In this essay, Huey-li Li argues that, although precariousness has always been embedded in human existence, our human vulnerability has been heightened by seemingly omnipresent and omnipotent risks in the modern era, ranging from the 9/11 terroristic attacks and nuclear meltdowns to infectious disease outbreaks and climate change. Li unravels some of the ambiguities surrounding the conceptualization of vulnerability, pointing out that human vulnerability, to a large extent, is coterminous with the increasingly more vulnerable global–local ecological systems in the (...) age of the Anthropocene. She then connects this formulation of vulnerability to the existential, ontological, and social vulnerability in education and its accompanying discourses. Li questions the wisdom of thinking that human invulnerability is an attainable goal in the modern era and argues further that all protective and preventive efforts are actually counterproductive — that is, that they instead tend to maximize our fears and thus render us more vulnerable. Instead of perpetuating the vulnerable pursuit of invulnerability in formal educational institutions, Li concludes, modern schooling should embrace and engage ecological and human vulnerability. In this way, education might better assume ethical responsibility for mitigating the ongoing ecological decline. (shrink)

(2013). Standards for Academic and Professional Instruction in Foundations of Education, Educational Studies, and Educational Policy Studies Third Edition, 2012, Draft Presented to the Educational Community by the American Educational Studies Association's Committee on Academic Standards and Accreditation. Educational Studies: Vol. 49, Critical, Interpretive, and Normative Perspectives of Educational Foundations: Contributions for the 21st Century, pp. 107-118.

This paper reports an empirical study on moral reasoning. It seeks to answer two questions: in the moral framing of tourism matters, what does this reasoning consist of? How are these elements mobilized by actors to reach moral pronouncement(s)? Through the means of group interviews, abduction and retroduction, this study finds that moral muteness (i.e. silence to socially unacceptable conduct) seems to be the moral pronouncement that the participants are likely to conduct in a condition whereby the social and cultural (...) systems being perceived insufficient to protect individuals who pursue a righteous action. The analysis reveals that (1) moral template, reflexivity, self-efficacy and emotions are constitutive elements of moral agency; (2) these agential properties permit the emergence of four moral reasoning processes, which explain moral muteness. (shrink)

In this study, we examine the relation between corporate environmental responsibility and risk in U.S. public firms. We develop and test the risk-reduction, resource-constraint, and cross-industry variation hypotheses. Using an extensive U.S. sample during the 1991–2012 period, we find that for U.S. industries as a whole, CER engagement inversely affects firm risk after controlling for various firm characteristics. The result remains robust when we use firm fixed effect or an alternative measure of CER using principal component analysis or downside risk (...) measures. To address the concern of endogeneity bias, we use a system equations approach and dynamic system generalized methods of moment regressions, and continue to find that environmentally responsible firms experience lower risk. These findings support the risk-reduction hypothesis, but not the resource-constraint hypothesis, along with the notion that the top management in U.S. firms is generally risk averse and that their CER engagement facilitates their risk management efforts. Our cross-industry analysis further reveals that the inverse CER-risk association mainly comes from the manufacturing sector, whereas in the service sector, CER tends to increase firm risk. (shrink)

Riassunto: L’antico teatro della Casa Ufficiale è un antico teatro esistente nell’area Montuosa del Taihang nella Provincia dell’Henan Settentrionale, il quale nacque nel periodo centrale della Dinastia Qing. L’aspetto dell’antico teatro della Casa Ufficiale è legato all’ambiente naturale locale, alla cultura popolare e alla produttività agricola. Ci sono otto antiche fasi della casa ufficiale nell’area Montuosa del Taihang nella Provincia dell’Henan Settentrionale, che forniscono prove fisiche per lo studio del dramma teatrale popolare nell’area Montuosa del Taihang durante la dinastia Qing. (...) Le iscrizioni sulle stele e sul palcoscenico dell’opera tradizionale cinese riflettono alcune caratteristiche del dramma teatrale rappresentato dai funzionari fin dalla dinastia Qing in Cina. I tipi di opere eseguite sono opere locali, le quali rappresentano dei preziosi materiali per lo studio storico. In una certa misura, è possibile ricostruire il percorso lo sviluppo regionale della società, della cultura e della vita quotidiana locale. (shrink)

Moral hypocrisy (MH) occurs when people fail to practice what they preach. Despite the prevalence of the effect of social identity on an individual’s MH, few empirical studies have explored contextual factors that may help reduce MH. By conducting two experiments based on the research paradigm of real stranger presence, we examined how in-group and out-group strangers’ presence and moral behavior may contribute to reducing MH. The results of experiment 1 demonstrated that compared with the presence of out-group strangers, the (...) presence of in-group stranger could effectively inhibit MH (no significant difference between participants reported and actual donation proportions was obtained). The results of experiment 2 replicated and extended the results of experiment 1, first by showing that the presence of in-group strangers could effectively inhibit MH and then by revealing the influence of present strangers’ behavior (moral or hypocritical) on MH. The results indicated that strangers’ moral behavior could effectively eliminate participants’ MH, especially in the presence of in-group strangers. However, when present strangers exhibited hypocritical behavior, they exhibited no effect on participants’ MH, irrespective of the condition of in-group and out-group strangers. The current study provides empirical support for theories related to MH and moral decision making and contributes to the literature on in-group and out-group effects on MH and decision making. (shrink)

McCarthy, Homan, and Rozier (2020) state that the Christian bioethical categories, namely sin, human dignity, and the common good, can shed light on bioethical issues, whereas secular bioethics may...

We develop a theoretical model of income and pay comparison satisfaction with two mediators, examine the direct and the indirect paths of our model, and treat culture as a moderator. Based on 311 professors in the US and Spain, we demonstrate a positive direct path and a negative indirect path. Our subsequent multi-group analysis illustrates: For American professors, their direct path shows that income is directly related to high pay comparison satisfaction. Their indirect path reveals the following new insights: Professors (...) with high income have a strong love of money orientation, set their pay equity comparison standards significantly higher than their own salary, and as a consequence, have low pay comparison satisfaction. For Spanish professors, love of money is not related to their pay comparison standards which are slightly higher than their own self-reported income. Neither the direct nor the indirect path is significant. The standardized total effect of income to pay satisfaction is positive for American professors, but negligible for Spanish professors. Are you satisfied with your pay when you compare? Our results demonstrate that pay comparison satisfaction depends on not only one’s income but also one’s love of money and pay equity comparison standards which may vary across cultures. (shrink)

There is a high need for cognition on earthquake risk to improve the public’s risk knowledge and risk awareness, so that they can make right decisions and take quick actions regarding mitigation measures and adjustments. In this study, search engine query data from the Baidu Index were extracted to reveal the information search behaviors of the Chinese public regarding the earthquake risk from 2010 to 2012. The data were also analyzed to discuss the characteristics of need for cognition on a (...) nationwide scale and over the long term. The results showed that graphic representations of need for cognition adhere to a “half-peak pattern” before and after earthquake events and dimensions in psychological distance theory, such as temporal distance, spatial distance, and social distance influence the need for cognition on earthquake risk that was the time and spatial discount effect. The implications for theory and practice regarding risk communication and management are discussed and concluded. (shrink)

The emerging discourse of hopeful tourism (Hunter 1997; Lee et al. 2017; Pritchard, Morgan, and Ateljevic 2011; Sampaio, Thomas, and Font 2012; Schultz et al. 2005; Tolkach, Pratt, and Zeng 2017) h...

This essay introduces the philosophy of harmony in Classical Confucianism. In the first part of the essay the author summarizes the concept of harmony as it was developed in various Confucian classics. In the second part, the author offers an account of the Confucian program of harmony, ranging from internal harmony in the person, to harmony in the family, the state, the international world, and finally to harmony in the entire universe.

This essay explores a tragic event that happened in China, which garnered much attention, the Li case: a young woman who was nine months pregnant and her baby died as a result of the failure to receive a medically necessary c-section due to the hospital having failed to secure her family's consent for the c-section. Differing from some critiques, this essay argues that the Li case should not be used to blame the Confucian family-determination model that has been applied in (...) Chinese society for thousands of years. Based on summarizing the reasons supporting the model, this essay indicates that it is an integral part of the model that, in emergency or special cases, the physician must take medical action to save the patient, without the need to secure the consent of a family member. In order to prevent tragic cases like the Li case from happening, we recommend that relevant Chinese laws be further developed and specified and that, most importantly, Chinese physicians must cultivate the Confucian virtue of benevolence in their practice of taking care of patients in a virtuous way, along with patients’ families. (shrink)

Investigating how people respond to and view AI-created artworks is becoming increasingly crucial as the technology’s current application spreads due to its affordability and accessibility. This study examined how AI art alters people’s evaluation, purchase intention, and collection intention toward Chinese-style and Western-style paintings, and whether art expertise plays a role. Study 1 recruited participants without professional art experience and found that those who made the paintings would not change their liking rating, purchase intention, and collection intention. In addition, they (...) showed ingroup preference, favoring Chinese-style relative to Western-style paintings, in line with previous evidence on cultural preference in empirical aesthetics. Study 2 further investigated the modulation effect of art expertise. Art experts evaluated less favorably AI-generated paintings relative to artist-made paintings, while non-experts showed no preference. There was also an interaction effect between the author and the art expertise and interaction between the painting style and the art expertise. Collectively, the findings in this study showed that who made the art matters for experts and that the painting style affects aesthetic evaluation and ultimate reception of it. These results would also provide implications for AI-art practitioners. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Techniques of the Self:Nourishing Life as Art of LivingLi Manhua (bio)Daoism and Environmental Philosophy: Nourishing Life. By Eric S. Nelson. London and New York: Routledge, 2021.This essay proposes an account of the techniques of the self in early Daoism in light of Eric S. Nelson's Daoism and Environmental Philosophy: Nourishing Life (Routledge, 2021). It argues that the techniques of the self involved in nourishing life (yangsheng 養生) are indispensable (...) to the creation of the interdependent human-nature rapport that Nelson considers. Such interdependence does not require a moralistic stance that negates the self or forsakes individual desires in the cause of the environment—as in some of the existing Western ecological discourse—but a new form of self-relation involving the practice of a set of techniques of the self that relates the human to the non-human. The present contribution begins by arguing that the practice of nourishing life entails a series of bodily and spiritual techniques (shu 術) of the self, with the example of Cook Ding. This is followed by my exposition of different categories of such techniques, and why the techniques of nourishing the spirit (shen 神) are prioritized over those of the preservation of the bodily form (xing 形). Finally, I extend my discussion on the specific techniques of nourishing the spirit with regard to his chapter "Emptying Ecology," where Nelson argues that undoing fixations of the self and being responsive (ying 應) to things are attainable through deconstructive, skeptical, and paradoxical communicative strategies (p. 80).To start with, Nelson regards nourishing life as a way of living and speaking that goes beyond the binary opposition or a hierarchical relation between the human and other forms of life in some Western ecological philosophies:In the current crisis conditions, it appears that humans need every motivating ecology available whether it be light or dark green, anthro- or bio-centric, shallow or deep. All of these contending discourses are equalized in a Daoist ecology of shifting perspectives and ways of speaking. A benefit of dao-centric models—that as inflections of the "way" encompass and extend beyond notions of "bios" (specific life) and "zōe" (life in general)—is that they contest the binary oppositions and stratified hierarchies that have dominated recent Western environmental discourses: anthropocentrism/biocentrism, and humanism/posthumanism [End Page 762] (although the latter finds biocentrism still too anthropocentric in positing the very distinction between them).(p. 31, my emphasis)In other words, a non-hierarchical and non-opposing rapport between the human and the non-human lies in a practice of changing perspectives and, more concretely and importantly, adjusting communicative ways. Such a way of perceiving and speaking beyond boundaries between the individual and the general forms of life (sheng 生) is epitomized by the practice of nourishing life of Cook Ding in the third chapter of the Zhuangzi 庄子, titled "The Master of Nourishing Life" (Yangsheng zhu 養生主). When Ding—Lord Wenhui's chef—cuts up an ox, he avoids violent and forced slaughter, slitting through the tender parts of the animal without touching any bone. As such, by concentrating only on the intestines of the ox, his movement is so agile that the knife produces a musical rhythm.More precisely, Nelson regards the example of Ding as "a cultivated and practiced process in which nature can come to be itself" (p. 36). In the context of the Zhuangzi, nature (tian 天) as an extension of the Dao goes beyond the "one-and-many" anthropocentric paradigm wherein humans have exclusive knowledge of the One, namely the unifying principle of reality (Chai 2018, p. 265). In this sense, specific life forms, bios, are undifferentiated from the wholeness of the One in the generic life, zōe. In other words, as the root of all life lies in Dao in terms of the onto-cosmological attunement of nothingness (wuwei 無為), our bodies (shen 身) mirror Heaven or Nature (tian 天) and the Earth (di 地) in the way they attune to the flow of vital energetic dynamics, responding to the myriad things and Heaven and Earth in an organic totality. This is manifest in Ding, as he nourishes life by turning his daily activity into a practice of encountering non-human life forms... (shrink)

All cultures are infused by or even rooted in certain values. Although those values are generally recognised in all societies, they are diversely ranked or proritised in different human groups and different perceptions partly account for cultural diversity as not all values can be equally upheld in any community or by any individual. Though value universalism in a strict sense is unachievable, we can all agree on a pluralistic mutual understanding of and tolerance for diversity.

I defend a new conception of the particular-universal distinction based on considerations about what David Lewis calls ‘amphibians’. I argue, first, that given the possibility of amphibians, two recently popular conceptions of the particular-universal distinction, namely the repeatability conception and the duplicability conception, are both objectionable since they are biased in one way or another. I then propose a more flexible conception that solves this problem by regarding amphibians as belonging to a sui generis sort of property distinct from what (...) I call ‘strong universals’ and ‘strong tropes’. Finally, I respond to some objections directed at this new account. (shrink)

Abstract: In this essay I will discuss five major challenges faced by Confucianism in recent times. Two of these challenges have been widely acknowledged, namely those of science and democracy. I believe that Confucianism's problem with science has been largely solved, even though more constructive work would further strengthen Confucianism in this regard. The problem of democracy is still being dealt with. I will examine three more major challenges. The third major challenge for Confucianism comes from environmentalism. Confucianism has taken (...) note of its important message and has begun to respond to it. The fourth major challenge is the feminist challenge. Even though contemporary Confucianism accepts sexual equality, philosophically significant progress is yet to be made. The final challenge is the challenge of Confucianism's own survival. After serving three major assults in the 20th century, especially the most recent assult by "the glorious cat," Confucianism needs to find a way to renew itself into future. . (shrink)

The party in power headed by Hu Jintao ever since the Sixteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China put forward “scientific outlook on development”. It then becomes an important guideline for Chinese economic and social development and is a significant strategic idea that we have to adhere to and carry out in order to develop socialism with Chinese characteristics. “Scientific outlook on development” covers a wide range of fields, such as, natural science, humanity science and social science, etc., (...) constitutes a systematic scientific theory with profound ideological connotation and rigorous internal logic, and, in the meanwhile, is enriched and developed continuously in practice. (shrink)

Affect plays an important role in the consumer decision-making process and there is growing interest in the development of new technologies and computational approaches that can interpret and recognize the affects of consumers, with benefits for marketing described in relation to both academia and industry. From an interdisciplinary perspective, this paper aims to review past studies focused on electroencephalography -based affective computing in marketing, which provides a promising avenue for studying the mechanisms underlying affective states and developing recognition computational models (...) to predict the psychological responses of customers. This review offers an introduction to EEG technology and an overview of EEG-based AC; provides a snapshot of the current state of the literature. It briefly presents the themes, challenges, and trends in studies of affect evaluation, recognition, and classification; and further proposes potential guidelines for researchers and marketers. (shrink)

Mediation analysis has been used in many disciplines to explain the mechanism or process that underlies an observed relationship between an exposure variable and an outcome variable via the inclusion of mediators. Decompositions of the total effect of an exposure variable into effects characterizing mediation pathways and interactions have gained an increasing amount of interest in the last decade. In this work, we develop decompositions for scenarios where two mediators are causally sequential or non-sequential. Current developments in this area have (...) primarily focused on either decompositions without interaction components or with interactions but assuming no causally sequential order between the mediators. We propose a new concept called natural mediated interaction effect that captures the two-way and three-way interactions for both scenarios and extends the two-way MIs in the literature. We develop a unified approach for decomposing the TE into the effects that are due to mediation only, interaction only, both mediation and interaction, neither mediation nor interaction within the counterfactual framework. Finally, we compare our proposed decomposition to an existing method in a non-sequential two-mediator scenario using simulated data, and illustrate the proposed decomposition for a sequential two-mediator scenario using a real data analysis. (shrink)