Emotion terms such as “sad”, “happy” and “joyful” apply to a wide range of entities. We use them to refer to mental states of sentient beings, and also to describe features of non-mental things such as comportment, nature, events, artworks and so on. Drawing on the literature on polysemy, this paper provides an in-depth analysis of emotion descriptions. It argues that emotion terms are polysemous and distinguishes seven related senses. In addition, the paper applies the analysis to shed light on (...) a long-standing debate in philosophy of music concerning emotion descriptions of music. (shrink)

The surface grammar of reports such as ‘I have a pain in my leg’ suggests that pains are objects which are spatially located in parts of the body. We show that the parallel construction is not available in Mandarin. Further, four philosophically important grammatical features of such reports cannot be reproduced. This suggests that arguments and puzzles surrounding such reports may be tracking artefacts of English, rather than philosophically significant features of the world.

Since the early nineteenth century a membrane or wall has been central to the cell’s identity as the elementary unit of life. Yet the literally and metaphorically marginal status of the cell membrane made it the site of clashes over the definition of life and the proper way to study it. In this article I show how the modern cell membrane was conceived of by analogy to the first “artificial cell,” invented in 1864 by the chemist Moritz Traube (1826–1894), and (...) reimagined by the plant physiologist Wilhelm Pfeffer (1845–1920) as a precision osmometer. Pfeffer’s artificial cell osmometer became the conceptual and empirical basis for the law of dilute solutions in physical chemistry, but his use of an artificial analogue to theorize the existence of the plasma membrane as distinct from the cell wall prompted debate over whether biology ought to be more closely unified with the physical sciences, or whether it must remain independent as the science of life. By examining how the histories of plant physiology and physical chemistry intertwined through the artificial cell, I argue that modern biology relocated vitality from protoplasmic living matter to nonliving chemical substances—or, in broader cultural terms, that the disenchantment of life was accompanied by the (re)enchantment of ordinary matter. (shrink)

The concept of causation is essential for understanding relationships among various phenomena, yet its fundamental nature and the criteria for establishing it continue to be debated. This paper presents a new theory of causation through a quasi-axiomatic approach. The core of this framework is Probability Distribution Determinism (PDD), which updates traditional determinism by representing states of affairs as probability distributions, with the if-then function serving as its foundational definition. Based on PDD, by merely using appropriate naming strategies, it is possible (...) to derive systems in which the structural characteristics of relationships among things closely resemble those in the real world, such as having various forms of nested hierarchies. Additionally, there are two related yet distinctly different contexts about relationships in PDD: one emphasizes the potential influence of conditions on outcomes in the general sense, while the other focuses on attributing responsibility for the state changes in specific scenarios. The formula for determining the relationship in the general sense is established as S(Y |S1(X), Ψ) ̸≡ S(Y |S2(X), Ψ). Subsequently, within the PDD framework, the paper clarifies the legitimate use of a series of concepts related to causation in those two contexts, thus encompassing the entire detailed connotation of the concept of causation. The comparison with other theories of causation and the analysis of case applications demonstrate that the new theory applies not only to situations where other theories are competent but also to situations where they are not. This suggests that, although certain aspects within the new framework may require further analysis, it provides a highly promising direction for a deeper understanding of causation. (shrink)

Ad hoc concepts feature prominently in lexical pragmatics. A speaker can use a word or phrase to communicate an ad hoc concept that is different from the lexically encoded concept and the hearer can construct the intended ad hoc concept pragmatically during utterance comprehension. I argue that some philosophical concepts have origins as ad hoc concepts, and such concepts pose a challenge for experimental philosophy regarding these concepts. To illustrate this, I consider philosophers’ ‘what-it’s-like’-concepts and experimental philosophy of consciousness.

Empirical evidence suggests that perceptual‐motor simulations are often constitutively involved in language comprehension. Call this “the simulation view of language comprehension”. This article applies the simulation view to illuminate the much‐discussed phenomenon of copredication, where a noun permits multiple predications which seem to select different senses of the noun simultaneously. On the proposed account, the (in)felicitousness of a copredicational sentence is closely associated with the perceptual simulations that the language user deploys in comprehending the sentence.

This Review paper is about the security of bio metric templates in cloud databases. Biometrics is proved to be the best authentication method. However, the main concern is the security of the biometric template, the process to extract and stored in the database within the same database along with many other. Many techniques and methods have already been proposed to secure templates, but everything comes with its pros and cons, this paper provides a critical overview of these issues and solutions.

Zeugmatic oddness is a linguistic intuition of oddness with respect to an instance of zeugma, i.e. a sentence containing an instance of a homonymous or polysemous word being used in different meanings or senses simultaneously. Zeugmatic oddness is important for philosophical debates as philosophers often use it to argue that a particular philosophically interesting expression is ambiguous and that the phenomenon referred to by the expression is disunified. This paper takes a closer look at zeugmatic oddness. Focusing on relevant psycholinguistic (...) literature on homonymy and polysemy processing and representation, I argue that there are two different ways in which zeugmatic oddness can arise. Philosophical upshots concerning zeugmatic oddness are then drawn. (shrink)

This paper offers a fine analysis of different versions of the well known sure-thing principle. We show that Savage's formal formulation of the principle, i.e., his second postulate (P2), is strictly stronger than what is intended originally.

This paper presents a human-computer interaction model with a three layers learning mechanism in a pervasive environment. We begin with a discussion around a number of important issues related to human-computer interaction followed by a description of the architecture for a multi-agent cooperative design system for pervasive computing environment. We present our proposed three- layer HCI model and introduce the group formation algorithm, which is predicated on a dynamic sharing niche technology. Finally, we explore the cooperative reinforcement learning and fusion (...) algorithms; the paper closes with concluding observations and a summary of the principal work and contributions of this paper. (shrink)

Slurs are derogatory, and theories of slurs aim at explaining their “derogatory force”. This paper draws a distinction between the type derogatory force and the token derogatory force of slurs. To explain the type derogatory force is to explain why a slur is a derogatory word. By contrast, to explain the token derogatory force is to explain why an utterance of a slur is derogatory. This distinction will be defended by examples in which the type and the token derogatory force (...) come apart. Because of the distinction, an adequate theory of slurs must be plausible for both the type and the token derogatory force. However, I will argue that many theories fail to be plausible for both. In particular, Hom’s combinatorial externalism and the conventional implicature theory offer implausible accounts of the token derogatory force, whereas the prohibitionist theory is insufficient to explain the type derogatory force. (shrink)

In the philosophy of mind, revelation is the claim that the nature of qualia is revealed in phenomenal experience. In the literature, revelation is often thought of as intuitive but in tension with physicalism. While mentions of revelation are frequent, there is room for further discussion of how precisely to formulate the thesis of revelation and what it exactly amounts to. Drawing on the work of David Lewis, this paper provides a detailed discussion on how the thesis of revelation, as (...) well as its incompatibility with physicalism, is to be understood. (shrink)

The structure of communication networks can be more or less “democratic”: networks are less democratic if (a) communication is more limited in terms of characteristic degree and (b) is more tightly channeled to a few specifc nodes. Together those measures give us a two-dimensional landscape of more and less democratic networks. We track opinion volatility across that landscape: the extent to which random changes in a small percentage of binary opinions at network nodes result in wide changes across the network (...) as a whole. If wide and frequent swings of popular opinion are taken as a mark of instability, democratic communication networks prove far more stable than anti-democratic ones. In a fnal section, we consider the democratic or anti-democratic character of networks that respond to volatility by rewiring at random, in a search for community, or in a search for a leader. (shrink)

Philosophically expanding upon the workings of Chris Land and other notable figures in the field of philosophy, the ideology of Xenoaccelerationism is rooted in the spirit of hermeneutics which supports the holistic nuanced approach to understanding the functionality of the Xenoaccelerationist. In the name of accelerationism “Xeno” meaning alien refers to the use of outside viewpoints and expertise to transcend the limitations of methodological thought processes. Through the successful application of accelerationism given the lens of alienation draws upon abstract methods (...) to pursue economic expansion initiatives. The ideal Xenoaccelerationist is thought to have the characteristics of non-partisan affiliation, diverse thought processes, and a rigorous academic understanding of the world and its various functions. (shrink)

The work of Thomas White represents a systematic attempt to combine the best of the new science of the seventeenth century with the best of Aristotelian tradition. This attempt earned him the criticism of Hobbes and the praise of Leibniz, but today, most of his attempts to navigate between traditions remain to be explored in detail. This paper does so for his ontology of accidents. It argues that his criticism of accidents in the category of location as entities over and (...) above substances was likely aimed at Francisco Suárez, and shows how White’s worries about the analysis of location were linked with his broader cosmological views. White rejects real qualities, but holds that the quantity of a substance is somehow distinct from its bearer. This reveals a common ground with some of his scholastic interlocutors, but lays bare a deep disagreement with thinkers like Descartes on the nature of matter. (shrink)

I look at the distinction between between realist and antirealist views of the quantum state. I argue that this binary classification should be reconceived as a continuum of different views about which properties of the quantum state are representationally significant. What's more, the extreme cases -- all or none --- are simply absurd, and should be rejected by all parties. In other words, no sane person should advocate extreme realism or antirealism about the quantum state. And if we focus on (...) the reasonable views, it's no longer clear who counts as a realist, and who counts as an antirealist. Among those taking a more reasonable intermediate view, we find figures such as Bohr and Carnap -- in stark opposition to the stories we've been told. (shrink)

This commentary focuses on explaining the intuition of revelation, an issue that Chalmers (2018) raises in his paper. I first sketch how the truth of revelation provides an explanation for the intuition of revelation, and then assess a physicalist proposal to explain the intuition that appeals to Derk Pereboom’s (2011, 2016, 2019) qualitative inaccuracy hypothesis.

Moral circles help define the boundaries of one’s moral consideration. One’s moral circle may provide insight into how one perceives or treats other entities. A data-driven model exploration was conducted to explore predictors and prediction models. Candidate predictors were built upon past research using moral foundations and political orientation. Moreover, we also employed additional moral psychological indicators, i.e., moral reasoning, moral identity, and empathy, based on prior research in moral development and education. We used model exploration methods, i.e., Bayesian model (...) exploration, Bayesian model averaging, and elastic-net regression. The study successfully replicated past research supporting the relationship between moral foundations, political orientation, and the moral circle. Additional moral psychological constructs, such as post-conventional moral reasoning and moral identity, significantly predicted the moral circle width. The identified components of the moral circle were conceptually related to phronesis, i.e., practical wisdom. We discussed the educational implications of the findings, particularly those related to moral education focusing on phronesis cultivation, multiculturalism and global citizenship, and climate justice. (shrink)

We developed and tested a behavioral version of the Defining Issues Test-1 revised (DIT-1r), which is a measure of the development of moral judgment. We conducted a behavioral experiment using the behavioral Defining Issues Test (bDIT) to examine the relationship between participants’ moral developmental status, moral competence, and reaction time when making moral judgments. We found that when the judgments were made based on the preferred moral schema, the reaction time for moral judgments was significantly moderated by the moral developmental (...) status. In addition, as a participant becomes more confident with moral judgment, the participant differentiates the preferred versus other schemas better particularly when the participant’s abilities for moral judgment are more developed. (shrink)

Weakly Aggregative Modal Logic (WAML) is a collection of disguised polyadic modal logics with n-ary modalities whose arguments are all the same. WAML has some interesting applications on epistemic logic and logic of games, so we study some basic model theoretical aspects of WAML in this paper. Specifically, we give a van Benthem-Rosen characterization theorem of WAML based on an intuitive notion of bisimulation and show that each basic WAML system Kn lacks Craig Interpolation.

_Wittgenstein_ presents a concise, comprehensive, and systematic treatment of Ludwig Wittgenstein's thought from his early work, _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,_ to the posthumous publication of _On Certainty_, notes written just prior to his death. A substantial scholarly addition to our understanding of one of the most original and influential thinkers of the twentieth century, by renowned Wittgenstein scholar, Hans Sluga Proposes an original new interpretation of Wittgenstein's work Written to also be accessible to readers unfamiliar with Wittgenstein's thought Includes discussion of the (...) social and political background and contemporary relevance of Wittgenstein's thoughts. (shrink)

Most theories of slurs fall into one of two families: those which understand slurring terms to involve special descriptive/informational content (however conveyed), and those which understand them to encode special emotive/expressive content. Our view is that both offer essential insights, but that part of what sets slurs apart is use-theoretic content. In particular, we urge that slurring words belong at the intersection of a number of categories in a sociolinguistic register taxonomy, one that usually includes [+slang] and [+vulgar] and always (...) includes [-polite] and [+derogatory]. Thus, e.g., what distinguishes ‘Chinese’ from ‘chink’ is neither a peculiar sort of descriptive nor emotional content, but rather the fact that ‘chink’ is lexically marked as belonging to different registers than ‘Chinese’. It is, moreover, partly such facts which makes slurring ethically unacceptable. (shrink)

It is often thought that sensible qualities such as colours do not exist as properties of physical objects. Focusing on the case of colour, I discuss two views: the Galilean view, according to which colours do not exist as qualities of physical objects, and the naive view, according to which colours are, as our perception presents them to be, qualities instantiated by physical objects. I argue that it is far from clear that the Galilean view is better than the naive (...) view. Given the arguments in this paper, the naive view ought to be taken seriously. The discussion here appeals especially to theorists who, like Goff, are already convinced that the quantitative language of physical science fails to capture all qualities. (shrink)

The Shape-of-a-Life phenomenon is widely recognized by philosophers of well-being: an upward life trajectory seems better than its downward equivalent if the sum of momentary well-being is held fixed. But what if we hold fixed the sum of momentary well-being in an upward trajectory, are certain ways to improve from the bad times better than the others? Velleman suggests that a redemptive trajectory is better than a bare upward trajectory. In this paper, I elaborate this proposal by developing a mediating (...) factor account of prudential redemption. I argue that, in redemptive trajectories, there is a mediating factor that bears certain relations with the negative and the positive events respectively, one that does not necessarily appear in bare upward trajectories. Prudential redemption, compared to mere improvement, can enhance a person’s lifetime well-being because a redeemed event is made less bad by virtue of the mediating factor. This result has implications for making decisions in the face of equally good options and for evaluating the rationality of honoring sunk costs. (shrink)

In "Experience as a Way of Knowing" (this journal), the author tries to create some troubles for philosophers who believe in "qualia" or "what it is like". I think the author has underestimated the complexity of the issues, and I will voice my concerns in five sections. Besides presenting my interpretation of the author's position and challenging it, I will (1) challenge the author's treatment of the knowledge argument, especially the author's treatment of "this is what it is like to (...) see red", (2) challenge the author's interpretation of "what-it-is-like" talk and the author's view that phenomenal properties are theoretical postulates, (3) challenge the author's rejection of "apparent properties", and (4) point out some issues with the author's interpretation of several authors who write about the knowledge argument. (shrink)

Husserl's Absolute-Flow-Model (AFM) represents an approach to a coherent phenomenological description of time-consciousness. Within the AFM framework the streaming of every real moment in the flow of time-consciousness is necessarily concomitant with some retentional or protentional modifications of time-consciousness modes. These modifications of consciousness, i.e. all retentions and protentions, are characterized here as "temporal apprehension." By means of this distinctive function of time-consciousness, all constituents of one and the same consciousness phase are assigned an intentional sense as their temporal index, (...) so that all these constituents can be temporally represented and distinguished by time-consciousness. In this way, the AFM can overcome some of the difficulties in describing the flow of consciousness. (shrink)

He drove a taxi. Now he drives a truck. So, must he be driving the truck right now? Must he, as long as he's working as a truck driver, keep driving his truck all day and all night? What do we speak of, when we speak of "now"? In this talk, some popular conceptions in the philosophy of time will be put under critical scrutiny: (1) The present (the "now") is an instant, a time point with no length; (2) the (...) "content" of the present is always an event, a happening, which constitutes a segment of a larger process; (3) what (time) is now, is determined by the passage of time (itself). The following points will be defended respectively: (1) The present may be a time period. "Now" is not an indivisible time-atom in the substantival sense. (2) What is now can be an event, a process, or a state. "Driving a truck now" – in the sense of being a truck driver – is neither an event nor something happening to him. (3) "Now", among other temporal concepts, is not a name for any thing, but schemata under which we understand ways things being themselves. There are variety of ways of being, and accordingly there are multiple aspects of now-ness. (shrink)

The Quantum Economics Intelligence Initiative, spearheaded by Quantum Economist PhDs. Kaiola M Liu integrates insights from seminal thinkers like Einstein, Archimedes, Adam Smith, Nick Land, and Sun Tzu. By applying principles of quantum mechanics, this forward-looking project aims to redefine economic modeling, exploring real-world applications and potential benefits. The initiative encompasses foundational studies, economic model applications, incorporation of quantum computing, and analysis of contemporary economic philosophies. Keywords - Quantum Mechanics, Economics, Technological Advancements, Philosophy.

We investigate the association between controlling shareholders' ownership (CS_Own) and firms' leverage decisions in the Singaporean context. We examine whether the impact of ownership concentration on leverage differs across excess and lower control. We report that shareholders with excess control prefer leverage financing for an optimal capital structure and focus on value maximisation rather using leverage as a tool of minority shareholders' expropriation. Our analysis shows that firms capital structure significantly influences by the coalition of shareholders particularly decisions about leverage (...) financing in addition to the firms' specific characteristics and institutional arrangements. Our empirical evidence shows that controlling shareholders with a lower fraction of equity are more concerned about limited holding thus prefer leverage over equity financing to inflate their equity stake to protect them from the potential takeovers and mergers. We report that capital structure decisions in Singapore are linked with the trade-off between the controlling shareholders' target of mitigating firm risk and their non-dilution entrenchment needs. Further, we found an inverted U-shaped association between control ownership and leverage financing. In terms of moderating effect of family-controlled ownership, our findings exhibit that leverage financing is less pronounced for family firms in Singapore due to the under-diversified investment portfolio. (shrink)

Hans Kelsen's thorough critique of Eric Voegelin's "New Science of Politcs" is - in my oppinion - the best commentary on Voegelin that has been written so far.

A sentence's meaning may depend on the state of motion of the speaker. I argue that this context-sensitivity blocks the inference from special relativity to four-dimensionalism.

This article presents a robust defense of the concept of “datafied enhancement” as a subset of human enhancement. Firstly, the author notes that the widespread development of ICT and AI technologies has made it possible to collect and analyze human biometric data, thus integrating data into the concept of embodiment. Secondly, the author explores the cultural and intellectual history of datafied enhancement, highlighting the significant role data has played in human evolution. Thirdly, the author examines the functional classifications of datafied (...) enhancement, arguing that conversational, wearable, ingestible, and embeddable technological devices can enhance individuals’ physical, cognitive, emotional, and moral capacities by collecting body data. Fourthly, the author underscores the importance of distinguishing datafied enhancement from dataism to avoid misconceptions. Finally, the author addresses potential ethical issues, such as data exclusivity, the uncontrollable data self, and privacy invasion. By acknowledging these risks, datafied enhancement can be guided to become a technology that respects human dignity and promotes the common good. (shrink)

In 1984, Arthur Danto wrote an article with the telling title ‘The End of Art.’ Just a few years earlier, Richard Rorty had declared the end of philosophy and Michel Foucault, the end of politics. A few years later, Francis Fukuyama was to declare the end of history. So, on the face of it, Danto’s thesis fits in nicely with the ‘endism’ that was popular in the 1980s. In important ways, however, I believe it also stands out.

Imperatives occur ubiquitously in natural languages. They produce forces which change the addressee’s cognitive state and regulate her actions accordingly. In real life we often receive conflicting orders, typically, issued by various authorities with different ranks. A new update semantics is proposed in this paper to formalize this idea. The general properties of this semantics, as well as its background ideas are discussed extensively. In addition, we compare our framework with other approaches of deontic logics in the context of normative (...) conflicts. (shrink)

This paper addresses what is arguably ?? one of the most fundamental questions in the debate on depiction, What is a Picture? It offers a critical discussion of traditional theories of pictorial representation, such as the Resemblance Theory, Conventionalism, and the Illusion Theory; it introduces and analyses the crucial notions of ‘seeing as’ and ‘seeing in’, and concludes by presenting some of the most recent accounts of depiction defended by Kendall Walton, Dominic Lopes, Robert Hopkins, and John Hyman.

Today, the lipid bilayer structure is nearly ubiquitous, taken for granted in even the most rudimentary introductions to cell biology. Yet the image of the lipid bilayer, built out of lipids with heads and tails, went from having obscure origins deep in colloid chemical theory in 1924 to being “obvious to any competent physical chemist” by 1935. This chapter examines how this schematic, strictly heuristic explanation of the idea of molecular orientation was developed within colloid physical chemistry, and how the (...) image was transformed into a reflection of the reality and agency of lipid molecules in the biological microworld. Whereas in physical and colloid chemistry these images considered secondary to instrumental measurement and mathematical modeling of surface phenomena, in biology the manipulable image of the lipid on paper became an essential tool for the molecularization of the cell. (shrink)

In ‘The End of Art: A Real Problem or Not Really a Problem?’ I raised some questions about Arthur Danto’s famous ‘end of art’ thesis. A largely polemical paper, it was intended as an invitation to further discussion, and Kalle Puolakka has now taken up this invitation in ‘Playing The Game After The End of Art’. I thank him for his many insightful remarks. Critical comments are typically more interesting and helpful than simple praise, and Puolakka’s comments are no exception. (...) I would therefore like to return the favour. I will place Puolakka’s remarks under critical examination and in the process hope to rephrase, refine, and defend some of my original claims. First, however, I will briefly restate my reading of Danto’s ideas on the end of art. (shrink)

《政治宗教》是沃格林学术生涯早期的代表作，通过“政治宗教”的理论视角考察了纳粹德国的历史根源、符号特征与世俗宗教本质。学术界围绕“政治宗教”的理论内涵与学术价值展开了大量的争论。然而，若要恰当地评估“ 政治宗教”则需要澄清该理论所遵循的理论基础及其所体现的特征与性质。首先，“政治宗教”的特征体现在其“符号 — 经验”的分析模式中；其次，该理论是沃格林探究纳粹德国政治危机的新视角，也是沃格林“精神政治学”的理论雏形。在明确“政治宗教”的特征与性质之后，进而可以恰当地阐明该研究对当今学界诊断社会政治危机与探索良 善秩序的启迪意义。.

Causalists and Evidentialists can agree about the right course of action in an (apparent) Newcomb problem, if the causal facts are not as initially they seem. If declining $1,000 causes the Predictor to have placed $1m in the opaque box, CDT agrees with EDT that one-boxing is rational. This creates a difficulty for Causalists. We explain the problem with reference to Dummett's work on backward causation and Lewis's on chance and crystal balls. We show that the possibility that the causal (...) facts might be properly judged to be non-standard in Newcomb problems leads to a dilemma for Causalism. One horn embraces a subjectivist understanding of causation, in a sense analogous to Lewis's own subjectivist conception of objective chance. In this case the analogy with chance reveals a terminological choice point, such that either (i) CDT is completely reconciled with EDT, or (ii) EDT takes precedence in the cases in which the two theories give different recommendations. The other horn of the dilemma rejects subjectivism, but now the analogy with chance suggests that it is simply mysterious why causation so construed should constrain rational action. (shrink)

Since its emergence in the 1950s, analytic aesthetics has become the mainstream approach to aesthetics in the English-speaking world, and it has subsequently spread throughout most of the world, including mainland China. Although it was introduced into the Chinese academic world at an early time, around the late 1950s, and has been disseminated and researched in China over the past three decades, analytic aesthetics remains underdeveloped in China. Chinese academics tend to have little familiarity with, and exposure to, analytic approaches (...) to aesthetics. Unsurprisingly, given this situation, Chinese contributions to analytic aesthetics have had a marginal impact on the international academic discussion. This paper aims at providing a picture of the development of analytic aesthetics in China. In section 1, I clarify the scope of the paper. Section 2 briefly introduces aesthetics in China so as to outline the context for our discussion about analytic aesthetics. In section 3, I first offer a brief historical narrative of the dissemination and reception of analytic aesthetics in China, and then explore how analytic aesthetics has been researched and taught in China. -/- . (shrink)

The thesis of quantifier variance is consistent and cannot be refuted via a collapse argument.

Integrative Hermeneutics aims to synthesize classical philosophical traditions with contemporary insights derived from modern technologists. This paper explores the foundational aspects of philosophy, including Metaphysics, Axiology, Logic, Epistemology, Ethics, Linguistics, and Pragmatics, and relates them to the embedded tribal knowledge within Polynesian social groups. We propose an innovative hermeneutic framework that aligns traditional wisdom with the dynamic ideologies of the modern technologist, particularly from a Bay Area educational perspective. The discourse aims to be revolutionary, offering novel intersections between ancient and (...) modern, theoretical and practical, philosophical and technological. (shrink)

My task in this paper is to study Sartre’s ontology as a godless theology. The urgency of defending freedom and responsibility in the face of determinism called for an overarching first principle, a role that God used to play. I first show why such a principle is important and how Sartre filled the void that God had left with a solipsist consciousness. Then I characterize Sartre’s ontology of this consciousness as a “dualist monism”, explaining how it supports his radical conception (...) of freedom. Then, by assessing Sartre’s dualist monism through a theological lens, I disclose an inconsistency in his thought concerning the idea that the in-itself is a deterministic plenitude, which presumes a theos different from consciousness and hence threatens monism. Finally I argue that his inconsistency originates from the finitude of Sartre’s first principle and analyze this finitude by examining the modes of temporality it implies. The entire trajectory problematizes the practice of theo-logy, the idea that a theos stands at the origin of the “logic” (organization or intelligibility) of everything such that all must be conceived under the logos of the theos. While Sartre forcefully criticized the theology of the infinite, his was nonetheless a theology of finitude. (shrink)

The rigor and precision of Leibniz's "possible world" evolved into the concept of Turing machine, and with the birth of the first computer and the physical realization of Turing machine, human cognitive and intelligent activities were optimistically considered by cognitive scientists to be convertible into computational programs for simulation by machines. Cognitive science then formed the research agenda of "cognitive computationalism", and our Chinese scholars have responded to this general view that "the essence of cognition is computation" and that the (...) human brain and computers are merely formal systems for manipulating and processing symbols in their respective fields. Professor Hong Dingguo used the concepts of "manifest order" and "hidden order", Professor Jin Gulun used the philosophical categories of "constitutive theory" and "generative theory", and Liu Yuesheng used the concept of "cognition". Professor Hong Dingguo reinterpreted the relationship between the "real world" and the "possible world" by using the concepts of "manifest sequence" and "hidden sequence", Professor Jin Wulun used the philosophical categories of "composition theory" and "generation theory", and Professor Liu Yuesheng used the generalized information paradigm of "structural information" and "exchange information". "This provides a profound elucidation of the nature of cognitive logic and the process of human cognitive activities becoming symbols through coding and puts forward theoretical limits. The current theoretical dilemma and practical difficulty of cognitive science lies in the fact that it has developed algorithmic concepts in the Turing sense that can only model the explicitly sequential part of cognitive and intellectual activity, forming a constitutive atomic abstraction, or in our terms, classical "structural information", which cannot fully explain the inner mechanisms of human mental activity and its embodied flexibility, selectivity and self-emergence. Wu Xuemou's pan-system theory does not simply rely on logic and Turing machine algorithms, but models human intelligence by treating structural information as a complex large system composed of a collection of elements and a collection of relations (exchange information: five mutual eight chips), in order to break through the narrow path of seeking only the local consistency of the system as currently done; while Wang Dekui's exploration of the three-spin biological and physical path and Huang Zhanji's abandonment of the artificial means of logic to seek the large logical natural mechanisms and Mr. Zhou Liquan's proposal of a schema for successful communication using natural language on the basis of concepts such as context and implicit connotation ("Logic — A Theory of Correct Thinking and Successful Communication"), all reflect the milestones of Chinese scholars who seek to address the deeper issues of cognitive science. We believe that along this series of explorations, combined with new results in recent years in the fields of artificial life and evolutionary computation, a new research agenda in cognitive science will emerge. (shrink)

The present study aimed to develop effective moral educational interventions based on social psychology by using stories of moral exemplars. We tested whether motivation to engage in voluntary service as a form of moral behavior was better promoted by attainable and relevant exemplars or by unattainable and irrelevant exemplars. First, experiment 1, conducted in a lab, showed that stories of attainable exemplars more effectively promoted voluntary service activity engagement among undergraduate students compared with stories of unattainable exemplars and non-moral stories. (...) Second, experiment 2, a middle school classroom-level experiment with a quasi-experimental design, demonstrated that peer exemplars, who are perceived to be attainable and relevant to students, better promoted service engagement compared with historic figures in moral education classes. (shrink)

Abstract Much has been written about the socio-cultural functions of religion. It is equally important to discuss the role and impact of religion and ethics on development and promoting reform in civil society. In today's South Asian context it is necessary to analyse religion both as a tradition and a representation of modernity. Otherwise it is difficult to clearly understand not only the relationship of domination-subordination, together with processes of exclusions and violence prevalent in the sub-continent but also the emerging (...) perspectives, lineages and languages of sociology in general and religion in particular. An attempt is made in this paper to examine the relationship and to evaluate the processes in the evolving discourse of sociology. It also analyses the 'moral' as embedded in religion and as an autonomous category emerging with secularisation. The subtleties of rights and righteousness in the method and metamorphosis of development are also dealt with in this paper. -/- . (shrink)

In his classic book “the Foundations of Statistics” Savage developed a formal system of rational decision making. The system is based on (i) a set of possible states of the world, (ii) a set of consequences, (iii) a set of acts, which are functions from states to consequences, and (iv) a preference relation over the acts, which represents the preferences of an idealized rational agent. The goal and the culmination of the enterprise is a representation theorem: Any preference relation that (...) satisfies certain arguably acceptable postulates determines a (finitely additive) probability distribution over the states and a utility assignment to the consequences, such that the preferences among acts are determined by their expected utilities. Additional problematic assumptions are however required in Savage's proofs. First, there is a Boolean algebra of events (sets of states) which determines the richness of the set of acts. The probabilities are assigned to members of this algebra. Savage's proof requires that this be a σ-algebra (i.e., closed under infinite countable unions and intersections), which makes for an extremely rich preference relation. On Savage's view we should not require subjective probabilities to be σ-additive. He therefore finds the insistence on a σ-algebra peculiar and is unhappy with it. But he sees no way of avoiding it. Second, the assignment of utilities requires the constant act assumption: for every consequence there is a constant act, which produces that consequence in every state. This assumption is known to be highly counterintuitive. The present work contains two mathematical results. The first, and the more difficult one, shows that the σ-algebra assumption can be dropped. The second states that, as long as utilities are assigned to finite gambles only, the constant act assumption can be replaced by the more plausible and much weaker assumption that there are at least two non-equivalent constant acts. The second result also employs a novel way of deriving utilities in Savage-style systems -- without appealing to von Neumann-Morgenstern lotteries. The paper discusses the notion of “idealized agent" that underlies Savage's approach, and argues that the simplified system, which is adequate for all the actual purposes for which the system is designed, involves a more realistic notion of an idealized agent. (shrink)

The present study aimed to examine how to improve the effectiveness of moral exemplar-applied interventions based on the pillars of the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) framework, autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Past research has mainly focused on the relatedness and attainability of moral exemplars for predicting motivation outcomes. The data for this study consisted of synthesized data sets from previous studies examining the motivational impacts of distinct moral exemplars and intervention methods. The main syntheses for these data sets used Multilevel Modeling (MLM) (...) focusing on relatability, attainability, and intervention methods, corresponding to relatedness, competence, and autonomy in the SDT, respectively, as predictors. In general, there was a significant interaction effect between the attainability or relatability, and the intervention method. Autonomous instruction methods, which support autonomy, were demonstrated to boost motivational outcomes. Implications from this study support the employment of SDT to examine the use of moral exemplars in moral education and were consistent with previous exemplar studies. (shrink)