In this paper, we defined (I,T) − standard neutrosophic rough sets based on an implicator I and a t-norm T on I; lower and upper approximations of standard neutrosophic sets in a standard neutrosophic approximation are defined. Some properties of (I,T) − standard neutrosophic rough sets are investigated. We consider the case when the neutrosophic components (truth, indeterminacy, and falsehood) are totally dependent, single-valued, and hence their sum is ≤ 1.

A rough fuzzy set is the result of the approximation of a fuzzy set with respect to a crisp approximation space. It is a mathematical tool for the knowledge discovery in the fuzzy information systems. In this paper, we introduce the concepts of rough standard neutrosophic sets and standard neutrosophic information system, and give some results of the knowledge discovery on standard neutrosophic information system based on rough standard neutrosophic sets.

Today, soft computing is a field that is used a lot in solving real-world problems, such as problems in economics, finance, banking... With the aim to serve for solving the real problem, many new theories and/or tools which were proposed, improved to help soft computing used more efficiently. We can mention some theories as fuzzy sets theory (L. Zadeh, 1965), intuitionistic fuzzy set (K Atanasov, 1986), neutrosophic set (F. Smarandache 1999). In this paper, we introduce a new notion of sup (...) port-neutrosophic set (SNS), which is the combination a neutrosophic set with a fuzzy set. So, SNS set is a direct extension of fuzzy set and neutrosophic sets (F. Smarandache). Then, we define some operators on the support-neutrosophic sets, and investigate some properties of these operators. (shrink)

In this paper, we first propose the concept of divergence measure on neutrosophic sets. We also provide some formulas for the divergence measure for neutrosophic sets. After that, we investigate the properties of proposed neutrosophic divergence measure. Finally, we also apply these formulas in medical problem and the classification problem.

Post-mortem reproduction is a complex and contested matter attracting attention from a diverse group of scholars and resulting in various responses from a range of countries. Vietnam has been reluctant to deal directly with this matter and has, accordingly, permitted post-mortem reproduction implicitly. First, by analysing Vietnam’s post-mortem reproduction cases, this paper reflects on the manner in which Vietnamese authorities have handled each case in the context of the contemporary legal framework, and it reveals the moral questions arising therefrom. The (...) article then offers an account of Vietnamese social norms as an explanation for the tendency to conduct post-mortem reproduction. In arguing that a deeper and more thorough examination of the moral and ethical reasoning is required, the paper advocates in favour of supportive post-mortem reproduction regulation. In doing so, the paper seeks to reconcile the Vietnamese legal framework and post-mortem reproduction experiences of other countries. The article concludes that Vietnam and countries sharing the similar cultural traits should permit post-mortem reproduction explicitly. This would require full engagement with the ethical and legal issues arising, and careful promulgation of regulations and guidelines based on comparative experiences of a range of countries in handling this matter. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 904-922, October 2022.

Coastal protection is crucial to human development since the ocean has many values associated with the economy, ecosystem, and culture. However, most ocean protecting efforts are currently ineffective due to the burdens of finance, lack of appropriate management, and international cooperation regimes. For aiding bottom-up initiatives for ocean protection support, this study employed the Mindsponge Theory to examine how the public’s perceived economic and cultural values influence their willingness to support actions to protect the ocean. Analyzing the European-Union-Horizon-2020-funded dataset of (...) 709 respondents from 42 countries, we discovered that perceived economic values have negative effects on the tendency of ocean protection supports (i.e., food, transportation, renewable energy, oil and gas, and recreation). In contrast, certain perceived cultural values can help increase the willingness to do so (i.e., mental well-being and sense of identity). However, the effects of perceived cultural values are only moderately reliable. These findings suggest that designing cultural information delivery campaigns can help promote coastal reserve supports, such as fundraisings and preserving the oceans from the community. (shrink)

ObjectiveThe goal of the study was to explore the relationship between parent–children relationships related to using the internet among kids and potentially associated factors.Materials and MethodsA sample of 1.216 Vietnamese students between the ages of 12 and 18 agreed to participate in the cross-sectional online survey. Data collected included socioeconomic characteristics and internet use status of participants, their perceived changes in relationship and communication between parents and children since using the internet, and parental control toward the child’s internet use. An (...) Ordered Logistic Regression was carried out to determine factors associated with parent–children relationship since using the internet.ResultsThe characteristics of the relationship between children and their parents since using the Internet were divided into three levels: deterioration, stability, and improvement. The topics that children most often communicate with their parents include learning, housework, and future directions. Two-way interactive activities, such as supporting parents to use the Internet, have a positive impact on the parent–child relationship. Stubborn parental control, such as establishing rules about contact or allowing Internet access and setting up global positioning system to track negatively affecting parent–child relationships.ConclusionFindings indicated that changes in the quality of the parent–child relationship were self-assessed by participants regard to kids’ internet use, especially in the COVID-19 epidemic context. Educational campaigns and programs to raise awareness of parents as to the dangers and negative influences that their children may encounter online, psychology of children’s behaviors and effects of different responding strategies are recommended. (shrink)

IntroductionThis study aimed to explore the mental wellbeing profiles and their related factors among urban young adults in Vietnam.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted in Hanoi, which is the capital of Vietnam. There were 356 Vietnamese who completed the Mental Health Inventory-5 questionnaire. The Latent Profile Analysis was used to identify the subgroups of mental wellbeing through five items of the MHI-5 scale as the continuous variable. Multinomial logistic regression was used to determine factors related to subgroups.ResultsThree classes represented three levels (...) of MHI-5 score, which included “Poor mental health,” “Fair mental health,” and “Good mental health,” were, respectively, 14.3, 46.6, and 39.0%. Compared to a low household economy, participants with an average household economy had 2.11 and 4.79 times higher odds of being in a good mental health class relative to fair and poor mental health classes. Respondents with more than two acute symptoms had 3.85 times higher odds of being in a good mental health class relative to a poor mental health class, as compared to those without acute symptoms. Regarding the measurement of the Perceived Social Support Scale, people having support from their family had 1.80 and 2.23 times higher odds of being in classes of fair and good mental health relative to the poor mental health class; and participants having friend support also had 1.87 times higher odds of being in a good mental health class compared with the fair mental health class, as the MSPSS score increased by 1 unit. People with Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale increased by 1 score, those who had 1.17, 1.26, and 1.47 times higher odds of being in a good compared to fair mental health class, fair compared to poor mental health class, and good compared to poor mental health class, respectively.ConclusionOur findings were given to promote a new classification method for mental health screening among the general population. The current findings could be used as evidence to develop policies and plans that focus on encouraging early screening for mental health problems among the general young population in the future. (shrink)

AimHealthcare workers have directly provided care for COVID-19 patients, and have faced many additional sources leading to poor mental health. The study aimed to investigate the mental health problems and related factors among healthcare staff in Vietnam.MethodsA descriptive cross-sectional mixed methods study, combining quantitative and qualitative research methods, was performed among 400 healthcare workers working at the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases and Ninh Binh General Hospital from the first day of treatment for COVID-19 patients to May 01, 2020.ResultsThe results (...) showed that 8.0% of participants had stress, 17.5% of participants had anxiety, and 14.8% of participants had depression. Approximately 50% of participants reported that they had at least one of these symptoms. The findings illustrated that stress, anxiety, and depression were associated with the position in a hospital, health status during the COVID-19 pandemic, family members/relatives infected with COVID-19, physical and mental support from friends, family, and community, department, years of working, and the average work hours per day of healthcare workers exposed to COVID-19.ConclusionDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers who worked in the hospital providing treatment and care for COVID-19 patients dealt with mental health problems such as stress, anxiety, and depression. It is necessary to promote mental health among healthcare workers, to contribute to the fight against the COVID-19 outbreak in Vietnam. (shrink)

Vietnam is home to a prospering technology community and numerous enterprises that range from small start-ups to development giants. Virtually all public services are offered online. In fact, the country even has a system for e-residency and “data embassies.” This achievement derives in part from the nation’s transparent and enduring political preferences, but more importantly from Vietnamese law and its regulatory system regarding information, the digital general public, and intellectual property rights (IPR) protection. In this examination of the most pertinent (...) aspects of Vietnam’s digital economy legislation, this study explores the nation’s regulatory structure regarding copyright and patents within the context of digital transformation. The study discusses the relationship between foreign and national regulations in terms of IPR protection and the advancement of digitalization. Research on Vietnamese regulations and the practical application of major patent and copyright regulations has revealed that in many respects, the nation is highly reliant on the effective operation of a broader foreign institutional and legal framework. Thus, in the near future, technological advancement will necessitate the establishment of additional transnational regulatory systems. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe provision of gifts and payments for healthy volunteer subjects remains an important topic in global health research ethics. This paper provides empirical insights into theoretical debat...

This paper is an empirical analysis of how culture, specifically tradition, affects well-being, i.e., happiness, life satisfaction, and financial satisfaction, along with socioeconomic factors in East Asia. Ordered probit regression model results show that women have higher happiness and satisfaction levels than men even in Confucian cultures in which men generally receive more favourable conditions than women. Additionally, marital status or the impact of religion had strong and positive effects on happiness and sometimes on life satisfaction but not on financial (...) satisfaction. Interestingly, tradition has a statistically significant and important effect on both life and financial satisfaction. Finally, the results show that individuals who value tradition greater also have higher levels of financial satisfaction. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a nudge for public–private cooperation in healthcare to rapidly cope with limited resource. However, Vietnam’s historical reliance on a public healthcare system, combined with a traditional emphasis on socialization in the Polanyian sense, hindered the swift integration of the private sector. This research investigates path dependency in Vietnam’s public health sector, using theories including path dependency, Karl Polanyi’s double movement with legal analysis method to analyze the interplay of historical decisions, and socialist policies in healthcare. Recognizing (...) these institutional and market governance flaws, a deeper understanding of the role of law becomes vital in crafting strategies for a more resilient and sustainable healthcare system in Vietnam. In this article, Ho Chi Minh City is chosen as a case study due to its notable mix of public–private healthcare facilities and its status as a leading area in infection cases during the third COVID-19 wave. The article suggests that there should be a change in the way public and private sectors work together, one that is more in line with market-driven solutions which requires solid legal framework for cooperation beyond merely mobilizing resources. (shrink)

Growing numbers of women in militaries worldwide, coupled with vast segments of women within war-affected populations globally, raise questions about gender as it structures trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress disorder, and other mental health consequences of war. In this study, we investigate the gendered associations between early-life wartime stress exposures and PTSD symptoms in older adulthood using data from the 2018 Vietnam Health and Aging Study, a unique data set documenting multiple dimensions of health and wartime stress exposures within a sample (...) of older adults who occupied diverse roles during the American war in Vietnam. Our results indicate that the severity of recent PTSD symptoms is significantly and positively associated with the severity of wartime stress exposure among both men and women. Vietnamese men’s social positions, particularly their predominance in combat, exposed them to more numerous war-related stressors. However, Vietnamese women experience a greater PTSD penalty associated with some wartime stress exposures, likely due to the burden of protecting family in wartime and incorporation into military and paramilitary roles with lesser preparation, training, and support than men. We conclude that women who survive major wars, both as soldiers and civilians, bear a significant burden of armed conflict’s lasting toll upon mental health. (shrink)

The Grätzer-Schmidt theorem of lattice theory states that each algebraic lattice is isomorphic to the congruence lattice of an algebra. We study the reverse mathematics of this theorem. We also show thatthe set of indices of computable lattices that are complete is Π11\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Pi ^1_1$$\end{document}-complete;the set of indices of computable lattices that are algebraic is Π11\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Pi ^1_1$$\end{document}-complete;the set of compact elements of a computable (...) lattice is Π11\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Pi ^{1}_{1}$$\end{document} and can be Π11\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Pi ^1_1$$\end{document}-complete; andthe set of compact elements of a distributive computable lattice is Π30\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Pi ^{0}_{3}$$\end{document}, and there is an algebraic distributive computable lattice such that the set of its compact elements is Π30\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Pi ^0_3$$\end{document}-complete. (shrink)

A total of 1918 loci, detected by the hybridization of 938 expressed sequence tag unigenes from 26 Triticeae cDNA libraries, were mapped to wheat homoeologous group 4 chromosomes using a set of deletion, ditelosomic, and nulli-tetrasomic lines. The 1918 EST loci were not distributed uniformly among the three group 4 chromosomes; 41, 28, and 31% mapped to chromosomes 4A, 4B, and 4D, respectively. This pattern is in contrast to the cumulative results of EST mapping in all homoeologous groups, as reported (...) elsewhere, that found the highest proportion of loci mapped to the B genome. Sixty-five percent of these 1918 loci mapped to the long arms of homoeologous group 4 chromosomes, while 35% mapped to the short arms. The distal regions of chromosome arms showed higher numbers of loci than the proximal regions, with the exception of 4DL. This study confirmed the complex structure of chromosome 4A that contains two reciprocal translocations and two inversions, previously identified. An additional inversion in the centromeric region of 4A was revealed. A consensus map for homoeologous group 4 was developed from 119 ESTs unique to group 4. Forty-nine percent of these ESTs were found to be homoologous to sequences on rice chromosome 3, 12% had matches with sequences on other rice chromosomes, and 39% had no matches with rice sequences at all. Limited homology was found between wheat ESTs on homoeologous group 4 and the Arabidopsis genome. Forty-two percent of the homoeologous group 4 ESTs could be classified into functional categories on the basis of blastX searches against all protein databases. (shrink)

Education reforms worldwide, in both developed and developing countries, address the content of education programmes and/or changes education systems. There are different paths, and different socio...

Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those values; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Re-tweets, citation rates, ranked lists of best schools, and Grade Point Averages. We are vulnerable to value capture because of the competitive advantage that such crisp and clear expressions of value have in (...) our private reasoning and our public justification. There is, however, a price. In value capture, we take a central component of our autonomy — our ongoing deliberation over the exact articulation of our values — and we outsource it. And the metrics to which we outsource usually engineered for the interests of some external force, like a large-scale institution’s interest in cross-contextual comprehensibility and quick aggregability. That outsourcing cuts off one of the key benefits to personal deliberation. In value capture, we no longer adjust our values and their articulations in light of own rich experience of the world. Our values should often be carefully tailored to our particular selves or our small-scale communities, but in value capture, we buy our values off the rack. In some cases – like decreasing CO2 emissions – the costs of non-tailored values are outweighed by the benefit of precise collective coordination. In other cases, like in our aesthetic lives, they are not. This suggests that we should want different values suited to different scales. We should want value federalism. Some values are perhaps best pursued at the largest-scale level, others at smaller scales. The problem occurs when we exhibit an excess preference for the largest-scale values – when we consistently let the universal metrics swamp our quieter interests. (shrink)

In her BBC Reith Lectures on Trust, Onora O’Neill offers a short, but biting, criticism of transparency. People think that trust and transparency go together but in reality, says O'Neill, they are deeply opposed. Transparency forces people to conceal their actual reasons for action and invent different ones for public consumption. Transparency forces deception. I work out the details of her argument and worsen her conclusion. I focus on public transparency – that is, transparency to the public over expert domains. (...) I offer two versions of the criticism. First, the epistemic intrusion argument: The drive to transparency forces experts to explain their reasoning to non-experts. But expert reasons are, by their nature, often inaccessible to non-experts. So the demand for transparency can pressure experts to act only in those ways for which they can offer public justification. Second, the intimate reasons argument: In many cases of practical deliberation, the relevant reasons are intimate to a community and not easily explicable to those who lack a particular shared background. The demand for transparency, then, pressures community members to abandon the special understanding and sensitivity that arises from their particular experiences. Transparency, it turns out, is a form of surveillance. By forcing reasoning into the explicit and public sphere, transparency roots out corruption — but it also inhibits the full application of expert skill, sensitivity, and subtle shared understandings. The difficulty here arises from the basic fact that human knowledge vastly outstrips any individual’s capacities. We all depend on experts, which makes us vulnerable to their biases and corruption. But if we try to wholly secure our trust — if we leash groups of experts to pursuing only the goals and taking only the actions that can be justified to the non-expert public — then we will undermine their expertise. We need both trust and transparency, but they are in essential tension. This is a deep practical dilemma; it admits of no neat resolution, but only painful compromise. (shrink)

Clinical practice is a part of the integral learning method in nursing education. The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in clinical learning is highly encouraged among nursing students to support evidence-based nursing and student-centered learning. Through the information-processing lens of the mindsponge theory, this study views performance expectancy (or perceived usefulness) and effort expectancy (or perceived ease of use) as results of subjective benefit and cost judgments determining the students’ ICT using intention for supporting clinical learning, respectively. Therefore, (...) the study examines whether effort expectancy moderates the relationship between performance expectancy and the intention to use ICT among Moroccan nursing students. The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was employed on a dataset of 702 Moroccan nursing students. We found that nursing students’ performance expectancy is positively associated with the intention to adopt ICT and social media, while effort expectancy positively moderates this relationship. Moreover, the model with effort expectancy as the moderator was discovered to have a significantly larger weight than the model with effort expectancy as the direct predictor, validating our information-processing reasoning. This study provides a new perspective on the interplay between the benefit and cost perceptions of ICT use to support clinical learning methods in nursing education. Moreover, given the limited education resources, especially in developing countries like Morocco, we recommend nursing education and training prioritize communicating the benefits of ICTs and social media over ease of use. Doing so would help improve the effectiveness and efficiency of nursing education and training while lowering costs. (shrink)

Ao dai is a typical long dress of Viet Nam used to be worn by both men and women of the Viet and other ethnic peoples. In her shaping and development history, Viet Nam became a place that converged various cultural flows such as the Vietnamese indigenous culture and that of the Chinese, Champa and Indian etc. To the end of the 19th century, especially the 20th, Viet Nam continued to be influenced by the French culture and the American ways (...) of living. The acceptance of cultures from various nationalities and communities from the North to South, East to West made it possible for the Vietnamese fashion designers to harmonize all into an Ao dai for the Vietnamese women. This article will synthesize and analyze three renovation movements of Ao dai in the 20th century. It also discusses about these processes and introduces typical innovators whose contribution has created the Ao dai as it is today, a traditional dress that represents history of the Vietnamese culture, aesthetic sense, art and vitality. (shrink)

Collaboration of tradition and modern from the East and Western on the humanity and cultural view in Vietnam.

With growing global concerns about water scarcity and environmental sustainability, understanding the factors influencing individual water conservation behaviors is crucial. This study utilizes the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics to investigate the relationship between concerns of local issues and water conservation behaviors in a sample of 1831 residents in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. New Mexico is an arid region of which 90% faced severe drought driven by the most significant wildfire in state history and some of the driest months ever (...) recorded in 2022. The results show a positive association between the drought or water scarcity concern and the number of water conservation behaviors adopted. Likewise, the positive association between the concern about population growth and development and water conservation behaviors is also observed. However, further examination is needed due to the weak reliability of this relationship. In contrast, negative associations between concerns about water quality and water bills with water conservation behaviors are also identified. Based on these findings, the study discusses the potential of building the eco-surplus culture by improving information dissemination of water-saving methods and existing water-related issues in the local areas. (shrink)

Games may seem like a waste of time, where we struggle under artificial rules for arbitrary goals. The author suggests that the rules and goals of games are not arbitrary at all. They are a way of specifying particular modes of agency. This is what make games a distinctive art form. Game designers designate goals and abilities for the player; they shape the agential skeleton which the player will inhabit during the game. Game designers work in the medium of agency. (...) Game-playing, then, illuminates a distinctive human capacity. We can take on ends temporarily for the sake of the experience of pursuing them. Game play shows that our agency is significantly more modular and more fluid than we might have thought. It also demonstrates our capacity to take on an inverted motivational structure. Sometimes we can take on an end for the sake of the activity of pursuing that end. (shrink)

Recent conversation has blurred two very different social epistemic phenomena: echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Members of epistemic bubbles merely lack exposure to relevant information and arguments. Members of echo chambers, on the other hand, have been brought to systematically distrust all outside sources. In epistemic bubbles, other voices are not heard; in echo chambers, other voices are actively undermined. It is crucial to keep these phenomena distinct. First, echo chambers can explain the post-truth phenomena in a way that epistemic (...) bubbles cannot. Second, each type of structure requires a distinct intervention. Mere exposure to evidence can shatter an epistemic bubble, but may actually reinforce an echo chamber. Finally, echo chambers are much harder to escape. Once in their grip, an agent may act with epistemic virtue, but social context will pervert those actions. Escape from an echo chamber may require a radical rebooting of one's belief system. (shrink)

There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, we care about getting things right. On the other hand, we demand autonomy. We want appreciators to arrive at their aesthetic judgments through their own cognitive efforts, rather than deferring to experts. These two demands seem to be in tension; after all, if we want to get the right judgments, we should defer to the judgments of experts. The best explanation, I suggest, is (...) that aesthetic appreciation is something like a game. When we play a game, we try to win. But often, winning isn’t the point; playing is. Aesthetic appreciation involves the same flipped motivational structure: we aim at the goal of correctness, but having correct judgments isn’t the point. The point is the engaged process of interpreting, investigating, and exploring the aesthetic object. Deferring to aesthetic testimony, then, makes the same mistake as looking up the answer to a puzzle, rather than solving it for oneself. The shortcut defeats the whole point. This suggests a new account of aesthetic value: the engagement account. The primary value of the activity of aesthetic appreciation lies in the process of trying to generate correct judgments, and not in having correct judgments. -/- *There is an audio version available: look for the Soundcloud link, below.*. (shrink)

I propose to study one problem for epistemic dependence on experts: how to locate experts on what I will call cognitive islands. Cognitive islands are those domains for knowledge in which expertise is required to evaluate other experts. They exist under two conditions: first, that there is no test for expertise available to the inexpert; and second, that the domain is not linked to another domain with such a test. Cognitive islands are the places where we have the fewest resources (...) for evaluating experts, which makes our expert dependences particularly risky. -/- Some have argued that cognitive islands lead to the complete unusability of expert testimony: that anybody who needs expert advice on a cognitive island will be entirely unable to find it. I argue against this radical form of pessimism, but propose a more moderate alternative. I demonstrate that we have some resources for finding experts on cognitive islands, but that cognitive islands leave us vulnerable to an epistemic trap which I will call runaway echo chambers. In a runaway echo chamber, our inexpertise may lead us to pick out bad experts, which will simply reinforce our mistaken beliefs and sensibilities. (shrink)

Online book fairs are being held in Vietnam to replace traditional offline events that have been shelved owing to the COVID-19 crisis. This study aims to explore book consumers’ perceptions regarding digital book fairs and their evaluation of the first-ever national online book fair held in Vietnam. In-depth interviews were conducted to obtain insights from people who had attended the online book event. The findings provide acceptance of and support for the organization of digital book fairs during the COVID-19 pandemic. (...) Attendees generally appreciated the convenience of the national online book fair and the promotional programmes offered by various publishers and distributors. Furthermore, some attendees enjoyed the novelty of the event and the feeling of being included in the reading community. Nevertheless, most of the attendees highlighted several limitations, especially the lack of social and face-to-face interaction. These findings have implications for online book fair organizers, publishers, and book distributors alike. (shrink)

We offer an account of the generic use of the term “porn”, as seen in recent usages such as “food porn” and “real estate porn”. We offer a definition adapted from earlier accounts of sexual pornography. On our account, a representation is used as generic porn when it is engaged with primarily for the sake of a gratifying reaction, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with the represented content. We demonstrate the usefulness of the concept of generic (...) porn by using it to isolate a new type of such porn: moral outrage porn. Moral outrage porn is representations of moral outrage, engaged with primarily for the sake of the resulting gratification, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with morally outrageous content. Moral outrage porn is dangerous because it encourages the instrumentalization of one’s empirical and moral beliefs, manipulating their content for the sake of gratification. Finally, we suggest that when using porn is wrong, it is often wrong because it instrumentalizes what ought not to be instrumentalized. (shrink)

According to most accounts of trust, you can only trust other people (or groups of people). To trust is to think that another has goodwill, or something to that effect. I sketch a different form of trust: the unquestioning attitude. What it is to trust, in this sense, is to settle one’s mind about something, to stop questioning it. To trust is to rely on a resource while suspending deliberation over its reliability. Trust lowers the barrier of monitoring, challenging, checking, (...) and questioning. Trust sets up open pipelines between yourself and parts of the external world. Trust permits external resources to have a similar relationship to one as one’s internal cognitive faculties. This creates efficiency, but at the price of exquisite vulnerability. We must trust in this way because we are cognitively limited beings in a cognitively overwhelming world. Crucially, we can hold the unquestioning attitude towards objects and technologies. When I trust my climbing rope, I stop worrying about its reliability. When I trust my online calendaring system, I simply go to the events indicated, without question. But, one might worry, how could one ever hold such a normatively loaded attitude as trust towards mere objects? How could it ever make sense to feel betrayed by an object? Trust is our engine for expanding and outsourcing our agency — for binding external processes into our practical selves. Thus, we can be betrayed by our smartphones in the same way that we can be betrayed by our memory. When we trust, we try to make something a part of our agency, and we are betrayed when our part lets us down. To unquestioningly trust something is to let it in—to attempt to bring it inside one’s practical functioning. This suggests a new form of gullibility: agential gullibility, which occurs when agents too hastily and carelessly integrate external resources into their own agency. (shrink)

Games have a complex, and seemingly paradoxical structure: they are both competitive and cooperative, and the competitive element is required for the cooperative element to work out. They are mechanisms for transforming competition into cooperation. Several contemporary philosophers of sport have located the primary mechanism of conversion in the mental attitudes of the players. I argue that these views cannot capture the phenomenological complexity of game-play, nor the difficulty and moral complexity of achieving cooperation through game-play. In this paper, I (...) present a different account of the relationship between competition and cooperation. My view is a distributed view of the conversion: success depends on a large number of features. First, the players must achieve the right motivational state: playing for the sake of the struggle, rather than to win. Second, successful transformation depends on a large number of extra-mental features, including good game design, and social and institutional features. (shrink)

The current debate over aesthetic testimony typically focuses on cases of doxastic repetition — where, when an agent, on receiving aesthetic testimony that p, acquires the belief that p without qualification. I suggest that we broaden the set of cases under consideration. I consider a number of cases of action from testimony, including reconsidering a disliked album based on testimony, and choosing an artistic educational institution from testimony. But this cannot simply be explained by supposing that testimony is usable for (...) action, but unusable for doxastic repetition. I consider a new asymmetry in the usability aesthetic testimony. Consider the following cases: we seem unwilling to accept somebody hanging a painting in their bedroom based merely on testimony, but entirely willing to accept hanging a painting in a museum based merely on testimony. The switch in intuitive acceptability seems to track, in some complicated way, the line between public life and private life. These new cases weigh against a number of standing theories of aesthetic testimony. I suggest that we look further afield, and that something like a sensibility theory, in the style of John McDowell and David Wiggins, will prove to be the best fit for our intuitions for the usability of aesthetic testimony. I propose the following explanation for the new asymmetry: we are willing to accept testimony about whether a work merits being found beautiful; but we are unwilling to accept testimony about whether something actually is beautiful. (shrink)

Art can be addressed, not just to individuals, but to groups. Art can even be part of how groups think to themselves – how they keep a grip on their values over time. I focus on monuments as a case study. Monuments, I claim, can function as a commitment to a group value, for the sake of long-term action guidance. Art can function here where charters and mission statements cannot, precisely because of art’s powers to capture subtlety and emotion. In (...) particular, art can serve as the vessel for group emotions, by making emotional content sufficiently public so as to be the object of a group commitment. Art enables groups to guide themselves with values too subtle to be codified. (shrink)

What is a game? What are we doing when we play a game? What is the value of playing games? Several different philosophical subdisciplines have attempted to answer these questions using very distinctive frameworks. Some have approached games as something like a text, deploying theoretical frameworks from the study of narrative, fiction, and rhetoric to interrogate games for their representational content. Others have approached games as artworks and asked questions about the authorship of games, about the ontology of the work (...) and its performance. Yet others, from the philosophy of sport, have focused on normative issues of fairness, rule application, and competition. The primary purpose of this article is to provide an overview of several different philosophical approaches to games and, hopefully, demonstrate the relevance and value of the different approaches to each other. Early academic attempts to cope with games tried to treat games as a subtype of narrative and to interpret games exactly as one might interpret a static, linear narrative. A faction of game studies, self-described as “ludologists,” argued that games were a substantially novel form and could not be treated with traditional tools for narrative analysis. In traditional narrative, an audience is told and interprets the story, where in a game, the player enacts and creates the story. Since that early debate, theorists have attempted to offer more nuanced accounts of how games might achieve similar ends to more traditional texts. For example, games might be seen as a novel type of fiction, which uses interactive techniques to achieve immersion in a fictional world. Alternately, games might be seen as a new way to represent causal systems, and so a new way to criticize social and political entities. Work from contemporary analytic philosophy of art has, on the other hand, asked questions whether games could be artworks and, if so, what kind. Much of this debate has concerned the precise nature of the artwork, and the relationship between the artist and the audience. Some have claimed that the audience is a cocreator of the artwork, and so games are a uniquely unfinished and cooperative art form. Others have claimed that, instead, the audience does not help create the artwork; rather, interacting with the artwork is how an audience member appreciates the artist's finished production. Other streams of work have focused less on the game as a text or work, and more on game play as a kind of activity. One common view is that game play occurs in a “magic circle.” Inside the magic circle, players take on new roles, follow different rules, and actions have different meanings. Actions inside the magic circle do not have their usual consequences for the rest of life. Enemies of the magic circle view have claimed that the view ignores the deep integration of game life from ordinary life and point to gambling, gold farming, and the status effects of sports. Philosophers of sport, on the other hand, have approached games with an entirely different framework. This has lead into investigations about the normative nature of games—what guides the applications of rules and how those rules might be applied, interpreted, or even changed. Furthermore, they have investigated games as social practices and as forms of life. (shrink)

Twitter makes conversation into something like a game. It scores our communication, giving us vivid and quantified feedback, via Likes, Retweets, and Follower counts. But this gamification doesn’t just increase our motivation to communicate; it changes the very nature of the activity. Games are more satisfying than ordinary life precisely because game-goals are simpler, cleaner, and easier to apply. Twitter is thrilling precisely because its goals have been artificially clarified and narrowed. When we buy into Twitter’s gamification, then our values (...) shift from the complex and pluralistic values of communication, to the narrower quest for popularity and virality. Twitter’s gamification bears some resemblance with the phenomena of echo chambers and moral outrage porn. In all these phenomena, we are instrumentalizing our ends for hedonistic reasons. We have shifted our aims in an activity, not because the new aims are more valuable, but in exchange for extra pleasure. (shrink)

The feeling of clarity can be dangerously seductive. It is the feeling associated with understanding things. And we use that feeling, in the rough-and-tumble of daily life, as a signal that we have investigated a matter sufficiently. The sense of clarity functions as a thought-terminating heuristic. In that case, our use of clarity creates significant cognitive vulnerability, which hostile forces can try to exploit. If an epistemic manipulator can imbue a belief system with an exaggerated sense of clarity, then they (...) can induce us to terminate our inquiries too early — before we spot the flaws in the system. How might the sense of clarity be faked? Let’s first consider the object of imitation: genuine understanding. Genuine understanding grants cognitive facility. When we understand something, we categorize its aspects more easily; we see more connections between its disparate elements; we can generate new explanations; and we can communicate our understanding. In order to encourage us to accept a system of thought, then, an epistemic manipulator will want the system to provide its users with an exaggerated sensation of cognitive facility. The system should provide its users with the feeling that they can easily and powerfully create categorizations, generate explanations, and communicate their understanding. And manipulators have a significant advantage in imbuing their systems with a pleasurable sense of clarity, since they are freed from the burdens of accuracy and reliability. I offer two case studies of seductively clear systems: conspiracy theories; and the standardized, quantified value systems of bureaucracies. (shrink)

Public parks play important roles in conserving biodiversity, promoting environmental sustainability, fostering community engagement, and enhancing the overall well-being of residents in urban areas. Nevertheless, finance is needed to maintain and expand the greenspaces in the parks. The current study aims to examine how perceptions of biodiversity loss consequences and park visitation frequency influence the residents’ willingness to contribute financially to tree-planting projects in public parks. Employing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics on a dataset of 535 Vietnamese urban residents, we (...) discovered that perceived health loss and knowledge erosion as consequences of biodiversity loss and park visitation frequency are directly positively associated with financial donation willingness. Meanwhile, the perceived economic growth loss was found to be indirectly positively associated with donation willingness through park visitation frequency, whereas the perceived loss of nature-based recreation opportunities exhibits the opposite indirect association. Based on these results, communication strategies focusing on the multifaceted benefits of biodiversity preservation and investments in public parks are recommended to improve urban residents’ financial support to park panting initiatives, accessibility to greenspaces, and connections with nature. These are crucial for promoting an eco-surplus culture that enhances biodiversity conservation and human well-being. (shrink)

The theory and culture of the arts has largely focused on the arts of objects, and neglected the arts of action – the “process arts”. In the process arts, artists create artifacts to engender activity in their audience, for the sake of the audience’s aesthetic appreciation of their own activity. This includes appreciating their own deliberations, choices, reactions, and movements. The process arts include games, urban planning, improvised social dance, cooking, and social food rituals. In the traditional object arts, the (...) central aesthetic properties occur in the artistic artifact itself. It is the painting that is beautiful; the novel that is dramatic. In the process arts, the aesthetic properties occur in the activity of the appreciator. It is the game player’s own decisions that are elegant, the rock climber’s own movement that is graceful, and the tango dancers’ rapport that is beautiful. The artifact’s role is to call forth and shape that activity, guiding it along aesthetic lines. I offer a theory of the process arts. Crucially, we must distinguish between the designed artifact and the prescribed focus of aesthetic appreciation. In the object arts, these are one and the same. The designed artifact is the painting, which is also the prescribed focus of appreciation. In the process arts, they are different. The designed artifact is the game, but the appreciator is prescribed to appreciate their own activity in playing the game. Next, I address the complex question of who the artist really is in a piece of process art — the designer or the active appreciator? Finally, I diagnose the lowly status of the process arts. (shrink)

In this note, we consider a Merton model for default risk, where the firm’s value is driven by a Brownian motion and a compound Poisson process.

I propose an account of aesthetic value, where aesthetic value lies in the process of aesthetic engagement: in our activity of perceiving, guiding our attention, interpreting, and otherwise wrestling with aesthetic objects. It also includes our social activities of engagement: arguing with each other, writing criticism, making top-ten lists. (This is a short summary of a view developed in greater detail elsewhere.).

This is a reply to Elisabeth Camp's and Elijah Millgram's probing discussions of "Games and the Art of Agency", in a symposium in Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy. Millgram argues that games cannot function as a guide to life, because they are too different from life. Games are limited in a special way: in life, we deliberate about what goals we want to take on, but in games, the goals are fixed and given to us. Camp argues that there (...) is nothing particularly special about games, because the fluidity of agency is all over ordinary life too - games are just like ordinary life. I respond to Millgram: we do deliberate about our ends, in games, when we aesthetically reflect on which games to play. And I respond to Camp: games are distinctive in the way they regulate how our reasons flow across the game/life border. To respond to these criticisms, I add some substantial new features to my account of the motivational structure of game-play. (shrink)