Essentialist legal theorists, represented by Raz, have depicted legal theory as a project of seeking necessary truths about law. They have, however, left the notion of necessity in their conception of legal theory largely unexplained. This paper explores four different notions of necessity in the philosophical literature and investigates two issues: first, what kind of necessity best fits the notion of necessity implicit in the essentialist conception of legal theory, and secondly, whether that notion of necessity is a coherent one (...) that withstands philosophical challenges. I argue that the Putnamian notion of quasi-necessity best fits essentialist legal theorists’ self-understanding, but the notion of quasi-necessity does not withstand Ebbs’s two challenges. Meanwhile, although Plunkett’s theory of metalinguistic negotiation can be used to preserve a coherent notion of necessity that circumvents Ebbs’s two challenges, due to its broadly anti-essentialist underpinnings such a notion is unlikely to be congenial to essentialist legal theorists. (shrink)

ABSTRACT‘What it is like’ is a popular philosophical locution to talk about conscious experiences, but how it manages to refer to conscious experiences is still under investigation. What’s remarkable about ‘what it is like’ is that its literal meaning doesn’t concern consciousness; nevertheless this phrase is popular in discourses about consciousness. Understanding ‘what it is like’ thus requires investigation into the contextual factors that guide the interpretation of ‘what it is like’, which have not been sufficiently explored. This paper aims (...) at understanding the context of ‘what it is like’, based on a revised property account of its semantics. After criticising Stoljar’s account in terms of ‘stereotypical contexts’, I consider several contextual factors that can be discerned in Stoljar’s interpretation of Nagel’s definition of consciousness. Then, I consider and criticise Mehta’s proposal that the meaning of ‘what it is like’ is fixed by mentioning the hard problems of consciousness. Eventually, I propose that the meaning of ‘what it is like’ is fixed by Phenomenal Thinking Context, in which the audience is made to think in the way in which one typically thinks about experiences. I also argue that Phenomenal Thinking Context explains the popularity of ‘what it is like’. (shrink)

There are two dominant contradictory approaches towards understanding the nature of language: one, the epistemological approach; two, the ontological approach. The epistemological approach understands language as a mere tool and denies the close relationship between a word and the actual thing for which that word stands. The ontological approach, on the other hand, understands language as the disclosure of world experience and professes a close relationship between a word and the thing it signifies. However, this approach opposes the epistemological approach (...) towards the understanding of language. In this article, we propose that Hegel, in his Phenomenology of Spirit, depicts an interesting relationship between language and spirit which points towards the consistency between the two contradictory approaches towards the nature of language. For Hegel, language not only plays a role in spirit’s pursuit of self-knowledge which signifies the epistemological approach, but also in spirit’s existence which signifies the ontological approach. Thus, in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, the epistemological approach and the ontological approach towards the nature of language coexist. In this article, by turning to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and through an analysis of the relationship between language and spirit, we not only attempt to seek some resolution to the epistemology-ontology contradiction, but we also reveal the homogeneity of language and spirit, which we take as the true nature of language in Hegel’s philosophy. (shrink)

陆流,字锦川,本号不息,知名中医及气功大师,四川省内外医学、哲学、气功和人体科学等学会理事及委员.

The path integral is not typically utilized for analyzing entanglement experiments, in part because there is no standard toolbox for converting an arbitrary experiment into a form allowing a simple sum-over-history calculation. After completing the last portion of this toolbox (a technique for implementing multi-particle measurements in an entangled basis), some interesting 4- and 6-particle experiments are analyzed with this alternate technique. While the joint probabilities of measurement outcomes are always equivalent to conventional quantum mechanics, differences in the calculations motivate (...) a number of foundational insights, concerning nonlocality, retrocausality, and the objectivity of entanglement itself. (shrink)

In both his life and poetry, The Ruined Cottage marked a decisive breakthrough for Wordsworth, which resulted from his daring adoption and sustained use of a monistic idea. Though hitherto mostly dismissed or construed as a derivative of Platonism, Stoicism, Christian mysticism, and/or other conventional English and European concepts and usually seen as part of his supposedly quietist retreat from radical politics, the philosophy of One Life which Wordsworth promoted was in reality a recognizably unconventional conceptual innovation, which indeed made (...) possible his poetic and political innovations in The Ruined Cottage and beyond. In the larger context of ideas that extends well beyond England and Europe and involves in particular the Chinese cosmological belief in tianren heyi or humanity’s unity with heaven, this essay explores Wordsworth’s innovative use of monism in The Ruined Cottage and argues for a significantly different understanding of Wordsworth and the related rise of English Romanticism. (shrink)

With the surge in the number of data and datafied governance initiatives, arrangements, and practices across the globe, understanding various types of such initiatives, arrangements, and their structural causes has become a daunting task for scholars, policy makers, and the public. This complexity additionally generates substantial difficulties in considering different data(fied) governances commensurable with each other. To advance the discussion, this study argues that existing scholarship is inclined to embrace an organization-centric perspective that primarily concerns factors and dynamics regarding data (...) and datafication at the organizational level at the expense of macro-level social, political, and cultural factors of both data and governance. To explicate the macro, societal dimension of data governance, this study then suggests the term “social data governance” to bring forth the consideration that data governance not only reflects the society from which it emerges but also (re)produces the policies and practices of the society in question. Drawing on theories of political science and public management, a model of social data governance is proposed to elucidate the ideological and conceptual groundings of various modes of governance from a comparative perspective. This preliminary model, consisting of a two-dimensional continuum, state intervention and societal autonomy for the one, and national cultures for the other, accounts for variations in social data governance across societies as a complementary way of conceptualizing and categorizing data governance beyond the European standpoint. Finally, we conduct an extreme case study of governing digital contact-tracing techniques during the pandemic to exemplify the explanatory power of the proposed model of social data governance. (shrink)

The relationship between bilingual language control and executive control is debated. The present study investigated the effect of short‐term language switching in a comprehension task on executive control performance in unbalanced bilinguals. Participants were required to perform a context task and an executive control task (i.e., flanker task) in sequence. A picture‐word matching task created different language contexts in Experiment 1 (i.e., L1, L2, and dual‐language contexts). By modifying the color‐shape switching task, we created different contexts that do not involve (...) language processing in Experiment 2 (i.e., color, shape, and dual context). Experiment 1 showed overall faster responses (in both congruent and incongruent trials) in the flanker task after a language switching context than after single (L1 or L2) contexts. This suggests that the language switching in a comprehension task affected general monitoring performance. By contrast, the nonlinguistic contexts in Experiment 2 did not affect flanker performance. This provides further evidence for the crucial role of language processing during switching to elicit short‐term adaptions on domain‐general conflict monitoring. Overall, our findings add to the previous studies by showing cross‐talk between bilingual language control and domain‐general conflict monitoring when language switching occurs in a comprehension task. (shrink)

We examined whether and how managerial ability affects the relationship between customer concentration and corporate performance. Based on a novel measure of managerial ability, we found that customer concentration has a significant negative effect on corporate performance, while managerial ability can mitigate this effect. The negative effect of customer concentration is only significant in the subsample of low ability and lower efficiency in asset utilization, while the moderating effect of managerial ability is significant for all levels of asset utilization efficiency (...) and more significant for firms with a lower gross margin. The results are robust to numerous robustness tests and endogeneity concerns. Additional analysis of mechanisms shows that in addition to superior operating ability, competent managers select major customers who are more beneficial to their company and decrease the sensitivity of their research and development investment to customers. These findings indicate that the heterogeneity of managerial ability plays an important role in the supplier–customer context when the supplier firm generally faces one or more concentrated customers. (shrink)

The pattern, process, and mechanism of residential heterogeneity vary significantly with different geographical scales. However, most traditional methods ignore the checkboard and modifiable areal unit problem, which may cover up the complexity and hierarchy of social space. Taking Hangzhou city as an example, a multiscalar method was proposed based on the information entropy theory to estimate residential heterogeneity and its scale sensitivity. Based on the sixth population census of Hangzhou and the housing price database of 6,536 residential districts from 2008 (...) to 2018, we explore the scale effect and dynamic characteristics of residential heterogeneity. The results of spatial simulation and geostatistical analysis based on Python Spatial Analysis Library module show that the multiscalar algorithm better presents the real segregation pattern than traditional method, which is one of the new models and technologies in urban geography complex system. Exploring residential heterogeneity through multiscalar lens provides an important basis for the gradual and refined urban renewal. (shrink)

In contrast to the individualistically focused paradigm, this article suggests that persuasion is a relationship- and context-specific phenomenon. The article analyses how interpersonal and mass persuasion operates in Chinese daily life. The key concepts of filial piety and guanxi as a major feature of persuasion in the public sphere are thoroughly analysed. It is argued that persuasion is indispensable in dialogical relationships between the self and other, and between the individual and society; yet at the same time it is indigenous (...) to the socio-cultural context. (shrink)

Firstly, the authors analyzed the properties of primary-onditionals and secondary-conditionals, establishthe minimum system $C2L_{m}$ of primary-conditionals and secondary-conditionals, and then prove some of the formal theorems of the system which have important intuitive meanings. Secondly, the authors constructed the neighborhood semantics, prove the soundness of $C2L_{m}$ , introduce a general concept of canonical model by the neighborhood semantics, and then prove the completeness of $C2L_{m}$ by the canonical model. Finally, according to the technical results of the minimum system $C2L_{m}$ , (...) the authors discuss some of the important problems concerning primary-conditionals and secondary- onditionals. (shrink)

Given the controversies over Mandarin Chinese in terms of Talmy’s bipartite language typology, this paper presents an exhaustive study of Chinese motion verbs collected from two authoritative dictionaries, namely, The Ancient Chinese Dictionary (2nd Edition) and The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (7th Edition). An analysis of 662 motion verbs in ancient Chinese and 693 motion verbs in modern Chinese indicates that Mandarin Chinese has undergone a typological shift from verb-framed to satellite-framed as far as the lexicalization pattern is concerned. The typological (...) shift seems to have been driven by two forces, the decline of monosyllabic motion verbs and the upsurge of disyllabic motion verbs, which, upon second thoughts, can be boiled down to a single but predominant process of disyllabification in Chinese, whereby two (former) roots that bear a wide range of syntactic relations are lexicalized into a disyllabic word. Thus, we see an intriguing case of how phonology and morphosyntax interact to impact the typological properties of a language. (shrink)

Low‐molecular‐weight (LMW) thiols are extensively involved in the maintenance of cellular redox potentials and the protection of cells from a variety of reactive chemical and electrophilic species. However, we recently found that the metabolic coupling of two LMW thiols – mycothiol (MSH) and ergothioneine (EGT) – programs the biosynthesis of the anti‐infective agent lincomycin A. Remarkably, such a constructive role of the thiols in the biosynthesis of natural products has so far received relatively little attention. We speculate that the unusual (...) thiol EGT might function as a chiral thiolation carrier (for modification) and a novel activator (for glycosylation) of sugar. Additionally, we examine recent evidence for LMW thiols (MSH and others) as sulfur donors of sulfur‐containing natural products. Clearly, the LMW thiols have more diverse activities beyond cell protection, and more attention should be paid to the correlation of their functions with thiol‐dependent enzymes. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider the iterative algorithm for a boundary value problem of n -order fractional differential equation with mixed integral and multipoint boundary conditions. Using an iterative technique, we derive an existence result of the uniqueness of the positive solution, then construct the iterative scheme to approximate the positive solution of the equation, and further establish some numerical results on the estimation of the convergence rate and the approximation error.

Despite numerous published writings on China's regional role, the world still knows very little about Beijing's perception and strategy. This article seeks to make an intellectual contribution in understanding China's foreign policy and its efforts to participate in East Asian integration. This article argues that under the rhetoric of peaceful development and community building, China's foreign policy is pragmatic and changes with the tide of events in international relations. China's participation in regional integration serves as a good case for examining (...) changes in Beijing's strategy. In the past two decades, China has moved from a reluctant participant of regional affairs to an active participant and potential future leader. China's adjusting role is a consequence of Beijing's pragmatism in policy and its growing economic confidence. Pragmatism has led China to and wait for the proper timing to step onto the world stage. (shrink)

A striking feature of human female sexual reproduction is the high level of gametes that exhibit an aberrant number of chromosomes (aneuploidy). A high baseline observed in women of prime reproductive age is followed by a dramatic increase in older women. Proper chromosome segregation requires one or more DNA crossovers (COs) between homologous maternal and paternal chromosomes, in combination with cohesion between sister chromatid arms. In human females, CO designations occur normally, according to the dictates of CO interference, giving early (...) CO-fated intermediates. However, ≈25% of these intermediates fail to mature to final CO products. This effect explains the high baseline of aneuploidy and is predicted to synergize with age-dependent cohesion loss to explain the maternal age effect. Here, modern advances in the understanding of crossing over and CO interference are reviewed, the implications of human female CO maturation inefficiency are further discussed, and areas of interest for future studies are suggested. (shrink)

Exact solutions of epidemic models are critical for identifying the severity and mitigation possibility for epidemics. However, solving complex models can be difficult when interfering conditions from the real-world are incorporated into the models. In this paper, we focus on the generally unsolvable adaptive susceptible-infected-susceptible epidemic model, a typical example of a class of epidemic models that characterize the complex interplays between the virus spread and network structural evolution. We propose two methods based on mean-field approximation, i.e., the first-order mean-field (...) approximation and higher-order mean-field approximation, to derive the exact solutions to ASIS models. Both methods demonstrate the capability of accurately approximating the metastable-state statistics of the model, such as the infection fraction and network density, with low computational cost. These methods are potentially powerful tools in understanding, mitigating, and controlling disease outbreaks and infodemics. (shrink)

It is important to identify the developmental antecedents of externalizing behavioral problems in early childhood. The current study examined the main effects of maternal personality and its interactive effects with child temperamental reactivity in predicting child externalizing behavioral problems, indicated by impulsivity and aggression. This study was composed of 70 children (Mage= 17.6 months, SD = 3.73) and their mothers. The results showed that maternal agreeableness was negatively associated with child impulsivity. Child temperamental reactivity moderated the effect of maternal conscientiousness (...) on child impulsivity in support of the differential susceptibility model. Specifically, for highly reactive children, maternal conscientiousness was negatively associated with child impulsivity whereas this association was nonsignificant for low reactive children. Child reactivity also moderated the contribution of maternal neuroticism to child impulsivity. That is, maternal neuroticism was negatively associated with impulsivity, only for highly reactive children. (shrink)

There are two accounts of how readers of unspaced writing systems know where to move their eyes: saccades are directed toward default targets ; or saccade lengths are adjusted dynamically, as a function of ongoing parafoveal processing. This article reports an eye-movement experiment supporting the latter hypothesis by demonstrating that the slope of the relationship between the saccade launch site on word N and the subsequent fixation landing site on word N + 1 is > 1, suggesting that saccades are (...) lengthened from launch sites that afford more parafoveal processing. This conclusion is then evaluated and confirmed via simulations using implementations of both hypotheses, with a discussion of these results for our understanding of saccadic targeting during reading and existing models of eye-movement control. (shrink)

Previous neurological studies of shyness have focused on the hemispheric asymmetry of alpha spectral power. To the best of our knowledge, few studies have focused on the interaction between different frequencies bands in the brain of shyness. Additionally, shy individuals are even shyer when confronted with a group of people they consider superior to them. This study aimed to reveal the neural basis of shy individuals using the delta-beta correlation. Further, it aimed to investigate the effect of evaluators’ facial attractiveness (...) on the delta-beta correlation of shyness during the speech anticipation phase. We recorded electroencephalogram activity of 94 participants during rest and anticipation of the public speaking phase. Moreover, during the speech anticipation phase, participants were presented with high or low facial attractiveness. The results showed that, as predicted, the delta-beta correlation in the frontal region was more robust for high shyness than for low shyness during the speech anticipation phase. However, no significant differences were observed in the delta-beta correlation during the baseline phase. Further exploration found that the delta-beta correlation was more robust for high facial attractiveness than low facial attractiveness in the high shyness group. However, no significant difference was found in the low-shyness group. This study suggests that a stronger delta-beta correlation might be the neural basis for shy individuals. Moreover, high facial attractiveness might enhance the delta-beta correlation of high shyness in anticipation of public speaking. (shrink)

It is important for energy enterprises to research on the investment potential of the energy markets in countries along the “Belt and Road,” which can help them optimize the regional investment structure, reduce investment risks, and conform to the development trend of “going global.” Therefore, we construct an investment potential assessment system of 29 indexes including five dimensions: politics, economy, society, energy, and cooperation and assess energy investment potential of 48 sample countries along the “Belt and Road” using principal component (...) analysis to provide reference meanings for energy enterprises. The results show that the assessment results of investment potential are affected by a combination of multiple indexes. In addition, compared with Central Asia and South Asia, which have weak economic foundations and greater political and legal risks, the investment potential of Central and Eastern Europe and some emerging economies in Southeast Asia is higher. (shrink)