In this paper, I critically analyze Andrea Sangiovanni’s approach to international justice in the EU that he labels Reciprocity-based Internationalism (RBI). I aim to show that the type of reciprocity RBI operates with is not a morally attractive ground for distributive justice because it cannot cope with the case of member states’ inability to reciprocate the production of collective goods at the EU level. I illustrate this with the case of disability. I contrast RBI’s understanding of reciprocity (...) with Christie Hartley’s ‘relationship model’. I argue that the relationship model of reciprocity should characterize the EU, whose two core normative features are fraternity and equal status. The advantage of the relationship model is that it calls for a stronger type of solidarity than RBI does. That not only entails the willingness to support those worse-off members that cannot productively reciprocate other member states’ efforts at the EU level but also calls for a higher redistribution rate within the EU. In the paper, I make three comparisons between RBI’s ‘productive reciprocity’ and the relationship model. The first concerns non-EU-integration-related disadvantages; the second concerns membership cases, such as accession to federations and supranational unions, while the third comparison examines EU-integration-related disadvantages. I argue that the relationship model is a better alternative to RBI in both integration-related and non-integration-related disadvantages. Also, the relationship model can justify accession cases where previous historical ties are relevant, which are outside of the purview of RBI. (shrink)

When individuals receive benefits as a result of the burdens assumed by other people, they are expected to make a return in similar form. To do otherwise is considered as a failure to treat those other people with appropriate respect. It is this which justifies the expectation that individuals share in the labour that is necessary to preserve just institutions and productive practices that characterise complex schemes of social cooperation. In this paper, I argue that where benefits do not (...) meet thresholds specifying the expected function and efficacy of those benefits, this does not simply issue in a ‘downward adjustment’ in the work expectations and reciprocal demands that are made of people. Rather, it legitimates refusal to engage in productive labour even where limited benefits are still being received. Other costs and obligations emerge that contribute to the creation of disruptive political, economic and social associations. These not only replace the demands of reciprocity but actively target and disrupt the practices and exchanges that give form to reciprocity. (shrink)

The frame associated with a classical point particle is generally noninertial. The point particle may have a nonzero velocity and force with respect to an absolute inertial rest frame. In time–position–energy–momentum-space {t, q, p, e}, the group of transformations between these frames leaves invariant the symplectic metric and the classical line element ds2 = d t2. Special relativity transforms between inertial frames for which the rate of change of momentum is negligible and eliminates the absolute rest frame by making velocities (...) relative but still requires the absolute inertial frame. The Lorentz group leaves invariant the symplectic metric and the line elements $ds^{2} = -dt^{2} + \frac{1}{c^{2}} dq^{2}$ and $d \mu^{2} = dp^{2}-\frac{1}{c^{2}}de^{2}$ . General relativity for particles under only the influence of gravity avoids the issue of noninertial frames as all particles follow geodesics and hence have locally inertial frames. For other forces, the question of the absolute inertial frame remains.) Born conjectured that the line element should be generalized to the pseudo-orthogonal metric $ds^{2} = -d t^{2}+\frac{1}{c^{2}} dq^{2} + \frac{1}{b^{2}}(dp^{2}-\frac{1}{c^{2}}de^{2})$ . The group leaving this metrics and the symplectic metric invariant is the pseudo-unitary group of transformations between noninertial frames. We show that these transformations also eliminate the need for an absolute inertial frame by making forces relative and bounded by b and so embodies a relativity that is shape reciprocal in the sense of Born. The inhomogeneous version of this group is naturally the semidirect product of the pseudo-unitary group with the nonabelian Heisenberg group. This is the quaplectic group. (shrink)

This paper mounts a partial defense of the basic structure objection to the egalitarian criticism of productive incentives. The defense is based on the claim that some duties of justice are subject to a reciprocity condition. The paper develops this position via an examination of the debate between Andrew Williams and G. A. Cohen on publicity and incentives. Reciprocity is an intrinsic feature of a relational conception of social justice, not simply a requirement of stability. Not all (...) duties are conditional on reciprocity because some duties are owed to third parties, as well as to their primary targets. Some forms of exploitation may be unconditionally wrong, but not the specific kind of exploitation at stake when talented individuals accept market wages. (shrink)

This article traces John Rawls’s debt to Frank Knight’s critique of the ‘just deserts’ rationale for laissez-faire in order to defend justice as fairness against some prominent contemporary criticisms, but also to argue that desert can find a place within a Rawlsian theory of justice when desert is grounded in reciprocity. The first lesson Rawls took from Knight was that inheritance of talent and wealth are on a moral par. Knight highlighted the inconsistency of objecting to the inheritance of (...) wealth while taking for granted the legitimacy of unequal reward based on differential productive capacity. Rawls agreed that there was an inconsistency, but claimed that it should be resolved by rejecting both kinds of inequality, except to the extent they benefitted the worst off. The second lesson Rawls learned from Knight was that the size of one’s marginal product depends on supply and demand, which depend on institutional decisions that cannot themselves be made on the basis of the principle of rewarding marginal productivity. The article claims that this argument about background justice overstates its conclusion, because the dependence of contribution on institutional setup is not total. Proposals for an unconditional basic income may therefore have a strike against them, as far as a reciprocity-based conception of desert is concerned. If we follow Knight’s analysis of the competitive system, however, so too does the alternative of leaving determination of income up to the market. (shrink)

Public-health measures are very effective and efficient means of improving health, yet public health is either neglected by the literature or fraught with unease, mainly due to the combination of the aggregate-distributive tension with the element of compulsion.The author argues that this unease can be decreased by 1) a pluralist-holistic view of health, situating the normative value of health in its effect on well-being, incorporating both the objective and subjective source of the value of health; and 2) by a rich (...) concept of reciprocity.This article supports Martha Nussbaum’s critique of social-contract thinking for placing too much weight on the scale of normal functioning and productive reciprocity, as well as Sen’s distinction between well-being and agency freedom.To reach an adequate understanding of the value and goal of public health within the general setting of health care, a pluralist conception of health, well-being and reciprocity is necessary. (shrink)

This article addresses the increasingly widespread view that Bourdieu's sociological analysis is flawed by excessive determinism and thus is anti-rationalist in its socio-political implications. Against this contention, it argues that works such as Distinction should be viewed as critiques of an absolutist universalism rather than of universalism as such. Moreover, Bourdieu's logic of practice, it is claimed, caters not only for a degree of autonomy at the level of the individual, but also identifies two key intellectual fields as pivotal cultural (...) accumulators of autonomous or critical thought: the artistic field and the scientific field. In this context, it is particularly important that one of his very late works, Science of Science and Reflexivity, gives such a vital role to the free `corporation' of scientists as judges of scientific reputations. His concept of artistic autonomy is further explored by illustrations from casestudies in historical sociology, by writers who have been decisively influenced by his sociology of literature. The article ends with an application of his ideas to contemporary newspaper obituaries of cultural producers. This illuminates in particular an underlying issue in his sociology: current dangers to artistic autonomy. (shrink)

A simple molecular system is described consisting of the reciprocal linkage between an autocatalytic cycle and a self-assembling encapsulation process where the molecular constituents for the capsule are products of the autocatalysis. In a molecular environment sufficiently rich in the substrates, capsule growth will also occur with high predictability. Growth to closure will be most probable in the vicinity of the most prolific autocatalysis and will thus tend to spontaneously enclose supportive catalysts within the capsule interior. If subsequently disrupted in (...) the presence of new substrates, the released components will initiate production of additional catalytic and capsule components that will spontaneously re-assemble into one or more autocell replicas, thereby reconstituting and sometimes reproducing the original. In a diverse molecular environment, cycles of disruption and enclosure will cause auto-cells to incidentally encapsulate other molecules as well as reactive substrates. To the extent that any captured molecule can be incorporated into the autocatalytic process by virtue of structural degeneracy of the catalytic binding sites, the altered autocell will incorporate the new type of component into subsequent replications. Such altered autocells will be progenitors of “lineages” with variant characteristics that will differentially propagate with respect to the availability of commonly required substrates. Autocells are susceptible to a limited form of evolution, capable of leading to more efficient, more environmentally fitted, and more complex forms. This provides a simple demonstration of the plausibility of open-ended reproduction and evolvability without self-replicating template molecules or maintenance of persistent nonequilibrium chemistry. This model identifies an intermediate domain between prebiotic and biotic systems and bridges the gap from nonequilibrium thermodynamics to life. (shrink)

The main features of how to build a Born’s Reciprocal Gravitational theory in curved phase-spaces are developed. By recurring to the nonlinear connection formalism of Finsler geometry a generalized gravitational action in the 8D cotangent space (curved phase space) can be constructed involving sums of 5 distinct types of torsion squared terms and 2 distinct curvature scalars ${\mathcal{R}}, {\mathcal{S}}$ which are associated with the curvature in the horizontal and vertical spaces, respectively. A Kaluza-Klein-like approach to the construction of the curvature (...) of the 8D cotangent space and based on the (torsionless) Levi-Civita connection is provided that yields the observed value of the cosmological constant and the Brans-Dicke-Jordan Gravity action in 4D as two special cases. It is found that the geometry of the momentum space can be linked to the observed value of the cosmological constant when the curvature in $\mathit{momentum}$ space is very large, namely the small size of P is of the order of $( 1/R_{\mathit{Hubble}})$ . Finally we develop a Born’s reciprocal complex gravitational theory as a local gauge theory in 8D of the $\mathit{deformed}$ Quaplectic group that is given by the semi-direct product of U(1,3) with the $\mathit{deformed}$ (noncommutative) Weyl-Heisenberg group involving four $\mathit{noncommutative}$ coordinates and momenta. The metric is complex with symmetric real components and antisymmetric imaginary ones. An action in 8D involving 2 curvature scalars and torsion squared terms is presented. (shrink)

Public-health measures are very effective and efficient means of improving health, yet public health is either neglected by the literature or fraught with unease, mainly due to the combination of the aggregate-distributive tension with the element of compulsion.The author argues that this unease can be decreased by 1) a pluralist-holistic view of health, situating the normative value of health in its effect on well-being, incorporating both the objective and subjective source of the value of health; and 2) by a rich (...) concept of reciprocity.This article supports Martha Nussbaum’s critique of social-contract thinking for placing too much weight on the scale of normal functioning and productive reciprocity, as well as Sen’s distinction between well-being and agency freedom.To reach an adequate understanding of the value and goal of public health within the general setting of health care, a pluralist conception of health, well-being and reciprocity is necessary. (shrink)

A pervasive misunderstanding of Confucian philosophy’s concepts considers them to be directives that call for deference and subordination, principally associated with the concept Lǐ 禮 which is understood as rites, rituals, manners, or generally “propriety”. Imposing Lǐ 禮 is considered a path to social and personal harmony. However, an analysis of the conditions and implications of Lǐ 禮 in early Confucian thinking shows that authentic respect, not obedience, is considered the essential condition for good governance and an ordered society. Significantly, (...) authentic respect can only originate from within the self, it cannot be commanded. Based upon self-cultivation, participation in ritual and exemplary conduct establishes a commitment to respect, and the purposeful distinctions expressed through Lǐ 禮 make social order intelligible. Considering the essence of respect in depth, and comparing it to the ethics conceived by Immanuel Kant, neither Confucian nor Kantian ethics are truly deontological in the sense of a “duty that is owed to an external instance”, rather they both rest on the autonomy of the self. A synthesis of both implies that extending authentic respect to an other in an encounter within the context of Lǐ 禮 gives rise to “Existential Reciprocity”: a virtuous cycle which mutually affirms both the self and the other, while rejecting a dichotomous opposition between self-esteem and morality. This is not contingent on external factors, but accessible from a self-determined, autonomous engagement with self-affirming conduct and productive encounters. Benefits are immediate and personal, and this forms the conditions in which harmonious relationships are a natural outcome. (shrink)

This paper argues that what Aristotle has in mind as the criterion for estimating the value of products in Nicomachean Ethics V.5 is neither the Marxian concept of 'human labour' nor Polanyi's concept of 'status', but the benefit of a recipient, and maintains that Aristotle here does not analyse the mechanism of a market economy, but addresses the problem of how to build reciprocal relationships among citizens through the exchange of goods. Furthermore, unlike Nussbaum's capability approach, which draws attention to (...) the concept of well-being, the paper argues that the concept of reciprocity plays the key role in Aristotle's distributive theory of property in the Politics and lays the foundation for his understanding of political governance as the exchange of governing and being governed in turn. (shrink)

Summary Why and how is the Gestalt theorists’ concept of productive thinking particularly suitable for being applied to the educational question of how student motivation can be encouraged, thus providing an important condition for self-regulated, intrinsically motivated learning? An answer to this question has been sought using an approach to the fostering of text comprehension ability, based upon the features specific to productive thinking, originally identified by Wertheimer and Duncker. Firstly, these specific features are dealt with and their (...) educational implications compared with those deriving from the definitions of problem-solving used most frequently in educational research. Secondly, an analysis is made of the process by which the features specific to productive thinking are turned into the conditions for a kind of text analysis suitable for designing an instructional project aimed at enhancing text comprehension ability and, at the same time, encouraging intrinsic motivation and self-regulation on the part of the learner. Thirdly, an educational project centred on the thinking-aloud poor reader is described, where thinking aloud and reflection–response are combined in order to guarantee the maximum level of intrinsic motivation. In the concluding section, the most important features of the project are discussed in relation to reciprocal teaching and scaffolding. (shrink)

Strong reciprocators possess two behavioural dispositions: they are willing to bestow bene ts on those who have bestowed bene ts, and they are willing to punish those who fail to bestow bene ts according to some social norm. There is no doubt that peoples' behaviour, in many cases, agrees with what we would expect if people are strong reciprocators, and Fehr and Henrich argue that many people are, in fact, strong reciprocators. They also suggest that strongly reciprocal behaviour may be (...) brought about by specialised cognitive architecture produced by evolution. I argue that specialised cognitive architecture can play a role in the production of strongly reciprocal behaviour only in a very attenuated sense, and that the evolutionary foundations of strong reciprocity are more likely cultural than biological. (shrink)

Synthesizing insights from a dynamic capability perspective and social network theory, this study identifies the factors influencing green innovation and examines the relationships between influencing factors, green innovation, and performance. This study uses structural equation modeling to test the research hypotheses. The results indicate that dynamic capability, coordination capability, and social reciprocity are significant drivers of green innovation, including green product innovation and green process innovation. Green product and process innovation have positive effects on environmental performance and organizational performance. (...) These findings are relevant to firms in quest of green management and innovation. (shrink)

A misconception regarding the ultrastructural basis of myocardial failure has been observed in laboratory studies involving medical students and practicing physicians, in medical textbooks, and in clinical instruction of students. This misconception attributes heart failure to overextension of individual cardiac muscle fibres and their sarcomeres, resulting in a mechanically based decline in contractile force production. The basis of the misconception is a set of component misconceptions which interact in reciprocally supportive ways. The interlocking nature of the component misunderstandings strengthens the (...) overall misconception, making it difficult to undermine. A contributor to many aspects of the faulty account of heart failure is a tendency toward oversimplification of complex phenomena in learning, instruction, and scientific research. Implications for medical education are considered. Keywords: mental models, knowledge representation, reductionism, myocardium, heart failure, physiology CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This article is a contribution to the critical sociology of science perspective introduced and developed by Pierre Bourdieu. The paper proposes a transversalist theory of science and technology production and diffusion. It is here argued that science and technology are comprised of multiple regimes where each regime is historically grounded, possesses its own division of labour, modes of cognitive and artifact production and has specific audiences. The major regimes include the disciplinary regime, utilitarian regime, transitory regime and research-technology regime. Though (...) each regime is autonomous, they are simultaneously closely interlaced. In science and technology, autonomy is not antithetical to interdependence and reciprocity. This study demonstrates for the four specified regimes of production and diffusion that differentiation is not contrary to interaction. In science, differentiation and interaction comprise two sides of the same coin. All regimes exhibit a measure of transversality. (shrink)

Democratic equality challenges both utilitarianism and classical liberal and libertarian thought which continues to exert a major influence in the politics of many capitalist countries. This chapter aims to clarify the content of, and motivation for, democratic equality. Section 1 begins with an outline of democratic equality. It introduces and clarifies, in a preliminary way, two key elements of democratic equality: the notion of fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle. Section 2 explains why Rawls considers democratic equality a (...) better account of what justice requires than rival accounts. Sections 3 and 4 briefly review some outstanding interpretative and normative issues within democratic equality. Section 4 also looks at the question of how far democratic equality can properly incorporate the just claims of sick and disabled people. Democratic equality incorporates a principle of productive reciprocity, however, this incorporation of productive reciprocity in democratic equality remains rather undeveloped. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.4 (1999) 150-177 [Access article in PDF] The Desire for the Sovereign and the Logic of Reciprocity in the Family of Nations Lydia H. Liu It may sound like a truism that the modern nation cannot imagine itself except in sovereign terms. But what is this truism saying or, rather, withholding from us? When Benedict Anderson wrote his influential study of nationalism in 1983, he circumscribed the (...) imagining of the nation as "both inherently limited and sovereign" and relied on this basic understanding to explain the global transformation of dynastic empires into nation-states [Imagined Communities 6]. That insight, however, has not drawn to itself as much attention or scrutiny as some of his other concepts, like "print capitalism" or "creole nationalisms." If one were to name a few of the blind spots in the contemporary discussions of nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and diaspora, one of them would be the place and placing of sovereignty and sovereign right. To those of us whose initial purpose has been to historicize the nation and nationalism, this blind spot cannot but raise some serious methodological and interpretive questions. Insofar as sovereignty articulates a major mode of exchange between nation and empire in recent history and moreover figures prominently in the realm of what Anderson calls "quotidian universals" [Spectre of Comparisons 33], the truism of its truth needs to be unpacked carefully.Hence, I would like to raise some tentative questions about desire and sovereignty, not in terms of legal studies, but in light of what we have learned about colonial exchange and its production of difference, fetishism, identity, and the logic of reciprocity. I am going to show that these intellectual and material developments have had significant bearings on the making of international law such that our inquiry into the latter can no longer be confined to the self-explanatory evolution of legal discourse. For sovereign thinking is one of those areas that must be reexamined, to borrow Edward Said's words, "according to a detailed logic governed not simply by empirical reality but by a battery of desires, repressions, investments, and projections" [18].In this essay, I begin with a critical analysis of Benedict Anderson's work, focusing on the interplay of the historical and the universal in his study of the nation. I am particularly interested in examining what Anderson chose to do, or not to do, with sovereignty in his theory of nationalism, and I raise some questions about his idea of the "modular," whereby the universal takes on the role of a migrant figure making histories [End Page 150] here and there. Section two introduces the subject of fetishism and desire into the discussion by linking the display of the thrones of the Emperor Qianlong in British museums to significant moments of sovereign thinking in the reign of Queen Victoria and the Empress Dowager of China at the turn of the century. In section three, I attempt a detailed discussion of the sovereignty complex of Ku Hung-ming, a diasporic subject who grew up in colonial Malaysia, was educated in Europe, and ended up serving China as his adopted sovereign country. My analysis centers on Ku's well-known defense of the Empress Dowager during the popular nationalist uprising of 1900 and his work as a translator and publicist in Anglo-Chinese military confrontations. Finally, I turn to the theories of international law itself and ask how nineteenth-century jurists revised the notion of sovereignty to arrive at a new constitutive theory of recognition in the heyday of imperialist expansion. I argue that any attempt to explain the rise of the modern nation-state must take full account of this significant revision in the early nineteenth century, because the revision signaled a paradigmatic shift from natural law to positivist jurisprudence to the effect that a constitutive understanding of sovereign right would eventually overcome and displace the natural law notion of universal sovereignty. Sovereign Thinking in Migrant Nationalisms In Imagined Communities, Anderson pointed to sovereignty as a necessary condition in thinking about the nation when, for example, he... (shrink)

A misconception regarding the ultrastructural basis of myocardial failure has been observed in laboratory studies involving medical students and practicing physicians, in medical textbooks, and in clinical instruction of students. This misconception attributes heart failure to overextension of individual cardiac muscle fibres and their sarcomeres, resulting in a mechanically based decline in contractile force production. The basis of the misconception is a set of component misconceptions which interact in reciprocally supportive ways. The interlocking nature of the component misunderstandings strengthens the (...) overall misconception, making it difficult to undermine. A contributor to many aspects of the faulty account of heart failure is a tendency toward oversimplification of complex phenomena in learning, instruction, and scientific research. Implications for medical education are considered. (shrink)

Previous research has suggested that in cultural production fields the concatenation of eminence explains success, defined as influence and innovation. We propose that individuals in fields as diverse as philosophy, literature, mathematics, painting, or architecture gain visibility by cumulating the eminence of others connected to them across and within generations. We draw on interaction ritual chain and social movement theories, and use evidence from the field of modernist architecture, to formulate a model of how networks of very strong ties generate (...) motivations and emotional enthusiasm, change reputations, and form collective movements that over time transform the structure of cultural fields. Because major aesthetic innovations break sharply with older styles, they need very strong group solidarity over a long period of time to propagate a new standard of practice. We propose mutual halo effects, i.e., the reciprocal reinforcement of upstream and downstream prestige on a given individual node, as the key factor accounting for success in a cultural production field. We discuss the relevance of these results for building a model of influence and innovation in cultural production fields in which networks—reshaped by shifting technological, political, and economic conditions—trigger new styles. (shrink)

Participative pricing demonstrates the basic idea of allowing customer participation in price-setting process. Nottingham Playhouse, IBIS Singapore, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wiener Deewan, Girl Talk, 8k, Zest consulting, Radiohead band and many more have successfully implemented pay-what-you-want, the most innovative form of participative pricing. Based on the degree of participation, PWYW is the highest form that allows buyers to select any price they want to pay for a product/service, including zero. The present study examines how customers lower their motivation to (...) pay more for products offered under PWYW by morally disengaging themselves from reciprocity concerns. It focuses on one mechanism of moral disengagement—displacement of responsibility and tests the proposed hypotheses in PWYW context. 284 responses were gathered using structured questionnaires at a reputed public university. Data were analysed using partial least-squares structural equation modelling. Findings indicate that customers’ moral disengagement via displacement of responsibility towards reciprocity concerns is negatively associated with willingness-to-pay more. Results corroborate the attenuating role of perceived control on the negative association between displacement of responsibility towards reciprocity concerns and WTPM. However, relaxation from monetary commitments does not have a significant moderating effect on the negative relationship between moral disengagement and WTPM. This study is possibly the first to empirically investigate the interplay among individuals’ cognitive mechanisms, moral disengagement from reciprocity concerns and socio-demographic variables under participative pricing. Findings empirically substantiate the theory of moral disengagement, moral self-regulation and social cognitive theory. Practitioners should actively engage customers’ moral self-regulation process and provide more sense of perceived control while designing participative pricing offerings. (shrink)

This paper argues that self-consciousness and associated psychic consciousness emerges as a consequence of a recursive selfdirecting on itself of the cognitive centre in the human brain. The neural mechanisms and circuits underlying self-consciousness appeared and developed during biological evolution as an adaptation that increased the fitness of our social ancestors, chances of their survival, and reproduction. These mechanisms/circuits strengthened the efficiency of individuals in various social relations, enabled separation of 'I' from 'he/she' or 'them' and the formation of firstand (...) higher-order theory of mind, stimulated development of complex, recursive language, facilitated forming temporary coalitions directed to achieve a particular goal, helped to establish social hierarchies, and increased coherence and cooperativity of a social group. The reciprocal reinforcement of the development of the neural network in the brain underlying self-consciousness and of the network of various social relations and aspects was a self-driving process, one of positive feedbacks abundant in anthropogenesis. (shrink)

The ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of knowledge circulation is explored in a study of the encounter between American and British nuclear scientists and engineers who together developed a gas centrifuge to enrich uranium in the 1960s. A fine-grained analysis of the transnational encounter reveals that the ‘how’ engages a wide variety of sometimes mundane modes of exchange in a series of face-to-face interactions over several years. The ‘why’ is driven by the reciprocal wish to improve the performance of the centrifuge, (...) though this motive is embedded in the asymmetric field of the ‘special relationship’ in nuclear matters between the United Kingdom and the United States. The result of the encounter is co-produced, hybrid knowledge in which the national provenance of the contributions from each side of the Atlantic is at once diluted and a contested site for the affirmation of national power. (shrink)

There is evidence of reciprocal connectivity, similarity of oscillatory responses to stimulation of multiple motor and somatosensory cortices, whole system oscillation, and short- latency responses to behavioral perturbation. These suggest that frame/content may be instantiated by overlapping neural populations, and that the genesis of frame oscillations may be profitably thought of as an emergent property of a distributed neural system.

ABSTRACT Research suggests that ethical leadership affects employee behavior and organizational functioning. This study aimed to determine the relationship between EL and productive energy, as mediated by person-organizational fit. The study used assumptions of the social learning and social exchange theories that posit that leadership has a direct impact on employee behavior, mainly through role modeling and the reciprocal nature thereof. An empirical paradigm using a cross sectional quantitative design was used. The PE instrument was assessed for construct validity (...) within the South African context. The analysis included a comparison between the private and public sectors, emphasizing the importance of context as differentiator. Relatively high, statistically significant correlations were found between the variables for both sectors and the combined sample. The hierarchical regression analysis indicated that 18% of the variance in PE is explained by EL. This model was improved by the inclusion of POF. The conceptual model was confirmed with structural equation modeling. The findings of this study suggest that EL has a significantly positive effect on PE and POF, which mediates the relationship between EL and PE. Sectoral differences were reported. (shrink)

Marketers are increasingly relying on promotional practices (variously labeled as stealth marketing, hybrid messages, covert advertising) based on the diffusion of product information by third parties that appear to be independent of advertisers. In this paper, we examine to what extent the media treat their advertisers favorably, providing these advertisers’ products extra visibility in supposedly neutral editorial content. Empirically, we model the determinant of media coverage of Italian fashion products in an extended dataset of consumer magazines in Italy, France, Germany, (...) UK, and the USA. Research findings show that advertising is an important determinant of product placements in editorial content, and this result is consistent across countries and publishers. Our results imply that resource-rich advertisers engaging in compensatory advertising (that is, advertising investments that compensate poor product quality) might bias media coverage in their favor. Consumers will consequently be exposed twice to favorable messages about those products, in both advertisements and media content, resulting in higher purchases and reduced consumer welfare. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments purport to undercut the justification of our moral judgments by showing why a tendency to make moral judgments would evolve regardless of the truth of those judgments. Machery and Mallon (2010. Evolution of morality. In J.M. Doris and The Moral Psychology Research Group (Eds.), The Moral Psychology Handbook (pp. 3-46). Oxford: Oxford University Press) have recently tried to disarm these arguments by showing that moral cognition – in the sense that is relevant to debunking – is not (...) the product of natural selection. Specifically, they present a barrage of increasingly influential challenges against reciprocity-based approaches to moral nativism. In the present paper I defend the nativist account of moral cognition against these criticisms, thereby bolstering the skeptical conclusions of evolutionary debunking arguments. However, Machery and Mallon's critique does successfully highlight several vulnerabilities in Richard Joyce's approach to debunking, suggesting several ways in which it can be revised toward generating a more robust version of the argument. (shrink)

A reciprocal symmetry between art and culture, the reductionism and the impoverishment of the artistic practices are all consequences of the establishment of the new conceptualist paradigm in art since the 60s. Nespolo’s artistic production in that period exemplifies this features being thus conceivable as a variant of conceptualism since he adopts its new experimental rules mixing them with the traditional ones of the visual artistic paradigm.

The earth is the archetypal image of the origin of humanity, but throughout the history of Western culture it has given way to other, more heavenly allegories. Enlightenment as a paradigm of knowledge consolidated itself in Western philosophical thought in a very convincing way as a production of meanings. Through this rereading of the first Greek metaphysics, thought gradually distanced itself from its materiality, from its humanity, from the possibility of admiring the concrete world, getting closer and closer to the (...) need to create abstract objects, which, as ethical limits, political, aesthetic and epistemological, we end up meeting again in our lives. Visibility seems to be the basis of a Western mental habitus: recognition, officiality, legitimacy and certainty become visible signs with which we compare and validate our own experiences. The earth, as a less transparent element, with greater ability to hide, occult, encrypt represents, however, an image that is better suited to the discussion plan proposed in this text. The relationship with reality, in terms of visibility and invisibility, requires a new perception of the world: the underlying structure no longer assumes a transcendent level, but is understood as a plane of immanence, in which meaning is interior, produced by compositions; an amalgam of networks that intertwine in an imperceptible, invisible underground plane. What we propose here is not a vertical perspective, but a horizontal one like the ground. It is from this earthly thought that we want to reflect on what happens in philosophy and childhood; in philosophy with childhood and in the childhood of philosophy. In the present attempt of an ecophilosophy of education, the discussion plan requires a deviation from the guiding images with which we learn to do research. The intention of the following investigation is to look for another type of map: a kind of subterranean cartography, which pays attention not to what we can see, which has well-defined names and categories, but to what is hidden and inhabits a plane that is muddy, earthly, indistinguishable and absolutely alive. According to the Lipmanian model of Philosophy for Children, the subterranean and rhizomatic processes of the research community will be examined, comparing them to other collective movements that characterize the vegetable communities of plants that inhabit the natural world. Finally, three concepts considered relevant to escape the limits found in some contemporary pedagogical postures will be illustrated, suggesting other paths in the relationship between philosophy, childhood and education: reciprocity, passivity and invisibility. (shrink)

It is hypothesized that human faces judged to be attractive by people possess two features—averageness and symmetry—that promoted adaptive mate selection in human evolutionary history by way of production of offspring with parasite resistance. Facial composites made by combining individual faces are judged to be attractive, and more attractive than the majority of individual faces. The composites possess both symmetry and averageness of features. Facial averageness may reflect high individual protein heterozygosity and thus an array of proteins to which parasites (...) must adapt. Heterozygosity may be an important defense of long-lived hosts against parasites when it occurs in portions of the genome that do not code for the essential features of complex adaptations. In this case heterozygosity can create a hostile microenvironment for parasites without disrupting adaptation. Facial bilateral symmetry is hypothesized to affect positive beauty judgments because symmetry is a certification of overall phenotypic quality and developmental health, which may be importantly influenced by parasites. Certain secondary sexual traits are influenced by testosterone, a hormone that reduces immunocompetence. Symmetry and size of the secondary sexual traits of the face (e.g., cheek bones) are expected to correlate positively and advertise immunocompetence honestly and therefore to affect positive beauty judgments. Facial attractiveness is predicted to correlate with attractive, nonfacial secondary sexual traits; other predictions from the view that parasite-driven selection led to the evolution of psychological adaptations of human beauty perception are discussed. The view that human physical attractiveness and judgments about human physical attractiveness evolved in the context of parasite-driven selection leads to the hypothesis that both adults and children have a species-typical adaptation to the problem of identifying and favoring healthy individuals and avoiding parasite-susceptible individuals. It is proposed that this adaptation guides human decisions about nepotism and reciprocity in relation to physical attractiveness. (shrink)

This essay argues that economic scarcity, along with mankind’s evolved propensity for reciprocity, are keys to understanding the origins and evolution of Western religion in all its varieties and purposes. Scarcity is religion’s first cause uncaused. Eusocial cooperation and productive efficiency, which are mobilized by religion, are shown to be inherent and rational responses to scarcity. The reformation that began around 1500 CE represents the substitution of efficient secular religions for traditional theological varieties. The balance between traditional and (...) secular religions is determined by cost, benefits, and the structure of economic payoffs. (shrink)

Christianity finds itself in a new situation, one that resembles its first‐century experience in that it will be shaped by a new dominant world culture. This culture is marked by three factors‐the economy, the multireligious situation, and science. The author's discussion deals with the issues that arise in this engagement with culture under three rubrics: dialogue between science and religion, globalization of the religious encounter, and interreligious dialogue in a globalized world. The major assertions are: (1) Science and religions must (...) avoid restrictive and expansionist relationships and work for reciprocal interaction. (2) Globalization is an unavoidable, but ambiguous, historical development; religions should reject responses of “ethnification” and “primitivism” and rather engage in strategies that encourage both productive encounter and critical distance. (3) Interreligious dialogue includes dialogues of life, of intellectual exchange, of religious experience, of common action, and of confrontation; this dialogue will seek to embrace truth (which involves science) and wisdom (which includes the various religious traditions) in the reciprocal interaction that is marked by love. (shrink)

The virtual display of products in e-commerce brings new problems of information asymmetry, and the overload of digital information also increases the difficulty of consumers' purchasing decisions. The real-time interaction between the streamer and the consumer during live streaming e-commerce will promote consumers' understanding of the product, reduce information asymmetry, and increase consumers' purchase intention. However, why do people trust the untouchable and unfamiliar streamers from live streaming e-commerce to purchase online? To understand this phenomenon, based on the perspective of (...) the information asymmetry theory and parasocial relationship theory, this research identified how social capital affected purchase intention in live streaming e-commerce. Through a questionnaire survey of live viewers, the purchase intention model constructed by empirical testing was used. The findings showed that the streamer's professionalism, the reciprocal expectation of live streaming, and the viewer's parasocial relationship could effectively increase the viewer's purchase intention. The occurrence of a streamer's negative public events could significantly reduce the viewer's purchase intention. The scale of live streaming and the streamer's commitment had no significant impact on the viewer's purchase intention. Trust played an intermediary role between the streamer's professionalism and parasocial relationship and the viewer's purchase intention. (shrink)

Mario Bunge’s Causality and Modern Science is arguably one of the best treatments of the causal realist tradition ever to have been written, one that defends the place of causality as a category in the conceptual framework of modern science. And yet in the current revival of causal realism in contemporary metaphysics, there is very little awareness of Bunge’s work. This paper seeks to remedy this, by highlighting one particular criticism Bunge levels at the Aristotelian view of causation and illustrating (...) its relevance for contemporary powers-based accounts. Roughly, the Aristotelian view depicts interactions between objects as involving a unidirectional exertion of influence of one object upon another. This idea of unidirectional action is central to the Aristotelian distinction between active and passive powers, and its corresponding distinction between active and passive objects. As Bunge points out, modern physics does not recognise the existence of any unidirectional actions at all; all influence comes in the form of reciprocal action, or interaction. If this is right, all notions deriving from or influenced by the idea of unidirectional actions—such as the concept of mutual manifestation and reciprocal disposition partners—risk being false by the same measure. Bunge drew the conclusion that the Aristotelian view is ontologically inadequate, but still advocated its use as the most useful approximation available in science. He considered, but ultimately rejected the possibility of a modified view of causation built on reciprocal action, because, in his view, it couldn’t account for the productivity of causation. Bunge’s critique of this particular aspect of the Aristotelian view cannot be overlooked in contemporary metaphysics, but it is possible to construe a modified view of causation that takes the reciprocity of interactions seriously without loss of productivity. (shrink)

It is often argued that constitution and causation are different kinds of dependence relations. Some have argued for a distinction between constitutive explanation of causal capacities that explain what a system would do in specific situations from causal or etiological explanations that explain why an event such as a change in the property of a system happened. In what follows we argue against the claim that causation and constitution are always distinct metaphysical relations. This paper develops a temporal account of (...) constitution. We call this species of constitution, diachronic constitution. We show how diachronic constitution is a consequence of a common type of causation in the empirical sciences: continuous reciprocal causation, a variety of causal production instantiated in complex dynamical systems. Hence, this paper seeks to establish that constitution does not only resemble causation in certain respects. We argue for the stronger claim that constitution can be analysed in terms of causation understood as production of change. Temporalizing the constitution relation is neither as remarkable nor as problematic as it might initially seem. The idea of diachronic constitution will appear almost inevitable in the context of complex dynamical systems, given local interactions between microscale and macroscale states in such systems. (shrink)

I investigate the reciprocal relationship between social accounts of knowledge production and efforts to increase the representation of women and some minorities in the academy. In particular, I consider the extent to which feminist social epistemologies such as Helen Longino’s critical contextual empiricism can be employed to argue that it is in researchers’ epistemic interests to take active steps to increase gender diversity. As it stands, critical contextual empiricism does not provide enough resources to succeed at this task. However, considering (...) this view through an employment equity lens highlights areas where such theories need to be further developed. I argue that views such as Longino’s ought to attend to nuances of community structure and cultural features that inhibit critical social interactions, if we are to maximize the epistemic as well as the ethical improvements associated with a social approach to knowing. These developments advance these epistemic theories for their own sake. They also help develop these theories into a tool that can be used by those calling for increased diversity in the academy. (shrink)

Tobacco is a significant product providing considerable economic benefits to countries worldwide, while its increased consumption causes health and socio-economic losses for smokers and non-smokers. This paper constructs a decomposition system of tobacco taxation: the population aging factor is included in the influencing factors of personal tax, and personal tax revenue is regarded as the product of tax structure, macro tax burden, regional economy, reciprocal aging, and the elderly population. This article conducts an empirical study on the relationship between taxation (...) and economic growth. The estimated coefficients of business tax and corporate income tax are significant at the significance level of 0.1, with a consumption tax and time-variable coefficients reporting a 0.02 level of significance. The T statistic value and the explanatory degree of the variables involved in the model to the explained variables are also very high, reaching more than 95%. We find that increasing the macro tax burden negatively impacts economic growth. Therefore, the study suggests that for fostering the industry’s economic growth, the country needs to ensure the optimal macro tax burden of 17.5%, with different types of taxes influencing economic growth. Personal tax reform should pay attention to the phenomenon of aging, adjust the tax structure to increase personal tax income, provide policy support and guarantee for the elderly labor force, and encourage the re-employment of silver-haired people to alleviate the adverse impact of aging on taxation. (shrink)

The thesis revolves around the following questions. What is time? Is time tensed or tenseless? Do things endure or perdure, i.e. do things persist by being wholly present at many times, or do they persist by having temporal parts? Do causes bring their effects into existence, or are they only correlated with each other? Within a realist approach to metaphysics, the author claims that the tensed view of time, the endurance view of persistence, and the production view of causality naturally (...) combine into what is called the dynamic view of temporal reality, and that the tenseless view of time, the perdurance view of persistence, and the correlation view of causality naturally combine into what is called the static view of temporal reality. The author argues in favour of a dynamic view. During the discussion a number of metaphysical problems are addressed. First, it is argued that the charges that the dynamic view is contradictory, made by J.M.E. McTaggart and David Lewis, are viciously circular. Secondly, it is argued that the static view cannot account for change, and deprives metaphysics of essential means to provide natural explanations to empirical phenomena. Thirdly, the author presents a novel account of the nature of necessary causal production. He suggests that the traditional conception of causes as essentially being external to the effects should be abandoned, and that causal production instead should be explicated in terms of reciprocal interactions between coexistent substances. (shrink)

Cosmopolitans argue that the account of human rights and distributive justice in John Rawls's The Law of Peoples is incompatible with his argument for liberal justice. Rawls should extend his account of liberal basic liberties and the guarantees of distributive justice to apply to the world at large. This essay defends Rawls's grounding of political justice in social cooperation. The Law of Peoples is drawn up to provide principles of foreign policy for liberal peoples. Human rights are among the necessary (...) conditions for social cooperation, and so long as a decent people respect human rights, a common good, and the Law of Peoples, it is not the role of liberal peoples to impose upon well-ordered decent peoples liberal liberties they cannot endorse. Moreover, the difference principle is not an allocative or alleviatory principle, but applies to design property and other basic social institutions necessary to economic production, exchange and consumption. It presupposes political cooperation—a legislative body to actively apply it, and a legal system to apply it to. There is no feasible global state or global legal system that could serve these roles. Finally, the difference principle embodies a conception of democratic reciprocity that is only appropriate to cooperation among free and equal citizens who are socially productive and politically autonomous. a Footnotesa I am grateful to K. C. Tan for many helpful discussions and criticisms of this essay. I am also grateful to the other contributors to this volume for their comments, and to Ellen Paul for her many helpful suggestions in preparing the final version of this essay. (shrink)

The explanatory value of niche construction can be strengthened by firm footing in semiotic theory. Anthropologists have a unique perspective on the integration of such diverse approaches to human action and evolutionary processes. Here, we seek to open a dialogue between anthropology and biosemiotics. The overarching aim of this paper is to demonstrate that niche construction, including the underlying mechanism of reciprocal causation, is a semiotic process relating to biological development as well as cognitive development and cultural change. In making (...) this argument we emphasize the semiotic mechanisms underlying the niche concept. We argue that the “niche” in ecology and evolutionary biology can be consistent with the Umwelt of Jakob von Uexkull. Following John Deely we therefore suggest that investigations into the organism—environment interface constituting niche construction should emphasize the semiotic basis of experience. Peircean signs are pervasive and allow for flexible interpretations of phenomena in relation to the perceptual and cognitive capacities of the behaving organism, which is particularly pertinent for understanding the relation of proximate/ultimate selective forces as co-productive. Additionally, theoretical work by Kinji Imanishi on the evolution of daily life and Gregory Bateson’s relational view of evolution both support the linkage between proximate and ultimate evolutionary processes of causation necessitated by the niche construction perspective. We will then apply this theoretical framework to two specific examples: 1) hominin evolution, including uniquely human cultural behaviors with niche constructive implications; and 2) the multispecies and anthropocentric niche of human-dog coevolution from which complex cognitive capacities and semiotic relationships emerged. The intended outcome of this paper is the establishment of concrete semiotic mechanisms and theory underlying niche constructive behavior which can then be applied to a broad spectrum of organisms to contextualize the reciprocal relation between proximate and ultimate drivers of behavior. (shrink)

This paper discusses the economic, legal, moral, and political difficulties in developing drugs for the developing world. It argues that large, global pharmaceutical companies have social responsibilities to the developing world, and that they may exercise these responsibilities by investing in research and development related to diseases that affect developing nations, offering discounts on drug prices, and initiating drug giveaways. However, these social responsibilities are not absolute requirements and may be balanced against other obligations and commitments in light of economic, (...) social, legal, political, and other conditions. How a company decides to exercise its social responsibilities to the developing world depends on the prospects for a reasonable profit and the prospects for a productive business environment. Developing nations can either help or hinder the pharmaceutical industry’s efforts to exercise social responsibility through various policies and practices. To insure that companies can make a reasonable profit, developing nations should honor pharmaceutical product patents and adhere to international intellectual property treaties, such as the Trade‐Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement. To insure the companies have a good business environment, developing nations should try to promote the rule of law, ethical business practices, stable currencies, reliable banking systems, free and open markets, democracy, and other conditions conducive to business. Overall, this paper advocates for reciprocity and cooperation between pharmaceutical companies and developing nations to address the problem of developing drugs for the developing world. In pursuing this cooperative approach, developing nations may use a variety of other techniques to encourage pharmaceutical companies to act responsibly, such as subsidizing pharmaceutical research, helping to design and implement research protocols, providing a guaranteed market, and bulk buying. (shrink)

The return of individual research results and incidental findings from biobanking research is a much debated ethical issue globally but has extensive relevance in India where the burden of out of pocket health care expenses is high for the majority. The views of 21 ethics committee (EC) members and 22 researchers from Bengaluru, India, concerning the ethics of biobanking research were sought through in‐depth interviews using an unfolding case vignette with probes. A shared view among most was that individual research (...) results which are ‘actionable’ or have ‘clinical significance’ should be returned to the sample contributors through their treating physicians. This was seen as an ethical obligation and a moral duty on the side of the researcher to “give back” to the person who contributed to the research. The challenges foreseen were that of resources, both financial and personnel, for the time and counseling needed to accompany the disclosure of results. Perceptions of ‘ownership’ appear to influence the concept of benefit sharing. While benefit sharing in financial terms was considered ethically challenging, certain researchers and ethics committee members made a case for “two way altruism” where the researcher in return for the altruistic ‘valuable contribution’, shares with the contributor/ community, benefits of the research which could include research findings, improved patient care, and more affordable access to the new diagnostic tests or products arising from the research. This defines the emerging ethic of “giving back” which goes beyond individual rights and ensures reciprocity and distributive justice. (shrink)

Modern ethical perspectives toward the environment often emphasize the connection of humans to a broader biotic community. The full intimacy of this connectedness, however, is only now being revealed as scientific findings in developmental biology and genetics provide new insights into the importance of environmental interaction for the development of organisms. These insights are reshaping our understanding of how organism-environment interaction contributes to both consistency and variation in organism development, and leading to a new perspective whereby an “organism” is not (...) solely viewed as the adaptive product of evolutionary selection to an external environment over generations, but as continuously being constructed through systems of interactions that link an organism’s characteristics developmentally to the physical and social influences it experiences during life. This newfound emphasis on “interaction” leads to an interdependency whereby any change to an “environment” impacts the interacting “organism,” and an alteration to the “organism” eventually affects its “environment.” The causal reciprocity embedded within this organism-environment interdependency holds implications for our moral obligations to environments, given their compulsory role in shaping all organisms including ourselves. (shrink)

To what degree has biology influenced and shaped the development of moral systems? One way to determine the extent to which human moral systems might be the product of natural selection is to explore behaviour in other species that is analogous and perhaps homologous to our own. Many non-human primates, for example, have similar methods to humans for resolving, managing, and preventing conflicts of interests within their groups. Such methods, which include reciprocity and food sharing, reconciliation, consolation, conflict intervention, (...) and mediation, are the very building blocks of moral systems in that they are based on and facilitate cohesion among individuals and reflect a concerted effort by community members to find shared solutions to social conflict. Furthermore, these methods of resource distribution and conflict resolution often require or make use of capacities for empathy, sympathy, and sometimes even community concern. Non-human primates in societies in which such mechanisms are present may not be exactly moral beings, but they do show signs of a sense of social regularity that -- just like the norms and rules underlying human moral conduct -- promotes a mutually satisfactory modus vivendi. (shrink)

The introduction claims that there might exist an evolutionary bridge from possible genres in nature to human cultural genres. A sub-hypothesis is that basic life-conditions, partly common for animals and humans, in the long run can generate so-called life-genres. To investigate such hypotheses a framework of interrelated key communicational concepts is outlined in the second, main part. Four levels are suggested. Signs are seen as elements in utterances. Further, sufficiently similar utterances can be perceived as kinds of utterances or genres. (...) Genres are kinds of communication in a species' life-world. Utterance and genre are the framework’s key concepts. Both are seen as products and processes and as constituted by five reciprocal aspects: form, content, act, time, and space, the necessary elements to initiate and interpret communication. A model illustrates this integrative principle. Part three dwells with the idea of life-genres, and part four exemplifies and problematises how a chimpanzee’s ‘begging’ for meat, a fish’s nest-making, and kinds of birdsongs, could be seen as possible life-genres. The last, short part gives a brief summary, highlights challenges, and reflects over the framework’s relevance for biosemiotics. (shrink)

What could a social-justice oriented, feminist data studies look like? The current datalogical turn foregrounds the digital datafication of everyday life, increasing algorithmic processing and data as an emergent regime of power/knowledge. Scholars celebrate the politics of big data knowledge production for its omnipotent objectivity or dismiss it outright as data fundamentalism that may lead to methodological genocide. In this feminist and postcolonial intervention into gender-, race- and geography-blind ‘big data’ ideologies, I call for ethical, anti-oppressive digital data-driven research in (...) the social sciences and humanities. I argue that a reflexive data scholarship can emerge from the reintegration of feminist and postcolonial science studies and ethics of care ideals. Although it is not a panacea for all ails of data mining, I offer a road map for an alternative data-analysis practice that is more power-sensitive and accountable. By incorporating a people-centric and context-aware perspective that acknowledges relationships of dependency, reflects on temptations, and scrutinises benefits and harm, an ‘asymmetrically reciprocal’ (Young, 1997) research encounter may be achieved. I bring this perspective to bear on experiences of a two-year research project with eighty-four young Londoners on digital identities and living in a highly diverse city. I align awareness of uneven relations of power and knowledge with the messy relation of dependency between human and non-human actors in data analysis. This framework productively recognises that digital data cannot be expected to speak for itself, that data do not emerge from a vacuum, and that isolated data patterns cannot be the end-goal of a situated and reflexive research endeavor. Data-driven research, in turn, shows the urgency for renewed feminist ethical reflection on how digital mediation impacts upon responsibility, intersectional power relations, human subjectivity and the autonomy of research participants over their own data. (shrink)

The analysis of the reciprocal relations of the discipline of philosophy and other cultural phenomena requires a few disclaimers. First of all, the characterization of philosophy as a cultural phenomenon along with literature, music and theater, or culinary arts, fashions and sports, rejects claims that philosophy somehow relates to absolute truths which transcend the limits of any particular cultural context and mean the same things for anyone who manages to reach the heights and/or depths necessary for that purpose. This also (...) entails that any pursuit of philosophy, including Buddhist philosophy in Japan, is only possible within the network of textualities and cultural practices that surround it, and the people engaged in it relate to the cultural codes and institutions of their environment just as they relate to the internal rules of their philosophy and its received heritage. Secondly, we have to acknowledge two major aspects in approaching any cultural phenomenon, namely, its texts and its practice. The texts produced by the people engaged in, say, philosophy or literature or cooking are distinct from, yet always related to, the practical aspects of that phenomenon, which determine who produces these texts, how and why they are produced, and how they are used and disseminated. Alternatively, seen from the aspect of practice, texts are a sort of by-product of what people do; for example, reciting Buddhist sutras does not imply a deep understanding of their semantic, textual, and philosophical content. Both of these aspects are equally relevant to the phenomenon as a whole, and neither can be sufficiently analyzed without the knowledge of the other. In this article, I will focus on some key categories and issues mainly as they have been reflected in the domain of literature, especially since it can be argued that literature is the filter through which Buddhist influence, and its philosophical aspect, in particular, has been mediated to other spheres of culture. (shrink)