This study presents an exploration of the belief changes of prospective teachers through social co-constructivist teaching. The future presumed in-class teaching orientations of the PTs were also estimated by metaphor analysis. A case study was conducted to monitor the belief changes of the PTs and estimate their probable in-class practices. The participants were six PTs involved in a certification in education programme. The data were gathered from the following different sources; interviews, written reflections and metaphor explanations. The data that were (...) analysed interpretatively and specific parts of the analysed data were subjected to quantification. The PTs held considerably conventional and idealistic teaching beliefs prior to the implementations. The PTs improved their reasoning and enlarged their conceptualisations regarding teaching and learning after the implementations. Five types of teaching belief typologies displaying inherently sophisticated nature of the beliefs were extracted. Some of the PTs appeared to have promise in terms of implementing more learner-centred teaching; however, others preserved their traditional teaching practical orientations. It was considered that changes in teaching beliefs may have motivational and attitudinal dimensions. Finally, capturing the metaphors of the PTs regarding teaching and learning appeared to provide more realistic insights into the estimated in-class practical orientations. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Daodejing (DDJ) is an ancient Chinese text traditionally taken as a representative Daoist classic expressing a distinctive philosophy from the Warring States Period (403–221 BCE). This essay explicates the ethical dimensions of the DDJ paying attention to issues related to war and peace. The discussion consists of four parts: (1) “naturalness” as an onto‐cosmological argument for a philosophy of harmony, balance, and peace; (2) war as a sign of the disruption of the natural pattern of things initiated by (...) the proliferation of desire; (3) defensive war and appropriate war conduct required when one has to be involved in warfare; and (4) the natural and spontaneous way of living that would prevent war from happening in the first place. This essay attempts to show that what makes the DDJ different from other military texts, or what is called the “art of war corpus” in China is that the discourse of war and warfare in the DDJ is presented via its unique understanding of peace at the personal and social levels. The DDJ is meant to be an inquiry into an effective method to prevent war from happening amid a world full of selfish interests and excessive desires. It proposes that peace is not only a condition in which there is freedom from war and overt violence, but a state of harmony that marks human life and its betterment. (shrink)

This dialogue between two “semiotic animals” explores the paradox of life and death where death is not perceived as an absolute end or an inevitable aspect of life. The reciprocal and paradoxical relationship between life and death is at the core of the semiotic process. Death is an integral part of this semiotic process, like a door opening out on another transcending world with unpredictable outcomes. Not only does the dialogue reveal an insight into the semioethics of the ritualization of (...) life and death but it also exposes the disingenuous separation between the realms of zoosemiotics and anthroposemiotics. On ontological and epistemological levels, both zoosemiotics and anthroposemiotics are integrated reality that invariably cannot exist without one or the other in mutually transparent co-evolutionary processes purposefully oriented toward meaning making. (shrink)

Purpose of the paper is to establish the emergence and evolution of a gender problematics from the foundations of classical philosophy, namely, from the phenomenon of will-to-truth as the spontaneous desire of man to understand the life. To achieve this purpose, the following tasks are solved: 1) to investigate the way in which philosophy constitutes itself; 2) to establish how the category of "sex" manifests, both in the natural and in the social contexts; 3) to determine the correlation of gender (...) studies and philosophy. Theoretical basis. If for the methodology of gender studies it is inherent to proceed from the contextuality and value foundations of knowledge, then in this paper gender is considered directly from the being-in-world, human presence. Originality. The distinction between will-to-truth and will-to-knowledge, conducted for the first time by Michel Foucault, is used as a method by which the ontological demand of sex is revealed. Conclusions. As a result of the study, it was found that scientific developments in the field of gender issues in their subject matter are not mainly descended from subject sphere of classical philosophy. Sex is not substantiated metaphysically, and it is ontical, not ontological attribute of the human kind; its presentation as the determining factor of the cultural history in context of femininity/masculinity dichotomy is biased. This quality is similar to Nietzsche’s will to power, i.e., determination of definite knowledge that is later used in legal, socio-political discourse, corrects language practice, determines scientific researches making them dependant on axiological component of culture. As the social justice problem is solved, gender as the subject of social study loses its actuality. (shrink)

This is the first book-length study of the conception of emotions in premodern, or more specifically, pre-Han Chinese philosophical traditions, ranging from the early-5th to the late-3rd centuries BCE. This era is known as the "Warring States period" in China and marked by the flourishing of a number of different schools of philosophers who advocated their visions of how society should be run. The author looks at wide-ranging views about the nature of emotions and their proper role in moral life (...) espoused by representative thinkers of the time. The approach taken by the author is based on a premise that what constitutes emotions as phenomena in the world is of primary importance to questions concerning the... (shrink)

Managers face an ethical dilemma in the allocation of scarce resources to corporate social responsibility because the underlying managerial incentives behind such CSR spending can range from pure altruism to complete financial orientation. Despite the importance of the managerial role in implementing CSR, prior studies generally have treated the role of managers as an exogenous factor. This study builds on recent studies on the managerial characteristics in studies on CSR by examining how managerial efficiency influences the outcomes of CSR. Using (...) a newly developed measure of managerial efficiency, we find that, on average, managerial efficiency is positively associated with a subsequent change in corporate social performance, although the association is weak in the level of total CSP. We find that efficient managers are more likely to engage in the product-related CSR that directly connects to corporate financial performance but are less likely to engage in environment-related CSR. We also find that CSP is positively associated with CFP with efficient managers. Our findings contribute to management and other stakeholders’ understanding of the association of CSR to its outcomes, CSP and/or CFP, which is hinged by the indispensable moderating role of managerial efficiency. (shrink)

The question of whether knowledge is definable in terms of belief, which has played an important role in epistemology for the last 50 years, is studied here in the framework of epistemic and doxastic logics. Three notions of definability are considered: explicit definability, implicit definability, and reducibility, where explicit definability is equivalent to the combination of implicit definability and reducibility. It is shown that if knowledge satisfies any set of axioms contained in S5, then it cannot be explicitly defined in (...) terms of belief. S5 knowledge can be implicitly defined by belief, but not reduced to it. On the other hand, S4.4 knowledge and weaker notions of knowledge cannot be implicitly defined by belief, but can be reduced to it by defining knowledge as true belief. It is also shown that S5 knowledge cannot be reduced to belief and justification, provided that there are no axioms that involve both belief and justification. (shrink)

Adaptation to climate change impacts is a key research topic in business ethics that poses substantial implications on the good lives of human beings. The commercial port sector is a highly relevant study focus with its pivotal roles in supply chains and international trade. Hence, it is important to investigate whether the port planning system and practice is appropriate in tackling climate change impacts. But beforehand, we must thoroughly understand the attitude and behaviors of port planners and operators on ports’ (...) climate adaptation planning. Through a survey towards 21 ports in Canada, the paper investigates the attitude and behaviors of port planners and operators on ports’ climate adaptation planning. Towards the end, we propose a new approach so as to enable port stakeholders to carry out climate adaptation planning effectively. The paper offers important insight to researchers to investigate the ways in developing effective climate adaptation plans and practice for ports and other business sectors. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe Daodejing is an ancient Chinese text traditionally taken as a representative Daoist classic expressing a distinctive philosophy from the Warring States Period . This essay explicates the ethical dimensions of the DDJ paying attention to issues related to war and peace. The discussion consists of four parts: “naturalness” as an onto‐cosmological argument for a philosophy of harmony, balance, and peace; war as a sign of the disruption of the natural pattern of things initiated by the proliferation of desire; defensive (...) war and appropriate war conduct required when one has to be involved in warfare; and the natural and spontaneous way of living that would prevent war from happening in the first place. This essay attempts to show that what makes the DDJ different from other military texts, or what is called the “art of war corpus” in China is that the discourse of war and warfare in the DDJ is presented via its unique understanding of peace at the personal and social levels. The DDJ is meant to be an inquiry into an effective method to prevent war from happening amid a world full of selfish interests and excessive desires. It proposes that peace is not only a condition in which there is freedom from war and overt violence, but a state of harmony that marks human life and its betterment. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Accepting the claim that the living have some moral duties with regard to dead bodies, this paper explores those duties and how they bear on the popular travelling exhibition Bodyworlds. I argue that the concept of informed consent presupposes substantial duties to the dead, namely duties that reckon with the meaning of the act in question. An attitude of respect and not regarding human remains as mere raw material are non‐alienable substantial duties. I found the ethos of Bodyworlds premature (...) but full of promises such as public attitudes to organ donations. At the practical level I conclude that Bodyworlds should use only willed donations or unclaimed bodies for which dignified funerals are not available. In the case of live donations, Bodyworlds has a duty to participate in the medical care of needy donors. However, secrecy with regard to the sources of cadavers seems to be the most troublesome aspect of Bodyworlds. (shrink)

:This article examines the concept of moral enhancement from two different perspectives. The first is a bottom-up approach, which aims at identifying fundamental moral traits and subcapacities as targets for enhancement. The second perspective, a top-down approach, is holistic and in line with virtue ethics. Both perspectives lead to the observation that alterations of material and social conditions are the most reliable means to improve prosocial behavior overall.Moral enhancement as a preventive measure invokes Gnostic narratives on the allegedly fallen status (...) of human nature, its search for salvation, and the dependence of the laity on heteronomous salvific interventions. The allure of the preventive kind of enhancement is attributable to its religious hues.Owing to the absence of clarity regarding moral enhancement and of metrics to evaluate its progress, humanity is at risk of prioritizing unclear and unsubstantiated measures of preventive diminishment at the expense of celebrating human capacities and joys. (shrink)

The appropriateness of S5 as a logic of knowledge has been attacked at some length in the philosophical literature. Here one particular attack based on the interplay between knowledge and belief is considered: Suppose that knowledge satisfies S5, belief satisfies KD45, and both the entailment property (knowledge implies belief) and positive certainty (if the agent believes something, she believes she knows it) hold. Then it can be shown that belief reduces to knowledge: it is impossible to have false beliefs. While (...) the entailment property has typically been viewed as perhaps the least controversial of these assumptions, an argument is presented that it can plausibly be viewed as the culprit. More precisely, it is shown that this attack fails if we weaken the entailment property so that it applies only to objective (nonmodal) formulas, rather than to arbitrary formulas. Since the standard arguments in favor of the entailment property are typically given only for objective formulas, this observation suggests that care must be taken in applying intuitions that seem reasonable in the case of objective formulas to arbitrary formulas. (shrink)

Originally published 1961. Translation of "Meditaciones del Quijote :Meditacion preliminar. Meditacion primera." (1914). Contents: Reader...; Preliminary Meditation; First Meditation (Brief Treatise on the Novel).

I found the JCS issue on Machine Consciousness, Volume 10, No. 4-5 , frustrating and alienating. There seems to be a consensus building that consciousness is accessible to scientific scrutiny, so much so that it is already understood well enough to be modeled and even synthesized. I'm not so sure. It could be instead that the vocabulary of consciousness is being subtly redefined to be amenable to scientific investigation and explicit modeling. Such semantic revisionism is confusing and often misleading. Whatever (...) else consciousness is, it is at least a certain quality of life apparent from personal reflection. Introspection is, after all, the only way we know that consciousness even exists. Scientific and technical redefinitions that fail to account for its phenomenal quality are at best incomplete. In my view, all but one of the ten articles in the JCS volume on Machine Consciousness commit various degrees of Protean distortion. (shrink)

Nosso ensaio procura explorar as relações entre os pensamentos de Foucault e Gadamer nos contextos da hermenêutica e da ética do cuidado de si. Num primeiro momento apresentamos os desdobramentos do cuidado de si e os exercícios espirituais da filosofia antiga e o acesso à verdade como forma de vida. O segundo momento é dedicado a elaborar uma leitura sobre a hermenêutica compreendida como uma experiência ética originária baseadas nas contribuições de Gadamer, Heidegger e Schmidt. Nossas considerações finais são dedicadas (...) a pensar as relações entre o cuidado de si e a hermenêutica através da retomada de uma ética originária desdobrada na analítica sobre o ethos, aqui compreendido como a morado do Ser. (shrink)

Causal independence of the simultaneous positions and momenta of two distinguishable particles in nonrelativistic physics and causal independence of events in two relatively spacelike regions of space-time in relativity are analyzed and discussed. This review paper formulates causal independence in a general and operational way and summarizes the inferences drawn from it in non-relativistic quantum mechanics, classical relativistic point mechanics, quantum field theory, and classical field theory. Special attention is given to the open question of the relationship between local independence (...) and commutativity in quantum field theory. (shrink)

Almost all languages have some ways of categorizing nouns. Languages of South-East Asia have classifiers used with numerals, while most Indo-European languages have two or three genders. They can have a similar meaning and one can develop from the other. This book provides a comprehensive and original analysis of noun categorization devices all over the world. It will interest typologists, those working in the fields of morphosyntactic variation and lexical semantics, as well as anthropologists and all other scholars interested in (...) the mechanisms of human cognition. (shrink)

Much progress has been made in the Soviet Union and a number of other socialist countries in studying and advancing the heritage of Marx and Engels in esthetics. The enrichment of our notions of the views of the founders of Marxism with respect to esthetics and literary criticism has promoted the further development of the discipline of esthetics. The progress achieved is the result and continuation of the work done by the older generation of Soviet philosophers, critics, and students of (...) literature fully thirty and thirty-five years ago in studying and elaborating the heritage of Marx and Engels. (shrink)