The high turnover of nurses has become a global problem. Several studies have proposed that nurses' perceptions of the ethical climate of their organization are related to higher job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and thus lead to lower turnover. However, there is limited empirical evidence supporting a relationship between different types of ethical climate within organizations and facets of job satisfaction. Furthermore, no published studies have investigated the impact of different types of ethical climate on the three components of organizational (...) commitment. This study attempts to explore the different types of ethical climate that exist in hospitals, and the degree of job satisfaction and organizational commitment of nurses in Taiwan. It uses path analysis to understand which types of ethical climate influence different facets of job satisfaction. The study also examines the impact of different types of ethical climate and facets of job satisfaction on the three components of organizational commitment. Questionnaires were distributed to 352 nurses. The relationships among variables were assessed by factor analysis, reliability, descriptive statistics, correlations, and regression. The important conclusion is that hospitals can increase job satisfaction and organizational commitment by influencing an organization's ethical climate. Hospital administrators can foster within organizations the climate types of caring, independent, and rules climate that increase satisfaction, while preventing organizations from developing the type of instrumental climate that decreases it. (shrink)

I argue that rationally persuading another to do something for their own good is sometimes (objectionably) paternalistic. Rational persuasion may express, and be guided by, the motive of distrust in the other’s capacity to gather or weigh evidence, and may intrude on the other’s deliberative activities in ways that conflict with respecting their agency and autonomy. I also examine factors that make a difference to whether (and when) the provision of reasons is respectful.

Philosophical interest in state power has tended to focus on the state’s coercive powers rather than its expressive powers. I consider an underexplored aspect of the state’s expressive capacity: its capacity to use symbols (such as monuments, memorials, and street names) to promote political ends. In particular, I argue that the liberal state’s deployment of symbols to promote its members’ commitment to liberal ideals is in need of special justification. This is because the state’s exercise of its capacity to use (...) symbols may be in tension with respecting individual autonomy, particularly in cases in which the symbols exert influence without engaging citizens’ rational capacities. But despite the fact that the state’s deployment of symbols may circumvent citizens’ rational capacities, I argue that it may nonetheless be permissible when surrounded by certain liberal institutions and brought about via democratic procedures. (shrink)

What is wisdom? What does a wise person know? Can a wise person know how to act and live well without knowing the whys and wherefores of his own action? How is wisdom acquired? This Element addresses questions regarding the nature and acquisition of wisdom by developing and defending a skill theory of wisdom. Specifically, this theory argues that if a person S is wise, then (i) S knows that overall attitude success contributes to or constitutes well-being; (ii) S knows (...) what the best means to achieve well-being are; (iii) S is reliably successful at acting and living well (in light of what S knows); and (iv) S knows why she is successful at acting and living well. The first three sections of this Element develop this theory, and the final two sections defend this theory against two objections to the effect that there are asymmetries between wisdom and skill. (shrink)

Knowing-how is currently a hot topic in epistemology. But what is the proper subject matter of a study of knowing-how and in what sense can such a study be regarded as epistemological? The aim of this paper is to answer such metaepistemological questions. This paper offers a metaepistemology of knowing-how, including considerations of the subject matter, task, and nature of the epistemology of knowing-how. I will achieve this aim, first, by distinguishing varieties of knowing-how and, second, by introducing and elaborating (...) the concept of hybrid knowing-how, which entails a combination of a ground-level ability and a meta-level perspective on that ability. The stance I wish to advocate is that the epistemology of knowing-how is a normative discipline whose main task is to study the nature and value of human practical intelligence required to do things in a particular manner. (shrink)

Anti-intellectualists in epistemology argue for the thesis that knowing-how is not a species of knowing-that, and most of them tend to avoid any use of the notion “knowing-that” in their explanation of intelligent action on pain of inconsistency. Intellectualists tend to disprove anti-intellectualism by showing that the residues of knowing-that remain in the anti-intellectualist explanation of intelligent action. Outside the field of epistemology, some philosophers who try to highlight the nature of their explanation of intelligent action in certain fields, such (...) as ethics, tend to classify themselves as intellectualist simply because they appeal to the notion of knowing-that in their explanation. In a word, the idea of knowing-that is harmful to the anti-intellectualist explanation of intelligent action, whether from an insider or outsider perspective. In this paper, I argue that these tendencies are unjustified because they are based on an unclear conception of anti-intellectualism. I shall use Gilbert Ryle’s anti-intellectualism as a paradigm with which to describe anti-intellectualism and to illustrate why the notion of knowing-that is not harmful to but is, on the contrary, beneficial to the anti-intellectualist explanation of intelligent action. If my explication of Ryle’s anti-intellectualism is correct, then most anti-intellectualists in the literature blindly worry about the notion of knowing-that, most intellectualists fire into the wrong flock, and some philosophers outside epistemology mischaracterize their own position. (shrink)

The signature of the formal language of mereology contains only one binary predicate P which stands for the relation “being a part of”. Traditionally, P must be a partial ordering, that is, ${\forall{x}Pxx, \forall{x}\forall{y}((Pxy\land Pyx)\to x=y)}$ and ${\forall{x}\forall{y}\forall{z}((Pxy\land Pyz)\to Pxz))}$ are three basic mereological axioms. The best-known mereological theory is “general extensional mereology”, which is axiomatized by the three basic axioms plus the following axiom and axiom schema: (Strong Supplementation) ${\forall{x}\forall{y}(\neg Pyx\to \exists z(Pzy\land \neg Ozx))}$ , where Oxy means ${\exists (...) z(Pzx\land Pzy)}$ , and (Fusion) ${\exists x\alpha \to \exists z\forall y(Oyz\leftrightarrow \exists x(\alpha \land Oyx))}$ , for any formula α where z and y do not occur free. In this paper, I will show that general extensional mereology is decidable, and will also point out that the decidability of the first-order approximation of the theory of complete Boolean algebras can be shown in the same way. (shrink)

The signature of the formal language of mereology contains only one binary predicate which stands for the relation “being a part of” and it has been strongly suggested that such a predicate must at least define a partial ordering. Mereological theories owe their origin to Leśniewski. However, some more recent authors, such as Simons as well as Casati and Varzi, have reformulated mereology in a way most logicians today are familiar with. It turns out that any theory which can be (...) formed by using the reformulated mereological axioms or axiom schemas is in a sense a subtheory of the elementary theory of Boolean algebras or of the theory of infinite atomic Boolean algebras. It is known that the theory of partial orderings is undecidable while the elementary theory of Boolean algebras and the theory of infinite atomic Boolean algebras are decidable. In this paper, I will look into the behaviors in terms of decidability of those mereological theories located in between. More precisely, I will give a comprehensive picture of the said issue by offering solutions to the open problems which I have raised in some of my papers published previously. (shrink)

It is customary practice to define ‘x is composed of the ys’ as ‘x is a sum of the ys and the ys are pairwise disjoint ’. This predicate has played a central role in the debate on the special composition question and on related metaphysical issues concerning the mereological structure of objects. In this note we show that the customary characterization is nonetheless inadequate. We do so by constructing a mereological model where everything qualifies as composed of atoms even (...) though some elements in the domain are gunky, i.e., can be divided indefinitely into smaller and smaller proper parts. (shrink)

One of the main challenges in the philosophy of language is determining the form of knowledge of the rules of language. Michael Dummett has put forth the view that knowledge of the rules of language is a kind of implicit knowledge; some philosophers have mistakenly conceived of this type of knowledge as a kind of knowledge-that . In a recent paper in this journal, Patricia Hanna argues against Dummett’s knowledge-that view and proposes instead a knowledge-how view in which knowledge of (...) the rules of language is a kind of practical knowledge, like an agent’s non-propositional knowledge of counting. In this paper I argue, first, that Hanna misunderstands Dummett’s conception of knowledge of linguistic rules, and, second, that Dummett’s considerations of practical knowledge of language pose a problem for Hanna’s knowledge-how view. At the end of the paper, I briefly sketch an account of practical knowledge of language that meets the requirements set by Dummett. (shrink)

The four principles approach to biomedical ethics (4PBE) has, since the 1970s, been increasingly developed as a universal bioethics method. Despite its wide acceptance and popularity, the 4PBE has received many challenges to its cross-cultural plausibility. This paper first specifies the principles and characteristics of ancient Chinese medical ethics (ACME), then makes a comparison between ACME and the 4PBE with a view to testing out the 4PBE's cross-cultural plausibility when applied to one particular but very extensive and prominent cultural context. (...) The result shows that the concepts of respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence and justice are clearly identifiable in ACME. Yet, being influenced by certain socio-cultural factors, those applying the 4PBE in Chinese society may tend to adopt a "beneficence-oriented", rather than an "autonomy-oriented" approach, which, in general, is dissimilar to the practice of contemporary Western bioethics, where "autonomy often triumphs". (shrink)

Mereological theories are theories based on a binary predicate ‘being a part of’. It is believed that such a predicate must at least define a partial ordering. A mereological theory can be obtained by adding on top of the basic axioms of partial orderings some of the other axioms posited based on pertinent philosophical insights. Though mereological theories have aroused quite a few philosophers’ interest recently, not much has been said about their meta-logical properties. In this paper, I will look (...) into whether those theories are decidable or not. Besides, since theories of Boolean algebras are in some sense upper bounds of mereological theories which can be found in the literature, I shall also make some observations about the possibility of getting mereological theories beyond Boolean algebras. (shrink)

The use of technology in elite sports is becoming increasingly widespread, but its use is not without limits, especially considering factors such as fairness and health. This paper aims to explore under what condition the use of technology in elite sports should be restricted, particularly focusing on the concept of “achievement”. Delving into such a question is practically beneficial as we can justifiably maximize the use of technology in elite sports within the boundary set forth by the condition. Focusing on (...) the concept of “achievement” is advantageous as it helps determine the appropriate extent of technology use from the perspective of the essence of sports. To achieve this aim, we develop and defend an argument against performance-enhancing technology in sport, called the Weaken and Illusory Athletic Achievements Argument (WIAAA), the conclusion of which states that for any athlete S, ceteris paribus, S ought not attain athletic aims that could have been attained by S without enhancement or athletic aims that could not have been attained by S without enhancement, with enhancement. Based on the WIAAA, the use of technology in elite sports is justified if and only if it does not diminish or nullify athletic achievement. (shrink)

In “Knowing How”, Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson (2001) propose an intellectualist account of knowledge-how, according to which all knowledge-how is a type of propositional knowledge about ways to act. In this article, I examine this intellectualist account by applying it to the epistemology of language. I argue that (a) Stanley and Williamson mischaracterize the concept of knowledge-how in the epistemology of language, and (b) intellectualism about knowledge of language fails in its explanatory task. One lesson that can be drawn (...) from this case study is that Stanley and Williamson's intellectualism is limited in its explanatory scope and power insofar as it cannot explain the knowledge of language, which is usually conceived as knowledge-how and as non-propositional in character. Their intellectualist claim that all knowledge-how is knowledge-that should be withdrawn. (shrink)

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

Quite a few results concerning the decidability of mereological theories have been given in my previous paper. But many mereological theories are still left unaccounted for. In this paper I will refine a general method for proving the undecidability of a theory and then by making use of it, I will show that most mereological theories that are strictly weaker than CEM are finitely inseparable and hence undecidable. The same results might be carried over to some extensions of those weak (...) theories by adding the fusion axiom schema. Most of the proofs to be presented in this paper take finite lattices as the base models when applying the refined method. However, I shall also point out the limitation of this kind of reduction and make some observations and conjectures concerning the decidability of stronger mereological theories. (shrink)

Philosophical interest in state power has tended to focus on the state’s coercive powers rather than its expressive powers. I consider an underexplored aspect of the state’s expressive capacity: its capacity to use symbols (such as monuments, memorials, and street names) to promote political ends. In particular, I argue that the liberal state’s deployment of symbols to promote its members’ commitment to liberal ideals is in need of special justification. This is because the state’s exercise of its capacity to use (...) symbols may be in tension with respecting individual autonomy, particularly in cases in which the symbols exert influence without engaging citizens’ rational capacities. But despite the fact that the state’s deployment of symbols may circumvent citizens’ rational capacities, I argue that it may nonetheless be permissible when surrounded by certain liberal institutions and brought about via democratic procedures. (shrink)

How can we acquire understanding? Linda Zagzebski has long claimed that understanding is acquired through, or arises from, mastering a particular practical technê. In this paper, I explicate Zagzebski’s claim and argue that the claim is problematic. Based on a critical examination of Zagzebski’s claim, I propose, in conclusion and in brief, a new claim regarding the acquisition of understanding.

The signature of the formal language of mereotopology contains two predicates $P$ and $C$, which stand for “being a part of” and “contact,” respectively. This paper will deal with the decidability issue of the mereotopological theories which can be formed by the axioms found in the literature. Three main results to be given are as follows: all axiomatized mereotopological theories are separable; all mereotopological theories up to $\mathbf{ACEMT}$, $\mathbf{SACEMT}$, or $\mathbf{SACEMT}^{\prime}$ are finitely inseparable; all axiomatized mereotopological theories except $\mathbf{SAX}$, $\mathbf{SAX}^{\prime}$, (...) or $\mathbf{S\overline{B}X}^{\prime}$, where $\mathbf{X}$ is strictly stronger than $\mathbf{CEMT}$, are undecidable. Then it can also be easily seen that all axiomatized mereotopological theories proved to be undecidable here are neither essentially undecidable nor strongly undecidable but are hereditarily undecidable. Result will be shown by constructing strongly undecidable mereotopological structures based on two-dimensional Euclidean space, and it will be pointed out that the same construction cannot be carried through if the language is not rich enough. (shrink)

This paper examines whether the modern bioethical principles of respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice proposed by Beauchamp and Childress are existent in, compatible with, or acceptable to the leading Chinese moral philosophy—the ethics of Confucius. The author concludes that the moral values which the four prima facie principles uphold are expressly identifiable in Confucius’ teachings. However, Confucius’ emphasis on the filial piety, family values, the “love of gradation”, altruism of people, and the “role specified relation oriented ethics” will (...) inevitably influence the “specification” and application of these bioethical principles and hence tend to grant “beneficence” a favourable position that diminishes the respect for individual rights and autonomy. In contrast, the centrality of respect for autonomy and its stance of “first among equals” are more and more stressed in Western liberal viewpoints. Nevertheless, if the Confucian “doctrine of Mean” and a balanced “two dimensional personhood” approach are properly employed, this will require both theorists and clinicians, who are facing medical ethical dilemmas, of searching to attain due mean out of competing moral principles thus preventing “giving beneficence a priority” or “asserting autonomy must triumph”. (shrink)

We study the relationship between corporate social performance and financial performance by comparing the portfolio returns of firms with changes in corporate social responsibility (CSR) intensity. Using an extensive US sample from the MSCI ESG database, we find that improvement in the overall CSR is generally value enhancing. The relationship varies with CSR dimensions. More importantly, the relationship shifts differently for various CSR dimensions during the crisis period when trust in the society is low and financial resource is limited. Improvement (...) in environment, human rights, and product characteristics shows higher financial returns during the financial crisis period, whereas the value enhancement of improvement in employee relations is more pronounced during the non-crisis period. (shrink)

In ‘What Makes Killing Wrong?’ Sinnott-Armstrong and Miller make the bold claim that killing in itself is not wrong, what is wrong is totally-disabling. In ‘After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?’ Giubilini and Minerva argue for allowing infanticide. Both papers challenge the stigma commonly associated with killing, and emphasize that killing is not wrong at some margins of life. In this paper, we first generalize the above claims to the thesis that there is nothing morally wrong with killing per (...) se, so long as it is instant and unannounced. Then, from the perspective of social evolution, we explain why people refrain from killing others, the general guideline being that it is unadvisable to kill someone with whom you associate a Second Person Perspective (SPP). Finally, drawing from a seminal paper of Press and Dyson on the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, we stress that an SPP without an SP (Second Person), or the other way around, can both lead to unwelcome results. (shrink)

In this paper, we claim that Jesus’ command “Love your enemies” is compatible with the fact that (1) for a group of Cooperators and Defectors repeatedly playing the Prisoner’s Dilemma game with each other, Defection will be the dominant strategy, and (2) the Tit-For-Tat strategy, a variant of the Eye-For-Eye principle that Jesus refuted in his Sermon on the Mount, had won Robert Axelrod’s tournaments of Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game in the 1980s. By incorporating relevant biblical commands into an informed (...) cooperative strategy, we find that it itself is a strong contender in a secular world of social evolution. (shrink)

This paper will consider some interesting mereological models and, by looking into them carefully, will clarify some important metalogical issues, such as definability, atomicity and decidability. More precisely, this paper will inquire into what kind of subsets can be defined in certain mereological models, what kind of axioms can guarantee that any member is composed of atoms and what kind of axioms are crucial, by regulating the models in a certain way, for an axiomatized mereological theory to be decidable.

A comparative historical perspective shows how globalization and the specificities of China’s rapid growth era limit its hegemonic potential in the twenty-first century global economy. Although state capitalism and openness to foreign capital facilitated China’s economic transformation, interactions among three forms of capital—state, private, and foreign—have produced developmental dynamics that constrain China’s capacity to assume the position of the world’s economic hegemon. These include the compromised competitiveness of China’s corporate sector due to the domination of state-owned enterprises, limits on the (...) ability of Chinese firms to develop leading transnational corporations, and early openness to and continued dependence on foreign capital. Moreover, the party-state’s efforts to ameliorate these constraints arouse external suspicion rather than support a Chinese-led hegemonic order based on consent and shared interests. These historically conditioned realities should temper expectations that China is converging teleologically toward a familiar hegemonic role in the international economy. (shrink)

Relating visual images to textual messages may have great potential in facilitating students’ reading comprehension. The inevitable and important presence of visuals in textbooks obliges language teachers to exploit all semiotic resources to deepen students’ understanding. However, analysis of how images interact with text in textbooks has been rare, and among the efforts it has generally been found that visuals and text often fail to achieve coherence. This study investigates whether and how text and image complement each other ideationally by (...) six sense relations and interpersonally by the Mood system in ninth-grade English as a Foreign Language textbooks to reach intersemiotic complementarity. The results revealed that ideational rather than interpersonal IC is more frequent, where many more Participants than Processes in the texts find their visual complements. Ideational IC is particularly high in Information Reports while Recounts generally mark higher percentages of interpersonal IC. To accomplish ideational IC, repetition is most frequent, followed by hyponymy and collocation. Distinct IC patterns also characterize the different editions of textbooks investigated, which may suggest their different potentials in catering to students of varying proficiencies. (shrink)

A Leibnizian semantics proposed by Becker in 1952 for the modal operators has recently been reviewed in Copeland’s paper The Genesis of Possible World Semantics (Copeland in J Philos Logic 31:99–137, 2002 ), with a remark that “neither the binary relation nor the idea of proving completeness was present in Becker’s work”. In light of Frege’s celebrated Sense-Determines-Reference principle, we find, however, that it is Becker’s semantics, rather than Kripke’s semantics, that has captured the true spirit of Frege’s semantic program. (...) Furthermore, for Kripke’s possible world semantics to fit in Frege’s framework of senses , worlds and referents , it will have to be thoroughly reformulated. By introducing the notion of a hi-world into the picture, we manage to keep the key ingredients of Becker’s semantics intact, while at the same time solve a fatal problem that used to shadow Becker’s original semantics—it had not been able to make sense of inhomogeneous modality. The resulting generalized Beckerian semantics provides, in effect, a Beckerian analysis of the Kripkean possible worlds. It reveals the subtle hierarchical internal structure of a Kripkean world that has not been discovered before. (shrink)

Regulative virtue epistemology argues that intellectual virtues can adjust and guide one’s epistemic actions as well as improve on the quality of the epistemic actions. For regulative virtue epistemologists, intellectual virtues can be cultivated to a higher degree; when the quality of intellectual virtue is better, the resulting quality of epistemic action is better. The intellectual virtues that regulative epistemologists talk about are character virtues (such as intellectual courage and open-mindedness) rather than faculty virtues (such as sight and hearing), since (...) they don’t think that faculty virtues could be cultivated. This article refers to Xunzi’s philosophy, explaining how a regulative faculty-based virtue epistemology is possible. If this explanation works, on the one hand, a new branch of contemporary virtue epistemology is shown, and, on the other hand, a clear theoretical framework of Xunzi’s epistemology is constructed. (shrink)

Corporate citizenship represents various organizational activities and status related to the organization's societal and stakeholder obligations. This study develops five different dimensions of corporate citizenship and examines the relationship between the five dimensions and purchase intention by including two key mediators. In the proposed model of this study, purchase intention is indirectly affected by economic, legal, ethical, general philanthropic, and strategic philanthropic citizenship via the mediation of corporate identification and brand trust. Empirical testing using a survey of 353 consumers from (...) various industries confirms most of our hypothesized effects. Last, managerial implications for corporate leaders and limitations of our findings are discussed in depth. (shrink)

This paper examines Bernard Williams’ challenge to liberal universalists (liberals “who assume their morality is universally applicable to everyone”) to provide a theory of error: “a story about the subject matter of political morality and about past people’s situation which explains why those people got it wrong about the subject matter.” It develops a theory of error that appeals to socio-historical conditions of the past to explain their role in making (1) liberal values and reasons epistemically inaccessible, and (2) motivations (...) to live up to them unavailable. (shrink)

Mereology is the theory of the relation “being a part of”. The first exact formulation of mereology is due to the Polish logician Stanisław Leśniewski. But Leśniewski’s mereology is not first-order axiomatizable, for it requires every subset of the domain to have a fusion. In recent literature, a first-order theory named General Extensional Mereology can be thought of as a first-order approximation of Leśniewski’s theory, in the sense that GEM guarantees that every definable subset of the domain has a fusion, (...) and this has been achieved by positing an axiom schema which in effect defines infinitely many axioms. Intuitively, in order to range over every definable subset, such an axiom schema seems unavoidable. But this paper will show that GEM is finitely axiomatizable and that all we need are just finitely many instances of the said axiom schema. (shrink)

Buddhist teachings and practices can be viewed as a journey of soteriological transformation, where language, as a tool for the analysis of views, occupies a place of special significance and importance. This article examines how the concept of non-duality, from the Madhyamaka perspective, has served as a powerful rhetorical device with the explicit aim of fostering soteriological transformation. Among the various expressions representative of the Madhyamaka perspective, two are particularly explored in this article for their facilitation of soteriological transformation: the (...) expression of ‘neither a dharma nor a not-dharma’ and the teaching that ‘one should let go even of dharmas, still more so not-dharmas’ . I argue that the Madhyamaka expression of ‘neither A nor not-A’ is hardly ever just about conforming to any linguistic conventions. It is about gaining liberation from linguistic conventions and unexamined remarks. (shrink)

The existing differential item functioning detection approaches relying on item difficulty or item discrimination are limited for understanding the associates of DIF items, and consequently, DIF items were conventionally either deleted or ignored. Given the importance of minimizing DIF items in test construction, teachers or testing practitioners need more information regarding possible associates of DIF items. Using an example of a teacher-made mathematics achievement test, this study aimed to examine how the Poly-BW indices contributed to the properties of gender-related DIF (...) items. Data from a 34-item mathematics achievement test that involved 1,439 seventh-grade students from Taiwan showed that the differences of the defenselessness and power indices between men and women served as salient predictors of the DIF measures estimated by the Poly Simultaneous Item Bias Test procedure and with satisfactory accuracy of hit rates. Items with relatively large defenselessness for men were likely to present male-favoring DIFs, whereas items with relatively large power for men were likely to present female-favoring DIFs. The Poly-BW indices yielded directions for modifying items for teachers in practice. (shrink)

The study of aesthetics and the theories of literature and art is directly related to the creation and criticism of literature and art and is indirectly related to the aesthetic education of the people's spirit and the beautification of their life. Undoubtedly, this is an important component of cultural science. However, there is no denying that this is also a weak link in our research work. And it is precisely because of the weakness of this link that we have failed (...) to do a good job in promoting the development of literature and art and instead have allowed reactionary idealism room to function and counterrevolutionary elements opportunity to take advantage of. This was why the Hu Feng counterrevolutionary clique's sabotage activities were mainly conducted through the clique's so-called literary and artistic work. Despite the fact that the reactionary essence of Hu Feng's theory of literature and art has been exposed from all sides, there is still the need for a serious and thorough criticism of the aesthetic ideas of the Hu Feng element Li Ying, who masked himself as a 'Marxist-Leninist" and enjoyed considerable influence at the time. (shrink)

AbstractFor the later Heidegger, the poet is the messenger of Being, insofar as he speaks after the Saying (Sage) of Being. But only when the poet takes the risk of being mad, can he hear the message of Being and bring it out. As such, the poet does not need any human art of poetry. Heidegger calls this kind of bringing-out “techne” in its original sense – but not in the ordinary sense of human technique. This paper tries to discover (...) how the poet in the state of madness without using any human art can still convey the message of Being. I try to answer this question at first with the help of two dialogues from Plato, i.e. Ion and Phaedrus. I then take two Chinese classical poets, Li Bai (李白) and Du Fu (杜甫), as examples to illustrate such interpretation of Heidegger’s concept of the poet. (shrink)