In this paper I argue, contrary to Chad Hansen’s view , that pre-Han 漢 Chinese philosophy has the semantic concept of truth. Hansen argues that, first, pre-Han Chinese thinkers do not have motivations to introduce the concept of truth in their philosophy due to their peculiar theory of language; second, the concept does not fit well with philosophical texts at that time, and in particular, the Mozi 墨子 text about the three standards of doctrine. However, I argue that Chinese thinkers (...) indeed have reasons to introduce the concept of truth. Hansen’s reading of the three standards of doctrine takes the standards as standards of correct word use, thus attributing to the authors of the Mozi an understanding of yan 言 as something without complete propositional content. However, I argue, a reading that sees the three standards as standards for something with complete propositional content explains better the passages in which the authors apply the standards to various issues. Finally I argue that the term ran 然 is sometimes used as a truth predicate in classical Chinese texts, because it has several important features identical to that of the truth predicate “is true” in English. (shrink)

Media guidelines on safe suicide-related reporting are within the suicide prevention armamentarium. However, implementation issues beleaguer real-world practice. This study evaluated the perspectives of the Malaysian media community, persons with lived experience of suicidal behavior, and mental health professionals on suicide-related reporting in terms of the impact, strategies, challenges, and the implementation of guidelines on safe reporting. Three focus group discussions of purposively sampled Malaysian media practitioners, PLE, and MHP were audio-recorded, transcribed, coded and thematically analyzed. Inclusion criteria were: English (...) fluency, no clinical depression or suicidal ideation, no recent previous suicide attempts or suicide bereavement. Three major themes emerged: Unsafe Reporting; Impact; and Safe Reporting. Most described current reporting as unsafe by being potentially triggering to media users and may contribute to contagion effect. Positive impacts identified included raised awareness toward suicide and its prevention. Unsafe reporting was attributed to inadequate awareness, knowledge, and guidance, lack of empathy and accountability, job-related factors, popularity-seeking, lack of monitoring and governance, and information source with unsafe content. Majority agreed on how suicide stories should be framed to produce a safe report. The media community diverged on how detailed a suicide story should be. Safe reporting challenges included difficulties in balancing beneficial versus harmful details, social media ubiquity and its citizen reporters. Participants suggested these safe reporting strategies: stakeholder engagement, educational approaches, improving governance and surveillance, and guidelines revision. Most acknowledged the relevance of guidelines but were unaware of the existence of local guidelines. Implementation challenges included the dilemma in balancing media industry needs vis-à-vis safe reporting requirements, stakeholder engagement difficulties and social media regulation. There is poor awareness regarding safe suicide-related reporting across all groups. PLE and MHP were negatively impacted by current unsafe messaging which aggravated trauma and grief reactions. Postvention support gaps for mental health professionals were highlighted. Safe reporting promotion strategies should include stakeholder engagement to increase awareness on minimizing Werther and maximizing Papageno effects. Strategic re-examination and dissemination of local media guidelines to address new media issues, and effective surveillance mechanisms, are crucial in sustainable improvement of safe reporting practices. (shrink)

Japanese agricultural scholarship reached its peak in the Tokugawa period (1603-1868). Most of its representative works were imbued with the Chinese metaphysical doctrine of yin-yang-wu-hsing. They used the ideas of yin-yang, wu-hsing, yun-ch'i, hexagrams, and feng-shui extensively to develop their views and to explain various practices. There were two different attitudes towards Chinese concepts among Tokugawa scholars. Some regarded Chinese ideas as universal principles, and faithfully introduced them to Japan, whereas some were faced with the problem of national identity and (...) attempted to accommodate Chinese metaphysical principles to Japanese agriculture. This article examines the adoption of the yin-yang-wu-hsing doctrine in Tokugawa agriculture through a careful and critical textual study of several major Tokugawa writings. (shrink)

In light of rapid globalization, there has been an increase in U.S. psychologists conducting international cross-cultural research. Such researchers face unique ethical dilemmas. Although the American Psychological Association has its own Code of Ethics with guidelines regarding research, these guidelines do not specifically address international and cross-cultural research. The purposes of this article are to (a) provide a review of current ethical guidelines for research on human subjects, (b) provide a review of major ethical challenges and dilemmas in conducting cross-cultural (...) research, (c) highlight several existing frameworks that maybe useful for increasing cross-cultural understanding of these ethical challenges for U.S. psychologists, and (d) issue a call to the American Psychological Association to begin to assess and evaluate the nature and extent of ethical problems in conducting cross-cultural research among its members. (shrink)

In a society which traditionally valued the moral and expressive forces of art, landscape painting became one of the most esteemed art forms. In China, "landscape" has always meant what its Chinese name—shan shui —implies: paintings dominated by peaks and streams supplemented by trees, rocks, mists, and plunging waterfalls. Despite major changes in style, landscape painting in China between the eighth and eighteenth centuries was remarkably stable in subject matter. Chinese artists painted the natural settings which surrounded them in their (...) home provinces or those which they discovered in their travels; and such settings were dominated by mountains and rivers. Moreover mountains and water were imbued with symbolic value. Traditionally the mountain has been considered the symbol of the emperor—the son of Heaven—and of virtue and masculine energy. The ridges and folds of the mountains display the veins of energy that course through the earth and the continuous process of change which characterizes the Universe. Water represents the origin of life, the female principle, vitality itself. Trees, stones, bamboo, and many flowers were similarly endowed with cosmogonic and moral significance. Given the symbolic value with which elements of nature were traditionally endowed, Chinese landscape painting is properly considered the normative form through which artists reasserted correct social relationships, moral order among men, and moral order in nature. Esther Jacobson-Leong, associate professor of art history at the University of Oregon, is currently working on problems in the significance in Steppe art and related traditions. (shrink)

Analysts have generally offered two explanations for China's no-devaluation policy during the Asian financial crisis. The first is China's good economic fundamentals and the renminbi is not fully convertible. The second is China's foreign relations' imperative. China was endeavouring to seek favourable entry conditions into the WTO and improve relations with its Asian neighbours. At the same time it sought to exploit the undercurrent of resentment in Asia towards the role played by the US during the crisis. Policy making in (...) China has become more institutionalized in the post-Deng era, but these explanations ignore the role of China's domestic bureaucratic actors in exchange rate policy making. This paper examines the exchange rate regime preferences of China's key economic ministries and their influences in exchange rate policy making and argues that Party leaders were able to adopt a no-devaluation policy throughout the crisis because China's key economic ministries actively supported or acquiesced to that policy. (shrink)

I argue that it is a main theme of Davidson's theory of interpretation that interpretive charity implies the impossibility of massive disagreement. There is clear textual support for that. I then argue that from the first-person point of view of a full-blooded interpreter, the theme must be accepted; and that is precisely why Davidson accepts it. If massive disagreement between speaker and interpreter seems to us easy to imagine, it is only because the imagination involved is third-personal and not full-blooded.

The development of commercial revenue streams allows traditional nonprofit organizations to increase financial certainty in response to the reduction of traditional funding sources and increased competition. In order to capture commercial revenue-generating opportunities, traditional nonprofit organizations need to deliberately transform themselves into social enterprises. Through the theoretical lens of institutional entrepreneurship, we explore the institutional work that supports this transformation by analyzing field interviews with 64 institutional entrepreneurs from UK-based social enterprises. We find that the route to incorporate commercial processes (...) and convert traditional nonprofit organizations into social enterprises requires six distinct kinds of institutional work at three different domains; these are—“engaging commercial revenue strategies”, “creating a professionalized organizational form”, and “legitimating a socio-commercial business model”. In elaborating on social entrepreneurship research and practice, we offer a comprehensive framework delineating the key practices contributing to the transformation from traditional nonprofit organizations to social enterprises. This extends our understanding of the ex-ante strategy of incorporating commercial processes within social organizations. Furthermore, the identification of these practices also offers an important tool for scholars in this field to examine the connection of each practice with different ethical concerns of social entrepreneurship in greater depth. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 210 Seiten: 105-127.

Using the Lascar inequalities, we show that any finite rank δ-closed subset of a quasiprojective variety is definably isomorphic to an affine δ-closed set. Moreover, we show that if X is a finite rank subset of the projective space P n and a is a generic point of P n , then the projection from a is injective on X. Finally we prove that if RM = RC in DCF 0 , then RM = RU.

Qoheleth's theology concerns the practical realities of life and how one can cope in a topsy-turvy world. He espouses an ethic of liberality and enjoyment in the face of uncertainty.

The paper presents an exploratory attempt to analyse self‐reported leniency toward software piracy systematically, using an approach based on empirical factors, rather than ethical factors. The empirical factors studied were: social acceptance of software piracy; the cost of original software; urgency of the subject's need for software; availability of original software; knowledge of computer software copyright law; gender; monthly household income; and education level. It provides new insights to software companies and government officials who are developing programmes to promote the (...) concept of anti‐piracy among software consumers. This is also the first exploratory research to study the interaction effects among factors influencing the reported leniency towards software piracy, at the individual level. (shrink)

The paper presents an exploratory attempt to analyse self‐reported leniency toward software piracy systematically, using an approach based on empirical factors, rather than ethical factors. The empirical factors studied were: (i) social acceptance of software piracy; (ii) the cost of original software; (iii) urgency of the subject's need for software; (iv) availability of original software; (v) knowledge of computer software copyright law; (vi) gender; (vii) monthly household income; and (viii) education level. It provides new insights to software companies and government (...) officials who are developing programmes to promote the concept of anti‐piracy among software consumers. This is also the first exploratory research to study the interaction effects among factors influencing the reported leniency towards software piracy, at the individual level. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary exploration discusses the intricate conceptual linkages among Buddhism’s Eighth State of Consciousness, Quantum Holography, and the Jungian Collective Unconscious. Central to this study is examining the Eighth Consciousness in Buddhist thought—a realm that transcends the conventional sensory and mental states to connect with a more universal and profound awareness. Drawing parallels, Quantum Holography posits that every part of the universe retains information about the whole, much like a hologram. This notion seemingly mirrors the Jungian concept of the Collective (...) Unconscious, which postulates a shared reservoir of memories and ideas across humanity. The paper contends that the intricate dance of photons, oscillating between particle and wave states, mediates perception through resonance and hints at a multi-layered consciousness stratum that mirrors the vast, enigmatic quantum reality expanse. The study illuminates the intersections and divergences among these frameworks through meticulous comparative analysis, positing that an integrative understanding of quantum theories and Buddhist wisdom can unravel the human psyche’s profound depths. By weaving Eastern philosophies with Western psychological and quantum theoretical tapestry, the discourse unveils a multifaceted consciousness comprehension, championing integrative approaches as invaluable tools for decoding the mind and universe's enigmatic interplay from a quantum viewpoint. (shrink)

Over the last century, and especially since the publication of the Belmont Report in 1978, respect for persons, as exemplified by respect for autonomous decision-making, has become a central tenet in the practice of medicine. The authority of cognitively competent adults to make their own healthcare decisions is enshrined in both law and practice in most advanced industrialized nations. The right to consent to or to refuse medical interventions is virtually absolute, but is contingent on the provision of materially relevant (...) information about the benefits and burdens or risks of the proposed treatment as well as the freedom from coercion by others, especially healthcare personnel. This power also extends to the kinds, amounts and details of the proposed intervention, including the option to decline to hear anything, if one so chooses, assuming that this is a rational choice. This respect transfers to other competent individuals who are authorized as surrogates to decide for those who have temporarily or permanently lost the capacity to make their own healthcare decisions. (shrink)

This paper brings the intellectual tools of cognitive science to bear on resolving the “paradox of the active user” [Interfacing Thought: Cognitive Aspects of Human–Computer Interaction, Cambridge, MIT Press, MA, USA]—the persistent use of inefficient procedures in interactive tasks by experienced or even expert users when demonstrably more efficient procedures exist. The goal of this paper is to understand the roots of this paradox by finding regularities in these inefficient procedures. We examine three very different data sets. For each data (...) set, we first satisfy ourselves that the preferred procedures used by some subjects are indeed less efficient than the recommended procedures. We then amass evidence, for each set, and conclude that when a preferred procedure is used instead of a more efficient, recommended procedure, the preferred procedure tends to have two major characteristics: (1) the preferred procedure is a well‐practiced, generic procedure that is applicable either within the same task environment in different contexts or across different task environments, and (2) the preferred procedure is composed of interactive components that bring fast, incremental feedback on the external problem states. The support amassed for these characteristics leads to a new understanding of the paradox. In interactive tasks, people are biased towards the use of general procedures that start with interactive actions. These actions require much less cognitive effort as each action results in an immediate change to the external display that, in turn, cues the next action. Unfortunately for the users, the bias to use interactive unit tasks leads to a path that requires more effort in the long run. Our data suggest that interactive behavior is composed of a series of distributed choices; that is, people seldom make a once‐and‐for‐all decision on procedures. This series of biased selection of interactive unit tasks often leads to a stable suboptimal level of performance. (shrink)

The "I Ching" had an important influence on Tokugawa Shinto. First, it played a crucial role in the discussion of Confucian-Shinto relations; many Tokugawa Confucians and Shintoists used it to uphold the doctrine of the unity of Confucianism and Shinto, and Shintoists and scholars of National Learning (kokugaku) used it for its metaphysical and divinational value. Second, scholars of National Learning transformed it from a Confucian classic into a Shinto text, claiming that it was the handiwork of a Japanese deity.

One area of focus in contemporary debates on the Zhuangzi is whether the text endorses some kind of skepticism. For example, in chapter 2, Wang Ni expresses doubt toward "benevolence and rightness" and "the paths of right and wrong." He refuses to claim that there is something of which all things will agree to be right. However, the text repeatedly employs terms like "great knowledge" or "authentic knowledge", which hint at something endorsed or exalted by the text, if not right (...) in itself. Therefore, scholars have been trying to reconcile two sides of the Zhuangzi: the "guru" and the "skeptic."1 In the literature, scholars have refined their interpretation by differentiating skepticism into... (shrink)

Max Schelers Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsches Kritik an der christlichen bzw. christlich inspirierten Moral ist Gegenstand dieser Untersuchung. Darin lasst sich Schelers phanomenologisches Verstandnis der Liebe erschliessen, das einerseits Nietzsches Kritik apologetisch zwingend beantwortet und andererseits das Gedankengut Nietzsches aufgreift. Schelers Anlehnung an Nietzsche zeigt sich deutlich in seinem Kampf gegen den modernen Altruismus, gegen den Scheler mit ausserster Scharfe das christliche Verstandnis der Liebe abgrenzt. Daruber hinaus entwickelt der Autor in seinem Buch Schelers Verstandnis der Liebe weiter in Hinsicht auf (...) die christliche Soteriologie, die dadurch erheblich bereichert werden kann.". (shrink)

This paper proposes a reinterpretation of the Chinese worldview on equilibrium/nonequilibrium and yin-yang. Important terminologies and concepts that constitute Yijing have correlative aspects with irreversible thermodynamics and quantum reality- instability, nonlinearity, nonequilibrium and temporality. Ilya Prigogine is a Nobel laureate noted for his contribution to dissipative structures and their role in thermodynamic systems far from equilibrium, complexity and irreversibility. His expressions, as argued in this paper, resonate with the principles in Yijing. Thus, this paper attempts to re-state existing interpretations of (...) Yijing’s ideas with reference to science. Understanding Yijing’s terms and concepts must be contextualised to account for its pervasiveness of temporality and the change process. Otherwise, these cardinal concepts may be misconstrued as a hodgepodge of Eastern traditions with no relevance to modern science. This paper concentrates on the fundamental role of indeterminism in nonlinear systems on classical and quantum levels using Yijing’s conceptual framework. It concludes that the dominant ideas in Yijing and ancient Chinese philosophy resonate with the current scientific belief – the end of certainty. Instability, far-from-equilibrium, irreversibility, probability, bifurcation, and self-organisation are intrinsic properties of nature appearing at all levels, from particle, protein folding, and DNA double helix to cosmological scales. Information is the basis of all changes, and the agency of change is the human (‘ren’) with a consciousness existing in the probability space between heaven (‘tian’) and earth (‘di’). Finally, this paper outlines a modelling approach with the self-organising human in the centre between heaven and earth, representing living systems as discrete dynamical systems presented with binary choices (yin-yang). The interplay of yin and yang lines in a hexagram is thought to reflect the changing dynamics of a given situation, and the interpretation of the hexagram is based on the relationships between the yin and yang lines based on informational availability. In this way, the concepts of yin-yang and information causality are central to Yijing's understanding of change and are clarified in this paper. (shrink)

This paper applies a utilitarian analysis to corporate political donations. Unlike the more common rights-based analyses, it is argued that the optimal policy is the one that best satisfies society’s rational preferences concerning donor influence, adequate financing, donor pressure and the cost of maintaining and enforcing the democratic system. This analysis suggests that a ban is best if it would be generally observed and sufficient financing from other sources is available, otherwise a donation cap is a better option. Further, lobbyists (...) should be banned from donating small gifts and drafting bills for candidates. The impact of disclosure and other risk management mechanisms are also considered. (shrink)

Three distinct but related questions can be asked about the meaningfulness of one's life. The first is 'What is the meaning of life?', which can be called 'the cosmic question about meaningfulness'; the second is 'What is a meaningful life?', which can be called 'the general question about meaningfulness'; and the third is 'What is the meaning of my life?', which can be called 'the personal question about meaningfulness'. I argue that in order to deal with all three questions we (...) should start with the personal question. There is a way of understanding the personal question which allows us to answer it independently of any consideration of the cosmic question, but which nonetheless helps us see why the cosmic question should be dismissed as a bad question. Besides, a recommendable answer to the general question can be derived from my understanding of how the personal question should be answered. Two notions are essential to my account, namely, the notion of identities and the notion of a biographical life. And the account can be epitomized in this enticing way: a person's life is meaningful if it contains material for an autobiography that she thinks is worth writing and others think is worth reading. (shrink)

Search can be found in almost every cognitive activity, ranging across vision, memory retrieval, problem solving, decision making, foraging, and social interaction. Because of its ubiquity, research on search has a tendency to fragment into multiple areas of cognitive science. The proposed topic aims at providing integrative discussion of the central role of search from multiple perspectives. We focus on controlled search processes, which require a goal, uncertainty about the nature, location, or acquisition method of the objects to be searched (...) for, and a method for sampling through the search environment. While this definition of search is general and applicable to different domains, the specific mechanisms in the search process will likely differ. The goal of this issue is to compare and contrast how these search processes are similar and differ in different cognitive activities, with the goal of understanding the general nature of search in terms of the three characteristics stated above. We expect that given its cross-domain nature, the topic on search will be of broad interest to cognitive scientists, including psychologists, behavioral ecologists, computer scientists, neuroscientists, linguists, and sociologists. (shrink)

This article argues that Sartre's distinction in What Is Literature? between prose and poetry should be understood in the light of his earlier distinction in The Imaginary between two kinds of meaning. Sartre argues against the “Cartesian picture” of consciousness in The Imaginary, specifically concerning our experience of images. Not only is a mental image not an “inner object” mediating between consciousness and the world, even a picture drawn on paper should not be understood as an object standing between the (...) viewer and what this picture represents. Our experience, Sartre argues, is that of seeing things in a picture rather than seeing through it, such that the meaning of pictures and images in general is embodied in them and cannot be separated from them. He then goes on to contrast this kind of embodied meaning with a kind of meaning that can be completely grasped independently of its expression and identify the two with painting and language respectively. It is for this reason, this article argues, that Sartre later sees poetry as a deviation from language's proper function. This rigid distinction is maintained by Sartre until the end of his career, and the change that some commentators found in him are its outcome rather than a revolt against it. In contrast, Merleau-Ponty has demonstrated more convincingly that sense and signification are both essential aspects of linguistic meaning, and their relation is much more dynamic and complimentary than Sartre would have allowed. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 4, April 2022.

This paper analyzes the impacts of index inclusions and exclusions on corporate sustainable firms by studying a sample of US stocks that are added to or deleted from the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index over the period 2002-2008. The impacts are measured in terms of stock return, risk and liquidity. We cannot find any strong evidence that announcement per se has any significant impact on stock return and risk. However, on the day of change, index inclusion (exclusion) stocks experience a (...) significant but temporary increase (decrease) in stock return. Liquidity deteriorates after the announcement day and bounces back significantly near the day of change. Systematic risk shows little change after announcements. But, idiosyncratic risk is higher after announcements. The overall results support Harris and Eitan's (The Journal of Finance 41(4), 815-829, 1986) price pressure hypothesis, which posits that event announcement does not carry information and any shift in demand (and hence the corresponding price change and liquidity change) is temporary. (shrink)

A dynamic context model of interactive behavior was developed to explain results from two experiments that tested the effects of interaction costs on encoding strategies, cognitive representations, and response selection processes in a decision-making and a judgment task. The model assumes that the dynamic context defined by the mixes of internal and external representations and processes are sensitive to the interaction cost imposed by the task environment. The model predicts that changes in the dynamic context may lead to systematic biases (...) in cognitive representations and processes that eventually influence decision-making and judgment outcomes. Consistent with the predictions by the model, results from the experiments showed that as interaction costs increased, encoding strategies and cognitive representations shifted from perception-based to memory-based. Memory-based comparisons of the stimuli enhanced the similarity and dominance effects, and led to stronger systematic biases in response outcomes in a choice task. However, in a judgment task, memory-based representations enhanced only the dominance effects. Results suggested that systematic response biases in the dominance context were caused by biases in the cognitive representations of the stimuli, but response biases in the similarity context were caused by biases in the comparison process induced by the choice task. Results suggest that changes in interaction costs not only change whether information was assessed from the external world or from memory but also introduce systematic biases in the cognitive representation of the information, which act as biased inputs to the subsequent decision-making and judgment processes. Results are consistent with the idea of interactive cognition, which proposes that representations and processes are contingent on the dynamic context defined by the information flow between the external task environment and internal cognition. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the relation of heuristic search and level of intelligence in cognitive computation systems. The paper begins with a review of the fundamental properties of a cognitive computation system, which is defined generally as a control system that generates goal-directed actions in response to environmental inputs and constraints. An important property of cognitive computations is the need to process local cues in symbol structures to access and integrate distal knowledge to generate a response. To deal with uncertainties (...) involved in this local-to-distal processing, the system needs to perform heuristic search to locate and integrate the right set of distal structures. The level of intelligence of the system depends critically on the efficiency of the heuristic search process. It is argued that, for a bounded rationality system, the level of intelligence does not depend on how much search it needs to do to accomplish a task. Rather, the level of intelligence depends on how much search it does not need to do to achieve the same level of performance. Examples were discussed to illustrate this idea. The first two examples show how machines that play games like tic-tac-toe and chess rely heavily on the efficiency of the heuristic search algorithm to achieve better performance, demonstrating the relation of heuristic search and intelligence in a bounded rationality system. The second example shows how humans adapt to different information ecologies to perform information search on the Internet and how their performance improves over time, demonstrating how heuristic search can be improved in an adaptive rationality system. The two examples demonstrate how better search control knowledge and representations of task environment can improve the efficiency of heuristic search, thereby improving the intelligence of the system. (shrink)

Constraints and dependencies among the elements of embodied cognition form patterns or microstrategies of interactive behavior. Hard constraints determine which microstrategies are possible. Soft constraints determine which of the possible microstrategies are most likely to be selected. When selection is non‐deliberate or automatic the least effort microstrategy is chosen. In calculating the effort required to execute a microstrategy each of the three types of operations, memory retrieval, perception, and action, are given equal weight; that is, perceptual‐motor activity does not have (...) a privileged status with respect to memory. Soft constraints can work contrary to the designer's intentions by making the access of perfect knowledge in‐the‐world more effortful than the access of imperfect knowledge in‐the‐head. These implications of soft constraints are tested in two experiments. In experiment 1 we varied the perceptual‐motor effort of accessing knowledge in‐the‐world as well as the effort of retrieving items from memory. In experiment 2 we replicated one of the experiment 1 conditions to collect eye movement data. The results suggest that milliseconds matter. Soft constraints lead to a reliance on knowledge in‐the‐head even when the absolute difference in perceptual‐motor versus memory retrieval effort is small, and even when relying on memory leads to a higher error rate and lower performance. We discuss the implications of soft constraints for routine interactive behavior, accounts of embodied cognition, and tool and interface design. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn contrast to his contemporaries who take the heart–mind as the ruler of a person, Zhuangzi suggests that one’s action is guided by the spirit. Questions arise as one articulates the function of spirit and its relationship with the heart–mind. In this article, I articulate the relationship between heart–mind and spirit to show three points: first, spirit is a kind of qi 氣 that can be tied or run smoothly, or rather the mechanism triggered by the functioning of smooth qi. (...) This reading brings the skill passages together with the fasting of heart–mind passage. Second, the proceeding of spirit admits no fixed ways and is not confined to any particular organ or faculty, so it avoids the problem of self-assertion mentioned in Qiwulun. Third, the proceeding of spirit implies that one’s practice takes as many particularities of the context as possible into account, so the person has a higher chance to reduce conflict in interacting with things and other people and bring out their p.. (shrink)