Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those values; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Re-tweets, citation rates, ranked lists of best schools, and Grade Point Averages. We are vulnerable to value capture because of the competitive advantage that such crisp and clear expressions of value have in (...) our private reasoning and our public justification. There is, however, a price. In value capture, we take a central component of our autonomy — our ongoing deliberation over the exact articulation of our values — and we outsource it. And the metrics to which we outsource usually engineered for the interests of some external force, like a large-scale institution’s interest in cross-contextual comprehensibility and quick aggregability. That outsourcing cuts off one of the key benefits to personal deliberation. In value capture, we no longer adjust our values and their articulations in light of own rich experience of the world. Our values should often be carefully tailored to our particular selves or our small-scale communities, but in value capture, we buy our values off the rack. In some cases – like decreasing CO2 emissions – the costs of non-tailored values are outweighed by the benefit of precise collective coordination. In other cases, like in our aesthetic lives, they are not. This suggests that we should want different values suited to different scales. We should want value federalism. Some values are perhaps best pursued at the largest-scale level, others at smaller scales. The problem occurs when we exhibit an excess preference for the largest-scale values – when we consistently let the universal metrics swamp our quieter interests. (shrink)

Games occupy a unique and valuable place in our lives. Game designers do not simply create worlds; they design temporary selves. Game designers set what our motivations are in the game and what our abilities will be. Thus: games are the art form of agency. By working in the artistic medium of agency, games can offer a distinctive aesthetic value. They support aesthetic experiences of deciding and doing. -/- And the fact that we play games shows something remarkable about us. (...) Our agency is more fluid than we might have thought. In playing a game, we take on temporary ends; we submerge ourselves temporarily in an alternate agency. Games turn out to be a vessel for communicating different modes of agency, for writing them down and storing them. Games create an archive of agencies. And playing games is how we familiarize ourselves with different modes of agency, which helps us develop our capacity to fluidly change our own style of agency. (shrink)

Hostile epistemology is the study of how environmental features exploit our cognitive vulnerabilities. I am particularly interested in those vulnerabilities arise from the basic character of our epistemic lives. We are finite beings with limited cognitive resources, perpetually forced to reasoning a rush. I focus on two sources of unavoidable vulnerability. First, we need to use cognitive shortcuts and heuristics to manage our limited time and attention. But hostile forces can always game the gap between the heuristic and the ideal. (...) Second, we need to trust others, and trust makes us vulnerable. In particular, we need to trust experts whose expertise lies beyond our individual ability to vet. So we must rely on various imperfect signals and proxies, like institutional affiliation, to manage our trust. We are forced to use these imperfect and exploitable forms of reasoning, in order to cope with a cognitively overwhelming world. I present the hostile epistemology framework as a counterbalance to vice epistemology, which tends to locate responsibility for bad beliefs in the character of the believer. I draw two conclusions from my analysis. First: suppose we accept that that only communities and institutions can know about the world. This deeply social approach doesn’t solve the problem of expert identification. The individual still faces a problem: given their incomplete understanding, how should the individual pick which group to trust? Second: we might have hoped to get some kind of static picture of the right principles of reasoning — but hostile epistemology presents a different picture. We have to use risky heuristics and shortcuts, which hostile forces can game and exploit. We can respond by shifting to a different set of heuristics, but this simply shifts the location of our vulnerabilities. These new heuristics are also exploitable. There is no end to this, only a constant struggle to adapt. Limited beings in a hostile epistemic environment are locked in an unending epistemic arms race. (shrink)

Scientific models are important, if not the sole, units of science. This thesis addresses the following question: in virtue of what do scientific models represent their target systems? In Part i I motivate the question, and lay out some important desiderata that any successful answer must meet. This provides a novel conceptual framework in which to think about the question of scientific representation. I then argue against Callender and Cohen’s attempt to diffuse the question. In Part ii I investigate the (...) ideas that scientific models are ‘similar’, or structurally morphic, to their target systems. I argue that these approaches are misguided, and that at best these relationships concern the accuracy of a pre-existing representational relationship. I also pay particular attention to the sense in which target systems can be appropriately taken to exhibit a ‘structure’, and van Fraassen’s recent argument concerning the pragmatic equivalence between representing phenomena and data. My next target is the idea that models should not be seen as objects in their own right, but rather what look like descriptions of them are actually direct descriptions of target systems, albeit not ones that should be understood literally. I argue that these approaches fail to do justice to the practice of scientific modelling. Finally I turn to the idea that how models represent is grounded, in some sense, in their inferential capacity. I compare this approach to anti-representationalism in the philosophy of language and argue that analogous issues arise in the context of scientific representation. Part iii contains my positive proposal. I provide an account of scientific representation based on Goodman and Elgin’s notion of representation-as. The result is a highly conventional account which is the appropriate level of generality to capture all of its instances, whilst remaining informative about the notion. I illustrate it with reference to the Phillips-Newlyn machine, models of proteins, and the Lotka-Volterra model of predator-prey systems. These examples demonstrate how the account must be understood, and how it sheds light on our understanding of how models are used. I finally demonstrate how the account meets the desiderata laid out at the beginning of the thesis, and outline its implications for further questions from the philosophy of science; not limited to issues surrounding the applicability of mathematics, idealisation, and what it takes for a model to be ‘true’. (shrink)

In our life with science, we trust experts; we form judgements by inference from past evidence. We conduct ourselves very differently in the aesthetic domain. We avoid deferring to aesthetic experts. We form our judgements through direct perception of particulars rather than through inference. Why the difference? I suggest that we avoid aesthetic testimony and aesthetic inference, not because they’re unusable, but because we have adopted social norms to avoid them. Aesthetic appreciation turns out to be something like a game. (...) We have laid down certain rules and restrictions in order to shape a kind of activity we cherish. And aesthetic properties turn out to be a kind of social construct. Much like the goal of a game, they are constituted in part by our obedience to certain rules. The norms of aesthetic life are different from those of science because our purposes are different. We engage in science to get the right answers; we engage in aesthetic appreciation to be absorbed in the activity of the sensuous perception of particulars. Our aesthetic practices are a constructed shelter from science; they restore to us a small domain where we may once again engage in our own sensuous perception of particulars. (shrink)

According to most accounts of trust, you can only trust other people (or groups of people). To trust is to think that another has goodwill, or something to that effect. I sketch a different form of trust: the unquestioning attitude. What it is to trust, in this sense, is to settle one’s mind about something, to stop questioning it. To trust is to rely on a resource while suspending deliberation over its reliability. Trust lowers the barrier of monitoring, challenging, checking, (...) and questioning. Trust sets up open pipelines between yourself and parts of the external world. Trust permits external resources to have a similar relationship to one as one’s internal cognitive faculties. This creates efficiency, but at the price of exquisite vulnerability. We must trust in this way because we are cognitively limited beings in a cognitively overwhelming world. Crucially, we can hold the unquestioning attitude towards objects and technologies. When I trust my climbing rope, I stop worrying about its reliability. When I trust my online calendaring system, I simply go to the events indicated, without question. But, one might worry, how could one ever hold such a normatively loaded attitude as trust towards mere objects? How could it ever make sense to feel betrayed by an object? Trust is our engine for expanding and outsourcing our agency — for binding external processes into our practical selves. Thus, we can be betrayed by our smartphones in the same way that we can be betrayed by our memory. When we trust, we try to make something a part of our agency, and we are betrayed when our part lets us down. To unquestioningly trust something is to let it in—to attempt to bring it inside one’s practical functioning. This suggests a new form of gullibility: agential gullibility, which occurs when agents too hastily and carelessly integrate external resources into their own agency. (shrink)

There exist at present many conceptions of postmodern(ism). But there is a certain number of differences between the conceptions of postmodernism in the arts and the conceptions of postmodernism in various spheres of social activities. In arts, people pay much attention to the significant attributes of the concept, but in spheres of social life, the term is often used as a criterion to marking time in the periodization of history. That is, while in arts the significant attributes will make the (...) criteria to define the postmodernism, in social life the concept of postmodern(ism) exists a priori and does not depend on social characteristics. That is for many people, the postmodern era is simply taken for granted as the period after the Second World War. At the same time, we have to recognize that thearbitrary and easy use of this term in the social life has spread contagiously to the artistic field. Many people simply attribute the label of “postmodern” to all creations outside the traditional realism in the second half of the 20th century, only because in their opinion, those creations appeared in the age that they called “postmodern era” for granted. Thus, in this way, “postmodern” may have too many different and indefinite meanings, but just thereby, it has also no meaning at all. This situation has brought ambiguity to defining the status of contemporary arts. I can only state that, in the field of arts, despite different conceptions of “postmodern(ism)” among many persons, we may conclude that it is more exactly to use this concept only to designate the summit or the “paroxysm” of modernism; and it still bears a temporal character to designating the second half of the 20th century. With the meaning of “paroxysm”, the term of “postmodern” can be entirely replaced with the term “modern”, or more precisely, with the term “meta-modern” or “ultra-modern”. Besides, we should be vigilant against the abuse of the concept “postmodern” which is being used fairly popularly in the current socio-political life, and most of these cases of abuse only want to make impressions of the “ultra-new” (or “ultra-modern”) character of the events. Just because of this abuse, the concept “postmodern” runs the risk of becoming platitudinous, leads to becoming meaningless because of bearing too many different and indefinite meanings, and thereby loses its effectiveness and usability. For my own part, I think that we should use the concept “postmodern(ism)” only for architecture and painting. As for other fields, especially for literature, we should not use it, and instead, we shall make use of the concept “modern(ism)” or at the most, we shall use the concept “ultra- or meta-modern(ism)” which will be precise and very appropriate. It is not necessary that, whenever to make impressions of the newest, one should have to recourse to the term “postmodern(ism)”, and then to be at a loss in making efforts to find the characteristics in order to ascribe them to the term to demonstrate its legitimate existence, but in fact, these characteristics are not of its own. (shrink)

The current debate over aesthetic testimony typically focuses on cases of doxastic repetition — where, when an agent, on receiving aesthetic testimony that p, acquires the belief that p without qualification. I suggest that we broaden the set of cases under consideration. I consider a number of cases of action from testimony, including reconsidering a disliked album based on testimony, and choosing an artistic educational institution from testimony. But this cannot simply be explained by supposing that testimony is usable for (...) action, but unusable for doxastic repetition. I consider a new asymmetry in the usability aesthetic testimony. Consider the following cases: we seem unwilling to accept somebody hanging a painting in their bedroom based merely on testimony, but entirely willing to accept hanging a painting in a museum based merely on testimony. The switch in intuitive acceptability seems to track, in some complicated way, the line between public life and private life. These new cases weigh against a number of standing theories of aesthetic testimony. I suggest that we look further afield, and that something like a sensibility theory, in the style of John McDowell and David Wiggins, will prove to be the best fit for our intuitions for the usability of aesthetic testimony. I propose the following explanation for the new asymmetry: we are willing to accept testimony about whether a work merits being found beautiful; but we are unwilling to accept testimony about whether something actually is beautiful. (shrink)

Modern society faces major environmental problems, but there are many difficulties in studying the nature–human relationship from an integral psychosocial perspective. We propose the ecomind sponge conceptual framework, based on the mindsponge theory of information processing. We present a systematic method to examine the nature–human relationship with conceptual frameworks of system boundaries, selective exchange, and adaptive optimization. The theoretical mechanisms were constructed based on principles and new evidence in natural sciences. The core mechanism of ecomindsponge is the subjective sphere of (...) influence, which is the limited mental representation of information received from and processed based on the objective sphere of influence–actual interactions in reality. The subjective sphere is the sum of two sub-spheres: influencing (proactive) and being influenced (reactive). Maladaptation in thinking and behavior of the mind as an information collection-cum-processor results from the deviation of the subjective sphere from reality, which includes two main types: “stupidity” and “delusion”. Using Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 535 urban residents, we provide consistent statistical evidence on the proposed properties of subjective spheres. The dynamic framework of ecomindsponge can be used flexibly and practically for environmental research as well as other psychosocial fields. (shrink)

Is there a right or wrong way to play a game? Many think not. Some have argued that, when we insist that players obey the rules of a game, we give too much weight to the author’s intent. Others have argued that such obedience to the rules violates the true purpose of games, which is fostering free and creative play. Both of these responses, I argue, misunderstand the nature of games and their rules. The rules do not tell us how (...) to interpret a game; they merely tell us what the game is. And the point of the rules is not always to foster free and creative play. The point can be, instead, to communicate a sculpted form of activity. And in games, as with any form of communication, we need some shared norms to ground communicative stability. Games have what has been called a “prescriptive ontology.” A game is something more than simply a piece of material. It is some material as approached in a certain specified way. These prescriptions help to fix a common object of attention. Games share this prescriptive ontology with more traditional kinds of works. Novels are more than just a set of words on a page; they are those words read in a certain order. Games are more than just some software or cardboard bits; they are those bits interacted with according to certain rules. Part of a game’s essential nature is the prescriptions for how we are to play it. What’s more, we investigate the prescriptive ontology of games, we will uncover at least distinct prescriptive categories of games. Party games prescribe that we encounter the game once; heavy strategy games prescribe we encounter the game many times; and community evolution games prescribe that we encounter the game while embedded in an ongoing community of play. (shrink)

Coastal protection is crucial to human development since the ocean has many values associated with the economy, ecosystem, and culture. However, most ocean protecting efforts are currently ineffective due to the burdens of finance, lack of appropriate management, and international cooperation regimes. For aiding bottom-up initiatives for ocean protection support, this study employed the Mindsponge Theory to examine how the public’s perceived economic and cultural values influence their willingness to support actions to protect the ocean. Analyzing the European-Union-Horizon-2020-funded dataset of (...) 709 respondents from 42 countries, we discovered that perceived economic values have negative effects on the tendency of ocean protection supports (i.e., food, transportation, renewable energy, oil and gas, and recreation). In contrast, certain perceived cultural values can help increase the willingness to do so (i.e., mental well-being and sense of identity). However, the effects of perceived cultural values are only moderately reliable. These findings suggest that designing cultural information delivery campaigns can help promote coastal reserve supports, such as fundraisings and preserving the oceans from the community. (shrink)

In her BBC Reith Lectures on Trust, Onora O’Neill offers a short, but biting, criticism of transparency. People think that trust and transparency go together but in reality, says O'Neill, they are deeply opposed. Transparency forces people to conceal their actual reasons for action and invent different ones for public consumption. Transparency forces deception. I work out the details of her argument and worsen her conclusion. I focus on public transparency – that is, transparency to the public over expert domains. (...) I offer two versions of the criticism. First, the epistemic intrusion argument: The drive to transparency forces experts to explain their reasoning to non-experts. But expert reasons are, by their nature, often inaccessible to non-experts. So the demand for transparency can pressure experts to act only in those ways for which they can offer public justification. Second, the intimate reasons argument: In many cases of practical deliberation, the relevant reasons are intimate to a community and not easily explicable to those who lack a particular shared background. The demand for transparency, then, pressures community members to abandon the special understanding and sensitivity that arises from their particular experiences. Transparency, it turns out, is a form of surveillance. By forcing reasoning into the explicit and public sphere, transparency roots out corruption — but it also inhibits the full application of expert skill, sensitivity, and subtle shared understandings. The difficulty here arises from the basic fact that human knowledge vastly outstrips any individual’s capacities. We all depend on experts, which makes us vulnerable to their biases and corruption. But if we try to wholly secure our trust — if we leash groups of experts to pursuing only the goals and taking only the actions that can be justified to the non-expert public — then we will undermine their expertise. We need both trust and transparency, but they are in essential tension. This is a deep practical dilemma; it admits of no neat resolution, but only painful compromise. (shrink)

The relationship between Vietnam and China could be captured in the Chinese expression of “同床异梦”, which means lying on the same bed but having different dreams. The two countries share certain cultural and political similarities but also diverge vastly in their national interests. This paper adds to the extant literature on this topic by analyzing the element of trust/mistrust in their interactions in trade-investment, tourism, and defense-security. The analysis shows how the relationship is increasingly interdependent but is equally fragile due (...) to the lack of trust on both sides. The mistrust or even distrust of Chinese subjects run deep within the Vietnamese mindset, from the skepticism of Chinese investment, Chinese tourists, discrimination against ethnic Chinese, to the caution against Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. The paper forecasts that, despite the deep-seated differences and occasional mistrust, going forward, neither side would risk damaging the status quo even when tensions peak. (shrink)

What is the value of intellectual playfulness? Traditional characterizations of the ideal thinker often leave out playfulness; the ideal inquirer is supposed to be sober, careful, and conscientiousness. But elsewhere we find another ideal: the laughing sage, the playful thinker. These are models of intellectual playfulness. Intellectual playfulness, I suggest, is the disposition to try out alternate belief systems for fun – to try on radically different perspectives for the sheer pleasure of it. But what would the cog-nitive value be (...) of such playfulness? I suggest that intellectual playfulness function as, at the very least, a kind of intellectual insurance policy against epistemic traps. An epistemic trap is a belief system that re-directs good-faith inquiry to bad results. Am epistemic trap manipulates background beliefs to fend off contrary evidence. For example, a conspiracy theory might include a set of beliefs about how the mainstream media has been taken over by some vicious cabal. Normal epistemic attempts will be captured by a well-wrought epistemic trap, because normal attempts at inquiry are guided by these background beliefs -- which set what counts as a plausible path to explore, and what is implausible or beyond the pale. And a clever epistemic trap will manipulate those background beliefs for ill effect. Intellectual playfulness, on the other hand, isn’t motivated by an epistemic interest in the truth, but in the sheer pleasure of intellectual exploration. Since intellectual playfulness isn’t oriented towards the truth, it won’t be constrained by an agent’s background beliefs – it won’t, for example, prefer to investigate apparently more plausible pathways. Intellectual playfulness offers an opportunity to escape from epistemic traps. But intellectual playfulness has its own limitations. It will only drive us to explore belief systems when that exploration is fun. What we need is an array of differently-motivated exploratory tendencies – empathy, curiosity, playfulness – each of which will each cover for the others’ limitations. (shrink)

Solidarity is a valuable tradition of Vietnam Communist Party and Vietnamese people and Ho Chi Minh is the personification of the great national Solidarity. Ho Chi Minh Solidarity is reflected by tolerant, which is not tight in national matter but also extends to the contemporary world. This is the foundation of national Solidarity as well as international Solidarity to the liberating, building and developing carier of a country. It is difficult to reach a common point between 54 minority ethnics in (...) all around Vietnam with different culture, custom, religious beliefs. However, Ho Chi Minh, by his thinking and action, he was successful in establishing a great united bloc of all the minority ethnics in Vietnam. It leads to a happy, comfortable and peaceful life. That is the reason why people said that: “In the past, there were few men could be a part of legend when he was still alive, but Ho Chi Minh extremely did it”. (shrink)

Grammar logics were introduced by Fariñas del Cerro and Penttonen in 1988 and have been widely studied. In this paper we consider regular grammar logics with converse ( REG c logics) and present sound and complete tableau calculi for the general satisfiability problem of REG c logics and the problem of checking consistency of an ABox w.r.t. a TBox in a REG c logic. Using our calculi we develop ExpTime (optimal) tableau decision procedures for the mentioned problems, to which various (...) optimization techniques can be applied. We also prove a new result that the data complexity of the instance checking problem in REG c logics is coNP-complete. (shrink)

In this paper I am discussing the concept of “objective world”, its hope and aim as vigorously presented in Husserl’s famous discourse of the Fifth Meditation. In this manner, the first part of my work focuses on Husserl’s intentionality as knowledge of the “I” or “my ego” as my primordial identity, in relation to “my culturalcommunity” as its primordial one, too. The thesis will then develop into “intersubjectivity” in which “the other” and his “cultural community” as primordially constituted are objective (...) to be fully understood in terms of synthetic knowledge; namely through psychological, cultural, historical and social forms and contents. The second part of my paper takes off from where transcendental phenomenology is grounded to look into the problem of Globalization and questions of value. If the first part followed Husserlian theoretical investigations, sometimes called interpretive philosophy to hopefully acquire universal principles, the second onecan be called practical doctrine, which studies cases presented by a number of specialists who focus on praxis and consequences of Globalization – a theme for economic concerns, but inherently it affects the stability of the community of mankind. This new world order overtly and covertly critiques traditional concepts of nation and culture as it redefines democratic concept, coming home to human rights. Its challenge has been already about the doubts and contradictoriness of “values” in broadest and “reduction” sense. OBJECTIVITY as a noun, and OBJECTIVE, an adjective and noun are terminologies of extremely complicated shades of meaning in Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, particularly in the fifth one where such terms are used interchangeably to fit the concept of intersubjective Nature; which I will explore and further put it in current economic and political drive to Globalization. In this regard my theme will deal simultaneously with both the critique of Husserlian thought and neo-liberalism (liberal democracy), a twist of democracy for preserving capitalism in what is called a new world order by ordinance and defense of Imperialism as well as the states that so desire to join the world market. (shrink)

Vietnam has seen fast-rising debts, both domestic and external, in recent years. This paperreviews the literature on credit market in Vietnam, providing an up-to-date take on the domesticlending and borrowing landscape. The study highlights the strong demand for credit in both therural and urban areas, the ubiquity of informal lenders, the recent popularity of consumer financecompanies, as well as the government’s attempts to rein in its swelling public debt. Given thehigh level of borrowing, which is fueled by consumerism and geopolitics, (...) it is inevitable that theamount of debt will soon be higher than the saving of the borrowers. Unlike the conventional wisdom that creditors have more bargaining power over the borrowers, we suggest that—albeitlacking a quantitative estimation—when the debts pile up so high that the borrowers could not repay, the power dynamics may reverse. In this new politics of debt, the lenders fear to lose the money's worth and continue to lend and feed the insolvent debtors. The result is a toxic lending/borrowing market and profound lessons, from which the developing world could learn. (shrink)

Academia is a competitive environment. Early Career Researchers (ECRs) are limited in experience and resources and especially need achievements to secure and expand their careers. To help with these issues, this book offers a new approach for conducting research using the combination of mindsponge innovative thinking and Bayesian analytics. This is not just another analytics book. 1. A new perspective on psychological processes: Mindsponge is a novel approach for examining the human mind’s information processing mechanism. This conceptual framework is used (...) to construct models in studies. The framework is highly flexible and widely applicable for many different types of information processes. The mindsponge approach can help researchers discover interesting ideas or even formulate their very own theories when investigating psychosocial phenomena. This approach brings a fresh wind to the current landscape of social sciences and humanities (SSH). 2. Easy-to-follow analysis protocol: The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF analytics) is useful in terms of computing and visualizing power but also easy to learn and apply. Contrary to being intimidating, the Bayesian analytics section of this book is presented in a reader-friendly manner with a detailed yet clear step-by-step procedure. Examples are from published BMF articles, allowing readers to immediately practice the method and quickly create their own applications. With educational purposes in mind, the book is very suitable for ECRs who are looking to innovate their research methods. 3. Advocating for low-cost, high-quality research: Doing science can be very costly. Mindsponge innovative thinking and BMF analytics help produce impactful studies using openly available data on online repositories. This is based on the authors’ previous works and experiences. The book presents examples of employing the open R package bayesvl on secondary data from different sources. With less financial constraints, researchers can have more freedom of thought to pursue their curiosity and creativity. ECRs in low- and middle-income countries may find this aspect crucial in their careers. 4. Support and collaboration: The authors share their insights from experiences in the academic publishing system to help readers get through the processes of manuscript writing and peer-reviewing more easily. The authors are also ready to support other researchers with further inquiries and collaboration opportunities at the following website, mindsponge(dot)info. This book is for: a) ECRs whose only abundant resources are their innovation capacity and strength of will; b) Researchers in SSH who want to explore a novel approach to thinking and study conducting; c) Low- and middle-income countries’ researchers looking for a cost-effective research protocol; and, d) Innovative thinkers who want to turn their interesting thoughts into good publications. (shrink)

The nationwide economic reform in 1986 transformed Vietnam from a centrally planned economy to a socialist-oriented market economy. Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial spirits within the populace are suggested to fuel the structural changes. Despite the importance of entrepreneurship in Vietnam’s economy, studies in Vietnam mainly pay attention to the practical aspects of entrepreneurial activities and neglect the cognitive and theoretical aspects of entrepreneurship. Thus, the current study employs the information-processing perspective of the Mindsponge Theory to explore how entrepreneurs’ knowledge accumulation can (...) affect their perceived likelihood of business success. Bayesian analysis indicates that business-related experience positively affects entrepreneurs’ business success likelihood. Greater willingness/readiness to transform thinking, acting, and beliefs can improve the business success of entrepreneurs who study others’ failures carefully. However, for entrepreneurs who perceive learning from others’ failures as unnecessary, higher willingness/readiness to transform diminishes their chance of success. Based on these findings, we recommend Vietnamese entrepreneurs accumulate knowledge through experience, learning, and an open mind for better decision-making and innovation creation capabilities. However, the learning process should be selective. (shrink)

This article is a review and critical evaluation of the New Testament expressions that speak about the faith of Jesus beginning with the much discussed pistis Iesou Christou 'faith of/in Jesus Christ'. It is divided into three parts: (1) statistics of the New Testament expressions regarding the faith of Jesus, (2) historico-exegetical considerations of pistis Iesou Christou as 'faith of Jesus Christ' or 'faith in Jesus Christ', and (3) other key phrases that imply the faith of Christ. This leads to (...) the concluding reflections that underline, among other points, the importance and relevance of recalling the biblical meaning of the term pistis as faith and faithfulness, so as to break the impasse in the debate over the New Testament evidence regarding the faith of Jesus. Precisely in this biblico-theological perspective it is preferable to speak not so much about the faith that Jesus had, as about the fact that, in his radical self-emptying, he has lived our faith (as one of us), so that through our living in faith we can participate in his faith.(Italian). Copyright of Miscellanea Francescana is the property of Pontificia Facolta Teologica S. Bonaventura and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (shrink)

Effective stakeholder engagement and inclusive governance are essential for effective and equitable ocean management. However, few cross-national studies have been conducted to examine how stakeholders’ economic and cultural benefit perceptions influence their support level for policies focused on ocean preservation. The current study aims to fill this gap by employing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 709 stakeholders from 42 countries, a part of the MaCoBioS project funded by the European Commission H2020. We found that economic (...) and cultural benefit perceptions are generally negatively associated with the policy support level. Regarding economic aspects, stakeholders considering transportation and shipping, renewable energy generation, and oil and gas provision as the most crucial benefits their countries’ oceans provide tend to obtain less support for policies focusing on ocean preservation. Meanwhile, for cultural aspects, perceiving recreation and tourism, aesthetic pleasure, mental health and well-being support, and sense of identity provision as the most important benefits provided by the country’s ocean are negatively associated with the policy support level. The perceived economic, cultural, and environmental tradeoffs when supporting policies focused on ocean preservation were discussed. Recommendations for improving the effective management of multi-use marine space are also provided to reduce the perceived competing interests among stakeholders. (shrink)

Coral reefs provide substantial benefits to humans by generating biologically diverse ecosystems and reducing coastal hazards. However, in recent years, mass mortality of coral reefs due to bleaching has been witnessed in the ocean worldwide. Bleaching induced by the loss of the symbiotic relationship between algae and coral is mainly attributed to climate change. Marine protected areas (MPAs) can effectively prevent local disturbances but are less likely to conserve the coral reefs from global events like climate change. Other conservation and (...) restoration methods can be useful to protect and replenish the coral population temporarily, but whether they are feasible as sustainable conservation strategies is still equivocal. Coral reef mass mortality is not an exceptional occurrence but is linked to various instances of ecological loss, serving as an S.O.S. signal of severe prolonged climate extremes. (shrink)

Vietnam’s forests are at risk - carbon offset schemes could be the best chance of saving them, say Dr. Quan-Hoang Vuong and Minh-Hoang Nguyen. The value of forests is deeply ingrained in Vietnamese culture. Rừng vàng, biển bạc” [“forests of gold and seas of silver”] is both a metaphor for Vietnam, and a description of its natural wealth. The phrase is everywhere, from political speeches to daily conversation, as is Nhất phá sơn lâm, nhì đâm hà bá [“the worst crime (...) is to destroy the mountains and forests, the second worst is to kill the river”]. Deforestation is a Vietnamese taboo. (shrink)

According to some, the current political fracture is best described as political polarization – where extremism and political separation infest an entire whole population. Political polarization accounts often point to the psychological phenomenon of belief polarization – where being in a like-minded groups tends to boost confidence. The political polarization story is an essentially symmetrical one, where both sides are subject to the same basic dividing forces and cognitive biases, and are approximately as blame-worthy. On a very different account, what's (...) going on is best described propaganda – where a discrete set of bad actors have manipulated some part of the media environ-ment. The propaganda story is usually told as a highly asymmetrical story, where only some media consumers are under the spell of the propagandists. Which is right? I consider two analyses of the 2016 American election: Robert Talisse's polarization-style account in Overdoing Democracy, and Benkler et. al.'s propaganda-style account in Network Propaganda. I suggest that the propaganda account has better empirical support. I also offer a diagnosis of the appeal of the polarization story. Those who accept a polarization account are often political centrists, who accuse those at the political extremes of motivated reasoning – of believing what they find comfortable. Such centrists also tend to treat political extremism as the product of the irrational belief polarization, arising from living in like-minded groups. But, I argue, these arguments are too quick. First, we can’t dismiss a group as irrational merely be-cause they are likeminded. The existence of like-minded group can be explained in terms of irrational belief polarization, but it can also be explained by rational convergence on the truth. Second, belief polarization is not always irrational, such as when its emotional effects are used to repair impaired self-confidence. Third, political centrists are also subject to similar debunking argument. When we accept a polarization account, we get to feel the comfort of being “above it all”. Political centrists are just as plausibly subject to the irrational effects of living in like-minded groups. Belief polarization isn’t just for extremists. (shrink)

For consciousness to exist, an entity must have prerequisite characteristics and attributes to give rise to it. We explore these “building blocks” of consciousness in detail in this paper, which range from perceptive to computational to meta-representational characteristics of an entity’s cognitive architecture. We show how each cognitive attribute is strictly necessary for the emergence of consciousness, and how the building blocks may be used for any entity to be classified as being conscious. The list of building blocks is not (...) limited to human or organic consciousness and may be used to classify artificial and organisational conscious entities. We further explore a list of attributes that seem intuitively necessary for consciousness, but on further investigation, are neither required nor sufficient. The building blocks do not represent a theory of consciousness but rather a meta-theory on the emergence and classification of consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper we explore the constraints that our preferred account of scientific representation places on the ontology of scientific models. Pace the Direct Representation view associated with Arnon Levy and Adam Toon we argue that scientific models should be thought of as imagined systems, and clarify the relationship between imagination and representation.

Many scientific models are representations. Building on Goodman and Elgin’s notion of representation-as we analyse what this claim involves by providing a general definition of what makes something a scientific model, and formulating a novel account of how they represent. We call the result the DEKI account of representation, which offers a complex kind of representation involving an interplay of, denotation, exemplification, keying up of properties, and imputation. Throughout we focus on material models, and we illustrate our claims with the (...) Phillips-Newlyn machine. In the conclusion we suggest that, mutatis mutandis, the DEKI account can be carried over to other kinds of models, notably fictional and mathematical models. (shrink)

There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, we care about getting things right. On the other hand, we demand autonomy. We want appreciators to arrive at their aesthetic judgments through their own cognitive efforts, rather than deferring to experts. These two demands seem to be in tension; after all, if we want to get the right judgments, we should defer to the judgments of experts. The best explanation, I suggest, is (...) that aesthetic appreciation is something like a game. When we play a game, we try to win. But often, winning isn’t the point; playing is. Aesthetic appreciation involves the same flipped motivational structure: we aim at the goal of correctness, but having correct judgments isn’t the point. The point is the engaged process of interpreting, investigating, and exploring the aesthetic object. Deferring to aesthetic testimony, then, makes the same mistake as looking up the answer to a puzzle, rather than solving it for oneself. The shortcut defeats the whole point. This suggests a new account of aesthetic value: the engagement account. The primary value of the activity of aesthetic appreciation lies in the process of trying to generate correct judgments, and not in having correct judgments. -/- *There is an audio version available: look for the Soundcloud link, below.*. (shrink)

According to Newton and Clarke, Leibniz’s relationalism cannot make sense of distance quantities. Although the core of Newton and Clarke’s “argument from quantity” is clear enough, its details remain unclear because we do not know what its key term “quantity” means. This key term is still unsettled because, unlike Leibniz, who loudly voices his view of quantity in both his correspondence with Clarke and in his philosophical essays on quantity, Newton and Clarke are frustratingly terse when it comes to defining (...) quantity. Nevertheless, I think that it would be hasty to conclude that there is no way to expand our understanding of the term “quantity” as it appears in their argument. Although Newton and Clarke do not pursue a theory of quantity, their colleagues do, and the theory of quantity developed by their peers promises to deliver a historically rich perspective on Newton and Clarke’s argument from quantity. In this article, I aim to provide some historical context for Newton and Clarke’s argument from quantity by examining two criteria for quantity that were popular among their peers—what I call the “divisibility” and “precise increase and diminution” conditions. (shrink)

Market crises amplify fear, disrupting rational decision-making of stock investment. This study examines the relationship between investors’ information priorities—such as intuition, company performance, technical analysis, and other factors—and their fear responses (freeze, flight, and hiding) during market crashes. Using the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) to analyze data from 1,526 investors in China and Vietnam, the findings reveal complex dynamics. We found positive associations between investors’ prioritization of social influence and intuition for investment decision-making with being freeze (i.e., not knowing what (...) to do with the owned stock), between prioritization of professionals’ evaluation and intuition with fleeing (i.e. giving up stock investment permanently), and between prioritization of professionals’ evaluation and social influence with hiding (i.e., stopping investing in stock for a while). In contrast, prioritization of companies’ performance metrics (e.g., net profit, debt, etc.) was negatively associated with being freeze, fleeing, and hiding. Meanwhile, prioritization of professionals’ evaluation, technical analysis, and liquidity was negatively associated with being freeze, fleeing, and hiding, respectively. The study highlights the importance of disseminating transparent, accurate information through government and media channels, along with implementing financial education programs, to promote rational investment decisions and reduce fear-driven behaviors. (shrink)

This study aims at putting characterology to the test of the epistemology presented in J.C. Pariente's work, Language and the Individual. This epistemology requires certain conditions for a knowledge of the individual to be valid, i.e., to be at the same time conceptual and adapted to its individual object. By following characterologists in their work, the study concludes that the characterological processes have met the conditions demanded by Pariente's epistemology. So, one cannot say that characterology, like history, "is not a (...) conceptual knowledge of its object". (shrink)

The feeling of clarity can be dangerously seductive. It is the feeling associated with understanding things. And we use that feeling, in the rough-and-tumble of daily life, as a signal that we have investigated a matter sufficiently. The sense of clarity functions as a thought-terminating heuristic. In that case, our use of clarity creates significant cognitive vulnerability, which hostile forces can try to exploit. If an epistemic manipulator can imbue a belief system with an exaggerated sense of clarity, then they (...) can induce us to terminate our inquiries too early — before we spot the flaws in the system. How might the sense of clarity be faked? Let’s first consider the object of imitation: genuine understanding. Genuine understanding grants cognitive facility. When we understand something, we categorize its aspects more easily; we see more connections between its disparate elements; we can generate new explanations; and we can communicate our understanding. In order to encourage us to accept a system of thought, then, an epistemic manipulator will want the system to provide its users with an exaggerated sensation of cognitive facility. The system should provide its users with the feeling that they can easily and powerfully create categorizations, generate explanations, and communicate their understanding. And manipulators have a significant advantage in imbuing their systems with a pleasurable sense of clarity, since they are freed from the burdens of accuracy and reliability. I offer two case studies of seductively clear systems: conspiracy theories; and the standardized, quantified value systems of bureaucracies. (shrink)

Public sentiment regarding climate change in the United States is starkly divided, with the Republicans and Democrats holding markedly different views. Given the inherent connection between the water crisis and climate change, this research aimed to investigate the interplay between the residents’ beliefs about the impact of climate change on water supply unpredictability, their political identity, and their willingness to adopt direct and indirect potable water reuse. The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was conducted on a dataset of 1,831 water (...) users in the arid region of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The findings reveal a complicated interplay among examined factors. Specifically, we discovered a positive association between the belief in the impacts of climate change and the willingness to adopt potable water reuse among non-Republican water users. In contrast, Republican water users exhibit a negative association between climate change belief and willingness to adopt potable water reuse. Interestingly, despite this, Republicans generally show a higher overall willingness to adopt potable water reuse compared to non-Republicans. These findings suggest that contextual factors in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in which challenges of aridity and economic dependence on water resources are pronounced, might be important aspects contributing to the Republican’s high willingness to adopt potable water reuse. Also, the current climate change communication strategy with the Republicans might not be appropriate, and it should be tailored to align with the Republicans’ beliefs and persuade them better. (shrink)

Semi-Post algebras of any type T being a poset have been introduced and investigated in [CR87a], [CR87b]. Plain Semi-Post algebras are in this paper singled out among semi-Post algebras because of their simplicity, greatest similarity with Post algebras as well as their importance in logics for approximation reasoning ([Ra87a], [Ra87b], [RaEp87]). They are pseudo-Boolean algebras generated in a sense by corresponding Boolean algebras and a poset T. Every element has a unique descending representation by means of elements in a corresponding (...) Boolean algebra and primitive Post constants which form a poset T. An axiomatization and another characterization, subalgebras, homomorphisms, congruences determined by special filters and a representability theory of these algebras, connected with that for Boolean algebras, are the subject of this paper. (shrink)

I propose to study one problem for epistemic dependence on experts: how to locate experts on what I will call cognitive islands. Cognitive islands are those domains for knowledge in which expertise is required to evaluate other experts. They exist under two conditions: first, that there is no test for expertise available to the inexpert; and second, that the domain is not linked to another domain with such a test. Cognitive islands are the places where we have the fewest resources (...) for evaluating experts, which makes our expert dependences particularly risky. -/- Some have argued that cognitive islands lead to the complete unusability of expert testimony: that anybody who needs expert advice on a cognitive island will be entirely unable to find it. I argue against this radical form of pessimism, but propose a more moderate alternative. I demonstrate that we have some resources for finding experts on cognitive islands, but that cognitive islands leave us vulnerable to an epistemic trap which I will call runaway echo chambers. In a runaway echo chamber, our inexpertise may lead us to pick out bad experts, which will simply reinforce our mistaken beliefs and sensibilities. (shrink)

The concept of free will has been heavily debated in philosophy and the social sciences. Its alleged importance lies in its association with phenomena fundamental to our understandings of self, such as autonomy, freedom, self-control, agency, and moral responsibility. Consequently, when neuroscience research is interpreted as challenging or even invalidating this concept, a number of heated social and ethical debates surface. We undertook a content analysis of media coverage of Libet’s et al.’s :623–642, 1983) landmark study, which is frequently interpreted (...) as posing a serious challenge to the existence of free will. Media descriptions of Libet et al.’s experiment provided limited details about the original study. Overall, many media articles reported that Libet et al.’s experiments undermined the existence of free will, despite acknowledging that several methodological limitations had been identified in the literature. A propensity to attribute greater credibility than warranted to neurobiological explanations could be at stake. (shrink)

Many people now recognize that the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss are rooted in how and to what extent humans consume goods in the Anthropocene era. Consumerism has driven natural resource exploitation to its peak, and resource depletion is becoming more common. The beauty and personal care industry has an enormous market and substantial profitability, particularly in the high-income category. However, this benefit comes with the risk of being scrutinized, investigated, and criticized by civil society groups, environmental activists, (...) and consumers. More than anyone else, the industry is aware of the risks of negative society appraisals, notably the consequences of consumer-led boycott activities. In this paper, we suggest that, given the current situation, global beauty firms need to play a proactive role in directing resources toward the development of sustainable uses of biodiversity and agriculture methods. This includes advocating for the wider use of environmentally conscious sourcing of raw materials, avoiding excessive and wasteful packaging, and devoting resources to research and innovation in environmentally friendly manufacturing procedures. The proactiveness would allow them to demonstrate their environmental commitment and actively give customers persuasive evidence of their social responsibility through emission reduction and biodiversity protection actions, gradually building an environmental-healing culture in the beauty industry. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Okasha imports Arrow’s impossibility theorem into the context of theory choice. He shows that there is no function (satisfying certain desirable conditions) from profiles of preference rankings over competing theories, models or hypotheses provided by scientific virtues to a single all-things-considered ranking. This is a prima facie threat to the rationality of theory choice. In this paper we show this threat relies on an all-or-nothing understanding of scientific rationality and articulate instead a notion of rationality by (...) degrees. The move from all-or-nothing rationality to rationality by degrees will allow us to argue that theory choice can be rational enough. (shrink)

Network reconfiguration is one of the most effective methods to reduce line power loss in the distribution system, which causes higher losses than the other parts of the power system. This paper proposes a modified symbiotic organisms search algorithm to solve the NR problem. For the purpose of enhancing the effectiveness of MSOS, the mutualism and parasitism strategies of the original symbiotic organisms search have been modified to create better new solutions. In the mutualism strategy, the so-far best solution is (...) updated immediately as soon as new solutions are created. In the parasitism strategy, the update is only implemented for the first half of control variables, whereas another half still remains unchanged. The comparison results between MSOS and SOS on twenty-five benchmark functions and different scales of test distribution systems with 14, 33, 69, and 119 nodes show that the improvement level of MSOS over SOS is significant with higher success rates and better quality of gained solutions. Similarly, MSOS also reaches better results than other methods in the literature. Consequently, MSOS can be a favorable method for determining the most appropriate configurations for the distribution systems. (shrink)

Veritism, the position that truth is necessary for epistemic acceptability, seems to be in tension with the observation that much of our best science is not, strictly speaking, true when interpreted literally. This generates a paradox: truth is necessary for epistemic acceptability; the claims of science have to be taken literally; much of what science produces is not literally true and yet it is acceptable. We frame Elgin’s project in True Enough as being motivated by, and offering a particular resolution (...) to, this paradox. We discuss the paradox with a focus on scientific models and argue that there is another resolution available which is compatible with retaining veritism: rejecting the idea that scientific models should be interpreted literally. (shrink)

Climate change prevention necessitates the communication of transparent and reliable scientific evidence to improve public awareness and support. Felt responsibility is an essential factor influencing human environment-related psychology and behavior. However, the knowledge about the relationship between the felt responsibility and perceived uncertainty of scientific evidence regarding climate change has remained limited. The current study examines factors associated with the perceived uncertainty of scientific evidence (including felt responsibility to act on climate change) among stakeholders of marine and coastal ecosystems in (...) 42 countries. Employing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 709 stakeholders generated by MaCoBioS—a research project funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020, we reveal several main insights. Stakeholders with lower educational levels, being males and not from high-income countries, are more likely to think scientific evidence regarding how to act on climate change is uncertain. Moreover, people with a higher felt responsibility to act on climate change are also more likely to perceive higher uncertainty of scientific evidence. Based on these findings, we discuss how scientific evidence should be communicated to build the eco-surplus culture and, subsequently, the felt responsibility of stakeholders while inoculating them from climate change misinformation and disinformation. (shrink)

What could ground normative restrictions concerning cultural appropriation which are not grounded by independent considerations such as property rights or harm? We propose that such restrictions can be grounded by considerations of intimacy. Consider the familiar phenomenon of interpersonal intimacy. Certain aspects of personal life and interpersonal relationships are afforded various protections in virtue of being intimate. We argue that an analogous phenomenon exists at the level of large groups. In many cases, members of a group engage in shared practices (...) that contribute to a sense of common identity, such as wearing certain hair or clothing styles or performing a certain style of music. Participation in such practices can generate relations of group intimacy, which can ground certain prerogatives in much the same way that interpersonal intimacy can. One such prerogative is making what we call an appropriation claim. An appropriation claim is a request from a group member that non-members refrain from appropriating a given element of the group’s culture. Ignoring appropriation claims can constitute a breach of intimacy. But, we argue, just as for the prerogatives of interpersonal intimacy, in many cases there is no prior fact of the matter about whether the appropriation of a given cultural practice constitutes a breach of intimacy. It depends on what the group decides together. (shrink)

Bare plural generic sentences pervade ordinary talk. And yet it is extremely controversial what semantics to assign to such sentences. In this paper, I achieve two tasks. First, I develop a novel classification of the various standard uses to which bare plurals may be put. This “variety data” is important—it gives rise to much of the difficulty in systematically theorizing about bare plurals. Second, I develop a novel account of bare plurals, the radical account. On this account, all bare plurals (...) fail to express propositions. The content of a bare plural has to be pragmatically “completed” by a speaker in order for her to make an assertion. At least the content of a quantifier expression has to be supplied. But sometimes, the content of a sentential operator or modal verb is also supplied. The radical account straightforwardly explains the variety data: Speakers’ communicative intentions vary wildly across different contexts. (shrink)

We offer an account of the generic use of the term “porn”, as seen in recent usages such as “food porn” and “real estate porn”. We offer a definition adapted from earlier accounts of sexual pornography. On our account, a representation is used as generic porn when it is engaged with primarily for the sake of a gratifying reaction, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with the represented content. We demonstrate the usefulness of the concept of generic (...) porn by using it to isolate a new type of such porn: moral outrage porn. Moral outrage porn is representations of moral outrage, engaged with primarily for the sake of the resulting gratification, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with morally outrageous content. Moral outrage porn is dangerous because it encourages the instrumentalization of one’s empirical and moral beliefs, manipulating their content for the sake of gratification. Finally, we suggest that when using porn is wrong, it is often wrong because it instrumentalizes what ought not to be instrumentalized. (shrink)

The system of pedagogical colleges in Vietnam has made important contributions to the education system in general and to the pedagogical system in particular during the 1980s and 1990s. This study reviews the studies conducted and implemented in recent times according to different trends, especially the contributions that these school systems have made to education as well as to the development of the system itself. The findings highlight the historic contributions of teacher colleges, and they also face challenges that must (...) change to adapt to the new requirements of the pedagogy and education system. In addition, there are many issues that need to be researched and implemented not only related to the governance of each school but also associated with current systemic policy changes. (shrink)

In this paper, semi-Post algebras are introduced and investigated. The generalized Post algebras are subcases of semi-Post algebras. The so called primitive Post constants constitute an arbitrary partially ordered set, not necessarily connected as in the case of the generalized Post algebras examined in [3]. By this generalization, semi-Post products can be defined. It is also shown that the class of all semi-Post algebras is closed under these products and that every semi-Post algebra is a semi-Post product of some generalized (...) Post algebras. (shrink)

In this paper examines the roles and influence of China in the world and, mainly, in European Union. For a decade, Chinese investors have been looking for opportunities to buy european assets. Especially since the beginning of the 2008 crisis we observed an increase of investment activities of Chinese companies. During the crisis, cash troubled european companies due to loss of liquidity were forced to sell their shares at significant discount. Over time, with stabilizing the economic situation in Europe, European (...) companies asset prices seemingly ceased to be cheap, nevertheless a volume of Chinese FDI to Europe continued to grow. Our goal will be detailed insight into these investments and try to identify the benefits and risks of these investments. Moreover, this paper not only provide insight into economic development of Chinese FDI but also take into account political issues and background of these investment. As far as a methodology is concerned, the basis of our work will be comparing an impact of Chinese investments in European countries and their impact on economic development in selected countries. In particular, we are interested in the behavior of Chinese investors and their motivation to buy in Europe. At the same time it will also be interested in the motives of European companies that have decided to sell shares to new owners. Finally, we will also examine ways in which Chinese investors proceed with acquisitions in the EU. Data comes from Eurostat, the national statistical offices and stock market prices. We will also be examining the political influence on these countries individually and globally, therefore as part of the EU. Based on the gained information we will try to assess the current situation of China’s influence in the euro area and at the same time try to estimate its future impact. Finally, based on the detected information to analyze the results of our research. (shrink)

On April 19, 2024, the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness was announced at the “Emerging Science of Animal Consciousness” conference held at New York University. The New York Declaration is an effort to showcase a scientific consensus on the presence of conscious experiences across all vertebrates (including reptiles, amphibians, and fish) and many invertebrates (at least including cephalopods, decapod crustaceans, and insects). Scientifically, the New York Declaration marks a significant advancement for humanity. However, it also brings heightened awareness to (...) the moral challenges associated with animals that have conscious experiences (or phenomenal consciousness). This article will discuss philosophical approaches to the moral issue of killing sentient beings, thereby highlighting an existing moral dilemma in human society: In sustaining human survival, a species considered to have morality, we have to violate our own moral standards by killing other species with intrinsic value, consciousness, or sentience. This moral dilemma has long been present in human society. Various solutions have been proposed and implemented in practice to address this issue, such as the non-violence and vegetarian approach of Buddhism, the application of Islamic law and sacred rituals to animals in Islam, animal rights movements and voluntary extinction in Western countries, and the technology producing meat using animal cells. However, despite these approaches, we have not yet been able to fully resolve the dilemma, as sentient beings continue to be killed for our survival. We believe the most feasible solution is to change the current food consumption culture, build an eco-surplus culture to mitigate climate change, prevent deforestation, and promote peace. (shrink)

Art can be addressed, not just to individuals, but to groups. Art can even be part of how groups think to themselves – how they keep a grip on their values over time. I focus on monuments as a case study. Monuments, I claim, can function as a commitment to a group value, for the sake of long-term action guidance. Art can function here where charters and mission statements cannot, precisely because of art’s powers to capture subtlety and emotion. In (...) particular, art can serve as the vessel for group emotions, by making emotional content sufficiently public so as to be the object of a group commitment. Art enables groups to guide themselves with values too subtle to be codified. (shrink)