PurposeThis study investigated the impact of age and myopia on visual form perception among Chinese school-age children.MethodsThis cross-sectional study included 1,074 students with a mean age of 12.1 ± 4.7 years. The mean spherical equivalence refraction of the participants was −1.45 ± 2.07 D. All participants underwent distance visual acuity, refraction measurement and local and global visual form perception test including orientation, parallelism, collinearity, holes and color discrimination tasks.ResultsThe reaction times of emmetropes were slower than those of myopic and high (...) myopic groups on both local and global discrimination tasks. A reduction in reaction times was found with increasing age on both local and global discrimination tasks. Age was significantly associated with both local and global visual perception performance after adjusting for gender, visual acuity and SER.ConclusionsThis study revealed that both local and global visual perception improve with age among Chinese children and that myopes seem to have better visual perception than emmetropes. (shrink)

This paper reconciles an inconsistency between the benefits of mind wandering and a prominent conception of attention in philosophy and cognitive psychology, namely, the prioritization view. Since we prioritize the information in a task less if we are doing it while mind wandering compared to solely concentrating on it, why does our performance in the task sometimes improve when we are mind wandering? To explain this, we offer a conception of diffuse attention that generalizes from external to internal forms of (...) attention and captures deep commonalities between the two (Chun et al. 2011). We conceptualize mind wandering as an instance of internal diffuse attention that also induces diffuse attention in other concurrent tasks. Moreover, pace the prioritization view, certain tasks are in fact better performed with diffuse attention, which prioritizes information less than focused attention. Our account of mind wandering as an instance of the more general category of diffuse attention improves upon current leading philosophical views of mind wandering (such as Irving 2016) by better explaining the interaction between mind wandering and other tasks. (shrink)

Some of our beliefs are institutional; that is, beliefs whose content is to a large extent shaped by institutions, such as beliefs about intellectual property, trade policy, or traffic rules. In this chapter, we propose a novel account of institutional beliefs, as we call them. In particular, we argue that institutional beliefs are primarily attributable to social entities, such as groups or collectives, and only secondarily to individual agents. This is because institutional beliefs respond to specific problems that, in principle, (...) only collectives face. However, existing methodology in behavioural science primarily relies on eliciting beliefs through individual choice data, which presents challenges for empirically modelling our proposed concept of institutional beliefs. To address this challenge, we propose to speak of institutional beliefs attributable to individual agents as ‘qua beliefs’. That is, institutional beliefs attributable to individual agents acting qua members of certain institutionally shaped groups. Within this framework, individuals’ qua actions occur in a shared realm of problems that can only be addressed through collective efforts. The relationship between individuals and their groups can be rendered tractable under formalised conditions. Under these conditions, choice data collected from individuals need not obstruct the elicitation of institutional beliefs for empirical study at both the collective and the individual level. We refer to these conditions as “IS conditions”, which are developed based on the synthesis between an interpretationist understanding of mental states and standard models of revealed preference theory as used in experimental economics. For an illustration of how this approach can be operationalised experimentally, we direct our readers to chapter 10 of this volume, where an experimental study applied our account of institutional beliefs. (shrink)

The development of artificial perception technologies has surpassed the limitations of human natural senses, expanding humanity's perspectives on the world and self-awareness. However, it has simultaneously introduced new ethical challenges. These emerging challenges necessitate a philosophical reexamination of concepts such as 'nature,' 'artificial,' and ' invasiveness ' to better address associated issues. The advancement of artificial perception technologies not only involves scientific and practical applications but also profoundly influences human values, social ethics, and the future trajectory of human civilization. Amidst (...) the current transformation and transition in modes of cognition, reevaluating the relationship between technology and humanity becomes a crucial task. (shrink)

Hybrid belief aggregation addresses aggregation of individual probabilistic beliefs into collective binary beliefs. In line with the development of judgment aggregation theory, our research delves into the identification of precise agenda conditions associated with some key impossibility theorems in the context of hybrid belief aggregation. We determine the necessary and sufficient level of logical interconnection between the propositions in an agenda for some key impossibilities to arise. Specifically, we prove three characterization theorems about hybrid belief aggregation: (i) Precisely the path-connected (...) and pair-negatable agendas lead to the ‘oligarchy result’—only oligarchic rules satisfy universal domain, proposition-wise independence, respect for unanimity, and deductive closure of collective beliefs. (ii) Precisely the negation-connected agendas lead to the ‘triviality result’—only unanimity rules satisfy those conditions as well as anonymity. (iii) Precisely the blocked agendas lead to the ‘non-existence result’—no rules satisfy those conditions as well as completeness and consistency of collective beliefs. Furthermore, we compare these novel findings with existing agenda-theoretic characterization theorems in the domains of judgment aggregation and belief binarization. (shrink)

A motivating reason is a reason an agent acts for. There are two pre-theoretical intuitions about motivating reasons that seem irreconcilable. One intuition suggests that motivating reasons are factive, and the other says the opposite. As a result, a divide exists between philosophers, each side prioritizing one intuition to the detriment of the other. In this essay, I present the deliberative theory of motivating reasons and defend the second intuition that motivating reasons are non-factive. To do this, we must understand (...) motivating reasons’ role in our deliberation. I show that non-factive motivating reasons are compatible with the underlying role which gives rise to the intuition of reasons’ factivity. (shrink)

In this study, we draw on moral cleansing theory to investigate the consequence of unethical pro-organizational behavior from the perspective of the actors. Specifically, we hypothesize that after conducting UPB, people may feel guilty and tend to cleanse their wrongdoings by providing suggestions or identifying problems at work. We further hypothesize that the above relationship is moderated by the actor’s moral identity symbolization. We conducted three studies, including experiment and surveys, to test our hypotheses. Results of these studies show consistent (...) support to our hypotheses. In particular, individuals reported more felt guilt after conducting UPB, and they tended to compensate with more prohibitive and promotive voice subsequently. In addition, the indirect relationship from UPB acting to both voice behaviors via felt guilt was stronger for people with a high level of moral identity symbolization. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that reactive attitudes play a central role in our practices concerned with holding people responsible. However, it remains controversial which emotional attitudes count as reactive attitudes such that they are eligible for this central role. Specifically, though theorists near universally agree that guilt is a reactive attitude, they are much more hesitant on whether to also include shame. This paper presents novel arguments for the view that shame is a reactive attitude. The arguments also support the (...) view that shame is a reactive attitude in the sense that concerns moral accountability. The discussion thereby challenges both the view that shame is not a reactive attitude at all, suggested by philosophers such as R. Jay Wallace and Stephen Darwall, and the view that shame is a reactive attitude but does not concern moral accountability, recently defended by Andreas Carlsson and Douglas Portmore. (shrink)

The development of artificial perception technologies has surpassed the limitations of human natural senses, expanding humanity's perspectives on the world and self-awareness. However, it has simultaneously introduced new ethical challenges. These emerging challenges necessitate a philosophical reexamination of concepts such as 'nature,' 'artificial,' and ' invasiveness ' to better address associated issues. The advancement of artificial perception technologies not only involves scientific and practical applications but also profoundly influences human values, social ethics, and the future trajectory of human civilization. Amidst (...) the current transformation and transition in modes of cognition, reevaluating the relationship between technology and humanity becomes a crucial task. (shrink)

The ideal of filiality ( xiao) – care and reverence for elderly parents and ancestors – is one of the central values in Confucianism. It has been hugely influential in Chinese society. However, it has often been misused and vulgarized in practice, leading to significant human suffering. Hence, there is a need to articulate a morally defensible and realistic interpretation of filiality that is appropriate for the Chinese context. In this article, I articulate an account of filiality that can be (...) deployed to enhance understanding of the ideal, criticize misuses and promote healthy relations among family members. I argue that filiality comprises five parts that have been influential in Confucian philosophy and Chinese society. For each component, I demonstrate that a morally defensible and realistic interpretation must be sensitive to the age and health condition of family members, as well as the particularities of modern Chinese society such as the legacy of the one-child policy. I support my argument with empirical research findings from China. I do not deny the possibility that my argument may be valid outside of China, but I leave it as an open question. (shrink)

An amplitude controllable hyperjerk system is constructed for chaos producing by introducing a nonlinear factor of memristor. In this case, the amplitude control is realized from a single coefficient in the memristor. The hyperjerk system has a line of equilibria and also shows extreme multistability indicated by the initial value-associated bifurcation diagram. FPGA-based circuit realization is also given for physical verification. Finally, the proposed memristive hyperjerk system is successfully predicted with artificial neural networks for AI based engineering applications.

Using a combination of co-citation and co-word analysis, this paper reviewed the intellectual structure of the sales ethics research domain and its development over time. This multi-method bibliometric analysis included 183 sales ethics articles published between 1990 and 2020. Using co-citation analysis, we identified intellectual clusters within the research domain and explored the evolution of these clusters across three decades. We further leveraged co-word analysis to identify core themes (keywords) and delineated the field’s changing landscape. The evolutionary trends and keyword (...) network disconnections (i.e., structural holes) suggest promising areas for future research. In particular, our analyses identified potentially fruitful opportunities related to topics such as compensation, relationship marketing outcomes, salesperson job attitudes and well-being, training, sales force control, and sales technology. (shrink)

This essay aims to rectify a failure on the part of Western philosophers of technology to attend to the creative philosophical work of Li Bocong at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. After a brief account of Li Bocong’s personal contacts with the West and some remarks on his relationship to Marxism, we take up three aspects of his philosophy that can contribute to enlarging Western philosophical thinking about engineering and technology: (1) Li’s analysis of engineering as (...) more than design, (2) his argument for the relevance of the sociology of engineering, and (3) his conceptualization of engineering ethics as more than professional ethics. (shrink)

This article is one of the author’s serial writings to assimilate Ricoeur’s three-fold ethical investigation into various areas of human acts of forgetting, including 1) the therapeutic or pathological area, 2) the pragmatic area, dealing with individual and group’s self-identity in relation to time and otherness, and 3) the more explicitly ethical-political (social and institutional) area, in a wide context. Corresponding to the second area of the Ricoeurian three-fold investigation, this paper probes the ethical dimension of the Zhuangzian forgetfulness of (...) personal identity in relation to time and otherness. It first examines textual materials of the Zhuangzi to navigate on the narrative meanings of forgetting oneself or personal identity, and then delves into three domains of Zhuangzian conception on the forgetting of one’s fixed identity. Finally, it elaborates on the Zhuangzian notion of relational autonomy or agency that underlies the practice of forgetfulness of oneself or personal identity. (shrink)

The rapid progress of artificial intelligence (AI) has resulted in its integration into various stages of the media process, including information gathering, processing, and distribution. This integration has raised the possibility of AI dominating the media industry, leading to an era of “autonomous driving” within AI-driven media systems. Similar to the ethical dilemma known as the “trolley problem” (TP) in autonomous driving, a comparable problem arises in AI automated media. This study examines the emergence of the new TP in fully (...) automated AI-driven media (FAAIM), recognizing the complexity of this problem given the nature of media content and its societal impact. To address this complexity, we propose the adoption of the theory of “meaningful human control,” originally developed to address responsibility in the governance of lethal autonomous weapons systems, as a framework for governing FAAIM. By ensuring that humans can be held responsible for the operations of FAAIM, this paper aims to proactively confront the ethical challenges arising from FAAIM, identify potential solutions, and guide future research in media ethics. (shrink)

Despite growing recognition of the interconnectedness between climate change and modern slavery within supply chains, these issues are often studied in isolation, leading to a fragmented understanding of their relationship. This research aims to bridge this gap by investigating the key factors in supply chains that influence both climate change and modern slavery and how interactions among supply chain stakeholders impact the relationship between them. Utilising the PRISMA literature review method, we systematically reviewed 56 articles to identify the underlying mechanisms (...) and stakeholders' interactions that influence the dynamics between climate change and modern slavery in supply chains. Our findings culminate in a conceptual model that delineates 11 factors bi-directionally impacting both climate change and modern slavery. These factors include social (migration, violent conflict, and war as well as tradition and culture), environmental (deforestation, soil erosion, disruption of protected area, extreme weather, and resource) and economic (liabilities, employment, education, and pandemic). Furthermore, it highlights how stakeholder interactions at the government, NGO, supplier, focal firm, worker, and consumer levels impact this relationship. Finally, the model underscores the potential of technology adoption, sustainable development strategies, and stakeholder engagement and collaboration as levers to positively influence the relationship between climate change and modern slavery in supply chains. (shrink)

Background: Pediatric COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy hinders the establishment of immune barrier in children. Psychological flexibility may be a key contributing factor to pediatric COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, and self-efficacy and coping style play an important role in the relationship, but the underlying mechanisms remain unknown.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on parents from June 2021 to July 2021. A total of 382 parents were recruited for an online-investigation. Serial mediation models were used to examine whether self-efficacy and coping style mediated in (...) the psychological flexibility-pediatric COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy linkage.Result: Psychological flexibility was negatively related to pediatric COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Coping styles rather than self-efficacy played a mediating role independently. Serial mediation analyses indicated that self-efficacy and coping style co-play a serial mediating role in the association of psychological flexibility and pediatric COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.Conclusion: The present study showed that high psychological flexibility, high self-efficacy, and positive coping style were conducive to the lower pediatric COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has exerted a profound impact on numerous facets of our daily lives, including in higher education. International students have encountered unique challenges due to their vulnerability stemming from living abroad, including cultural adjustments, language barriers, and separation from families and friends. This review aims to examine the educational, financial, sociocultural and psychological impacts experienced by international students in the context of the pandemic and identify areas requiring support for this group. A systematic search of eight databases yielded (...) 78 relevant papers for inclusion. Through a systematic qualitative synthesis, this review presents an increased understanding of the multifaceted impact of COVID-19 on international students, encompassing five key themes: 1) unprecedented learning barriers, 2) stalled transnational mobility, 3) heightened financial, social, and cultural challenges, 4) exacerbated racism and racial discrimination, and 5) increased mental health risks. By systematically synthesising the distinctive challenges faced by international students in the context of the pandemic, this review provides recommendations for evidence-based support for international students in the post-pandemic era. (shrink)

Music is the universal language of mankind. The process of learning music can be understood as the process of constantly copying and spreading cultural memes. The term "mime" here comes from meme theory, which is a theory that studies cultural imitation and aims to explore the evolutionary model of cultural information dissemination. According to the principle of meme theory, music education itself is a process of cultural dissemination, which is transmitted to different meme carriers through imitation and replication. At present, (...) music education, especially instrumental music education, focuses on teaching performance skills, so there are many performers and educators who "only focus on skills". The author believes that this process should be based on the transmission of metaphysical music culture to be more in line with the philosophical meaning of education? Is education based on meme theory more effective? In order to verify this view, the author selected 20 students from a primary school and conducted a piano teaching experiment lasting 7 months. In the end, it was proved that the piano teaching model of " listening, reading, and playing" based on meme theory has a more benign improvement on students, and also revealed the philosophical significance of music education under the perspective of meme theory and the practical path of the future development of music education. (shrink)

This study focuses on learning effects between firms connected by common ownership. We explore the learning effects in a certain setting that how decision-makers in focal firms learn from punishments for fraudulent disclosure in their co-owned firms. Baseline results show that punishments for fraudulent disclosure in co-owned firms reduce information disclosure fraud in focal firms. The effects still exist after excluding other potential channels of learning. In mechanism analyses, similarities between focal firms and their co-owned firms and influential common shareholders (...) enhance the learning effects. Further, after the events in co-owned firms, there is improvement in internal control in focal firms, which contributes to the reduction of fraudulent disclosure. Additionally, empirical results mitigate the concern that the reduction of fraud is not driven by the learning argued in this paper but decision-makers alternatively conducting more other unethical behaviors such as real earnings management. In sum, empirical results support the existence of learning effects. As common ownership is an important but highly underexplored linkage between firms, future research can study learning effects between firms connected by common ownership in other suitable settings. (shrink)

Mitochondrial homeostasis serves as a cornerstone of cellular function, orchestrating a delicate balance between energy production, redox status, and cellular signaling transduction. This equilibrium involves a myriad of interconnected processes, including mitochondrial dynamics, quality control mechanisms, and biogenesis and degradation. Perturbations in mitochondrial homeostasis have been implicated in a wide range of diseases, including neurodegenerative diseases, metabolic syndromes, and aging‐related disorders. In the past decades, the discovery of numerous mitochondrial proteins and signaling has led to a more complete understanding of (...) the intricate mechanisms underlying mitochondrial homeostasis. Recent studies have revealed that Family with sequence similarity 210 member A (FAM210A) is a novel nuclear‐encoded mitochondrial protein involved in multiple aspects of mitochondrial homeostasis, including mitochondrial quality control, dynamics, cristae remodeling, metabolism, and proteostasis. Here, we review the function and physiological role of FAM210A in cellular and organismal health. This review discusses how FAM210A acts as a regulator on mitochondrial inner membrane to coordinate mitochondrial dynamics and metabolism. (shrink)

Previous research on the detrimental consequences of employees' unethical pro-organizational behaviors (UPB) has been based mainly on cognitive dissonance theory. The authors suggest that moral disengagement theory and cognitive dissonance theory can be used to explain the negative effects of UPB. We conducted two studies, including a scenario experiment and a survey, to test the mediating roles of moral identity and moral disengagement and the moderating role of performance pressure in the relationship between UPB and organizational deviance. The results revealed (...) that UPB impacts organizational deviance through moral identity and moral disengagement and that distinct psychological reactions are differentially moderated by performance pressure. Employees who face low levels of performance pressure are more receptive to the effects of moral identity; in contrast, employees who face high levels of performance pressure are more receptive to the effects of moral disengagement. The theoretical and managerial implications of this research are discussed. (shrink)

In this study, we focus on the problem of information expiration when using the traditional collaborative filtering algorithm and propose a new collaborative filtering algorithm by integrating the time factor. This algorithm considers information influence attenuation over time, introduces an information retention period based on the information half-value period, and proposes a time-weighted function, which is applied to the nearest neighbor selection and score prediction to assign different time weights to the scores. In addition, to further improve the quality of (...) the nearest neighbor selection and alleviate the problem of data sparsity, a method of calculating users’ sentiment tendency by analysis of user review features is proposed to mine users’ attitudes about the reviewed items, which expands the score matrix. The time factor and sentiment tendency are then integrated into the K-means clustering algorithm to select the nearest neighbor. A hybrid collaborative filtering model based on the improved K-means clustering algorithm is then proposed, by combining item-based and user-based collaborative filtering. Finally, the experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can address the time effect and sentiment analysis in recommendations and improve the predictive performance of the model. (shrink)

This paper shows how propositional dynamic logic can be interpreted as a logic for multi-agent belief revision. For that we revise and extend the logic of communication and change of [9]. Like LCC, our logic uses PDL as a base epistemic language. Unlike LCC, we start out from agent plausibilities, add their converses, and build knowledge and belief operators from these with the PDL constructs. We extend the update mechanism of LCC to an update mechanism that handles belief change as (...) relation substitution, and we show that the update part of this logic is more expressive than either that of LCC or that of doxastic/epistemic PDL with a belief change modality. It is shown that the properties of knowledge and belief are preserved under any update, and that the logic is complete. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. (shrink)

This study examined the relationships between the role of the instructor and university students’ learning outcomes in cloud-based classrooms during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of an online survey of 7,210 university students in mainland China revealed that the students’ perceived learning outcomes and learning satisfaction were positively related to instructor innovation and negatively related to instructor performance. Instructional support was positively related to the students’ perceived learning outcomes but not directly related to their learning satisfaction. The students’ academic self-efficacy (...) mediated the influence of instructional support and instructor innovation on their perceived learning outcomes and learning satisfaction. The results contribute to knowledge of the role instructors play in facilitating students’ learning outcomes in higher education and suggest ways to improve the learning environment and learning outcomes, especially in cloud-based virtual classrooms. (shrink)

In recent years, supply chain finance is exploited to solve the financing difficulties of small- and medium-sized enterprises. SME credit risk assessment is a critical part in the SCF system. The diffusion of SME credit risk may cause serious consequences, leading the whole supply chain finance system unstable and insecure. Compared with traditional credit risk assessment models, the supply chain relationship, credit condition of SME, and core enterprises should all be considered to rate SME credit risk in SCF. Traditional methods (...) mix all indicators from different index systems. They cannot give a quantitative result on how these index systems work. Furthermore, traditional credit risk assessment models are heavily dependent on the number of annotated SME data. However, it is implausible to accumulate enough credit risky SMEs in advance. In this paper, we propose an adaptive heterogenous multiview graph learning method to tackle the small sample size problem for SMEs’ credit risk forecasting. Three graphs are constructed by using indicators from supply chain operation, SME financial indicator, and nonfinancial indicator individually. All the graphs are integrated in an adaptive manner, providing a quantitative explanation on how the three parts cooperate. The experimental analysis shows that the proposed method has good performance for determining whether SME is risky or nonrisky in SCF. From the perspective of SCF, SME financing ability is still the main factor to determine the credit risk of SME. (shrink)

This book provides a systematic and comprehensive description of Non-Axiomatic Logic, which is the result of the author's research for about three decades.Non-Axiomatic Logic is designed to provide a uniform logical foundation for Artificial Intelligence, as well as an abstract description of the “laws of thought” followed by the human mind. Different from “mathematical” logic, where the focus is the regularity required when demonstrating mathematical conclusions, Non-Axiomatic Logic is an attempt to return to the original aim of logic, that is, (...) to formulate the regularity in actual human thinking. To achieve this goal, the logic is designed under the assumption that the system has insufficient knowledge and resources with respect to the problems to be solved, so that the “logical conclusions” are only valid with respect to the available knowledge and resources. Reasoning processes according to this logic covers cognitive functions like learning, planning, decision making, problem solving, etc.This book is written for researchers and students in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, and can be used as a textbook for courses at graduate level, or upper-level undergraduate, on Non-Axiomatic Logic. (shrink)