though the recent interest in Madhyamaka spiritual exercises has focused on the implication of non-duality for moral-psychological transformation and self-cultivation, more research is needed on the issue of contradiction in spiritual exercises, which can also relate to the recent concern for dialetheism and the pragmatics of contradiction in Tiantai studies. This essay traces how dialectic contradiction and (...) its pragmatic uses underlie Zhiyi's non-dualistic spiritual exercises, examining his unique philosophical vision of the middle and its effects on therapeutic transformation, which is to be cultivated through various meditative techniques. (shrink)

This essay proposes an ethics of spirituality as a post-secular question by tracing the legacy of Schleiermacher in Charles Taylor’s account. Given the recent interest in spirituality as a matter of each individual’s perspective and orientation, it is important to explore whether spirituality involves an ethics of spirituality. This question resonates with the ethics of belief in James-Clifford debates and its recent discussions on the non-propositional aspect of belief and its ethical implications for oneself and others. The paper addresses how (...) Schleiermacher and Taylor suggest the ethics of spirituality that demands authentic spirituality and reciprocal communication and recognition, while revealing differences concerning interactions with the institutional church, civil religion, and the civic-cultural frame of rationality and utility. (shrink)

Modern consumers face a dramatic rise in web-based technological advancements and have trouble making rational and proper decisions when they shop online. When they try to make decisions about products and services, they also feel pressured against time when sorting among all of the unnecessary items in the flood of information available on the web. In this sense, they need to use consumer decision-making creativity to make rational decisions. However, unexplored research questions on this subject remain. First, in what ways (...) do task difficulty and time constraints affect visual attention on exploitative and exploratory activities differently? Second, how does the location of the reference influence the level of visual attention to exploitative and exploratory activities depending on affordance theory? Third, how do exploratory and exploitative activities affect CDMC? Eye-tracking experiments were conducted with 70 participants to obtain relevant metrics such as total fixation duration, fixation count, and visit count to answer these research questions. Our findings suggest that task difficulty influences exploitative activity, whereas time constraint is related to the exploratory activity. The result of the location of hints aligns with the affordance theory for the exploitative activity. Besides, exploratory activity positively affected CDMC, but exploitative activity did not show any effect. (shrink)

This article explores the unusually high levels of cosmetic surgery in South Korea – for both women and men. We argue that existing explanations, which draw on feminist and postcolonial positions, presenting cosmetic surgery as pertinent only to female and non-western bodies found lacking by patriarchal and racist/imperialist economies, miss important cultural influences. In particular, focus on western cultural hegemony misses the influence in Korea of national identity discourses and traditional Korean beliefs and practices such as physiognomy. We show how (...) these beliefs provide a more ‘gendered’ as opposed to feminist analysis, which allows space for discussion of men’s surgeries. Finally, we critique the accepted notion of the ‘western body’, especially its position in some literature as a more unobtainable ideal for non-western than for western women. We argue that this body has little in common with actual western women’s bodies, and more in common with a globalized image, embodying idealized elements from many different cultures. (shrink)

Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists are effective for treating obesity, but the high cost of these medications endangers the financial viability of our health care system. To ensure that these drugs are available to Medicare beneficiaries, pharmaceutical manufacturers must lower their prices.

We review the concepts and the physics behind electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) and lasing without inversion (LWI) for various models of the V-type configurations.

Scholars have long recognised the interest of the Stoics' thought on geometrical limits, both as a specific topic in their physics and within the context of the school's ontological taxonomy. Unfortunately, insufficient textual evidence remains for us to reconstruct their discussion fully. The sources we do have on Stoic geometrical themes are highly polemical, tending to reveal a disagreement as to whether limit is to be understood as a mere concept, as a body or as an incorporeal. In my view, (...) this disagreement held among the historical Stoics, rather than simply reflecting a doxographical divergence in transmission. This apparently Stoic disagreement has generated extensive debate, in which there is still no consensus as to a standard Stoic doctrine of limit. The evidence is thin, and little of it refers in detail to specific texts, especially from the school's founders. But in its overall features the evidence suggests that Posidonius and Cleomedes differed from their Stoic precursors on this topic. There are also grounds for believing that some degree of disagreement obtained between the early Stoics over the metaphysical status of shape. Assuming the Stoics did so disagree, the principal question in the scholarship on Stoic ontology is whether there were actually positions that might be called "standard" within Stoicism on the topic of limit. In attempting to answer this question, my discussion initially sets out to illuminate certain features of early Stoic thinking about limit, and then takes stock of the views offered by late Stoics, notably Posidonius and Cleomedes. Attention to Stoic arguments suggests that the school's founders developed two accounts of shape: on the one hand, as a thought-construct, and, on the other, as a body. In an attempt to resolve the crux bequeathed to them, the school's successors suggested that limits are incorporeal. While the authorship of this last notion cannot be securely identified on account of the absence of direct evidence, it may be traced back to Posidonius, and it went on to have subsequent influence on Stoic thinking, namely in Cleomedes' astronomy. (shrink)

When naming certain hand-held, man-made tools, American Sign Language signers exhibit either of two iconic strategies: a handling strategy, where the hands show holding or grasping an imagined object in action, or an instrument strategy, where the hands represent the shape or a dimension of the object in a typical action. The same strategies are also observed in the gestures of hearing nonsigners identifying pictures of the same set of tools. In this paper, we compare spontaneously created gestures from hearing (...) nonsigning participants to commonly used lexical signs in ASL. Signers and gesturers were asked to respond to pictures of tools and to video vignettes of actions involving the same tools. Nonsigning gesturers overwhelmingly prefer the handling strategy for both the Picture and Video conditions. Nevertheless, they use more instrument forms when identifying tools in pictures, and more handling forms when identifying actions with tools. We found that ASL signers generally favor the instrument strategy when naming tools, but when describing tools being used by an actor, they are significantly more likely to use more handling forms. The finding that both gesturers and signers are more likely to alternate strategies when the stimuli are pictures or video suggests a common cognitive basis for differentiating objects from actions. Furthermore, the presence of a systematic handling/instrument iconic pattern in a sign language demonstrates that a conventionalized sign language exploits the distinction for grammatical purpose, to distinguish nouns and verbs related to tool use. (shrink)

Olwen Bedford and Kwang-Kuo Hwang, Guilt and Shame in Chinese Culture: A Cross-cultural Framework from the Perspective of Morality and Identity, pp. 127–144.This article formulates a cross-cultural framework for understanding guilt and shame based on a conceptualization of identity and morality in Western and Confucian cultures. First, identity is examined in each culture, and then the relation between identity and morality illuminated. The role of guilt and shame in upholding the boundaries of identity and enforcing the constraints of morality (...) is then discussed from the perspective of each culture. The developed framework is then applied the emotions of guilt and shame in Chinese culture drawing on previous field research. Implications for future research are discussed. (shrink)

We discuss four methodological issues regarding cross-cultural judgment studies of facial expressions of emotion involving design, sampling, stimuli, and dependent variables. We use examples of relatively recent studies in this area to highlight and discuss these issues. We contend that careful consideration of these, and other, cross-cultural methodological issues can help researchers minimize methodological errors, and can guide the field to address new and different research questions that can continue to facilitate an evolution in the field’s thinking about the nature (...) of culture, emotion, and facial expressions. (shrink)

With the expansion of clientele’s demographics and international transactions, many law firms began to open doors to non-mainstreamers—minority lawyers to join the legal workforce. Decades have passed and the inequality in compensation between minority and non-minority attorneys is still one of the most controversial issues in the legal profession. Based on human capital and labor discrimination theory, we examine the productivity and compensation differences between minority attorneys and non-minority counterparts. The sample consists of 554 firm-year observations of the 200 largest (...) U.S law firms from 2013 to 2016. We use OLS with clustered standard errors by year. We find minority partners are more likely to provide relatively routine and template-based services, which do not command fee premium, which results in low productivity of minority partners. We find that minority partners are compensated less than their non-minority counterparts after controlling for productivity. This paper aids in the understanding of diversity in the workplace and the effect of diversity on a firms’ productivity and the type of services to provide. Also, this paper has implications on the compensation gap between minorities and their non-minority counterparts. (shrink)

With the expansion of clientele’s demographics and international transactions, many law firms began to open doors to non-mainstreamers—minority lawyers to join the legal workforce. Decades have passed and the inequality in compensation between minority and non-minority attorneys is still one of the most controversial issues in the legal profession. Based on human capital and labor discrimination theory, we examine the productivity and compensation differences between minority attorneys and non-minority counterparts. The sample consists of 554 firm-year observations of the 200 largest (...) U.S law firms from 2013 to 2016. We use OLS with clustered standard errors by year. We find minority partners are more likely to provide relatively routine and template-based services, which do not command fee premium, which results in low productivity of minority partners. We find that minority partners are compensated less than their non-minority counterparts after controlling for productivity. This paper aids in the understanding of diversity in the workplace and the effect of diversity on a firms’ productivity and the type of services to provide. Also, this paper has implications on the compensation gap between minorities and their non-minority counterparts. (shrink)

As the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, particularly generative AI (Gen AI), becomes increasingly prevalent in nursing education, it is paramount to address the ethical implications of their implementation. This article explores the realm of cyberethics (a field of applied ethics that focuses on the ethical, legal, and social implications of cybertechnology), highlighting the ethical principles of autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, justice, and explicability as a roadmap for facilitating AI integration into nursing education. Research findings suggest that ethical dilemmas that (...) challenge these five principles can emerge within the context of nursing education; however, adherence to these very principles, which is essential to improving patient care, can offer solutions to these dilemmas. To ensure the ethical and responsible use of Gen AI in nursing education, these principles must be woven into the fabric of curricula, and appropriate guidelines must be developed. Nurse educators have a pivotal role in strategizing comprehensive approaches for ethical AI integration, establishing clear guidelines, and instilling critical thinking among students. Fostering lifelong learning and adaptability is key to ensuring that future nurses can successfully navigate the constantly evolving landscape of health care technology. Future research should investigate the long-term impacts of AI utilization on learning outcomes and ethical decision-making. (shrink)