In the perceptual learning of lexical tones, an automatic and robust attention-to-phonology system enables native tonal listeners to adapt to acoustically non-optimal speech, such as phonetic conflicts in daily communications. Previous tone research reveals that non-native listeners who do not linguistically employ lexical tones in their mother tongue may find it challenging to attend to the tonal dimension or integrate it with the segmental features. However, it is unknown whether the attentional interference initially caused by a maternal attentional system would (...) continue influencing the non-optimal tone perception for simultaneous bilingual teenagers. From an endpoint in the age of language acquisition, we investigate whether the tone-specific attention mechanism developed by the Urdu-Cantonese simultaneous bilinguals is automatic enough to assist them in adapting to a phonetically-conflicting environment. Three groups of teenagers engaged in a four-condition ABX task: Urdu-Cantonese simultaneous bilinguals, Cantonese native listeners, and Urdu-speaking, late learners of Cantonese. The results showed that although the simultaneous bilinguals could phonologically process Cantonese tones in a Cantonese-like way under a conflict-free listening condition, they still failed in adapting to the phonetic conflicts, especially the segment-induced ones. It thus demonstrated that the simultaneous exposure and years of regular education in Hong Kong local schools still could not automatically guarantee simultaneous bilingual processing of Cantonese tones. In interpreting the findings, it hypothesized that, except for simultaneous exposure, the development of a tone-specific attention mechanism is also likely to be L1-inhibitory, tone experience-driven, and language-specific for simultaneous bilinguals. (shrink)

Corporate debt default risk poses significant challenges in the business world, requiring a multifaceted approach for effective mitigation. This study, grounded in an ethical decision-making framework, investigates the influence of Confucian culture on shaping ethical corporate culture and managers’ moral capacity and its subsequent impact on corporate debt default risk. Our findings indicate that companies deeply influenced by Confucian culture tend to exhibit lower debt default risks. Specifically, companies that embrace Confucian values demonstrate an enhanced ethical corporate culture and heightened (...) individual moral capacity. These factors play crucial roles in the ethical decision-making process, thereby reducing the likelihood of engaging in risky financial behaviors. Further analysis reveals that the inhibitory effect of Confucian culture on debt default risk is particularly pronounced in enterprises operating within regions characterized by poor integrity environments and weak product market competition. This inhibitory effect can lead to a reduction in the cost of corporate debt financing and the risk of stock price crashes. Overall, this study contributes to the understanding of the interplay between culture, business ethics, and corporate risk management. (shrink)

Wang Zhaojun was a romanticized historical figure. The visualization of her was characterized by specific historical and social backgrounds. While her image was shaped with the thousands of years’ expansion of northern interethnic relations in ancient China, the united modern multi-ethnic state created her glorious image as “an angel bringing about national harmony, peace, and unity.”.

In this paper, we analyze the effect of the speed on the task of random number generation. Each subjectgenerates the sequences of ``random'' numbers under various speed conditions. In addition to the 16 indiceswhich have been used in the past studies, we introduce and calculate the new indices called the ``frequency ofschema''. From the statistical analysis, we find that there is an obvious change, along with the speed, in theproperties of sequences, indicating the transition of the underling information processing. It (...) is shown that thefrequencies of schemas are effective indices for describing the properties of sequences produced under high-speed conditions. (shrink)

Mencius, who often spoke of ming in different senses among which only one can be taken as fate, upheld two doctrines of fate--moral determinism and blind, unalterable fate--but he was prone to apply the former to collective entities, and the latter to individual persons. This bi-level distinction, which is at variance with the non-distinction in both Moism and Taoism, exercised a profound influence upon the minds of later Confucians.

A major challenge in global sales research is helping managers understand sales ethics across countries. Addressing this challenge, our research investigates whether a few demographic variables and psychographic variables reduce unethical sales behaviors (USBs) in Canada, Mexico, and the USA. Further, using literatures associated with business ethics, national culture, and customer orientation advocacy, we hypothesize why sales managers should expect similarities and differences in USBs between countries. We tested hypotheses using a sales contest scenario and six USBs, examining survey responses (...) from 948 business-to-business salespeople of a multinational company’s sales force in Canada, Mexico, and the USA. The results reveal that several psychographic variables (such as commitment, relationship to sales manager, and achievement need) affect salespeople’s tendency to engage in USBs differently in each country. In addition, business ethics, individualism, and customer orientation advocacy associated with each country can be used to anticipate similarities and differences in USBs between countries. This research offers important theoretical contributions and implications for more effectively managing sales forces and reducing USBs across countries. (shrink)

Epicurus famously argued that death cannot be bad for a person because only painful experiences or something that brings about them can be bad for people, but when a person dies, she cannot experience anything at all, let alone pain. If, as Epicurus argued, death is not something bad for us, then presumably, we have no reason to fear it. In contrast with Epicurus, however, contemporary philosophers of death generally subscribe to the deprivation account of the badness of death, which (...) allows that death can be comparatively bad for the one who dies. Still, many deprivation theorists believe that death, as merely comparatively bad, is not a fitting object of fear. Some of them argue that our attitudes would be unfitting if they respond to comparative value; while others contend that fear is not the kind of attitude that tracks comparative value. In this paper, I critically assess these arguments by deprivation theorists, and argue that, contrary to what these theorists claim, their arguments do not entail that death does not merit fear. (shrink)

In recent decades, Kant's philosophy of law has increasingly moved into the focus of moral-philosophical discussions. In this context, the "Naturrecht Feyerabend" is of particular importance. On the one hand, it is the only surviving transcription of the lectures on natural law that Kant gave twelve times between 1767 and 1788; on the other hand, it is based on his lectures in the summer semester of 1784 and thus provides important evidence of Kant's reflections during an important phase in the (...) development of his moral philosophy. Despite this special significance, the text has received little attention in previous research. Dieter Hüning, Stefan Klingner and Gianluca Sadun Bordoni present here a volume that emphasizes this special significance. The ten contributions in the volume ask about the relationship of "Naturrecht Feyerabend" to the tradition of natural law as well as its relationship to critical moral philosophy and the late "Doctrine of Right". Contributors are: Manfred Baum, Franz Hespe, Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, Dieter Hüning, Stefan Klingner, Markus Kohl, Gabriel Rivero, Gianluca Sadun Bordoni, Michael Städtler, and Gideon Stiening. (shrink)

In Philosophical Investigations §244, Wittgenstein suggests that we understand avowals (first-person psychological utterances) as manifestations or expressions of the speaker's mental states. An interesting philosophical theory, called expressivism, then develops from this Wittgensteinian idea. However, neo-expressivists disagree with simple expressivists on whether avowals are at the same time assertions, which are truth-evaluable. In this paper, I pursue the expressivist debate about whether avowals must also be viewed as assertions. I consider and reject three neo-expressivist objections against simple expressivism. Then, I (...) offer my own account of why we should understand avowals as assertions. (shrink)

This article studies the moral metaphor system focusing on a subsystem consisting of five pairs of MORAL and IMMORAL metaphors whose source concepts represent some contrastive categories in our visual experience: WHITE and BLACK, LIGHT and DARK, CLEAR and MURKY, CLEAN and DIRTY, PURE and IMPURE. The study examines whether these moral metaphors are manifested in Chinese and English, looking for linguistic evidence in both languages. It is found that the studied moral metaphors are applicable in both languages at varying (...) degrees. This finding suggests that these metaphors may range from being widespread to being universal. The study then further analyzes them regarding whether they are primary or complex metaphors and whether they are equal in status, applying a decompositional approach to metaphor analysis. The result suggests that the moral metaphors under study are complex rather than primary metaphors, and that they are actually not equal in status, some depending on others in meaning making in our moral cognition. If the analysis is valid, the implications are: some conceptual metaphors are more fundamental than others, those that are more fundamental are more likely to be widespread or universal, and hypotheses can be made about conceptual metaphors based on in-depth analysis of their conceptual composition. (shrink)

According to the theory of internal organs in traditional Chinese medicine, the gallbladder has the function of making judgments and decisions in mental processes and activities, and it also determines one's degree of courage. This culturally constructed medical characterization of the gallbladder forms the base of the cultural model for the concept of courage. In the core of this cultural model is a pair of conceptual metaphors: (a) "GALLBLADDER IS CONTAINTER OF COURAGE," and (b) "COURAGE IS QI (GASEOUS VITAL ENERGY) (...) IN GALLBLADDER," which partly constitutive of the understanding of the gallbladder and courage in Chinese culture. A description and analysis of the data from the Chinese language show that numerous conventional expressions are systematically tied to each other and contributive to the underlying conceptual metaphors. The study presents a case in which an abstract concept (courage) is understood in part via a conceptual metaphor grounded in the body, but shaped by a culture-specific metaphorical understanding of an internal organ (gallbladder) inside the body. Although the human body is a potentially universal source domain for metaphors structuring abstract concepts, cultural models set up specific perspectives from which certain aspects of bodily experience or certain parts of the body are viewed as especially salient and meaningful in the understanding of those abstract concepts. (shrink)

This paper studies the theme of civilization and barbarism in El Sur, a short story by Jorge Luis Borges. Focusing on the historical perspective, it analyzes the political-geographical discourse of the Argentine elite on the Indians and the geopolitical imaginary of "the South" in the second half of the nineteenth century. The protagonist of the story, Juan Dalhmann, identifies himself as heir to this discourse based on European values as the only pattern of a universal civilization. Dalhmann interprets the difference (...) in geography he encounters on his journey to the South as an anachronism in the temporal order, practicing the "denial of coevalness". The South is for him the space of the Other. The duel at the end of the story between Dalhmann and the man with indian face is a manifestation of the inescapable contradiction when Dalhmann becomes the new civilizer of modernity. (shrink)

Since 2016, drones have been deployed in various development projects in sub-Saharan Africa, where trials, tests, and studies have been rolled out in countries, including Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi, Ghana, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The use cases of drones vary, ranging from imagery collection to transportation of vaccines, lab samples, blood products, and other medical supplies. A wide range of stakeholders is involved, including governments, international organizations, educational institutions, as well as industry. Based on a field study (...) conducted in 2019, this article investigates how drones are used for medical supply delivery in Malawi-a country where the community is underserved for healthcare and related infrastructure underdeveloped, while airspace is largely open and regulations generally relaxed. The objective of presenting this case study is to contribute to the evidence regarding the rapid deployment of medical cargo drones across the African continent, and to spark critical reflections over the utility, suitability, and impacts of incorporating drones in the existing health supply chain systems in resource-poor settings. The discussion revolves around two aspects: 1) the emergent “African Drone Rise”-is it ok “as it is Africa”? and 2) the normative role of technology in the aid sector-is it “a solution looking for a problem”? In conclusion, a call for more structured guidance for the systematic examination and evaluation of the medical cargo drone case is raised. (shrink)

Customer citizenship behavior has attracted widespread attention from scholars due to its capacity of enabling enterprises to gain competitive advantages of low costs and high efficiency by giving full play to the initiative of customers. Based on the S-O-R Model, we have established the theoretical model to study the influence imposed by social support of online travel platform enterprises on customer citizenship behavior against the backdrop of the sharing economy. This research tests the fitting of the theoretical model and its (...) fundamental hypotheses using 626 samples acquired from the investigation with SPSS26.0 and AMOS25.0. Results indicate that the social support has a positive influence on customer citizenship behavior. Social support could have a positive influence on positive emotions. Social support has no significant negative effect on negative emotions. Positive emotions have a positive influence on customer citizenship behavior. Negative emotions have a negative influence on customer citizenship behavior. Positive emotions play a mediating effect in the positive influence of social support on customer citizenship behavior. Social support could have a positive influence on customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction has a positive influence on customer citizenship behavior. Customer satisfaction plays a mediating effect in the positive effect of social support on customer citizenship behavior. Positive emotions and customer satisfaction play a chain mediating effect in the positive effect of social support on customer citizenship behavior. (shrink)

This study aims to contribute to the research on spatial metaphors for morality from the perspective of Chinese. It outlines the linguistic patterns in Chinese that manifest the putative underlying spatial subsystem of moral metaphors, which can be summarized by a central metaphor “MORALITY IS SPATIALITY.” In doing so, it focuses on 17 spatial words that instantiate in real-life discourses five pairs of moral–spatial metaphors in their positive and negative valence. The total of 10 metaphors under study forms a cluster (...) as the spatial metaphor subsystem operating in conjunction and connection with other metaphor subsystems in our moral cognition. It is suggested that the 10 conceptual metaphors emerge from four image schemas: UP-DOWN, BALANCE, PATH, and OBJECT. A unified schematic configuration is proposed to lay out the spatial elements and relations represented by the four image schemas in a single diagram. Based on its linguistic analysis, the study also provides a list of prototypical target as... (shrink)

Yi Hwang is Korean giant Bo of Neo-Confucianism, Zhu Xi as their study to cases. He was the author severely criticized Wang Yangming. Lee Hwang and odd peak on the "four-terminal impassioned" debate, both sides quoted Zhu's literature as an argument, and from that perspective loyal to Zhu. However, in essence is, Yi Hwang on Mencius' four-terminal, "said Zhu interpretation presupposes a set of different teachings of Confucianism system architecture, though Mencius in line with the text, but out of Zhu (...) Xi's basic position. This is one of the most crucial question is: "truth" can activities? In Zhu's of Science, the reason why is gas, there are not only activities. Based on the literature that: Yi Hwang in the interpretation of Zhu Xi's theory of qi, intentionally or unintentionally give reasons when an activity, while escaping the structure of Zhu Xi of Science. As a leading representative of Korean Confucianism, Yi T'oegye generally adhered to Zhu Xi's philosophical viewpoint, also writing several essays criticizing Wang Yang-ming's differences with Zhu Xi. In the debate between Yi T'oegye and his contemporary, Ki Kobong on the "Four Buddings" and the "Seven Emotions," both sides appealed to Zhu Xi's texts in the belief that they were being faithful to Zhu Xi's standpoint. But in fact, Yi's interpretation of "Four Buddings" presupposes a philosophical framework that differs from that of Zhu Xi. In this Yi deviates from Zhu Xi's standpoint, although he remains faithful to Mencius' texts. The key point of this debate lies in the question of whether "li" can be active. In Zhu Xi's philosophical framework, "li" as the ontological ground for "qi" has mere being but not activity. In this paper I demonstrate that in his interpretation of Zhu Xi's doctrine of "li" and "qi," Yi unconsciously ascribes a kind of activity to "li "and hence deviates from Zhu Xi's original philosophical position. (shrink)

With the rise of the “humanitarian drone” in recent years, drones have become one of the most controversial public interest technologies that have gained increasing media attention. It is worth noting that, although there is a perception in the aid sector that drones hold the promise to reinvent the health supply logistics, to date, routine drone delivery is still relatively new and largely unproven. This paper presents a recent field study conducted in 2019, where drones were deployed in Malawi to (...) help address the last mile challenge in medical supply delivery, and where a noticeable mentality of “killing two birds with one stone” around the attempt of using drones in resource-poor settings is observed. The objective of the paper is to shed light, through a real-world case study and from the ethical perspective, on the impacts of implementing such a systemic change in the existing health supply chain systems. As conclusion, a call for more reflexive approaches for the critical examination, as well as more structured guidance for the responsible evaluation, of medical cargo drones is raised. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche has emerged as one of the most important and influential modern philosophers. For several decades, the book series Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) has set the agenda in a rapidly growing and changing field of Nietzsche scholarship. The scope of the series is interdisciplinary and international in orientation reflects the entire spectrum of research on Nietzsche, from philosophy to literary studies and political theory. The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that undergo a strict peer-review process. The (...) book series is led by an international team of editors, whose work represents the full range of current Nietzsche scholarship. (shrink)

Increasingly, humanitarian organizations across the globe have been implementing innovative technologies in their practice as they respond to the needs of communities affected by conflicts, disasters, and public health emergencies. However, technological innovation may intersect with moral values, norms, and commitments, and may challenge humanitarian imperatives. Through the examination of an empirical case study on drone mapping, this paper aims to explore three questions: (1) What are the dynamics between aid delivery and technological innovation in the humanitarian enterprise? (2) How (...) are structural problems addressed in an environment in which technology is being portrayed as a force for change? (3) What moral responsibilities towards vulnerable populations should humanitarian stakeholders bear when introducing innovative technologies in humanitarian action. Discussion revolves around the ideology of “technological utopia”, and the normative role of technology in the aid sector - to make substantive impacts, or to produce “success stories”. In conclusion, a call for rigorous ethical analysis to help foster value sensitive humanitarian innovation (VSHI) is made. (shrink)

One challenge that globalization has brought to business is that firms, as they expand their market globally through cross-border alliances, need to deal with partner firms from countries of different religious background. The impact of a country’s dominant religion on its firms’ international market entry mode choices has not been examined in traditional approaches. Focusing on hypothesizing the influence of Christian beliefs and atheism (i.e., the absence of belief in any deities), this research aims to fill the gap by exploring (...) religion’s role in providing moral restraint on managers’ propensity for opportunism, which in turn affects these managers’ choices of their firms’ international market entry via non-equity alliances or joint ventures. A study of 22,156 cross-border alliances formed in 48 industries world-wide over 9 years provides new insight toward understanding religion’s influence on firms’ international market entry mode decisions through the ethical dimension of strategic leadership. (shrink)

Collaborative filtering technology is currently the most successful and widely used technology in the recommendation system. It has achieved rapid development in theoretical research and practice. It selects information and similarity relationships based on the user’s history and collects others that are the same as the user’s hobbies. User’s evaluation information is to generate recommendations. The main research is the inadequate combination of context information and the mining of new points of interest in the context-aware recommendation process. On the basis (...) of traditional recommendation technology, in view of the characteristics of the context information in music recommendation, a personalized and personalized music based on popularity prediction is proposed. Recommended algorithm is MRAPP. The algorithm first analyzes the user’s contextual information under music recommendation and classifies and models the contextual information. The traditional content-based recommendation technology CB calculates the recommendation results and then, for the problem that content-based recommendation technology cannot recommend new points of interest for users, introduces the concept of popularity. First, we use the memory and forget function to reduce the score and then consider user attributes and product attributes to calculate similarity; secondly, we use logistic regression to train feature weights; finally, appropriate weights are used to combine user-based and item-based collaborative filtering recommendation results. Based on the above improvements, the improved collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm in this paper has greatly improved the prediction accuracy. Through theoretical proof and simulation experiments, the effectiveness of the MRAPP algorithm is demonstrated. (shrink)

Through a series of case studies, the book thoroughly investigates the pragmatic elements of "new pragmatism," which inherits the legacy of classical pragmatism and combines the topics and methods of analytic philosophy. By exploring the continuity and heterogeneity of these two trends of thought, the author aims to compare them from various perspectives of new pragmatists, such as W. V. Quine, Wilfrid Sellars, Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty, Donald Davidson, Robert Brandom, John McDowell, Nelson Goodman, and others. Furthermore, he reveals that (...) new pragmatism is not a closed trend; rather, it extends far beyond the context of analytic philosophy in both geographical and theoretical domains. The book will appeal to students and scholars of pragmatism and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

In Authority and Estrangement, Richard Moran provides a fascinating account of how we know what we believe that he calls the “transparency account.” This account relies on the transparency relation between the question of whether we believe that p and the question of whether p is true. That is, we can consider the former by considering the grounds for the latter. But Moran’s account has been criticized by David Finkelstein, who argues that it fails to explain how we know our (...) attitudes and emotions more generally. The aim of this paper is to show how Moran’s transparency account can be extended to meet this criticism by modifying it, using insights from Davidson’s view on attitudes and emotions. (shrink)

This study is a semantic analysis of metonymic and metaphoric expressions involving body-part terms for the face in Chinese. These expressions are discussed regarding four perceived roles of face, namely, as highlight of appearance and look, as indicator of emotion and character, as focus of interaction and relationship, and as locus of dignity and prestige. It is argued that the figurative extensions are based on some biological facts about our face: it is the most distinctive part on the interactive side (...) of our body capable of revealing our inner states. Referring to English the study shows that the terms for the face in both languages have developed figurative meanings along similar routes with similar stops. It also shows that the concepts of “face and facework”, admittedly ubiquitous in all cultures, are manifested more richly in Chinese than in English — a reflection of cultural differences in values attached to those concepts. Finally, a hypothetical “Triangle Model” is proposed to account for the relationship between language, culture, body, and cognition. (shrink)

本书从回忆母亲中医治病开始,一路写来,有中医的神奇、有中医的道理、有中医与西医的区别、有人生的智慧、有豁达的胸襟、有现代人常常忽略的东西、有不少值得深思的问题.

With the rapid development of sports science, human motion recognition technology, as a new biometric recognition technology, has many advantages, such as noncontact target, long recognition distance, secret recognition process, and so on. Traditional human motion recognition technology is affected by environmental factors such as motion background, which is prone to rough edges of the recognized objects and loss of motion tracking information, thus further reducing the recognition accuracy. In this paper, the traditional snake model will be improved and optimized (...) to improve the defect of human motion model contour extraction, so as to realize the accurate repair of image contour; in terms of algorithm running time, this paper innovatively improves the construction process of the snake model, further improves the running time of model evaluation, and solves the concave contour problem of corresponding moving objects in the snake model. In order to solve the problem of accurate convergence, this paper improves the snake model of the average moving algorithm and sets the corresponding weight coefficient to distinguish the corresponding moving target background, so as to achieve the convergence of the differential concave contour. In order to verify the superiority of the improved optimized snake model, experiments are carried out in the corresponding database. The experimental results show that the contour of the moving object extracted by the improved snake model algorithm is complete and the segmentation effect is obvious. At the same time, the running speed of the whole algorithm has been significantly improved. (shrink)

In this article, we explore how incomplete spokes-character faces (versus complete spokes-character faces in application icon designs) make a positive impression on users, and we outline the boundary conditions. Across three studies, we find incomplete spokes-character faces to be an effective image icon tool. In study 1, we find that spokes-characters with incomplete faces improve users’ brand evaluations. In study 2, we find that incomplete spokes-character faces create perceptions of anthropomorphism, which lead to more favorable brand evaluations by enhancing the (...) interpersonal closeness between the user and the brand. The results of study 3, however, show that the type of social exclusion (control vs. ignored vs. rejected) moderates the relationship between incomplete spokes-character faces in mobile application icons and brand evaluations. (shrink)