Health research has increased during the last decade, which has enhanced the importance of research ethics. However, little is known regarding the knowledge, awareness, attitudes, and practices of investigators in Myanmar. To assess awareness, knowledge, and attitudes of post-graduates regarding research ethics and research ethics committees (RECs) and their informed consent practices and to determine the association between their responses and certain independent factors. We conducted a cross-sectional study using a questionnaire that was distributed to a convenience sample of post-graduates (...) at the Defence Services Medical Academy in Myanmar. We used descriptive, t test, and chi-square statistics to analyze the data. Significance was set at p < 0.05. We obtained surveys from 204 participants, which included 177 MSc and 27 PhDs of whom 63.6% had performed research and 86.5% had prior ethics training. Regarding awareness, 92.2% were aware of an REC at their academy, but only 47.1% were “fully aware” of the functions of an REC and only 52.9% stated they were familiar with ethical principles that govern human subject research. More than 90% thought that research involving human subjects should be submitted to an REC and that post-graduates should have training on research ethics. However, several of their attitudes were sub-optimal; for example, 20.2% said that informed consent is only necessary from the community leader of a village rather than from the individual, 32.8% agreed it is acceptable to fabricate research data, and 33.0% believed that ethical review of research should be restricted to international collaborative research. Calculated mean total attitude scores were statistically significantly higher in post-graduates with PhDs compared with those with MSc and higher in those with knowledge of research ethics principles compared with those lacking such knowledge. Significant gaps exist among post-graduates regarding their knowledge, awareness, and attitudes regarding research ethics and RECs. We recommend that post-graduates receive further training in research ethics to ensure the ethical conduct of research. Further studies should be performed to determine the generalizability of our findings to other institutions in Myanmar. (shrink)

Myanmar has recently surfaced from total military rule and efforts at conducting research to enhance the health of the population has increased during the recent democratization process, both from the military and civil sectors as well as support from international agencies. International guidelines mandate that such research requires prior ethics review in accordance with international standards. Previous commentators have expressed concerns, however, regarding the degree of adequate training in research ethics for investigators, the optimal functioning of Research Ethics Committees, and (...) the extent of responsible conduct in research in low and middle-income countries. Such concerns might also be applicable to Myanmar, especially since it has recently emerged from a long period of military rule where there has been lack of basic freedoms and human rights abuses. We herein review the current gaps in research ethics capacity in Myanmar, the status of the existing RECs and the current efforts to establish training programs to enhance capacity in research ethics. (shrink)

In this study, we built and tested a theoretical model to determine how ethical leadership affects team creativity among teams composed of different characteristics. Following social learning theory and an antecedent–benefit–cost framework, we conducted analyses of multisource data from 50 team supervisors and 186 employees, which revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship between ethical leadership and team creativity. The teams exhibited more creativity when there was a moderate level of ethical leadership than when there were very low or very high (...) levels. Moreover, from an interactional perspective, we found that team faultlines significantly moderated the curvilinear relationship between ethical leadership and team creativity such that the inverted U-shaped relationship was more significant among teams with weak team faultlines. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Maximizing is a topic that has received significant attention from researchers and corporate organizations alike. Although extensive previous research has explored how maximizers behave in a decision scenario, a fundamental question remains about why they prefer a larger assortment regardless of whether the decisions are important or not. This study attempts to explore the underlying mechanism of this phenomenon. Four surveys were conducted, and participants from Mturk or Credamo online platforms were recruited. The maximizing tendency was measured by either maximization (...) scale or maximizing tendency scale, and perceived importance and preference for a large assortment were measured in different decision scenarios. Across four studies, we find that maximizers perceive the same decision as more important than satisficers, and perceived importance serves as the mechanism underlying the maximizers’ preference for a large assortment. In other words, in maximizers’ perceptions and interpretations, even seemingly trivial decisions are important enough to spend great effort on a large assortment. We additionally identified a boundary condition for the effect – cost salience. These findings illustrate a pioneering empirical exploration of the difference in the way maximizers and satisficers perceive their decision importance and the reason for maximizers’ preference for a large assortment. (shrink)

In the team context, leaders usually develop differentiated leader-member exchange relationships with employees, resulting in some employees having relatively inferior relationships with the leader than others. Nevertheless, how and when employees with low relative leader-member exchange (RLMX) relationships react toward the leader have been rarely considered in empirical research. Drawing upon social comparison theory, we develop a cross-level moderated mediation model to examine how and when RLMX may lead to employee’s unethical pro-leader behavior (UPLB). We propose that employees with (...) low RLMX would feel envy which in turn motivates them to engage in UPLB in order to gain the rewards and resources that are distributed by the leader. Further, we argue that envy is less likely to motivate low RLMX employees to engage in UPLB when distributive justice climate is high, because high distributive justice indicates that rewards and resources are distributed fairly (based on work contribution rather than engaging in unethical behaviors that please the leader). Data were obtained from 504 employees in 102 divisional teams in a large retail corporation at three time points. Results of the multilevel moderated mediation analysis show that envy mediates the effect of RLMX on UPLB and that the indirect relationship is moderated by team-level distributive justice climate. These findings suggest the importance of adopting a social comparison perspective to understand the negative consequences of RLMX via emotional mechanisms. (shrink)

China has achieved economic prominence but damaged the natural environment. Can religions excite pro-environmental actions? Chinese religion encompasses Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, native Taoism, and indigenous folk beliefs (GuanDi and Mazu). We theorize that believers demonstrate more sustainable HOPE (Help Ourselves Protect the Environment) than non-believers. Religions with standardized and formal liturgy show more pro-environmental HOPE than those without it. We challenge the myth that the believers of Christianity and Islam display more sustainable HOPE than other faith. The (...) 2013 Chinese General Social Survey (involving 10,017 randomly selected participants across 28 provinces) revealed that 11.10% of them have faith. Believers display higher levels of HOPE than atheists, demonstrating the __religion__ effect. Among believers, native Taoism and Buddhism exhibit more ecological HOPE than other religions, supporting the __dogma__ effect in the Chinese culture. Religions with formalized liturgy demonstrate more pro-environmental HOPE than generalized folk beliefs—GuanDi and Mazu, validating the __liturgy__ effect. Females, married, and people with good income, education, health, and country-domicile—the haves—exhibit robust ecological HOPE. The rich get richer and greener. However, those who are older, males, urban residents, and the Han majority do not. We empirically demonstrate the Matthew Effect in Religious Social Responsibility: Religious faith facilitates believers’ pro-environmental behaviors—HOPE and ethical behaviors in China. (shrink)

The rising tide of corporate scandals and audit failures has shocked the public, and the integrity of auditors is being increasingly questioned. It is crucial for auditors and regulators to understand the main causes of audit failure and devise preventive measures accordingly. This study analyzes enforcement actions issued by the China Securities Regulatory Commission against auditors in respect of fraudulent financial reporting committed by listed companies in China. We find that auditors are more likely to be sanctioned by the regulators (...) for failing to detect and report material misstatement frauds rather than disclosure frauds. Further analysis of the material misstatements indicates that auditors are more likely to be sanctioned for failing to detect and report revenue-related frauds rather than assets-related frauds. In sum, our results suggest that regulators believe auditors have the responsibility to detect and report frauds that are egregious, transaction-based, and related to accounting earnings. The results contribute to our knowledge of auditors’ responsibilities for detecting frauds as perceived by regulators. (shrink)

In the following text we will consider the question whether pictures can be regarded as arguments or not. Obviously, classical philosophical approaches lead to a different opinion about this topic than our common sense intuitions, which are fostered by our usage of ordinary language. On the one hand, logicians defend the thesis that arguments are of a linguistic kind. On the other hand, there are everyday contexts where, nevertheless, it seems appropriate to ascribe pictures the status of arguments. It (...) is this apparent tension between the philosophical approach and the one resulting from our linguistic practices that we will analyze in the following text. Examples – both from the everyday as the scientific context – will help us to settle the apparent dissent between the philosophical and the linguistic point of view. In the end, the thesis will be defended that pictorial representations make an essential contribution to communicative acts of argumentation without being regarded as (integral parts of ) arguments themselves. (shrink)

This book is the first to approach Jacques Rancière’s work from a legal perspective. A former student of Louis Althusser, Rancière is one of the most important contemporary French philosophers of recent decades: offering an original and path-breaking way to think politics, democracy and aesthetics. Rancière’s work has received wide and increasing critical attention, but no study exists so far that reflects on the wider implications of Rancière for law and for socio-legal studies. Although Rancière does not pay much specific (...) attention to law—and there is a strong temptation to identify law with what he terms the "police order"—much of Rancière’s historical work highlights the creative potential of law and legal language. Indeed, he repeatedly offers powerful instances of what Robert Cover labelled _jurisgenesis, _of norm-generation, with important legal implications and ramifications. So, rather than excavate the Rancièrean corpus for isolated statements about the law, this volume reverses such a method and asks: what would a Rancière-inspired legal theory look like? Bringing together specialists and scholars in different areas of law, critical theory and philosophy, this rethinking of law and socio-legal studies _through_ Rancière provides an original and important engagement with a range of contemporary legal topics, including constituent power, constitutional interpretation, the judicialization of politics, legal subjectivity, conflicts, human rights, the nomos of modernity, globalization, and the sensory configurations of law. It will, then, be of considerable interest to those working in these areas. (shrink)

We are reminded of relevant stories, tales, or symbols from long-term memory when facing a novel problem our daily lives. Visual cues are 1 tool known to facilitate reminding. In 2 experiments, Chinese students, who had experienced a folk tale many years ago during childhood, were asked to solve an analogous problem. We tested the hypothesis that a visual cue can help bridge the gap between a novel problem and a source analogy experienced in the distant past. Different types of (...) cues proved to have distinct influences on components of analogical problem solving. This research suggests that analogical representational features of a story or problem can be stored in long-term memory and can be activated by visual cues. The implications of these findings for theories that point to perceptual or grounded, rather than decontextualized structures in knowledge representation are discussed. (shrink)

Organizations have increasingly relied on team-based reward systems to boost productivity and foster collaboration. Drawing on the literature on ethics and justice as well as appraisal theories of emotion, we examine how team-based reward systems can have an insidious side effect: They increase the likelihood that employees remain silent when observing a team member engage in unethical behavior. Across four studies adopting different methods, measures, and samples, we found consistent evidence that people are less likely to report (i.e., speak up (...) or provide anonymous feedback about) a team member’s unethical behavior in team-based than in individual-based reward systems. Furthermore, our research reveals that this effect is primarily driven by a decrease in the experience of moral anger, which subsequently leads to a decreased likelihood of reporting unethical behavior when it benefits the team rather than the individual. We do not find support for perceived indirect benefit or envy as alternative explanations, suggesting that the decision to report a team member’s unethical behavior is not driven by calculative and selfish motives, but by moral motives. Finally, we establish that the effect is contingent on the observer and the perpetrator being members of the same team; it dissipates when the observer and the perpetrator are part of different teams. Our work contributes to research on reward systems and business ethics and provides practical implications for human resource practices. (shrink)

ObjectiveInvestigating the mental health status of Chinese resident physicians during the 2019 new coronavirus outbreak.MethodsA cluster sampling method was adopted to collect all China-wide resident physicians during the epidemic period as the research subjects. The Symptom Checklist-90 self-rating scale was used to assess mental health using WeChat electronic questionnaires.ResultsIn total, 511 electronic questionnaires were recovered, all of which were valid. The negative psychological detection rate was 93.9%. Among the symptoms on the self-rating scale, more than half of the Chinese (...) resident physicians had mild to moderate symptoms of mental unhealthiness, and a few had asymptomatic or severe unhealthy mental states. In particular, the detection rate of abnormality was 88.3%, obsessive-compulsive symptoms was 90.4%, the sensitive interpersonal relationship was 90.6%, depression abnormality was 90.8% /511), anxiety abnormality was 88.3%, hostility abnormality was 85.3%, terror abnormality was 84.9%, paranoia abnormality was 86.9%, psychotic abnormalities was 89.0%, and abnormal sleeping and eating status was 90.8%. The scores of various psychological symptoms of pediatric resident physicians were significantly lower than those of non-pediatrics.ConclusionThe new coronavirus epidemic has a greater impact on the mental health of Chinese resident physicians. (shrink)

Researchers have conducted many studies on the relationship between external rewards and intrinsic motivation. A recent study showed that, compared with delayed rewards, rewards delivered immediately after the experiment enhanced the participants’ intrinsic motivation. However, this study did not rule out the possibility of a misattribution effect of extrinsic motivation. The present research conducted three studies to explore whether immediate rewards actually enhance intrinsic motivation. To rule out the interference of the misattribution effect of extrinsic motivation, according to the different (...) characteristics of extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation, Study 1 and Study 2 improved the prior experimental paradigm, and the results indicated that the intrinsic motivation of participants who received extra rewards immediately after completing experimental tasks was stronger than that of participants who received the delayed extra reward. Furthermore, to rule out the potential interference of temporal discounting, Study 3 introduced a new variable—reward magnitude. The results showed that the delivery time of the extra reward had an independent effect on intrinsic motivation and that the immediacy of the extra reward could enhance intrinsic motivation. In all, the three studies strongly demonstrated that immediate external extra rewards could truly enhance intrinsic motivation. (shrink)

Neuroimaging technologies have improved our understanding of deception and also exhibit their potential in revealing the origins of its neural mechanism. In this study, a quantitative power analysis method that uses the Welch power spectrum estimation of functional near-infrared spectroscopy signals was proposed to examine the brain activation difference between the spontaneous deceptive behavior and controlled behavior. The power value produced by the model was applied to quantify the activity energy of brain regions, which can serve as a neuromarker for (...) deception detection. Interestingly, the power analysis results generated from the Welch spectrum estimation method demonstrated that the spontaneous deceptive behavior elicited significantly higher power than that from the controlled behavior in the prefrontal cortex. Meanwhile, the power findings also showed significant difference between the spontaneous deceptive behavior and controlled behavior, indicating that the reward system was only involved in the deception. The proposed power analysis method for processing fNIRS data provides us an additional insight to understand the cognitive mechanism of deception. (shrink)

Background: We described the prevalence of anxiety and depression related to COVID-19 pandemic among different types of population and examined their potential risk factors.Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted to collect demographic characteristics, exposure histories, and many other concerns about COVID-19. The Zung's self-rating anxiety scale and self-rating depression scale, followed by a four-step multiple logistic regression analysis was performed to identify factors associated with mental health outcomes.Results: Out of 3,303 participants, the quarantined people, community workstation staffs-policemen-volunteers and general public (...) reported higher percentages of depression than the general medical staff. Moreover, the quarantined people also showed higher prevalence of anxiety than the general public and the general medical staff. The quarantined people had the highest risk of anxiety and depression, whereas the self-rated health was negatively associated with the risks of anxiety and depression. Younger age group showed higher risks of anxiety and depression. People who had exposure history or contact from Hubei province after December 1, 2019, had family or friends engaged in front-line health care work, had confirmed case nearby were all more likely to suffer from anxiety. Moreover, the negligence or overindulgence toward the epidemic information was associated with a higher risk of depression and anxiety.Conclusions: Our findings show that the CPV and quarantined people were most at-risk population. We have identified that the young people, people with exposure histories and negligence or overindulgence toward epidemic information are in grave need of attention. (shrink)

Möbian Nights: Literary Reading in a Time of Crisis develops a new understanding of literary reading: that in the wake of disasters like the Holocaust, death remains a premise of our experience rather than a future. Challenging customary "aesthetic" assumptions that we write in order not to die, Sandor Goodhart suggests (with Kafka) we write to die. Drawing upon analyses developed by Girard, Foucault, Blanchot, and Levinas (along with examples from Homer to Beckett), Möbian Nights proposes that all literature (...) works "autobiographically", which is to say, in the wake of disaster; with the credo "I died; therefore, I am"; and for which the language of topology (for example, the "Möbius strip") offers a vocabulary for naming the "deep structure" of such literary, critical, and scriptural sacrificial and anti-sacrificial dynamics. (shrink)

I have been proposing for ‘christo‐dao’ rather than traditional christo-logy or modern christo‐praxis as a more appropriate paradigm for the understanding of Jesus Christ in the new millennium. This christological paradigm shift solicits a radical change of its root-metaphor, from logos (Christ as the incarnate logos) or praxis (Christ as the praxis of God’s reign) to ‘dao’ (Christ as the embodiment of the Dao, the “theanthropocosmic” Way) with a critical new interpretation. For EastAsian Christians, the christological adoption of dao (...) is as inevitable and legitimate as that of logos for the Western church at the fourth century. This adoption has been operative since the beginning of Korean Christianity. As an example, in this paper, I introduce the intriguing thoughts of Dasŏk Ryu Young-mo 柳永模 (1890-1981). According to John 14:6, Ryu comprehended Jesus as the Dao, the way of the truth toward the life in God. Christ is the brightest way on which we can walk safely (the truth) to attain the unity with God (the life). It coincides with the goal of Confucianism, the anthropocosmic unity of Heaven and humanity. Fromthis vantage point, he further expressed a nobel East Asian definition of God; namely, God is the One who is ‘the Being in Non-Being’ (Ŏpshigyeshin-nim): He believed that this event of Being-in-Non-Being has been historically manifested in the crucifixion (the Non-Being) and the resurrection (Being) of Jesus Christ. Christ is both the Non-Being (the Non-Ultimate, Vacuity) and Being (Great Ultimate, Form). Finally, confessing Jesus as the embodiment of the Dao is none other than Ryu’s East Asian way of saying “the Word made flesh.”. (shrink)

The Historical Dictionary of Philosophy, the _Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie,_ is distinguished by its particular presentation of philosophical terms, ideas and concepts. Rather than providing mere defintions or descriptive and analytical explanantions the _HWPh _strictly applies the critical method of history of concepts developed by the eminent German scholar and philosopher Joachim Ritter. By means of precise and detailed references it documents the origin, first occurrence, the historical evolution and the changes of meaning of each concept, from Ancient Greek (...) to contemporary philosophy. For the reader this presentation is of unique value: it makes traceable the importance of terms and concepts at certain periods or for a particular philosopher, as well as its changes and development of meaning. (shrink)

What is to be gained by studying visual observation in Mass Observation's COVID-19 collections? What can we see of the pandemic through diarists’ images and words? Visual methods were part of the plural research strategies of social research organisation Mass Observation (MO) in its first phase, when it was established in 1937, but remained marginal in relation to textual research methods. This continues with the post-1981 revival of the Mass Observation Project (MOP), with its emphasis on life writing. With wider (...) shifts in technology and accessibility, however, even when they are not solicited, photographs now accompany MOP correspondents’ submissions. In MO’s substantial COVID-19 collections, images appear in or as diary entries across a range of forms, including hand-drawn illustrations, correspondent-generated photographs, creative photomontages, and screengrabs of memes. In addition, diarists offer textual reflections on COVID-19's image cultures, such as the role of photographs in pandemic news media, as well as considering how the pandemic is intersecting with the visual in more abstract ways, from themes of surveillance and ‘Staying Alert’ in public health messaging to internal pictorial imaginaries produced as a result of isolation and contemplation. Positioning these materials in relation to wider patterns in pandemic visual culture, including public photographic collecting projects that make explicit reference to MO as their inspiration, this article considers the contribution of the visual submissions and image-rich writing in MO's COVID-19 collections to the depiction of a virus commonly characterised as invisible. (shrink)

Idealized mo dels of receptive elds (RFs) can be used as building blocks for the creation of p owerful distributed computation systems. The present rep ort concentrates on inv estigating the utility of collections of RFs in representing 3D objects under changing viewing conditions. The main requirement in this task is that the pattern of activity of RFs vary as little as p ossible when the object and the camera move relative to each other. I propose a method for representing (...) objects by RF activities, based on the observation that, in the case of rotation around a xed axis, dierences of activities of RFs that are prop erly situated with resp ect to that axis remain inv ariant. Results of computational exp eriments suggest that a representation scheme based on this algorithm for the choice of stable pairs of RFs would p erform consistently b etter than a scheme inv olving random sets of RFs. The proposed scheme may be useful under object or camera rotation, b oth for ideal Lam b ertian objects, and for real-world objects such as human faces. (shrink)

Mohism was an ancient Chinese philosophical movement founded in the fifth century B.C.E. by the charismatic artisan Mozi, or "Master Mo." The Mohists advanced a consequentialist ethics that anticipated Western utilitarianism by more than two thousand years and developed fascinating logical, epistemological, and political theories that set the terms of philosophical debate in China for generations. They were the earliest thinkers to outline a just war doctrine and to explain the origin of government from a state of nature. Their (...) epistemology and psychology provide intriguing alternatives to contemporary Western mentalism. The Philosophy of the Mozi is an extensive study of Mohism that immerses readers in the Mohist worldview, situates the movement's rise and decline within Chinese history, and highlights its relevance to modern thought. (shrink)

“Motivational externalism” is the externalism until they see more of what view that moral judgements have no motisuch a theory would be like. The mere posvational efficacy in themselves, and that sibility of such a theory is not sufficiently when they motivate us, the source of motireassuring, even given strong arguments vation lies outside the moral judgement in against the opposite position. For there may a separate desire. Motivational externalism also be objections to externalism. contrasts with “motivational internalism,” Moral philosophers (...) have not spent much which is either the view that our moral effort spelling out the details of an exterjudgements are partly constituted by motinalist model of moral motivation. Those vation, or else that they would be if we who have endorsed externalism include were rational. The major problem for mo- Philippa Foot, Michael Stocker, David tivational internalism—in either guise—is Brink, Al Mele, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, and that it flies in the face of common obsermyself (Foot 1972, Stocker 1979, Brink vation and first-personal experience of the 1989, 1997, Mele 1996, Svavarsdóttir fact that we can, without irrationality, be 1999, Zangwill 1999). But even these phiindifferent to morality. Philippa Foot piolosophers concentrated mostly on arguing neered this argument (Foot 1972). The pheagainst internalism or defending moral renomenon of indifference encourages alism rather than articulating the externalist motivational externalism. alternative. As a consequence, it is not clear This paper will not revisit this difficulty how the externalism that can be gleaned for internalism, but will travel in the opfrom these writings can be defended posite dialectical direction. The aim is to against various objections to externalism. expound and defend externalism, not to This paper is concerned to fashion an atargue against internalism. This paper will tractive version of externalism, and show address, and try to soothe away, the reluchow it evades objections. tance of many philosophers to embrace In section 1, a particular version of motimotivational externalism.. (shrink)

Dushu carried a most interesting article in its eleventh issue: "Starlight in the Dark of the Night" . In this article the author, Wu Zengding, introduced to the reader the autobiography of Vera, an aristocratic Russian woman of the nineteenth century who planned the assassination of a Russian tsar. The most engaging part of this article is the analysis—or rather, description—of the "enormous fascination" exerted by revolution. I have said many times that there is nothing more fascinating for young people (...) than revolution and love; and, under certain circumstances, the fascination of revolution is more powerful than that of love. Simply put, at least one of the factors that led Vera to take the extreme road of revolution was her fear and rejection of the shi su existence of married women in old Russia. I am reminded of the heroine, Lin Daojing, in Yang Mo's novel Song of Youth, who is rescued by Yu Shuize from a state of hopelessness after fleeing from marriage, and subsequently cohabits with him. She later ruptures with Yu Shuize , not only because of political conflicts, but also because of conflicts in their outlook on life. Had she stayed with Yu, she would inevitably have gone down the road of worldliness—having children, looking after the home, doing the family budget, dealing with birth, old age, illness, and death; she would have become garrulous and overly talkative, and so forth. There would be no more romance, no more drama—and readers would have objected to that. (shrink)

The existential and universal quantifiers in Japanese both consist of two morphemes: an indeterminate pronoun and a quantificational suffix. This paper examines the distributional characteristics of these suffixes (ka for the existential quantifier and mo for the universal quantifier). It is shown that ka can appear in a wider range of structural positions than mo can. This difference receives explanation on semantic grounds. I propose that mo is a generalized quantifier. More specifically, I assume that the phrase headed by (...) mo is of type ${\langle\langle\alpha, t\rangle, t}$ . Because of its type, mo cannot appear in certain structural positions without causing type mismatch. Ka, on the other hand, is a choice function variable of type ${\langle\alpha/t, \alpha\rangle}$ , and due to its type, its distribution is not as restricted. One of the consequences of this analysis is that there are no quantifier raising or type shifting operations in Japanese that would adequately obviate type mismatch. (shrink)

Abstract Mohism has long been misrepresented. Mo?tzu is usually called a utilitarian because he preached a universal love that must benefit. Yet Mencius, who pined the Confucian way of virtue (humaneness and righteousness) against Mo?tzu's way of benefit, basically borrowed Mo?tzu's thesis: that the root cause of chaos is this lack of love?except Mencius renamed it the desire for personal benefit. Yet Mo?tzu only championed ?benefit? to head off its opposite, ?harm?, specifically the harm done by Confucians who with good (...) intent (love) perpetuated rites that did people more harm than good. Mo?tzu wanted his universal love to be the public good that would actually do the public good (i.e. benefit the collective). And he derived this from Confucius? teaching of ?Love (all) men? and his Golden Rule: Render not what others would not desire. No man desires harm. As a critic of Confucian rites (especially the prolonged funeral), Mo?tzu worked to replace the blind custom of rites with his rational measure of ?rightness?: what is right must do good (i.e. benefit the intended recipient). It is not true that Mohists were ?joyless? ascetics; they would gladly celebrate a good harvest with wine and folk song?not expensive court music?with the people. Since Mohist discourse is ?public? (that is, accountable), it is also only proper that what is ?right? should be outer (means?end efficacy) and not inner as Mencius would insist. (shrink)

The mitogenic action of cytokines such as epidermal growth factor (EGF)d̊ or platelet dericed growth factor (PDGF) involves the stimulation of a signal cascade controlled by a small G protein called Ras. Mutations of Ras can cause its constitutive activation and, as a consequence, bypass the regulation of cell growth by cytokines. Both growth factor‐induced and oncogenic activation of Ras involve the conversion of Ras from the GDP‐bound (D‐Ras) to the GTP‐bound (T‐Ras) forms. T‐Ras activates a network of protein kinases (...) including c‐Mos, c‐Raf‐1 and MAP kinase. Eventually the activation of MAP kinase leads to the activation of the elongation factor 4E and several transcription factors such as c‐Jun, c‐Myc and c‐Fos. There are several modulators of Ras activity, such as the GTPase activating proteins (GAP1 and NF1), which stimulate the coversion of T‐Ras to D‐Ras. A series of small NF1 fragments, which bind T‐Ras, as well as truncated forms or derivatives of c‐Raf‐1, c‐Jun and c‐Myc, are capable of blocking the T‐Ras‐activated mitogenesis in a competitive manner. These agents offer a unique opportunity to control the proliferation of T‐Ras‐associated tumors, which represent more than 30% of total human carcinomas. (shrink)

It might sound rather convincing to assume that we owe the pleasure of reading the novel form to our elemental repository of physical perception, to our feelings. This would be true only if mere feelings could add up to something more than just emotions, to some deep understanding of the human. After all, a moment of epiphany, where we begin to realize things that dramatically disturb our normal state of mind, is not just emotional, nor indeed a simple moment. (...) Despite its root in the corporeal, a mo(ve)ment of affective realization reaches beyond the realm of the human and opens up the plane of virtual potentials. In this work, we intend to map out the points and relations of affective singularity that pervade the narrative of Toni Morrison’s Sula (1973). Also, we will discuss how these mo(ve)ments of sensation give form to Sula’s and Nel’s experiences and contribute to an affective transformation in morality and friendship. (shrink)

The Animal Rights Thesis (ART) entails that nonhuman animals like pigs and cows have moral rights, including rights not to be unjustly harmed. If ART is true, it appears to imply the permissibility of killing ranchers, farmers, and zookeepers in defense of animals who will otherwise be unjustly killed. This is the Militancy Objection (MO) to ART. I consider four replies to MO and reject three of them. First, MO fails because animals lack rights, or lack rights of sufficient strength (...) to justify other-defensive killing. Second, MO fails because those who unjustly threaten animals aren't liable or, if they are liable, their liability is outweighed by other considerations (e.g., a strong presumption against vigilante killing). I then argue both of these fail. Third, MO succeeds because animal militancy is permissible. Fourth, MO fails because there aren't liability justifications for defensive killing in general (i.e., pacifism is true). I argue that there's thoroughgoing epistemic parity between the Militancy View (MV) and the Pacifist View (PV), and that two considerations favor PV over MV. First, because under conditions of uncertainty, we should believe rights-bearers retain rather than lose their rights, which PV affirms and MV denies. Second, because PV is intrinsically likelier than MV to be true since PV at worst affirms wrongful letting die and MV at worst affirms wrongful killing, the latter of which is intrinsically harder to justify than the former. (shrink)

During the last ten years John Beatty, Elisabeth Lloyd and I have argued that the semantic conception of theories is, in the context of biological theorizing, a richer conception of theory structure than the syntactic ("received view") conception. Specifically, I have argued semantic conception of theory structure better represents the structure of evolutionary theory and the relationship of this theory to phenomena. One aspect of the semantic conception that is in need of greater attention is the nature of explanation (...) on this conception. In this paper, I argue that the semantic conception provides a richer mo accurate account of scientific explanation, in particular, of evolutionary explanations. In essence, I argue that explanation involves an appeal to numerous theories in addition to the putative explanatory theory. Employment of these theories is not formally possible in a syntactic conception but is in a semantic conception. (shrink)

This book illustrates the profound implications of Gabriel Marcel's unique existentialist approach to epistemology not only for traditional themes in his work concerning ethics and the transcendent, but also for epistemological issues, concerning the objectivity of knowledge, the problem of skepticism, and the nature of non-conceptual knowledge, among others. There are also chapters of dialogue with philosophers, Jacques Maritain and Martin Buber. In focusing on these themes, the book makes a distinctive contribution to the literature on Marcel.Brendan Sweetman, a native (...) of Dublin, Ireland, is Professor of Philosophy at Rockhurst University, Kansas City, MO, USA. His books include Why Politics Needs Religion: The Place of Religious Arguments in the Public Square (InterVarsity, 2006) and Religion: Key Concepts in Philosophy (Continuum Books, 2007). He has coauthored or coedited several other books, including Truth and Religious Belief (M.E. Sharpe, 1998), and Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology (Oxford University Press, 1992). Professor Sweetman has published more than fifty articles and reviews in a variety of collections and journals, including International Philosophical Quarterly, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Faith and Philosophy, Philosophia Christi, and Review of Metaphysics. He writes regularly in the areas of continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, political philosophy and ethics. (shrink)

The Book of Historical Documents is an ancient Chinese written monument, a collection of addresses of the ruler to the subjects and of the subjects to the rulers. The philosophical meaning of Shu jing is that it mentions or refers to the issues of a broad ideological order. These brief references either gave life to philosophical ideas, or later, after appropriate interpretation, were used by the philosophers to authoritatively confirm their thoughts. The first complete Russian translation of Shu jing was (...) done by Archimandrite Daniil in the early 40s of the 19th century. The translation was undertaken, first and primarily, as a teaching material assigned to students of the Chinese Language Cathedra at the Kazan Imperial University. This cathedra was first one established in Russia and the second one in Europe. Archimandrite Daniel was its first head in 1837-1844. Unfortunately, the translator have never had a chance to publish his work. Sivillov for the first time in Russian and European Sinology used a purely Chinese commented edition of The Book. The canonical text used by Sivillov and later his followers was considered and understood through the prism of modern Neoconfucianism, which, in comparison with ancient and early medieval Confucianism, reinterpreted and significantly enriched the philosophical meaning of the Shu jing. In some points of understanding of the Neoconfucian interpretation of the ancient text, Archimandrite Daniil was not only ahead of, but also more successful than his later colleagues. The text of the previously unpublished Shu jing Chapter III Da Yu mo Russian translation by archimandrite Daniil is attached. (shrink)

Rule consequentialism is usually taken to recommend a single ideal code for all moral agents. Here I argue that, depending on their theoretical mo- tivations, some rule consequentialists have good reasons to be relativists. Rule consequentialists who are moved by consequentialist considerations ought to support a scheme of multiple relativized moral codes because we could expect such a scheme to have better consequences in terms of impartial aggregate well- being than a single universal code. Rule consequentialists who nd compelling (...) the theory’s coherence with our considered moral intuitions should do the same because a scheme of multiple codes could better cohere with our intuitions about costless bene ts, though these intuitions must be weighed against our allegiance to moral universalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Acts of Enjoyment: Rhetoric, Žižek, and the Return of the SubjectJames J. Brown Jr. and Joshua GunnActs of Enjoyment: Rhetoric, Žižek, and the Return of the Subject by Thomas Rickert. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007. Pp. x + 252. $24.95, hardcover.Thomas Rickert had a falling-out with his brother, and this distresses him so much that his disrupted relation is described as “traumatic.” Rickert reports that while listening (...) to a portable CD player during a run on an unexpectedly warm winter day, a song by the now defunct jazz/rock band Morphine reminded him of a happy time at a pool hall with his brother (24). Mediated—or better, medicated—by music, the homological happiness of running in the sun and a positive past memory also resurfaced a painful relational rupture, the reason of which Rickert omits to underscore that mysterious, “little detail or object” of the Real that marks his singular finitude as a writing subject (216 n. 11). We’ll want to come back to this curiously deliberate omission, but for the present we note Rickert is not simply an undead author but a human being with relations and feelings. He is not just a gifted scholar or a bundle of reflections, but a nexus of body and movement and words and affect. If there is anything that Rickert’s study can be said to work through with brilliance, humor, and grace, it is the reality of complex personhood.Rickert’s brotherly confession comes in Chapter 1 as a way to introduce a psychoanalytic understanding of subjectivity, and more specifically, to help illustrate how trauma works itself out as an afterwardness or “belatedness” ( Nachträglichkeit ): traumatic events from the past are not reckoned with or worked-through until some coincidence or reminder, such as a similar [End Page 183] sensory experience, reintroduces the event in doubled re-presentation (18–27). This implies the “subject” (a paradigm person) is a kind of timedelay, a self-conscious temporal moving that becomes this way through re-presentation. The rhetorical subject is analogously a retrojected reckoning with events past (not all traumatic) that Rickert identifies as a scene of writing, a locus that has important implications for rhetorical studies in general and writing pedagogy in particular. Rickert’s logic is as follows: if we agree that the subject is a belated one in the psychoanalytic sense, then how we teach rhetoric needs to change. Rickert opens the book with the observation that his students are producing excellent cultural critiques but that such critiques do not lead the students to change their actions (1–7), perhaps evidence enough that something is not quite right in a classroom grounded by “cultural studies pedagogy” and ideology critique—or at the very least, proof that something has changed. The opening gambit is simply that a “postpedagogy” premised on an understanding of rhetorical subjectivity as belatedness is better than a status quo rooted in the rational subject of the Enlightenment.Mostly through a Žižek-filtered, Lacanian lens, Acts of Enjoyment then undertakes a retake of the rhetorical field, frequently scanning from the traumatic ontology of the rhetorical subject to that domain of knowledge that we hold dear, the subject of rhetoric. In Chapter 2, the (primal) scene thus shifts from the slo-mo subject to rhetorical studies, initially through a reassessment of Kinneavy’s “communications triangle,” but ultimately in response to the shock treatment of poststructuralism. The initial theoretical traumas introduced by Victor Vitanza, Diane Davis, Sharon Crowley, and others discussed in Chapter 1 are threaded into an account of “poststructural” redress in Chapter 2: as is true of all forms of trauma, the initial poststructural jolt delivered to the concept of subjectivity was deadened; poststructural theory was eventually used to “shore up rather than challenge Kinneavy’s triangle” (37). To truly work-through our traumatized subject in both senses, we need a second trauma: Lacanian psychoanalysis. Presumably, “poststructuralist thought” is to be opposed because it has no account of the subject (21–24); “Lacan,” after all, “is not a poststructuralist” (48). The remainder of the chapter is then used to deploy Lacan’s conceptual lexicon.Just as... (shrink)

The vestibular system is critical for human locomotion. Any deteriorated vestibular system leads to gait instability. In the past decades, these alternations in gait patterns have been majorly measured by the spatial-temporal gait parameters and respective variabilities. However, measuring gait characteristics cannot capture the full aspect of motor controls. Thus, to further understand the effects of deteriorated vestibular system on gait performance, additional measurement needs to be taken into consideration. This study proposed using the margin of stability to identify the (...) patterns of dynamic control under different types of mastoid vibrations in walking. This study hypothesized that using the MOS method could facilitate the understanding of another aspect of motor control induced by different types of mastoid vibrations, and applying the mastoid vibrations could induce the asymmetric MOS. Twenty healthy young adults were recruited. Two electromechanical vibrotactile transducers were placed on the bilateral mastoid process to apply different types of vestibular vibrations. A motion capture system with eight cameras was used to measure the MOSap, MOSml, and respective variabilities. The results were in line with the hypotheses that both bilateral and unilateral mastoid vibrations significantly increased MOSap, MOSml, and respective variabilities p = 0.001, p < 0.001; p = 0.001, p < 0.01 when compared to the no vibration condition. Also, significantly larger MOSml, MOSml variability, MOSap, and MOSap variability were observed under the unilateral vibration condition than that observed under the bilateral vibration condition. The above-mentioned result found that different types of mastoid vibrations affected the MOS differently, suggesting different patterns of control mechanisms under different sensory-conflicted situations. Besides, a significant difference between the dominant and non-dominant legs was observed in MOSml. Moreover, applying the unilateral mastoid vibrations induced a greater symmetric index of MOSml, suggesting that more active control in balance was needed in the medial-lateral than in the anterior-posterior direction. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of somatic maturation in anthropometric, physical, and game-related variables in youth basketball age groups under-13 and under-15. One-hundred and eighty-five basketball players performed anthropometrical and physical tests during a non-official youth basketball tournament. Predicted maturity offset and game-related variables were also analyzed. Cluster analysis was used to analyze the between-maturation status differences in all parameters in each age group. Also, regularized generalized canonical correlation analysis was used to assess relative contributions (...) of maturational, physical, and game-related variables within each age group. Based on MO, two different clusters were identified within each age category. Greater differences in MO were identified among U-13 clusters than among U-15 clusters. No significant differences were observed between clusters in terms of physical and game-related variables. High correlations between maturational, physical, and game-related variables were found for boys. In girls, different trends in terms of correlations were observed. The strongest association between blocks was observed between physical tests and game-related variables in all age categories, except for U-15 girls. Knowing and identifying performance profiles according to biological age is of upmost importance since it allows the coach to create challenging situations adjusted to the individual’s needs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ippolito Desideri S.J.: Opere e BibliografiaFrancis V. TisoIppolito Desideri S.J.: Opere e Bibliografia. By Enzo Gualterio Bargiacchi. Roma: Institutum Historicum S.I., 2007. 303 pp.One of the great lacunae in the history of Buddhist-Christian relations has been a lack of attention to the work of missionaries who reported on Buddhist belief and practice in various parts of East and South Asia. As a result, the important work [End Page (...) 166] of the Italian Jesuit Ippolito Desideri (1684–1733) has not received the attention it deserves. There had been centuries of missionary contact with the Buddhists of Sri Lanka, Japan, and China, but it was not until the mission of Desideri to Tibet (1716–1721) that the connection between the Buddhism of Southeast Asia and that of China and Japan could be established on the basis of Desideri’s study of Tibetan historiographical materials.Desideri was the first European to become fluent in Tibetan, the first to understand Buddhist Mahayana scholasticism, the first to grasp the meaning of Vajrayana ritual and practice, the first to describe the political situation of Tibet, the first to engage in serious debate with Tibetan lamas, and the first to write extensively on Catholic Christianity in Tibetan. Desideri left a body of works in Tibetan that have been translated into Italian by Giuseppe Toscano, SX, and published by IsMEO during the 1980s. Yet Desideri’s greatest achievement, the translation into Latin of Je Tsong Kapa’s Lam Rim Chen Mo, seems to have been lost. Moreover, the great intellectual and spiritual accomplishments of this Jesuit missionary were not much appreciated in his own lifetime, in part because of the political situation of the Society of Jesus at that time. As a result, although the overall facts of Desideri’s life were never completely forgotten, his writings lay hidden in the Jesuit Archives at Rome at precisely the time when those engaging in contact with Asian religions would have benefited from his insights.The author of this summary of the works of Ippolito Desideri and of the entire corpus of materials related to his oeuvre, Enzo Gualtiero Bargiacchi, is convinced that even today the works of this eighteenth-century Jesuit missionary have something to offer. I would agree with Bargiacchi, because I am equally convinced that the Desiderian project is in many ways a better model for interreligious dialogue between Christians and Buddhists than any of the more recent models that have been proposed and implemented since the Second Vatican Council. Recent essays by Trent Pomplun and Michael Sweet in Buddhist-Christian Studies (vol. 26, 2006) have shown that exchanges between missionaries and Buddhists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were more profound and more fruitful than we are inclined to believe on the basis of superficial histories of the period. It seems that, with the suppression of the Jesuits (1773–1815), a certain retrenchment in the Catholic theology of grace operating outside the confines of the Church set in, muting the vibrant speculations of theologians seeking to make theological sense of the reports of missionaries such as Desideri.Desideri’s approach to the Buddhism of Tibet continues to challenge our own approach to interreligious dialogue. In the first place, Desideri underwent extensive linguistic, spiritual, and theological training as a young Italian Jesuit. He seems to have had unusual physical stamina and mental acuity, particularly for the study of languages. He learned Tibetan in about four months and immediately began writing a treatise, the Tho rangs, explaining Christianity to the Tibetan literati. As his Tibetan improved, he composed other, more sophisticated works in which he took up the topics on which Buddhists and Catholic Christians could agree (the contingency of the created world, the moral law) and on which they disagree (the law of karmic retribution, [End Page 167] emptiness, reincarnation, soteriology). Desideri sought to take seriously the philosophical positions of the lamas, with whom he lived and engaged in debate. He adapted his presentation of Christianity to the linguistic requirements of Tibet, and he did not hesitate to acknowledge the excellence he found in the moral character and intellectual refinement of the Tibetans. Finally, one detects a respect... (shrink)

Standard narratives on the relation between Mozi and Mencius portray them as early Chinese masters with consistent philosophies in opposition to each other. However valuable, these narratives tend to rely on the same interpretative choices that have become solidified into hardly questioned facts. Inspired by a “hermeneutic of informed ignorance,” this paper tries to unravel a number of alternative interpretations from the same texts. The focus is a limited set of passages: the four Mencius statements explicitly mentioning Mozi and the (...) Mozi sections that may have inspired them. The resulting picture on for instance the presumed tension between Mo and Ru or on their presumed core values is more varied, tentative, and nuanced than in the standard narratives, even though it does not necessarily invalidate them. (shrink)

Incidence and prevalence rates of dengue have increased over the years, and the disease is quickly becoming cause for concern within the public health community. Globally, 128 countries and slightly under four billion people are at risk of contracting dengue. In Sri Lanka, more than half of dengue cases originate in Colombo, which in previous years, used a manual pen-and-paper data management system, which meant that it was not possible to obtain or provide up-to-date information about the severity and (...) spread of dengue. In 2015, two versions of a mobile application called Mo-Buzz Dengue were developed and launched in Colombo, Sri Lanka in order to overcome the challenges of the traditional management system by capitalizing on the rising affordability and ubiquity of mobile phone technology. To keep up with the dynamic nature of disease outbreaks, real-time data need to be visualized in a manner which facilitates discerning and comprehending these patterns. Hence, we used health maps in Mo-Buzz to effectively present this information. The first version of Mo-Buzz was for public health inspectors, digitized data management as well as provided educational materials. The second version of Mo-Buzz was a source of information for the general public, a crowdsourcing platform to provide information relating to dengue transmission, and for health authorities to alert users to dengue-specific developments in their area. This paper illustrates the design considerations of the Mo-Buzz disease surveillance system for the general public. A draft scaled-down version of the PHI system was used to obtain feedback and make incremental design enhancements. Additionally, similar health maps were evaluated in terms of capability and usability. These findings were applied to identify future enhancements to the health map of Mo-Buzz Dengue. (shrink)

In this study, we examine the problem of belief revision, defined as deciding whic h of several initially-accepted sentences to disbelieve, when new information presents a l ogical inconsistency with the initial set. In the first three experiments, the initial sentence set included a conditional sentence, a non-conditional sentence, and an inferred conclusi on drawn from the first two. The new information contradicted the inferred conclusion. Results indicated that the conditional sentences were more readily abandoned than non-c onditional sentences, (...) even when either choice would lead to a consistent belief state, and that this preference was more pronounced when problems used natural language cover sto ries rather than symbols. The pattern of belief revision choices differed depending on whe ther the contradicted conclusion from the initial belief set had been a modus ponens or m odus tollens inference. Two additional experiments examined alternative model-theoretic definitions of minimal change to a belief state, using problems that contained multiple mo dels of the initial belief state and of the new information that provided the contradiction. The results indicated that people did not follow any of four formal definitions of minimal change on these problems. The new information and the contradiction it offered was not, for example, used to select a particular model of the initial belief state as a way of reconci ling the contradiction. The preferred revision was to retain only those initial sentences th at had the same, unambiguous truth value within and across both the initial and new info rmation sets. The study and results are presented in the context of certain logic-based for malizations of belief revision, syntactic and model-theoretic representations of belief stat es, and performance models of human deduction. Principles by which some types of sent ences might be more "entrenched" than others in the face of contradiction are also discuss ed from the perspective of induction and theory revision. (shrink)

This book is an anthology with the following themes. Non-European Tradition: Bussanich interprets main themes of Hindu ethics, including its roots in ritual sacrifice, its relationship to religious duty, society, individual human well-being, and psychic liberation. To best assess the truth of Hindu ethics, he argues for dialogue with premodern Western thought. Pfister takes up the question of human nature as a case study in Chinese ethics. Is our nature inherently good (as Mengzi argued) or bad (Xunzi’s view)? Pfister ob- (...) serves their underlying agreement, that human beings are capable of becoming good, and makes precise the disagreement: whether we achieve goodness by cultivating autonomous feelings or by accepting external precepts. There are political consequences: whether government should aim to respect and em- power individual choices or to be a controlling authority. Early Greek Thinking: Collobert examines the bases of Homeric ethics in fame, prudence, and shame, and how these guide the deliberations of heroes. She observes how, by depending upon the poet’s words, the hero gains a quasi- immortality, although in truth there is no consolation for each person’s inevi- table death. Plato: Santas examines Socratic Method and ethics in Republic 1. There Socrates examines definitions of justice and tests them by comparison to the arts and sciences. Santas shows the similarities of Socrates’ method to John Rawls’ method of considered judgments in reflective equilibrium. McPherran interprets Plato’s religious dimension as like that of his teacher Socrates. McPherran shows how Plato appropriates, reshapes, and extends the religious conventions of his own time in the service of establishing the new enterprise of philosophy. Ac- cording to Taylor, Socrates believes that humans in general have the task of helping the gods by making their own souls as good as possible, and Socrates’ unique ability to cross-examine imposes on him the special task of helping others to become as good as possible. This conception of Socrates’ mission is Plato’s own, consisting in an extension of the traditional conception of piety as helping the gods. Brickhouse and Smith propose a new understanding of Socratic moral psychology—one that retains the standard view of Socrates as an intellectualist, but also recognizes roles in human agency for appetites and passions. They compare and contrast the Socratic view to the picture of moral psychology we get in other dialogues of Plato. Hardy also proposes a new, non-reductive understanding of Socratic eudaimonism—he argues that Socrates invokes a very rich and complex notion of the “Knowledge of the Good and Bad”, which is associated with the motivating forces of the virtues. Rudebusch defends Socrates’ argument that knowledge can never be impotent in the face of psychic passions. He considers the standard objections: that knowledge cannot weigh incom- mensurable human values, and that brute desire, all by itself, is capable of moving the soul to action. Aristotle: Anagnostopoulos interprets Aristotle on the nature and acquisition of virtue. Though virtue of character, aiming at human happiness, requires a complex awareness of multiple dimensions of one’s experience, it is not properly a cognitive capacity. Thus it requires habituation, not education, according to Aristotle, in order to align the unruly elements of the soul with reason’s knowledge of what promotes happiness. Shields explains Aristotle’s doctrine that goodness is meant in many ways as the doctrine that there are different analyses of goodness for different types of circumstance, just as for being. He finds Aristotle to argue for this conclusion, against Plato’s doctrine of the unity of the Good, by applying the tests for homonymy and as an immediate cons- equence of the doctrine of categories. Shields evaluates the issue as unresolved at present. Russell discusses Aristotle’s account of practical deliberation and its virtue, intelligence (phronesis). He relates the account to contemporary philo- sophical controversies surrounding Aristotle’s view that intelligence is neces- sary for moral virtue, including the objections that in some cases it is unnecessary or even impedes human goodness. Frede examines the advantages and disadvantages of Aristotle’s virtue ethics. She explains the general Greek con- ceptions of happiness and virtue, Aristotle’s conception of phronesis and compares the Aristotle’s ethics with modern accounts. Liske discusses the question of whether the Aristotelian account of virtue entails an ethical-psy- chological determinism. He argues that Aristotle’s understanding of hexis allows for free action and ethical responsibility : By making decisions for good actions we are able to stabilize our character (hexis). Hellenistic and Roman: Annas defends an account of stoic ethics, according to which the three parts of Stoicism—logic, physics, and ethics—are integrated as the parts of an egg, not as the parts of a building. Since by this analogy no one part is a foundation for the rest, pedagogical decisions may govern the choice of numerous, equally valid, presentations of Stoic ethics. Piering interprets the Cynic way of life as a distinctive philosophy. In their ethics, Cynics value neither pleasure nor tradition but personal liberty, which they achieve by self-suffi- ciency and display in speech that is frank to the point of insult. Plotinus and Neoplatonism: Gerson outlines the place of ordinary civic virtue as well as philosophically contemplative excellence in Neoplatonism. In doing so he attempts to show how one and the same good can be both action-guiding in human life and be the absolute simple One that grounds the explanation of everything in the universe. Delcomminette follows Plotinus’s path to the Good as the foundation of free will, first in the freedom of Intellect and then in the “more than freedom” of the One. Plotinus postulates these divinities as not outside but within each self, saving him from the contradiction of an external foundation for a truly free will. General Topics: Halbig discusses the thesis on the unity of virtues. He dis- tinguishes the thesis of the identity of virtues and the thesis of a reciprocity of virtues and argues that the various virtues form a unity (in terms of reciprocity) since virtues cannot bring about any bad action. Detel examines Plato’s and Aristotle’s conceptions of normativity : Plato and Aristotle (i) entertained hybrid theories of normativity by distinguishing functional, semantic and ethical normativity, (ii) located the ultimate source of normativity in standards of a good life, and thus (iii) took semantic normativity to be a derived form of normativity. Detel argues that hybrid theories of normativity are—from a mo- dern point of view—still promising. Ho ̈ffe defends the Ancient conception of an art of living against Modern objections. Whereas many Modern philosophers think that we have to replace Ancient eudaimonism by the idea of moral obligation (Pflicht), Ho ̈ffe argues that Eudaimonism and autonomy-based ethics can be reconciled and integrated into a comprehensive and promising theory of a good life, if we enrich the idea of autonomy by the central elements of Ancient eudaimonism. Some common themes: The topics in Chinese and Hindu ethics are perhaps more familiar to modern western sensibilities than Homeric and even Socratic. Anagnostopoulos, Brickhouse and Smith, Frede, Liske, Rudebusch, and Russell all consider in contrasting ways the role of moral character, apart from intellect, in ethics. Brickhouse / Smith, Hardy, and Rudebusch discuss the Socratic con- ception of moral knowledge. Brickhouse / Smith and Hardy retain the standard view of the so called Socratic Intellectualism. Shields and Gerson both consider the question whether there is a single genus of goodness, or if the term is a homonym. Bussanich, McPherran, Taylor, and Delcomminette all consider the relation between religion and ethics. Pfister, Piering, Delcomminette, and Liske all consider what sort of freedom is appropriate to human well-being. Halbig, Detel, and Ho ̈ffe propose interpretations of main themes of Ancient ethics. (shrink)

Il cambiamento climatico globale pone sfide senza precedenti ai nostri mo- di di concepire la morale e la politica. Siamo abituati a vedere un problema morale in situazioni in cui un individuo chiaramente identificabile inten- zionalmente ne danneggi un altro, a sua volta chiaramente identificabile; e in cui sia gli individui coinvolti, che il danno in questione, stiano fra loro in una relazione spazio-temporale di vicinanza. Il cambiamento climatico glo- bale danneggerà senz'altro milioni di persone, ma secondo modalità com- pletamente (...) diverse da queste. Dal punto di vista politico, d'altro canto, l'in- trattabilità del fenomeno è dovuta al fatto che siamo abituati a prendere de- cisioni pubbliche in base a preferenze momentanee, piuttosto che interessi a lungo termine e valori condivisi. Per affrontare il cambiamento climatico globale abbiamo dunque bisogno di riformare sia i nostri modi di concepire la problematicità morale, che il nostro stile di deliberazione politica. Per fare questo, è necessario partire dagli individui: fornendo una visione ideale di che tipo di carattere sia più adatto per vivere in un mondo globalizzato e altamente interconnesso come il nostro.Global climate change poses unprecedented challenges to our moral and political systems. We are used to see a situation as morally problematic when a clearly identifiable individual intentionally damages another, her- self clearly identifiable; and when these individuals, as well as the damage done, are close in space and time. Global climate change will certainly da- mage millions of people, but will do so in ways quite different from that. From the political point of view, the intractability of the problem is due to our often taking public decisions based on transitory preferences, rather than long-term interests and shared values. In order to face global climate change, we thus need to reform both our ways of conceiving moral pro- blems, and our style of political deliberation. To do so, we must begin from individuals: providing an ideal of character for what is required to live in a highly interconnected, globalized world. (shrink)

This paper draws an antigonal line leading from Sophocles’s Antigone to the lynching of Emmett Till. Drawing this line is an attempt to celebrate and honor that spirit of defiance in the name of loving the dead and memorializing loss. In particular, it takes up that portion of the line that centers on lynching. An overarching goal is thus to argue that lynching and its afterlives deserve more philosophical attention than they have received, especially from American philosophers. It is (...) long past time that philosophers take on lynching as a meaningful while volatile topic, especially insofar as it makes claims on the racial identities of the philosophers doing so. But rather than addressing lynching in general, this paper looks at one particular point on this line: the lynching of Emmett Till and the defiant mourning of his mother, Mamie Bradley. Doing so is meant to invite others to locate other points on this antigonal line. Upon sketching Sophocles’s play and Till’s murder, I consider some of the key features of Hegel’s influential interpretation. While philosophy has been mostly silent on lynching, Hegel’s Phenomenology provides essential, while problematic, material for initiating a philosophical approach to this neglected topic. Building on Hegel’s reading, I next consider the nature of “white law and order” and its complicity in extrajudicial murder and terror. Then I turn to Black mourning, where I explore what Fred Moten calls Mamie Bradley’s “Black Mo’nin”—her antigonal refusal of the white drive to annihilate Black life—and consider her as a practitioner of Christina Sharpe’s notion of “wake work.” I then turn to an artistic intervention in lynching photography to take up Sharpe’s challenge for how to respectfully engage lynching given different racial identities. Finally, I conclude by sketching an opening for a possible next antigonal point: the work of Ida B. Wells. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Acts of Enjoyment: Rhetoric, Žižek, and the Return of the SubjectJames J. Brown Jr. and Joshua GunnActs of Enjoyment: Rhetoric, Žižek, and the Return of the Subject by Thomas Rickert. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007. Pp. x + 252. $24.95, hardcover.Thomas Rickert had a falling-out with his brother, and this distresses him so much that his disrupted relation is described as “traumatic.” Rickert reports that while listening (...) to a portable CD player during a run on an unexpectedly warm winter day, a song by the now defunct jazz/rock band Morphine reminded him of a happy time at a pool hall with his brother (24). Mediated—or better, medicated—by music, the homological happiness of running in the sun and a positive past memory also resurfaced a painful relational rupture, the reason of which Rickert omits to underscore that mysterious, “little detail or object” of the Real that marks his singular finitude as a writing subject (216 n. 11). We’ll want to come back to this curiously deliberate omission, but for the present we note Rickert is not simply an undead author but a human being with relations and feelings. He is not just a gifted scholar or a bundle of reflections, but a nexus of body and movement and words and affect. If there is anything that Rickert’s study can be said to work through with brilliance, humor, and grace, it is the reality of complex personhood.Rickert’s brotherly confession comes in Chapter 1 as a way to introduce a psychoanalytic understanding of subjectivity, and more specifically, to help illustrate how trauma works itself out as an afterwardness or “belatedness” ( Nachträglichkeit ): traumatic events from the past are not reckoned with or worked-through until some coincidence or reminder, such as a similar [End Page 183] sensory experience, reintroduces the event in doubled re-presentation (18–27). This implies the “subject” (a paradigm person) is a kind of timedelay, a self-conscious temporal moving that becomes this way through re-presentation. The rhetorical subject is analogously a retrojected reckoning with events past (not all traumatic) that Rickert identifies as a scene of writing, a locus that has important implications for rhetorical studies in general and writing pedagogy in particular. Rickert’s logic is as follows: if we agree that the subject is a belated one in the psychoanalytic sense, then how we teach rhetoric needs to change. Rickert opens the book with the observation that his students are producing excellent cultural critiques but that such critiques do not lead the students to change their actions (1–7), perhaps evidence enough that something is not quite right in a classroom grounded by “cultural studies pedagogy” and ideology critique—or at the very least, proof that something has changed. The opening gambit is simply that a “postpedagogy” premised on an understanding of rhetorical subjectivity as belatedness is better than a status quo rooted in the rational subject of the Enlightenment.Mostly through a Žižek-filtered, Lacanian lens, Acts of Enjoyment then undertakes a retake of the rhetorical field, frequently scanning from the traumatic ontology of the rhetorical subject to that domain of knowledge that we hold dear, the subject of rhetoric. In Chapter 2, the (primal) scene thus shifts from the slo-mo subject to rhetorical studies, initially through a reassessment of Kinneavy’s “communications triangle,” but ultimately in response to the shock treatment of poststructuralism. The initial theoretical traumas introduced by Victor Vitanza, Diane Davis, Sharon Crowley, and others discussed in Chapter 1 are threaded into an account of “poststructural” redress in Chapter 2: as is true of all forms of trauma, the initial poststructural jolt delivered to the concept of subjectivity was deadened; poststructural theory was eventually used to “shore up rather than challenge Kinneavy’s triangle” (37). To truly work-through our traumatized subject in both senses, we need a second trauma: Lacanian psychoanalysis. Presumably, “poststructuralist thought” is to be opposed because it has no account of the subject (21–24); “Lacan,” after all, “is not a poststructuralist” (48). The remainder of the chapter is then used to deploy Lacan’s conceptual lexicon.Just as... (shrink)

The Chinese philosophical tradition aims at a departure from the imperfect reality for the sake of the ideal. But it is also clear to the Chinese philosophers that most people would not follow their footsteps in discarding reality and seeking the ideal. The weakness of the ideal in its incapacity to change the uncultivated man defines a common thread of philosophical thinking in China, and constitutes a bitter truth which these philosophers do not make explicit. Seven philosophers from the fifth (...) to the third centuries B.C.E. are analyzed in order to develop a fresh understanding of the dialectic between the ideal and the uncultivated man: Lao Tzu, Confucius, Mo Tzu, Mencius, Chuang Tzu, Hsun Tzu, and Han Fei. Although I treat them individually rather than group similar topics for comparison, I employ a consistent mode of analysis to study each of them. ;I find that Mo Tzu perceives reality as an oppressive order and attributes it to the egoism of the uncultivated man; and under his system, oppression will prevail since Mo Tzu's proposals of political and religious controls are imperfectly designed. Mencius shows that the uncultivated man is driven by profit and is repulsed by the demands of morality, making it difficult to found a moral polity. Hsun Tzu believes that the irrationality in man withdraws the popular support from a ritual and rational regime. ;Lao Tzu argues that reality is divided between "good" and "evil," which are themselves defined by conventions. Both "good" and "evil" acquire perpetuity, and even Lao Tzu's proposal of primitivism cannot destroy them. Han Fei similarly conceives reality as composed of both moral and immoral men. His statecraft either lends support to morality or is unable to curb wickedness; accordingly, he is incapable of improving reality. ;Confucius observes that his gentlemanly ideal splits into halves as his students appropriate one mode or the other. The gentleman is underappreciated because those embodying one half or the other of the good are not sympathetic to the full ideal. Chuang Tzu thinks that most people are gripped by partisan points of view, while only a few have transcended partisanship. His ideal personality, combining both partisan and nonpartisan standpoints, would appear suspect to most people. (shrink)

This extensive and generally useful anthology contains extracts from the writings of forty-seven Chinese philosophers, ranging from Confucius, Lao Tzu, Mo Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Mencius, and Hsun Tzu in ancient times to Sun Yat-sen, Hu Shih, Mao Tse-tung, and Fung Yu-lan in the twentieth century. Also included are passages from five books of the sayings of Buddha, on the ground, as stated by the editor, that Buddha "was the historic founder of a religion which profoundly influenced Chinese thinkers." The editor’s (...) introductions to the selections are clear and informative. Unfortunately, the proofreading and editing of the book seem to have been done less carefully than is desirable. For example, a reader sometimes cannot tell whether a particular footnote was written by the original author, by the translator, by the editor of the earlier collection from which the selection was culled for this collection, or by the editor of this collection. Dagobert Runes, not known to be a Chinese linguist, is listed as the translator of portions of the Tao Teh Ching included in the volume. Despite various flaws, however, the book is valuable for the breadth of its coverage.—W. G. (shrink)