: Confucianism is often valued as a doctrine that highlights both the individual and social dimensions of the ideal person, for it indeed puts special emphasis on such lofty goals as loving all humanity and cultivating the self. Through a close and critical analysis of the texts of the Analects and the Mencius, however, it is attempted to demonstrate that because Confucius and Mencius always take filial piety, or, more generally, consanguineous affection, as not only the foundation but also the (...) supreme principle of human life, the individual and social dimensions are inevitably subordinated to and substantially negated by the filial precisely within the Confucian framework, with the result that Confucianism in essence is neither collectivism nor individualism, but "consanguinitism.". (shrink)

I first give a brief summary of a critique of the traditional theories of approximation and idealization; and after identifying one of the major roles of idealization as detaching component processes or systems from their joints, a detailed analysis is given of idealized laws – which are discoverable and/or applicable – in such processes and systems (i.e., idealized model systems). Then, I argue that dispositional properties should be regarded as admissible properties for laws and that such an inclusion supplies the (...) much needed connection between idealized models and the laws they `produce'' or `accommodate''. And I then argue that idealized law-statements so produced or accommodated in the models may be either true simpliciter or true approximately, but the latter is not because of the idealizations involved. I argue that the kind of limiting-case idealizations that produce approximate truth is best regarded as approximation; and finally I compare my theory with some existing theories of laws of nature.We seem to trace [in KingLear] ... the tendency of imagination toanalyse and abstract, to decomposehuman nature into its constituentfactors, and then to construct beings in whomone or more of these factors isabsent or atrophied or only incipient. (shrink)

In this paper I construct Confucian moral realism as a metaethical theory that is compatible with, or even derivable from, traditional Confucianism. The paper is at once interpretative and constructive. In my analysis, Confucians can establish the realist's claims on moral properties because they embrace the view of a moralistic universe. Moral properties in Confucian ethics not only are presented as objective, naturalistic properties, but also are seen as 'causally efficacious'. There are several theses commonly endorsed by contemporary moral realists. (...) I will explain how many of the remarks by Confucius, Mencius, in Yijing, The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean can be understood as implicit endorsements of these theses. I will also analyze the theses specific to Confucian moral realism. The paper will end with a brief defense of this form of realism. (shrink)

This essay is a philosophical evaluation of some of the findings of Wald and Penrose in which they claim to have supported an arrow (or the irreversibility) of time in quantum gravity. First, the notion of lawlike irreversibility (or anisotropy) of time is spelled out, then the general situation in quantum mechanics is briefly discussed. Finally, the findings in quantum gravity are evaluated against such a background. My conclusion is that the arrow of time found in quantum gravity is at (...) best de facto (nonlawlike). (shrink)

In traditional Chinese cosmology, this pattern could be very well explained in terms of the fluctuation of yin and yang, or as the natural order of Heaven. This cosmological explanation fits natural history well. There are natural phenomena such as floods, draughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc., that are beyond human control. These events have their determining factors. Once those factors are present, a natural disaster, however unfavorably viewed by humans, is doomed to take place. The view that natural history is (...) determined by factors outside the human world can be accepted without much controversy. However, when applied to human history, the role of man in human history becomes problematic under this kind of cosmology. How much of our success or failure is due to our larger cosmological environment -- the ongoing development of the chi'? Can a single individual reverse the flow of yin and yang or the emergence of good times and bad times? On a larger scale, is human history predestined? If there is a necessary rotation of prosperity and chaos, then it can be argued that.. (shrink)

Confucianism has usually been regarded as a secular moral philosophy with no religious import at all. In china, However, Confucianism has been mentioned along with buddhism and taoism as one of the three religions (the so-Called san-Chiao) for centuries. This means that we must revise and broaden our traditional concept of religion. The confucian tradition certainly has its unique way of expressing its ultimate and therefore religious concern. The present essay is an attempt to uncover the religious import in confucian (...) philosophy and to ascertain its meaning in contemporary discussions of theology and philosophy of religion. In this article, First, The development of the confucian religious attitude has been traced; second, This attitude has been compared with the christian attitude; third, Its contemporary significance with reference to the current development of theology and religious philosophy in the west has been discussed; finally, Some general remarks upon the relevance of religious message to today's situation have been made. (shrink)

The concepts in the title refer to properties of physical theories and this paper investigates their nature and relations. The first three concepts, especially gauge invariance and indeterminism, have been widely discussed in connection to spacetime theories and the hole argument. Since the gauge invariance principle is at the crux of the issue, this paper aims at clarifying the nature of gauge invariance. I first explore the following chain of relations: gauge invariance $\Rightarrow $ the conservation laws $\Rightarrow $ the (...) Cauchy problem $\Rightarrow $ indeterminism. Then I discuss gauge invariance in light of our understanding of the above relations and the possibility of spontaneous symmetry breaking. (shrink)

One of the more controversial uses of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) involves selecting embryos with a specific tissue type so that the child to be born can act as a donor to an existing sibling who requires a haematopoietic stem cell transplant. PGD with HLA tissue typing is used to select embryos that are free of a familial genetic disease and that are also a tissue match for an existing sibling who requires a transplant. Preimplantation HLA tissue typing occurs when (...) parents select embryos that are not at risk of a familial genetic disease to be a match for an existing sibling who requires a transplant. In Victoria, Australia, applications to use PGD with HLA tissue typing are reviewed by the Infertility Treatment Authority on a case by case basis. Preimplantation HLA tissue typing is prohibited prima facie because the embryo to be tested would not be at risk for a genetic abnormality or disease. Arguments for or against the use of PGD/HLA tissue typing are based on several key issues including the commodification and welfare of the donor child. This essay aims to show that that the same arguments apply to both PGD with HLA tissue typing and Preimplantation HLA tissue typing, and that the policy distinction between the two procedures is therefore ethically inconsistent. (shrink)

The origin, content, argumentative basis, practical implication, and influence of Mencius' views of mind-heart and human nature are discussed. While the differences between Confucius and Mencius are acknowledged, it is argued that Mencius' view that human nature is good is consistent with and is a further development of basic ideas in Confucius' thinking. The basis of Mencius' view is not empirical generalization but inner reflection and personal experience, which reveal a shared natural endowment in human beings with a transcendental source. (...) In addition to a discussion of Mencius' views, the development of his ideas in the Sung and Ming and by contemporary Neo-Confucians is also considered. (shrink)

The "Philosophy of the Mind" teachings of Lu [Jiuyuan] and Wang [Yangming] represented a major school of thought in the neo-Confucianism of the Song and Ming dynasties. This school of thought can trace its sources and genealogy back to the notions of "fulfill the mind, know nature, and know Heaven" and "All Things are possessed within myself of Mencius in the pre-Qin period of Chinese philosophy, and was formed from these basic philosophical notions; further, it was a school of subjective (...) idealism unique to Chinese philosophy. It had a significant impact on the enlightenment thought both in the period between the Ming and Qing dynasties and in the modern era. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, and particularly in the last ten years, in the wake of the deepening of the studies on the scholarship of the Song and Ming periods on the part of people in our country, there has also been very great progress in the area of research of the Lu and Wang school of philosophy of the mind. In the following article, we shall attempt to discuss selectively the major developments of this school of thought. (shrink)

Most theories of slurs fall into one of two families: those which understand slurring terms to involve special descriptive/informational content (however conveyed), and those which understand them to encode special emotive/expressive content. Our view is that both offer essential insights, but that part of what sets slurs apart is use-theoretic content. In particular, we urge that slurring words belong at the intersection of a number of categories in a sociolinguistic register taxonomy, one that usually includes [+slang] and [+vulgar] and always (...) includes [-polite] and [+derogatory]. Thus, e.g., what distinguishes ‘Chinese’ from ‘chink’ is neither a peculiar sort of descriptive nor emotional content, but rather the fact that ‘chink’ is lexically marked as belonging to different registers than ‘Chinese’. It is, moreover, partly such facts which makes slurring ethically unacceptable. (shrink)

In his classic book “the Foundations of Statistics” Savage developed a formal system of rational decision making. The system is based on (i) a set of possible states of the world, (ii) a set of consequences, (iii) a set of acts, which are functions from states to consequences, and (iv) a preference relation over the acts, which represents the preferences of an idealized rational agent. The goal and the culmination of the enterprise is a representation theorem: Any preference relation that (...) satisfies certain arguably acceptable postulates determines a (finitely additive) probability distribution over the states and a utility assignment to the consequences, such that the preferences among acts are determined by their expected utilities. Additional problematic assumptions are however required in Savage's proofs. First, there is a Boolean algebra of events (sets of states) which determines the richness of the set of acts. The probabilities are assigned to members of this algebra. Savage's proof requires that this be a σ-algebra (i.e., closed under infinite countable unions and intersections), which makes for an extremely rich preference relation. On Savage's view we should not require subjective probabilities to be σ-additive. He therefore finds the insistence on a σ-algebra peculiar and is unhappy with it. But he sees no way of avoiding it. Second, the assignment of utilities requires the constant act assumption: for every consequence there is a constant act, which produces that consequence in every state. This assumption is known to be highly counterintuitive. The present work contains two mathematical results. The first, and the more difficult one, shows that the σ-algebra assumption can be dropped. The second states that, as long as utilities are assigned to finite gambles only, the constant act assumption can be replaced by the more plausible and much weaker assumption that there are at least two non-equivalent constant acts. The second result also employs a novel way of deriving utilities in Savage-style systems -- without appealing to von Neumann-Morgenstern lotteries. The paper discusses the notion of “idealized agent" that underlies Savage's approach, and argues that the simplified system, which is adequate for all the actual purposes for which the system is designed, involves a more realistic notion of an idealized agent. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly expected to disrupt the ordinary functioning of society. From how we fight wars or govern society, to how we work and play, and from how we create to how we teach and learn, there is almost no field of human activity which is believed to be entirely immune from the impact of this emerging technology. This poses a multifaceted problem when it comes to designing and understanding regulatory responses to AI. This article aims to: (i) (...) defend the need for a novel conceptual model for understanding the systemic legal disruption caused by new technologies such as AI; (ii) to situate this model in relation to preceding debates about the interaction of regulation with new technologies (particularly the ‘cyberlaw’ and ‘robolaw’ debates); and (iii) to set out a detailed model for understanding the legal disruption precipitated by AI, examining both pathways stemming from new affordances that can give rise to a regulatory ‘disruptive moment’, as well as the Legal Development, Displacement or Destruction that can ensue. The article proposes that this model of legal disruption can be broadly generalisable to understanding the legal effects and challenges of other emerging technologies. (shrink)

In the last 20 years, much attention has been paid to learners’ demotivation. Researchers have conducted many studies on second/foreign language learning demotivation from the perspectives of social culture, social psychology, and so forth. In China, related studies have mainly focused on college students’ demotivation; scant attention has been paid to senior high school students. Regarding scale development, although much progress has been made, there remains a need for a scale with high reliability and validity that is suitable for students (...) in the basic education stage. Therefore, based on previous studies and choosing Chinese senior high school students as participants, this research study developed a scale with 55 items, and exploratory factor analysis was used to develop a 28-item scale with six dimensions. The six-dimensional construct encompasses teacher knowledge, important others, teacher responsibility, learner-related factors, learning contents, and critical incidents, which are the key factors leading to English learners’ demotivation. Among them, the factor of critical incidents is new and has been overlooked by other researchers. Moreover, the descriptive analysis demonstrated the degree to which the demotivators influence learners, and the independent samples t-test found a significant difference in the impact of critical incidents in terms of the students’ language proficiency. Ultimately, four suggestions are put forward to remotivate and sustain learners’ motivation. (shrink)

This paper sheds light on the incongruent findings concerning the relationship between family involvement and firms’ corporate social responsibility. While prior studies have mainly taken the perspective of families’ socioemotional wealth preservation, we approach this relationship from the perspective of behavioral agency theory, highlighting the important role played by CEOs’ family memberships. Specifically, we posit that family firms are more likely to invest in CSR when their CEOs are members of the controlling families. Furthermore, we examine how family firms can (...) employ long-term incentives to encourage non-family CEOs to act in the interests of the controlling families to preserve SEW and thus enhancing family firms’ CSR performance. We tested our hypotheses using hand-collected data of family firms included in the S&P 500 index, in the period of 2003–2010. The empirical findings support our hypotheses that family firms with family members as the CEOs have better CSR performance and family firms tend to provide a high level of long-term incentives to non-family than family CEOs. In addition, long-term incentives strongly motivate CEOs to improve firms’ CSR performance, regardless of their family memberships. (shrink)

Severe tour guide stigma is a significant problem hindering tourism development. Based on self-identity threat and moral disengagement theory, this study analyzed the relationship between tour guide stigmatization and tour guides’ interpersonal deviance behavior. Survey data collected from 241 tour guides at three different points in time showed that tour guide stigmatization was positively related to tour guides’ interpersonal deviance behavior and that self-identity threat mediated this effect. The results also show that moral disengagement moderated the effect of tour guides’ (...) self-identity threat on interpersonal deviance behavior, as well as the indirect effect of tour guide stigmatization on tour guides’ interpersonal deviance behavior via self-identity threat. This study enriches theoretical research on tour guide stigmatization and offers practical suggestions for solving stigmatization problems for tour guides and organizations. (shrink)

We consider Geanakoplos and Polemarchakis’s generalization of Aumman’s famous result on “agreeing to disagree", in the context of imprecise probability. The main purpose is to reveal a connection between the possibility of agreeing to disagree and the interesting and anomalous phenomenon known as dilation. We show that for two agents who share the same set of priors and update by conditioning on every prior, it is impossible to agree to disagree on the lower or upper probability of a hypothesis unless (...) a certain dilation occurs. With some common topological assumptions, the result entails that it is impossible to agree not to have the same set of posterior probabilities unless dilation is present. This result may be used to generate sufficient conditions for guaranteed full agreement in the generalized Aumman-setting for some important models of imprecise priors, and we illustrate the potential with an agreement result involving the density ratio classes. We also provide a formulation of our results in terms of “dilation-averse” agents who ignore information about the value of a dilating partition but otherwise update by full Bayesian conditioning. (shrink)

Adopting an instrumental approach for stakeholder management, we focus on two primary stakeholder groups to investigate the relationship between employee treatment and loan contracts with banks. We find strong evidence that fair employee treatment reduces loan price and limits the use of financial covenants. In addition, we document that relationship bank lenders price both the levels and changes in the quality of employee treatment, whereas first-time bank lenders only care about the levels of fair employee treatment. Taking a contingency perspective, (...) we find that industry competition and firm asset intangibility moderate the relationship between good human resource management and bank loan costs. The cost reduction effect of fair employee treatment is stronger for firms operating in a more competitive industry and having higher levels of intangible assets. (shrink)

Savage's framework of subjective preference among acts provides a paradigmatic derivation of rational subjective probabilities within a more general theory of rational decisions. The system is based on a set of possible states of the world, and on acts, which are functions that assign to each state a consequence€. The representation theorem states that the given preference between acts is determined by their expected utilities, based on uniquely determined probabilities (assigned to sets of states), and numeric utilities assigned to consequences. (...) Savage's derivation, however, is based on a highly problematic well-known assumption not included among his postulates: for any consequence of an act in some state, there is a "constant act" which has that consequence in all states. This ability to transfer consequences from state to state is, in many cases, miraculous -- including simple scenarios suggested by Savage as natural cases for applying his theory. We propose a simplification of the system, which yields the representation theorem without the constant act assumption. We need only postulates P1-P6. This is done at the cost of reducing the set of acts included in the setup. The reduction excludes certain theoretical infinitary scenarios, but includes the scenarios that should be handled by a system that models human decisions. (shrink)

Status in an organization is considered a significant antecedent to an employee's work-related behaviors. However, the relationship between knowledge workers' informal status and "taking charge" has been ignored in previous human resource management (HRM) research. Based on the self-consistency theory, this study examines the mechanisms underlying the influence of knowledge workers’ informal status on taking charge. Data were collected from 337 dyads of employees and their immediate supervisors in 24 enterprises and companies. Based on moderated mediation analysis, results indicated that (...) knowledge workers’ informal status is positively related to taking charge and organization-based self-esteem (OBSE). OBSE fully mediated the relationship between knowledge workers’ informal status and taking charge, while person-job fit (P-J fit) and person-supervisor fit (P-S fit) each moderated the relationship between knowledge workers’ informal status and OBSE, in addition to the indirect effect of knowledge workers’ informal status on taking charge. Specifically, the indirect effect was strongest when P-J fit or P-S fit was high. The theoretical and managerial implications of the findings, limitations of the study, and future research directions are discussed. (shrink)

We explored the division of parenthood in Chinese families with adolescents by identifying the parental involvement patterns in the data obtained from 786 pairs of parents. Division-of-parenthood patterns were created via factor mixture modeling using self-reported three dimensions of father and mother involvement. Three differential division-of-parenthood patterns were identified: (a) parent-cooperation pattern, where moderate and equivalent involvement existed between mothers and fathers; (b) mother-dominated pattern, where mother involvement was particularly greater than father involvement; and (c) father-dominated pattern, where father involvement (...) was particularly greater than mother involvement. Families were more likely to be in the mother- or the father-dominated pattern as their levels of positive coparenting behaviors increased. By contrast, as the levels of paternal conflict behavior increased, families were likely to be in the mother-dominated pattern. This study highlighted parents’ individual parenting role, the diverse division-of-parenthood patterns in the family, and the important role of coparenting behavior. (shrink)

To the memory of Prof. Grigori Mints, Stanford UniversityBorn: June 7, 1939, St. Petersburg, RussiaDied: May 29, 2014, Palo Alto, California.

This study investigated the relative role of sub-syllabic components in spoken word recognition of Mandarin Chinese using an eye-tracking experiment with a visual world paradigm. Native Mandarin speakers were presented with four pictures and an auditory stimulus. They were required to click the picture according to the sound stimulus they heard, and their eye movements were tracked during this process. For a target word, nine conditions of competitors were constructed in terms of the amount of their phonological overlap with the (...) target: consonant competitor, rime competitor, tone competitor, consonant plus rime competitor, consonant plus tone competitor, rime plus tone competitor, cohort competitor, cohort plus tone competitor, and baseline competitor. A growth curve analysis was conducted with the fixation to competitors, targets, and distractors, and the results showed that competitors with consonant or rime overlap can be adequately activated, while tone overlap plays a weaker role since additional tonal information can strengthen the competitive effect only when it was added to a candidate that already bears much phonological similarity with the target. Mandarin words are processed in an incremental way in the time course of word recognition since different partially overlapping competitors could be activated immediately; like the pattern found in English, both cohort and rime competitors were activated to compete for lexical activation, but these two competitors were not temporally distinctive and mainly differed in the size of their competitive effects. Generally, the gradation of activation based on the phonological similarity between target and candidates found in this study was in line with the continuous mapping models and may reflect a strategy of native speakers shaped by the informative characteristics of the interaction among different sub-syllabic components. (shrink)