This chapter argues that ZHU Xi was influenced by Daoism. His philosophy begins with the Diagram of the Great Polarity or Taijitu 太極圖 which has Daoist origins. Later in life he studied two Daoist texts, namely, The Seal of the Unity of the Three in the Zhou Book of Changes or the Zhouyi Cantongqi 周易參同契, and The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of the Secret Talisman or the Huangdi Yinfujing 黃帝陰符經. The chapter begins with a discussion about the nature of Daoism and (...) inner meditative alchemy. Then I discuss the Diagram of the Great Polarity. Finally, ZHU Xi’s study of the above two texts is analyzed. (shrink)

This chapter is about issues in ethics and moral psychology that have been little explored by contemporary philosophers, ones that concern the advantages and disadvantages of two different kinds of empathy. Roughly, first type is what is sometimes called “other-focused” empathy, in which one reconstructs the thoughts and feelings that someone else has or would have. The second type, “self-focused” empathy, is the sort of emotional attitude someone adopts when she imagines how she would think or feel were she in (...) the other person’s place. Both are variants of empathy, for both have to do with having thoughts and feelings that are more apt, in the relevant senses, for someone else’s circumstances than one’s own. But they differ with respect to how much one makes substantial reference to oneself in order to elicit those thoughts and feelings. Some influential philosophers and psychologists have taken note of the distinction, but none have engaged the issues as thoroughly as did Zhu Xi and his students in twelfth century, largely in a series of commentaries and conversations that have yet to be translated into Western languages. The aim of this chapter is to explicate Zhu’s view about self- and other-focused empathy as he characterized them, reconstruct his arguments for his view, and then discuss some of the implications for ethics and moral psychology more generally. Zhu’s position in brief is that self-focused empathy is—for flawed moral agents like ourselves—a necessary and useful means by which we can better understand and care for others, but that ultimately it is the ladder we must kick away in favor of purely other-focused empathy. (shrink)

The argument is that (1) the spiritual crisis that Zhu Xi discussed with Zhang Shi 張栻 (1133–1180) and the other “gentlemen of Hunan” from about 1167 to 1169, which was resolved by an understanding of what we might call the interpenetration of the mind’s stillness and activity (dong-jing 動靜) or equilibrium and harmony (zhong-he 中和), (2) led directly to his realization that Zhou Dunyi’s thought provided a cosmological basis for that resolution, and (3) this in turn led Zhu Xi to (...) understand (or construct) the meaning of taiji in terms of the polarity of yin and yang; i.e. the Supreme Polarity as the most fundamental ordering principle (li 理). (shrink)

Abstract:While the American pragmatist C. S. Peirce and the twelfth-century Confucian thinker Zhu Xi 朱熹 lived and worked in radically different contexts, there are nevertheless striking parallels in their view of inquiry. Both appeal to the fundamental nature of reality in order to draw conclusions about the way in which inquiry can be a component of the path toward moral perfection. Yet they prominently diverge in their account not only of the fundamental nature of reality, but also of the way (...) in which we have epistemic access to it. These connections between metaphysical fundamentality or structure and epistemology, it is proposed, have the potential to illuminate current debates in metaphysics. Contemporary approaches that appeal either to grounding relations or to joint-carving ideology in characterizing metaphysical structure, it is proposed, implicitly rest on distinct sets of epistemological presuppositions that resemble the respective views of Zhu Xi or Peirce. (shrink)

In this article, I explore the relationship between desire and emotion in Descartes, Zhu Xi, and Wang Yangming with the aim of demonstrating 1) that Zhu Xi, by keying on the detriments of selfishness, represents an improvement over the more sweeping Cartesian suggestion to control desires in general; and 2) that Wang Yangming, in turn, represents an improvement over Zhu Xi by providing a more sophisticated hermeneutic of the cosmology of desire.

The objective of this paper is to provide a psychological perspective on Zhu Xi (ZX) and Dai Zhen (DZ) views about human nature, by comparing the potential implications of their views on an agent's moral cultivation. To help frame this objective, I will ask and answer the following question: if one commits to ZX who holds the view that human nature is innately good, although obscured, versus if one holds DZ's view that while human nature has the potential for good (...) but it is unformed or unknown (i.e., no original nature) then what are some of the possible implications for self love, sympathy, hope, forgiveness, and spontaneity that are relevant considerations, some of which have been noted by ZX and DZ, for the advance of an agent's moral cultivation. The implications of ZX's commitment to human nature being innately good could entail the following: despite an agent’s obscurities, because his nature is good, he is lovable and he can be hopeful that he can shed off his obscurities via proper moral cultivation. Spontaneity is encouraged as an integral part of an agent's moral self-cultivation. His self-responsibility, hinges on his ability to use the instrumentality of moral cultivation, for which he would need the assistance of a moral teacher. There is a greater capacity for forgiveness because of the presumption that the human nature is inherently good. He can sympathize and extend concern for others, in part, because others' nature is also good. ZX's view may potentially carry a risk of excess and a risk of expecting mainly the good, but not the unknown. Alternatively, implications for DZ's commitment to no original human nature, entails the following: DZ's view is likely more conducive to expecting and embracing the unknown, which potentially makes DZ's philosophy more practical, because we live in a world where we often encounter unknowns and unfamiliar people. Self-love is a prerequisite to know love before one can love others. A moral agent can be hopeful because his potential is good, and it will not be a lost opportunity in light of the constitutive essence of moral cultivation. Despite DZ appearing to be against spontaneity, he is only against the kind of spontaneity that could be hurtful to others as does ZX. Lastly, I argue that DZ's view could result in a broader and more practical commitment to sympathy. Compared to ZX, I argue that DZ’s view could have a potential risk of lower self-responsibility and risk of resistance to self-forgiveness, which does not arise out of DZ’s views about the human nature per se, but rather stems from DZ's bias towards externalized morality. (shrink)

I examine Zhu Xi's investigation thesis, the claim that a necessary condition (in ordinary cases) for one’s acting fully virtuously is one’s investigating the all-pervasive pattern in things (gewu格物). I identify four key objections that the thesis faces, which I label the rationalism, elitism, demandingness, and irrelevance worries. Zhu Xi, I argue, has resources for responding to each of these worries, and for defending a broadly intellectualist conception of fully virtuous agency.

Human aesthetic practices show a sensitivity to the ways that the appearance of an artefact manifests skills and other qualities of the maker. We investigate a possible origin for this kind of sensibility, locating it in the need for co-ordination of skill-transmission in the Acheulean stone tool culture. We argue that our narrative supports the idea that Acheulian agents were aesthetic agents. In line with this we offer what may seem an absurd comparison: between the Acheulian and the Quattrocento. In (...) making it we display some hidden richness in what counts as an aesthetic response to an artefact. We conclude with a brief review of rival explanations—biological and/or cultural—of how this skills-based sensibility became a regular feature of human aesthetic practices. (shrink)

Since the 1860s, petroleum companies, through their influence on local governments, port authorities, international actors and the general public gradually became more dominant in shaping the urban form of ports and cities. Under their development and pressure, the relationships between industrial and urban areas in port cities hosting oil facilities evolved in time. The borders limiting industrial and housing territories have continuously changed with industrial places moving progressively away from urban areas. Such a changing dynamic influenced the permeability of these (...) borders. Port cities are nodes and logistic points where various flows of commodities, wealth, and knowledge gathered before further re‐distribution. These flows affected port cities by changing their spatial organization and the availabiity of space between borders. The main question here is: How did industrial and urban borders evolve through time in port cities? Through a historical analysis, the article explores the settlements of oil facilities and the influence of oil companies over local, regional, and national governments in creating borders and how it influenced the porosity of port cities. This article, through the petroleum narrative, illustrates the impacts of past borders on the contemporary urban form through the evolution of the French port city of Dunkirk, in the North of France. As a historical study, the article analyzes the changing relationships between petroleum industrial sites and housing areas in the city of Dunkirk, using aerial pictures, archival sources, and regulations of different periods. The importance of this analysis lies in knowing that former oil sites previously located on the periphery of Dunkirk, that were forgotten by the authorities are now located within the current urban tissue. This process demonstrates the importance of historical developments to understand current challenges in the urban planning of industrial port cities. (shrink)

In the remainder of this article, we will disarm an important motivation for epistemic contextualism and interest-relative invariantism. We will accomplish this by presenting a stringent test of whether there is a stakes effect on ordinary knowledge ascription. Having shown that, even on a stringent way of testing, stakes fail to impact ordinary knowledge ascription, we will conclude that we should take another look at classical invariantism. Here is how we will proceed. Section 1 lays out some limitations of previous (...) research on stakes. Section 2 presents our study and concludes that there is little evidence for a substantial stakes effect. Section 3 responds to objections. The conclusion clears the way for classical invariantism. (shrink)

Hylomorphism is a metaphysical theory that accounts for the unity of the material parts of composite objects by appeal to a structure or ‘form’ characterizing those parts. I argue that hylomorphism is not merely a plausible or appealing solution to problems of material composition, but a position entailed by any coherent metaphysics of ordinary material objects. In fact, not only does hylomorphism have Aristotelian defenders, but it has had independent lives in both East and West. -/- I review three contemporary (...) hylomorphic theories appeal to ‘structure’ to explain the unity of material objects. Each, however, accepts a controversial principle: that substances can have other substances as proper parts. Such a principle is implausible and severely threatens the coherence of the theory. -/- I begin by showing that Thomas Aquinas’ account of form, which does not accept that substances can have other substances as parts, gives us a more coherent version of hylomorphism. Then I argue Zhu Xi, a Song dynasty Confucian thinker, developed a non-Aristotelian hylomorphism. Unlike Aristotelians, Zhu Xi’s metaphysics was formed in opposition to Buddhist versions of skepticism and gives us reasons to think that anyone who holds a view of objects stronger than Buddhists is committed to forms. In conclusion, I show directly, by appeal to some of those same considerations from Zhu Xi, why it is that all those who believe there are unified material objects will appeal to something like a substantial form. The traditional hylomorphic picture of material composition, then, remains a plausible framework for contemporary metaphysicians – and for good reason. (shrink)

Does the Ship of Theseus present a genuine puzzle about persistence due to conflicting intuitions based on “continuity of form” and “continuity of matter” pulling in opposite directions? Philosophers are divided. Some claim that it presents a genuine puzzle but disagree over whether there is a solution. Others claim that there is no puzzle at all since the case has an obvious solution. To assess these proposals, we conducted a cross-cultural study involving nearly 3,000 people across twenty-two countries, speaking eighteen (...) different languages. Our results speak against the proposal that there is no puzzle at all and against the proposal that there is a puzzle but one that has no solution. Our results suggest that there are two criteria—“continuity of form” and “continuity of matter”— that constitute our concept of persistence and these two criteria receive different weightings in settling matters concerning persistence. (shrink)

Yong Huang presents criticisms of Neo-Aristotelian meta-ethical naturalism and argues Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucian approach is superior in defending moral realism. After presenting Huang’s criticisms of the Aristotelian metaethical naturalist picture, such as that of Rosalind Hursthouse, I argue that Huang’s own views succumb to the same criticisms. His metaethics does not avoid an allegedly problematic ‘gap,’ whether ontological or conceptual, between possessing a human nature and exemplifying moral goodness. This ontological gap exists in virtue of the fact that it is (...) possible for there to be bad people, and the conceptual gap exists in virtue of the fact that people are not ‘good’ (in that sense of being a good agent) merely because they are human. Aristotelians and Confucians both should reject that such gaps are problematic. I conclude by proposing that Huang is better understood as criticizing the Aristotelian move from scientific-empirical facts about human nature to the objective prescriptivity of moral norms. But so too I argue that Confucians should not follow Huang here either. There is good scientific evidence that would be supportive of a Confucian analysis of social virtues and provide one way of responding to those worries about the scientific-empirical accessibility of facts about the good life. (shrink)

This paper explicates the influential Confucian view that “people” and not “institutional rules” are the proper sources of good governance and social order, as well as some notable Confucian objections to this position. It takes Xunzi 荀子, Hu Hong 胡宏, and Zhu Xi 朱熹 as the primary representatives of the “virtue-centered” position, which holds that people’s good character and not institutional rules bear primary credit for successful governance. And it takes Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 as a major advocate for the “institutionalist” (...) position, which holds that institutional rules have some power to effect success independently of improvements in character. Historians have often called attention to this debate but left the major arguments and positions relatively unspecified. As I show, the Confucian virtue-centered view is best captured in two theses: first, that reforming people is far more demanding than reforming institutional rules; second, that once the rules have reached a certain threshold of viability, further improvements in those rules are unlikely to be effective on their own. Once we specify the theses in this way, we can catalogue the different respects and degrees to which the more virtue-centered political thinkers endorse virtue-centrism in governance. Zhu Xi, for example, turns out to endorse a stronger version of virtue-centrism than Hu Hong. I also use this account of the major theses to show that Huang Zongxi, who is sometimes regarded as historical Confucianism’s foremost institutionalist, has more complicated and mixed views about the power of institutional reform than scholars usually assume. (shrink)

Beall (2016) proposes to read the middle-value of Weak Kleene logic as off-topic. This interpretation has recently drawn some attention: for instance, Francez has pointed out that Beall's interpretation does not meet some important requirements to count as a truth value. Moreover, Beall is silent about what a topic (or a subject matter) is. But arguably, what is a topic? is a crucial question, and an answer is really important to fully understand his proposal. Thus, our goal here is to (...) help to remedy this deficiency, and show how Beall's interpretation of Weak Kleene truth-values interacts with the notion of topic. To do that, we formalize his motivating ideas and draw some consequences from them. (shrink)

This volume includes nineteen articles by scholars from Asia, North America, and Europe on Chinese thinkers from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries. Included here are intellectual biographies of literati such as Zhou Dunyi, the Cheng brothers, Zhu Xi, Zhang Shi, Hu Hong, Wang Yangming, and Dai Zhen. Essays are arranged chronologically, and most begin with a biographical sketch of their subject. They provide variety rather than uniformity of approach, but all in all these essays are remarkably rich and offer (...) much new material on both familiar and lesser-known thinkers. (shrink)

This paper reports the first study in the literature that adopts a bibliometric approach to systematically explore the scholarship in the young and fast‐growing research field of experimental philosophy. Based on a corpus of 1,248 publications in experimental philosophy from the past two decades retrieved from the PhilPapers website, the study examined the publication trend, the influential experimental philosophers, the impactful works, the popular publication venues, and the major research themes in this subarea of philosophy. It found, first, an overall (...) growing trend in publications in experimental philosophy, encompassing four developmental stages. Second, it found that significant changes in topics of interest have taken place, with some gaining increasing attention, others seemingly going out of fashion, and still others remaining popular constantly. Third, the study identified lists of leading philosophers, frequently cited publications, and popular journals helpful for researchers and newcomers to get a quick start in learning about the field. (shrink)

Globally, above 1.4 billion adults did not reach the recommended level of physical education in their daily life, thus triple intendent reforms are proposed by the Ministry of Physical Education for the development of sporting leadership in schools, colleges, and universities, which are essentially important for the development of physical and mental health of the students. This article analyzes the situation of lacking sustainable sporting leadership among other factors related to Physical Education (PE) resources in the southern areas of Ningxia.

To morally defer is to form a moral belief on the basis of some credible authority's recommendation rather than on one’s own moral judgment. Many philosophers have suggested that the sort of knowledge yielded by moral deference is deficient in various ways. To better appreciate its possible deficiencies, I propose that we look at a centuries-long philosophical discourse that made much of the shortcomings of this sort of knowledge, which is the discourse about “getting it oneself” (zide 自得) in the (...) later (post-classical) Confucian tradition. In this chapter, I offer the first sustained philosophical account of “getting it oneself,” as conceived by its most influential proponents—Cheng Hao, Cheng Yi, and Zhu Xi. I describe its most notable features, including its tendency to enhance epistemic confidence and what I call “self-discovery aspects” of the phenomenon. I then focus on the Neo-Confucian claim that some parts of the deliberative process should be spontaneous or unforced, which, I argue, they saw as necessary for an unbiased appreciation of the inferential force of the reasons for one’s moral conclusions. I conclude by pointing to some of the broader implications of my reading for both the history of philosophy and current debates about moral deference. (shrink)

Local expressivism is the idea that some kinds of sentences express mental states other than beliefs. Global expressivism is the idea that all sentences are similarly expressive (of attitudes) instead of representational. They appear to disagree, but due to the vagueness of these big-picture ideas, the disagreement between them has not yet been clearly pinned down and has been suspected to be empty. This paper fixes this problem and shows not only how and where they disagree, but also that their (...) disagreement is more profound than it has usually been conceived as. I first show that local and global expressivism have very different conceptual origins and thus that we should not think of them as carrying the same project to different extents. I then show their disagreement: global expressivists think that the meaning of all kinds of sentences is primarily inferential, and the meaningfulness of language is to be primarily explained by our trying to agree with our peers, while local expressivists think that the meaning of some kinds of sentences is primarily representational, and the meaningfulness of language is to be primarily explained by our trying to agree with the environment. An important upshot of this reframing of the debate is that global expressivists’ arguments to convince local expressivists are not successful. (shrink)

In the recent debate on political legitimacy, we have seen the emergence of a revisionist camp, advocating the idea of ‘legitimacy without political obligation,’ as opposed to the traditional view that political obligation is necessary for state legitimacy. The revisionist idea of legitimacy is appealing because if it stands, the widespread skepticism about the existence of political obligation will not lead us to conclude that the state is illegitimate. Unfortunately, existing conceptions of ‘legitimacy without political obligation’ are subject to serious (...) objections. In this article, I propose a new conception of ‘legitimacy without political obligation,’ and defend it against various objections that the revisionist idea of legitimacy is either conceptually or morally mistaken. This new conception of legitimacy promises to advance the debates between anarchists and statists by making the task of philosophical anarchists significantly more difficult. (shrink)

The past eighteen years witnessed the rapid development of experimental philosophy of language. Adopting a bibliometric approach, this study examines the research trends and status quo of this burgeoning field based on a corpus of 237 publications retrieved from PhilPapers. It is observed that experimental philosophy of language has undergone three stages, the initiation stage, the development stage, and the extension stage, across which there is a clear upward trend in the annual number of publications. Michael Devitt, Edouard Machery, John (...) Turri, Nat Hansen, et al., are found to be the most productive philosophers, testifying their leading positions in this field. Journals, instead of books, are the major homes of works in this area. The analysis also yields a list of influential works, including the seminal work “Semantics, Cross-cultural Style” and other significant publications on the semantics of various types of expressions. Relatedly, the major research themes are found to include not only intuitions about the reference of proper names, but also a wide array of philosophically and linguistically interesting issues like the meaning of color adjectives, epistemic modals, and predicates of personal taste, the norms of assertions and the essence of lies, etc. These findings showcase that experimental philosophy of language has broadened the research territory and offered deep insights into central issues of philosophy of language that are beyond the reach of the conventional armchair methodology. (shrink)

In a recent article, Arthur Applbaum contributes a new view—legitimacy as a moral power—to the debate over the concept of political legitimacy. Applbaum rejects competing views of legitimacy, in particular legitimacy as a claim-right to have the law obeyed, for mistakenly invoking substantive moral argument in the conceptual analysis, and concludes that “at the core of the concept—what legitimacy is” is only a Hohfeldian moral power. In this article, I contend that: (1) Applbaum’s view of legitimacy, when fully unfolded, refers (...) to more than a mere moral power and should therefore be rejected even by his own standards; (2) Applbaum’s rejection of competing views of legitimacy ultimately relies on a claim that he does not successfully defend, namely, the claim that moral duties are of absolute rather than prima facie force. (shrink)

This paper explores the essence of the World and the essence of Life/Consciousness. Then derives from they the highest principles of value judgment and a series of ethics, providing a theoretical basis for guiding our future actions. The essence of the World consists of three aspects: 1. Existence, 2. Not nothingness, 3.Difference/Change. The essence of Life/Consciousness includes four aspects: 1.Has the distinction of "self" and "non-self".2. Has the change of the "new self" and the "old self".3. Pursues to maintain "self".4. (...) Pursue turning "non-self" into "self". Life and consciousness are completely identical. The pursuit of "Difference/Change" is the principle of the World. Beauty and art originate from the essence of the World and Life/Consciousness. The highest principle of value judgment for Life/Consciousness actions is that they should contribute to the growth of "Difference/Change". Ethics are inherent in Life /Consciousness. Low-level Life/Consciousness species have inherent rights. In the end, I argue that all of Life/Consciousness is a whole, which is also the consciousness or will of the World. Through the cognition of Life/Consciousness, the World achieves self-cognition and finally self-expansion. (shrink)

As past studies of the association between parent-child relationship and problematic internet use show mixed results and are influenced by many factors, this meta-analysis of 75 primary Chinese and English language studies from 1990 to 2021 with 110,601 participants (aged 6−25 years) explored (a) the overall association between parent-child relationship and problematic internet use, and (b) whether the association is affected by their types, country, measures, objects of the parent-child relationship, gender, age, year and publication types. We used funnel plots, (...) Classic fail-safe N and Egger's test to test for publication bias and for moderation with the homogeneity tests. The results showed a negative association between quality of parent-child relationship and problematic internet use (r = −0.18, 95% CI = [−0.20, −0.15]). The moderation analysis found that compared with internet addiction tendency, the association between social media addiction and parent-child relationship was stronger. (shrink)

A crucial tenet of virtue-based or expertise-based theorizing about politics is that there are ways to identify and select morally and epistemically excellent people to hold office. This paper considers historical challenges to this task that come from within Greek and Confucian thought and political practice. Because of how difficult it is to assess character in ordinary settings, we argue that it is even more difficult to design institutions that select for virtue at the much wider political scale. Specifically, we (...) argue that the vast majority of proposals that purport to select for virtue are either (a) unlikely to be effective, (b) not implementable at the scale of most current nations, or (c) have already been incorporated into most democratic states. Thus defenders of meritocratic institutions should take more seriously the practical barriers that will almost certainly arise when trying to implement these proposals at scale. Historical proponents of meritocratic values were well aware of concerns about the feasibility of their political ideals, and we should be too. (shrink)

According to the principle of internal-external consonance (Wexler,2006), an individual's internal neuropsychological structures match key features of his or her external culture. We propose that the Chinese self, which is rooted in a culture of human relatedness under the influence of Confucianism, is a good example of this principle because recent brain imaging studies have found neural evidence that mirrors its cultural root. We also discuss the future direction of research on the neural basis of Chinese self.

Wind power control technology is an important part of intelligent control in wind farms. By the automatic calculation and implementation of control strategy, problems such as imprecise of manual control scheduling, slow adjust rate, heavy workload, etc. have been solved. It can improve the capacity of wind power grid, and it also has the important meaning to the safe and stable operation of power grid. This paper introduces wind power control system from certain aspects such as control mode, control principle, (...) and so on. (shrink)

In this papers ,we use the control method of the maximal fractional integral and obtain the boundedness of higher order commutator generated by maximal Bochner-Riesz operator on Morrey space. Moreover , we get it's continuty from Morrey space to Lipschtz space and from Morrey space to BMO space.

In this papers ,we generalize some results of other authors to weighted spaces and gain the boundedness of maximal Bochner-Riesz operator on weighted Herz-Hardy spaces,weighted Hardy spaces and weighted weak Hardy spaces ,where $\omega \in A_1.$.

The results revealed that students who remained in China experienced challenges which included anxiety, closure of campuses, lockdown, their parents’ concern regarding health issues, and not being able to meet with friends. On the other hand, students who had left China during the pandemic were confined to their home countries. This group of students experienced more severe problems than the students who remained in China. Since the transition to home countries was “unplanned,” they were not ready to readjust to their (...) native culture and were vulnerable to severe reverse culture shock. Upon returning to their home countries, international students faced a number of challenges, including readjustment to their home countries and changes in their lives in host and home countries. In addition, they lost social and academic resources, such as the disruption of study environment, losing important group memberships, financial constraints, visa expiry, graduation delay, and academic suspension. (shrink)

This chapter describes the potential far‐reaching consequences of contemplative higher education for the fields of science and medicine.

This paper investigates the meaning of the neo-Confucian concept of 'li'. From early on, it has the sense of a pattern designating how things are and ought to be. But it takes on the appearance of something transcendent to the world only at a certain point in history, when it becomes juxtaposed to 'qi'. Zhu Xi has been criticized for this 'li-qi' dichotomization and the transcendentalization of 'li'. The paper re-examines this putative dualism and transcendentalism, looking into both Zhu's discussions (...) and pre- and post-Zhu discussions of 'li', and concludes it to be an inter-connective threading immanent to the world. (shrink)

This paper delves into the profound advancements of Large Language Models (LLMs), epitomized by GPT-3, in natural language processing and artificial intelligence. It explores the epistemological foundations of LLMs through the lenses of Aristotle and Kant, revealing apparent distinctions from human learning. Transitioning seamlessly, the paper then delves into the ethical landscape, extending beyond knowledge acquisition to scrutinize the implications of LLMs in decision-making and content creation. The ethical scrutiny, employing virtue ethics, deontological ethics, and teleological ethics, delves into LLMs' (...) behaviours and decisions, necessitating the exploration of novel ethical paradigms tailored to machine intelligence. The paper also addresses biases in data, privacy concerns, copyright implications, and intellectual property rights, emphasizing the need to adapt frameworks for both human and machine creators. The paper concludes by advocating for interdisciplinary dialogue between philosophers, cognitive scientists, and AI researchers to foster a balanced and ethically grounded integration of LLMs into the evolving landscape of artificial intelligence. Continuous reflection on the evolving relationship between human cognition and artificial intelligence emerges as a crucial aspect for shaping a harmonious and responsible future in this domain. (shrink)

Criticism and recommendations are very much welcome. Please don't hesitate to contact me with them. -/- .

This is a theoretical treatment of the term "Sha Zhu Pan" (杀猪盘) in Chinese, which translates to “Pig-Butchering” in English. The article critically examines the propagation and validation of "Pig Butchering," an animal metaphor, and its implications for the dehumanisation of victims of online fraud across various discourses. The study provides background information about this type of fraud before investigating its theoretical foundations and linking its emergence to the dehumanisation of fraud victims. The analysis highlights the disparity between academic literature, (...) subjected to rigorous peer-review processes, and sensationalised narratives prevalent in the media. While academic works subject "pig butchering" to critical scrutiny and refrain from endorsing derogatory terms to depict fraud victims, numerous media outlets employ this term uncritically, further worsening the predicament of these victims. "Pig butchering" is firmly rooted in the concept of dehumanisation, and this article underscores how language moulds perceptions of fraud and behaviour, extending to the development of preventive strategies. The role of law enforcement agencies in generating and disseminating materials is also a central theme, emphasising their responsibility as trusted sources of information. We suggest that these agencies should adopt non-victim shaming language to encourage victims to report crimes and alleviate the stigma attached to victimisation. Additionally, the article offers valuable cross-cultural insights by comparing metaphors from Chinese and Nigerian contexts. This comparative analysis enriches our comprehension of the global dimensions of online fraud and its cultural diversities, highlighting the substantial impact of language on perceptions and behaviours. We advocate for a departure from victim-blaming tendencies perpetuated by select media outlets, urging a more compassionate and accurate portrayal of those affected by online fraud. We, therefore, call for a more empathetic and accurate portrayal of individuals affected by online fraud, aligning with the broader objective of promoting understanding and support for these victims. (shrink)

Traditionally, the problem of evil, in its various formulations, has been one of the strongest objections against perfect being theism. In the voluminous literature on this problem, the motif of evil has usually been discussed with respect to human flourishing. In recent decades more focused attention has been paid to animal suffering and the philosophical problems that such suffering poses for perfect being theists. However, this growing body of literature, in Anglo-American philosophical milieus, is largely aimed at sketching a specifically (...) Christian or Christianity-inflected theodicy that would reconcile animal suffering with the existence of an omni-God. In contrast, there are few, if any, systematic attempts to put forth a Hindu theodicy that aims to offer morally justifiable reasons that God has for allowing animal suffering. In this article, we address this scholarly lacuna by illustrating how a Hindu perfect being theist might respond to the problem of animal suffering. (shrink)

This essay examines the way in which the modal concept of necessity was discussed and analyzed in some eleventh- and early twelfth-century sources, such as Peter Damian’s De divina omnipotentia, Anselm of Canterbury’s Cur deus homo and several anonymous commentaries on Aristotle’s De interpretatione that were presumably composed in the first two decades of the twelfth century by logicians connected to William of Champeaux’s and Peter Abelard’s milieu. My aim is to offer a comparison of these different sources with respect (...) to their use of the Boethian distinction between two types or kinds of necessity, namely, the “absolute” or “simple” necessity that is involved in statements like “God is necessarily immortal” or “it is necessary for humans to be animals”, and the “conditional” or “temporal” necessity that is at stake when we say, for instance, that someone necessarily walks when he is walking. (shrink)

"Rather than bookish, it is much enjoyable to create and evaluate something from own centralizing the facts and thoughts of the contents only pervaded in the book.

Questioning the reasons that led Augustine to reflect about time, a theme often associated with metaphysics and cosmology, in his work Confessions, which main character is autobiographical, we hypothesized that the theme belongs to the unitary project of the work, whose keys of reading would be 1) the purpose of human life and 2) the distinction between God and creatures. When analyzing the Augustinian argument, it is noticed that it is possible to insert the debate in question in the general (...) scope of the narrative of this specific work. It is also noticed that, from this perspective, the psychological approach is not necessarily linked to an understanding of time from a purely subjectivist aspect, since the central concern of the discussion is not with the metaphysical / cosmological aspect, but with the analysis interior. (shrink)

This eleventh volume of Collected Papers includes 90 papers comprising 988 pages on Physics, Artificial Intelligence, Health Issues, Decision Making, Economics, Statistics, written between 2001-2022 by the author alone or in collaboration with the following 84 co-authors (alphabetically ordered) from 19 countries: Abhijit Saha, Abu Sufian, Jack Allen, Shahbaz Ali, Ali Safaa Sadiq, Aliya Fahmi, Atiqa Fakhar, Atiqa Firdous, Sukanto Bhattacharya, Robert N. Boyd, Victor Chang, Victor Christianto, V. Christy, Dao The Son, Debjit Dutta, Azeddine Elhassouny, Fazal Ghani, Fazli Amin, (...) Anirudha Ghosha, Nasruddin Hassan, Hoang Viet Long, Jhulaneswar Baidya, Jin Kim, Jun Ye, Darjan Karabašević, Vasilios N. Katsikis, Ieva Meidutė-Kavaliauskienė, F. Kaymarm, Nour Eldeen M. Khalifa, Madad Khan, Qaisar Khan, M. Khoshnevisan, Kifayat Ullah,, Volodymyr Krasnoholovets, Mukesh Kumar, Le Hoang Son, Luong Thi Hong Lan, Tahir Mahmood, Mahmoud Ismail, Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Siti Nurul Fitriah Mohamad, Mohamed Loey, Mai Mohamed, K. Mohana, Kalyan Mondal, Muhammad Gulfam, Muhammad Khalid Mahmood, Muhammad Jamil, Muhammad Yaqub Khan, Muhammad Riaz, Nguyen Dinh Hoa, Cu Nguyen Giap, Nguyen Tho Thong, Peide Liu, Pham Huy Thong, Gabrijela Popović‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬, Surapati Pramanik, Dmitri Rabounski, Roslan Hasni, Rumi Roy, Tapan Kumar Roy, Said Broumi, Saleem Abdullah, Muzafer Saračević, Ganeshsree Selvachandran, Shariful Alam, Shyamal Dalapati, Housila P. Singh, R. Singh, Rajesh Singh, Predrag S. Stanimirović, Kasan Susilo, Dragiša Stanujkić, Alexandra Şandru, Ovidiu Ilie Şandru, Zenonas Turskis, Yunita Umniyati, Alptekin Ulutaș, Maikel Yelandi Leyva Vázquez, Binyamin Yusoff, Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas, Zhao Loon Wang.‬‬‬‬. (shrink)

In this eleventh book of scilogs – called in-turns and out-turns –, one may find new and old questions and solutions, referring mostly to topics on Neutrosophy, but also Multispace, with miscellaneous addition of topics on Physics, Mathematics, or Sociology – email messages to research colleagues, or replies, notes about authors, articles, or books, spontaneous ideas, and so on. -/- Exchanging ideas with Prem Kumar Singh, Feng Liu, Nicolae Bălașa, Jimmy Quellet, Minodora Rușchița, Frank Gelli, A. R. Vătuiu, Victor Christianto, (...) Vladimir I. Rogozhin, Robert Neil Boyd, Akira Kanda, Stefan Spaarmann, Oliver Consa, Yabin Shao, Junle Zhuo, Nivetha Martin, Said Broumi, Jean Dezert, Erick González, Tomasz Witczak, B. De Baets, I. Couso, D. Dubois, L. Good, Mihaela Colhon, Atiqe Ur Rahman, Muhammad Saeed, Muhammad Ihsan, Edeline Nancy, Shawkat Alkhazaleh, Shazia Rana, Vasantha Kandasamy, Santanu Acharjee, Mohamed Al-Shmrani, Parimala Manie, Mehmet Unver, Murat Olgun, Adel Aleidhri, Akira Kanda, Ilanthenral Kandasamy, Mircea Zărnescu, R. Tayebi Khorami, Arsham Borumand Saeid, Maisam Jdid, M. Abobala, Riad Hamido, Rafael Rojas, Esmaeil Zarei, Faisal Khan, Rouzbeh Abbassi, Adel Al-Odhari, Henry Garrett, Ackbar Rezaei, Saeid Jafari, Karthika Muthusamy, Harish Garg, Huda E. Khalid, Gonca D. Güngör, Muslim A. Noah Zainal, Fakhry Asad Agusfrianto, Madeleine Al-Tahan, Mariam Hariri, Yudi Mahatma, Masoud Ghods, Marco Brigliadori, Luis Enrique Aponte Pérez, Amr Mohammed, M. Aslam (in order of reference in the book). (shrink)

Trung Quốc là nền kinh tế lớn hàng đầu thế giới, vận hành với hiệu suất cao để đáp ứng nhu cầu sinh kế của hơn 1,4 tỷ người dân, và cung cấp một lượng hàng hóa công nghệ, tiêu dùng và cả nông phẩm tới thế giới. Hệ quả tất yếu của quá trình tăng trưởng liên tục hơn 4 thập niên là việc sử dụng tài nguyên, và trong quá trình sản xuất, chế tạo, chế biến cũng sản (...) sinh ra một lượng khí nhà kính (GHG) tích lũy khổng lồ phát thải vào khí quyển. Trong một thống kê được đăng trên The Guardian năm 2017, thế giới đã nhận thấy trong giai đoạn 1988-2015, 100 tổ hợp công nghiệp hàng đầu thế giới chịu trách nhiệm cho việc phát thải tới 71% tổng tồn lượng GHG trong khí quyển. Dẫn đầu danh sách này trên phương diện quốc gia là Trung Quốc, với thống kê chỉ 5 đại công ty Trung Quốc đã chiếm tới gần 17% tổng lượng phát thải, trong đó tổ hợp ngành than có trách nhiệm lớn nhất, tới 14,32%. Sau những tiến bộ công nghệ vượt bậc cũng như tích lũy thặng dư nền kinh tế, quá trình hiện đại hóa ở Trung Quốc sang thời kỳ Chủ tịch Tập Cận Bình đã chuyển hướng sang bảo vệ môi trường với các mục tiêu phát thải nghiêm ngặt. Chẳng hạn như xác định nhóm ngành sản xuất gang thép với vai trò lớn trong mục tiêu giảm phát thải GHG, chính phủ và lãnh đạo công nghiệp liên tục tìm kiếm giải pháp cho sự hạn chế nguồn tài nguyên, thúc đẩy khuếch tán công nghệ, ứng dụng tiến bộ trong giảm phát thải và thu giữ, chôn lấp các-bon, thích hợp với ngành thép, dựa trên đánh giá bằng hệ thống phân tích hướng tới giải quyết mục tiêu biến đổi khí hậu có tên viết tắt “C3IAM/NET-IS.”. (shrink)

Trung Quốc là nền kinh tế lớn hàng đầu thế giới, vận hành với hiệu suất cao để đáp ứng nhu cầu sinh kế của hơn 1,4 tỷ người dân, và cung cấp một lượng hàng hóa công nghệ, tiêu dùng và cả nông phẩm tới thế giới. Hệ quả tất yếu của quá trình tăng trưởng liên tục hơn 4 thập niên là việc sử dụng tài nguyên, và trong quá trình sản xuất, chế tạo, chế biến cũng sản (...) sinh ra một lượng khí nhà kính (GHG) tích lũy khổng lồ phát thải vào khí quyển. (shrink)

The accent on scientific and empirical character of alchemy, especially from the field of the history of science, promotes the idea that one can understand the cryptic and metaphorical language of alchemy mainly through the laboratory chemical practice. As a result, the tendency is to interpret the spiritual and esoteric language of alchemy, as metaphors for laboratory work and the most representative research on historiography of alchemy that point the spiritual character as being contaminated by esoteric sciences and Victorian occultism. (...) This paper is paying attention to this dichotomy by attempting to understand the exclusivist position of the position that alchemy is a proto-chemistry and to see the consequences of such an interpretation. It is reviewed one of the most representative voices that interpret alchemy as spiritual by Carl. G. Jung and Mircea Eliade, and their rejection, as it is illustrated by William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, showing the boundaries of both approaches and the hazarded character of understanding alchemy merely as part of the history of chemistry. (shrink)

Contrary to the notion that the human mind has some sort of tendency toward the abstract processes of classifying, analysing and synthesising, this paper suggests that these processes are historically and socially constructed. Because these processes (in particular, synthesising) are brought about to serve specific purposes and agendas, we need to pre-examine them periodically to see if they still serve our needs. In the past, synthesis had an important function as a symbol, among alchemists, for example. We have all but (...) forgotten that symbolic functioning and treat it now only in its material manifestations. Having done so, we use the material sense to explain the symbolic sense. In that way, synthesis may no longer be a helpful way to look at our abstract processes. Insofar as the needs of the future may be different than the needs of the past or present, it may indeed be time to abandon ideas of abstract synthesis. The author suggests that in its place, we consider the notion of ‘shuttling’. Shuttling allows us to adopt different positions, and even contradictory positions within our individual thinking, without feeling the need to immediately characterise the contradiction as ‘wrong’. And insofar as we may have multiple present positions, shuttling opens up the possibility for multiple future positions as well. (shrink)