Most discussions of racial fetish center on the question of whether it is caused by negative racial stereotypes. In this paper I adopt a different strategy, one that begins with the experiences of those targeted by racial fetish rather than those who possess it; that is, I shift focus away from the origins of racial fetishes to their effects as a social phenomenon in a racially stratified world. I examine the case of preferences for Asian women, also known as ‘yellow (...) fever’, to argue against the claim that racial fetishes are unobjectionable if they are merely based on personal or aesthetic preference rather than racial stereotypes. I contend that even if this were so, yellow fever would still be morally objectionable because of the disproportionate psychological burdens it places on Asian and Asian-American women, along with the role it plays in a pernicious system of racial social meanings. (shrink)

This chapter distinguishes between two concepts of moral responsibility. We are responsible for our actions in the first sense only when those actions reflect our identities as moral agents, i.e. when they are attributable to us. We are responsible in the second sense when it is appropriate for others to enforce certain expectations and demands on those actions, i.e. to hold us accountable for them. This distinction allows for an account of moral responsibility for implicit bias, defended here, on which (...) people may lack attributability for actions caused by implicit bias but are still accountable for them. What this amounts to is leaving aside appraisal-based forms of moral criticism such as blame and punishment in favor of non-appraising forms of accountability. This account not only does more justice to our moral experience and agency, but will also lead to more effective practices for combating the harms of implicit bias. (shrink)

Moral agency is limited, imperfect, and structurally constrained. This is evident in the many ways we all unwittingly participate in widespread injustice through our everyday actions, which I call ‘structural wrongs’. To do justice to these facts, I argue that we should distinguish between summative and formative moral criticism. While summative criticism functions to conclusively assess an agent's performance relative to some benchmark, formative criticism aims only to improve performance in an ongoing way. I show that the negative sanctions associated (...) with summative responses are only justifiably imposed under certain conditions when persons exercise their agency wrongly — conditions that do not always hold for structural wrongs. Yet even in such cases we can still use formative responses, which are warranted whenever agents fall short of moral ideals. Expanding our repertoire of moral criticism to include both summative and formative responses enables us to better appreciate both the powers and limitations of our agency, and the complexity of moral life. (shrink)

Now that society is in a period of transition, the lack of norms for moral values is becoming an increasingly serious issue. People in commerce talk about commerce, and those "going out to sea" talk about the sea.

The virtual brand community has become an important marketing tool for companies. A successful brand community marketing strategy should attract a large number of consumers. Although past studies have revealed consumer motivations for participating in virtual brand communities, they fail to answer an important question: Why is it so easy for some virtual brand communities to attract users while others have such difficulty? In this study, product characteristics are hypothesized to be important factors that determine consumer motivation to participate in (...) brand communities. Product characteristics can directly affect how actively consumers participate in brand communities. The results of questionnaires show that product complexity, product symbolism, and product satisfaction have a positive influence on consumers’ willingness to participate in brand communities. Notably, the duration of product use has a regulating effect on the influence of product satisfaction and product symbolism. A long period of product use weakens the influence of product satisfaction on consumers’ willingness to participate in brand communities. On the contrary, a long period of product use strengthens the influence of product symbolism on consumers’ willingness to participate in brand communities. This study enriches the literature on brand community participation and has implications for companies that aim to utilize brand communities for marketing. (shrink)

Young children judge that violations of ordinary, causal constraints are impossible. Yet children’s religious beliefs typically include the assumption that such violations can occur via divine agency in the form of miracles. We conducted two studies to examine this potential conflict. In Study 1, we invited 5- and 6-year-old Colombian children attending either a secular or a religious school to judge what is and is not possible. Children made their judgments either following a minimal prompt or following a reminder of (...) God’s extraordinary powers. Irrespective of their education, and whether or not they had been reminded of God’s extraordinary powers, children systematically judged violations of ordinary, causal constraints to be impossible. In Study 2, we asked if more extensive reminders of God’s special powers would prompt religious children to say that the impossible can happen. Five- and 6-year-old Colombian children attending either a secular or a religious school were presented with narratives in which the protagonist desired an ordinarily impossible outcome. In half the stories, the protagonist prayed to God for the desired outcome. Irrespective of education and of whether the protagonist prayed, children systematically concluded that the desired outcome would not occur and justified that conclusion by reference to ordinary causal constraints. Nevertheless, in a minority of their replies children did assert that violations of ordinary causality are possible. Overall, irrespective of their religious education, young children judge that events rarely deviate from their natural course; only occasionally do they acknowledge exceptions. (shrink)

The green development level reflected in the green finance index and the evaluation of the degree of green development in smart cities have important practical effects on economic transformation. For promoting the transformation and upgrading of finance, we select 2013–2019 data and construct a distributed lag model to analyse the important role played by green finance and financial technology in the construction of smart cities. In the paper, we find green finance promotes the construction of smart cities, and only it (...) will not appear until nine months late. Financial technology has an opposite impact on the construction of smart cities, this is mainly because the research and marketization of financial technology are higher, and the cost is also higher. This influence will appear in the next 14 months. (shrink)

This paper contrasts a picoeconomic approach to theexplanation of akrasia with Davidson's divided-mind approach and defends theformer in a wider context. The distinctive merits of a picoeconomic model of mindlie in the following aspects: First, it relies on a scientifically well-groundeddiscovery about motivational dynamics of animals for its explanation of preference change,which elucidates or materializes some philosophers' speculations both about thepossible mismatch between valuation and motivation and about the relevance of temporalfactors to akrasia. Second, it grounds the necessity of endogenous (...) higher-order constraints,expressible in forms of judgment, in an intrapersonal dynamic process of interactivefirst-order temporary preferences. Thus the motivational basis for the normativeconstruction of the rationality of `best judgment' can also be illuminated with this model. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is regarded in the context of the tasks that are delegated to it during the development of technical projects and the features of the implementation of tasks that must be performed in real time without the possibility of interruption. The relevance of the study is determined by the fact that artificial intelligence sees as its main task the formalisation of decision-making with little or no human involvement. The basis of the methodological search are biological and prognostic methods. The (...) current stage of development of socio-humanitarian technologies, and in particular, systems with artificial intelligence, prompts people to conduct such socio-technical projects, for the implementation of which the properties of the human biological brain are no longer enough. The result of research on artificial intelligence is the desire to understand the work of the human brain, to reveal the secrets of human consciousness and the problem of creating machines with a certain level of human intelligence. The novelty of the study is determined by the fact that the understanding of artificial intelligence is primarily aimed at creating an environment that can distinguish artificial intelligence from the entire array of technological devices not only as a platform of knowledge and program code. The practical significance of the study is determined by the necessity for standardisation and the formation of attitudes and the acceptability of the use of artificial intelligence in tasks that will subsequently affect social development. (shrink)

Governments have adopted strict home quarantine measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. A monotonous, barren, and under-stimulating environment can cause state boredom, and people often deal with boredom via novelty-seeking behavior. Novelty-seeking behavior can be divided into “novelty input” and “novelty output.” The former refers to obtaining novel information such as browsing the Web; the latter refers to engaging in creative behavior such as literary creation. This study explores the relationship between two types of novelty-seeking behavior and individual state boredom during (...) home quarantine, along with the moderation effect of trait creativity. The study sample consists of 582 Chinese college students who were quarantined at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants completed the Multidimensional State Boredom Scale, the Williams Creativity Aptitude Test, and self-compiled questionnaires of novelty input and novelty output. The results show that there is no significant relationship between novelty input or novelty output and boredom during the COVID-19 quarantine. Trait creativity is found to negatively moderate the relationship between the two means of novelty seeking and boredom. Specifically, novelty output negatively predicts the state boredom of individuals with high creativity, while novelty input positively predicts the state boredom of individuals with low creativity. Our findings suggest that different novelty-seeking behaviors may have different effects on the boredom level of individuals with high versus low creativity during quarantine. During a quarantine period, individuals should avoid excessively engaging in novelty input behaviors aimed at escaping boring situations. (shrink)

Experiences in the heart is one matter and literary writing is another: Toegye (1501-1570, a famous Korean Confucianist), however, would rather regard the two as a completely unified process, which amalgamates an immanent quality and a literary style, without isolation between them. Toegye stressed and valued the purity of the first experience, i.e., the filtered and the purified in the heart, which would flow into the second experience and purify it as well, ultimately cultivating it into a complete aesthetic experience. (...) Poetry should be solely triggered by positive emotions, being aesthetically clear and pure, with no extravagance inside. A plain and ordinary style of literary writing is thereby formed and is regarded as a natural access of transcendence to a philosophical, ethical, and aesthetic connotation which is pure, rich, and profound, 'shaping to Sagehood' in Confucianism. Emotion plays the role of a cementing force that unifies all these factors and sections for life aestheticization. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHusserl's phenomenology of intersubjectivity is often thought to fall into solipsism and thus be a failed project. One of the typical symptoms is the so-called “paradox of incorporation”. The key to avoiding the paradox lies in finding the motives that lead to alien experiences. An important effort in this direction is to extend the so-called phenomenon of “double sensation” limited to the tactile realm to all perceptual realms. However, the legitimacy of the extension is based on the recognition of a (...) pre-subjective, anonymous, and impersonal dimension, which exorcizes, but not answer the question. This article attempts to make a new interpretation of Husserl's fifth Cartesian Meditation. It focuses on the concept of “replacing” and argues that the motivational basis of alien experience is the desire for total naturalization. (shrink)