The Mathematical Book in Nine Chapters, written by Qin Jiushao in 1247, is a masterpiece that is representative of Chinese mathematics at that time. Most of the previous studies have focused on its mathematical achievements, while few works have addressed the counting diagrams that Qin used as a writing system. Based on a seventeenth-century copy of Qin’s treatise, this paper systematically analyzes the writing system, which includes both a numeral system and a linear system. It argues that Qin provided a (...) new representation of mathematics in addition to textual procedures, detailed solutions, and operations carried out with counting rods. Moreover, this new representation was used to connect mathematical practices within and outside the text and should be understood in its textual context. Therefore, Qin’s writing system represents an intermediate phase in the textualization and symbolization of Chinese mathematics in thirteenth-century China. (shrink)

Firms are under increasing pressure from external forces to do what is right and behave ethically. However, we have only a limited understanding of how ethical and responsible business practices impact the value of the firm, both in the short and the long term. In this study, we examine 196 firms that were recognized as the world's most ethical firms from 20 countries over a 14-year span. Results show that ethical behavior may have little effect on a firm's profitability in (...) the short term. However, it has a positive effect on a firm's market value, reflecting the market's positive assessment of its long-term performance. We also find that firms frequently listed among the world's most ethical companies tend to have higher market value than firms listed only once. (shrink)

Cet article s’intéresse aux familles chinoises vivant à distance dans le contexte de l’immigration intellectuelle des jeunes chinois. Les communications intrafamiliales s’appuient sur Wechat, qui permet non seulement de garantir les échanges quotidiens, mais aussi de gérer la présence parentale en ligne. Partant d’une approche sociologique, cet article traite des stratégies de mise en scène adoptées par les jeunes chinois étudiant en France. Un travail empirique a été mené afin d’analyser comment ils se comportent devant leurs parents restés en Chine (...) en répondant aux attentes sur les études, sur le projet d’avenir, sur l’argent et sur la vie amoureuse. L’article vise à saisir la manière dont les jeunes chinois réinterprètent les relations familiales. (shrink)

Zhu Xi is the most important of the twelfth-century neo-Confucianists. Some consider him second only to Confucius himself in his importance to Chinese philosophy as a whole, since it is his interpretation of Confucius that has been canonical since his lifetime. This short book, modeled after the Burton Watson "Basic Writings" volumes for Zhuangzi, Xunzi, and Han Feizi, is an accessible, one-volume introduction to Zhu Xi's influential philosophical system designed especially for course use. In "classifying" Zhu Xi's conversations in the (...) Classified Conversations of Master Zhu, Li Jingde dedicated the first thirteen chapters to conversations explaining his general philosophical system. Readers are introduced to his metaphysics of principle (li), psychophysical stuff (qi), spiritual beings (guishen), human nature (xing), mind-heart (xin), and emotions (qing); and to his program of self-cultivation-that is, the curriculum that Confucians should follow to attain moral perfection. Gardner argues that these chapters constitute the best overview of Zhu Xi's basic philosophical teachings, and selections from them form the basis of his volume. Occasionally, they are supplemented with passages from the Collected Literary Writings of Master Zhu and from Zhu's commentaries on the Classics. (shrink)

Objectives: The objectives of the study were to explore the effect of self-presentation and psychological needs on exercise dependence and to provide an essential reference for preventing and inhibiting the production of exercise dependence in overweight college students. Methods: The freshmen in two comprehensive universities accepted physical fitness tests, filled out the scales of self-presentation, psychological needs, and exercise dependence after obtaining their consent. A sample of 747 overweight college students who have regular exercise was screened using the formula of (...) Fox sports participation and the standard of overweight for Chinese adults. Multiple regression, exploratory factor, and confirmatory factor analyses were used to analyze the related data. Results: In overweight college students, compared with the lower peers, those with higher physical attractiveness were more likely to suffer from detoxification of emotion, physiology, and vitality, and compared with the lower peers, those with higher self-presentation were more likely to appear in physiological abstinence. The self-presentation of overweight male and female students has a significant positive influence on psychological needs and exercise dependence. In contrast, psychological needs have a significant negative influence on exercise dependence. The psychological needs of overweight male and female college students were established as the mediating effect of self-presentation and exercise dependence. The mediating effect of psychological needs of females was higher than that of males. The “ability display” of male and female students can affect “emotional distress” by “autonomy” and “competence.” The sense of relationship partially mediated the “attractiveness” of male and female students. Also, females on the one hand, rely on “weight control” by “competence” to produce some mediating effects on “physiological distress.” At the same time, the “ability display” by “competence” has a full mediating effect on “physiological distress.” Conclusion: In the self-presentation of the overweight college students, the higher scores in “attractiveness,” “weight control,” and “ability display,” the higher the psychological needs and exercise dependence; the higher the autonomy, competence, and relationship, the less the emotional, physiological, and dynamic distress. (shrink)

For Sergey Khoruzhy, Russian philosophy, which is characterized by religiosity, takes the perfect expression of the Orthodox truth as the ultimate pursuit. He believes that the Russian philosophy that truly embodies the “Russian mind” is hidden in the practice of the Russian Orthodox ascetic tradition, which contains not only the image of an ascetic Christian but also reflects the ontological state of being and the ontological intuition of being human in a universal sense. On the basis of the ascetic practice, (...) Khoruzhy constructs three anthropological forms shaped by different forces at different levels: 1) the person who unfolds to another being (God), the ascetic, 2) the “average” person who unfolds in the unconsciousness (the Freudian person), 3) the person who is shaped by modern technological trends such as computer technology, genetic engineering, and other technologies. Such a unique anthropological framework also offers the possibility of reinterpreting and analyzing the role of Elder Zossima, a typical figure in Dostoevsky’s masterpiece “The Brothers Karamazov”. (shrink)

The human being has always been one of the most concerned propositions in philosophy, but after the philosophy of subjectivity, the theory of personality has entered a vacuum state, and the existentialist notion that man’s existence precedes his essence became theoretically dominant. However, for Lev Karcavin, a Russian religious philosopher in the 20th century, the man had already acquired his specialty in their Personal God, Jesus Christ. Being is the existence of individuality, its origin is the hypostasis of God, and (...) man becomes a non-perfect individual existence by participating in the hypostasis of God, but it still reflects some extent the perfect image of the Holy Trinity and makes it its mission to realize this perfect image. Moreover, human existence of consciousness is all-united for his participation in a divine being; it’s an organic fusion of all existence beyond the individual, where each individual is not only himself but also an individual “larger” than himself—the harmonious individual. The world in its ultimate sense is a harmonious unity of individuality composed of different individuals in a hierarchical order, in which the individual and the world, the instant and the eternal, are dialectically united. (shrink)

The idea of fragmentalism has been proposed by Kit Fine as a non-standard view of tense realism. This paper examines a modal version of the view, called modal fragmentalism, which combines genuine realism and realism of modality. Modal fragmentalism has been recently discussed by Iaquinto. But unlike Iaquinto, who primarily focused on possibilities de re, in this paper, we focus on expressions of possibilities de dicto. We argue that the chief idea of modal realism should be that different worlds are (...) distinguished not just in terms of how things are differently with respect to each world, but also in terms of how things could have been differently with respect to each world. This demands a realism-oriented semantics for suppositional contents, and more specifically, for conditionals. By deploying a multidimensional semantics for conditionals, we show that there are good reasons to consider modal fragmentalism as a serious approach in metaphysics, which shares many similarities with the fragmentalism of tense. (shrink)

Rosenkranz (2021) offered a logic and a detailed account of justification, according to which justification that p can be analyzed as a form of second-level ignorance: ¬K¬Kp. An intuition behind the analysis is that the justified subject has the potential, at least in a nearby world, to either come to know p or come to know ¬Kp. However, given Rosenkranz’s hyperintensional semantics for modeling knowledge states, we can always construct, out of an ¬K¬K-agent’s knowledge state, epistemic possibilities that prohibit the (...) agent from having that potential. This shows that Rosenkranz’s analysis is still insufficient for carrying all the epistemic weight underlying the notion of justification. A better analysis would require a deeper look into an agent’s knowledge structure and its involved modalities, which could be a lot more complex than what the ¬K¬K rule tells us. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.1 (2002) 1-17 [Access article in PDF] What if the Father Commits a Crime? Rui Zhu Apparently, Socrates and Confucius respond similarly to the question if a son should turn in his father in the case of the father's misdemeanor. When Euthyphro, flaring his pride of his moral impartiality, tells Socrates that he is on his way to report his father because he (...) has thrown one of the household slaves into a ditch and left him bound there until he was dead, Socrates says, "Good Heaven! Certainly, Euthyphro, most men would not know how they could do this and be right. It is not the part of anyone to do this, but of one who is far advanced in wisdom." 1According to Socrates, only a man of high wisdom knows how to prosecute his father righteously, but Euthyphro does not appear to have this wisdom. When his interlocutor observes that an upright man in his state would bear witness against his father if he misappropriates a sheep, Confucius contradicts the interlocutor's understanding of uprightness by speaking in a matter-of-fact tone: "In my country the upright men are of quite another sort. A father will cover up for his son, and a son his father—which incidentally does involve a sort of up—rightness." 2Confucius stands on the same line with Socrates but seems the more radical of the two. Socrates does not directly refute Euthyphro and only suggests that he make sure he understands what he is doing before going any further. Socrates is not only typically Socratic—indirect and suggestive—but also sounds so reasonable that Euthyphro appears in contrast to be a reckless youth who harbors [End Page 1] only a faint understanding of morality. Confucius's response is more rigid, for he categorically dismisses an act of the Euthyphroian kind. He demands that father and son cover up for each other in the case of either one's guilt. Compared to Socrates, Confucius advocates the position that seems a little too strong and leaves no room for justice, while Socrates does not have that problem with justice. This is how we feel about Socrates and Confucius on our first impression. The prima facie observations that we make from the remarks of Socrates and Confucius seem both plain and unproblematic.By embedding these remarks into their respective social or philosophical cultures, this paper will show that our previous observations are not quite accurate. The apparent affinity of the Socratic and Confucian stances belies different underlying moral philosophies. We want to use their comments as bridges to explore the early Greek and Confucian ethics and show how different a picture we see after things are examined within their traditions.The issue of a possible father-son conflict may be treated as a case study of the early Greek (the Heroic era until the age of Socrates) and early Confucian (Confucius and Mencius) morals. There is a strong theme in the early Greek morals that allows, or sometimes demands, a son such as Euthyphro to prosecute his father for the sake of justice, because justice, instead of love (philein) or filial piety, is the governing principle in the early Greek ethics. Confucian ethics is founded on love (human-heartedness), which in turn is extended from the love between father and son. All moral principles including justice are derived from this extension of love. The mutual love of father and son then becomes the governing principle in the case of Confucianism. A Guilty Father: The Greek Motif The question, "What if the father commits a crime?" has a certain realistic aroma to a boy coming of age in the Hesiodic Greek world. That father has to be overcome by son before some relief from strife becomes possible is a familiar theme in Greek literature. In Hesiod's Theogony, Uranus (the sky) incurs hatred from all his newborn children since he hides them in their mother Gaia's womb and does not let them return to the light, for no reason... (shrink)

This chapter aims to offer a brief survey of the methodology of the current volume. The foremost issue that requires particular clarification is the terminology of gongsheng. The reader will notice that not all contributions of this volume are using the term “gongsheng” literally. In the first half of the chapter, I explain how we employ a systematic treatment of this terminological issue during the editing of this volume. Since the research topics of this volume are significantly diverse, an illustration (...) of its layout and its overall research background is offered. As this volume aims to explore the philosophical significance of the concept of gongsheng, I will also elaborate on the philosophical implications of our methodology. This will be the task of the second half of the chapter: I will discuss some philosophical complexities concerning the topic (dis-)continuity of this volume and then briefly examine its metaphysical implications. (shrink)

本书通过比较研究揭示出,在生存主义哲学和道家思想对人之生存结构的理解方面,存在着深层的共识,这是二者之间展开深度对话的"客观基础".本书分为两大部分,第一部分,包括本研究的第一章和第二章,分别对海德格 尔存在与时间和萨特存在与虚无中的生存主义思想加以呈现,诠释,以期读者能够对生存主义哲学的"标本式"理论有所了解,并为后文的比较研究提供一定的理论铺垫.第三到八章,对道家思想与生存主义思想展开多维比较. 主要围绕"无"在生存结构中的地位和作用来展开,并努力揭示出,生存主义哲学和道家思想在人的"带无生存"这一点上,有着极为醒目的相通之处.然而,在此基础上产生的价值导向,却表现出同样醒目的分梳.通过分析道 家与生存主义哲学思想上重叠性与互补性,可能为融合东西方智慧,尤其是吸收中国传统道家智慧的现代生存哲学理论体系的建立提供一定的思想素材和理论参考.

Technology has a pervasive and profound effect on the contemporary world, and engineers play a central role in all aspects of technological development. In order to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public, engineers must be morally committed and equipped to grapple with ethical dilemmas they confront.

Previous studies have focused on the relationship between imaginary companions (ICs) and children’s social developments. As far as we know, few studies have focused on the relationship between ICs and children’s agency attributions. This study aimed to explore the potential differences in agency attributions between children with and without ICs, children with egalitarian IC relationships and hierarchical IC relationships. Children’s agency attributions were measured by two experiments. One was based on behavioral cues (Random animations/ToM animations) and the other was based (...) on appearance characteristics (ball/doll). The results revealed that children with ICs attributed more cognitive properties to Random and ToM animations than children without ICs. Compared with children without ICs, children with ICs attributed marginally more biological properties to a ball and more psychological properties to a ball and a doll. However, children with egalitarian and hierarchical IC relationships did not differ in their agency attributions. The results suggest that children with ICs are more likely to attribute agencies to non-human items with behavioral cues or appearance characteristics than children without ICs. Compared with child-IC relationship qualities, IC status may be more related to children’s agency attributions. However, only a correlation between IC status and children’s agency attributions was found in this study and it is interesting for future researchers to investigate the potential causal directions between children’s IC status and their agency attributions. If one of the causal directions or both the causal directions exist, future researchers can further explore the underlying mechanism. (shrink)

This open access book sheds light on the term gongsheng/kyōsei, which is used in Chinese and Japanese to not only translate “symbiosis” in biology but also broadly deployed in philosophical, social and political contexts. It is a cross-contextual attempt to study the foundation of gongsheng/kyōsei as a philosophy of co-becoming, with exploration of its significance for thinking about the planetary challenges of our times.

In nontheistic moral traditions, there is a typical ethical conundrum concerning the relation between cosmic order and human agency. Within those traditions, it is generally recognized that the universe has its own order and history that are independent of human will. A moral discourse has to find space to accommodate human agency in the midst of the iron grid of cosmic law. Both Confucius and Aurelius use the concept of timeliness (kairos) to resolve the difficult issue. But their philosophies take (...) on divergent paths. By studying their resolutions of the issue, we will be able to appreciate the distinctive nature of their nontheistic moral narratives. (shrink)

Yidali si xiang jia Weike de "Xin ke xue" de zhong yao xing bu xia yu Daerwen de "Wu zhong qi yuan", shi mei xue jia Zhu Guangqian wan nian tou ru zui duo jing li wan cheng de yi bu zhong liang ji yi zuo. Zhu Guangqian zai fan yi de tong shi, hai dui "Xin ke xue" jin xing le shen ru yan jiu. zai ben shu zhong, Zhu Guangqian xian shi e yao jie shao le "Xin ke (...) xue" de jing sui, ren wei Weike yan jiu li shi shi qiang diao qiong ben qiu yuan, yi bu luo zi ran fa wei qi dian, lun zheng ren lei ji she hui zhi du de fa zhan; hou you tou shi Weike de shi xue he mei xue, fen xi le wei ke dui xi fang zhe xue de ge xin he Zhongguo mei xue de ju da ying xiang, bing dai chu le Zhu Guangqian zi ji dui zi you ji ren dao zhu yi de zhui qiu. (shrink)

As one of the three systems of China's traditional culture, Daoism has an important place in the history of Chinese philosophy. Based on the ideas of inaction performing all, the Way modeling spontaneity, and the dialectic of you [having, being] and wu [lacking, nonbeing], this article is a systematic exploration of Laozi's philosophy of denial, spontaneity, and atheism, as well as of the deep and lasting influence of his metaphysical principles on all schools of traditional Chinese philosophy.

Abstract In ?On Making an Effort? E. J. Coffman develops what he takes to be a fairly serious problem for Robert Kane's positive theory of free choice, where the concept of efforts of will is pivotal.1 Coffman argues that the plausibility of Kane's libertarian account of free choice ?is inversely proportional to the plausibility of a certain principle of agency? (p. 12). And since the latter is quite plausible, the former is therefore ?at best fairly implausible? (p. 12). In what (...) follows I will show that Coffman's objection is in fact misplaced. Kanean libertarianism not only is in accordance with the essence of the principles of personal responsibility that Coffman advocates, it also affords a more plausible and intelligible account of the sources of personal responsibility superior to the proposed principles. (shrink)