According to Popper, democracy, and the one of the western type at that, is the best form of the state system which makes open society possible. At the same time, democratic traditions and institutions have been historically developing not only in the West but also in the East. A number of crucial principles of Buddhistcivilization forming throughout the millennium appear to be quite corresponding to the model of open society. The principles of universal humanism and compassion as the staple of (...) the world; the principle of universal responsibility for forming social institutes and organizations aimed to solve problems common to all people; the principle of tolerance and common ethical direction of all world religions can be attributed to such principles. The humanistic ideal of Buddhism is an individual satisfied with life in society and living in harmony with nature. Buddhism encourages self-restriction and social solidarity, justice and equality, pure thoughts and deeds. Buddhist civilization lies “in between” since in most cases it acts a close-to-perfect mediator among other cultures and civilizations, various ethnic groups and peoples. (shrink)

The escape from the ‘Malthusian trap’ is shown to tend to generate in a rather systematic way quite serious political upheavals. Some demographic structural mechanisms that generate such upheavals have been analyzed, which has made it possible to develop a mathematical model of the respective processes. The forecast of political instability in Sub-Saharan African countries in 2015– 2050 produced on the basis of this model is presented.

Various features of the interpretation of these schools main positions, the reasons for their appearance and the consequences for the development of Mahayana Buddhism have been the subject of discussion in this research. Attention is drawn to the existence of various ideas of Buddhist authors about the interpretation of fundamental philosophical ideas of these schools. The influence of the peculiarities of translation into other languages for the adequate transmission of the author’s thought is discussed. It is noted that the possibility (...) of different interpretations was already established in the very methodology of the transmission of Buddhist doctrines, formed at the earliest stages of Buddhism. The opinions of a number of Tibetan authors are analyzed. The study presents the derivation of the existence of different interpretations of some categories central to Mahayana Buddhism due to the presence of different philosophical methodologies. A number of features were associated with the interpretation of the correlation of logical-critical knowledge, yogic methods and their priority in choosing ways to achieve an exit from the chain of rebirth. The factor of similarities in the positions of such authors as Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu (traditionally attributed to different schools) makes it problematic to unambiguously interpret their philosophical positions; Some features of these schools were determined not only by theoretical backgrounds, but also by political struggle for a leading place in the Buddhist hierarchy of a certain country, as well as the desire to affect authorities. (shrink)

The most enigmatic feature of polytene chromosomes is their banding pattern, the genetic organization of which has been a very attractive puzzle for many years. Recent genome‐wide protein mapping efforts have produced a wealth of data for the chromosome proteins of Drosophila cells. Based on their specific protein composition, the chromosomes comprise two types of bands, as well as interbands. These differ in terms of time of replication and specific types of proteins. The interbands are characterized by their association with (...) “active” chromatin proteins, nucleosome remodeling, and origin recognition complexes, and so they have three functions: acting as binding sites for RNA pol II, initiation of replication and nucleosome remodeling of short fragments of DNA. The borders and organization of the same band and interband regions are largely identical, irrespective of the cell type studied. This demonstrates that the banding pattern is a universal principle of the organization of interphase polytene and non‐polytene chromosomes.Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssaysCaught in the act: Rapid, symbiont‐driven evolution AbstractFunction and evolution of sex determination mechanisms, genes and pathways in insects Abstract. (shrink)

The early decades of the last century saw European philosophical thought becoming increasingly interested in the sociological extension of the idea of law. From the viewpoint of the sociology of law, law is formed in the process of social interactions and is not sanctioned by the state. Sergey Hessen and Georges Gurvitch base their conceptions of social law on the sociology of law in the 1920s and 1930s. They start a polemic in the pages of the journal Sovremenniye zapiski. (...) Although they differ radically in their definitions of the status of the state they concur in defining society as a set of social institutions and communities existing as instruments for expressing personal freedom. The social regulations they propose are already legal situations. Hessen and Gurvitch believe that the individual can fully exercise his/her freedom only in conditions of such legal pluralism. However, the concept of legal pluralism involves an inherent problem of preserving social unity: why is it that society does not fall into a range of autonomous social entities, each offering the individual its own legal order for actualising freedom? To solve this problem the philosophers use the concept of “the general will”. General will is an instrument of correlation between individual freedom and the development of society and culture as a whole. The object of philosophical dispute is how the general will is formed: 1) in the process of social self-organisation according to Gurvitch; 2) in the operation of the suprafunctional organisation according to Hessen. The difference in the grounding of the general will leads to a difference in the concepts of social unity: 1) sobornost according to Gurvitch and 2) solidarity according to Hessen. Analysis of the dispute between Gurvitch and Hessen brings out not only the differences in the interpretation of social unity but also the fundamental problems with the conceptions of social law. (shrink)

The manifestation of the significance of geographic specificity in the formation and development of society is the most crucial research vector in the study of socio-philosophical doctrines. The tradition of conceptualizing the meaning of geography in the history of Russia was significantly contributed by Sergey Solovyov and Vasily Klyuchevsky. Fyodor Stepun also correlated geographic conditions and social practices within the philosophy of landscape, which he successfully integrated into his socio-philosophical doctrine. This research paper is undertaken to reveal the essential (...) principles of Stepun's social philosophy and to determine the features of his argumentation, which he used to interpret the mechanism of the socio-cultural process. Comparing the landscapes of Europe and Russia is Stepun's favorite method to focus on entirely different systems of social practices formed in different natural conditions. The limited/unlimited opposition is the foundation of Stepun's landscape philosophy. Stepun emphasizes that religion plays a significant role in forming the existence of social beings. Religion creates and maintains the unity of society, without which it is impossible to include geographic space in social practices. Religion forms a collective social subject from a multitude of individuals and collective formations and from their various activities - a unity tradition: a culture that has its strategy for the social development of the landscape. Stepun believed that the loss of religion's functionality as an instrument of social cohesion leads, in the long term, to the death of culture. Orthodox politics will help in the conditions of Russia's infinite space to ensure social cohesion and thus incorporate the landscape into social area. This policy knows the unique role of religion in socio-cultural development. Thanks to the Orthodox policy, it is possible to integrate the Russian landscape into the economic system effectively. (shrink)

啓蒙思想の系譜を繙き、理性の力を問い直す。古代ギリシアから、ホッブズ、カント、フランクフルト学派を経て最新の議論まで。啓蒙を巡る問題意識の変遷を追う論考集。.

New Age in religious literature is regarded as an integral eclectic concept that refers to a person's search for spirituality outside of known world religions in their confessional terms. Conditionally it includes non-religious groups and trends, Gnostic and metaphysical schools, non-confessional spiritual associations, groups and currents of the "alternative" way of life. From the sociological point of view, it can be attributed to the manifestation of deviations in the form of social anomalies. At the same time, for participants in this (...) direction, their own values, knowledge, activities are seen as a gradual approximation to the norm, a model, in assessing the life of the main mass of society as pathological or nearpathological states that also have the chance to change when they realize their true nature. The description of these public phenomena through the concept of "New Age" is seen as an intermediate or transitional nature due to the presence of serious differences in both the vision of the world and their practical activities. (shrink)

The paper explores the influence of greenwash on green trust and discusses the mediation roles of green consumer confusion and green perceived risk. The research object of this study focuses on Taiwanese consumers who have the purchase experience of information and electronics products in Taiwan. This research employs an empirical study by means of the structural equation modeling. The results show that greenwash is negatively related to green trust. Therefore, this study suggests that companies must reduce their greenwash behaviors to (...) enhance their consumers’ green trust. In addition, this study finds out that green consumer confusion and green perceived risk mediate the negative relationship between greenwash and green trust. The results also demonstrate that greenwash is positively associated with green consumer confusion and green perceived risk which would negatively affect green trust. It means that greenwash does not only negatively affect green trust directly but also negatively influence it via green consumer confusion and green perceived risk indirectly. Hence, if companies would like to reduce the negative relationship between greenwash and green trust, they need to decrease their consumers’ green consumer confusion and green perceived risk. (shrink)

Comparative philosophy has been interested in issues such as whether the familiar Western concepts of the soul and self can be applied in understanding Chinese philosophy about human selfhood and whether there are alternative Chinese modes of thinking about these concepts. I will outline a comparison of the main concerns of the Greeks and Chinese philosophers in their discussion about the soul and self, and examine some of the major comparative theories that are recently developed. The comparative discussion is significant (...) in helping us understand each tradition's views of soul and self in its own terms, and in identifying alternatives to familiar modes of thinking. However, we should avoid looking for simplified uniformity in each tradition and overgeneralizing the contrasts between China and Greece. (shrink)

In 1958, a group of New-Confucians issued “A Manifesto for a Re-Appraisal of Sinology and Reconstruction of Chinese Culture.” Equally in 1958, the British philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe published her classical paper “Modern Moral Philosophy.” These two papers have the same target — modern Western morality — and the solutions they proposed respectively. Yet Anscombe’s paper did not mention Confucianism, and the “Manifesto” ignored Aristotelian tradition of virtue. Furthermore, from 1960s to 1990s, the revival movement of Confucianism and the revival movement (...) of Aristotelian ethics have not had much dialogue. This paper seeks to explain this phenomenon by comparing these two historically important documents. In particular it tries to understand why the “Manifesto” fails to see the similarities between Aristotle and Confucius. (shrink)

Because no previous literature discusses the determinants of green product development performance, this study develops an original framework to fill the research gap. This study explores the influences of green dynamic capabilities and green transformational leadership on green product development performance and investigates the mediation role of green creativity. The results demonstrate that green dynamic capabilities and green transformational leadership positively influence green creativity and green product development performance. Besides, this study indicates that the positive relationships between green product development (...) performance and their two antecedents—green dynamic capabilities and green transformational leadership—are partially mediated by green creativity. It means that green dynamic capabilities and green transformational leadership can not only directly affect green product development performance positively but also indirectly affect it positively via green creativity. Hence, companies have to increase their green dynamic capabilities, green transformational leadership, and green creativity to enhance their green product development performance. (shrink)

In her elaboration of the distinction between connected knowing and separate knowing, Professor Clinchy addresses some conceptual relations that are central to Polanyi’s epistemology. I believe Polanyi would be happy to see the strong echoes ofhis thoughts in feminist epistemology, and the feminists will find substantial support from Polanyi’s philosophy.

This article examines how modern Chinese Buddhism has been influenced by Christianity. For our purposes ‘modern Chinese Buddhism’ refers to a form of what has become known in the West as ‘Engaged Buddhism’, but in Chinese is known by titles which can be translated ‘Humanistic Buddhism’ or ‘Buddhism for Human Life’. This tradition was initiated on the Chinese mainland between the two World Wars by the monk Tài X?, and Part one of the article is devoted to him. Since the (...) communist conquest of China, its main branches have flourished in Taiwan, whence two of them have spread worldwide. The most successful, at least in numerical terms, has been Fo Guang Shan, founded by a personal disciple of Tài X?, Hsing Yun, now very old, and it is on this movement that we concentrate in Parts two and three. We differentiate between conscious imitation and analogous development due to similar social circumstances, and show how Protestant Christianity and Roman Catholicism have had different effects. In Part four, we examine Fo Guang Shan as a missionary religion. (shrink)

A growing body of research has started to examine how individuals from different countries may differ in their use of ethically questionable tactics during business negotiations. Whereas prior research focused on the main effect of the national culture or nationality of the negotiator, we add a new factor, which is the nationality of the counterpart. Looking at both these variables allows us to examine whether and how people may change their likelihood of using ethically questionable tactics in inter-cultural negotiations as (...) opposed to intra-cultural ones. Results of an experiment show that overall, American participants were less likely than Chinese participants to use ethically questionable tactics in negotiations. However, American participants were more likely to use ethically questionable tactics, particularly those related to false promises and inappropriate information gathering, in inter-cultural negotiations with Chinese counterparts, than in intra-cultural negotiations with American counterparts. By contrast, Chinese participants were less likely to use ethically questionable tactics, particularly those related to false promises and attacking opponent’s network, in inter-cultural negotiations with American counterparts, than in intra-cultural negotiations with Chinese counterparts. Implications and future directions are discussed. (shrink)

This study proposed a novel construct – green core competence – to explore its positive effects on green innovation and green images of firms. The results showed that green core competences of firms were positively correlated to their green innovation performance and green images. In addition, this research also verified two types of green innovation performance had partial mediation effects between green core competences and green images of firms. Therefore, investment in the development of green core competence was helpful to (...) businesses for the enhancement of their green innovation and green images. Furthermore, this study found that green core competence, two types of green innovation performance, and green images of medium & small enterprises (SMEs) were all significantly less than those of large enterprises in the information and electronics industry in Taiwan. Therefore, there was the advantage of firm size for the green core competence in this industry, and it was imperative for SMEs to develop and create their green core competences to strengthen their green innovation performance, and green images. (shrink)

Community-Based Tourism (CBT) has been presented as an alternative to sustain tourism development in developing countries. This tourism model offers local residents an opportunity to manage natural and cultural resources in order to promote local economy and generate greater benefits. The objective of the study is to investigate the benefits, challenges of CBT and solution to address identified shortcomings by studying Muen Ngoen Kong community in Chiang Mai, Thailand. In order to achieve these objectives, qualitative methods; field observation and interview (...) were employed and qualitative data were analyzed by thematic analysis. The results of field observation and interview data from local residents were reported, analyzed, and discussed. To practice CBT, the findings indicated that several challenges; conflict over resource ownership and benefit leaking, financial issues, and problems of community participation had been experienced in implementation of CBT. However, abundance of tourism resources and security related concerns were identified as benefits of CBT in the area. In close collaboration with government agency, product development was recommended to create a unique condition for CBT and address shortcoming. It is crucial to involve local residents, empower the local community, conserve and cultivate cultural resources, and finally, maintain the sustainability of overall tourism resources. (shrink)

When Carl Wellman introduced the reasoning-type conduction, he endorsed a dialectical view on natural language argumentation. Contemporary scholarship, by contrast, treats conductive argument predominantly on a product view. Not only did Wellman’s reasons for a dialectical view thus fall into disregard; a product-treatment of conduction also flouts the standard semantics of ‘argument’. Attempting to resolve these difficulties, our paper traces Wellman’s preference for a dialectical view to the role of defeasible warrants. These act as stand-ins for value hierarchies that arguers (...) of normal suasory inclination find acceptable. We also improve on extant ways of diagramming conduction and distinguish two of its structural variants. (shrink)

Both young children and agrammatic aphasic speakers have difficulty interpreting pronouns, but not reflexive elements. This phenomenon is known as the delay of Principle B effect in language acquisition. The interpretation of pronouns is non-adult-like for children and disturbed in agrammatic aphasia, yet there is evidence that interpretation of pronouns is not always problematic for these populations and that it seems to be governed by linguistic principles. This chapter examines the linguistic principles underlying the interpretation of pronouns and reflexives among (...) children and agrammatic aphasic speakers whose native languages were Dutch, Spanish, and Italian by focusing on two types of sentences: simple transitive sentences and Exceptional Case Marking constructions. It first looks at earlier research on language acquisition and agrammatism before discussing two important linguistic theories, Government and Binding Theory and Reflexivity and Primitives of Binding. (shrink)

Differences among scientific, mathematical, and ethical subject matters motivate a pluralism where distinct domains of subject matter are associated with distinct truth properties and logics. However, it is unclear how such pluralism might accommodate potentially attractive epistemic norms, such as that one ought to believe only what is true, and that one ought to believe what is logically true. In this paper, I show how such pluralism can accommodate such norms by supplementing the account developed in Yu (2017a,b) with epistemic, (...) doxastic, and deontic operators. The upshot is that pluralism is compatible with, even if not committed to, monism about epistemic norms. (shrink)

This essay was contributed to the celebration of Father Mclean’s 75th birth day in a volume To the Mountain—essay in honor of Professor George F. Mclean (Fu Jen Catholic University Press, Taiwan, 2004.) In this essay I recalled what I knew of him by personal contact. As I wrote this essay, I was moved myself by his personality. Just as it says on the preface of the volume, “Over the past 40 years, George Mclean has helped to establish contacts and (...) build relations with philosophers in most of the countries of the world, and hundreds—indeed, thousands—of scholars are in his debt”, I am one of those hundreds, or thousands scholars in his debt. I am sure people may tell their own story about Professor George Mclean as they know themselves. (shrink)

This paper is a cognitive semantic analysis of a CCTV educational commercial, which is one of a series designed and produced in preparation for, and in celebration of, the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Called the “Beijing Opera Episode”, this TV commercial converges on the theme: “To mount the stage of the world, and to put on a show of China”. That is, China sees her hosting of the 2008 Olympics by Beijing as a great opportunity for her to step onto (...) the international stage to perform a show of China. This theme, which alludes to China's globalization and retention of cultural identity, is conceptualized and expressed in terms of a central metaphor of theatrical performance: hosting the beijing olympics is performing beijing opera on an international stage. This study first analyzes in detail how this central metaphor is manifested multimodally through visual and aural as well as verbal discourse, thus examining it as a multimodal metaphor. The study then applies a decompositional approach, based on the distinction between primary and complex metaphors, to analyzing the central metaphor as a metaphorical compound with its internal structures and components, which is nevertheless built on a more general cognitive foundation. The study also offers a linguistic perspective on a cultural model underlying the central metaphor, which is arguably a Chinese cultural model for understanding various aspects and events of life in general. At the core of this cultural model is the widespread life is a stage metaphor, which however has a specific manifestation within the Chinese cultural context. (shrink)

With the development of artificial intelligence technologies, it is possible to use computer to read digital medical images. Because Alzheimer’s disease has the characteristics of high incidence and high disability, it has attracted the attention of many scholars, and its diagnosis and treatment have gradually become a hot topic. In this paper, a multimodal diagnosis method for AD based on three-dimensional shufflenet and principal component analysis network is proposed. First, the data on structural magnetic resonance imaging and functional magnetic resonance (...) imaging are preprocessed to remove the influence resulting from the differences in image size and shape of different individuals, head movement, noise, and so on. Then, the original two-dimensional ShuffleNet is developed three-dimensional, which is more suitable for 3D sMRI data to extract the features. In addition, the PCANet network is applied to the brain function connection analysis, and the features on fMRI data are obtained. Next, kernel canonical correlation analysis is used to fuse the features coming from sMRI and fMRI, respectively. Finally, a good classification effect is obtained through the support vector machines method classifier, which proves the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method. (shrink)

Developing World Bioethics, Volume 22, Issue 3, Page 170-178, September 2022.