Safeguarding GenAI models against threats and aligning them with security requirements is imperative yet challenging. This chapter provides an overview of the security landscape for generative models. It begins by elucidating common vulnerabilities and attack vectors, including adversarial attacks, model inversion, backdoors, data extraction, and algorithmic bias. The practical implications of these threats are discussed, spanning domains like finance, healthcare, and content creation. The narrative then shifts to exploring mitigation strategies and innovative security paradigms. Differential privacy, blockchain-based provenance, quantum-resistant algorithms, (...) and human-guided reinforcement learning are analyzed as potential techniques to harden generative models. Broader ethical concerns surrounding transparency, accountability, deepfakes, and model interpretability are also addressed. The chapter aims to establish a conceptual foundation encompassing both the technical and ethical dimensions of security for generative AI. It highlights open challenges and lays the groundwork for developing robust, trustworthy, and human-centric solutions. The multifaceted perspective spanning vulnerabilities, implications, and solutions is intended to further discourse on securing society’s growing reliance on generative models. Frontier model security is discussed using Anthropic proposed approach. (shrink)

Liver transplantation (LT) activities during the COVID-19 pandemic have been curtailed in many countries. The impact of various policies restricting LT on outcomes of potential LT candidates is unclear. We studied all patients on the nationwide LT waitlists in Hong Kong and Singapore between January 2016 and May 2020. We used continuous time Markov chains to model the effects of different scenarios and varying durations of disruption on LT candidates.

The design, implementation, and outcome of game-based learning for learners with disabilities have not been sufficiently examined systematically. Particularly, learner-based and contextual factors, as well as the essential roles played by various stakeholders, have not been addressed when game-based learning applications are used in special education. Therefore, a systematic literature review using the Activity Theory was conducted to analyse studies about game-based learning for learners with disabilities. Content analysis of 96 studies reported relevant information with respect to each activity component— (...) subject, technology, object, rules, community, division of labour and outcome. Furthermore, this study identified existing gaps from the reviewed studies, including occasional lack of parental engagement, difficulty of standardising performance measures due to the heterogeneity of learner profiles and contradictions. Finally, recommendations were made under each activity component. The study concluded that both general and domain-specific guidelines should be created for each disability category proposed in this review to assist practitioners who wish to use game-based learning with learners with disabilities. (shrink)

Let me first express my gratitude for the three detailed and informative critiques of my book The China Model. These critiques are themselves models of Confucian civility, even as they express sharp areas of disagreement. There does seem to be agreement that the ideal of a Confucian-inspired democratic meritocracy is a worthwhile political project, particularly in the Chinese political context, but Huang, Li, and Wang question my book's arguments in defense of this ideal. There are three kinds of critiques: (...) the need to take Confucianism more seriously, the need to take democracy more seriously, and the need to take political meritocracy more seriously. Let me try to respond to each critique in turn.Yong... (shrink)

Daniel Bell's The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy is a significant contribution to contemporary political theory. I am very much in sympathy with his ideal of political meritocracy, although I would disagree with him on the degree to which it is realized or practiced in China today; for me, the reality is as distant from Bell's ideal of political meritocracy, if I understand it correctly, as it is from democracy. However, in the present comment, I (...) will not exploit this disagreement. Instead, I will try to make two friendly amendments to his political meritocracy as an ideal, with which I have a lot of agreements. In the Introduction to the book, Bell discloses that "I developed an... (shrink)

Interviews Professor Wang, a political philosopher at Beijing University about the political reforms in China. Explanation on a democratic political system with Chinese characteristics; Confucian tradition of respect for a ruling intellectual elite; Relevance of Confucian scholar Huang Zongxi's proposal for reform.

Psychopaths are often regarded as a scourge of contemporary society and, as such, are the focus of much public vilification and outrage. But, arguably, psychopaths are both sinned against as well as sinners. If that is true, then their status as the victims of abusive subcultures partially mitigates their moral responsibility for the harms they cause. We argue, from the neuroethics of psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), that communities have a moral obligation to psychopaths as well as a case (...) against them. A reflection on the genesis and developmental epidemiology of psychopathy reveals an individualist, attribution-type error evident in much Western psychological and legal thinking—an error that obscures important moral truths about psychopaths. The resulting analysis makes us reconsider the distinction between disorders and moral failings and the ethical significance of the biological or neurocognitive mechanisms underpinning psychopathy. We claim that casting aside the deficit model (based on the presupposition that psychopaths are intrinsically unlike the rest of us) in favor of a relational and holistic view of personality potentiates a more informed and inclusive set of ethical, forensic, and therapeutic attitudes. (shrink)

Unrealistic therapeutic beliefs are very common—the majority of patient-subjects enrol in phase 1 trials seeking and expecting significant medical benefit, even though the likelihood of such benefit has historically proven very low. The high prevalence of therapeutic misestimation and unrealistic optimism in particular has stimulated debate about whether unrealistic therapeutic beliefs in early-phase clinical trials preclude adequate informed consent. We seek here to help resolve this controversy by showing that a crucial determination of when such therapeutic beliefs are ethically problematic (...) turns on whether they are causally linked and instrumental to the motivation to participate in the trial. Thus, in practice, it is ethically incumbent on researchers to determine which understanding and beliefs lead to the participant’s primary motivation for enrolling, not to simply assess understanding, beliefs and motivations independently. We further contend that assessing patient-subjects’ appreciation as a component of informed consent—it is already an established component of decision-making capacity assessments—can help elucidate the link between understanding-beliefs and motivation; appreciation refers to an individual’s understanding of the personal significance of both the medical facts and the experience of trial participation. Therefore, we recommend that: in addition to the usual question, ‘Why do you want to participate in this trial?’, all potential participants should be asked the question: ‘What are you giving up by participating in this trial?’ and researchers should consider the settings in which it may be possible and practical to obtain ‘two-point consent’. (shrink)

This Element provides a comprehensive introduction to philosophy of neuroscience. It covers such topics as how neuroscientists procure knowledge, including not just research techniques but the use of various model organisms. It presents examples of knowledge acquired in neuroscience that are then employed to discuss more philosophical topics such as the nature of explanations developed in neuroscience, the different conception of levels employed in discussions of neuroscience, and the invocation of representations in neuroscience explanations. The text emphasizes the importance of (...) brain processes beyond those in the neocortex and then explores what makes processing in neocortex different. It consider the view that the nervous system consists of control mechanisms and considers arguments for hierarchical vs. heterarchical organization of control mechanisms. It concludes by considering implications of findings in neuroscience for how humans conceive of themselves and practices such as embracing norms. (shrink)

We draw from ego depletion and leader–member exchange theories to provide nuanced insight into why abusive supervision is indirectly associated with supervisor-directed destructive voice. A multi-wave, multi-source field study demonstrates evidence that abusive supervision has a positive conditional indirect effect on supervisor-directed destructive voice through subordinates’ relational ego depletion with their supervisors that is stronger for higher LMX differentiation contexts than lower LMX differentiation contexts. We make novel theoretical, empirical, and practical contributions by providing a parsimonious explanation for why relational (...) aspects of supervisory treatment drain subordinates’ capacities for controlling their volitional actions during interactions with their supervisors and how this relationship impacts subordinates’ supervisor-directed destructive voice. Overall, our study extends the application of ego depletion and LMX theories to the examination of abusive supervision and destructive voice in order to meaningfully inform researchers’ attempts to build cohesive streams of research in these areas and practitioners’ attempts to promote ethical workplace environments. (shrink)

This research focuses on the employee loyalty aspect of private hospitals in Pakistan during the COVID-19 pandemic, seriously impacted by strict work demand and work-family conflict. To manage this issue, social rewards and psychological rewards played a role as a mediator. The study uses a causal research design with a correlational study design in a non-contrived environment. Minimal researcher interference has been assured. AMOS 24 has been used to deal with the mediation in study design with bootstrap methodology. The study (...) was conducted on 250 nurses of different private hospitals across Punjab province using a proportionate stratified sampling technique. A finding of this study suggests that nurses remain loyal to their organizations despite having uncompromising work demands and facing work-family conflict when they are provided with social and psychological rewards on their job by their organizations. (shrink)

In this study Daniel Conway shows how Nietzsche's political thinking bears a closer resemblance to the conservative republicanism of his predecessors than to the progressive liberalism of his contemporaries. The key contemporary figures such as Habermas, Foucault, McIntyre, Rorty and Rawls are also examined in the light of Nietzsche's political legacy. _Nietzsche and the Political___ also draws out important implications for contemporary liberalism and feminist thought, above all showing Nietzsche's continuing relevance to the shape of political thinking today.

In this book, Daniel Shapiro argues that the dominant positions in contemporary political philosophy - egalitarianism, positive rights theory, communitarianism, and many forms of liberalism - should converge in a rejection of central welfare state institutions. He examines how major welfare institutions, such as government-financed and -administered retirement pensions, national health insurance, and programs for the needy, actually work. Comparing them to compulsory private insurance and private charities, Shapiro argues that the dominant perspectives in political philosophy mistakenly think that (...) their principles support the welfare state. Instead, egalitarians, positive rights theorists, communitarians, and liberals have misunderstood the implications of their own principles, which in fact support more market-based or libertarian institutional conclusions than they may realize. Shapiro's book is unique in its combination of political philosophy with social science. Its focus is not limited to any particular country; rather it examines welfare states in affluent democracies and their market alternatives. (shrink)

The concept of integrity appears in many arguments and theories in business ethics and organizational behavior where it plays multiple roles. It has been shown to have desirable organizational outcomes and is held as important by the academic and practitioner alike. Yet despite its prominence there are a variety of approaches to defining and conceptualizing it and little existent theory to explain its nature. We offer integrative social contracts theory (ISCT) as a framework that can anchor integrity in ethical theory (...) and also encompass aspects of integrity such as wholeness, consistency, and authenticity. In addition we show how ISCT can resolve some of the challenges to definitions of integrity that have been raised in the literature and hence we provide some suggestions for future academic research and suggestions for the practitioner. (shrink)

Daniel K. Gardner explores the major philosophical ideas of the Confucian tradition, showing the profound social and political impact it had and continues to have in China.

Robert Pirsig wrote of Steve Hagen's first book, Why the World Doesn't Seem to Make Sense, "For those who are certain that objectivity and intellect are the ground floor of all knowledge, this can be a valuable trip to the sub-basement." Now, in The Grand Delusion, Hagen drills deeper, into the most basic strengths, assumptions, and limitations of religion and belief, philosophy and inquiry, science, and technology. In doing so, he shines new light on the question Why is there Something (...) rather than Nothing?-and shines this light from an entirely unexpected (and largely unexplored) direction. Using a provocative mix of examples from physics, philosophy, religion, myth, neuroscience, and mathematics-and a clever, shade-throwing Socratic dialogue between Hagen and his foil, "ANYONE"-this book also offers a fresh perspective on other questions that science, philosophy, and religion have long grappled with. Such topics include: · What does it mean to exist? · What is mind? · What constitutes a measurement? · What exactly is motion? Layer by layer, Hagen examines the questions we ask, the way we ask them, the assumptions and beliefs we hold dear, and the ways in which we separate ourselves from the very answers we seek. In the process, he draws on sources that include Huang Po, Richard Feynman, Sir Arthur Eddington, Hui-Neng, Susan B. Anthony, Daniel Dennett, Joseph Campbell, Dogen, Emily Dickinson, Nagarjuna, Ikkyu, William I. McLaughlin, Sam Harris, and Henry David Thoreau. Ultimately, this book reveals how all of these fundamental questions-and many, many more-stem from a single error, a single unwarranted belief, a single Grand Delusion. The Grand Delusion helps readers move past this delusion into insight that can settle these age-old and seemingly intractable questions. (shrink)

A Modern Legal Ethics proposes a wholesale renovation of legal ethics, one that contributes to ethical thought generally. Daniel Markovits reinterprets the positive law governing lawyers to identify fidelity as its organizing ideal. Unlike ordinary loyalty, fidelity requires lawyers to repress their personal judgments concerning the truth and justice of their clients' claims. Next, the book asks what it is like--not psychologically but ethically--to practice law subject to the self-effacement that fidelity demands. Fidelity requires lawyers to lie and to (...) cheat on behalf of their clients. However, an ethically profound interest in integrity gives lawyers reason to resist this characterization of their conduct. Any legal ethics adequate to the complexity of lawyers' lived experience must address the moral dilemmas immanent in this tension. The dominant approaches to legal ethics cannot. Finally, A Modern Legal Ethics reintegrates legal ethics into political philosophy in a fashion commensurate to lawyers' central place in political practice. Lawyerly fidelity supports the authority of adjudication and thus the broader project of political legitimacy. Throughout, the book rejects the casuistry that dominates contemporary applied ethics in favor of an interpretive method that may be mimicked in other areas. Moreover, because lawyers practice at the hinge of modern morals and politics, the book's interpretive insights identify--in an unusually pure and intense form--the moral and political conditions of all modernity. (shrink)

Given the current shortage of kindergarten teachers, this study examines the relationship between empowering leadership and job satisfaction among kindergarten teachers in China from the perspective of their job characteristics and the Chinese cultural context. The participants were 557 Chinese kindergarten female teachers whose average number of years of experience was 2.82. They completed a self-report survey regarding empowering leadership, vigor, affective commitment, and job satisfaction. The study results show that vigor and affective commitment could mediate the relationship between empowering (...) leadership and job satisfaction. Finally, we discuss the findings of this study in depth. At the same time, we suggest that administrators should focus on the empowering leadership of Chinese kindergarten teachers, strive to increase their level of dynamism, and finally, strengthen the emotional connection between the organization and the Chinese kindergarten teachers. Thus, we suggest that educational administrators should empower kindergarten teachers more, rather than allowing them to be mere enforcers. In addition, how to enhance the individual dynamics of early childhood teachers and their emotional connection to the organization may also be something for educational administrators to consider. (shrink)

We review recent progress in the stem cell biology of the respiratory system, and discuss its scientific and translational ramifications. Several studies have defined novel stem cells in postnatal lung and airways and implicated their roles in tissue homeostasis and repair. In addition, significant advances in the generation of respiratory epithelium from pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) now provide a novel and powerful platform for understanding lung development, modeling pulmonary diseases, and implementing drug screening. Finally, breakthroughs have been made in the (...) generation of decellularized lung matrices that can serve as a scaffold for repopulation with respiratory cells derived from either postnatal or PSCs. These studies are a critical step forward towards the still distant goal of stem cell‐based regenerative medicine for diseases of lung and airways. (shrink)

I outline Rawls's theory of justification, highlighting its philosophical and pragmatic conditions. I argue that the theory has remained essentially unchanged since his earliest methodological writings, and that his recent writings have sought to show how "justice as fairness" can satisfy these conditions, given Rawls's new construal of the "fact of pluralism" which theories of justice designed for modern Western liberal democracies must address. I argue that neither Rawls's revised conception of reflective equilibrium, based on the "fixed points" of such (...) societies' political cultures rather than on individuals' "considered moral judgments" nor the newer notion of "overlapping consensus", succeed in justifying "justice as fairness" according to the terms of Rawls's theory of justification. (shrink)

Scientific psychology and neuroscience are taking increasingly precise and comprehensive pictures of the human mind, both in its physi- cal architecture and its functional processes. Meanwhile, each human mind has an abbreviated view of itself, a self-portrait that captures how it thinks it operates, and that therefore has been remarkably influential. The mind’s self-portrait has as a central feature the idea that thoughts cause actions, and that the self is thus an origin of the body’s actions. This self- portrait is (...) reached through a process of inference of apparent mental cau- sation, and it gives rise to the experience that we are consciously willing what we do. Evidence from several sources suggests that this self-portrait may often be a humble and misleading caricature of the mind’s opera- tion—but one that underlies the feeling of authorship and the acceptance of responsibility for action. (shrink)

For much of the twentieth century, Confucianism was condemned by Westerners and East Asians alike as antithetical to modernity. Internationally renowned philosophers, historians, and social scientists argue otherwise in Confucian Political Ethics. They show how classical Confucian theory--with its emphasis on family ties, self-improvement, education, and the social good--is highly relevant to the most pressing dilemmas confronting us today. Drawing upon in-depth, cross-cultural dialogues, the contributors delve into the relationship of Confucian political ethics to contemporary social issues, exploring Confucian perspectives (...) on civil society, government, territorial boundaries and boundaries of the human body and body politic, and ethical pluralism. They examine how Confucianism, often dismissed as backwardly patriarchal, can in fact find common ground with a range of contemporary feminist values and need not hinder gender equality. And they show how Confucian theories about war and peace were formulated in a context not so different from today's international system, and how they can help us achieve a more peaceful global community. This thought-provoking volume affirms the enduring relevance of Confucian moral and political thinking, and will stimulate important debate among policymakers, researchers, and students of politics, philosophy, applied ethics, and East Asian studies. The contributors are Daniel A. Bell, Joseph Chan, Sin Yee Chan, Chenyang Li, Richard Madsen, Ni Lexiong, Peter Nosco, Michael Nylan, Henry Rosemont, Jr., and Lee H. Yearley. (shrink)

The authors examined how a perceiver’s identification of a target person’s actions covaries with attributions of mind to the target. The authors found in Study 1 that the attribution of intentionality and cognition to a target was associated with identifying the target’s action in terms of high-level effects rather than low-level details. In Study 2, both action identification and mind attribution were greater for a liked target, and in Study 3, they were reduced for a target suffering misfortune. In Study (...) 4, it was again found that action identification and mind attribution were greater for a liked target, but like that for the self or a liked other, positive actions were identified at higher levels than negative actions, with the reverse being true for disliked others. In Study 5, the authors found that instructing participants to adopt the target’s perspective did not affect mind attribution but did lead to higher level identifications of the.. (shrink)

In recent years, consumers in the United States have been confronted by no fewer than four competing fair-trade labels, each grounded in a separate certification system and widely differing standards. This fracturing is partly a response to the recent split by the U.S. certifier Fair Trade USA from the international fair trade system, but also illustrates longstanding divisions within the fair trade movement. This article explores the dynamics of competition among nonstate standards through content analyses of fair trade standards documents (...) from the four U.S. fair-trade certifications for agrifood products. It analyzes the differences among them, asking what kinds of social and labor relations are facilitated by each, and identifies how closely they correspond with key fair trade principles. We make two primary arguments. First, we contend that the case of fair trade challenges the dominant conceptual model used to analyze competition among multiple private standards in a single arena, in which newer challengers lower the rigor of standards. Second, we argue that the current fractured U.S. certification landscape illuminates divisions among different interest groups over which principles—and which labor and production forms—should be privileged under the banner of fair trade. (shrink)

Ce texte a déjà paru dans La Lettre de l'OCIM, n° 150, novembre-décembre 2013, p. 15-24. Nous remercions Daniel Jacobi et Serge Lochot, Rédacteur en chef La Lettre de l'OCIM, de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. L'exposition temporaire résistera-t-elle à la montée en force de l'événementiel? Cette interrogation nourrit ici une réflexion menée à partir d'une analyse des différentes offres – expositions temporaires, événements – proposées au public par les musées depuis une trentaine d'années, - Sciences de (...) l'information et de la communication. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:EMOTION AND GOD: A REPLY TO MARCEL SAROT* DANIEL WESTBERG University of Virginia Charlottesville, Virginia M ARCEL SAROT has helpfully drawn attention to the question of St. Thomas's treatment of divine emotion; and in my view he rightly protests against the widely fashionable approach of rejecting the classical doctrine of impassibility in favor of a suffering and passible God. Nevertheless, I disagree sharply with his contentions (1) that (...) emotion is restricted to corporeal creatures,' and therefore (2) that emotion cannot be ascribed to God. What kind of moral agent would God be without emotion? Sarot is not helpful here, and in this respect the critics of impassibility have a legitimate point; for, if we eliminate emotion from God, then we have to treat the Scriptures as "embodying primitive anthropomorphic conceptions of God," so that God's love, wrath, mercy, justice, and even his "serious concern for the welfare of His people are meaningless."2 To dismiss the biblical picture of God as anthropomorphic, maintaining not only that "anger" and "joy" are symbolic, but that even the notions of care and concern are not applicable to the divine being, seems unfaithful to revelation. It also calls into question the nature of God's personality and agency.' *See Marcel Sarot, "God, Emotion, and Corporeality," The Thomist 58 (1994): 61-92. Much of this paper was prepared for a theological discussion group at the University of Virginia, before the appearance of Sarot's article. I am grateful for the points raised by Robert Wilken, Jamie Ferreira, Eugene Rogers, David Hart, and others in the discussion, and for the helpful comments of Jeff Greenman on this version. 1 Sarot, 82: "without corporeality, no emotion." 2 T. E. Pollard, "The Impassibility of God," Scottish Journal ofTheology 8 (1955): 360..1 R. E. Creel thinks that emotional impassibility is compatible with caring about and acting for the welfare of another person, but that such a being could not be "rejoiced by the good fortunes of its beloved and distressed by its misfortunes" (Divine Impassibility: An Essay in Philosophical Theology [Cambridge: Cambridge, University Press, 1986], 117). I do not think this is close enough to the biblical presentation. 109 110 DANIEL WESTBERG The burden of my response, and what I explain below, is this: Being a rational agent implies emotion of a kind. If we can speak of God having intellect and will, which St. Thomas does (STh I, qq. 14 & 19), so that God is an intelligent being with powers to act, then we should be able to speak (with similar qualifications) about emotion in God. In other words, agency by intellect and will implies emotion, which means that emotion should be ascribed to God, as the Bible does, but in a way that does not attribute passibility. The two basic mistakes I see in Sarot's account are these: (1) to rely on physicalist definitions of the nature of emotion; (2) to assume that the Latin passio is the same as the contemporary English term "emotion." Thus I agree that Aquinas understood the relevant meaning of passio to refer to a person undergoing some bodily change (a transmutatio corporalis), but deny that this extended in Aquinas's account over the entire range of even human emotion. Much of the recent work in the field of emotion, amongst both philosophers and psychologists, suggests that bodily sensation is only sometimes an aspect of emotion, and not essential in its definition. I shall attempt to show the parallels between the distinctions made by Aquinas and the framework of some of this contemporary research. I. EMOTION AND MORAL AGENCY The essence of emotion has to do with being a moral agent, not with bodily existence. Any moral being (including angels and other spirits, God and human beings) has emotion. This is the implication of any moral psychology (especially, though not necessarily, Aristotelian) that analyzes moral action as a result of choice combining reason and desire in reference to an end to be obtained. Beings that have intellect and will (or rational appetite) have emotion; that is, they are capable of being "moved" towards (or away from) an object by appetite. For human beings, the paradigm experience of emotion is... (shrink)

ObjectiveTo explore the relations among perceived stress, fatigue, sleepiness, and the pathway of their effects on the ambulatory arterial stiffness index among medical staff.MethodsThis cross-sectional study was conducted at a tertiary hospital in Wuhan, China. Perceived stress, fatigue, and sleepiness were measured using the perceived stress scale, Fatigue assessment scale, and Epworth Sleepiness Scale, respectively. AASI was obtained from 24-h ambulatory blood pressure monitoring. Path analysis was used to clarify the relations among the PSS, FAS, and ESS scores, and their (...) relations to AASI values.ResultsA total of 153 participants were included herein. The PSS and FAS correlated with the ESS, and the PSS correlated with the FAS. In addition, the ESS correlated with the AASI. According to the path analysis results, the PSS and FAS had no direct effect on the AASI, but did have an indirect effect on this index by influencing the ESS.ConclusionSleepiness was a mediator of the effects of perceived stress and fatigue on AASI. (shrink)