This study investigated the relationship between death anxiety and experienced meaning in life. Six hundred and forty-eight Chinese college students were surveyed using the Death Anxiety Scale, the Prosocial Behavior Scale, and the Meaning in Life Scale. The results showed that death anxiety predicted experienced meaning through three pathways: the first one was through search for meaning singly; the second one was through prosocial behavior singly; and the third one was through search for meaning and prosocial behavior serially, which accounted (...) for the highest proportion of the total effect. This study highlights the positive side of death anxiety. (shrink)

This research explores why a metallic basketball hoop is referred to as sacred within the secular realm of sports, drawing on Phil Jackson’s insights alongside the ideas of Mircea Eliade and Dōgen Zenji. Phil Jackson, known as the “Zen Master,” holds the most NBA championship rings as a coach. In Sacred Hoops, he explores a basketball world entangled with commercialism, violence, and scandals, while presenting a vision of the sport as “sacred.” Jackson’s Western religious background and his exploration of concepts (...) like “enlightened mind,” “no-mind,” and “action without intention” align closely with Eastern Zen principles. This article also examines Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane, where he explores the coexistence of the sacred and profane throughout history, and Dōgen Zenji’s philosophy of “casting off body and mind.” Using creative hermeneutics as its methodology, this study attempts to reinterpret the idea of sacredness in sports. The key findings are: (1) sacredness can emerge from the mundane/everyday world, with sports providing a space for such awareness; (2) Eliade views sacredness externally through the Western concept of hierophany; (3) Dōgen Zenji’s Eastern view focuses on internal transformation through casting off body and mind; (4) this study emphasizes the difference between Eastern and Western views of the sacred, proposing an Eastern interpretation; and (5) through mindful practice, basketball players can unify with the game, transcend individual limits, and achieve tranquility and sacredness. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on firms' financial performance (CSR-effect). Two competing hypotheses, social impact hypothesis and shift of focus hypothesis, are proposed to investigate this issue, where the former suggests that CSR has a positive relation with performance and the latter are opposite. In order to ensure the CSR-effect is not contaminated by other faeton or samples are randomly drawn, we employ four matching methods, Nearest, Caliper, Mahala and Mahala Caliper to match (...) the samples of CSR (CSR-firms) and without CSR (NonCSR-firms) with similar characteristics. Although four methods yield slightly different results, firms engaging in CSR activities tend to obtain significantly higher values on pretax income to net sales and profit margin, and adopting CSR at the very least not deteriorate the performance of firms, making our con clusion favors the social impact hypothesis and against shift of focus hypothesis in Taiwan. Thus, ambition and conscience are not conflicting with each other. (shrink)

The modern doctor-patient relationship displays a patient-centred, mutual-participation characteristic rather than the former active-passive or guidance-cooperation models in terms of medical decision making. Respecting the wishes of patients, amounting to more than mere concern for their welfare, has become the feature central to certain modern bioethics theories. A group of ethical principles such as respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice has been proposed by bioethicists and widely adopted by many medical societies as an ethical guide to how doctors, in (...) their daily practice, should treat their patients. However, seeing patients as persons who are rational, self-conscious beings capable of valuing their own lives, and who are consequently entitled to the liberty and rights to choose for themselves, is in general the backbone of Western bioethical principles.Since Confucian philosophy has long been a representative of the East-Asia cultural tradition and Confucian bioethics has recently been developed as a theory of applied ethics, examining Confucius's idea of “persons” may shed some light on the current bioethical debates. Confucius's concept of persons, which is best interpreted via his theories of “chun-tze”, (the morally ideal person) encapsulating a two-dimensional approach, (the “autonomous person” and the “relational person”), provides a more comprehensive model regarding what a person is and how he/she should be treated. This two-dimensional approach sees a person not only as a rational, autonomous agent but also as a relational, altruistic identity whose self actualisation involves incessant participating in and promoting of the welfare of his fellow persons. Hence this may balance the current bioethical trend whereby “respect for autonomy” often triumphs. (shrink)

Theories of language production have long been expressed as connectionist models. We outline the issues and challenges that must be addressed by connectionist models of lexical access and grammatical encoding, and review three recent models. The models illustrate the value of an interactive activation approach to lexical access in production, the need for sequential output in both phonological and grammatical encoding, and the potential for accounting for structural effects on errors and structural priming from learning.

Historically, the preconditions for the emergence of bioethics in China. were political reforms and their applications. The Hanzhong Euthanasia Case and the publication of Qiu Ren-zong's academic work Bioethics played a significant role in the development of bioethics in China. Other contributory factors include the establishment of the Chinese Society of Medical Ethics/Chinese Medical Association (C.M.A), the publication of the Journal of Chinese Medical Ethics, and the teaching and education of bioethics in China. Major achievements of bioethics in China include (...) the establishment of ethics committee and ethics review system, active international communication and cooperation among the academic circles, and the successful management of the 8th World Congress of Bioethics in Beijing in 2006. Chinese bioethics focus on native Chinese realities and conditions, absorb the international research achievements in relevant fields, and combine international ideas with traditional Chinese doctrines. Admittedly, there are still some aspects to be improved, yet bioethics has attracted a lot of attention from the core leadership in China and has gained sound financial support, which augers well for its further development. This article also briefly introduces the development of bioethics in Hong Kong and Taiwan, China. (shrink)

The primary purpose of this study is to link the effects of consumer personality traits on green buying intention via the mediating variable of consumer ethical beliefs so as to extend the context of green buying intentions with consumer ethics literatures. Based on a survey of 545 Taiwanese respondents, consumer personality traits were found to significantly affect consumer ethical beliefs. The results also indicate that some dimensions of consumer ethical beliefs significantly predict consumer intention to buy green products. Generally speaking, (...) this study enhances our knowledge of consumers’ ethical decision-making in the context of green consumption behaviors. Theoretical and managerial implications, limitations, and future research are also provided. (shrink)

This study examined the relationship between person–organization (PO) fit on prosocial identity (prosocial PO fit) and various employee outcomes. The results of polynomial regression analysis based on a sample of 589 hospital employees, which included medical doctors, nurses, and staff, indicate joint effects of personal and organizational prosocial identity on the development of a sense of organizational identification and on the engagement in prosocial behaviors toward colleagues, organizations, and patients. Specifically, prosocial PO fit had a curvilinear relationship with organizational identification, (...) such that organizational identification increased as organizational prosocial characteristics increased toward personal prosocial identity and then decreased when the organizational prosocial characteristics exceeded the personal prosocial identity. In addition, organizational identification and prosocial behaviors increased as both personal and organizational prosocial identity increased from low to high. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the problem of how to measure the strength of statistical evidence from the perspective of evidence amalgamation operations. We begin with a fundamental measurement amalgamation principle : for any measurement, the inputs and outputs of an amalgamation procedure must be on the same scale, and this scale must have a meaningful interpretation vis a vis the object of measurement. Using the p value as a candidate evidence measure, we examine various commonly used approaches to amalgamation (...) of evidence across similar studies, including standard forms of meta-analysis. We show that none of these methods satisfies MAP. Thus an underlying measurement problem remains. We argue that a successful approach to evidence amalgamation necessitates a solution to the problem of evidence measurement, and we suggest some lines of reasoning that might guide further work towards this end. (shrink)

Relatively little research has examined the effects of ownership on the firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR). In addition, most of it has been conducted in the Western context such as the U.S. and Europe. Using a sample of 118 large Korean firms, we hypothesize that different types of shareholders will have distinct motivations toward the firm’s CSR engagement. We break down ownership into different groups of shareholders: institutional, managerial, and foreign ownerships. Results indicate a significant, positive relationship between CSR ratings (...) and ownership by institutions and foreign investors. In contrast, shareholding by top managers is negatively associated with firm’s CSR rating while outside director ownership is not significant. We conclude that different owners have differential impacts on the firm’s CSR engagement. (shrink)

Language learning requires linguistic input, but several studies have found that knowledge of second language rules does not seem to improve with more language exposure. One reason for this is that previous studies did not factor out variation due to the different rules tested. To examine this issue, we reanalyzed grammaticality judgment scores in Flege, Yeni-Komshian, and Liu's study of L2 learners using rule-related predictors and found that, in addition to the overall drop in performance due to a sensitive period, (...) L2 knowledge increased with years of input. Knowledge of different grammar rules was negatively associated with input frequency of those rules. To better understand these effects, we modeled the results using a connectionist model that was trained using Korean as a first language and then English as an L2. To explain the sensitive period in L2 learning, the model's learning rate was reduced in an age-related manner. By assigning different learning rates for syntax and lexical learning, we were able to model the difference between early and late L2 learners in input sensitivity. The model's learning mechanism allowed transfer between the L1 and L2, and this helped to explain the differences between different rules in the grammaticality judgment task. This work demonstrates that an L1 model of learning and processing can be adapted to provide an explicit account of how the input and the sensitive period interact in L2 learning. (shrink)

The paper explores the influence of greenwash on green trust and discusses the mediation roles of green consumer confusion and green perceived risk. The research object of this study focuses on Taiwanese consumers who have the purchase experience of information and electronics products in Taiwan. This research employs an empirical study by means of the structural equation modeling. The results show that greenwash is negatively related to green trust. Therefore, this study suggests that companies must reduce their greenwash behaviors to (...) enhance their consumers’ green trust. In addition, this study finds out that green consumer confusion and green perceived risk mediate the negative relationship between greenwash and green trust. The results also demonstrate that greenwash is positively associated with green consumer confusion and green perceived risk which would negatively affect green trust. It means that greenwash does not only negatively affect green trust directly but also negatively influence it via green consumer confusion and green perceived risk indirectly. Hence, if companies would like to reduce the negative relationship between greenwash and green trust, they need to decrease their consumers’ green consumer confusion and green perceived risk. (shrink)

v. 1. East & west philosophy of religion.

Supporting families of people with developmental disabilities from culturally diverse backgrounds is receiving increased attention in the era of globalisation. However, there is little information about how disability policy and cultural values work together to support families. This article examined how disability policy and Chinese cultural values influence family care of children and young people with developmental disabilities. By comparing qualitative interview data from Chinese families in Taipei (15) and Sydney (10), we analysed how their expression of cultural values in (...) family care differs by policy context, relative to ethics of care claims for recognition, rights and redistribution. We found that positive expressions of Chinese culture in family care fade if policies do not complement them. Policies can alleviate potential tension with cultural values in three ways: reinforcing family capacity to care; ensuring the rights of both family caregivers and people with disabilities; and extending care choices for families. These approaches resonate with ethics of care principles. We argue that culturally responsive disability policy for families means working with cultural values to achieve ethics of care. This implies that incorporating principles of ethics of care could inform cultural responsiveness in disability policy development. (shrink)

Research from cognitive science and geoscience education has shown that sketching can improve spatial thinking skills and facilitate solving spatially complex problems. Yet sketching is rarely implemented in introductory geosciences courses, due to time needed to grade sketches and lack of materials that incorporate cognitive science research. Here, we report a design-centered, collaborative effort, between geoscientists, cognitive scientists, and artificial intelligence researchers, to characterize spatial learning challenges in geoscience and to design sketch activities that use a sketch-understanding program, CogSketch. We (...) developed 26 CogSketch worksheets that use cognitive science–based principles to scaffold problem solving of spatially complex geoscience problems and report observations of an implementation in an introductory geoscience course where students used CogSketch or human-graded paper worksheets. Overall, this research highlights the principles of interdisciplinary design between cognitive scientists, geoscientists, and AI researchers that can inform the collaborative design process for others aiming to develop effective educational materials. (shrink)

This survey aimed to illustrate factors that contribute to nurses' fear when faced with a possible human-to-human avian flu pandemic and their willingness to care for patients with avian flu in Taiwan. The participants were nursing students with a lesser nursing credential who were currently enrolled in a bachelor degree program in a private university in southern Taiwan. Nearly 42% of the nurses did not think that, if there were an outbreak of avian flu, their working hospitals would have sufficient (...) infection control measures and equipment to prevent nosocomial infection in their working environment. About 57% of the nurse participants indicated that they were willing to care for patients infected with avian influenza. Nurses' fear about an unknown infectious disease, such as the H5N1 influenza virus, could easily be heightened to levels above those occurring during the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in Taiwan. (shrink)

During the 1920s, researchers from the American Museum of Natural History led by Roy Chapman Andrews exported a large collection of valuable fossils from the Gobi Desert. While their expedition was celebrated across Europe and the United States, it aroused enormous controversy in China and Mongolia, especially after a new Nationalist government was formed in Nanjing during the late 1920s. Whereas Chinese scholars accused American scientists of plundering their natural heritage, Andrews argued that because dinosaurs went extinct long before the (...) creation of China, prehistoric fossils belonged equally to all mankind. This essay locates the Central Asiatic Expedition within a broader history of epistemic imperialism to explore what the controversy that it engendered reveals about the production, circulation, and accumulation of knowledge in a global context. (shrink)

This article aims to help readers to learn about health care related cultural and religious beliefs and spiritual needs in Chinese communities. The recall diary of a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-infected intern working in Hoping Hospital in Taiwan during the 2003 SARS epidemic is presented and used to assist in understanding one patient’s spiritual activities when personally confronted with this newly emerging infectious disease. The article also gives an overview of the 2003 SARS epidemic in Taiwan, and discusses people’s (...) general perceptions towards infectious diseases, their coping strategies concerning disease, and their spiritual beliefs, the psychological impact of the 2003 SARS outbreak in Chinese communities, Chinese myths about infectious disease, and the religious activities of a SARS-infected intern in Taiwan. Recommendations are given on how to achieve quality holistic nursing care. (shrink)

Causal and counterfactual thoughts are bound together in Byrne's theory of human imagination. We think there are two issues in her theory that deserve clarification. First, Byrne describes which counterfactual possibilities we think of, but she leaves unexplained the mechanisms by which we generate these possibilities. Second, her exploration of and enablers gives two different predictions of which counterfactuals we think of in causal scenarios. On one account, we think of the counterfactuals which we have control over. On the other, (...) which counterfactuals we think of depends on whether something is a strong cause or an enabler. Although these two accounts sometimes give the same predictions, we present cases in which they differ, and we would like to see Byrne's theory provide a way of reconciling these differences. (shrink)

This paper examines how industrial buyers’ attributions of their suppliers’ actions of corporate social responsibility are related to both the brand advocacy and brand equity. Using a sample of 173 questionnaires gathered in Taiwan, we find that CSR perceptions of industrial buyers are more strongly and positively related to brand advocacy and brand equity when industrial buyers interpret CSR activities of their suppliers as driven more by intrinsic motives and less by extrinsic motives. Furthermore, brand advocacy mediates the interactive effects (...) of CSR and CSR attribution on industrial brand equity. (shrink)

Learning general concepts in imperfect environments is difficult since training instances often include noisy data, inconclusive data, incomplete data, unknown attributes, unknown attribute values and other barriers to effective learning. It is well known that people can learn effectively in imperfect environments, and can manage to process very large amounts of data. Imitating human learning behavior therefore provides a useful model for machine learning in real-world applications. This paper proposes a new, more effective way to represent imperfect training instances and (...) rules, and based on the new representation, a Human-Like Learning (HULL) algorithm for incrementally learning concepts well in imperfect training environments. Several examples are given to make the algorithm clearer. Finally, experimental results are presented that show the proposed learning algorithm works well in imperfect learning environments. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 5, Page 40-41, May 2012.

In the target article, Schilbach et al. defend a perspective that focuses on the neural basis of social cognition during live, ongoing interactions between individuals. We argue that a second-person neuroscience would benefit from formal approaches borrowed from economics and behavioral ecology and that it should be extended to social interactions in nonhuman animals.