This book reprints an ancient Chinese work from the late Warring States period (3rd century BC) that contains stories and anecdotes exemplifying the carefree nature of the ideal Taoist sage. Chuang Tzu's philosophy represents the main current of Taoist teachings, and his text is widely regarded as both deeply insightful and a great achievement in the Chinese poetical essay form. The version presented was translated by Feng Yu-lan, the famous Chinese philosopher, who puts more emphasis on Chuang Tzu's (...) philosophy than do previous attempts. William James once said that every great philosopher has a personal vision. When one has grasped that vision, the whole system can be easily understood. And Crocé once said that the greater a philosophical system is, the simpler the central idea. Although the present translation is limited to the first seven chapters of Chuang Tzu's writings, it accurately conveys his main vision and ideas. (shrink)

First-ever comprehensive introduction to the major new subject of quantum computing and quantum information.

Phase transitions are well-understood phenomena in thermodynamics (TD), but it turns out that they are mathematically impossible in finite SM systems. Hence, phase transitions are truly emergent properties. They appear again at the thermodynamic limit (TL), i.e., in infinite systems. However, most, if not all, systems in which they occur are finite, so whence comes the justification for taking TL? The problem is then traced back to the TD characterization of phase transitions, and it turns out that the characterization is (...) the result of serious idealizations which under suitable circumstances approximate actual conditions. (shrink)

Drawing on the perspective of causal reasoning and the social cognitive theory of moral thought and action, this study explores the mechanisms underlying the association between exposure to exploitative leadership and employee workplace deviance. The results of a time-lagged survey conducted in China reveal that exposure to exploitative leadership can evoke a moral justification process that leads to increased employee organizational and interpersonal deviance. A tendency toward hostile attribution bias reinforces the direct link between exploitative leadership and moral justification and (...) the indirect effects of exploitative leadership on employee organizational and interpersonal deviance, via moral justification. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed and potential directions for future studies are proposed. (shrink)

The specious present (James, 1890/1950) is the phenomenal temporal structure of the representational content of my present experience. This article is a study of the mereological structure of the specious present and what it reveals about the nature of the mind. I argue that the specious present has certain features that cannot be easily explained within the framework of physicalism about the mind — the view that consciousness is nothing over and above what is physical. In particular, the specious present (...) is a phenomenally extended (i.e.non-instantaneous) whole whose parts are conceptual abstractions and are therefore dependent on this whole. However, unlike the specious present, what is physical does not have this special property of the parts being dependent on the whole. Therefore, it is unclear how the specious present can be explained in physicalistic terms. (shrink)

In the context of the slowing growth of the real economy and the rapid development of the financial industry, more and more non-financial companies are participating in the financial industry for the purpose of development and profit expansion. China has gradually appeared the phenomenon of corporate financialization. This paper uses the panel fixed effect model empirically examines the effect of political turnover on corporate financialization by using data of listed companies and top prefecture level officials in China between 2007 and (...) 2020. We find that the turnover of mayors significantly decreases corporate financialization, while the turnover of party secretaries has no impact on corporate financialization. Moreover, these results are moderated by the characteristics of government officials and firm’s characteristics. Our results further show that changes by mayors increase fixed asset investment and decrease cash holdings, and, thus, reduce corporate financialization. These findings could assist in solving the “from real to virtual” problems, strengthening financial services, and realizing high-quality economic development. (shrink)

With the prevalence of values and the advent of the idea of rationalist education, the values characteristic of distinct subjectivity and affectiveness face many theoretical and practical problems when taught within the framework of modern education, which seeks certainty of knowledge. The challenges that values education encounters in today’s world urgently demand that we return to the origins of human spiritual life. We must be informed by the Marxist disclosure of the intrinsic value of human existence, and grasp the intrinsic (...) isomorphism between values education and human existence within the web of original and historical dialectic relations by relying on a complementary understanding of values and the essence of education: real men possess a logic of existence that endows value independence and consciousness of edification, and on the basis of the nature of the value of human existence, values education obtains a solid foundation both in the sense of fact and of value. Human existence thus displays the value content of self-selection, self-edification, and self-improvement peculiar to it due to its mutual dependence on and fulfillment of values education. (shrink)

If God exists atemporally, could God still be temporally conscious? This article aims to clarify a conceptual space for a divine temporal mode of consciousness under the traditional assumption that God exists atemporally. I contend that an atemporally existing and conscious God – by the divine nature, and not just the human nature in Christ – could also be conscious of the temporal world – and indeed, all possible temporal worlds – through a temporal mode that is akin to human (...) temporal consciousness, albeit exempt from its limitations. I submit that although (a) God exists atemporally (ontological atemporalism), (b) God could be both temporally and atemporally conscious (bimodalism of divine consciousness), and (c) these two modes of consciousness could be unified in an absolute divine consciousness without incurring schizophrenia-like problems (unity of bimodal divine consciousness). (shrink)

This learned, elegant book builds an interpretation of beatitude in Spinoza’s Ethics through interaction with a range of primary texts, including prominently the Zhuangzi, as well as secondary literature on Spinoza. Douglas’s focus is the promise that Spinoza’s doctrine of beatitude offers for eluding what is worst about death.The book starts with an account of beatitude that will serve as a foil. Chapter 1 sets out André Comte-Sponville’s account of beatitude in Spinoza, advertised as a Stoic account, on which one (...) attains beatitude by developing a sort of desire that is immune to hope: without hope and with the right sort of desire, we lack unfulfilled desires and so are happy (12). Douglas argues that, on this... Read More. (shrink)

BackgroundRapid advances in medical technology, changing healthcare policies, and increasing patient diversity have exacerbated the ethical challenges. As nursing students are an integral part of the future nursing workforce, ethical sensitivity has a critical impact on their future careers.PurposeThis study aims to promote research in related fields by systematically reviewing the origin and development of the concept of ethical sensitivity in nursing students, comparing currently available tools for assessing ethical sensitivity in nursing students, and exploring their applicability and reliability.MethodsA literature (...) review method was used in this study. A literature search was conducted for assessment tools published between 1995 and 2024. A total of six articles focusing on assessment tools they developed to measure ethical or moral sensitivity were included and analyzed.ResultsOur analysis revealed significant variations in the reliability and applicability of these assessment tools, particularly when used in diverse cultural settings. The study also identified a need for localized modifications of these tools to ensure their accuracy and relevance in different regions.ConclusionThe findings provide valuable guidance for nursing educators in selecting appropriate assessment tools and offer a foundation for developing new tools that are more contextually relevant. This study contributes to the advancement of ethical sensitivity education for nursing students worldwide, ultimately enhancing patient care and professional development. (shrink)

New York City hospitals expanded resources to an unprecedented extent in response to the COVID pandemic. Thousands of beds, ICU beds, staff members, and ventilators were rapidly incorporated into h...

The sources of financing for a firm can influence its environmental ethics. This study shows that traditional debt financing is associated with more pollution. Specifically, after issuing debt, firms tend to increase not only their total pollution level but also their pollution intensity. The debt‒pollution link cannot be fully explained by the production effect. This effect is more pronounced when the firm borrows for short-term purposes, has managerial short-termism, or has more risk-taking behavior. The environmental awareness of the public can (...) weaken the debt effect. Our findings support the notion that traditional debt financing can exacerbate short-termism in firm operations, leading to a sacrifice of long-term investments that may yield future benefits. Our study suggests that green financing, such as green bonds or green loans, could help improve corporate ethical behavior. (shrink)

We propose a three-way interaction model based on substitutes for leadership theory to explore the relationship among ethical leadership, moral personality, and moral ideology on two types of employee voluntary behaviors. Results from a sample of 218 supervisor–subordinate dyads indicate that moral personality attenuates the relationship between ethical leadership and employee voluntary behaviors. Idealism serves as the boundary condition for the moderating effect of moral personality. However, relativism only serves as the boundary condition for the moderating effect of moral personality (...) when predicting workplace deviant behavior. (shrink)

This study examined the role of religion in xenophobic responses to the threat of Ebola. Religious communities often offer members strong social ties and social support, which may help members cope with psychological and physical threat, including global threats like Ebola. Our analysis of a nationally representative sample in the U.S. found that overall, the more vulnerable to Ebola people felt, the more they exhibited xenophobic responses, but this relationship was moderated by importance of religion. Those who perceived religion as (...) more important in their lives exhibited weaker xenophobic reactions than those who perceived religion as less important. Furthermore, social connectedness measured by collectivism explained the moderating role of religion, suggesting that higher collectivism associated with religion served as a psychological buffer. Religious people showed attenuated threat responses because they had a stronger social system that may offer resources for its members to cope with psychological and physical threats. The current research highlights that different cultural groups react to increased threats in divergent ways. (shrink)

Radical interpretation is used by Davison in his linguistic theory not only as an interesting thought experiment but also a general pattern that is believed to be able to give an essential and general account of linguistic interpretation. If the principle of charity is absolutely necessary to radical interpretation, it becomes, in this sense, a general methodological principle. However, radical interpretation is a local pattern that is proper only for exploring certain interpretation in a specific case, and consequently the principle (...) of charity is an applicable principle in the limited scope. It is neither the case that every linguistic interpretation is in nature radical nor that the principle of charity is the primary and fundamental principle for all linguistic interpretation as Davidson believes. (shrink)

As traditional methods such as questionnaires for measuring risk propensity are not applicable in some scenarios, a nonintrusive method that could automatically identify individuals' risk propensity could be valuable. This study utilized Defense of the Ancients 2 single match data and historical statistics to train predictive models to identify risk propensity by machine learning methods. Self-reported risk propensity scores from 218 DOTA 2 players were paired with their behavioral metrics. The best-performing model occurred with Gaussian process regression. The root mean (...) square error of this model was 1.10, the correlation between predicted scores and self-reported questionnaire scores was 0.44, the R-squared was 0.17, and the test–retest reliability was 0.67. We discussed how selected behavioral features could contribute to predicting risk propensity and how the approach could be of potential value in the application of perceiving individuals' risk propensities. Moreover, the limitations of our study were discussed, and recommendations were made for future studies in this field. (shrink)

With the emergence of environmental sustainability and green business management, increasing demands have been made on businesses in the areas of environmental corporate social responsibility. Furthermore, the influence of ECSR on green capital investment, environmental performance, and business competitiveness has also been the subject of attention from enterprises. However, in previous studies, the mediating role of green information technology capital in the relationship between ECSR, environmental performance, and business competitiveness, has not been investigated by researchers. In order to bridge this (...) gap in the ECSR literature, this study aims to examine the influence of ECSR on green IT capital, and the consequent effect of green IT capital on environmental performance and business competitiveness. Data were collected from 358 companies from the top 1000 manufacturers in Taiwan. The results confirmed that ECSR has significant positive effects on green IT human capital, green IT structural capital, and green IT relational capital. Green IT structural capital and green IT relational capital have positive effects on environmental performance and business competitiveness, and environmental performance has a positive effect on business competitiveness. In addition, green IT structural capital and green IT relational capital have partial mediating effects on ECSR, environmental performance, and business competitiveness. The implications and suggestions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

This book is devoted to a thorough analysis of the role that models play in the practise of physical theory. The authors, a mathematical physicist and a philosopher of science, appeal to the logicians’ notion of model theory as well as to the concepts of physicists.

Two alternative accounts of quantum spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) are compared and one of them, the decompositional account in the algebraic approach, is argued to be superior for understanding quantum SSB. Two exactly solvable models are given as applications of our account -- the Weiss-Heisenberg model for ferromagnetism and the BCS model for superconductivity. Finally, the decompositional account is shown to be more conducive to the causal explanation of quantum SSB.

The use of color-tinted lenses can introduce profound effects into how we process visual information at the early to late stages. Besides mediating harsh lighting conditions, some evidence suggests that color-tinted lenses can influence how humans respond to emotional events. In this study, we systematically evaluated how color-tinted lenses modified our participants’ psychophysiological responses to emotion-inducing images. The participants passively viewed pleasant, neutral or unpleasant images from the International-Affective-Picture-System (IAPS), while wearing none, blue, red, yellow or green tinted-lenses that were (...) controlled for luminance. Established neuroergonomic indices of arousal were measured on the autonomic level, namely Skin-Conductance-Response (SCR) and Heart-Rate-Variability (HRV), and on the cortical level, with electroencephalography (EEG) event-related potentials (ERPs). Phasic SCR responses were significantly enhanced for unpleasant images and both pleasant and unpleasant images induced significantly larger ERP amplitudes of the Late-Positive-Potential (LPP), with pleasant images having the greatest impact. Interestingly, a significant main effect was found for tint. Similar to viewing pleasant images, red-tinted lenses induced the largest LPPs. Taken together, these findings suggest that the autonomic response to affective images is modulated at the cortical level of processing, congruent with the use of red-tinted lenses. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to improve the entrepreneurial performance and sports morality of college teacher-and-student entrepreneurs. Consequently, psychological capital is creatively combined with social and political education to explore college entrepreneurs’ EP and sports morality. First, following a theoretical model implementation, this article proposes several hypotheses. Then, a questionnaire survey was designed, and the data were analyzed. The results show that gender has little impact on EP and sports morality; PsyCap significantly affects the EP of college entrepreneurs at (...) the age of 33–38 years; in terms of educational background, average scores of PsyCap + SPE of bachelors are the highest, followed by masters or above, and finally, the college undergraduate; the average score of PsyCap + SPE of married respondents is 4.0, while that of the unmarried is 3.7; there is a significant difference between college entrepreneurs’ EP under the dimension of the basic enterprise situation; and the average score of the length of entrepreneurship is 9.87, which has the most significant impact on the EP and sports morality, and the significance of sports morality is 0.04. Among them, the most significant impact on EP and sports morality is weekly sports participation, with a score of 9.67. Therefore, PsyCap + SPE plays a positive role in the EP of college entrepreneurs. In contrast, sports morality has little impact on EP. This study provides a reference for the research on the influence of entrepreneurship and sports morality of college entrepreneurs. (shrink)

The outbreak of COVID-19 at the end of 2019 has become the most devastating public health event of the 21st century. The different performances of governments and people in different countries and regions show that national values may play an important role in the prevention and control of COVID-19. Based on data from the seventh wave of World Values Survey and the Human Freedom Index report in 2020, three national value factors are extracted in this manuscript, including religious belief, government (...) satisfaction and individual freedom. Then ordinary least squares regression regression model is constructed to explore the influence of these three value factors on the prevention and control of COVID-19 and some heterogeneity analysis is implemented. The results show that religious belief and individual freedom significantly increased the COVID-19 infection rate, while government satisfaction significantly reduced the COVID-19 infection rate. The study findings have the ability to hold up after a range of robustness. For countries and regions with different COVID-19 testing policies, the influence of national values is different. Only in countries and regions with high testing rate policies and complete systems of the prevention and control of COVID-19, the influence of national values is significant. Based on these findings, a series of targeted policy recommendations for building national values in the post-epidemic era are proposed. (shrink)

To reduce the workload of paper evaluation and improve the fairness and accuracy of the evaluation process, a writing assistant scoring system for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners is designed based on the principle of machine learning. According to the characteristics of the data processing process and the advantages and disadvantages of the Browser/server (B/s) structure, the equipment structure design of the project online evaluation teaching auxiliary system is further optimized. The panda method is used to read the (...) data, the clean method is used to realize the data preprocessing, the model test is carried out, the cross validation method is selected, the data is divided in advance, and the process of programming the problem scoring system is further optimized, the automatic scoring technology is constructed by English teaching recognition module, feature extraction module and scoring module, the table structure of programming problems is designed, the auxiliary evaluation program of English writing is designed, and the design of writing auxiliary scoring system is completed. The analysis of the experimental results shows that the accuracy of the system is close to 90%, and the total average difference is 0.56. The system can normally take out a variety of test papers. Considering the subjectivity of manual scoring and the impact of key code setting on scoring, the carefully set key code can effectively improve the scoring accuracy of the system. The scoring strategy of the automatic scoring system is effective and the scoring effect is good, and it can be used in practical application. (shrink)

Although work engagement as a positive organizational behavior has gained considerable achievements in recent years, there is still a lack of content research based on certain culture, job, and group characteristics. This study conducts a grounded theory research on work engagement by coding and analyzing the interview files from public servants working in the government located in Eastern China. The result shows a five-dimension construct of work engagement, which includes loyalty to the work, commitment to the working relationships, positive emotion, (...) initiative action, and priority for mixed roles. Additionally, the current study also constructs a theoretical model which discovers the dynamic variables motivating the process of work engagement and the influence of Confucianism. (shrink)

I first give a brief summary of a critique of the traditional theories of approximation and idealization; and after identifying one of the major roles of idealization as detaching component processes or systems from their joints, a detailed analysis is given of idealized laws – which are discoverable and/or applicable – in such processes and systems (i.e., idealized model systems). Then, I argue that dispositional properties should be regarded as admissible properties for laws and that such an inclusion supplies the (...) much needed connection between idealized models and the laws they `produce'' or `accommodate''. And I then argue that idealized law-statements so produced or accommodated in the models may be either true simpliciter or true approximately, but the latter is not because of the idealizations involved. I argue that the kind of limiting-case idealizations that produce approximate truth is best regarded as approximation; and finally I compare my theory with some existing theories of laws of nature.We seem to trace [in KingLear] ... the tendency of imagination toanalyse and abstract, to decomposehuman nature into its constituentfactors, and then to construct beings in whomone or more of these factors isabsent or atrophied or only incipient. (shrink)

This article argues for an anti-deflationist view of scientific representation. Our discussion begins with an analysis of the recent Callender–Cohen deflationary view on scientific representation. We then argue that there are at least two radically different ways in which a thing can be represented: one is purely symbolic, and therefore conventional, and the other is epistemic. The failure to recognize that scientific models are epistemic vehicles rather than symbolic ones has led to the mistaken view that whatever distinguishes scientific models (...) from other representational vehicles must merely be a matter of pragmatics. It is then argued that even though epistemic vehicles also contain conventional elements, they do their job of demonstration in spite of such elements. (shrink)

This paper examines the justifications for using infinite systems to 'recover' thermodynamic properties, such as phase transitions (PT), critical phenomena (CP), and irreversibility, from the micro-structure of matter in bulk. Section 2 is a summary of such rigorous methods as in taking the thermodynamic limit (TL) to recover PT and in using renormalization (semi-) group approach (RG) to explain the universality of critical exponents. Section 3 examines various possible justifications for taking TL on physically finite systems. Section 4 discusses the (...) legitimacy of applying TL to the problem of irreversibility and assesses the repercussions for its legitimacy on its home turf. (shrink)

Over forty years after the foundations of the special theory of relativity had been securely laid, a heated debate, beginning in 1965, about the correct formulation of relativistic thermodynamics raged in the physics literature. Prior to 1965, relativistic thermodynamics was considered one of the most secure relativistic theories and one of the most simple and elegant examples of relativization in physics. It is, as its name apparently suggests, the result of the application of the special theory of relativity to thermodynamics. (...) The basic assumption is that the first and second laws of thermodynamics are Lorentz-invariant, and, as a result, a set of Lorentz transformations is derived from thermodynamic magnitudes, such as heat and temperature. (shrink)