According to the received account of guilt in the philosophical literature, one cannot feel guilt unless one takes oneself to have done something morally wrong. But ordinary people feel guilt in many cases in which they do not take themselves to have done anything morally wrong. In this paper, I focus on one kind of guilt without perceived wrongdoing, guilt about being merely causally responsible for a bad state-of-affairs. I go on to present a novel account of guilt that explains (...) guilt about mere causal responsibility, according to which guilt represents part of the self as bound up with what is bad. (shrink)

According to the safety account of knowledge, one knows that p only if one’s belief could not easily have been false. An important issue for the account is whether we should only examine the target belief when evaluating whether a belief is safe or not. In this paper, it is argued that, if we should only examine the target belief, then the account fails to account for ignorance of necessary truths. But, if we should also examine beliefs in other relevant (...) propositions, then the account fails to account for knowledge from falsehood. Therefore, the safety account of knowledge is undermined by knowledge from falsehood and ignorance of necessary truths. (shrink)

The safety principle is the view that, roughly, if one knows that p, p could not easily have been false. It is common for safety theorists to relativize safety to belief-formation methods. In this paper, I argue that there is no fixed principle of method-individuation that can stand up to scrutiny. I examine various ways to individuate methods and argue that all of them are subject to serious counterexamples. In the end, I conclude by considering some alternative ways to preserve (...) the insight behind safety without invoking a fixed principle of method-individuation. (shrink)

According to the safety account of knowledge, one knows that p only if one's belief could not easily have been false. An important issue for the account is whether we should only examine the belief in the target proposition when evaluating whether a belief is safe or not. In this paper, it is argued that if we only examine the belief in the target proposition, then the account fails to account for why beliefs in necessary truths could fall short of (...) knowledge. But, if we also examine beliefs in other relevant propositions, then the account fails to preserve epistemic closure. Therefore, the safety account cannot find a safe path between epistemic closure and necessary truths. (shrink)

Ravasio (2023) recently presents an interesting discussion of strategies to deal with lookism. He categorizes strategies into revisionary and redistributive ones and argues for a case against the former. This note is a critical response to both the taxonomy and the evaluation. I argue that the taxonomy needs to be improved and that the case against revisionary strategies cannot be maintained.

Employees perceive illegitimate tasks as inappropriate assignments because such tasks are beyond what they expect to do in any given job position. Extant literature indicates that, in addition to creating psychological strain and reducing well-being, illegitimate task assignments can result in counterproductive work behavior. This study extends the literature by examining whether illegitimate tasks may lead to two specific forms of CWB targeting organizations: destructive voice and time theft. To understand how and when this happens, we investigate the mediating role (...) of moral disengagement and the moderating role of psychological entitlement. Survey results based on 258 supervisor–subordinate dyads in China reveal that illegitimate tasks are positively related to destructive voice and time theft through moral disengagement. Furthermore, psychological entitlement strengthens the positive relationship between illegitimate tasks and moral disengagement and the indirect effect of illegitimate tasks on destructive voice and time theft. Overall, the findings provide insightful theoretical and managerial implications for research related to illegitimate tasks and CWB. (shrink)

Safety accounts of knowledge claim, roughly, that knowledge that p requires that one's belief that p could not have easily been false. Such accounts have been very popular in recent epistemology. However, one serious problem safety accounts have to confront is to explain why certain lottery‐related beliefs are not knowledge, without excluding obvious instances of inductive knowledge. We argue that the significance of this objection has hitherto been underappreciated by proponents of safety. We discuss Duncan Pritchard's recent solution to the (...) problem and argue that it fails. More importantly, the problem reaches deeper and poses a threat to any current safety accounts that require a belief's modal stability in close possibilities (as well as safety accounts that appeal to ‘normality’). We end by arguing that ways out of the problem require substantial reconstruction for a safety‐based account of knowledge. (shrink)

According to the safety principle, if one knows that p, one's belief that p could not easily have been false. One problem besetting this principle is the lottery problem – that of explaining why one does not seem to know that one will lose the lottery purely based on probabilistic considerations, prior to the announcement of the lottery result. As Greco points out, it is difficult for a safety theorist to solve this problem, without paying a heavy price. In this (...) paper, I first reject three existing safety-based solutions to the lottery problem, due to Pritchard, Sosa, and Broncano-Berrocal. Failure of these accounts reveals that there is something crucial missing in the safety principle. By way of remedying this, I propose to integrate a safety principle with a condition regarding one's own awareness of (nearby) error-possibilities. The resulting account, as I argue, enjoys a number of theoretical advantages, including its capacity to handle the lottery problem. (shrink)

In this paper, we employ the unique qualified foreign institutional investors (QFII) scheme in China to investigate whether and how the different religious beliefs in the areas where foreign institutional shareholders from are associated with the corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance of domestic firms. After controlling for other determinants, we find robust evidence that firms with QFII investors from areas with stronger religious beliefs have better CSR performance than those that do not have these beliefs'. This association is more pronounced (...) when a QFII has a shorter holding period, has a relatively large ownership in the firm, or is a more committed investor in China. The above moderating results show that the stock preference may be a channel through which religious QFIIs affect firms’ CSR performance. Our paper contributes to the growing body of literature on CSR and on the effects of investors’ religious beliefs. It also offers useful guidance to listed companies, institutional investors, regulators, and other stakeholders. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the entanglement of the modern concepts of freedom, autonomy, and the modern notion of the subject and how a passion for and insistence on freedom has undermined the reconstruction of human subjectivity in Heidegger and Foucault, and how such passion has also limited the educational effort at addressing the problems brought to education by the modern notion of the subject. Drawing on Levinas, it suggests that a new understanding of freedom as heteronomy will allow us to envision (...) an open subjectivity that is essential for education. Particularly, it looks at Gert Biesta’s recent campaigns for “subjectification” and “the gift of teaching” to analyze the underlying contradictions caused by the entanglement of freedom and subjectivity. (shrink)

It is a commonplace in economics that we should disregard sunk costs. The sunk cost effect might be widespread, goes the conventional wisdom, but we would be better off if we could rid ourselves of it. In this paper, I argue against the orthodoxy by showing that the sunk cost effect is often beneficial. Drawing on discussions of related topics in dynamic choice theory, I show that, in a range of cases, being disposed to honor sunk costs allows an agent (...) to mimic a resolute chooser, someone who adopts the best plan at the outset of a decision problem and sticks with it, even when resoluteness is unfeasible. I discuss several kinds of cases in which honoring sunk costs coincides with resolute choice. (shrink)

The Chinese tianrenheyi thesis bespeaks a correlative cosmology irreducible to the Western metaphysics. This article historicizes tianrenheyi for new implications to help rethink the given concepts of ‘person/thing,’ ‘environment/nature,’ and ‘relationality’ in contemporary ethical and environmental education in three steps. First, it turns to Yu Ying-Shih’s writing for a historical and ethical picture of tianrenheyi as an ‘Axial breakthrough’ in Confucius' time and with direct relevance to Confucian person-making education. Second, it moves on to Roger Ames’ unpacking of tianrenheyi as (...) hospitalized in a ‘correlative cosmology’ and ‘Confucian relational personhood’ to help us re-understand Confucian ‘person’ as being relational. Finally, it shows how these re-invoked philosophical–ethical–cosmological theses expose a ‘foundational individualism’ which grounds and confines current educational thinking to an anthropocentric ordering. As an alternative, this article calls for a productive symbiotic conjoining between humans and their cultural–natural environs toward nurturing today’s youth into ecologically literate, responsible, and responsive co-beings. (shrink)

Biesta has suggested that education after humanism should be interested in existence, not essence, in what the subject can do, not in what the subject is—the truth about the subject—and this is the way inspired by Foucault and Levinas. In this article, I analyze Foucault’s alleged deconstruction and reconfiguration of the subject and Levinas’ approach to human subjectivity and suggest that Foucault’s early and later works have already implied certain concepts of the subject and that Levinas’ approach to human subjectivity (...) does not, as has often been perceived in educational circles, avoid theorizing about human subjectivity. Drawing on the French philosophy of difference, particularly Levinas’ ideas of alterity and subjectivity, I propose a post-humanist subject as a singular existence that ‘announces, promises, and at the same time conceals’, that cannot be exhausted, totalized, and replicated. The singular and unique subject, open and responsible to the world and beyond, is indispensible to the educational mission of subjectification. (shrink)

Philosophers have in recent years displayed an increasing interest in investigating folk metaethical beliefs using rigorous empirical methods. Taken together, these studies put significant pressure on many philosophical theories that depend on the truth of folk moral objectivism, the view that the folk see morality as objectively grounded. Frequently included among the target of criticism is Mackie’s error theory, or more specifically the conceptual claim thereof. Finding this criticism misplaced, Benjamin Fraser tries to exonerate error theory from such accusation by (...) distinguishing different senses of objectivity. In this paper, I show why Fraser’s strategy is not successful so that the pressure empirically brought upon classical error theory is genuine. However, I also argue that even on the new picture suggested by experimental studies, the folk still entertain erroneous beliefs, which, when coupled with plausible metasemantic assumptions and further empirical support, should warrant an error theory after all, though not in its classical form. (shrink)

Empathy was investigated in 592 Mainland Chinese youth using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. Participants’ empathy-related information covering demographic traits, emotional wellness, as well as academic and social problems were recorded. Results of Classification and Regression Tree (CART) analysis showed that emotional empathy, cognitive empathy, and empathy-related personal distress was impacted by inherited traits (e.g., sex), acquired traits (e.g., study major), and a combination of both aspects, respectively. Moreover, empathy was found to be higher in youth in a vulnerable social position (...) (i.e., outlander, female, and ethnic minority) than those in a dominant one (i.e., local, male, and ethnic majority). It was also found that personal distress, rather than empathy, was significantly correlated with academic, social, and emotional problems in the cohort of youth. Hence, the current study provided an innovative observation of the relationships between empathy, personal distress, ethnicity, social vulnerability, wellness, study major, and other key characteristics in Mainland Chinese youth. (shrink)

We prove the Decomposability Conjecture for functions of Baire class $2$ from a Polish space to a separable metrizable space. This partially answers an important open problem in descriptive set theory.

Ever since the outbreak of the coronavirus disease, people have been flooded with vast amounts of information related to the virus and its social consequences. This paper draws on social amplification theory and the extended parallel process model and assesses the following: how two amplification stations—news media and peoples’ personal networks—influence the risk-related perceptions of people and how these risk-related perceptions impact people’s health-protective behaviors. This study surveyed 1,946 participants. The results indicate that peoples’ exposure to news media significantly and (...) positively predicted both perceived efficacy and perceived threat. It also shows that peoples’ exposure to risk-related information through their personal networks negatively predicted their perceived efficacy, but it positively predicted their perceived threat. The mediating effect of fear was examined, and the result was contradictory to the EPPM. In short, this study reveals the underlying mechanism of individuals’ exposure to risk information, processing, and precautionary measures. (shrink)

Depending on whether we are somewhat tolerant of nearby error-possibilities or not, the safety condition on knowledge is open to a strong reading and a weak reading. In this paper, it is argued that induction and conjunction introduction constitute two horns of a dilemma for the safety account of knowledge. If we opt for the strong reading, then the safety account fails to account for inductive knowledge. In contrast, if we opt for the weak reading, then the safety account fails (...) to accommodate knowledge obtained via the method of conjunction introduction. (shrink)

Leo Strauss’s way of reading of Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise got changed after his rediscovery of exotericism. As early as in the comment article on Hermann Cohen’s analysis of Spinoza’s Bible science, Strauss put forward that the Treatise should not be understood on the basis of our readers’ own presupposes of Spinoza’s personal motives. Later, in Spinoza’s Critique of Religion (1930), Strauss indeed read the Treatise literally, trying to understand it on the basis of Spinoza’s explicit statements. After the rediscovery of (...) exotericism in 1930s, however, Strauss’s way of reading got changed. Strauss became very alert to Spinoza’s way of writing. Strauss found that Spinoza spoke with a view to the capacity of the vulgar and practiced exoteric writing. Some of Spinoza’s explicit statements were addressed to the non-philosophic majority and were not Spinoza’s true teachings. Based on this, Strauss regarded not all of Spinoza’s explicit statements, but those most opposed to what Spinoza considered the vulgar view, as well as those with an implication of a heterodox character, as expressing Spinoza’s true views. Strauss shows that “be alert to the art of writing” means two things. First, understand the author’s explicit statements. And second, try to find whether there are teachings that are different from or even opposed to the explicit statements. Keywords: Leo Strauss, exotericism, Spinoza, theologico-political treatise. (shrink)

As an imprint and reinvigoration of Confucian culture, China foregrounds its 21st-century state-run education as to make national(istic) citizens, reinvoking lideshuren (establishing personhood by cultivating moral excellence) as its signature discourse beyond Western frameworks. Drawing upon Foucault’s thinking, this article untangles China’s effort as being epistemologically vexed in three steps. First, I pick up Foucault’s interpellation on language, discourse, and episteme, evoking a possible language-episteme conflation and/or rupture which is crucial to understanding China’s lideshuren knowledge (re)production and translation within and (...) across cultures. Second, I trace lideshuren to a Confucian prototype to make visible its possible historical–cultural murmurings along a correlative relationality episteme. This historical detour enables me to better problematize, in the third section, contemporary China’s remobilizing, transforming, and reinterpreting Confucian lideshuren discourses to both the Chinese and Western wor(l)d along a delimiting modern ‘trap of philology’. This historical–present epistemological comparison, albeit reductive, feeds into my analysis of China’s making of universal–national(istic) citizens at the nexus of nationalism and globalism. By focusing on China, this article provides implications for comparing national educations as making universal individuals in a globalized age. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic affects all population segments and is especially detrimental to university students because social interaction is critical for a rewarding campus life and valuable learning experiences. In particular, with the suspension of in-person activities and the adoption of virtual teaching modalities, university students face drastic changes in their physical activities, academic careers, and mental health. Our study applies a machine learning approach to explore the gender differences among U.S. university students in response to the global pandemic. Leveraging a (...) proprietary survey dataset collected from 322 U.S. university students, we employ association rule mining techniques to identify and compare psychological, cognitive, and behavioral patterns among male and female participants. To formulate our task under the conventional ARM framework, we model each unique question-answer pair of the survey questionnaire as a market basket item. Consequently, each participant's survey report is analogous to a customer's transaction on a collection of items. Our findings suggest that significant differences exist between the two gender groups in psychological distress and coping strategies. In addition, the two groups exhibit minor differences in cognitive patterns and consistent preventive behaviors. The identified gender differences could help professional institutions to facilitate customized advising or counseling for males and females in periods of unprecedented challenges. (shrink)

Volume 30, Issue 6, December 2022, Page 973-991.

The current study uses a two-wave longitudinal survey to explores the influence mechanism of the family environment on adolescents’ academic achievement. The family environment is measured by parents and children’s reports, including family atmosphere, parent–child interaction, and family rules, to reveal the mediating effect of adolescents’ positive or negative peers between the family environment and academic achievement, and whether the gap between self- and parental educational expectation plays a moderating effect. This study uses the data of the China Education Panel (...) Study ; the survey samples include 9,449 eighth-grade students, establishing a multilevel moderated mediating effect model. The results showed the family environment and peer interaction quality can positively predict adolescents’ academic achievement. Using the KHB test, peer interaction quality plays a partial mediating role in the process of family environment positively affecting academic achievement, and the mediating ratio is 27.5%. The educational expectation gap moderates the effect of the family environment on academic achievement and also on peer interaction quality. Therefore, from the perspective of environment and important others, to correctly grasp the academic achievement of junior high school students in the process of socialization, it is necessary to recognize that the family environment, peer interaction quality, and educational expectation gap play an important role. (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel adaptive dynamic programming approach to address the optimal consensus control problem for discrete-time multiagent systems. Compared with the traditional optimal control algorithms for MASs, the proposed algorithm is designed on the basis of the event-triggered scheme which can save the communication and computation resources. First, the consensus tracking problem is transferred into the input-state stable problem. Based on this, the event-triggered condition for each agent is designed and the event-triggered ADP is presented. Second, neural networks (...) are introduced to simplify the application of the proposed algorithm. Third, the stability analysis of the MASs under the event-triggered conditions is provided and the estimate errors of the neural networks’ weights are also proved to be ultimately uniformly bounded. Finally, the simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the event-triggered ADP consensus control method. (shrink)

We argue that i-frame interventions can and do increase support for systemic reforms, and s-frame interventions should be pursued in parallel to address key societal issues. Without accompanying i-frame interventions, s-frame interventions can fail. We offer an operant conditioning framework to generate positive spillover effects. Behavioral scientists should develop i-frame interventions that enhance, rather than compete with, s-frame interventions.

Chinese translation of Dewey's aesthetics.

This article provides a method for estimating the bounds of transaction costs in horizontal mergers. Consider, for example, a completed monopoly merger in linear Cournot oligopolies with 10 symmetric firms. The method shows that its transaction costs are at most 25% (78%) of total premerger profits if there is zero (100%) excess capacity. Such estimations can be extended in a straightforward manner to other mergers and other oligopoly models. The estimation is based both on the profitability precondition, and on the (...) non-empty core precondition, which postulates that the split of a merger’s profits be in its core. The article shows that the core in linear Cournot oligopolies has a non-empty interior, and indicates that the non-empty core precondition also sheds new lights on understanding important issues such as the stylized fact that mergers are likely to occur in markets plagued by excess capacities; why profitable mergers might not be formed; and why completed mergers might break up in the future. (shrink)

It is well documented that self-control has a positive effect on individuals’ subjective well-being. However, little research has focused on the moderators underlying this relationship. The present research used two studies to examine the moderating role of both trait and state motivation on the relationship between self-control and subjective well-being using psychometric and experimental models, respectively. In Study 1, we explored whether trait motivation moderated the relationship between trait self-control and subjective well-being using a psychometric model. In Study 2, we (...) examined the moderating effects of both trait and state motivation on the effect of state self-control on subjective well-being using an experimental model. Our results indicated that self-control had a positive effect on subjective well-being, with this relationship being primarily moderated by prevention motivation. When state and trait prevention motivations were congruent, self-control had the most obvious impact on subjective well-being. This study suggests that current understandings around the association between self-control and happiness is limited, implying that motivation should be the focus of future research. (shrink)

New energy vehicle is an innovative means of transportation, and its development has been widely concerned all over the world. However, few studies investigate the purchase intention of new energy vehicles from the perspective of combining altruism and cultural factors. Based on the extended norm activation model, this study explores the influencing factors of NEVs’ purchasing intention and the moderating effects of “mianzi” and green peer influence. According to 302 valid questionnaires, the results indicated that the extended NAM model is (...) useful in predicting consumer purchasing behavior with an improved explanatory power in purchase intentions of NEVs from 15 to 26%. The awareness of consequences, the ascription of responsibility, and green self-identity have a positive impact on the personal norm. Personal norm and green self-identity are positively associated with purchase intention. “Mianzi” and green peer influence positively moderate the relationship between green self-identity and intention to purchase. The findings give new insights into the impact of cultural factors on purchasing NEVs and profound suggestions for policymakers and enterprises to promote the development of NEVs. (shrink)

The setting in which people generate ideas and work collaboratively to solve problems is gradually shifting from traditional face-to-face communities to virtual communities. Virtual communities are, therefore, becoming a new source of creative ideas. Nevertheless, online creativity is not without challenges. The main obstacle seems to be a lack of active engagement from participants within these virtual communities, resulting in a low quality and quantity of creative content when compared to traditional methods of creation. Research suggests that successfully generating creative (...) ideas online involves sustained, active engagement among collaborators. A number of studies have investigated various factors related to the generation of creative ideas within virtual communities. However, a comprehensive understanding of contributing factors remains elusive. This study examines past research on the factors that drive creative ideas generation in online creative communities through a systematic literature review. The study seeks to analyze research findings over the past decade and provide an overview of the main driving factors, research areas, research trends, and implications for future research. Web of Science and Scopus were used to identify relevant articles, while Google Scholar was used to minimize the risk of missing any valuable data related to the aim of this study. The results provide an overview of the studies examining creative ideas generation within virtual communities. By approaching the subject matter from three primary perspectives, this paper identifies influencing factors associated with the successful generation of creative ideas online. The results of the paper also provide an overview of the research methods and guiding theories adopted by current researchers. The paper concludes with research trends and recommendations for future research. (shrink)

本书内容包括:政治的发生;城帮,民众和广场;最好的国家;从世界问题开始的天下政治;治与乱等。.

本书包括社会建构论与科学社会研究的转向、科学知识社会学的学术实践、双重黑箱:传统社会学的科学观等。.