Do people share their feelings of guilt with others and, if so, what are the reasons for doing this or not doing this? Even though the social sharing of negative emotional experiences, such as regret, has been extensively studied, not much is known about whether people share feelings of guilt and why. We report three studies exploring these questions. In Study 1, we re-analysed data about sharing guilt experiences posted on a social website called “Yahoo Answers”, and found that people (...) share intrapersonal as well as interpersonal guilt experiences with others online. Study 2 found that the main motivations of sharing guilt (compared with the sharing of regret) were “venting”, “clarification and meaning”, and “gaining advice”. Study 3 found that people were more likely to share experiences of interpersonal guilt and more likely to keep experiences of intrapersonal guilt to themselves. Together, these studies contribute to a further understanding of the social sharing of the emotion guilt. (shrink)

Bedtime procrastination is generally considered to be a maladaptive behavior. However, BP may be an adaptive fast LH strategy within the LH framework, and further, personal beliefs about their abilities and resources promote this fast LH strategy. Here, the present study addressed this idea, focusing on the effect of self-efficacy on BP, the mediation of harm avoidance, and the moderation of novelty seeking. Data from 552 Chinese university students were analyzed using SPSS 25.0 and SPSS PROCESS Macro. Results indicated that (...) HA partially mediates the relationship between self-efficacy and BP. Main interactional effects have been observed when NS is introduced in the model as a moderator. Implications and limitations of the study and suggestions for further study are discussed. (shrink)

The social, ethical and legal implications of discoveries in the neurosciences.

What role does our knowledge about the ideal society play in guiding policymaking in the real world? One intuitive answer is to approximate. Namely, we have a duty to approximate the ideal within the relevant constraints of feasibility. However, political philosophers seem to have what might be called ‘approximatophobia'. Many philosophers, including idealists such as David Estlund, warn against approximation. Their criticism is chiefly motivated by ‘the problem of second best’, which points out that your second-best option may not be (...) closest to your best option. This paper aims to dispel ‘approximatophobia'. The difficulty posed by the problem of second best is often overstated. More positively, I present a novel defence of approximation, arguing that approximation of an ideal can be a reasonably reliable default strategy of action guidance in the real world. Difficulties that may afflict the project of approximation can be mitigated by sophistication of the project of approximation. After showing that critics of approximation overstep their mark in issuing the strong or moderate warning against approximation, I propose an account of sophisticated approximation. It seeks a series of reforms that make existing social institutions closer to the ideal based on careful selection of frame of analysis. Three virtuous correlations are identified as indicators for successful project of approximation, linking descriptive similarity to desirability, feasibility and knowledge of the ideal. I also explain a two-staged strategy of sophisticating the way you approximate the ideal, with an expected positive feedback effect. (shrink)

This article introduces a non-Anglophone concept of gong qi as a metaphor for ‘corporation’. It contributes an endogenous perspective from a Sino-Japanese organizational context that enriches mainstream business ethics literature, otherwise heavily reliant on Western traditions. We translate the multi-layered meanings of gong qi based on analysis of its ideograms, its references into classical philosophies, and contemporary application in this Japanese multinational corporation in China. Gong qi contributes a perspective that sees a corporation as an inclusive and virtuous social entity, (...) and also addresses the elusive, implicit, and forever evolving nature of organizational life that is rarely noticed. We propose gong qi can be applied in other organizations and wider cultural contexts to show a new way of seeing and understanding business ethics and organization. Rather than considering virtue as a list of definable individual qualities, we suggest that the metaphor of gong qi reveals how virtue can be experienced as indeterminate, yet immanently present, like the substance of emptiness. This, then allows us to see the virtue of immanence, the beauty of implicitness, and hence, the efficacy of gong qi. (shrink)

Econarrative: Ethics, Ecology and the Search for New Narratives to Live By, written by Arran Stibbe, is a timely publication that extends the theory of ecolingusitics to better incorporate narrativ...

Kant’s published arguments for the non-spatiotemporality of things in themselves have not been well received. I argue that Kant has available to himself an argument for the non-spatiotemporality of things in themselves that is premised upon a disparity between the compositional structure of the intelligible world and the structure of space and time. I argue that Kant was unwaveringly committed to the premises of this argument throughout his career and that he was aware of their idealistic implications. I also argue (...) that this argument is consistent with Kant’s restrictive mature epistemology. If my argument is successful, then even if Kant’s published arguments for transcendental idealism fail, we need not regard his ambitious metaphysical project as a failure. (shrink)

Typically, fair machine learning research focuses on a single decision maker and assumes that the underlying population is stationary. However, many of the critical domains motivating this work are characterized by competitive marketplaces with many decision makers. Realistically, we might expect only a subset of them to adopt any non-compulsory fairness-conscious policy, a situation that political philosophers call partial compliance. This possibility raises important questions: how does partial compliance and the consequent strategic behavior of decision subjects affect the allocation outcomes? (...) If k% of employers were to voluntarily adopt a fairness-promoting intervention, should we expect k% progress (in aggregate) towards the benefits of universal adoption, or will the dynamics of partial compliance wash out the hoped-for benefits? How might adopting a global (versus local) perspective impact the conclusions of an auditor? In this paper, we propose a simple model of an employment market, leveraging simulation as a tool to explore the impact of both interaction effects and incentive effects on outcomes and auditing metrics. Our key findings are that at equilibrium: (1) partial compliance by k% of employers can result in far less than proportional (k%) progress towards the full compliance outcomes; (2) the gap is more severe when fair employers match global (vs local) statistics; (3) choices of local vs global statistics can paint dramatically different pictures of the performance vis-a-vis fairness desiderata of compliant versus non-compliant employers; (4) partial compliance based on local parity measures can induce extreme segregation. Finally, we discuss implications for auditors and insights concerning the design of regulatory frameworks. (shrink)

In considering Kant’s response to the Leibnizian theory of space in the Transcendental Aesthetic, scholars have overwhelmingly emphasized Kant’s response to Leibniz’s relationalism. They have largely missed the metaphysically realistic aspects of Leibniz’s theory with which Kant is primarily concerned. As such, scholars have failed to appreciate the threat Leibniz’s theory poses to Kant’s idealism, a point made publicly as early as 1786 by H. A. Pistorius. I argue that the Aesthetic does indeed contain a compelling argument against the Leibnizian (...) theory of space. This argument crucially depends upon Kant’s claim that space is monistic: that the whole of space is prior to the parts of space and, as such, spatial representations are not decomposable. (shrink)

Much recent attention has been paid to Kant’s account of the unity of space in the Critique of Pure Reason, not least because of the significant implications of that view for other key critical-period doctrines. But far less attention has been paid to the development of Kant’s account of the unity of space. This paper aims to offer a systematic account of Kant’s pre-critical account of the unity of space. On the view presented herein, Kant’s early account of the unity (...) of space is deeply rooted in his pre-critical cosmological views. In particular, I argue that Kant sees the unity of space as grounded in the cosmological unity of the world of substances, which is itself rooted in the divine conservation of all substances in relations of mutual causal dependence. I contend that the seeds of this view are present in the late 1740s and 1750s, but that this view receives its fullest and most complete expression in the 1770 Inaugural Dissertation. The final section of the paper considers the fate of Kant’s pre-critical account of the unity of space. I contend that the theory is excluded from the Critique of Pure Reason in light of the strict epistemological strictures adopted in that text. But considerable textual evidence shows that Kant continues to aver the theory throughout the 1770s and 1780s in the looser epistemic context of his lectures. I contend, then, that this theory is not abandoned at all. Rather, like Kant’s 1763 proof of the existence of God, it is epistemically demoted: it is Kant’s preferred view, but one that falls short of the demanding epistemic standards of the critical philosophy. (shrink)

Yuanfang Dai argues that, despite the many forms of gender oppression in different societies and cultures, it is still possible to speak generally of women’s oppression. This notion of shared oppression can inform a transcultural feminist solidarity that challenges structural gender oppression across social and cultural differences.

Interpretation from the perspective of the historical development of global imbalances can be defined as the persistent global imbalances, the current scale is not balanced and financial imbalances. Historically there have been two of the largest global imbalances, which lasted until World War I nearly half the world's imbalances and since the 1990s until 2007, before the outbreak of the financial crisis of the contemporary global imbalances. The external imbalance is sustained by the national economic systems, economic policy, the global (...) economic system system system and the global political system and other important systemic factors, it has brought the global economy a great threat to sustainable development, and eventually lead to crisis. The problem of global imbalances could be regarded as persistent, sweeping imbalances of current account and financial account from the historical perspective. There were two largest global imbalances, one lasted about a half century before the First World War, and the other lasted from 1990s to the financial crisis of 2007. There were several reasons for the long term external imbalance, such as the national economy policies, global economic system, global political system and other important systemic factors which led the sustained development of global economy to the economic crisis. (shrink)

We present a novel method, called graph sparse nonnegative matrix factorization, for dimensionality reduction. The affinity graph and sparse constraint are further taken into consideration in nonnegative matrix factorization and it is shown that the proposed matrix factorization method can respect the intrinsic graph structure and provide the sparse representation. Different from some existing traditional methods, the inertial neural network was developed, which can be used to optimize our proposed matrix factorization problem. By adopting one parameter in the neural network, (...) the global optimal solution can be searched. Finally, simulations on numerical examples and clustering in real-world data illustrate the effectiveness and performance of the proposed method. (shrink)

There is controversy as to whether children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and those with high-functioning autism plus language impairment (HFA-LI) share similar language profiles. This study investigated the similarities and differences in the production of Chinese negative sentences by children with DLD and children with HFA-LI to provide evidence relevant to this controversy. The results reflect a general resemblance between the two groups in their lower-than-TDA (typically developing age-matched) performance. Both groups encountered difficulties in using negative markers, which suggests (...) that they might be impaired in feature agreement. Slight differences were detected between the two groups. Specifically, children with DLD experienced difficulties with the agreement on the feature [+telic] and that on the feature [+dynamic], while children with HFA-LI had difficulties with the agreement on the feature [+dynamic] and that on the feature [−dynamic]. This study supports the idea of a common symptomatology for the two disorders. More importantly, it suggests that these two disorders, DLD and HFA-LI, are not altogether the same in terms of language impairment. This paper concludes that general labels should not be simply attached to any children with language disorders. Instead, atypical language is very worthy of further analysis in the categorization of language disorders. (shrink)

The nature of creative thinking is complex and multifaceted, often involving cognitive processes and dispositions modulated by implicit cultural belief systems and ways of thinking. In this article, we build on existing research on the relations of creative thinking and culture, and explore how specific cultural resources can be harnessed to foster creative problem-solving in education. We first review the recent changes in our understanding of creative thinking, from an exclusive focus on cognitive processes to a more inclusive view of (...) creative problem-solving as socially negotiated and culturally modulated, carrying important cultural functions. We then introduce a pedagogical model, QEOSA, to illustrate how cultural resources, particularly culture-specific ways of thinking about the world, can be harnessed to foster creative thinking in education, and what developmental and pedagogical considerations are involved to make it effective. We finally conclude this article by indicating the value of this line of work that integrates psychological, cultural, developmental, and educational principles in fostering the development of a creative mind-set with relevant knowledge, skills, dispositions, and values. (shrink)