Profitant de la commémoration du cinquantenaire de la création du premier Centre de recherches sur l’imaginaire fondé par Gilbert Durand, Léon Cellier et Paul Deschamps, nous tentons d’approfondir notre réflexion sur les influences réciproques entre l’imaginaire chinois et la pensée durandienne, dont la rencontre se révèle féconde et fructueuse dans les champs interculturels et comparatifs, et semble propice pour la connaissance et le rayonnement de l’un comme de l’autre, et pour le développement futur de la recherche sur l’imaginaire. While (...) seizing the opportunity to participate in the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the creation of the first Research Center on the Imaginary Founded by Gilbert Durand, Léon Cellier and Paul Deschamps, this presentation aims to deepen reflection on the reciprocal influences between the Chinese Imaginary and Durandian thought, This encounter proves to be fruitful in both inter-cultural and comparative fields, and is propitious for the knowledge and influence of both cultures. It may well spawn future developments in research on the Imaginary. (shrink)

The list of saints dragonslayers is long in Western tradition: from archangel Michael, Saint George, Saint Marcel up to captain Nemo from the famous Jules Verne’s novel. It is quite different in East Asia and especially in China, where the dragon benefits from an extremely positive valuation. What are the causes of such a symbolic reversal? This is what we are trying to elucidate in this paper. The dragon, so laden with malignity in the West and requiring a hero to (...) fight it and to restore, against multiple perversity, the solidity of the concept of being, is an auspicious image in the Chinese world that benefits from the riches of multiplicity: assimilated to the “Son of Heaven”, emperor of all under heaven, located in the center of the changing world, he ensures the correct order of political, geographic, calendar, or anthropological pluralities. Two world views stand face to face: one that saves being by slaying the dragon, the other which recognizes the value of changes and transformations. (shrink)

The present text contains a critical edition of Peter of Palude’s question of divine concurrence, found in his Sentences commentary, book II, d. 1, q. 4. The question concerns whether God is immediately active in every action of a creature, and if yes, how we should understand this divine concurrence. Peter, just as elsewhere in his commentary, considers at length the opinions of other thinkers — especially those of Giles of Rome, Durand of St.-Pourçain, and Thomas Aquinas — and (...) develops his own answer as a response to theirs. Thus, while Giles maintained that God acts uniformly in every instance of natural causation just as the sun acts uniformly by giving the same light to everything, Peter (following Durand) argues that this is incompatible with the divine creation of multiple things. Second, while Durand maintained that God is only mediately active in the actions of creatures, Peter rejects this opinion because it cannot account for miracles contra naturam (such as the three young men in Nebuchadnezzar’s fire), and because he thinks that God’s immediate action follows from his immediate conservation of creatures. Third, Peter presents Aquinas’s position in detail, and defends it against Durand’s objections; according to this position, God immediately conserves and concurs with every creature, with an action that is numerically distinct from that of the secondary agent. Although as a result of his extensive borrowing, Peter’s text might not be regarded as immensely original, it provides an interesting case study of the Dominican reaction against Durand in the early 1300’s. (shrink)

A case study of multimodal systems and a new interpretation of Charles S. Peirce's theory of reasoning and signs based on an analysis of his system of ...

What is the relationship between complexity in the world and complexity in the mind? Intuitively, increasingly complex objects and events should give rise to increasingly complex mental representations (or perhaps a plateau in complexity after a certain point). However, a counterintuitive possibility with roots in information theory is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the “objective” complexity of some stimulus and the complexity of its mental representation, because excessively complex patterns might be characterized by surprisingly short computational descriptions (e.g., if they (...) are represented as having been generated “randomly”). Here, we demonstrate that this is the case, using a novel approach that takes the notion of “description” literally. Subjects saw static and dynamic visual stimuli whose objective complexity could be carefully manipulated, and they described these stimuli in their own words by giving freeform spoken descriptions of them. Across three experiments totaling over 10,000 speech clips, spoken descriptions of shapes (Experiment 1), dot-arrays (Experiment 2), and dynamic motion-paths (Experiment 3) revealed a striking quadratic relationship between the raw complexity of these stimuli and the length of their spoken descriptions. In other words, the simplest and most complex stimuli received the shortest descriptions, while those stimuli with a “medium” degree of complexity received the longest descriptions. Follow-up analyses explored the particular words used by subjects, allowing us to further explore how such stimuli were represented. We suggest that the mind engages in a kind of lossy compression for overly complex stimuli, and we discuss the utility of such freeform responses for exploring foundational questions about mental representation. (shrink)

The majority of women who freeze their eggs for non-medical or social reasons, commonly referred to as elective egg freezing (EEF), do not eventually utilize their frozen eggs. This would result in an accumulated surplus of unused frozen eggs in fertility clinics worldwide, which represents a promising source of donation to infertile women undergoing IVF treatment. Rigorous and comprehensive counseling is needed, because the process of donating one’s unused surplus frozen eggs involves complex decision-making. Prospective EEF donors can be broadly (...) categorized into those who have achieved motherhood and those who remained childless and have given up on motherhood aspirations. A two-step systematic counseling protocol is proposed. Firstly, it is imperative to verify and ensure that these women do not want to conceive any children with their surplus frozen eggs before proceeding with further counseling and signing of consent forms. Secondly, various motivating and dissuading factors in the donation of unused surplus frozen eggs should then be comprehensively discussed with egg freezers to facilitate informed decision-making. Key motivating factors for donation include reciprocity in wanting to share the joys of motherhood among egg freezers who already have children, goodwill to help others in need, and avoiding the wastage of surplus frozen eggs after expending so much money, time, and effort. Key dissuading factors include fear of accidental incest between natural and unknown donor-conceived offspring, as well as apprehension of unexpected future contact with unknown donor-conceived offspring due to either donor anonymity being abolished in their jurisdiction or widespread consumer DNA testing. (shrink)

This article argues that resolutions are reason-giving: when an agent resolves to φ, she incurs an additional normative reason to φ. Resolution-making is therefore a normative power: an ability we have to alter our normative circumstances through sheer acts of will. I argue that the reasons we incur from forming resolutions are importantly similar to the reasons we incur from making promises. My account explains why it can be rational for an agent to act on a past resolution even if (...) temptation causes a shift in her preferences and even her judgment about what to do, and offers a response to a common objection to the normativity of resolutions known as the bootstrapping problem, on which if resolutions were reason-giving, they would problematically allow us to bootstrap any action into rationality simply by resolving to perform it. (shrink)

Objective: The COVID-19 epidemic has generated great stress throughout healthcare workers. The situation of HCWs should be fully and timely understood. The aim of this meta-analysis is to determine the psychological impact of COVID-19 pandemic on health care workers.Method: We searched the original literatures published from 1 Nov 2019 to 20 Sep 2020 in electronic databases of PUBMED, EMBASE and WEB OF SCIENCE. Forty-seven studies were included in the meta-analysis with a combined total of 81,277 participants.Results: The pooled prevalence of (...) anxiety is 37% from 44 studies. Depression is estimated in 39 studies, and the pooled prevalence of depression is 36%. There are 10 studies reported the prevalence of insomnia, and the overall prevalence of insomnia is 32%. The subgroup analysis showed a higher incidence of anxiety and depression among women and the frontline HCWs compared to men and non-frontline HCWs respectively.Conclusions: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused heavy psychological impact among healthcare professionals especially women and frontline workers. Timely psychological counseling and intervention ought to be implemented for HCWs in order to alleviate their anxiety and improve their general mental health. (shrink)

It is highly likely that, to achieve full human–machine symbiosis, truly intelligent cognitive systems—human-like —may have to be developed first. Such systems should not only be capable of performing human-like thinking, reasoning, and problem solving, but also be capable of displaying human-like motivation, emotion, and personality. In this opinion article, I will argue that such systems are indeed possible and needed to achieve true and full symbiosis with humans. A computational cognitive architecture is used in this article to illustrate, in (...) a preliminary way, what can be achieved in this regard. It is shown that Clarion involves complex structures, representations, and mechanisms, and is capable of capturing human cognitive performance as well as human motivation, emotion, personality, and other relevant aspects. It is further argued that the cognitive architecture can enable and facilitate true human–machine symbiosis. (shrink)

BackgroundIt has been well investigated that nature exposure intervention can restore directed attention and improve subsequent cognitive performance. The impairment of decision-making skills in mentally fatigued soccer players was attributed to the inability of attention allocation. However, nature exposure as the potential intervention to counter mental fatigue and improve the subsequent decision-making skill in soccer players has never been investigated.ObjectsThis study aimed to evaluate the effects of nature exposure intervention on decision-making skills among mentally fatigued university soccer players. Moreover, different (...) durations of nature exposure were also evaluated.MethodsA random control between-subject design was adopted. Players were randomly assigned into six groups with three different durations of the experimental group compared with the corresponding control group. All players were first mentally fatigued by performing a 45-min Stroop task; then, they viewed virtual photos of natural or urban scenes; and finally, they performed a soccer decision-making task.ResultsThe subjective ratings of mental fatigue were significantly higher following the Stroop task. Only Exp 3 significantly improved decision-making reaction time compared with Con 3. Moreover, the accuracy slightly increased in Exp 3 after the intervention.ConclusionIn line with attention restoration theory, nature exposure significantly improved decision-making skills in mentally fatigue university players. However, the duration must be 12.50 min for each stimulus to stay longer to attract involuntary attention. (shrink)

Most of the work in agent-based social simulation has assumed highly simplified agent models, with little attention being paid to the details of individual cognition. Here, in an effort to counteract that trend, we substitute a realistic cognitive agent model (CLARION) for the simpler models previously used in an organizational design task. On that basis, an exploration is made of the interaction between the cognitive parameters that govern individual agents, the placement of agents in different organizational structures, and the performance (...) of the organization. It is suggested that the two disciplines, cognitive modeling and social simulation, which have so far been pursued in relative isolation from each other, can be profitably integrated. (shrink)

This paper explores the interaction between implicit and explicit processes during skill learning, in terms of top-down learning (that is, learning that goes from explicit to implicit knowledge) versus bottom-up learning (that is, learning that goes from implicit to explicit knowledge). Instead of studying each type of knowledge (implicit or explicit) in isolation, we stress the interaction between the two types, especially in terms of one type giving rise to the other, and its effects on learning. The work presents an (...) integrated model of skill learning that takes into account both implicit and explicit processes and both top-down and bottom-up learning. We examine and simulate human data in the Tower of Hanoi task. The paper shows how the quantitative data in this task may be captured using either top-down or bottom-up approaches, although top-down learning is a more apt explanation of the human data currently available. These results illustrate the two different directions of learning (top-down versus bottom-up), and thereby provide a new perspective on skill learning. Ó 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

The article first addresses the importance of cognitive modeling, in terms of its value to cognitive science (as well as other social and behavioral sciences). In particular, it emphasizes the use of cognitive architectures in this undertaking. Based on this approach, the article addresses, in detail, the idea of a multi-level approach that ranges from social to neural levels. In physical sciences, a rigorous set of theories is a hierarchy of descriptions/explanations, in which causal relationships among entities at a high (...) level can be reduced to causal relationships among simpler entities at a more detailed level. We argue that a similar hierarchy makes possible an equally productive approach toward cognitive modeling. The levels of models that we conceive in relation to cognition include, at the highest level, sociological/anthropological models of collective human behavior, behavioral models of individual performance, cognitive models involving detailed mechanisms, representations, and processes, as well as biological/physiological models of neural circuits, brain regions, and other detailed biological processes. (shrink)

This article explores the view that computational models of cognition may constitute valid theories of cognition, often in the full sense of the term ‘‘theory”. In this discussion, this article examines various (existent or possible) positions on this issue and argues in favor of the view above. It also connects this issue with a number of other relevant issues, such as the general relationship between theory and data, the validation of models, and the practical benefits of computational modeling. All the (...) discussions point to the position that computational cognitive models can be true theories of cognition. Ó 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

In the literature, CSR’s roles on firm performance are found to be positive, negative, or neutral. This inconclusive pattern suggests there may be a more complicated mechanism at work than the traditional focus on simple linear associations. We propose and test an inverted-U-shaped relationship between CSR and shareholder value, the fundamental measure of firm performance. Further, we incorporate a critical firm attribute, marketing capability, to moderate the nonlinear link between CSR and shareholder value, thereby exploring a previous understudied area involving (...) the interplay between CSR and market-side competency. The results show that an initial increase in CSR engagement positively drives firm shareholder value, but the effect turns negative when a firm pursues excessive CSR engagement. Notably, however, this negative association does not apply to firms that have a high marketing capability. Our research generates meaningful implications for a stakeholder view of CSR, strategic management, firm valuation, resource-based theories, and business practices. (shrink)

Students’ affective learning is critical for their academic success; therefore, considerable attention has been devoted to the role of various student-related and teacher-related factors as predictors of student affective learning. Notwithstanding, the impact of two important teacher-related factors, namely teacher–student rapport and teacher support, has not been adequately researched. To address this gap, the present study sought to explore the role of teacher support and teacher–student rapport in Chinese English as a foreign language students’ affective learning. To do so, three (...) valid inventories of the variables were administered to 497 Chinese EFL students. Performing correlational analyses, favorable associations were found between teacher–student rapport, teacher support, and student affective learning. The predictive power of teacher support and teacher–student rapport was assessed using structural equation modeling. Chinese EFL students’ affective learning was shown to be largely influenced by teacher–student rapport and teacher support. The pedagogical implications and future directions are also discussed. (shrink)

Deduction is decisive but nonetheless mysterious, as I argue in the introduction. I identify the mystery of deduction as surprise-effect and demonstration-difficulty. The first section delves into how the mystery of deduction is connected with the representation of information and lays the groundwork for our further discussions of various kinds of representation. The second and third sections, respectively, present a case study for the comparison between symbolic and diagrammatic representation systems in terms of how two aspects of the mystery of (...) deduction – surprise-effect and demonstration-difficulty – are handled. The fourth section illustrates several well-known examples to show how diagrammatic representation suggests more clues to the mystery of deduction than symbolic representation and suggests some conjectures and further work. (shrink)

This paper describes how meta-cognitive processes (i.e., the self monitoring and regulating of cognitive processes) may be captured within a cognitive architecture Clarion. Some currently popular cognitive architectures lack sufficiently complex built-in meta-cognitive mechanisms. However, a sufficiently complex meta-cognitive mechanism is important, in that it is an essential part of cognition and without it, human cognition may not function properly. We contend that such a meta-cognitive mechanism should be an integral part of a cognitive architecture. Thus such a mechanism has (...) been developed within the Clarion cognitive architecture. The paper demonstrates how human data of two meta-cognitive experiments are simulated using Clarion. The simulations show that the meta-cognitive processes represented by the experimental data (and beyond) can be adequately captured within the Clarion framework. (shrink)

With the emergence of online communities, more and more people are participating in online technology communities to meet personalized learning needs. This study aims to investigate whether and how male and female users behave differently in online technology communities. Using text data from Python Technology Community, through LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) model, sentiment analysis and regression analysis, this paper reveals the different topics of male and female users in the online technology community, their sentimental tendencies and activity under different topics, (...) and their correlation and their mutual influence. The results show that: (1) Male users tend to provide information help, while female users prefer to participate in the topic of making friends and advertising. (2) When communicating in the technology community, male and female users mostly express positive emotions, but female users express positive emotions more frequently. (3) Different emotional tendencies of male and female users under different topics have different effects on their activity in the community. The activity of female users is more susceptible to emotional orientation. (shrink)

The internal-external issue of ren 仁 and yi 義 concerning whether ren and yi are internal or external is traceable to the Warring States period. One of the most famous recorded debates happened between Gaozi and Mengzi in Mengzi 6A:4. In the existing literature it is generally believed that Gaozi holds that ren is "nei" 內 and yi is "wai" 外, whereas Mengzi contends that both ren and yi are "nei."1 However, this assertion has two problems that I aim to (...) address in the present essay.First, it is not well founded to predicate that Mengzi considers ren and yi, as well as li 禮 and zhi 智, completely... (shrink)

Aim To synthesize qualitative research on perspectives and understandings of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients, family members, and staff regarding respect and dignity in ICU, in order to explore the connotations and meanings of respect and dignity in ICU. Design A qualitative meta-synthesis. Methods The Chinese and English databases were systematically searched, including PubMed, Web of Science, CINAHL, Embase, Cochrane Library, CNKI, Wangfang Data, VIP, and CBM from each database’s inception to July 22, 2023. Studies were critically appraised using the (...) Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) Critical Appraisal Checklist for Qualitative Research. Qualitative data were extracted, summarized, and meta-synthesized. (PROSPERO: CRD42023447218). Results A total of 9 studies from 6 countries were included in the meta-synthesis. Thirty-six main themes and 67 sub-themes were extracted, which were eventually integrated into 9 categories and 4 themes: (1) integrity of humanity; (2) autonomy; (3) equality; (4) environmental support. Conclusion To maintain patient dignity, it is necessary to create an environment of respect within the ICU where healthcare professionals uphold the concept of preserving human integrity and respect patients' autonomy and equality. Healthcare professionals need to value the dignity of ICU patients and treat them as unique individuals during treatment and care. Hospital managers should also strive to create a respectful environment to provide environmental support for dignity care implementation. (shrink)

Logicians have strongly preferred first-order natural deductive systems over Peirce's Beta Graphs even though both are equivalent to each other. One of the main reasons for this preference, I claim, is that inference rules for Beta Graphs are hard to understand, and, therefore, hard to apply for deductions. This paper reformulates the Beta rules to show more fine-grained symmetries built around visual features of the Beta system, which makes the rules more natural and easier to use and understand. Noting that (...) the rules of a natural deductive system are natural in a different sense, this case study shows that the naturalness and the intuitiveness of rules depends on the type of representation system to which they belong. In a diagrammatic system, when visual features are discovered and fully used, we have a more efficacious deductive system. I will also show that this project not only helps us to apply these rules more easily but to understand the validity of the system at a more intuitive level. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to identify Peirce?s great contribution to logical diagrams and its limit.Peirce is the first person who believed that the same logical status can be given to diagrams as to symbolic systems.Even though this belief led him to invent his own graphical system, Existential Graphs, the success or failure of this system does not determine the value of Peirce?s general insights about logical diagrams.In order to make this point clear, I will show that Peirce?s revolutionary ideas (...) about diagrams not only overcame some important defects of Venn diagrams but opened a new horizon for logical diagrams.Finally, I will point out where Peirce?s new horizon for logical diagrams stopped and will claim that this limit is mainly responsible for the discrepancy between Peirce?s and others? estimates of his contribution to logical diagrams. (shrink)

Leukoaraiosis is a common imaging marker of cerebral small vessel disease. In recent years, with the continuous advances in brain imaging technology, the detection rate of leukoaraiosis is higher and its clinical subtypes are gradually gaining attention. Although leukoaraiosis has long been considered an incidental finding with no therapeutic necessity, there is now growing evidence linking it to, among other things, cognitive impairment and a high risk of death after stroke. Due to different research methods, some of the findings are (...) inconsistent and even contradictory. Therefore, a comprehensive and in-depth study of risk factors for leukoaraiosis is of great clinical significance. In this review, we summarize the literature on leukoaraiosis in recent years with the aim of elucidating the disease in terms of various aspects. (shrink)

A non‐normative, response‐dependent view about morality can avoid metaphysical extravagance and explain why the extension of some non‐normative concepts can non‐accidentally match the extension of moral concepts. These features make it a plausible reductive account of moral properties. However, some philosophers believe that a response‐dependent account of morality must contain an irreducibly normative component. I argue that it is impossible to defend such a position while retaining the response‐dependent nature of morality in the ordinary sense. However, I believe that philosophers' (...) motivation for engaging in such a philosophical project should be taken seriously. The underlying concern is that the plausibility of a response‐dependent view makes people's strong commitment to irreducible normativity a puzzle that requires an explanation. I explain why people systematically fail to give up this commitment without claiming that they rationally cannot give it up, which means a non‐normative response‐dependent view is immune from such a challenge. (shrink)

This work attempts to respond to Tomas Aquinas' Cosmological Argument in a way that combines Set Theory with the idea of the ‘Book of Change’. The study defines the ith Cause Set on which to operate on, which leads to the ontological commitment of austerity that the ‘First Cause's Compromise with emergence’ cannot be avoided. It is argued in the present paper that the concept that ‘emergence only consists of Synchronic Emergence and Diachronic Emergence’ should be extended to a broader (...) notion of emergence, which is made up of the two discussed elements and a third one ‘No-Boundary Emergence’ (beyond the time dimension). The article defines the concept of No-Boundary Emergence, proves why it is a type of emergence that differs from the traditional two types, and asserts that it underlies the bottom layer of the cosmos. This study describes the common feature of all emergence as communication protocols between layers. The assemblage of all emergences behaves similar to a distributed system that cannot be restricted by Gödel's theorem. The paper provides evidence (in Big Bang Cosmology, Conformal Cyclic Cosmology, Superstring Theory, Quantum Gravity) for this point of view, and notes that emergence (in the context of No-Boundary Emergence) is not only a simple scientific theory but also a progressive scientific research programme that can spontaneously grow from scientific theory based on Platonism at the expense of a degenerating shift to the ontological commitment of austerity. This paper proposes an improved model of Schrödinger Cat that provides a new explanation for quantum measurement and argues that there must be a forbidden zone of thought experiments. The study also introduces the implications of ancient Chinese thoughts (namely, the ‘Book of Change’ and Confucius). The paper comes to the conclusion that emergence (crossing the gap between ‘being’ and ‘nothing’, while ignoring the forbidden zone of thought experiments) relieves ‘cosmological insufficiency’ in the sense of Neo-Aristotelism. (shrink)

In the Analects (13.18) we find a case that a son reported his sheep-stealing father to the authority, and Confucius and the Duke of She disagreed whether the son was upright or not. This case reflects a conflict of strong and deep intuitions, and it continues to ignite heated debates. In this paper I first try to clarify the nature of this conflict and Confucius’s position, as it has many different interpretations. Next, I examine and articulate a variety of arguments (...) in support of Confucius’s position and classify them into five different types. Of the five arguments, two of them are especially noteworthy: the argument from Goodness and the argument from Social Utility. Both arguments can find strong support in Confucian tradition, and many historical arguments are still relevant and insightful today. These arguments also demonstrate the value of Confucian ethics in contemporary society. (shrink)

Almost no trace of the eleventh-century Tibetan kingdom of Tsongkha remains in extant Tibetan materials; to write its history, scholars have therefore had to rely almost exclusively on Chinese sources written during the Song dynasty. This paper identifies a hitherto undiscovered colophon preserved in the Tibetan Bud- dhist canon as belonging to a translation that was produced through the patronage of the Tsongkha royal court in 1068 or 1080. This colophon provides the Tibetan versions of the names of the Tsongkha (...) king Dongzhan, the queen Xinmu, and their capital/palace. Not only does this new source offer us a valuable local insight into this mysterious Tibetan kingdom, it also raises questions concerning the perception of Tsongkha by Song Chinese literati and Central Tibetan clerics during and after the eleventh century. The paper proffers a description and interpretation of the ambivalent status held by this border region among its two neighboring regions. (shrink)

The development and application of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has raised many concerns about privacy violations in the public. Thus, privacy-preserving computation technologies (PPCTs) have been developed, and it is expected that these new privacy protection technologies can solve the current privacy problems. By not directly using raw data provided by users, PPCTs claim to protect privacy in a better way than their predecessors. They still have technical limitations, and considerable research has treated PPCTs as a privacy-protecting tool and focused (...) on possible technical improvements. In this article, we argue that PPCTs cannot effectively protect privacy in the narrow sense due to their technical limitations. Moreover, although these shortcomings could be remedied, they still fall into a paradox because their aim is to protect privacy, but they could reveal private information from users. This paradox of privacy protection not only aggravates the social impact arising from AI privacy issues but may also make the current privacy protection lose its meaning, resulting in a situation in which privacy protection is useless. (shrink)

The issue of emotion contagion has been gaining attention. Humans can share emotions, for example, through gestures, through speech, or even through online text via social media. There have been computational models trying to capture emotion contagion. However, these models are limited as they tend to represent agents in a very simplified way. There exist also more complex models of agents and their emotions, but they are not yet addressing emotion contagion. We use a more psychologically realistic and better validated (...) model – the Clarion cognitive architecture – as the basis to model emotion and emotion contagion in a more psychologically realistic way. In particular, we use Clarion to capture and explain human data from typical human experiments on emotion contagion. This approach may open up avenues for more nuanced understanding of emotion contagion and more realistic capturing of its effects in different circumstances. (shrink)

The book Just Hierarchies: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World by Daniel A. Bell and Pei Wang aims to answer the following question: 'Should morally justifiable social hierarchies structure our social lives on an everyday basis, including our relations with loved ones?' Bell and Wang respond positively. In this article, I mainly focus on the relations between intimates, examining the arguments from the perspective of social egalitarianism and feminism. Bell and Wang argue that hierarchies (...) involving shifting roles are justified, but I shall argue that the defence of hierarchy in intimate relations is not completely convincing. First, the authors mistake hierarchical societies for hierarchical organisations. I will explain why this conflation is detrimental to the defence of hierarchies. Second, the authors neglect to mention some of the significant moral wrongs perpetuated by hierarchical systems. A hierarchy such as a caste system not only fixes inferior and superior positions but also conveys demeaning messages to those who are lower in rank. In addition, we also need to consider the macro-background of specific interpersonal hierarchies to be able to make sense of the wrongs of intimate hierarchies. Third, the practical implications of the defence of intimate hierarchies are ambiguous. I argue that, ultimately, the authors are not able to defend what they set out to defend at the very beginning of the book. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo elucidate the clinical, radiologic characteristics of Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON) associated with the other diseases.Materials and methodsClinical data were retrospectively collected from hospitalized patients with LHON associated with the other diseases at the Neuro-Ophthalmology Department at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army General Hospital (PLAGH) from December 2014 to October 2018.ResultsA total of 13 patients, 24 eyes (10 men and 3 women; mean age, 30.69 ± 12.76 years) with LHON mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations, were included in the cohort. 14502(5)11778(4)11778 (...) &11696(1)12811(1)11696(1)3460(1). One patient was positive for aquaporin-4 antibody (AQP4-Ab), and two were positive for myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein antibody (MOG-Ab). Three patients were associated with idiopathic optic neuritis (ON). Two patients were with compression optic neuropathy. Three patients were with the central nervous system (CNS) diseases. One patient was with proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) and one with idiopathic orbital inflammatory syndrome (IOIS). At the onset, visual acuity (VA) in eighteen eyes was below 0.1, one eye was 0.5, five eyes were above 0.5, while VA in sixteen eyes was below a 0.1 outcome, three eyes experienced moderate vision loss. MRI images showed T2 lesions and enhancement in nine patients who received corticosteroids treatment; additional immune modulators treatment was performed on two patients. None of the patients had relapse during the follow-up time.ConclusionLeber’s hereditary optic neuropathy can be accompanied with multiple-related diseases, especially different subtypes of ON, which were also exhibited with IOIS and compression optic neuropathy for the first time in this cohort. This condition may be a distinct entity with an unusual clinical and therapeutic profile. (shrink)