The qualitative nature of co-deployed or “associated” metaphorical source domains in discourse has been extensively researched, often in terms of whether they share common conceptual roots. There are however few empirical studies on the strength of these associations and their implications. In mental healthcare activities like psychological interviews and counseling, for example, strongly associated sources may suggest unique “conceptual assemblages” that highlight underexplored (dis)similarities between clients or client groups, beyond the typical focus on isolated sources and frequencies. Our case study (...) compares source domain associations produced by two interviewee groups – one meeting the diagnostic threshold for acute stress disorder (ASD), the other not – relating their first-hand experiences of traumatic events during the 2019 Hong Kong social unrest. The machine learning method of association rule mining is used to extract and quantify the top association rules in both groups. Results show i) a shared rule suggesting a highly schematic construal of trauma that nevertheless varies in instantiating details, and ii) several distinct rules that corroborates and lends further insight into the “agentive vs. non-agentive” characteristics exhibited by ASD vs. non-ASD individuals. Implications and future directions, including potential extensions to other discourse contexts, are discussed. (shrink)

Optimization for vertical vibration performance of a rail-train coupling system is investigated in this paper with the introduction of inerters for both primary and secondary suspensions. A model of a typical Chinese passenger train that travels on a traditional rail with track, sleepers, and ballast is simulated. The goal is to improve the ride quality for the train and vibration attenuation for the rail system in response to track irregularities. Optimizations for only inertance and all suspension parameters are carried out (...) by the particle swarm algorithm. Performance benefits for both the train and the rail system are demonstrated and suspension layouts with inerters connected in parallel and series are compared with the traditional one in both time domain and frequency domain. (shrink)

Based on the job demands-resources model, this study explored the relationships of work engagement, job performance and psychological capital in industry employees. A total of 399 IT programmers were recruited and completed the work engagement scale, knowledge employee job performance scale and psychological capital questionnaire. The results showed that: There is a relationship between work engagement and job performance, which may not be linear but inverted U-shaped, and psychological capital plays a moderating role in the inverted U-shaped relationship between work (...) engagement and job performance. (shrink)

According to the dual-system theories, the decisions in an ultimatum game are governed by the automatic System 1 and the controlled System 2. The former drives the preference for fairness, whereas the latter drives the self-interest motive. However, the association between the contributions of the two systems in UG and the cognitive process needs more direct evidence. In the present study, we used the process dissociation procedure to estimate the contributions of the two systems and recorded participants eye movements to (...) examine the cognitive processes underlying UG decisions. Results showed that the estimated contributions of the two systems are uncorrelated and that they demonstrate a dissociated pattern of associations with third variables, such as reaction time and mean fixation duration. Furthermore, the relative time advantage and the transitions between the two payoffs can predict the final UG decisions. Our findings provide evidence for the independent contributions of preference for fairness and self-interest maximizing inclinations to UG and shed light on the underlying processes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Morality in Flux: Medical Ethics Dilemmas in the People's Republic of ChinaRen-Zong Qiu (bio)IntroductionModern China is undergoing a fundamental change from a monolithic society to a rather pluralistic one. It is a long and winding road. Marxism is facing various challenges as the influence of Western culture increases. Confucianism is still deeply entrenched in the Chinese mind but various religions, including Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity are experiencing a revival. (...) Almost fifty minorities coexist in the country in addition to the majority Han people. Tension and conflict are inevitable as diverse—and sometimes incompatible—values come to the fore at this historic juncture. Many fields, including medicine, face new challenges, and in this environment the field of bioethics is flourishing.Like many countries, China is groping with the effects of new medical technology and skyrocketing health care costs. But in the context of the Chinese sociocultural environment, some unique—as well as more familiar—issues arise. None of the classic texts provide ready-made answers to these dilemmas; we must find the answers ourselves. The only reasonable way to resolve the conflicts between opposing values is through dialogue, consultation, and negotiation among the various social and cultural groups.The bioethical dilemmas receiving the most attention in China now relate to the two ends of life: birth and death. On one end are issues relating to reproductive technology, especially birth control and family planning; at the other end is euthanasia.Dilemmas Surrounding Reproductive TechnologyAccording to traditional Chinese belief, not having a child results from not having virtue. In fact, the most serious violation of the Confucian [End Page 16]principle of filial piety is to be without offspring. A Chinese man without a child experiences heavy psychological pressure, and the burden is especially onerous for women because infertility is always blamed on the wife. Wives who do not bear a child are stigmatized and mistreated—even abused—in families that stick to traditional values.In China today, this widely held belief is colliding with another reality: an apparent increase in infertility among newly-married couples. The rate may be about 5 percent. These couples turn to doctors for help.Artificial insemination by donor (AID) and by husband is now widely practiced. Eleven provinces have established sperm banks, and private doctors are performing AID for considerable fees. But procedures to address legal and ethical problems associated with the procedure have lagged behind. With the exception of a few centers in large cities, AID is undertaken without established procedures or policies relating to the selection of donors and recipients, records about those involved, or clarification of the status of the child. The legal status of the child remains unresolved.The status of the child within the community is also unresolved as traditional values clash with the application of modern technology to childbearing. The case of "The Child Who Did Not Belong" (see box), illustrates how an AID child is not accepted by the family that embraces traditional values because he is not the husband's biological child.In vitro fertilization (IVF) is another alternative. Two IVF centers are in operation, one in Beijing and the other in Changsha, and both have succeeded in producing live births. This technology has received considerable media attention and is generally accepted even among those with traditional views.But much of this medical technology is not widely accessible—especially in rural areas—and so some infertile couples resort to surrogate motherhood to ensure an heir. An infertile couple enters into a contract with a woman who has intercourse with the husband in order to bear a child for the couple. This practice is called "borrowing a wife." In some villages, the "borrowed wife" receives as much as 10,000 yuan (five times a professor's monthly salary or about $250) for a girl and double that for a boy.But the more common and thorny problems involved with the beginning of life relate to birth control, family planning, and the "one couple, one child" policy that the Chinese government instituted to curb overpopulation. The goal of that policy is to prevent China's population from exceeding 1.2 billion in the year 2000... (shrink)

The assumption that a system described as ‘Confucianism’ formulated by Dong Zhongshu became accepted as the norm during the Western Han dynasty (202 BCE – 9 CE) is challenged and his supposed authorship of the Chunqiu fanlu examined.

Plakias has recently argued that there is nothing wrong with publishing defences of philosophical claims which we don't believe and also nothing wrong with concealing our lack of belief, because an author's lack of belief is irrelevant to the merit of a published work. Fleisher has refined this account by limiting the permissibility of publishing without belief to what he calls ‘advocacy role cases’. I argue that such lack of belief is irrelevant only if it is the result of an (...) inexplicable incredulity or the result of a metaphilosophical or epistemic stance that is unrelated to the specific claim. However, in many real-life cases, including Fleisher's advocacy role cases, our doubts regarding the claims we defend arise from reasons that have something to do with the insufficiency of the philosophical evidence supporting the claim, and publishing an unconditional defence of a claim without revealing our doubts is impermissible as it involves withholding philosophically relevant reasons. Plakias has also argued that discouraging philosophers from publishing claims they don't believe would be unfair to junior philosophers with unsettled views. I propose that we should change our academic practices that pressure philosophers to publish articles that pretend to be defences of settled views. (shrink)

In this paper, findings from research in neuroscience of morality will be reviewed to consider the purposes of moral education. Particularly, I will focus on two main themes in neuroscience, novel neuroimaging and experimental investigations, and Bayesian learning mechanism. First, I will examine how neuroimaging and experimental studies contributed to our understanding of psychological mechanisms associated with moral functioning while addressing methodological concerns. Second, Bayesian learning mechanism will be introduced to acquire insights about how moral learning occurs in human brains. (...) Based on the reviewed neuroscientific research on morality, I will examine how evidence can support the model of moral education proposed by virtue ethics, Neo-Aristotelian moral philosophy in particular. Particularly, two main aims of virtue ethics-based moral education, the habituation of virtues and the cultivation of phronesis, will be discussed as the important purposes of moral education based on neuroscientific evidence. (shrink)

The challenging competitive situation in the market forces the organizations to recognize the crucial role of branding. Many studies focused on financial and customer perspectives and ignored the importance of employee-based brand building in the organization. Employee-based brand equity plays a vital role in increasing organizational performance. Hence, this study puts effort into brand-building and recognized many factors that develop employee-based brand equity for organizations. This study examines the role of internal knowledge dissemination and employees-based brand equity through brand identification (...) and emotional attachment. This study also assesses the direct relationship between internal knowledge dissemination and brand identification, internal knowledge dissemination and emotional attachment, brand identification and employee-based brand equity, and emotional attachment and employee-based brand equity. For this purpose, this study adopts a convenient sampling technique and questionnaire survey method and gathered data with 712 sample sizes from employees of various clothing brands in China. For empirical examination of the data, this study considers the partial least square structural equation modeling technique and analyzed data using the Smart PLS 3.3.3 software. The outcomes revealed that internal knowledge dissemination negatively influences employee-based brand equity. This study finds a positive direct association between internal knowledge dissemination and brand identification, internal knowledge dissemination and emotional attachment, brand identification and employee-based brand equity, and emotional attachment and employee-based brand equity. Moreover, this study finds that emotional attachment and brand identification positively mediate the relationship between internal knowledge dissemination and employee-based brand equity. The findings of this study provide an insight to the organizations that effective dissemination of the internal knowledge enhances employees’ brand identification and their emotional attachments. Consequently, these positive attributes of employees play a constructive role in creating employee-based brand equity. This study also has some valuable theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

This book uncovers and explores the constant tension between the historical and the transcendental that lies at the heart of Michel Foucault’s work. In the process, it also assesses the philosophical foundations of his thought by examining his theoretical borrowings from Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, who each provided him with tools to critically rethink the status of the transcendental. Given Foucault’s constant focus on the (Kantian) question of the possibility for knowledge, the author argues that his philosophical itinerary can be (...) understood as a series of attempts to historicize the transcendental. In so doing, he seeks to uncover a specific level that would identify these conditions without falling either into an excess of idealism (a de-historicized, subject-centered perspective exemplified for Foucault by Husserlian phenomenology) or of materialism (which would amount to interpreting these conditions as ideological and thus as the effect of economic determination by the infrastructure). The author concludes that, although this problem does unify Foucault’s work and gives it its specifically philosophical dimension, none of the concepts successively provided (such as the e;piste;mè, the historical a priori, the regimes of truth, the games of truth, and problematizations) manages to name these conditions without falling into the pitfalls that Foucault originally denounced as characteristic of the “anthropological sleep”—various forms of confusion between the historical and the transcendental. Although Foucault’s work provides us with a highly illuminating analysis of the major problems of post-Kantian philosophies, ultimately it remains aporetic in that it also fails to overcome them. (shrink)

In the Essay, Locke refers to the ordinary-sized natural things as ‘particular sorts of Substances’ (2.23), whereas the ‘three sorts of Substances’ (2.27) are more metaphysically laden sorts: God, finite spirits, and fundamental material particles. He posits the much-contested ‘substratum’ in each particular sort of substance but not any of the three sorts. It should also be noted that his list of the particular sorts includes ‘men’. In regard to this nobler sort, he refers to a further classification – viz., (...) ‘the Substance of spirit’ and ‘the Substance of the body’ – only in terms of their nominal essence. A naturalistic, nominalist approach is deeply entrenched in his account of the human-related sorts as well. In this chapter, I shall explore how Locke develops a theory of substance in the Essay that is less metaphysical, more naturalistic, and epistemically humbler than those of his rationalist contemporaries. (shrink)

although mostly known to specialists nowadays, Kenelm Digby was a remarkable figure on the intellectual scene of the early seventeenth century. He has been described as “one of the most influential natural philosophers” of his time,1 and corresponded with many of the great scholars of his days, including Descartes, and the French pioneer of atomism, Pierre Gassendi. In the later years of his life, Digby, alongside men like Robert Boyle, became one of the founding members of the Royal Society.2Digby authored (...) one major work of philosophy: the Two Treatises of 1644. This work consisted of a long First Treatise on bodies, and a shorter, Second Treatise on the human soul. In the First Treatise, Digby argued... (shrink)

The work of Thomas White represents a systematic attempt to combine the best of the new science of the seventeenth century with the best of Aristotelian tradition. This attempt earned him the criticism of Hobbes and the praise of Leibniz, but today, most of his attempts to navigate between traditions remain to be explored in detail. This paper does so for his ontology of accidents. It argues that his criticism of accidents in the category of location as entities over and (...) above substances was likely aimed at Francisco Suárez, and shows how White’s worries about the analysis of location were linked with his broader cosmological views. White rejects real qualities, but holds that the quantity of a substance is somehow distinct from its bearer. This reveals a common ground with some of his scholastic interlocutors, but lays bare a deep disagreement with thinkers like Descartes on the nature of matter. (shrink)

In The Fragmentation of Being, Kris McDaniel argues for ontological pluralism, proposing that we should accept not just being itself but also modes of being into which being fragments. McDaniel’s guiding idea is that being is analogous, and given the analogy of being, being should be taken to fragment into modes of being. I argue that even if McDaniel is right that being is analogous, ontological pluralism is not forced upon us. Given the analogy of being, objects don’t have being (...) simpliciter but have it in virtue of having something more fundamental particular to them. Upon examination, this falls short of supporting ontological pluralism, for the analogy of being implies that there are many grounds of being, but we are given no good reason for taking grounds of being as modes of being. (shrink)

activity” has been considered to play a major role in the short-term maintenance of memories. Many studies since then have provided support for this view and greatly advanced our knowledge of the effects of stimulus type and modality on delay activity and its temporal dynamics. In humans, working memory has also been a subject of intense investigation using scalp and intracranial electroencephalography as well as magnetoencephalography, which provide estimates of local population activity. The published findings include reports of systematic changes (...) in signal amplitude during working memory in the theta, alpha, beta. (shrink)

This paper looks at the critical reception of two central claims of Peter Auriol’s theory of cognition: the claim that the objects of cognition have an apparent or objective being that resists reduction to the real being of objects, and the claim that there may be natural intuitive cognitions of nonexistent objects. These claims earned Auriol the criticism of his fellow Franciscans, Walter Chatton and Adam Wodeham. According to them, the theory of apparent being was what had led Auriol to (...) allow for intuitive cognitions of nonexistents, but the intuitive cognition of nonexistents, at its turn, led to scepticism. Modern commentators have offered similar readings of Auriol, but this paper argues, first, that the apparent being provides no special reason to think there could be intuitions of nonexistent objects, and second, that despite his idiosyncratic account of intuition, Auriol was no more vulnerable to scepticism than his critics. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper identifies two central paradoxes threatening the notion of amor fati [love of fate]: it requires us to love a potentially repellent object (as fate entails significant negativity for us) and this, in the knowledge that our love will not modify our fate. Thus such love may seem impossible or pointless. I analyse the distinction between two different sorts of love (eros and agape) and the type of valuation they involve (in the first case, the object is loved (...) because we value it; in the second, we value the object because we love it). I use this as a lens to interpret Nietzsche's cryptic pronouncements on amor fati and show that while an erotic reading is, up to a point, plausible, an agapic interpretation is preferable both for its own sake and because it allows for a resolution of the paradoxes initially identified. In doing so, I clarify the relation of amor fati to the eternal return on the one hand, and to Nietzsche's autobiographical remarks about suffering on the other. Finally, I examine a set of objections pertaining both to the sustainability and limits of amor fati, and to its status as an ideal. (shrink)

Abstract This paper studies Olivi's account of perceptual representation. It addresses two main questions: (1) how do perceptual representations originate? and (2) how do they represent their objects? Regarding (1), it is well known that Olivi emphasizes the activity of the soul in the production of perceptual representations. Yet it is sometimes argued that he overstresses the activity of the soul in a way that yields a philosophically problematic result. I argue that Olivi was well aware of the problem that (...) could be raised for his theory and that he sought to cope with it. Regarding (2), Pasnau argues that for Olivi, causal relationships with external objects determine the content of perceptual representations. I argue that, rather, perceptual representations are about their objects because they are their similitudes. This makes him an internalist about representational content. (shrink)

Perhaps the year 1996 will be entered in history as an important year in Sino-American relations.

This study offers a new and stimulating interpretation of Theophrastus' "De sensibus, a treatise unique in content and method, as it reports and criticizes the ...

This paper explores the accounts of conceptual thought of Peter John Olivi (1248–1298) and Peter Auriol (1280–1322). While both thinkers are known for their criticism of representationalist theories of perception, it is argued that they part ways when it comes to analyzing conceptual cognition. To account for the human capacity for conceptual thought, Olivi is happy to make a number of concessions to indirect realist theories of representation. Insofar as he criticizes a specific branch of indirect realism about conceptual thought, (...) he does so for theological rather than strictly epistemological reasons. This goes to qualify recent philosophical interpretations of Olivi’s ‘Tractatus de verbo.’ By contrast, Auriol’s account of conceptual thought is thoroughly direct realist. According to Auriol, the natures of external things themselves appear to us directly in conceptual cognition, without the mediation of inner images or other representational devices. (shrink)

Sui Han geht von der Mehrdeutigkeit des Begriffs des Nichtseienden – die der von Aristoteles in einer berühmten Formulierung festgestellten Mehrdeutigkeit des Seienden teilweise, aber nicht völlig analog ist – und der „Aussageverflechtung von Sein und Nichtsein“ aus. Sie legt dar, dass bei Plotin mit Blick auf sämtliche Seinsebenen vom Einen-Guten bis hinab zur Materie in jeweils unterschiedlichem Sinn sowohl von deren Sein als auch von deren Nichtsein gesprochen werden kann. Diesem unterschiedlichen Sinn jeweils auf die Spur zu kommen, ist (...) das eigentliche Anliegen der Autorin. (shrink)