A large body of research links testosterone and cortisol to male-male competition. Yet, little work has explored acute steroid hormone responses to coalitional, physical competition during middle childhood. Here, we investigate testosterone, dehydroepiandrosterone, androstenedione, and cortisol release among ethnically Chinese boys in Hong Kong, aged 8–11 years, during a soccer match and an intrasquad soccer scrimmage, with 63 participants competing in both treatments. The soccer match and intrasquad soccer scrimmage represented out-group and in-group treatments, respectively. Results revealed that testosterone showed (...) no measurable change. DHEA increased during both treatments in the majority of participants and the degree of change had no relation to independent variables or covariate measures. Most boys experienced androstenedione increases during match play, but no significant differences during the intrasquad soccer scrimmage competitions. The magnitude of change differed significantly between treatments and was positively associated with age. These latter findings suggest boys’ androstenedione responses may be sensitive to competitor type. For most subjects, cortisol significantly increased during match play, decreased during the intrasquad soccer scrimmage, and differed significantly between treatments, suggesting each treatment promoted a different psychological state among competitors. Cortisol/DHEA molar ratio decreased during the intrasquad scrimmage, suggestive of a more relaxed mental state. These data shed new light on potential proximate mechanisms associated with coalitional competition among prepubescent boys, with relevance to adrenarche and life history theory. (shrink)

Liver transplantation (LT) activities during the COVID-19 pandemic have been curtailed in many countries. The impact of various policies restricting LT on outcomes of potential LT candidates is unclear. We studied all patients on the nationwide LT waitlists in Hong Kong and Singapore between January 2016 and May 2020. We used continuous time Markov chains to model the effects of different scenarios and varying durations of disruption on LT candidates.

Since the very beginning, Confucianism has been troubled by a serious gap between its political ideals and the reality of societal circumstances. Contemporary Confucians must develop a viable method of governance that can retain the spirit of the Confucian ideal while tackling problems arising from nonideal modern situations. The best way to meet this challenge, Joseph Chan argues, is to adopt liberal democratic institutions that are shaped by the Confucian conception of the good rather than the liberal conception of (...) the right.Confucian Perfectionism examines and reconstructs both Confucian political thought and liberal democratic institutions, blending them to form a new Confucian political philosophy. Chan decouples liberal democratic institutions from their popular liberal philosophical foundations in fundamental moral rights, such as popular sovereignty, political equality, and individual sovereignty. Instead, he grounds them on Confucian principles and redefines their roles and functions, thus mixing Confucianism with liberal democratic institutions in a way that strengthens both. Then he explores the implications of this new yet traditional political philosophy for fundamental issues in modern politics, including authority, democracy, human rights, civil liberties, and social justice.Confucian Perfectionism critically reconfigures the Confucian political philosophy of the classical period for the contemporary era. (shrink)

This paper asks how the intensity of individual local eParticipation affects users’ perception of democratically valuable effects. Drawing on participatory and deliberative theory literature we extract four participatory effects- internal political efficacy, common good orientation, tolerance, and legitimacy. Furthermore, the paper examines which cognitive factors may moderate the relationship between intensity of participation and perception of participatory effects. Drawing on online survey data from 670 citizens engaged in public budgeting online consultations on the local level, the conducted path analysis shows (...) that intensity of participation seems to foster the perception of common good orientation and tolerance. The other perceptions of participatory effects were not influenced by participation intensity. Findings on moderating factors indicate that the beneficial effects of online participation were not distributed unequally among participants. In conclusion, the research presents evidence for an optimistic view on local eParticipation that is able to promote democratically valuable user experiences. (shrink)

This Source Book is devoted to the purpose of providing such a basis for genuine understanding of Chinese thought (and thereby of Chinese life and culture, ...

The conception of saviour siblings using preimplantation genetic diagnosis coupled with human leukocyte antigen typing or HLA typing alone is controversial and receives a wide divergence of legal responses among countries around the world. The resulting child conceived through this procedure is dubbed a ‘saviour sibling’ as the child can potentially act as a compatible donor for an elder ailing sibling who needs a haematopoietic stem cell transplantation. At present, the acceptability of this procedure in Malaysia is ambiguous as there (...) is no specific statute governing assisted reproductive technology, and the guideline issued by the Malaysian Medical Council does not expressly address this issue. The ethical arguments relating to the conception of saviour siblings in the current literature are mainly thought to reflect a liberal viewpoint which is predominantly Western in nature. This paper seeks to explore the perception of selected key stakeholders on the acceptability of and ethical concerns related to this procedure in the Malaysian context. The findings indicate that stakeholders generally support the conception of saviour siblings and some of their concerns echo the Western viewpoint. Interestingly, many were highly anxious about its economic implication, which is rarely discussed in the current literature on saviour siblings. (shrink)

The advancement of human reproductive technology has made it possible for parents with a child affected by a haematological disorder to select and bring into being, a prospective child who can act as a matched stem cell donor. This can be done through the use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) coupled with human leukocyte antigen (HLA) typing (PGD-HLA typing), or HLA tying as a standalone procedure, where a healthy embryo, which is an HLA match to the existing sick sibling, is (...) chosen for implantation. The creation of such a sibling (saviour sibling) is normally taken as a last resort when there is no related or unrelated matched donor. While the conception of a saviour sibling may serve as a reliable and realistic treatment option for the ailing child, it also poses new moral questions that challenge a religiously pluralistic society such as Malaysia. The use of PGD-HLA typing may be controversial as it involves creating a life to save a life, selection of compatible human embryos and destruction of the unselected embryos. At present, there is no legal framework regulating the conception of saviour siblings. The development of ethically sound and appropriate local laws and policies should consider the views of religious communities, especially when it involves a controversial subject such as the conception of saviour siblings. This article seeks to explore the perceptions of religious scholars and representatives of the major religions professed and practised in Malaysia, namely Islam, Buddhism, Christianity and Hinduism, through qualitative interviews. (shrink)

What is belief? "Beliefs aim at truth" is the commonly accepted starting point for philosophers who want to give an adequate account of this fundamental state of mind, but it raises as many questions as it answers. For example, in what sense can beliefs be said to have an aim of their own? If belief aims at truth, does it mean that reasons to believe must also be based on truth? Must beliefs be formed on the basis of evidence alone? (...) Is truth the constitutive norm of belief? Does aiming at truth bring in a normative dimension to the nature of belief? How can the aim of truth guide the formation of our beliefs? In what ways do partial beliefs aim at truth? Is truth the aim of epistemic justification? Last but not least, is it knowledge rather than truth which is the fundamental aim of belief? In recent years, pursuing these questions has proved extremely fertile for our understanding of a wide range of current issues in philosophy of mind and action, epistemology, and meta-ethics. The Aim of Belief is the first book to be devoted to this fast-growing topic. It brings together eleven newly commissioned essays by leading authors on the aim of belief. Contributors: Jonathan Adler, Krister Bykvist, Timothy Chan, Pascal Engel, Kathrin Glüer, Anandi Hattiangadi, Michael Hicks, Paul Horwich, David Papineau, Andrew Reisner, Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen, Ralph Wedgwood, Åsa Wikforss, Daniel Whiting. (shrink)

Without doctors being able to explain medical decisions to patients, I argue their use of black box AIs would erode the effective and respectful care they provide patients. In addition, I argue that physicians should use AI black boxes only for patients in dire straits, or when physicians use AI as a “co-pilot” (analogous to a spellchecker) but can independently confirm its accuracy. I respond to A.J. London’s objection that physicians already prescribe some drugs without knowing why they work.

In re-examining the concepts of desire, intention, and trying, David K. Chan brings a fresh approach toward resolving many of the problems that have occupied philosophers of action for almost a century. This book not only presents a complete theory of human agency but also, by developing the conceptual tools needed to do moral philosophy, lays the groundwork for formulating an ethics that is rooted in a clear, intuitive, and coherent moral psychology.

Russellian monism—an influential doctrine proposed by Russell (The analysis of matter, Routledge, London, 1927/1992)—is roughly the view that physics can only ever tell us about the causal, dispositional, and structural properties of physical entities and not their categorical (or intrinsic) properties, whereas our qualia are constituted by those categorical properties. In this paper, I will discuss the relation between Russellian monism and a seminal paradox facing epiphenomenalism, the paradox of phenomenal judgment: if epiphenomenalism is true—qualia are causally inefficacious—then any judgment (...) concerning qualia, including epiphenomenalism itself, cannot be caused by qualia. For many writers, including Hawthorne (Philos Perspect 15:361–378, 2001), Smart (J Conscious Stud 11(2):41–50, 2004), and Braddon-Mitchell and Jackson (The philosophy of mind and cognition, Blackwell, Malden, 2007), Russellian monism faces the same paradox as epiphenomenalism does. I will assess Chalmers’s (The conscious mind: in search of a fundamental theory. Oxford University Press, New York, 1996) and Seager’s (in: Beckermann A, McLaughlin BP (eds) The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mind. Oxford University Press, New York, 2009) defences of Russellian monism against the paradox, and will put forward a novel argument against those defences. (shrink)

This book provides much new thinking on the phenomenon of whole person education, a phenomenon which features strongly in East Asian universities, and which aims to develop students intellectually, spiritually, and ethically, to master critical thinking skills, to explore ethical challenges in the surrounding community and to acquire a broad based foundation of knowledge in humanities, society and nature. The book considers different approaches to whole person education, including Confucian, Buddhist, and Chinese perspectives, Western philosophy and religion and interdisciplinary approaches. (...) Overall, the book provides a comprehensive overview of whole person education, why it matters and how to implement it. Moreover, although the examples in the book are from East Asia, the discussion and the values involved are universal, important for the whole world. (shrink)

Autobiography of Burmese Buddhist philosopher.

Set aside fanciful doomsday speculations about AI. Even lower-level AIs, while otherwise friendly and providing us a universal basic income, would be able to do all our jobs. Also, we would over-rely upon AI assistants even in our personal lives. Thus, John Danaher argues that a human crisis of moral passivity would result However, I argue firstly that if AIs are posited to lack the potential to become unfriendly, they may not be intelligent enough to replace us in all our (...) jobs. If instead they are intelligent enough to replace us, the risk they become unfriendly increases, given that they would not need us and humans would just compete for valuable resources. Their hostility will not promote our moral passivity. Secondly, the use of AI assistants in our personal lives will become a problem only if we rely on them for almost all our decision-making and motivation. But such a (maximally) pervasive level of dependence raises the question of whether humans would accept it, and consequently whether the crisis of passivity will arise. (shrink)

Design research has been positioned as an important methodological contribution of the learning sciences. Despite the publication of a handbook on the subject, the practice of design research in education remains an eclectic collection of specific approaches implemented by different researchers and research groups. In this paper, I examine the learning sciences as a design science to identify its fundamental goals, methods, affiliations, and assumptions. I argue that inherent tensions arise when attempting to practice design research as an analytic science. (...) Drawing inspiration and insight from Chinese philosophy and the practice of Chinese medicine, I propose that the learning sciences may better attain its claims to science through greater reliance on inductive synthesis rather than linear causal analysis. In so doing, I reposition the endeavor of science making within the metaphysics of process philosophy instead of classical Western philosophy. I suggest that theory building will be strengthened empirically and pragmatically by more careful observation and systematic generalization of the stability patterns of design related phenomena. It also needs to be more situated in its orientation. (shrink)

The convergence of India’s rich cultural and religious heritage with its rapidly transforming economy provides a unique opportunity to understand how senior executives navigate the demands of the business environment within the context of their religious convictions. Forty senior executives with varying religious backgrounds and global responsibilities within Indian multinational corporations participated in this study. Drawing from virtue ethics theory and using systematic content analysis, several themes emerged for ethical virtues. The analysis illustrates how these deeply seated ethical virtues helped (...) to form and refine these executives’ ethical mindsets via guiding principles such as an ethical culture, environment, molding, education, commitment and leadership. In turn, these ethical mindsets influenced the executives’ ethical decision-making processes. We find that these executives’ ethical virtues and mindsets are inspired by their religious backgrounds. In summary, a very complex mental tug-of-war appears to take place as these executives rationalize and negotiate unethical circumstances while being cognizant of personal religious beliefs. We contend that in a pluralistic multi-faith society such as India, it is critical for corporations to align the virtues of its senior executives with those of the corporation so that virtues are applied consistently when dealing with various stakeholders. The findings present several theoretical and practical implications, which are discussed. (shrink)

Drama pedagogy has evolved in recent years as one the most creative and adaptable tools for engaged learning in language teaching. This paper discusses the teaching of modern Chinese play selected to be a prescribed text in pre-university Chinese literature curriculum. The play in focus is Teahouse by the renowned Chinese writer, Lao She. The study aims to pilot qualitative research through concrete individual teaching, in order to perform a preliminary classification and analysis of how teaching methods of modern plays (...) are carried out. These include the use of the Theatre in Education and Drama in Education models to conduct the teaching of modern plays. The study purported that the use of Theatre in Education and Drama in Education are methods to trigger students’ interest in learning before lessons and to carry out warm-up activities and to evaluate lesson results. These methods also aid students to familiarize the core of the original texts and use meaningful, theatrical real scenarios for the teaching of language and literature. Keywords - Education, drama pedagogy, classroom pedagogy, qualitative design, Singapore. (shrink)

Many current theories of human rights are flawed in that they fail to recognise differences between fundamental human rights and others of lesser significance. If some rights are superior to others than it is possible to formulate a hierarchy of rights, and rules to resolve potential conflicts of rights. Only by self-examination can we determine what is personally significant in how we live meaningful and directed lives. This in turn aids in defining social values and determining the rights individuals should (...) reasonably expect to be provided by society. (shrink)

Questions about the meanings of racialized representations must be included as part of developing an ethical game design practice. This paper examines the various ways in which race and racial contexts are repre-sented in a selected range of commercially available e-games, namely war, sports and action-adventure games. The analysis focuses on the use of racial slurs and the contingencies of historical re-representation in war games; the limited representation of black masculinity in sports games and the romanticization of ‘ghetto play’ in (...) urban street games; and the pathologization and fetishization of race in ‘crime sim’ action-adventure games such as True Crime: Streets of LA. This paper argues for, firstly, a continuous critical engagement with these dominant representations in all their evolving forms; secondly, the necessary inclusion of reflexive precepts in e-games development contexts; and thirdly, the importance of advocating for more diverse and equitable racialized representations in commercial e-games. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe four broad ‘meta-methods’ employed in scientific and philosophical research of qualia. These are the theory-centred metamethod, the property-centred meta-method, the argument-centred meta-method, and the event-centred meta-method. Broadly speaking, the theory-centred meta-method is interested in the role of qualia as some theoretical entities picked out by our folk psychological theories; the property-centred meta-method is interested in some metaphysical properties of qualia that we immediately observe through introspection ; the argument-centred meta-method is interested in the role of (...) qualia in some arguments for non-physicalism; the event-centred metamethod is interested in the role of qualia as some natural events whose nature is hidden and must be uncovered empirically. We will argue that the event-centred metamethod is the most promising route to a comprehensive scientific conception of qualia because of the flexibility of ontological and methodological assumptions it can provide. We also reveal the hidden influences of the different meta-methods and in doing so show why consideration of meta-methods has value for the study of consciousness. (shrink)

The disciplinary characterisation (DC) is the most popular approach to defining metaphysical naturalism and physicalism. It defines metaphysical naturalism with reference to scientific theories and defines physicalism with reference to physical theories, and suggests that every entity that exists is a posited entity of these theories. DC has been criticised for its inability to solve Hempel’s dilemma and a list of problems alike. In this paper, I propose and defend a novel version of DC that can be called a historical (...) paths approach. The idea is (roughly) that metaphysical naturalism can be defined with reference to the historical ideas that current scientific ideas descend from. I argue that it is not rendered implausible by the above problems, and hence that DC is more defensible and attractive than it may first appear. I then argue that the approach also provides a useful framework for the naturalisation of the philosophy of mind and phenomenology. (shrink)

Alexander Bird (2001; 2002; 2007) offers a powerful argument showing that, regardless of whether necessitarianism or contingentism about laws is true, salt necessarily dissolves in water. The argument is that the same laws of nature that are necessary for the constitution of salt necessitate the solubility of salt. This paper shows that Bird’s argument faces a serious objection if the possibility of emergentism – in particular, C. D. Broad’s account – is taken into account. The idea is (roughly) that some (...) emergent laws in some possible worlds may disrupt the solubility of salt without disrupting its constitution. (shrink)

Translation of western philosophical concept into Chinese is often considered to be challenging. This is attributed to both linguistic and cultural differences. This article discusses these challenges under four categories, namely terminology, semantic understanding and context, philosophical disputes, and language reconstruction and combination. For each category, one or two examples are presented to illustrate the challenges. How each of these challenges is resolved is also discussed so as to provide the readers with some guidelines if they encounter similar challenges in (...) their work. (shrink)

Monism is our name for a range of views according to which the connection between dispositions and their categorical bases is intimate and necessary, or on which there are no categorical bases at all. In contrast, Dualist views hold that the connection between dispositions and their categorical bases is distant and contingent. This paper is a defence of Monism against an influential conceivability argument in favour of Dualism. The argument suggests that the apparent possibility of causal behaviour coming apart from (...) categorical bases is best explained by Dualism. We argue that Monism can explain the apparent possibility as well, if we take metaphysically alien laws — namely, laws whose metaphysical nature is alien to the actual world — into account. (shrink)

In this introductory chapter to the volume The Aim of Belief, the editor surveys the fundamental questions in current debates surrounding the aim of belief, and identifies the major theoretical approaches. The main arguments of the ten contributions to the volume are outlined and located in the context of the existing literature.

This book brings together leading scholars and practitioners from the United States, Europe, and Asia. The contributors come from different disciplines, including medicine, criminology, sociology, psychology, forensic sciences, and law. As a group, they have the background to discuss and conduct research in the area and to propose and critique theories and typologies of animal cruelty. In addition, they have the expertise to evaluate policy issues and to recommend best practices for protecting animals and intervening with those who abuse or (...) neglect them. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to engage with the social issues emerging from the increasing reliance upon app-driven services, as they pertain to precarious labor and ethical standpoints in a digital era. Popular ride services such as Uber have been lauded for bringing much needed transportation services that are superior to expensive taxis or unpleasant or inaccessible public transit. Design/methodology/approach As a result of over three years of ongoing research and analysis, this paper is a comprehensive assessment of a number of (...) social issues facing the integration of practices both signified and enacted in an economy driven by apps such as Uber. While these companies are indeed profitable, questions remain as to just how much of a panacea these practices actually herald. Findings Findings indicate that privatization and a lack of labor regulation may present a significant savings to the user, but full cost economics suggest that the social and environmental costs require consideration. Research limitations/implications The recommendations here refer to the ethical considerations forwarded in this paper and serve to open up dialog to further discuss the persistent issues facing a precarious future. Practical implications In terms of practical implications, there is a point of tension between governmental/regulatory bodies, disruptive innovators and users. Social implications Stakeholders of all stripes are scrambling to keep up with the pace and problematics of digital innovations and an inclusive critical dialog on app-driven services has yet to become a priority. Originality/value The original value of this analytical framework from a social justice perspective stands to catalyze action on a number of pervasive social issues surrounding digital ethics and policy. (shrink)