In an era of rising social awareness, both academics and practitioners have been concerned about the effectiveness of pro-social consumer influence strategies. The main assumption here is that for social marketing to succeed one must first understand the factors underlying pro-social consumer behavior. Firstly, drawing on two dimensions the authors first identify four types of social behavior. Next, the model describes social behavior as a result of preceding social behavior motivation and actual social behavior intention. Norms and economic evaluation have (...) an impact on social behavior motivation, which in turn influences social behavior intention, eventually leading to actual social behavior. Actual control factors, such as the availability of resources and opportunities, decide whether social behavior intention can really translate into actual social behavior. Finally, authors propose message strategies for each type of social behavior. (shrink)

The American movie, “Peaceful Warrior” (2006), starring Scott Mechlowicz and Nick Nolte, is a story about an outstanding athlete’s perplexities and anxieties. The main character in the movie, Dan Millman, aggressively pushes his performance in order to become a top athlete. As a result, he develops feelings of perplexity and anxiety, and suffers daily from these problems, leading to insomnia. The other character in the movie, Socrates, who works at a gas station, is like a philosopher. Socrates not only helps (...) others to feel better, he can also help himself; in other words, he provides philosophical counseling services. In this paper, I utilize a combination of Buddhist philosophy and Logic-based Therapy (LBT) to interpret and analyze scenarios from this Movie, hoping to provide materials for philosophical counseling. The Buddhist philosophy I use includes the Ch’an philosophies of attachment, contemplation, greed, animosity, ignorance, non-duality, and meditation. The Five Steps of Logic-Based Therapy I incorporate include: (1) identifying the counsel­ee’s emotional reasoning; (2) identifying any irrational premises; (3) refuting any irrational premises; (4) finding antidotes to the refuted premises; and (5) exercising willpower in overcoming cognitive dissonance. There are six aspects that I address in this paper. The first is the anxieties of the Movie’s main character, Dan. The second is the philosophical counseling approach attained by combining Ch’an philosophy and Logic-based Therapy. The third is “knowing the dissatisfactions,” i.e. the process of finding one’s emotional reasoning/irrational premises. The fourth is “terminating the causes (of the dissatisfactions),” i.e. refuting the irrational premises. The fifth is “cultivating the path,” i.e. finding an antidote to the refuted premises. And the sixth aspect is “realizing the cessation (awakening),” i.e., exercising willpower in overcoming cognitive dissonance. (shrink)

In Geography and the Production of Space in Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Hsuan L. Hsu examines how literature represents different kinds of spaces ranging from the single-family home to the globe. He focuses on authors such as Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville and Sarah Orne Jewett, who drew on literary tools such as rhetoric, setting, and point of view to mediate between individuals and different kinds of spaces. These authors used forms such as the regional sketch, the domestic (...) novel, and the detective story to re-examine how local spaces and communities would change when incorporated into global economic and political networks. Geography and the Production of Space in Nineteenth-Century American Literature is valuable reading for American literature scholars, and for all concerned with intersections between literature and geography"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

The idea of a final end of human conduct – the highest good – lies at the centre of important parts of Kant’s philosophy, such as his moral theory, his philosophy of religion, his views on the historical progress of the human species, and his conception of human rationality. This collection of new essays attempts to re-evaluate the doctrine of the highest good and to determine its relevance for contemporary philosophy.

Under the stimulus of developing commercial economy and overseas trade, the social customs characterized by prevailing luxury and extravagance was gradually formed in Fujian Province from the mid-Ming Dynasty on. The transformation started from the material culture and later spread to people’s mental attitudes including the public ethics and human relations. Compared with what happened in the Jiangnan area, the change in Fujian Province was less profound and thorough, but it highly surpassed the North China society, where many sub-prefectures and (...) counties remained unchanged till the end of the Ming Dynasty. However, there were also some coastal or interior regions in Fujian which continuously maintained a simple and unspoiled social atmosphere for the unbalanced economic development. (shrink)

Bayesian probability has recently been proposed as a normative theory of argumentation. In this article, we provide a Bayesian formalisation of the ad Hitlerum argument, as a special case of the ad hominem argument. Across three experiments, we demonstrate that people's evaluation of the argument is sensitive to probabilistic factors deemed relevant on a Bayesian formalisation. Moreover, we provide the first parameter-free quantitative evidence in favour of the Bayesian approach to argumentation. Quantitative Bayesian prescriptions were derived from participants' stated subjective (...) probabilities (Experiments 1 and 2), as well as from frequency information explicitly provided in the experiment (Experiment 3). Participants' stated evaluations of the convincingness of the argument were well matched to these prescriptions. (shrink)

Der Mensch sei von Natur aus politisch, sagt Aristoteles, nur im geordneten Gemeinwesen der Polis finde er seine Bestimmung. Seit der Antike dient die menschliche Natur zur Legitimierung sehr verschiedener, keineswegs 'natürlicher' politischer Ordnungen. In historischen Fallstudien vom Alten Orient bis zur Frühen Neuzeit untersuchen die Beiträge, wie das Verhältnis von Menschennatur und politischer Ordnung gedacht und dargestellt wurde, welche normative Kraft es entfaltete, welche Hierarchien, Machtverhältnisse und Herrschaftsformen es stützte und wo es an seine Grenzen stieß. Denn nicht allein (...) Ordnung, sondern auch ihr Gegenteil kann als naturhaft identifiziert werden. In der Geschichte der politischen Anthropologie zeigt sich der Rekurs auf Natur als ebenso wirkmächtig wie ambivalent. Gerade ihre Bruchlinien und Widersprüche machen vormoderne Auseinandersetzungen um das Verhältnis von Menschennatur und politischer Ordnung für heutige Diskussionen interessant. (shrink)

When The Sound of One Hand Clapping came out in Japan in 1916 it caused a scandal. Zen was a secretive practice, its wisdom relayed from master to novice in strictest privacy. That a handbook existed recording not only the riddling koans that are central to Zen teaching but also detailing the answers to them seemed to mark Zen as rote, not revelatory. For all that, The Sound of One Hand Clapping opens the door to Zen like no other book. (...) Including koans that go back to the master who first brought the koanteaching method from Japan to China in the eighteenth century, this book offers, in the words of the translator, editor, and Zen initiate Yoel Hoffmann, "the clearest, most detailed, and most correct picture of Zen" that can be found. What we have here is an extraordinary introduction to Zen thought as lived thought, a treasury of problems, paradoxes, and performance that will appeal to artists, writers, and philosophers as well as Buddhists and students of religion. (shrink)