The comparative analysis of the W. Golding’s novels demonstrates that the identification of God is the central problem in the works of the famous English writer. Golding did not consider Divinity only in connection with Christian orthodoxy, rational view of the world. In his novels, God gets different embodiments according to the wide cultural tradition. The group of heroes is trying to determine Divinity by force of the religious ritual in such fables as Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, Rites (...) of Passage, Double Tongue, The Scorpion God. The writer was convinced that the base of any religion is violence and triumph of mass consciousness, it can lead to tyranny, totalitarian system. The heroes of novels Pincher Martin, Darkness Visible opposed God to the ego. To Cris and Sophy God became ‘the black lighting‘, the death, the damnation. By the example of their fates, Golding revealed the cult of self-will and individual freedom as the main problem of the contemporary society. Paths to God of Golding’s saints are different and profoundly individual, they are far away of any standards. They believe in spiritual foundation of the objective reality, they can reach the theophany and spread their consciousness to the compassion of other people. However, saints are exclusion, that is why the author’s viewpoint is conveyed by the spiritual searches of Jocelin, Talbolt, Arieka. Each of them had come up the hard way from proud self-assurance to doubting and searching the truth. Golding supposed that the man cannot touch the ground of Divinity, but his aspiration for God is the root of human and morality. The author saw God as spiritual foundation of the objective reality that is becoming acquainted due to intuition, individual spiritual search and creativity. (shrink)

Background Participants' understanding of clinical trials is important in informed consent. However, little is known about what information participants really want to know. Aims To demonstrate the existence of a discrepancy between participants' understanding and their desire to know. Methods The participants in clinical trials at Seoul National University Hospital were surveyed. The survey consisted of 11 statements based on the essential elements of informed consent. The participants gave two responses to each statement on a five-point Likert scale to rate (...) their subjective understanding and desire to know, respectively. Information discrepancy was defined as the difference between these two ratings: if understanding exceeded desire to know for a particular item, it was defined as ‘over-informed’; if desire to know exceeded understanding for a particular item, it was defined as ‘under-informed’. Results Participants reported good understanding of ‘voluntariness’, ‘duration’, ‘study involves research’ and poor understanding of ‘confidentiality’, ‘compensation’, ‘benefits’, ‘procedures’ and ‘risks or discomforts’. For ‘risks or discomforts’, ‘who to contact’, ‘voluntariness’, ‘duration’ and ‘procedures’, participants reported high desire to know compared with ‘confidentiality’, ‘purpose’, ‘study involves research’ and ‘benefits’. The elements ‘study involves research’, ‘voluntariness’, ‘duration’, ‘purpose’ and ‘who to contact’ were over-informed, while ‘compensation’, ‘risks or discomforts’, ‘procedures’, ‘confidentiality’ and ‘benefits’ were under-informed. Participants over 50 years of age, those without a college education and those whose participation was less voluntary were relatively less informed about the clinical trials. Conclusions An information discrepancy was observed between the participants' understanding and their desire to know. By putting more emphasis on under-informed elements, the quality of informed consent could be improved. (shrink)

Irresponsible research practices damaging the value of science has been an increasing concern among researchers, but previous work failed to estimate the prevalence of all forms of irresponsible research behavior. Additionally, these analyses have not included articles published in the last decade from 2011 to 2020. This meta-analysis provides an updated meta-analysis that calculates the pooled estimates of research misconduct and questionable research practices, and explores the factors associated with the prevalence of these issues. The estimates, committing RM concern at (...) least 1 of FFP and QRPs concern 1 or more QRPs, were 2.9% and 12.5%, respectively. In addition, 15.5% of researchers witnessed others who had committed at least 1 RM, while 39.7% were aware of others who had used at least 1 QRP. The results document that response proportion, limited recall period, career level, disciplinary background and locations all affect significantly the prevalence of these issues. This meta-analysis addresses a gap in existing meta-analyses and estimates the prevalence of all forms of RM and QRPs, thus providing a better understanding of irresponsible research behaviors. (shrink)

This paper proposes an epistemic logical framework for demanding knowing why in the natural sciences. Our focus is on the phenomena and their respective causal factors revealed by experiments. Two novel modalities \(\textsf{E}(\psi,\varphi )\) and \(\textsf {W}((\psi _1,\varphi _1)\bullet (\psi _2,\varphi _2)\bullet \cdots \bullet (\psi _n,\varphi _n))\) are introduced over models that deviate from the usual epistemic models by having both experimental evidence and the scientific theories, which is inspired by scientific practices. The modality \(\textsf{E}\) expresses scientists’ have (conclusive) experimental (...) evidence indicating a dependence relation between the causal factor \(\psi \) and \(\varphi \). Based on the evidence, scientists often package some (perhaps seemingly unrelated) phenomena together, and the modality \(\textsf{W}\) captures scientists’ knowing why in their entirety, or having systematic knowledge-why of them, which amounts to having a _unified_ scientific theory of all these dependences. A sound and complete axiomatization is given, followed by a decidability result. Many notions of much philosophical interest are embodied in the present framework. We also draw several comparisons and connections with some existing relevant logical work. (shrink)

G. Priest's anti-consistency argument (Priest 1979, 1984, 1987) and J. R. Lucas's anti-mechanist argument (Lucas 1961, 1968, 1970, 1984) both appeal to Gödel incompleteness. By way of refuting them, this paper defends the thesis of quartet compatibility, viz., that the logic of the mind can simultaneously be Gödel incomplete, consistent, mechanical, and recursion complete (capable of all means of recursion). A representational approach is pursued, which owes its origin to works by, among others, J. Myhill (1964), P. Benacerraf (1967), J. (...) Webb (1980, 1983) and M. Arbib (1987). It is shown that the fallacy shared by the two arguments under discussion lies in misidentifying two systems, the one for which the Gödel sentence is constructable and to be proved, and the other in which the Gödel sentence in question is indeed provable. It follows that the logic of the mind can surpass its own Gödelian limitation not by being inconsistent or non-mechanistic, but by being capable of representing stronger systems in itself; and so can a proper machine. The concepts of representational provability, representational maximality, formal system capacity, etc., are discussed. (shrink)

Resumen: La cultura filosófica tradicional china se refiere al pensamiento filosófico y las tradiciones culturales de la antigua China que incluye diferentes escuelas filosóficas y sistemas de pensamiento como el confucianismo, el taoísmo, el mohismo y el legalismo. Como sistema de pensamiento único en la antigua China, la cultura filosófica tradicional china es una herencia acumulada por la nación china. La cultura Han Fu es un componente importante de la cultura tradicional china, que abarca orígenes históricos, características morfológicas, materiales y (...) técnicas, costumbres, connotaciones culturales y valores espirituales. Puede aplicarse y heredarse en la sociedad contemporánea, así como integrarse e interactuar con otros elementos culturales tradicionales. Como importante portadora del pensamiento filosófico tradicional chino, la cultura Han Fu es también una manifestación concreta de la cultura nacional china y del espíritu humanista moderno. Como forma de heredar y exhibir la cultura de la vestimenta tradicional china, la representación de la cultura Han Fu ha recibido cada vez más atención y afecto y ha desempeñado un papel importante en la larga historia, y su evolución y desarrollo también han sido influenciados y moldeados por la cultura filosófica tradicional china. Por tal motivo, este artículo utilizó el enfoque hermenéutico, el materialismo dialéctico y el materialismo histórico, explorando las manifestaciones de la cultura filosófica tradicional china en la cultura Han Fu, con el fin de comprender y heredar mejor la cultura Han Fu. El artículo presenta primero los pensamientos filosóficos tradicionales chinos, que incluyen principalmente el confucianismo, el taoísmo y el pensamiento budista; luego se elaboraron varios conceptos importantes en el pensamiento filosófico; luego, consideraremos y analizaremos las ideas filosóficas contenidas en la cultura Han Fu, y señalaremos la encarnación y aplicación de las ideas filosóficas de “unidad del cielo y el hombre” y “neutralidad” en la cultura Han Fu; Finalmente, el valor del desempeño de Han Fu se elabora a partir de dos aspectos: su expresión de valor, forma de expresión y contenido. Mediante el estudio, se descubrió que la cultura Han Fu puede presentar y expresar sus ideas centrales de una manera específica para demostrar mejor el pensamiento filosófico tradicional chino, lo que ayuda a instar mejor a las personas a utilizar la cultura Han Fu como herramienta y utilizarla para publicitar. sus ideas y conceptos relevantes. (shrink)

According to the desire-satisfaction theory of well-being, your life goes well to the extent that your desires are satisfied. This theory faces the problem of prudential neutrality: it apparently cannot avoid saying that, from the point of view of prudence or self-interest, you ought to be neutral between satisfying an existing desire of yours and replacing it with an equally strong desire and satisfying the new desire. It also faces the problem of remote desires: it regards as directly relevant to (...) your well-being even desires whose objects are intuitively too irrelevant to (or ‘remote’ from) your life to affect your welfare. In this article, I argue that desire theorists can answer both objections by appealing to hidden desires – ones that it is psychologically realistic to attribute to the agents in the cases on which the two problems are based, even though they are not mentioned in descriptions of those cases. (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)

Solving problems with insight culminates in an “Aha! moment”: a feeling of confidence and pleasure. In daily life, insights are often followed by important decisions, such as deciding what to do with a new idea. Here, we investigated whether having an Aha! moment affects subsequent decision-making. Because Aha! moments tend to elicit positive affect, which is generally associated with an increased risk-taking tendency, we hypothesized that people would favor a monetary payout with more upside despite greater uncertainty after solving a (...) problem with insight. Participants were asked to solve verbal puzzles and report whether they solved them with insight or without insight. After each puzzle, they chose between two bonuses: a fixed payout or a risk payout with 50% chance of receiving a high or a low payout. Participants were more likely to choose the risk payout after they solved with insight compared to without, suggesting a temporarily higher risk preference. The study provided pre­liminary evidence of a carryover effect - the impact of an Aha! moment on the subsequent risk choice - that can have implications in everyday decision-making. (shrink)

The authors explore the interfaces between different dimensions of moral cognition, bridging economic, Bayesian and reinforcement learning perspectives. The human aversion to harming others cuts across these different interfaces, influencing decisions, judgments, and inferences about morality.

We examine the influence of inferring interlocutors' referential intentions from their body movements at the early stage of lexical acquisition. By testing human participants and comparing their performances in different learning conditions, we find that those embodied intentions facilitate both word discovery and word‐meaning association. In light of empirical findings, the main part of this article presents a computational model that can identify the sound patterns of individual words from continuous speech, using nonlinguistic contextual information, and employ body movements as (...) deictic references to discover word‐meaning associations. To our knowledge, this work is the first model of word learning that not only learns lexical items from raw multisensory signals to closely resemble infant language development from natural environments, but also explores the computational role of social cognitive skills in lexical acquisition. (shrink)

abstract Mou Zongsan used to say that in Western philosophy there exist three different traditions. The first is the tradition of Plato and Aristoteles, the second is the tradition of Kant and Hegel, and the last is the tradition of Leibniz and Russell. I am afraid, however, that this kind of interpretation is already outdated and incapable of encompassing the rich variegations of Western philosophy as a whole. In my view, the various options would have been exhausted by supplementing the (...) preceding list with the tradition founded by Husserl and Heidegger and the one set up by Whitehead. All of these traditions together encapsulate the most important domains of philosophy, such as ontology, epistemology, and axiology. In this article I closely investigate the epistemological thought of Bertrand Russell in order to find out whether it contains any aspects from which we can borrow and learn. (shrink)

Parental participation has gained significant attention in environmental psychology, which has revealed a need for an instrument that can measure parental participation with children regarding environmental issues. The present study met this need by validating the parental participation in the environment (PPE) scale. This process began with 45 Chinese parents participating in an individual interview and group discussions, which helped generate a list of eighteen parent-child environmental activities. The activities were then modified and validated in the current study with a (...) diverse group of 969 parents recruited from six major Chinese cities. Both score structure evidence and generalizability evidence were obtained within this sample, and psychometric tests suggested a single factor construct with nine items. Once the PPE scale was revised, it showed measurement invariance across the parent who responded to the items (mother vs. father), across the child’s primary caregiver (mother vs. father vs. grandparent), across the family’s living region (North China vs. South China), as well as across the family’s income group. Finally, evidence based on relations to other variables showed a relationship among parents’ PPE, pro-environmental behavior, and connectedness with nature. As a result, the study provided a novel measure to assess pro-environmental socializationviaparental participation. (shrink)

This study used structural equation modeling to verify the performance of the ethical decision-making models developed by Jones and by Kelley and Elm. A comparison showed that the Kelley and Elm decision model yielded the optimal degree of fit. The investigations conducted in this study indicated that moral intensities are not an objective, existing concept but rather the product of subjective perception influenced by organizational factors. In addition to directly influencing ethical decisions, organizational factors indirectly influence ethical decisions through moral (...) intensities. (shrink)

Voluntary work behavior refers to spontaneous workplace behaviors that extend beyond role norms, including extra-role behaviors that benefit the organization and negative behaviors that may harm the organization. This study examined the relationship between self-control and VWB and the mediating role of job satisfaction. A total of 1,101 full-time employees from China completed a battery of self-report measures online. The results show that self-control positively predicts employees' OCB and negatively predicts employees' CWB. Moreover, job satisfaction significantly mediates the relationship between (...) self-control and OCB/CWB. The results confirm that employees with high self-control are more public-spirited, which previous studies have described as being “highly committed” or “less harmful”. This finding closely relates to the observation that employees with high self-control tend to have more satisfying work outcomes or higher workplace status than those with low self-control. (shrink)

This essay was contributed to the celebration of Father Mclean’s 75th birth day in a volume To the Mountain—essay in honor of Professor George F. Mclean (Fu Jen Catholic University Press, Taiwan, 2004.) In this essay I recalled what I knew of him by personal contact. As I wrote this essay, I was moved myself by his personality. Just as it says on the preface of the volume, “Over the past 40 years, George Mclean has helped to establish contacts and (...) build relations with philosophers in most of the countries of the world, and hundreds—indeed, thousands—of scholars are in his debt”, I am one of those hundreds, or thousands scholars in his debt. I am sure people may tell their own story about Professor George Mclean as they know themselves. (shrink)

There is increasing interest in clarifying how different face emotion expressions are perceived by people from different cultures, of different ages and sex. However, scant availability of well-controlled emotional face stimuli from non-Western populations limit the evaluation of cultural differences in face emotion perception and how this might be modulated by age and sex differences. We present a database of East Asian face expression stimuli, enacted by young and older, male and female, Taiwanese using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). (...) Combined with a prior database, this present database consists of 90 identities with happy, sad, angry, fearful, disgusted, surprised and neutral expressions amounting to 628 photographs. 20 young and 24 older East Asian raters scored the photographs for intensities of multiple-dimensions of emotions and induced affect. Multivariate analyses characterized the dimensionality of perceived emotions and quantified effects of age and sex. We also applied commercial software to extract computer-based metrics of emotions in photographs. Taiwanese raters perceived happy faces as one category, sad, angry, and disgusted expressions as one category, and fearful and surprised expressions as one category. Younger females were more sensitive to face emotions than younger males. Whereas older males showed reduced face emotion sensitivity, older female sensitivity was similar or accentuated relative to young females. Commercial software dissociated six emotions according to the FACS demonstrating that defining visual features were present. Our findings show that East Asians perceive a different dimensionality of emotions than Western-based definitions in face recognition software, regardless of age and sex. Critically, stimuli with detailed cultural norms are indispensable in interpreting neural and behavioral responses involving human facial expression processing. To this end, we add to the tools, which are available upon request, for conducting such research. (shrink)

This article studies 2 Chinese body-part terms zhi 'finger' and zhang 'palm' as they are used in compounds and idioms to express abstract concepts. Primarily, zhi 'finger' is used to express intention, aim, guidance, and direction, whereas zhang 'palm' is used to refer to power and control. The metaphoric and metonymic expressions involved are based on 2 common acts with hands: pointing with the index finger and holding in the palm of the hand. A comparison between Chinese and English data (...) reveals 2 differences. First, the conceptual metaphor "CONTROL IS HOLDING IN THE PALM OF THE HAND" is not richly manifested in English, although it is in Chinese. Second, the conceptual metaphor "THE FINGER IS THE DOER" is well manifested in English, but it is not realized in Chinese. These differences consist in the choice of a subpart (palm or finger) over the part (hand) as a result of cultural preferences. They reside, however, in a larger context of common grounding of meaning in bodily experiences. (shrink)

This paper is a cognitive semantic analysis of a CCTV educational commercial, which is one of a series designed and produced in preparation for, and in celebration of, the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Called the “Beijing Opera Episode”, this TV commercial converges on the theme: “To mount the stage of the world, and to put on a show of China”. That is, China sees her hosting of the 2008 Olympics by Beijing as a great opportunity for her to step onto (...) the international stage to perform a show of China. This theme, which alludes to China's globalization and retention of cultural identity, is conceptualized and expressed in terms of a central metaphor of theatrical performance: hosting the beijing olympics is performing beijing opera on an international stage. This study first analyzes in detail how this central metaphor is manifested multimodally through visual and aural as well as verbal discourse, thus examining it as a multimodal metaphor. The study then applies a decompositional approach, based on the distinction between primary and complex metaphors, to analyzing the central metaphor as a metaphorical compound with its internal structures and components, which is nevertheless built on a more general cognitive foundation. The study also offers a linguistic perspective on a cultural model underlying the central metaphor, which is arguably a Chinese cultural model for understanding various aspects and events of life in general. At the core of this cultural model is the widespread life is a stage metaphor, which however has a specific manifestation within the Chinese cultural context. (shrink)

In this study, I examined what channels of socialization influence the moral behavior of cadets. We conducted a regression analysis of the effects of parents' attitudes to moral education, the standard and potential curriculum of schools, peer groups, and communication media on individual ethics and discipline using 399 sample participants. The participants were recruited through a questionnaire survey on cadets from academy of military, naval, and air force, and four-year based students from R.O.C. National Defense University. The analysis results showed (...) that the cultivation of morality among cadets was directly influenced by the school's potential curriculum (i.e., intern cadres and officers in company) and their parents' attitudes to moral education during early childhood. The results also indicated that the influence of teaching by example was more significant than that of teaching by precept. (shrink)

Purpose:On the background of innovation-driven growth strategy of the Chinese government, this study aims to explore the impact of the knowledge base on innovation-driven growth of a firm, which is moderated by organizational character.Design/methodology/approach:Based on the data of 965 Chinese listed companies, some hypotheses were tested using the method of hierarchical regression analysis.Findings:Organizational growth relies on both technological and business model innovations and their interactive effect. Knowledge base, both breadth and depth, makes a positive impact on the innovation-driven growth of (...) an enterprise. In the impacting mechanism, an explicit organizational character not only has direct positive effects on business model innovation, it also strengthens the effect of knowledge breadth on business model innovation. On the contrary, an implicit organizational character is not significantly related to innovation.Research limitations/implications:In order to achieve growth, enterprises are suggested to adopt such dual innovation strategy, led by technological innovation and supplemented with business model innovation, which is supported by the integrated management of intangible resources, deep and broad knowledge, and explicit organizational character.Originality/value:A new theoretical framework of organizational innovation-driven growth was proposed. The realization paths of innovation-driven growth were explored. The idea of collaborative governance between the knowledge base and organizational character was raised. (shrink)

In this study, we tested a possible mechanism of the association between math anxiety and math achievement: the mediating role of math-specific grit. In Study 1, a sample of 10th grade students completed a battery of personality and attitude questionnaires, and math achievement was indexed by curriculum-based examination scores. Mediation analyses indicated that math-specific grit, but not domain-general grit, mediated the relationship between math anxiety and math achievement. In Study 2, we replicated and extended the above findings with another sample (...) of 11th grade students. Mediation analyses indicated that math-specific grit and math-specific procrastination played sequential mediating roles in the relationship between math anxiety and math achievement. That is, individuals with higher math anxiety were less gritty in math learning, possibly further leading them to be more procrastinated in performing math work, which may finally result in worse math achievement. In summary, the current study provides the first evidence that math-specific grit may mediate the relationship between math anxiety and math achievement. Furthermore, it also demonstrated the value of math-specific grit over domain-general grit in predicting math success, which invites a broader investigation on subject-specific grit. (shrink)

In his work, the author critically interprets the idea of the connection of the achievements of William Whewell in the field of the philosophy of science with the prevailing sentiments and social-cultural attitudes in the so-called Victorian era. The author believes that, on the contrary, all of Whewell’s positive achievements should be associated with the development of world science, with the spirit of the times, and above all, with its neo-Kantian background, whereas his mistakes and delusions (rejection of evolutionism, support (...) for the idea of phlogiston) really resulted from specifically English conservatism and blind trust in the actual social institutions and ideas both in science and in politics. (shrink)

We prove that the diagonalizable algebras of PA and ZF are not isomorphic.

This paper focuses on Confucian formulations of personhood and the implications they may have for bioethics and medical practice. We discuss how an appreciation of the Confucian concept of personhood can provide insights into the practice of informed consent and, in particular, the role of family members and physicians in medical decision-making in societies influenced by Confucian culture. We suggest that Western notions of informed consent appear ethically misguided when viewed from a Confucian perspective.

GIS is important equipment in the substation system in a complex microgrid network. Due to the long-term service in harsh operation environments, the electrical performance of GIS equipment will be seriously affected. Therefore, the regular maintenance of GIS equipment in the substation system is a routine task so as to ensure the normal operation of the microgrid networks. The traditional method relies on manual labor, where not only with the low operation efficiency but also regarding some maintenance, labors cannot reach (...) the inside of the GIS equipment, which seriously restricted the completion of GIS equipment maintenance operation. Based on the above analysis, a basic configuration of a GIS equipment maintenance robot with smart structure, convenient control, and stable motion characteristic has been proposed in this paper. Through the optimization design of the chassis adsorption system, the GIS inspection robot can achieve hanging and vertical adsorption inside the GIS equipment and some special motion status. In this way, the entire GIS equipment can be inspected without blind spots. Through establishing the mechanical model of the GIS inspection robot under the hanging and vertical motion state, the robustness and stability of the GIS inspection robot in the special status have been analyzed, and the corresponding GIS inspection robot robust stability motion control method has also been proposed. Finally, through the integrated design of mechanical system and hardware and software control system, the GIS inspection robot physical prototype system has been developed and the maintenance operation experiment has been carried out in Hunan Electric Power Company Maintenance Company through simulating the internal GIS equipment. The physical prototype can realize the basic movement and special movement in internal GIS equipment without any blind spots and complete the inspection task of GIS equipment operation; the movement of GIS robot is dexterous and stable in the whole operation process, which has strong robust stability. The research of GIS inspection robot in the complex microgrid networks has important theoretical significance and practical application value for the intelligent operation and maintenance management of substation system in complex microgrid networks. (shrink)