In mathematics, various representations of real numbers have been investigated. All these representations are mathematically equivalent because they lead to the same real structure - Dedekind-complete ordered field. Even the effective versions of these representations are equivalent in the sense that they define the same notion of computable real numbers. Although the computable real numbers can be defined in various equivalent ways, if computable is replaced by primitive recursive (p. r., for short), these definitions lead to a number of different (...) concepts, which we compare in this article. We summarize the known results and add new ones. In particular we show that there is a proper hierarchy among p. r. real numbers by nested interval representation, Cauchy representation, b -adic expansion representation, Dedekind cut representation, and continued fraction expansion representation. Our goal is to clarify systematically how the primitive recursiveness depends on the representations of the real numbers. (shrink)

In mathematics, various representations of real numbers have been investigated. All these representations are mathematically equivalent because they lead to the same real structure – Dedekind-complete ordered field. Even the effective versions of these representations are equivalent in the sense that they define the same notion of computable real numbers. Although the computable real numbers can be defined in various equivalent ways, if “computable” is replaced by “primitive recursive” , these definitions lead to a number of different concepts, which we (...) compare in this article. We summarize the known results and add new ones. In particular we show that there is a proper hierarchy among p. r. real numbers by nested interval representation, Cauchy representation, b -adic expansion representation, Dedekind cut representation, and continued fraction expansion representation. Our goal is to clarify systematically how the primitive recursiveness depends on the representations of the real numbers. (shrink)

本书分别对熊十力、陈寅恪、钱钟书的阐释思想进行专门探讨和比较研究。他们的阐释思想分别代表了20世纪中国哲学、史学、文学三个学科的阐释思想所曾达到的最高成就。.

Human behavior depends on the ability to effectively introspect about our performance. For simple perceptual decisions, this introspective or metacognitive ability varies substantially across individuals and is correlated with the structure of focal areas in prefrontal cortex. This raises the possibility that the ability to introspect about different perceptual decisions might be mediated by a common cognitive process. To test this hypothesis, we examined whether inter-individual differences in metacognitive ability were correlated across two different perceptual tasks where individuals made judgments (...) about different and unrelated visual stimulus properties. We found that inter-individual differences were strongly correlated between the two tasks for metacognitive ability but not objective performance. Such stability of an individual’s metacognitive ability across different perceptual tasks indicates a general mechanism supporting metacognition independent of the specific task. (shrink)

In the contemporary epistemological literature, peer disagreement is often taken to be an instance of a more general phenomenon of “higher-order evidence.” Correspondingly, its epistemic significance is often thought to turn on the epistemic significance of higher-order evidence in general. This chapter attempts to evaluate this claim, and in doing so to clarify some points of unclarity in the current literature – both about what it is for evidence to be “higher-order,” and about the relationship between disagreement and higher-order evidence. (...) We will begin by considering some candidate definitions of “higher-order evidence,” and offering our own definition that attempts to capture the phenomenon of interest. We will then consider, in light of this definition, whether disagreement and its epistemic significance are best-understood as a kind of higher-order evidence. We’ll argue that although peer disagreement can be epistemically significant qua higher-order evidence, this role doesn’t exhaust its significance, and that it can also serve as straightforward first-order evidence. Finally, we’ll suggest that inattention to this latter point has made broadly conciliatory views about peer disagreement seem somewhat easier to resist than they in fact are. (shrink)

Professor Chen Ning Yang, an eminent contemporary physicist, was Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, from 1955 to 1966, and Albert Einstein Professor of Physics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook until his retirement in 1999. He has been Distinguished Professor-at-Large at the Chinese University of Hong Kong since 1986 and Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, since 1998. Since receiving his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1948, Prof Yang has (...) made great impacts in both abstract theory and phenomenological analysis in modern physics. In 1983, he published "Selected Papers (1945-1980), With Commentary". It has been considered by Freeman Dyson as one of his favorite books. The present book is a sequel to that earlier volume. It is a collection of his personally selected papers (1971-2012) supplemented by his insightful commentaries. Its contents reflect Professor Yang's changing interests after he reached age sixty. It also includes commentaries written by him in 2011 when he is 89 years old. The papers and commentaries in this unique collection comprise a remarkable personal and professional chronicle, shedding light on both the intellectual development of a great physicist and on the nature of scientific inquiry. (shrink)

Drawing on social exchange theory and benevolent leadership literature, we show how the largesse associated with benevolent leadership can cause subordinates to feel obliged to undertake illegitimate tasks assignments that go beyond their job duties. The hypotheses are tested in a scenario experimental study and a multisource, time-lagged field survey. Both studies indicate that benevolent leadership evokes indebtedness in subordinates (called felt obligation), which is then indirectly related to their willingness to undertake illegitimate tasks. The second study shows that subordinates (...) who try to avoid actions that damage relationships (called disintegration avoidance) and those who feel job insecurity are most willing to perform illegitimate assignments. Practical implications for curbing workplace exploitation are discussed. (shrink)

This study attempts to answer the question why Confucianism, the dominant “teaching” among the Three Teachings, is not a religion in contemporary China, unlike the other two “teachings,” Buddhism and Daoism. By examining this phenomenon in the social-historical context, this study finds its origin in Orientalism. The Orientalist conceptualization of religion became part of the New Culture discourse at the turn of the twentieth century. While China has undergone tremendous social changes over the past century, the old discourse remains.

Editor's AbstractThis essay presents Mainland New Confucianism (MNC) as diverse but distinctive, as still in a process of maturation but already with a clear direction. According to Chen, MNC is a rejection of the twin modernist narratives of the left (revolution) and the right (enlightenment) in favor of a narrative that downplays the ruptures associated with the May Fourth Movement and instead seeks to reconnect to China's past values and traditions.

In the fifth year of the reign of Shaoxi [in the Song dynasty]—in other words, in the year 1194 A.D.—Zhu Xi was returning to his home province after he had been relieved of his position at court as daizhi shijiang when, in the eleventh month of that year he came to Yushan county in Jiangxi Province. The governor of the district invited Master Zhu to give a number of lectures at the local county school, and Master Zhu complied, discoursing on (...) essential teachings in response to the questions that were raised by the students as well as in response to the lectures given by other scholars. At one point, the record says, the scholar Cheng Gong1 rose to ask the question: "Philosophers prior to the Three Ages only spoke about zhong and ji ; how come, then, that when it came to the time of the dialogues of those in the school of Confucius, everything seemed to revolve around the word ren ?" Master Zhu replied: "The discussions of zhong and of ji have often tended to make people misunderstand the meaning of what they were actually saying; alas, we do not ourselves have the leisure here to discuss all of that in detail.". (shrink)

Today's educational environment forms the stage for a host of debates, many of which centre on the use of standardized assessment in the classroom. With this push towards standardization, less time is being devoted to incorporating ?experiential? knowledge, or that knowledge which comes from hands?on, travel, natural and other worldly experiences, into the learning environment. William Wordsworth and Thomas Hardy, two somewhat unlikely sources of educational insight, do have a pertinent message to add to this ongoing educational discussion. The two (...) authors, through their personal experiences and through their literary works, draw from and examine the roles of formal education and the functions of various facets of knowledge in education. They exemplify the importance of finding a balance between formal educational experiences and informal avenues of education. Both men remind society that without the incorporation of experiential knowledge into the educational experience, students cannot reach the full potential of their intellectual, emotional, spiritual and social growth. Through an examination of the lives and works of Wordsworth and Hardy, the importance of non?formal, non?standardized experiences is reasserted at a time when it is of utmost importance to evaluate the components that make up modern education. (shrink)

The fiscal imbalance between the central and local governments under fiscal centralization may motivate local governments to pass tax burdens on firms. The causal identification of the tax system reform and the sustainable export innovation behavior of firms are of great significance. This study uses the income tax sharing policy of China to examine the impact of fiscal centralization on the sustainable export innovation behavior of firms. We find that this tax reform has significantly inhibited the increase of the export (...) value-added rate of firms, and has an increasing trend with the share ratio between the Central Government and the local government. Moreover, this effect mainly comes from the crowding-out effect of imported intermediate goods on domestic intermediate goods. The tests show that the above conclusions are consistent with the general logic of local governments. When they face greater downward fiscal pressure, they will further pass the tax burden on local firms and force the firms to promote their export performance to expand the tax base. This short-sighted behavior of replacing “quality improvement” with “quantity increase” is an important factor that affects the sustainable export innovation behavior of firms and the climb in the global value chain. (shrink)

The common law's approach in the law of unjust enrichment is to enumerate specific «unjust factors» as permissible causes of action in claims for restitution. This approach has come under attack, inter alia, for being unnecessarily complicated. The claim is that the civilian approach, with its single ground of absence of legal cause for the transfer, is preferable since the operative unjust factor in any particular case is irrelevant to the restitutionary response. In defence of the common law's approach, this (...) article tenders four aspects of the restitutionary response which, it is claimed, are illuminated by reference to the nature, context, and effect of the operative unjust factor in any particular case. They are: (i) the availability of the defence of change of position; (ii) the justifiability of certain «bars» on rescission and the permissible mode of mutual restitution on rescission; (iii) the appropriate measure of enrichment where restitution is, or must be, effected in money; and (iv) two possible justifications for the controversial remedy of partial rescission. (shrink)

Our paper draws attention to a neglected channel of corruption—the bribe payments by state-owned enterprises. This is an important phenomenon as bribe payments by SOEs fruitlessly waste national resources, compromising public welfare and national prosperity. Using a large dataset of 30,249 firms from 50 countries, we show that, in general, SOEs are less likely to pay bribes for achieving organizational objectives owing to their political connectivity. However, in deteriorated institutional environments, SOEs may be subjected to potential managerial rent-seeking behaviors, which (...) disproportionately increase SOE bribe propensity relative to privately owned enterprises. Specifically, our findings highlight the importance of fostering democracy and rule of law, reducing prevalence of corruption and shortening power distance in reducing the incidence of SOE bribery. (shrink)

All concepts, methods, and techniques of the philosophy of language arise from its conceptions of language. Conceptions of language have determined the character of the philosophy of language and the direction of its philosophical research. Various schools and currents within the philosophy of language differ from each other, mainly in the way they understand the referential character of the sign—that is, the relationship between the meaning of a word and its referential object.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis asserts that people who organize their experience with the help of different languages can have different pictures of the world.

Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions became the most widely read book about science in the twentieth century. His terms 'paradigm' and 'scientific revolution' entered everyday speech, but they remain controversial. In the second half of the twentieth century, the new field of cognitive science combined empirical psychology, computer science, and neuroscience. In this book, the theories of concepts developed by cognitive scientists are used to evaluate and extend Kuhn's most influential ideas. Based on case studies of the Copernican revolution, (...) the discovery of nuclear fission, and an elaboration of Kuhn's famous 'ducks and geese' example of concept learning, this volume, first published in 2006, offers accounts of the nature of normal and revolutionary science, the function of anomalies, and the nature of incommensurability. (shrink)

The idea of the "original position" is one of the most famous concepts in contemporary political philosophy. Since the first publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971, the device of the original position has become a popular theoretical method in many political theorists' writings. Unfortunately, the true meaning of the original position is far from clear both in Rawls's and Rawlsians' accounts. This has caused a lot of misunderstanding and misuse of this concept in contemporary literature. This study attempts (...) to explore the more profound connotation of the original position by sorting out its relationship with Kant's categorical imperative procedure and argues that it is more appropriate to claim that Rawls's original position device is a development of Kant's categorical imperative procedure rather than the standard version of rational choice theory or social contract tradition. I demonstrate three essential similarities between Rawls's original position and Kant's categorical imperative procedure, which embodies Kantian constructivism: justificatory individualism, the reasonable presupposes and subordinates the rational, and the combination of moral and realistic considerations. (shrink)

To me, becoming attached to Dushu was a "historical event" of no mean significance, because doing so has ever since profoundly affected my academic career.

"Scholar of the humanities" is not a title of honor; it is only a choice of profession. Hence, those "erstwhile scholars" who have already gone into politics or business are not discussed in the present article. Instead of touching on such hot topics as professors selling meat pies, buying and selling automobiles, entering people's political consultative conferences, or taking government posts, this article considers the destiny and possible options of scholars who are willing to engage in humanity studies and are (...) still doing so, for the latter are more perplexed and more at loss and deserve more understanding and sympathy. (shrink)

This article examines various positions on whether children should be allowed to play in late imperial China. Demonstrating distinctly different views from Neo-Confucian thinkers, professional genre painters of “Children at Play” ( yingxi tu 嬰戲圖), and the emerging pediatric specialists, the article maintains that clearly multi-vocal forces coexisted during the Song Dynasty, including a persuasive child-favoring stance that remains unique in global humanities on this issue.

In his Knowledge and Belief (1962), Hintikka establishes his system of epistemic logic with the KK (Knowing that One Knows, in symbols, Kp→KKp) principle (KK for short). However, his system of epistemic logic and the KK principle are grounded upon his strong notion of knowledge, which requires that knowledge is infallible, that is, it makes further inquiry pointless, and becomes ‘discussion-stopper’; knowledge implies truth, to wit, cognitive agents will not be mistaken in their knowledge; cognitive agents will be ‘perfect logicians’, (...) i.e. they have infinitive capability of logical inference. Hintikka calls the argument for KK from the strong notion of knowledge as the ‘transcendental argument’ for KK. Obviously, the strong notion of knowledge is far away from our ordinary conception of knowledge; based on such a strong sense of knowledge, epistemic logic has met the problem of logical omnipotence, and is difficult to apply in our ordinary cognitive practice. Moreover, there is no close connection of the KK principle with internalism or externalism. (shrink)

This study examines the effect of teaching ethics and the form of code of ethics on auditors’ ethical decision making. We draw upon Rest’s decision-making model and Hunt and Vitell’s theory of marketing ethics to assist us with this examination. We use accounting students as substitutes for auditors in this study to enhance its internal validity as students are “subjects who would not already have detailed knowledge and experience of the Code”. The research method includes a survey and an experiment (...) in the study. A between-subjects survey design with a sample of 271 students and a within-subjects experimental design with a sample of 146 students are used. A confirmatory factor analysis is conducted before other statistical methods are performed. Our results show that teaching codes of ethics improves accounting students’ awareness of audit independence issues and their ethical judgments and intentions. However, the form of a code of ethics does not make any significant difference in terms of the participants’ awareness of audit independence and their ethical judgments and intentions. Our study contributes to the debate on the effectiveness of principles-based versus rules-based codes of ethics and the importance of teaching ethics in non-Western economies. (shrink)

This paper discusses the structural relationship between ideals on pleasure and pleasure as a human psychological phenomenon in Chinese thought. It describes the psychological phenomenon of pleasure, and compares different approaches by pre-Qin Confucian and Daoist scholars. It also analyzes its development in Song and Ming Confucianism. Finally, in the conclusion, the issue is transferred to a general understanding of happiness, so as to demonstrate the modern value of the classical ideological experience.