We initiate a study of two general concepts of semisimplicity for MV-algebras by replacing the standard MV-algebra with an arbitrary MV-chain. These generalised notions are called -semisimple MV-algebras and -semisimple MV-algebras. We obtain several of their characterisations and explore in more-depth the case of perfect MV-chains.

Ethical attitudes and behaviour are complex. This complexity extends to the influencers operating at different levels both outside and within the organisation, and in different combinations for different individuals. There is hence a growing need to understand the proximal and distal influencers of ethical attitudes, and how these operate in concert at the individual, organisational, and societal levels. Few studies have attempted to combine these main research streams and systematically examine their combined impact. The minority of studies that have taken (...) a combined approach have often done so using conventional statistical and analytical techniques which imply linearity between variables—a situation that rarely exists in business settings and is likely to lead to simplistic or even erroneous conclusions. Applying a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis approach, this paper reports on the mutual and simultaneous influence of individual demographic factors, as well as proximal and distal factors stemming from within and outside the work environment to understand individuals’ ethical views within the workplace. The multiple configurations that emerged reveal the complex nature of influencers of ethical attitudes, and reinforce the view that “one size does not fit all”. We discuss these implications together with managerial recommendations and future research directions. (shrink)

Fur Descartes galt die Erkenntnistheorie als <I>prima philosophia. Mit der beruhmten Formel <I>cogito ergo sum erhob er das denkende Selbstbewusstsein zum <I>fundamentum inconcussum et primum veritatis. Diesen Primat der Erkenntnistheorie in der Neuzeit stellt Heidegger mit seinem ontologischen Ansatz in <I>Sein und Zeit in Frage. Das menschliche Erkennen ist fur ihn nicht etwas Ursprungliches, sondern etwas Abgeleitetes. Es setzt das <I>Verstehen voraus, das gemeinsam mit <I>Befindlichkeit und <I>Rede die ursprungliche Erschlossenheit des Daseins ausmacht. Spater sieht Heidegger, dass der Entwurf des (...) Verstehens vom Lichtungsgeschehen des Seins ermoglicht ist. Dabei gewinnt die Sprache eine grundlegende Funktion. Diese Abhandlung geht dem theoretischen Erkennen auf den Grund und bietet dabei einen neuen Horizont zum besseren Verstandnis von Heideggers Philosophie.". (shrink)

Western Buddhists often believe and proclaim that metaphysical speculation is irrelevant to Buddhist ethics or practice. This view is problematic even with respect to early Buddhism, and cannot be sustained regarding later Indian Buddhists. In Śāntideva’s famous Bodhicaryāvatāra, multiple claims about the nature of reality are premises for conclusions about how human beings should act; that is, metaphysics logically entails ethics for Śāntideva, as it does for many Western philosophers. This article explores four key arguments that Śāntideva makes from metaphysics (...) to ethics: actions are determined by their causes, and therefore we should not get angry; the body is reducible to its component parts, and therefore we should neither protect it nor lust after other bodies; the self is an illusion, and therefore we should be altruistic; all phenomena are empty, and therefore we should not be attached to them. The exploration of these arguments together shows us why metaphysical claims can matter a great deal for Buddhist ethics, practice and liberation. (shrink)

This is a new release of the original 1947 edition.

Air pollution in China has been drawing considerable attention in recent years. The emergence of new energy vehicles provides hope to reduce air pollutant emission. However, consumers' recognition and acceptance of NEVs remain at the early stage. This research aims to explore how consumers' environmental concern influences their NEV purchase intention. Specifically, this research conducted an online survey and an experiment to address the following issues: how consumers' psychological distance toward air pollution influences their purchase intention for NEVs, and does (...) their risk perception of the consequences of air pollution mediate this influence; whether consumers' perceived price level of NEVs plays a moderating role in the relationship between risk perception and purchase intention; and whether the construal level of stimulus can be manipulated to influence consumers' PD toward air pollution to increase their purchase intention for NEVs. The results of study 1, based on a total of 293 valid samples, show that consumers' PD toward air pollution significantly affects their purchase intention for NEVs, and risk perception of the consequences of air pollution plays a considerable mediating role. Meanwhile, consumers' perceived price level of NEVs has a significant negative moderating effect on the relationship between risk perception and purchase intention. The results of study 2, based on an online experiment, show that the construal level of stimulus can influence consumers' PD toward air pollution, which in turn affects their purchase intention for NEVs. The findings of this research have implications for businesses' promotional strategies and governments' policies. For instance, low-construal-level promotional materials can be developed to arouse consumers' environmental concern, thereby facilitating their eco-friendly consumption behavior. Governmental financial assistance and other policies can also increase consumers' willingness to purchase NEVs. (shrink)

CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS ON SPINOZA'S "ETHICS" BY CELESTINE J. SULLIVAN, JB, Benedict Spinoza wrote very little. If the urgency of certain ...

Contemporary engaged Buddhist scholars typically claim either that Buddhism always endorsed social activism, or that its non-endorsement of such activism represented an unwitting lack of progress. This article examines several classical South Asian Buddhist texts that explicitly reject social and political activism. These texts argue for this rejection on the grounds that the most important sources of suffering are not something that activism can fix, and that political involvement interferes with the tranquility required for liberation. The article then examines the (...) history of engaged Buddhism in order to identify why this rejection of activism has not yet been taken sufficiently seriously. (shrink)

This dissertation examines the idea of _ethical revaluation_ — taking things we normally see as good for our flourishing and seeing them as neutral or bad, and vice versa — in the Mahāyāna Buddhist thinker Śāntideva. It shows how Śāntideva’s thought on the matter is more coherent than it might otherwise appear, first by examining the consistency of Śāntideva’s own claims and then by applying them to contemporary ethical thought. In so doing, it makes four significant contributions. Śāntideva claims that (...) property and relationships are bad for us because they promote attachment, and that others’ wrongdoing is good for us because it allows us to generate patient endurance. Yet he also urges his readers to give property to others, and to prevent their wrongdoing. Is he caught in contradiction? The dissertation argues that he is not, because giving to others is not intended to benefit them materially, but rather to produce beneficial mental states in them, and preventing wrongdoing is intended to benefit the wrongdoer and not the victim. In both cases, Śāntideva emphasizes individual action in a way that makes social or political action more difficult to justify. The dissertation’s first contribution is to show how this interpretation of Śāntideva contrasts notably with standard presentations of Mahāyāna ethics. Its second contribution is to refute claims that Buddhists have no normative ethics. Śāntideva’s resolutions of these apparent contradictions also have relevance for contemporary ethical thought. Martha Nussbaum argues against an ethical revaluation similar to Śāntideva’s, on the grounds that such a revaluation makes it contradictory to argue for providing goods to others, preventing others’ wrongdoing or engaging in political action. Śāntideva’s views show that ethical revaluation is a more sustainable position than these criticisms of Nussbaum’s would imply; if it is to be rejected, it must be rejected on other grounds. To show this point is the dissertation’s third contribution. The fourth contribution is methodological; by finding similarities of concern and differences of opinion between Śāntideva and a contemporary thinker, it helps bridge the gap between normative and comparative religious ethics. (shrink)

The Mahāyāna Buddhist thinker Śāntideva tells his audience to give out alcohol, weapons and sex for reasons of Buddhist compassion, though he repeatedly warns of the dangers of all these three. The article shows how Śāntideva resolves this issue: these gifts, and gifts in general, attract their recipients to the virtuous giver, in a way that helps the recipients to become more virtuous in the long run. As a consequence, Śāntideva does recommend the alleviation of poverty, but assigns it a (...) much smaller significance than is usually supposed. His views run counter to many engaged Buddhist discussions of political action, and lend support to the “modernist” interpretation of engaged Buddhist practice. (shrink)

Ken Wilber insists that valid knowledge must be derived from paradigms: sets of injunctions and social practices that lead to replicable experiences. In this article, I examine Wilber's claims that the theory still includes the essentials of premodern traditions, because the essentials of those traditions consist of a phenomenological core of practices leading to mystical experience. Drawing on the works of Robert Sharf and Wilhelm Halbfass and on close readings of primary texts, this article argues that mystical paradigms of replicable (...) experience are not in fact the essentials of these traditions--neither for the majority of practitioners nor even for their revered teachers or masters. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of this point for constructive integral work. (shrink)

An encyclopedia article about Śāntideva, the 8th-century Indian Mahāyāna Buddhist philosopher known for his work on ethics. The article explores his history and written corpus and classifies his work (as he does) by way of the "perfections" (pāramitā) of the bodhisattva. It addresses his views on metaphysics and their implications for ethics and practice, as well as his views on gift-giving, anger and other emotions. It also briefly discusses his relationship to virtue ethics and consequentialism.

The Training Anthology of Śāntideva: A Translation of the Śikṣā-samuccaya. By Charles Goodman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. lxxvii + 433. $105 ; $34.95.

Śāntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra is an extraordinary text. Its ethical arguments, with their metaphysical grounding, are among the most explicit in classical Indian literature. This fact alone is sufficient to place the BCA among the most important texts of classical Indian philosophy. But the BCA's importance goes well beyond philosophy as such, as the Readings volume reviewed here shows amply: it is a work of poetic and literary brilliance with ritual and meditative significance in Tibet and elsewhere. (There is nothing wrong with (...) the Readings volume's English translation of the title as... (shrink)

A small but growing body of research suggests that witnessing mistreatment affects third-party observers’ attitudes and behaviors. Based on the framework of belief in a just world theory, this study examines perverse secondary victimization which is particularly pervasive in negative workplace gossip from a third-party perspective but has nonetheless received little attention in organizational research. We present a moderated mediation model and hypothesize that third-party observers’ deservingness judgment would mediate the effect of observed negative workplace gossip and interact with their (...) just world beliefs in predicting their unfavorable reactions toward the target. Additionally, an observer’s BJW would exacerbate the positive relationship between observed negative workplace gossip and deservingness judgment, that is, third-party observers with high BJW are more susceptible to victim derogation bias and consider that the target of gossip deserved the victimization experience to maintain their worldview. Data were collected from 210 full-time employees through online questionnaires and the empirical results supported the hypotheses. The study discusses the theoretical and practical implications of the findings. (shrink)

Diagrams are a form of spatial representation that supports reasoning and problem solving. Even when diagrams are external, not to mention when there are no external representations, problem solving often calls for internal representations, that is, representations in cognition, of diagrammatic elements and internal perceptions on them. General cognitive architectures—Soar and ACT-R, to name the most prominent—do not have representations and operations to support diagrammatic reasoning. In this article, we examine some requirements for such internal representations and processes in cognitive (...) architectures. We discuss the degree to which DRS, our earlier proposal for such an internal representation for diagrams, meets these requirements. In DRS, the diagrams are not raw images, but a composition of objects that can be individuated and thus symbolized, while, unlike traditional symbols, the referent of the symbol is an object that retains its perceptual essence, namely, its spatiality. This duality provides a way to resolve what anti-imagists thought was a contradiction in mental imagery: the compositionality of mental images that seemed to be unique to symbol systems, and their support of a perceptual experience of images and some types of perception on them. We briefly review the use of DRS to augment Soar and ACT-R with a diagrammatic representation component. We identify issues for further research. (shrink)

Nowadays, the major depressive disorder is a common disease that negatively affects the life quality of many people around the world. As MDD symptoms are closely related with the changes in food and eating, the relation between patients’ emotional responses and food tastes could be used as criteria for diagnostic. Until now, studies on the emotional response to different food tastes for patients affected by MDD have been poorly described in literature. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate (...) the emotional response of patients suffering from MDD to the imagined different food tastes and to compare the results with a control group. Emotional responses in tested participants were induced by using cards with words of basic food tastes such as “sweet,” “salty,” “bitter,” “sour,” and “neutral.” The assessment of emotional response was performed with FaceReader 6 software. The outcome of this study showed that participants with MDD expressed lower “happy” and “contempt” and higher “surprised” emotions, along with a higher negative valence mean, in comparison with controls for all tested basic tastes of food. When Likert scale was used, significant differences in response were only found for “sour” and “salty” imaginary tastes between healthy group and patients with MDD. The findings of this study provide the additional data on food–associated emotion analysis of MDD patients and could be useful for the further development of the contactless method for early diagnosis of MDD. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between psychology and modern art design education in colleges, and to provide the basis for improving the quality of art education in colleges. Based on the relevant theory, the characteristics of educational psychology and art psychology and the correlation between them were analyzed from the angle of art education. According to the characteristics of college students' psychological development, the significance of art psychology-related courses was analyzed. Through the form of questionnaire, (...) a total of 200 students were randomly selected from Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts and Xi'an University of Science and Technology, respectively. A total of 400 questionnaires were issued, and 382 valid questionnaires were recovered. The results show that almost all students in two colleges think pedagogy and educational psychology are the theoretical basis for art teachers, while less than one-third of students in Xi'an University of Science and Technology think that art psychology is the theoretical basis for art teachers. The difference between the students' aesthetic and life values in the two colleges is significant. In the 15 directions of life values, there are significant differences in five directions: spirit—material, enrichment—emptiness, enthusiasm—apathy, hope—despair, and dedication—acceptance. It shows that the psychological and values of college students are changeable, and the educators should pay attention to the education in the related fields of psychology. This exploration was conducted based on educational psychology, which is of great significance for improving the educational level of art psychology in colleges and enable students to form correct aesthetic standards and life values. (shrink)