In the ethical texts, Aristotle claims that all instances of choice (prohairesis) must be preceded by deliberation, but it is not clear why he believes this. This paper offers an explanation of that commitment, drawing heavily from the De Anima and showing that the account emerging from there complements that of the ethical texts. The view is that the deliberative faculty has the capacity to manipulate reasons combinatorially, while the perceptual/desiderative faculty does not, and choice requires the combinatorial manipulation of (...) reasons. (shrink)

Three times in Book 1 chapter 13 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says desire partakes of reason in a way. There is a consensus view in the literature about what that claim means: desire has no intrinsic rationality, but can partake of reason by being blindly obedient to the commands of reason. I argue this consensus view is mistaken: for Aristotle, adult human desire has its own intrinsic rationality, and while it is to be obedient to reason, it is not (...) blind obedience, for when reason tells desire to obey, it includes an explanation supporting its order which desire can at least potentially understand. Thus, the nature of human desire, and also of the characteristic interaction of desire and reason, is much different than it is standardly taken to be. (shrink)

Many authors have argued that Aristotle does not stay true to his official account on which every instance of choice must be preceded by deliberation, and it is a good thing that he does so because his official account has catastrophically bad theoretical implications. I argue that Aristotle does not deviate from his official account, and that the official account does not have the decisively bad implications others have claimed it to have. These objectionable entailments only obtain on a certain (...) conception of what deliberation is like, and I argue that this conception is not Aristotle’s. Once Aristotle’s own conception of deliberation is understood, the terrible putative entailments clearly do not follow from the official account, and so textually Aristotle remains consistent while conceptually he remains plausible. (shrink)

Three times in Book 1 chapter 13 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says desire partakes of reason in a way. There is a consensus view in the literature about what that claim means: desire has no intrinsic rationality, but can partake of reason by being blindly obedient to the commands of reason. I argue this consensus view is mistaken: for Aristotle, adult human desire has its own intrinsic rationality, and while it is to be obedient to reason, it is not (...) blind obedience, for when reason tells desire to obey, it includes an explanation supporting its order which desire can at least potentially understand. Thus, the nature of human desire, and also of the characteristic interaction of desire and reason, is much different than it is standardly taken to be. (shrink)

I offer a novel analysis of the relations between Aristotle’s three species of desire - appetite, temper, and wish - and the three things he says in EN 2.3 lead to pursuit - the pleasant, the beneficial, and the noble. It has long been tempting to think that these trios line up with one another in some way, ideally relating their members in one-to-one fashion. One account, by John Cooper, has gathered prominent adherents, but other authors, notably Giles Pearson, (...) have argued we should give up on even trying to correlate the two trios. I attempt to show that the two trios do relate in interesting ways, but not in a way that correlates their members in a one-to-one fashion. Instead, I argue that both appetite and temper are ultimately for the pleasant, while all things that an agent takes as objects of wish are conceived of as either pleasant, beneficial, or noble. This account conflicts with a dominant understanding of the species of desire as differentiated by their objects. I reply defend the view by showing that there is a second criterion for differentiating the species of desire. (shrink)

At EN VII.6 1149a24-b3, Aristotle offers an argument for the conclusion that akrasia due to thumos is less shameful than akrasia due to epithumia. The reasoning in this argument is obscure, for Aristotle makes two claims in particular that are difficult to understand; first, that in some way thumos “hears” reason when it leads to akrasia, and second, that thumos responds to what it hears “as if having syllogized” to a conclusion about how to act. This paper argues that previous (...) attempts to understand these two points have failed. It offers an account of the first difficult claim, but concludes there is not enough material in the text to determine what Aristotle means when he says thumos responds “as if having syllogized”. Nevertheless, the paper ends by offering an account of this remark that is Aristotelian in inspiration, even though it admittedly goes beyond anything that can be gleaned from the text. (shrink)

Caleb Cohoe helms another excellent entry in the Cambridge Critical Guides series. The volume consists of thirteen contributions, nominally ordered to proceed t.

Martin Heidegger's radical and, for that, controversial reflections on language were not simply a passing interest in his thinking, but a fundamental, career-long concern arguably as significant to him as his study of being. This book traces the intimate connection between language and being in Heidegger's philosophy, and shows how they cannot be understood apart from one another. It discusses why Heidegger's undervalued philosophy of language is increasingly important, how it figures in the wider context of his work, and (...) how it is to be approached and understood for our times. This includes the significance to Heidegger of being, the logos principle, etymology, phenomenology, mysticism, and poetry. Illuminating a difficult yet highly significant area in Heidegger's thinking, Williams provides an insightful and authoritative interpretation of the topic. (shrink)

ObjectiveCancer and its treatments affect patients’ fertility potential. This study examined the prevalence of reproductive concerns and their relationship with metacognitions among Chinese young adult female cancer survivors.MethodsA total of 318 YAFCS completed an online survey from March to December 2021. Participants reported sociodemographic characteristics, reproductive concerns and metacognitions. Reproductive concerns were measured using the Reproductive Concerns after Cancer scale, and metacognitions were measured by the Short Form of Metacognitions Questionnaire. We used Pearson correlation analysis to examine associations between metacognitions (...) and reproductive concerns across multiple domains and multivariable linear regression to determine the influencing factors of reproductive concerns.ResultsThe mean score of reproductive concern among YAFCS was 49.97 ± 12.52. A total of 57.9% of participants reported a high level of concern regarding at least one dimension of reproductive concerns, and they were most concerned about their child’s health and least concerned about partner disclosure of fertility status. We also found a moderate association between RCAC and MCQ-30 scores. In multivariate analyses, metacognitions, especially negative metacognitive beliefs had an impact on reproductive concerns among YAFCS.ConclusionHigher reproductive concerns were associated with higher metacognitions among YAFCS, especially with negative metacognitive beliefs. Oncology professionals should pay attention to assessing reproductive concerns in patients who want to have children or who have no children. Moreover, metacognitive beliefs may be an intervention target for alleviating reproductive concerns among YAFCS. (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 152–154 Levi R. Bryant. The Democracy of Objects . Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities Press. 2011. 316 pp. | ISBN 9781607852049. | $23.99 For two decades post-anarchism has adopted an epistemological point of departure for its critique of the representative ontologies of classical anarchism. This critique focused on the classical anarchist conceptualization of power as a unitary phenomenon that operated unidirectionally to repress an otherwise creative and benign human essence. Andrew Koch may have inaugurated this trend in (...) 1993 when he wrote his influential paper entitled “Post-structuralism and the Epistemological Basis of Anarchism.” Koch’s paper certainly laid some of the important groundwork for post-anarchism’s continual subsumption of ontology beneath the a priori of an epistemological orientation, and his work continues to be cited as an early and important venture into post-anarchist philosophy. The problem is that Koch could not conceive of an anti-essentialist and autonomous ontological system, one not subject to regulation or representation by the human mind. Consequently, he was forced to assert a subjectivist claims-making ego as the foundation of a post-structuralist anarchist politics. Saul Newman was indebted to this heritage insofar as he also posited the ego (extrapolated from the writings of Max Stirner) and the subject (extrapolated from Jacques Lacan’s oeuvre ) as the paradoxical ‘outside’ to power and representation. Todd May fell into a similar trap in his book The Political Philosophy of Post-structuralist Anarchism when he wrote that “[m]etaphysics [...] partakes of the normativity inhabiting the epistemology that provides its foundations.” 1 Whereas Newman’s approach did not necessarily foreclose the possibility of metaphysics—at least to the extent that he began with the subject of the Lacanian tradition (wherein the subject is believed to be radically split between thinking and being)—May completely foreclosed the possibility of any escape from the reign of the epistemological. There laid the impasse of yesterday’s post-anarchism. This impasse at the heart of the project of post-anarchism has forced Koch, Newman, May, and many others, to come to similar conclusions about the place of ontology in post-anarchist scholarship. The post-anarchists have all formulated a response strikingly similar to Koch’s argument that any representative ontology ought to be dismantled and dethroned in favour of “a conceptualization of knowledge that is contingent on a plurality of internally consistent episteme .” 2 By dismissing all ontologies as suspiciously representative and as incessantly harbouring a dangerous form of essentialism, post-anarchists have overlooked the privilege that they have placed on the human subject, language, and discourse, at the expense of the democracy that the human subject shares with other animals, objects, and beings in the world. This epistemological characterization of post-anarchism has held sway for far too long. It is not by chance that post-anarchism, as a concept, was first formulated by Hakim Bey as an “ontological anarchism,” 3 and subsequently repressed by the canon of post-anarchist authors. Perhaps Bey’s ontological anarchism also lacked the ‘rigour’ required of today’s scholarly audience and for these two reasons (at least) he has received very little credit for his inaugurating efforts into post-anarchism. In any case, I want to challenge this reluctance and revive the roots of post-anarchism. Levi Bryant gives us a reason to believe that we can achieve the promise of Bey’s ontological anarchism without sacrificing the scholarly standard of rigour. Levi Bryant’s newest open-access book, The Democracy of Objects , is a tour de force . His book challenges post-anarchists to take their radical critique of representation a step further by questioning the “hegemony that epistemology currently enjoys in philosophy.” Bryant maintains that post-structuralism, and radical anti-humanisms, only appear to reject the subject as the locus of political agency. Their rejection is actually more of a disavowal, a replacement of the human subject with the equally human order of language or discourse. What post-structuralism attempts to elucidate is the manner in which the subject is colonized by the Other of language, discourse and social relations. What here appears as a movement away from the determining subject of humanism and existentialism is only replaced with the determining apparatuses of structures as they are conceived by astute analysts of political culture. Post-structuralism thus re-enters the anthropocentric discourse to the extent that the cultural analyst believes himself capable of conceiving the determinative structures of society. In contradistinction to the claims of post-structuralism and post-anarchism, the role of the ontologist is not to suture the gap between epistemology and the real but to de-suture it, as Bryant puts it: “[o]ntology does not tell us what objects exist, but that objects exist, that they are generative mechanisms.” Above all else, the role of ontology, for post-anarchists, ought to be a real de-centering of the subject in relation to other objects in the non-human world such that the subject becomes conceived as one object among others within a living democracy of equality. This inevitably leads to the conclusion that objects exist whether or not the subject or analyst is there to represent them: they represent themselves and are autonomous from our dictation, just as each object finds its autonomy in relation to other objects. Ontology must now be distinguished from representation. We must shift the terms of the debate and interrogate the hegemony that epistemology has been afforded within post-anarchist philosophy. At least two possibilities are now permitted. On the one hand, one could intervene into the reigning mode of philosophy, namely epistemology, by latching onto concepts from meta-ethical philosophy. Meta-ethics allows one to easily separate the ontological from the epistemological and to answer very particular questions about each in order to formulate an overarching meta-ethical position. 4 Post-anarchism is particularly adept at this task because of its resounding ability to frame itself as an ethical political philosophy in relation to the strategic political philosophy of classical Marxism. On the other hand, Bryant argues that “[p]erhaps the best way to defeat [the privilege currently held by epistemology] is to shift the terms of debate.” Shifting the terms of debate is also something that post-anarchists have been very good at doing. Thus, instead of asking the question ‘how do representative ontological systems harbour concealed epistemological orientations toward the political?’ one might ask ‘ do epistemological orientations toward the political always harbour representative and subject-centred ontological systems?” The genius of Bryant’s book rests in its ability to convincingly argue for the radical autonomy of being and of objects. This claim speaks to some of the most compelling theories of the political in anarchist and marxist political philosophy (for instance, hegemony, representation, democracy, and so on) and it re-stages the political drama of our times across a much wider terrain. The fallacy of strategic political philosophy in the Marxist tradition, as Todd May quite correctly points out, is that it remains committed to a concept of power that is unitary in its analysis, unidirectional in its influence, and utterly repressive in its effect. Similarly, Bryant’s ontology allows one to argue that there is a fallacy that occurs “whenever one type of entity is treated as the ground or explains all other entities.” Whereas May’s post-structuralist anarchism moved away from the fallacy of the unitary analysis of power, whereby subjects are constituted by the influence of a single site of power, it nonetheless remained committed to a tactical political philosophy which is monarchical in the final analysis . It remains monarchical to the extent that the human world, the world of epistemology, is treated as the yardstick of democracy. Bryant’s argument is quite instructive: “[w]hat we thus get is not a democracy of objects or actants where all objects are on equal ontological footing [...] but instead a monarchy of the human in relation to all other beings.” The real fallacy is thus not against strategic political philosophy but philosophy itself and the way it has played out over so many centuries. “The epistemic fallacy,” writes Bryant, “consists in the thesis that proper ontological questions can be fully transposed into epistemological questions.” The point that Bryant is making relates to the way ontology is today always reduced to an epistemology and thereby loses its significance as a philosophical question. This book should be applauded for its novelty and its thesis ought to be taken seriously by post-anarchists today. Because of this book, and the attendant post-continental movement that is being called ‘speculative realism,’ we can now distinguish three stages in the life of post-anarchism. First, we can deduce what Süreyya Evren has described as its ‘introductory period.’ The introductory period of post-anarchism is defined by its inability to side-step the ontological problem in the literature of classical anarchism. During this period, post-anarchism needed to distinguish itself from classical anarchism while nonetheless remaining committed to its ethical project. The second period overcomes the problem of the separation of post-anarchism from classical anarchism by re-reading the classical tradition as essentially post-anarchistic. Some of the critiques of post-anarchism—especially that from Cohn & Wilbur 5 —are included into this period insofar as post-anarchism, for them, was always already anarchism. Whereas the first and second phases have included only explicitly anarchist literature under their rubric of worthwhile investigation, in the third period this no longer holds true. To be certain, the second period permitted the incorporation of post-structuralist literature into post-anarchist discussions (but always with a certain amount of reservation). This third period, the one that is to come—the one that is already here if only we would heed its call—will not take such care with attempts at identification or canonization. Indeed, post-anarchism is already here, like a seed beneath the snow, waiting to be discovered. Levi Bryant teaches us that the third period is already here: and yet where is it? NOTES 1) Todd May. The Political Philosophy of Post-Structuralist Anarchism . University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. 1997. 2. 2) Andrew Koch. “Post-structuralism and the Epistemological Basis of Anarchism” [1993] in Post-Anarchism: A Reader . Eds. Duane Rousselle & Sureyyya Evren. London: Pluto Press. 2011. pp. 23-40. 3) Bey, Hakim. “ Post-Anarchism Anarchy .” 1987. 4) I have attempted to do this in my paper on Bataille’s post-anarchism; see Duane Rousselle. “Georges Bataille’s Post-anarchism.” Journal of Political Ideologies . 17(3): in press. 5) Jesse Cohn & Shawn Wilbur. “ What’s Wrong with Post-anarchism? ” 2010. (shrink)

The well-known ¿Berber Head¿ in the British Museum, found at Kyrene in 1861, has long defied exact stylistic analysis. Its findspot provides no precise date, and ever since the excavators suggested that it was a piece from the fourth century bc, this dating has been sustained, generally through inertia. Yet recent scholars have become increasingly aware of the weakness of this date without offering specific alternatives other than a gradual down-dating. Its North African features indicate that it is a (...) portrait of an indigenous ruler, and thus attribution must be based on the likelihood of such a person being honoured in Kyrene. It is herein suggested that it is a portrait of the Numidian prince Mastanabal, son of Massinissa, and that it dates to the time that Massinissa was a close associate of the king of Kyrene, the future Ptolemaios VIII of Egypt, or 163¿148 bc. Mastanabal was a noted athlete and thus the piece may be a commemoration of one of his victories. Its commissioning would fit into his father¿s vigorous hellenization policy. Although the style remains difficult of analysis, certain features, especially the beard under the chin, support a second-century bc date. (shrink)

Dynamics concerns the process of change in variable conditions through time at any level of analysis. Various important issues or topics in stakeholder theory and practice involve consideration of change over time and thus unavoidably involve dynamics. While dynamics has received explicit recognition in stakeholder literature, dynamic analysis remains partly tacit and suffused through the literature. One reason is that dynamics remains difficult to model even in economics. This article provides a basic orientation to stakeholder dynamics as a key conceptual (...) and methodological issue for stakeholder thinking. This article identifies current literature concerning stakeholder dynamics and evaluates future directions in dynamic reasoning that would help build stakeholder theory and improve practice of stakeholder management. Notions of competition, influence strategies, change in stakeholder networks, mindsets, salience or values, learning, creative destruction, long-term sustainability, stakeholder reciprocity, sustainable development, and value creation all embed change and thus time dynamics. Static complexity and heterogeneity across units-of-analysis are not the same as dynamics but do also change over time. Dynamics concerns how change process influences consequences (later in time) in relationship to antecedents (earlier in time). Management copes with change process, as much as with complexity and variation in antecedents and consequences. (shrink)

Technological innovation has an important impact on environmental pollution. In this paper, first, we analyze the influence mechanism of technological innovation on environmental pollution and then design the index system of technological innovation. Then, we use the entropy method to calculate the technological innovation level of different regions in China based on provincial panel data from 2004 to 2016. Finally, the panel vector autoregression model is adopted, and taking the discharge of sewage, solid waste, and exhaust gas as the research (...) objects, the impact of technological innovation on them is empirically analyzed. The results show that China’s technological innovation level is steadily improving, but there are significant differences in the impact of technological innovation on wastewater, waste gas, and solid waste. Specifically, technological innovation can contribute to an increase in wastewater and solid waste emissions. However, the impact of this technological innovation on them is not equal. Secondly, the impact of technological innovation on exhaust emissions is to inhibit exhaust emissions in the short term and promote exhaust emissions in the long term. Finally, there are clear differences between them in terms of the specific impact of changes in wastewater, solid waste, and exhaust emissions. Changes in wastewater discharges and solid waste generation are largely derived from their own effects, while the role of technological innovation is supportive and insignificant. The change in exhaust emissions is initially influenced by itself, but in the long run, the influence of technological innovation gradually increases and eventually exceeds its own influence. Based on these research results, this paper puts forward corresponding policy suggestions to speed up environmental pollution control. (shrink)

What makes a word easy to learn? Early‐learned words are frequent and tend to name concrete referents. But words typically do not occur in isolation. Some words are predictable from their contexts; others are less so. Here, we investigate whether predictability relates to when children start producing different words (age of acquisition; AoA). We operationalized predictability in terms of a word's surprisal in child‐directed speech, computed using n‐gram and long‐short‐term‐memory (LSTM) language models. Predictability derived from LSTMs was generally a (...) better predictor than predictability derived from n‐gram models. Across five languages, average surprisal was positively correlated with the AoA of predicates and function words but not nouns. Controlling for concreteness and word frequency, more predictable predicates and function words were learned earlier. Differences in predictability between languages were associated with cross‐linguistic differences in AoA: the same word (when it was a predicate) was produced earlier in languages where the word was more predictable. (shrink)

The potential negative impacts of biological pest control on non-target species have become the focus of a contentious debate. In this article, we use examples from both classical and augmentative biological control of fruit fly pests in Hawaii to address several important factors in assessing non-target risks of fruit fly parasitoids. Several fruit fly parasitoids have been introduced to Hawaii and contribute substantially to the reduction of pest populations in the state's farms and forests. However, an historical lack of host-specificity (...) testing of these parasitoids with non-target species has raised concerns about their impact on non-pest fruit flies, including some flies deliberately introduced for biological control of weeds and others that are endemic Hawaiian species. When developing protocols to assess risks of introduced fruit fly parasitoids, we need first to define an appropriate range of species against which host specificity should be tested. For assessing susceptibility of a non-target species to parasitoids, behavioral tests are as important as suitability tests. Experimental factors, such as host-exposure substrate, absence or presence of preferred hosts, and laboratory vs. natural conditions, are shown to affect the results of host-specificity tests and risk analysis. Still, assessing long-term, indirect ecological impacts of parasitoids and weighing potential risks and benefits in multiple dimensions (besides dollar values) remains a challenge to environmentalists, conservationists, applied ecologists, and biocontrol practitioners. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Research on the Transformation of Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction by Zhan LingShaoming DuanZhan Ling. Research on the Transformation of Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction. Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 2022, 324 pages, softcover, ¥ 118.00 ISBN: 978-7-5203-9465-9.Research on the Transformation of Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction is a laudable scholarly endeavor that provides reader with a unique interpretation of the representative works in contemporary China science fiction. Taking "transformation" as (...) the key word, this book outlines the development process and transformation features of science fiction since the founding of the People's Republic of China (i.e., new China). Starting with the investigation of the reasons for each transformation, this book combs the changes in the creative values, scientific views, and aesthetics of science fiction in more than seventy years. The book also aims to show the literary achievements of contemporary Chinese science fiction, affirm the academic values of "transformation" from the perspective of literary development history, and points out the existing shortcomings. This book will interest global scholars in literary studies, especially those in the field of Chinese science fiction studies. The detailed studies of contemporary Chinese science fiction by Zhan Ling connect her primary sources with wider temporal and spatial contexts. Zhan Ling approaches contemporary Chinese science fiction that was mostly unknown to the scholars of the twenty-first century, some of which were underestimated and even ignored for a long time.The book has an introduction, seven chapters, and a conclusion. The introduction briefly introduces the origin of Chinese science fiction. There was no category of "science fiction" in ancient Chinese literary tradition; it actually appeared in the late Qing dynasty. At that time, the Qing government was defeated miserably by Western powers in the two [End Page 521] "Opium Wars" and was forced to sign a series of unequal treaties with Western powers, which greatly damaged China's sovereignty and territorial integrity.In order to achieve the goals of "enriching the country and strengthening the army" and "learning foreign technology to counter foreigners," the Qing government decided to carry out the "Westernization Movement" (1861–95), calling on Qing officials to learn and use Western advanced science and technology and set up modern military, industry, and civilian enterprises. Science fiction, as a kind of literature directly linked with Western science and technology, had been introduced into China. In 1872 the Chinese version of Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle was published in Shanghai Shen Daily, which opened the exploration of science fiction in Chinese literature. In 1904 Huang Jiangdiaosou (pen name) wrote the first Chinese science fiction, The Moon Colony. The intellectuals in the late Qing dynasty regarded science fiction as the literary practice of "saving the country through science" (6). Science fiction had contributed to the establishment of modern scientific consciousness for the pedantic people in the late Qing dynasty. The decline of the Qing dynasty was marked by the invasion and encroachment of the Western powers, which marked the formation of Chinese semicolonial and semifeudal society; This, in turn, contributed to the development of science fiction in China.The main body consists of seven chapters. Zhan Ling discusses the changes and transformations in the development of science fiction in contemporary China. The founding of new China marked the full rule of the Communist Party of China. In order to distinguish from the Kuomintang rule, the Communist Party called it "contemporary" after 1949. According to this "division," "contemporary science fiction" of the title refers to the science fiction published in mainland China after 1949. Compared with the past, science fiction in contemporary China has made great progress in quality and quantity (12).Zhan Ling divides the development of science fiction in contemporary China into four stages. The first phase was from 1949 to 1966. The second phase is from 1978 to 1984. The third phase is from 1985 to 1999. The fourth phase is the twenty-first century. The book tries to integrate the development history of contemporary Chinese science fiction into the development history of Chinese science fiction for research, and even puts contemporary Chinese science fiction into the development history of world science fiction [End Page 522... (shrink)

Alcohol use disorder is one of the most common substance use disorders contributing to both behavioral and cognitive impairments in patients with AUD. Recent neuroimaging studies point out that AUD is a typical disorder featured by altered functional connectivity. However, the details about how voxel-wise functional coordination remain unknown. Here, we adopted a newly proposed method named functional connectivity density to depict altered voxel-wise functional coordination in AUD. The novel functional imaging technique, FCD, provides a comprehensive analytical method for brain's (...) “scale-free” networks. We applied resting-state functional MRI toward subjects to obtain their FCD, including global FCD, local FCD, and long-range FCD. Sixty-one patients with AUD and 29 healthy controls were recruited, and patients with AUD were further divided into alcohol-related cognitive impairment group and non-cognitive impairment group. All subjects were asked to stay stationary during the scan in order to calculate the resting-state gFCD, lFCD, and lrFCD values, and further investigate the abnormal connectivity alterations among AUD-NCI, ARCI, and HC. Compared to HC, both AUD groups exhibited significantly altered gFCD in the left inferior occipital lobe, left calcarine, altered lFCD in right lingual, and altered lrFCD in ventromedial frontal gyrus. It is notable that gFCD of the ARCI group was found to be significantly deviated from AUD-NCI and HC in left medial frontal gyrus, which changes probably contributed by the impairment in cognition. In addition, no significant differences in gFCD were found between ARCI and HC in left parahippocampal, while ARCI and HC were profoundly deviated from AUD-NCI, possibly reflecting a compensation of cognition impairment. Further analysis showed that within patients with AUD, gFCD values in left medial frontal gyrus are negatively correlated with MMSE scores, while lFCD values in left inferior occipital lobe are positively related to ADS scores. In conclusion, patients with AUD exhibited significantly altered functional connectivity patterns mainly in several left hemisphere brain regions, while patients with AUD with or without cognitive impairment also demonstrated intergroup FCD differences which correlated with symptom severity, and patients with AUD cognitive impairment would suffer less severe alcohol dependence. This difference in symptom severity probably served as a compensation for cognitive impairment, suggesting a difference in pathological pathways. These findings assisted future AUD studies by providing insight into possible pathological mechanisms. (shrink)

The recent global financial crisis and worst recession since the Great Depression underscore the theoretical and practical importance of defining requirements for assessing alternative theories of capitalism. The expressed goal of Freeman and his co-authors is to replace value-allocating ‘shareholder capitalism’ with value-creating ‘stakeholder capitalism.’ Each theory combines a different value proposition and principal-agent conception. So interpreted, the value creation proposition suggests two requirements for assessing alternative theories. A proposed better theory of capitalism should demonstrate first practicality of prescriptive guidance (...) for managers and second superiority of its embedded value proposition for sustainable long-term performance. Shareholder and stakeholder conceptions are not the only approaches to developing a theory of capitalism embedding a different value proposition and agency model. Two other conceptions suggest organisational wealth and corporate social responsibility (CSR) theories of capitalism. All four alternatives meet the relatively minimal requirement of practicality. Freeman and his co-authors argue the value creation proposition will outperform the value allocation proposition. But organisational wealth and CSR theories may also outperform shareholder capitalism. Demonstrating that stakeholder capitalism will outperform organisational wealth and CSR theories depends on which principal and value proposition one judges most important in particular conditions. (shrink)

Space being the precondition for human existence, human perception and experience vary responding to different spaces. Modern urban dwellers live in urban space where they seem to have much space mobility but end up living in a homogenized concrete jungle. This fact has influenced, if not defined, modern urban dwellers’ life experience and caused their anxieties about such an existence. However, wilderness, as opposed to urban space, is not merely a type of space, but a way of existence relating to (...) diversity, freedom, and healthy savagery. Civilizational evolution explains the change of human perception of wilderness from fear and desire to conquer to longing and affection, and in this sense the history of the evolution of space perception is also a history of civilization because space and culture are entwined and the more diversified the types of human living space, the more diversified their existences. In the contemporary world, the significance of wilderness not only lies in its resistance to the aforementioned homogenized, unidimensional, urban human existence, but the civilization of wilderness points to a new form of civilization that is intrinsically different from technological civilization for whose disease the civilization of wilderness per se may serve as a possible remedy. (shrink)

Filling out long questionnaires can be frustrating, unpleasant, and discouraging for respondents to continue. This is why shorter forms of long instruments are preferred, especially when they have comparable reliability and validity. In present study, two short forms of the Cross-cultural Personality Assessment Inventory were developed and validated. The items of the short forms were all selected from the 28 personality scales of the CPAI-2 based on the norm sample. Based on some priori criteria, we obtained the appropriate (...) items and constructed the 56-item Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory and the 28-item CPAI. Then, we examined the factor structure of both short forms with Exploratory SEM and replicated the four-factor structure of the original CPAI-2, reflecting the four personality domains of Chinese people, namely, Social Potency, Dependability, Accommodation, and Interpersonal Relatedness. Further analyses with ESEM models demonstrate full measurement invariance across gender for both short forms. The results show that females score lower than males on Social Potency. In addition, these four factors of both short forms have adequate internal consistency, and the correlation patterns of the four factors, the big five personality traits, and several health-related variables are extremely similar across the two short forms, reflecting adequate and comparable criterion validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. Overall, the short versions of CPAI-2 are psychometrically acceptable and have practically implications for measuring Chinese personality and cross-cultural research. (shrink)

Background: Frailty is a natural consequence of the aging process. With the increasing aging population in Mainland China, the quality of life and end-of-life care for frail older people need to be taken into consideration. Advance Care Planning has also been used worldwide in long-term facilities, hospitals and communities to improve the quality of end-of-life care, increase patient and family satisfaction, and reduce healthcare costs and hospital admissions in Western countries. However, it has not been practiced in China. Research (...) objective: This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a modified Advance Care Planning intervention in certainty of end-of-life care, preferences for end-of-life care, quality of life concerns, and healthcare utilization among frail older people. Research design: This study used a quasi-experimental design, with a single-blind, control group, pretest and repeated posttest approach. Participants and research context: A convenience sample of 74 participates met the eligibility criteria in each nursing home. A total of 148 frail older people were recruited in two nursing homes in Zhejiang Province, China. Ethical considerations: The study received ethical approval from the Clinical Research Ethics Committee, the Faculty of Medicine, and The Chinese University of Hong Kong, CREC Ref. No: 2016.059. Findings: The results indicated the Advance Care Planning programme was effective at increasing autonomy in decision making on end-of-life care issues, decreasing decision-making conflicts over end-of-life care issues, and increasing their expression about end-of-life care. Discussion: This study promoted the participants’ autonomy and broke through the inherent custom of avoiding talking about death in China. Conclusion: The modified Advance Care Planning intervention is effective and recommended to support the frail older people in their end-of-life care decision in Chinese society. (shrink)

The present longitudinal study used the traditional cross-lagged panel model and autoregressive latent trajectory model with structured residuals to examine the relationships between perceived interparental conflict, negative thinking, and depression symptoms in Chinese children. Changes in these three variables over time were also examined, as well as the trait and state aspects of the relationships between them. A sample of 516 third-grade primary students completed questionnaires about IPC, NT, and depression three times over a period of 1 year, at 6-month (...) intervals. The CLPM findings indicated that, assuming that stability of each variable across time was controlled, Chinese children’s perception of IPC significantly affected their level of depression through the mediating path of NT. After taking trait factors into account, among all the significant autoregressive and cross-lagged paths originally found in the CLPM, only one third remained significant in the ALT-SR model. More specifically, the ALT-SR model, revealed a driving effect of children’s NT on perceived IPC and depression symptoms. The CLPM model although elucidated the interplay among three variables, the ALT-SR model showed little evidence of their interrelated growth across time. Taken together, these results indicate that children’s perceived IPC in the long term are a stable trait, with few state-level fluctuations, and is not a significant within-person predictor of subsequent children’s internalization problems. These perceptions appear to contribute more to children’s general psychological tendency than do changes over time. The research is the first to test the reciprocal relationships between Chinese children’s perceived IPC, NT, and depression symptoms. The findings demonstrate that previously proposed theories about the bidirectional relation between IPC and children’s social adjustment, to some extent, may reflect a correlation at a trait level. Put another way, it is IPC’s central tendency to be sensitive in the long term as a stable trait that is associated with their children’s general tendency to show well adjustment. The study contributes to our understanding of that extend previous results and have implications for complementary theoretical and practical interventions. The complementary techniques of CLPM and ALT-SR models offer different insights into children’s internalization problems, and hold promise for supporting the building of more comprehensive children’s developmental theories that acknowledge the interconnectedness of different domains of mental health. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: The Cosmic Community Social and Individual Autonomy The World Out of Balance Multiple Communities, Multiple Identities Renewing the Cosmic Community.

This book presents a reading of Martin Heidegger's philosophy as an effort to strike a middle position between the philosophies of Plato and Friedrich Nietzsche. Duane Armitage interprets the history of Western philosophy as comprising a struggle over the meaning of "being," and argues that this struggle is ultimately between materialism and idealism, and, in the end, between atheism and theism. This work therefore concerns the question of the meaning of the so called "death of God" in the context (...) of contemporary Continental Philosophy.. (shrink)

This book critiques the postmodernism and Continental philosophy of Heidegger and Nietzche through the lens of the mimetic theory of Rene Girard.

Alain Badiou has claimed that Quentin Meillassoux's book After Finitude (Bloomsbury, 2008) "opened up a new path in the history of philosophy." And so, whether you agree or disagree with the speculative realism movement, it has to be addressed. Lacanian Realism does just that. This book reconstructs Lacanian dogma from the ground up: first, by unearthing a new reading of the Lacanian category of the real; second, by demonstrating the political and cultural ingenuity of Lacan's concept of the real, and (...) by positioning this against the more reductive analyses of the concept by Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, Saul Newman, Todd May, Joan Copjec, Jacques Ranciere, and others, and; third, by arguing that the subject exists intimately within the real. Lacanian Realism is an imaginative and timely exploration of the relationship between Lacanian psychoanalysis and contemporary continental philosophy. (shrink)

For centuries, outside business organizations have sought to enter into business relationships with indigenous populations, often benefitting both parties. However, the power imbalance that foreign settlers had over indigenous peoples often led to exploitative relationships whereby the indigenous people were marginalized and at times treated inhumanely. While the nature of trade and relationships has changed over time, the special status that native tribes enjoy in U.S.A. continues to attract attention from business enterprises. In the past few years, various organizations have (...) found it advantageous to their business interests to engage in transactions with Native American tribes. Three specific examples are described: Allergan transferred patent rights to a tribe to circumvent a U.S. patent review panel; Tesla opened a store and service center on native land in New Mexico to get around the state’s dealership laws; and Lume Cannabis Co. opened retail stores on native lands in Michigan near communities that had decided to not license recreational cannabis stores. All three examples raise questions over the ethics of buying access to native sovereignty. Students are asked to apply ethical theories to try and identify what distinguishes ethical and unethical transactions. (shrink)

Photography in Colorado was encouraged as early as 1861, when newspaper editor William Byers wrote in the Rocky Mountain News, "Secure the shadow, ere the substance perish," and roused the citizenry to take photographs of their families, friends, landscape, homes, and mills in order to document their lives and share them with others. The revised edition of Colorado: A History in Photographs draws on this rich legacy, portraying Colorado's history in images taken from the frontier era to the present, all (...) accompanied by a vivid, updated narrative. Presenting a broad view of countless aspects of life in Colorado and including 270 black-and-white photographs, this book will inform, entertain, and inspire all those who delight in learning more about the history of the Centennial State. (shrink)

The discrepancy between measures of preferred and actual participation in decision making was used as a measure of ecological dissonance for an organization and then used to assess its relationship to job satisfaction, job involvement, job alienation, and job formalization. Questionnaires were administered to 143 faculty and staff members of Mississippi State University. Correlational analyses indicated mild relationships between the measures of ecological dissonance and job satisfaction, job involvement, job alienation, and job formalization, thus providing support for ecological dissonance theory (...) (see Miller, Topping, & Wells-Parker, 1989). It was concluded that ecological dissonance in participation in decision making was a predictor of workers’ job satisfaction, job involvement, job alienation, and job formalization. (shrink)

Currently, there are two bottleneck problems in the research of college students’ entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial behavior: lack of comprehensive and systematic theoretical framework and empirical analysis to reveal the role path that affects entrepreneurial intention, and most studies ignore the gap between entrepreneurial intention and behavior. Based on the literature review, this study adopted the Theory of Planned Behavior as the theoretical framework introduced entrepreneurial situational factors and entrepreneurial implementation intention, and constructed a two-step extended entrepreneurial intention–behavior model. The (...) structural equation was constructed using AMOS24.0 to empirically analyze the antecedent variables of college students’ entrepreneurial intention and the factors influencing entrepreneurial behavior. The empirical results showed that expected material possessions, expected social reputation, expected self-evaluation, mission and responsibility, and career development are the antecedent variables of entrepreneurial attitude. Support from families and friends, college teachers’ views, and the role models are antecedent variables of entrepreneurial subjective norms. Professional ability, entrepreneurial ability, entrepreneurial experiences, and personality traits are the antecedent variables of entrepreneurial perceived behavior control. In the formation stage of college students’ entrepreneurial intention, attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavior control, and entrepreneurial situational factors have significant impacts on the formation of college students’ entrepreneurial intention, while entrepreneurial intention, perceived behavior control, and entrepreneurial situational factors have significant impacts on the transformation phase of entrepreneurial behavior. Entrepreneurial implementation intention plays an intervening role between entrepreneurial intention and behavior of college students. (shrink)

Negativity in Psychoanalysis examines the role of negativity in psychoanalytic theory and its application in clinical settings. While theories around negativity and death drive have become routinized within philosophical interpretations of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, they often mask an inherent positivity. This volume assembles highly esteemed psychoanalytic theorists and clinicians for an in-depth discussion on the topic. It features comprehensive introductions to Freudian and Lacanian perspectives, alongside contemporary clinical and cultural issues. The book also investigates how psychoanalytic negativity influences and (...) is influenced by social, theological, and philosophical dialogues. This work will prove invaluable for practicing psychoanalysts and those in training, while also appealing to academics and scholars in critical and cultural theory, continental and post-continental philosophy, and sociology, especially those whose research intersects clinical and theoretical traditions. (shrink)

As considerações de Merleau-Ponty sobre a historicidade são significativas, tanto como um relato fenomenológico, quanto como um relato existencial de nossa situação histórica. Naturalmente, estes aspectos de seu trabalho não se excluem mutuamente, mas se entrelaçam. E cada aspecto contribui para o sentido da crise da historicidade humana. Primeiro consideraremos a crise fenomenológica da historicidade – ou seja, consideraremos a crise da historicidade fenomenologicamente. Esta é a tentativa de revelar as condições da possibilidade da história a partir da história ou (...) da estrutura de nossa situação histórica – onde a posição de Merleau-Ponty se afasta da fenomenologia husserliana. Em seguida, consideraremos a crise existencial de historicidade – ou seja, consideraremos a crise de historicidade existencialmente. Esta é a tentativa de compreender o imperativo de que as coisas são importantes para nós historicamente. Finalmente, vamos indicar brevemente a importância destes aspectos de nossa historicidade como um entrelaçamento crítico. Este entrelaçamento crítico revela a intrusão mútua do “como” e do “porquê” de nossa historicidade, que Merleau-Ponty descreve no final de sua carreira como uma existência chiasmática dentro da carne do mundo. O cruzamento crítico como interrogatório de nosso ser histórico fornece o “quem”, “o quê”, “quando” e “onde” de nossa historicidade. (shrink)

Duane Cady views warism and pacifism as polar extremes on a continuum that embraces a full spectrum of ethical positions on the morality of war and peace. Realizing that he could not intellectually defend the notions of just-war theory, he found that he was a reluctant pacifist. In this new edition of From Warism to Pacifism, Cady continues to expose the pervasive, subconscious warism that is the dominant ideology in modern Western culture. He explores the changes over the last (...) twenty years—from the end of the Cold War to the ongoing “war on terror,” as well as Barack Obama winning the Nobel Prize for Peace. Like racism and sexism, the uncritical presumption that war is morally justifiable, even morally required, misguides our attitudes and institutions. In its place, Cady proposes the development of a positive concept of peace. Citing common objections to pacifist values, he describes peace as something more than the mere absence of war and demonstrates that pacifism is a defensible position. (shrink)