From Han Yu’s yuan Dao 原道 (retracing the Dao) to Ouyang Xiu’s lun ben 论本 (discussing the root), the conflicts arising from Confucianists’ rejection of Buddhism were focused on one point, namely, the examination of zhongxin suo shou 中心所守 (something kept in mind). The attitude towards the distinction between mind and trace, and the proper approach to erase the gap between emptiness and being, as well as that between the expedient and the true, became the major concerns unavoidable for various (...) thinkers to integrate the two teachings and to propel academic development. To understand by mind and to blame for matter were of crucial methodological significance for transcendence in both Confucianism and Buddhism. The arguments of Confucian scholars like Zhang Zai and the Cheng brothers on the identity of mind and trace and the unity of void and solid are mutually manifested. The same mind with the same principle means mind is principle. The common axis of Confucianism and Buddhism exists in the emphasis on mind beyond trace. The unification of mind and trace or the accordance of body and function has actually become the cardinal foundation for the possible mergence of the Three Teachings. (shrink)

Neo-Confucianism of the Han and Tang dynasties is an indispensable part of the history of Chinese philosophy. From Han dynasty Confucians to Tang dynasty Confucians, the study of Confucian classics evolved progressively from textual research to conceptual explanation. A significant sign of this transformation is the book Lunyu Bijie 论语笔解 (A Written Explanation of the Analects), co-authored by Han Yu and Li Ao. Making use of the tremendous room for interpretation within the Analects, the book studied and reorganized the relationship (...) between the study of literature and the Dao and principles. It clearly shows an inevitable development of Confucianism, shifting its focus from phenomena to the nature of the heart-mind in order to comprehend nature and heavenly Dao, both of which cannot be heard (from Confucius). (shrink)

Interrogating the totalizing perspectives on Chinese gender studies that typically treat China only in binary opposition to the West, “Other Genders, Other Sexualities” focuses on the dynamics of difference within China and probes the complex history of Chinese sexuality and gender formations. The centerpiece of this special issue is the first English translation of Li Xiaojiang’s 1983 post-Mao feminist retheorization of women’s emancipation and sexual differences. Other topics addressed include the emergence of the “modern girl” in early twentieth-century China, the (...) legacy of socialist gender practices in rural cultures, transgender performance on Chinese television, the political ambivalence of Chinese gay identity in the cinema, and early Chinese gender configurations in East Han art and writing. By recognizing the gender implications of China’s competing economic ideologies, this issue generates critical insights and new perspectives for the study of Chinese history, gender and sexuality, and feminist culture. Contributors:_Hongwei Bao, Tani Barlow, Dong Limin, Chengzhou He, Sarah Kile, Li Xiaojiang, Lingzhen Wang, Yu Shiling Lingzhen Wang_ is Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at Brown University. She is the author of _Personal Matters: Women's Autobiographical Practice in Twentieth-Century China_. (shrink)

This book is the result of the first SEEP (Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy) conference that was held in Asia. First, the Western tradition is reinterpreted and restated by the two editors with their diversified perspective of virtue ethics and communicative ethics. Then, new approaches such as "critical realism", "reciprocal delivery", "evolutionary thought" and "cultural studies" are applied to understand ethical problems in economics. Further, in contrast to the reassessment of Scottish moral philosophy and German Romanticism, Chinese, Japanese, and (...) Korean ethical thinking is examined under the modern perspective. This book does not miss the reflections on current problems around the penetration of corruption and the primacy of shareholders' value in the field of business. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the problem of time in modern science, where in recent years there have been major changes related to the latest discoveries in the field of the foundations of quantum theory. The author refers to works of K.-F. von Weizsacker (which works are not well-known in Russian-speaking field). Weizsacker deploys a large-scale program of building modern physics, while starting (not only as a physicist, but also a professional philosopher) with questions of philosophical interpretation of postulates of (...) modern physics, especially quantum mechanics. His key thesis is that time in physics is fundamentally distinct, which represents the whole physics as an integral scientific discipline. Weizsacker comes from physical and philosophical reflections, that give a special value to his work. Analyzing the conclusions of theoretical physics, namely the issues of substantiation of statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, and, above all, quantum mechanics, Weizsacker comes to the key idea of the structure of time in the substantiation of physical theory. The author in this conclusion disagrees with the opinion of most modern physicists that time has a subjective character, and the modus of the past, present and future reflects its essential character. The allocation of the time structure requires special logic. Such a logic is temporal and quantum. Starting from temporal logic, introducing the concept of possibility and probability, he comes to the substantiation of quantum mechanics. Being modal logic, it is based on the concept of possibility and probability. Key concept for Weizsacker is a binary alternative (Uralternative), closely related to the principle of superposition in quantum mechanics. By introducing the concept of certain alternatives, essentially actualized alternatives, Weizsacker shows how one can get the theory of relativity with its space-time structure. Further, he shows that based on its structure, you can get the theory of relativity. The space-time structure in this case is secondary, relational, as understood by Leibniz, Mach, and Einstein. (shrink)

Both Carnap and Quine made significant contributions to the philosophy of mathematics despite their diversedviews. Carnap endorsed the dichotomy between analytic and synthetic knowledge and classified certainmathematical questions as internal questions appealing to logic and convention. On the contrary, Quine wasopposed to the analytic-synthetic distinction and promoted a holistic view of scientific inquiry. The purpose of thispaper is to argue that in light of the recent advancement of experimental mathematics such as Monte Carlosimulations, limiting mathematical inquiry to the domain of (...) logic is unjustified. Robustness studies implemented inMonte Carlo Studies demonstrate that mathematics is on par with other experimental-based sciences. (shrink)

The Rising Sun Battlefield Journal published by the East-Is-Red Commune of the Beijing Institute of Light Industry devoted as many as six pages to an all-out attack of "On Family Background" in a long and despicable article titled "The Big Poisonous Weed ‘On Family Background’ Must Be Torn Up by the Roots." In their own words, the appearance of this article was inevitable at a time when the Cultural Revolution reached the stage of great alliance [of mass rebel organizations] and (...) the great power seizure [from capitalist-roaders within the Party]. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 210 Seiten: 151-166.

The BP neural network model is a hot issue in recent academic research, and it has been successfully applied to many other fields, but few researchers apply the BP neural network model to the field of automobile insurance. The main method that has been used in the prediction of the total claim amount in automobile insurance is the generalized linear model, where the BP neural network model could provide a different approach to estimate the total claim loss. This paper uses (...) a genetic algorithm to optimize the structure of the BP neural network at first, and the calculation speed is significantly improved. At the same time, by considering the overfitting problem, an early stop method is introduced to avoid the overfitting problem. In the model, a three-layer BP neural network model, which includes the input layer, hidden layer, and output layer, is trained. With consideration of various factors, a total claim amount prediction model is established, and the trained BP neural network model is used to predict the total claim amount of automobile insurance based on the data of the training set. The results show that the accuracy of the prediction by using the BP neural network model to both the data of Shandong Province and to the data of six cities is over 95%. Then, the predicted total claim amount is used to calculate premiums for five cities in Shandong Province according to credibility theory. The results show that the average premium of the five cities is slightly higher than the actual claim amount of the city. The combination of BP neural network and credibility theory can perform accurate claim amount estimation and pricing for automobile insurance, which can effectively improve the current situation of the automobile insurance business and promote the development of insurance industry. (shrink)

This study compared the effects of three education models, namely, the bag-of-virtues, values clarification, and virtue ethics models, through qualitative and quantitative approaches. In the quantitative study, a between-subjects design was adopted in sampling 120 freshman cadets from a Taiwanese military academy. For the qualitative study, focus group interviews were conducted with 10 freshman cadets. The results show that the VC model was the most effective among the three moral education models, followed by the VE and BV models.

While online medical consultations have become increasingly popular, not least in times when epidemics make access to medical facilities difficult, research exploring the interactive value of OMC is still in its infancy. This study examines patients’ disalignment with speculative diagnosis and its management by doctors in OMC interactions, which to my best knowledge are not examined. From a discourse analytic perspective, this study adopts Du Bois’s notion of stance-taking to approach text-based interactions collected from a widely used OMC website in (...) China. This study finds that patients’ disalignment is often based on hard evidence, which is different from the major findings of previous studies. When addressing such disalignment, doctors adopt varied discursive strategies, which are hardly mentioned in prior studies, in particular, strategies that address the affective aspect of patients’ disalignment. This study thus provides a different perspective on disalignment and its management in the clinical context. (shrink)

Lester Embree is very concerned with the issue of culture in his philosophical thinking. Besides his preoccupation with the cultural disciplines, he explores the notions of culture in Schutz and Gurwitsch. He even brings up the term “phenomenology of culture.” With inspirations from Embree, the present paper intends to explore culture as a phenomenological theme. Starting with elaboration on the concept of cultural object in both Husserl and Schutz, the paper focuses on the question of cultural difference and universalism. I (...) contend that despite apparent differences between Schutz and Husserl, there is close positioning between them. In the final part of my paper, I make a deeper reflection on the problem of cultural difference.Lester Embree está muy preocupado con el tema de la cultura en su pensamiento filosófico. Además de su preocupación por las disciplinas culturales, explora las nociones de cultura en Schutz y Gurwitsch. Incluso menciona el término "fenomenología de la cultura". Con inspiraciones de Embree, el presente documento pretende explorar la cultura como un tema fenomenológico. Comenzando con la elaboración del concepto de objeto cultural tanto en Husserl como en Schutz, el artículo se centra en la cues-tión de la diferencia cultural y el universalismo. Sostengo que a pesar de las aparentes diferencias entre Schutz y Husserl, existe un posicionamiento cercano entre ellos. En la parte final de mi trabajo, hago una reflexión más profunda sobre el problema de la diferencia cultural. (shrink)

This study draws the attention towards the importance of reducing weight discrimination against children for their educational success, as an issue of social justice. We investigate the consequences of early-onset obesity identifying the mediating mechanisms in the relationship between childhood obesity and academic achievement. To do so, we employ the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort in the US and apply a parallel process latent growth model with a combination of quasi-experiments and econometrics. The results of this study suggest that teachers (...) may serve as a significant source of weight bias, especially for girls. (shrink)

Our computational studies of infant language learning estimate the inherent difficulty of Arbib's proposal. We show that body language provides a strikingly helpful scaffold for learning language that may be necessary but not sufficient, given the absence of sophisticated language in other species. The extraordinary language abilities of Homo sapiens must have evolved from other pressures, such as sexual selection.

In recent years, the path planning of robot has been a hot research direction, and multirobot formation has practical application prospect in our life. This article proposes a hybrid path planning algorithm applied to robot formation. The improved Rapidly Exploring Random Trees algorithm PQ-RRT ∗ with new distance evaluation function is used as a global planning algorithm to generate the initial global path. The determined parent nodes and child nodes are used as the starting points and target points of the (...) local planning algorithm, respectively. The dynamic window approach is used as the local planning algorithm to avoid dynamic obstacles. At the same time, the algorithm restricts the movement of robots inside the formation to avoid internal collisions. The local optimal path is selected by the evaluation function containing the possibility of formation collision. Therefore, multiple mobile robots can quickly and safely reach the global target point in a complex environment with dynamic and static obstacles through the hybrid path planning algorithm. Numerical simulations are given to verify the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed hybrid path planning algorithm. (shrink)

We study the computational complexity of finding a line that bisects simultaneously two sets in the two-dimensional plane, called the pancake problem, using the oracle Turing machine model of Ko. We also study the basic problem of bisecting a set at a given direction. Our main results are: (1) The complexity of bisecting a nice (thick) polynomial-time approximable set at a given direction can be characterized by the counting class #P. (2) The complexity of bisecting simultaneously two linearly separable nice (...) (thick) polynomial-time approximable sets can be characterized by the counting class #P. (3) For either of these two problems, without the thickness condition and the linear separability condition (for the two-set case), it is arbitrarily hard to compute the bisector, even if it is unique. (shrink)

A distinction is made between structural and semantic knowledge, focusing on the possible influences of the latter. To the extent that early vision may be influenced by object-identity, it would seem necessary to evoke compiled transducers to explain such an influence. Compiled transducers may furnish a way in which vision can be and is penetrated.

The historical development of debates about reduction testifies to us that reductionism in biology must proceed by providing a precise and complete causal explanation for every biological phenomenon at the level of molecules. An intertheoretical reduction model was proposed in biology but proved unsuccessful due to its inability to accommodate and explain the success of molecular biology. Ever since the molecular structure of the gene was discovered, actual biological research has successfully generated explanations for complex biological facts in terms of (...) the predicates of molecular biology. Biological phenomena, which classical functional biology explains only with limited powers, are more accurately described and comprehensively explained as the reduction processes advance with molecular biology. It is clear that the reductionist research program of molecular biology is the best account of success and progress in biology. (shrink)

Independent narration in Chinese philosophy has gone through the process of interpretation, critical differentiation, dialogue, and original thought, and so is a creative activity that surpasses the conjunctive pattern of universality and particularity. In modern Confucian studies, there has always been a tension between philosophical and historical explanations, which suggests a tension between ecumenical and indigenous experiences. Critical differentiation itself only has methodological significance, and is not a goal in itself. China’s development and strength has encouraged China to engage in (...) philosophical dialogue with the West. It is the task and direction of future philosophical creativity to face the contemporary existence, re-construct Confucianism’s relationship with modern life, and respond in a metaphysical and positive manner to the challenges imposed by modernity. (shrink)

This paper interprets Knight’s views of the firm from the standpoint of his theory of human agency. Focusing on the coordination perspective, this paper argues that Knightian firms are institutions which deal with intersubjective uncertainty. The fundamental principle underlying an organized activity is the reduction of the uncertainty inherent in judgements and decisions by grouping the decisions of a particular individual and estimating the proportion of successes and failures. Coordinating activities by the use of the firm, shift focus and interest (...) from errors in human agents’ opinions of things to errors in their opinions of other people. By routinizing some judgements in the form of wage payments, firms allow the coordination of the interests of various parties and thus reduce uncertainty. Furthermore, entrepreneurs conduct economic calculation and bet their judgements on the value of the factors of production they employ. Correct entrepreneurial judgement is the ultimate source of profit. This paper calls for a research agenda on the theory of the firm to incorporate Knight’s insights.Cet article interprète la vision knightienne de la firme du point de vue de sa théorie de l’agent humain. En s’intéressant principalement à l’enjeu de la coordination, cet article soutient que les entreprises sont, selon Knight, des institutions qui “agissent” en incertitude intersubjective. Le principe fondamental qui sous-tend une activité organisée est la réduction de l’incertitude inhérent aux jugements et décisions par le regroupement des décisions d’un individu et l’estimation des proportions de succès et d’échecs. Les activités de coordination par le biais de l’entreprise, déplacent le sujet d’étude et l’intérêt des erreurs dans les opinions qu’ont les agents humains à propos des choses vers leurs erreurs d’opinion sur les autres personnes. En rendant routiniers les jugements par la pratique de paiements de salaires, les firmes permettent la coordination des intérêts de parties variées et réduisent ainsi l’incertitude. De plus, les entrepreneurs procèdent à des calculs économiques et fondent leurs jugements sur la valeur des facteurs de production qu’ils emploient. Le jugement entrepreneurial correct est l’ultime source de profit. Cet article plaide en faveur d’un programme de recherche en théorie de l’entreprise qui incorpore les perspectives ouvertes par Knight. (shrink)

There is an interesting convergence between Michael Polanyi and Wittgenstein with respect to the problem of doubt. Polanyi carries out his “critique of doubt” on the basis of the distinction between explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge and examines explicit doubt and tacit doubt. On the level of explicit doubt, Polanyi debunks the paradoxical nature of the principle of universal doubt and illuminates the fiduciary character of doubt. The introduction of the tacit dimension into the discussion of the problem of human (...) knowledge leads Polanyi to discover tacit doubt. Polanyi’s critique of doubt finds strong echoes in Wittgenstein, especially in his On Certainty. Nevertheless, there are important differences between two thinkers. Wittgenstein’s emphasis on the practical aspect of a world-picture and Polanyi’s sensitivity to tacit doubt are among the most prominent items that set them apart. (shrink)