Daniel Bell and Wang Pei’s recent monograph, Just Hierarchy, seeks to defend hierarchical relationships against more egalitarian alternatives. This paper addresses their argument, offered in one chapter of the book, in favour of a hierarchical relationship between human and nonhuman animals. This relationship, Bell and Pei argue, should conform to what they call “subordination without cruelty:” it is permissible to subordinate and exploit animals for human ends, provided that we do not treat them cruelly. We focus on three aspects (...) of their view: their argument for a hierarchical view; their understanding of cruelty; and their account of the heightened duties they claim we owe to nonhuman animals who are intelligent, domesticated, and/or “cute.” We argue that the reasons that Bell and Pei offer fail to support their conclusions, and that, even if one accepts a hierarchical view, the conclusions that Bell and Pei draw about the permissibility of practices such as killing animals for food do not follow. We conclude by emphasizing philosophers’ responsibility to thoroughly test their arguments and to engage with existing debates, especially when the practices they seek to justify involve harms of great magnitude. (shrink)

This thirteenth volume of Collected Papers is an eclectic tome of 88 papers in various fields of sciences, such as astronomy, biology, calculus, economics, education and administration, game theory, geometry, graph theory, information fusion, decision making, instantaneous physics, quantum physics, neutrosophic logic and set, non-Euclidean geometry, number theory, paradoxes, philosophy of science, scientific research methods, statistics, and others, structured in 17 chapters (Neutrosophic Theory and Applications; Neutrosophic Algebra; Fuzzy Soft Sets; Neutrosophic Sets; Hypersoft Sets; Neutrosophic Semigroups; Neutrosophic Graphs; Superhypergraphs; Plithogeny; (...) Information Fusion; Statistics; Decision Making; Extenics; Instantaneous Physics; Paradoxism; Mathematica; Miscellanea), comprising 965 pages, published between 2005-2022 in different scientific journals, by the author alone or in collaboration with the following 110 co-authors (alphabetically ordered) from 26 countries: Abduallah Gamal, Sania Afzal, Firoz Ahmad, Muhammad Akram, Sheriful Alam, Ali Hamza, Ali H. M. Al-Obaidi, Madeleine Al-Tahan, Assia Bakali, Atiqe Ur Rahman, Sukanto Bhattacharya, Bilal Hadjadji, Robert N. Boyd, Willem K.M. Brauers, Umit Cali, Youcef Chibani, Victor Christianto, Chunxin Bo, Shyamal Dalapati, Mario Dalcín, Arup Kumar Das, Elham Davneshvar, Bijan Davvaz, Irfan Deli, Muhammet Deveci, Mamouni Dhar, R. Dhavaseelan, Balasubramanian Elavarasan, Sara Farooq, Haipeng Wang, Ugur Halden, Le Hoang Son, Hongnian Yu, Qays Hatem Imran, Mayas Ismail, Saeid Jafari, Jun Ye, Ilanthenral Kandasamy, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, Darjan Karabašević, Abdullah Kargın, Vasilios N. Katsikis, Nour Eldeen M. Khalifa, Madad Khan, M. Khoshnevisan, Tapan Kumar Roy, Pinaki Majumdar, Sreepurna Malakar, Masoud Ghods, Minghao Hu, Mingming Chen, Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Mohamed Talea, Mohammad Hamidi, Mohamed Loey, Mihnea Alexandru Moisescu, Muhammad Ihsan, Muhammad Saeed, Muhammad Shabir, Mumtaz Ali, Muzzamal Sitara, Nassim Abbas, Munazza Naz, Giorgio Nordo, Mani Parimala, Ion Pătrașcu, Gabrijela Popović, K. Porselvi, Surapati Pramanik, D. Preethi, Qiang Guo, Riad K. Al-Hamido, Zahra Rostami, Said Broumi, Saima Anis, Muzafer Saračević, Ganeshsree Selvachandran, Selvaraj Ganesan, Shammya Shananda Saha, Marayanagaraj Shanmugapriya, Songtao Shao, Sori Tjandrah Simbolon, Florentin Smarandache, Predrag S. Stanimirović, Dragiša Stanujkić, Raman Sundareswaran, Mehmet Șahin, Ovidiu-Ilie Șandru, Abdulkadir Șengür, Mohamed Talea, Ferhat Taș, Selçuk Topal, Alptekin Ulutaș, Ramalingam Udhayakumar, Yunita Umniyati, J. Vimala, Luige Vlădăreanu, Ştefan Vlăduţescu, Yaman Akbulut, Yanhui Guo, Yong Deng, You He, Young Bae Jun, Wangtao Yuan, Rong Xia, Xiaohong Zhang, Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas, Zayen Azzouz Omar, Xiaohong Zhang, Zhirou Ma.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬. (shrink)

This chapter offers a brief introduction to Xuanxue Wei Jin Dynasty philosophy.

The concept of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is ubiquitous in the public and semi-technical domain, yet rarely defined precisely. We clarify main concepts that are usually discussed in connection to GenAI and argue that one ought to distinguish between the technical and the public discourse. In order to show its complex development and associated conceptual ambiguities, we offer a historical-systematic reconstruction of GenAI and explicitly discuss two exemplary cases: the generative status of the Large Language Model BERT and the differences (...) between protein structure predictions from AlphaFold 2 and 3. Our analysis shows that there is no unique and unambiguous definition of GenAI based on a purely technical account of the term. Following this conclusion, we argue that the public discourse is not simply a less complex way of speaking, but instead transcends its technical basis. As a means to structure this newly emerging discussion landscape we introduce a non-exhaustive list of four central aspects of GenAI: (multi-)modality, interaction, flexibility, and productivity. These dimensions constitute a first step towards defining GenAI beyond its technical basis. (shrink)

Background: The concept of digital twins has great potential for transforming the existing health care system by making it more personalized. As a convergence of health care, artificial intelligence, and information and communication technologies, personalized health care services that are developed under the concept of digital twins raise a myriad of ethical issues. Although some of the ethical issues are known to researchers working on digital health and personalized medicine, currently, there is no comprehensive review that maps the major ethical (...) risks of digital twins for personalized health care services. Objective: This study aims to fill the research gap by identifying the major ethical risks of digital twins for personalized health care services. We first propose a working definition for digital twins for personalized health care services to facilitate future discussions on the ethical issues related to these emerging digital health services. We then develop a process-oriented ethical map to identify the major ethical risks in each of the different data processing phases. Methods: We resorted to the literature on eHealth, personalized medicine, precision medicine, and information engineering to identify potential issues and developed a process-oriented ethical map to structure the inquiry in a more systematic way. The ethical map allows us to see how each of the major ethical concerns emerges during the process of transforming raw data into valuable information. Developers of a digital twin for personalized health care service may use this map to identify ethical risks during the development stage in a more systematic way and can proactively address them. Results: This paper provides a working definition of digital twins for personalized health care services by identifying 3 features that distinguish the new application from other eHealth services. On the basis of the working definition, this paper further layouts 10 major operational problems and the corresponding ethical risks. Conclusions: It is challenging to address all the major ethical risks that a digital twin for a personalized health care service might encounter proactively without a conceptual map at hand. The process-oriented ethical map we propose here can assist the developers of digital twins for personalized health care services in analyzing ethical risks in a more systematic manner. (shrink)

The rare but severe cerebral venous thrombosis occurring in some AstraZeneca vaccine recipients has prompted some governments to suspend part of their COVID-19 vaccination programmes. Such suspensions have faced various challenges from both scientific and ethical angles. Most of the criticisms against such suspensions follow a consequentialist approach, arguing that the suspension will lead to more harm than benefits. In this paper, I propose a rights-based argument against the suspension of the vaccine rollouts amid this highly time-sensitive combat of COVID-19. (...) I argue that by suspending a vaccine rollout, a government infringes people's right to take the risks they deem worth taking for their health. I also consider four potential objections to my argument and explain why none of them undermines my argument. (shrink)

John Harris recently argues that the moral bioenhancement proposed by Persson and Savulescu can damage moral agency by depriving the recipients of their freedom to fall (freedom to make wrongful choices) and therefore should not be pursued. The link Harris makes between moral agency and the freedom to fall, however, implies that all forms of moral enhancement, including moral education, that aim to make the enhancement recipients less likely to “fall” are detrimental to moral agency. In this paper, I present (...) a new moral agency-based critique against the moral bioenhancement program envisaged by Persson and Savulescu. I argue that the irresistible influences exerted by the bioenhancement program harms our capabilities for conducting accurate self-reflection and forming decisions that truly express our will, which subsequently undermine our moral agency. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a clarification of the long debate on whether enhancement will or will not diminish authenticity. It focuses particularly on accounts provided by Carl Elliott and David DeGrazia. Three clarifications will be presented here. First, most discussants only criticise Elliott’s identity argument and neglect that his conservative position in the use of enhancement can be understood as a concern over social coercion. Second, Elliott’s and DeGrazia’s views can, not only co-exist, but even converge together as an (...) autonomy based theory of authenticity. Third, the current account of autonomy provided by DeGrazia fails to address the importance of rationality and the ability of self-correction, which, as a result impedes the theory to provide a fully developed account for authenticity. In conclusion, a satisfactory account of authenticity cannot focus only on identity or subjective preference. (shrink)

The human faculty of moral judgment is not well suited to address problems, like climate change, that are global in scope and remote in time. Advocates of ‘moral bioenhancement’ have proposed that we should investigate the use of medical technologies to make human beings more trusting and altruistic, and hence more willing to cooperate in efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change. We survey recent accounts of the proximate and ultimate causes of human cooperation in order to assess the (...) prospects for bioenhancement. We identify a number of issues that are likely to be significant obstacles to effective bioenhancement, as well as areas for future research. (shrink)

Robert Sparrow recently argues that state-driven moral bioenhancement is morally problematic because it inevitably invites moral perfectionism. While sharing Sparrow’s worry about state-driven moral bioenhancement, I argue that his anti-perfectionism argument is too strong to offer useful normative guidance. That is, if we reject state-driven moral bioenhancement because it cannot remain neutral between different conceptions of the good, we might have to conclude that all forms of moral enhancement program ought not be made compulsory, including the least controversial and most (...) popular state-driven program: compulsory (moral) education. -/- In this paper, I argue that instead, the spirit of Sparrow’s worry should be recast in the language of the capability approach – an approach that strives to enhance people’s capabilities to develop their own conceptions of the good by restricting itself from endorsing thick conceptions of the good. The distinction made regarding thick and thin conceptions of the good helps better capture sentiments against state-driven bioenhancement programs without falling prey to the issues I raise against Sparrow’s anti-perfectionist arguments. (shrink)

Love is often seen as the most intimate aspect of our lives, but it is increasingly engineered by a few programmers with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Nowadays, numerous dating platforms are deploying so-called smart algorithms to identify a greater number of potential matches for a user. These AI-enabled matchmaking systems, driven by a rich trove of data, can not only predict what a user might prefer but also deeply shape how people choose their partners. This paper draws on Jürgen Habermas’s “colonization (...) of the lifeworld” thesis to critically explore the insidious influence of delegating romantic decision-making to an algorithm. The love lifeworld is colonized inasmuch as online dating algorithms encroach into our romantic relations to the extent that communicative action within romance is replaced by the technocratic rules of an algorithm. (shrink)

Despite Donald Davidson's influential criticism of the very notion of conceptual schemes, the notion continues enjoying its popularity in contemporary philosophy and, accordingly, conceptual relativism is still very much alive. There is one major reason responsible for Davidson's failure which has not been widely recognized: What Davidson attacks fiercely is not the very notion, but a notion of conceptual schemes, namely, the Quinean notion of conceptual schemes and its underlying Kantian scheme-content dualism. However, such a notion simply cannot carry the (...) weight of conceptual relativism for it does not catch the essences of conceptual relativism. Consequently, I argue that the very notion of conceptual schemes and conceptual relativism have survived Davidson's attack. Therefore, the failure of the Quinean notion of conceptual schemes and Kantian scheme-content dualism, even if Davidson can claim victory, does not mark the end of the very notion of conceptual schemes.[ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

A fundamental entity is an entity that is ‘ontologically independent’; it does not depend on anything else for its existence or essence. It seems to follow that a fundamental entity is ‘modally free’ in some sense. This assumption, that fundamentality entails modal freedom (or ‘FEMF’ as I shall label the thesis), is used in the service of other arguments in metaphysics. But as I will argue, the road from fundamentality to modal freedom is not so straightforward. The defender of FEMF (...) should provide positive reasons for believing it, especially in light of recent views that are incompatible with it. I examine both direct and indirect routes to FEMF. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that a liberal state has a general duty to protect its people from undue health risks. However, the unprecedented emergent measures against the COVID-19 pandemic taken by governments worldwide give rise to questions regarding the extent to which this duty may be used to justify suspending a vaccine rollout on marginal safety grounds. -/- In this chapter, I use the case of vaccination to argue that while a liberal state has a general duty to protect its (...) people’s health, there is a limit to the measures this duty can be used to justify. First, I argue that since every available option involves different risks and benefits, the incommensurability of the involved risks and benefits forbids the prioritisation of a particular vaccine. Second, I argue that given epistemic limitations and uncertainty, policies that favour certain vaccines are not only epistemically ill-founded but also morally unacceptable. I conclude that in a highly uncertain situation such as the unfolding pandemic, the duty a liberal state ought to uphold is to properly communicate the knowns and unknowns to the general public and help people decide which option to choose for themselves. I call this duty the duty to facilitate risk-taking. (shrink)

Comparative philosophy between two disparate cultural-philosophic traditions, such as Western and Chinese philosophy, has become a new trend of philosophical fashion in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Having learned from the past, contemporary comparative philosophers cautiously safeguard their comparative studies against two potential pitfalls, namely cultural universalism and cultural relativism. The Orientalism that assumed the superiority of the Occidental has become a memory of the past. The historical pendulum has apparently swung to the other extreme. The more recent (...) "reverse Orientalism" has started to reclaim the superiority of the Oriental. We have even been told that the twenty-first... (shrink)

Why is mutual understanding between two substantially different comprehensive language communities often problematic and even unattainable? To answer this question, the author first introduces a notion of presuppositional languages. Based on the semantic structure of a presuppositional language, the author identifies a significant condition necessary for effective understanding of a language: the interpreter is able to effectively understand a language only if he/she is able to recognize and comprehend its metaphysical presuppositions. The essential role of the knowledge of metaphysical presuppositions (...) in understanding is further strengthened by developing a truth-value conditional theory of understanding. It is concluded that if the interpreter approaches an incompatible alien language from the standpoint of the interpreter's own language by projecting the metaphysical presuppositions of his/her own language upon the alien language, then the mutual understanding between the two language communities is doomed to failure. (shrink)

With the rapid development of information technology, the electricity consumption of Internet Data Centers (IDCs) increases drastically, resulting in considerable carbon emissions that need to be reduced urgently. In addition to the introduction of Renewable Energy Sources (RES), the joint use of the spatial migration capacity of IDC workload and the temporal flexibility of the demand of Electric Vehicle Charging Stations (EVCSs) provides an important means to change the carbon footprint of the IDC. In this paper, a sustainability improvement strategy (...) for the IDC carbon emission reduction was developed by coordinating the spatial-temporal dispatch flexibilities of the IDC workload and the EVCS demand. Based on the Minkowski sum algorithm, a generalized flexible load model of the EVCSs, considering traffic flow and Road Impedance (RI) was formulated. The case studies show that the proposed method can effectively increase the renewable energy consumption, reduce the overall carbon emissions of multi-IDCs, reduce the energy cost of the DCO, and utilize the EV dispatching potential. Discussions are also provided on the relationship between workload processing time delay and the renewable energy consumption rate. (shrink)

Kuhn's alleged taxonomic interpretation of incommensurability is grounded on an ill defined notion of untranslatability and is hence radically incomplete. To supplement it, I reconstruct Kuhn's taxonomic interpretation on the basis of a logical-semantic theory of taxonomy, a semantic theory of truth-value, and a truth-value conditional theory of cross-language communication. According to the reconstruction, two scientific languages are incommensurable when core sentences of one language, which have truth values when considered within its own context, lack truth values when considered within (...) the context of the other due to the unmatchable taxonomic structures underlying them. So constructed, Kuhn's mature interpretation of incommensurability does not depend upon the notion of truth-preserving translatability, but rather depends on the notion of truth-value-status-preserving cross-language communication. The reconstruction makes Kuhn's notion of incommensurability a well grounded, tenable and integrated notion.Author Keywords: Incommensurability; Thomas Kuhn; Taxonomic structures; Lexicons; Truth-value; Untranslatability; Cross-language communication. (shrink)

In this article, we explicate evidence-based nursing (EBN), critically appraise its framework and respond to nurses’ concern that EBN sidelines the caring elements of nursing practice. We use resources from care ethics, especially Vrinda Dalmiya’s work that considers care as crucial for both epistemology and ethics, to show how EBN is compatible with, and indeed can be enhanced by, the caring aspects of nursing practice. We demonstrate that caring can act as a bridge between ‘external’ evidence and the other pillars (...) of the EBN framework: clinical expertise; patient preferences and values. Drawing on an influential EBN handbook, section 1 presents the aims and features of EBN, including the normative principle that EBN should take place within a ‘context of caring’. We aim to understand this context and whether it can be neatly detached from the EBN framework, as the handbook seems to suggest. In section 2, we highlight the grounds for resistance to EBN from the nursing community, before mounting the argument that nursing practices can be understood fruitfully through feminist care ethics and/or virtue ethics lenses. In section 3, we deepen that analysis using Dalmiya’s concepts of care-knowing and care as a hybrid ethico-epistemic virtue, which are ideally suited to the complex practices of nursing. In section 4, we bring this rich understanding of care into conversation with EBN, showing that its framework cannot be adequately theorised without paying proper attention to care. Caring can be neither an innocuous background assumption of nor an afterthought to the EBN framework. (shrink)

Various theorists have endorsed the “communication argument”: communicative capacities are necessary for morally responsible agency because blame aims at a distinctive kind of moral communication. I contend that existing versions of the argument, including those defended by Gary Watson and Coleen Macnamara, face a pluralist challenge: they do not seem to sit well with the plausible view that blame has multiple aims. I then examine three possible rejoinders to the challenge, suggesting that a context-specific, function-based approach constitutes the most promising (...) modification of the communication argument. (shrink)

This essay offers an analysis of the writing and practices of Song Siyŏl as a way to explore the philosophical concepts and philosophizing process of Confucian ritual in relation to women. As a symbolic and influential figure in Korean philosophy and politics, his views contributed to shaping the orthodox interpretation of the theory and practice of Neo-Confucian ritual regarding women. By demonstrating and analyzing what kinds of issues were discussed in terms of women in four family rituals, I delineate the (...) ways in which Song Siyŏl positioned women in his ritualist metaphysics and to examine his philosophizing process. (shrink)

This paper reconciles an inconsistency between the benefits of mind wandering and a prominent conception of attention in philosophy and cognitive psychology, namely, the prioritization view. Since we prioritize the information in a task less if we are doing it while mind wandering compared to solely concentrating on it, why does our performance in the task sometimes improve when we are mind wandering? To explain this, we offer a conception of diffuse attention that generalizes from external to internal forms of (...) attention and captures deep commonalities between the two (Chun et al. 2011). We conceptualize mind wandering as an instance of internal diffuse attention that also induces diffuse attention in other concurrent tasks. Moreover, pace the prioritization view, certain tasks are in fact better performed with diffuse attention, which prioritizes information less than focused attention. Our account of mind wandering as an instance of the more general category of diffuse attention improves upon current leading philosophical views of mind wandering (such as Irving 2016) by better explaining the interaction between mind wandering and other tasks. (shrink)

Numerous societal issues, from climate change to pandemics, require public engagement with scientific research. Such engagement reveals challenges that can arise when experts communicate with laypeople. One of the most common frameworks for framing these communicative interactions is the deficit model of science communication, which holds that laypeople lack scientific knowledge and/or positive attitudes towards science, and that imparting knowledge will fill knowledge gaps, lead to desirable attitude/behavior changes, and increase trust in science. §1 introduces the deficit model in more (...) detail and shows that adhering to this model often fails to achieve its aims, which motivates the main question of this chapter: how can Ludwik Fleck’s theory of thinking collectives address the persistent problem of deficit approaches in science communication? I suggest that it can do so by exposing the deficit model’s implicit assumption of an expert-lay divide. Accordingly, §2 lays out Fleck’s theory and §3 contrasts it with contemporary debates about science communication. Following this descriptive work, §4 draws on Fleck’s ideas to make four concrete suggestions for further questioning the expert-lay divide. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that reactive attitudes play a central role in our practices concerned with holding people responsible. However, it remains controversial which emotional attitudes count as reactive attitudes such that they are eligible for this central role. Specifically, though theorists near universally agree that guilt is a reactive attitude, they are much more hesitant on whether to also include shame. This paper presents novel arguments for the view that shame is a reactive attitude. The arguments also support the (...) view that shame is a reactive attitude in the sense that concerns moral accountability. The discussion thereby challenges both the view that shame is not a reactive attitude at all, suggested by philosophers such as R. Jay Wallace and Stephen Darwall, and the view that shame is a reactive attitude but does not concern moral accountability, recently defended by Andreas Carlsson and Douglas Portmore. (shrink)

Di er ci Qimeng (The second Enlightenment), by Wang Zhihe and Fan Meijun, is a timely book in Chinese about constructing a philosophical and practical way to contend with China's postmodernization. It combines Whitehead's process philosophy with a focus on Chinese modernity in order to map out a desirable postmodern society. It addresses the problem on several dimensions from policy making to basic value systems. The range of themes can be seen from the topics of the book's twelve chapters: (...) (1) Reverence for Land—Toward a Constructive Postmodern Agriculture; (2) Becoming Fully Human—Toward a Postmodern Organic Education; (3) Survival of the Harmonious-Toward a Constructive Postmodern Harmonious Culture; (4) Beauty .. (shrink)

Conclusion: Needle-free vaccination is a promising technology for the next generation of vaccines, but we found that intramuscular injection was still the most acceptable immunization route in this survey. One major reason might be that most people lack knowledge about needle-free vaccination. We should strengthen the publicity of needle-free vaccination technology, and thus improve the acceptance and coverage of vaccination in different populations.

on how to justify the rationality of sciences.

The discussion of collective agency involves the reduction problem of the concept of a collective. Individualism and Cartesian internalism have long restricted orthodox theories and made them face the tension between an irreducible concept of a collective and ontological reductionism. Heterodox theories as functionalism and interpretationism reinterpret the concept of agency and accept it as realized on the level of a collective. In order to adequately explain social phenomena that have relations as their essence, in this paper we propose a (...) relational, holistic account of collective agency and argue that functionalism and interpretationism can be integrated into such an account. (shrink)

In the first Critique, Kant famously holds a novel practical notion of Belief (Glauben) as assent justified not by evidence but by practical considerations. This paper examines the early development of Kant’s practical notion of Belief prior to the first Critique. It aims to make clear what prompted Kant to develop this notion in the first place, and how this notion came to assume its crucial role in Kant’s critical system. This development, I argue, has two main steps. The first (...) is his introduction of a practical notion of Belief in mid-to-late 1760s. I argue that he did so because he regards this notion as a useful tool to get ordinary people to justifiably commit to the existence of God and an after-life. The second step is Kant’s abandonment of the objective validity of his logical proof of God around 1772. This step elevated Belief from a merely useful means to the only justified way to commit to the existence of God and an after-life. This second step, I argue, is closely connected to Kant’s pivot to the view that the objective validity of concepts requires sensibly given objects, and it is motivated by Kant’s concern with subject-cancelling real repugnance. (shrink)

Against the received translation-failure interpretation, this book presents a presuppositional interpretation of incommensurability, that is, the thesis of incommensurability as cross-language communication breakdown due to the incompatible metaphysical presuppositions underlying two competing presuppositional languages, such as scientific languages. This semantically sound, epistemologically well-established, and metaphysically profound interpretation not only affirms the tenability of the notion of incommensurability and confirms the reality of the phenomenon of incommensurability, but also makes some significant contributions to the discussion of many related issues, such as (...) the notion of conceptual schemes, the notion of truth-value status and truth-value conditions, and the issue of cross-language understanding and communication. (shrink)

The current discussions of conceptual schemes and related topics are misguided; for they have been focused too much on the truth-conditional notions of meaning/concepts and translation/interpretation in Tarski's style. It is exactly due to such a Quinean interpretation of the notion of conceptual schemes that the very notion of conceptual schemes falls prey to Davidson's attack. We argue that what should concern us in the discussions of conceptual schemes and related issues, following the initiatives of I. Hacking, T. Kuhn, and (...) N. Rescher, is not the truth-values of assertions, but rather the truthvalue-status of the sentences used to make the assertions. This is because the genuine conceptual innovation between alternative theories/languages does not lie in differences in determining the truth-values of their sentences, but turns on whether these sentences have truth-values when considered within the context of a competing one. The core of conceptual relativism does not consist in the claim that different conceptual schemes may yield incommensurable truth claims, but rather that different conceptual schemes may yield incompatible truth-value-status and therefore lead to distinct perceptions of reality. Conceptual schemes are no longer seen as sentential languages consisting of a set of sentences accepted as true, but rather seen as metaphysical presuppositions of presuppositional languages.[ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to show how Davidson’s anti-sceptical argument can respond to the closureRK-based radical scepticism. My approach will focus on the closureRK principle rather than the possibility that our beliefs could be massively wrong. I first review Davidson’s principle of charity and the triangulation argument, and then I extract his theory on content of a belief. According to this theory, content of a belief is determined by its typical cause and other relevant beliefs. With this constraint on (...) content, I argue that doubt must be local. Furthermore, since one cannot rationally believe that one’s commitment to the cause of beliefs could be false, our commitment to the denial of a sceptical hypothesis is not a knowledge-apt belief. Therefore, the closureRK principle is not applicable to rational evaluations of this commitment. As a result, the closureRK-based sceptical argument fails while the closureRK principle remains. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to clarify the notion of semantic presupposition and to refute Böer and Lycan's critique of that notion. The author presents a feasible and coherent formal definition of semantic presupposition after examining several popular definitions of the notion. In terms of this definition, two central arguments against semantic presupposition presented by Böer and Lycan are analyzed and responded to with care. It is concluded that the notion of semantic presupposition is not empty but rather is philosophically (...) interesting and fruitful. (shrink)

The aesthetic construction of the world can originally be traced back to the bodily-affective state of being in the surroundings. In this respect, the newly developed aesthetic concept atmosphere enables a new understanding of the interaction between sensation, emotion and the environment, and is therefore of great importance for the development of a contemporary environmental awareness. In reviewing the studies so far, it would be meaningful to further reflect on the following questions: what role does the spiritual dimension play in (...) atmospheric experience? How is it possible for us to be critical of the atmosphere we encounter? How can a bodily-affective approach to the world be opened up by emphasizing atmospheric experience without excluding other legitimate aspects such as value judgments? These issues require re-examination of the current basic approach, according to which, on the one hand, atmospheric experience is largely confined to a pre-reflective level, and, on the other hand, sensation and awareness of atmosphere are viewed as occurring one after another. Practically, in the experience of atmosphere, corporeality and spirituality are not so clearly delineated, based on the fact that sensory recognition of external stimuli always merges with mental actions such as cognition, imagination, beliefs, values, memory and expectation. In this sense, the experience of atmosphere is not a purely biophysiological response at all. Instead, it is largely shaped by spiritual elements and cultural frameworks. The knowledge of traditions, customs, languages, religions, stories, folklore and/or mythology may modify the ordinary perception of things and thus open an unusual way to the atmosphere. The complexity of atmosphere and atmospheric perception reveals a diversity of life experience that can never be thoroughly represented and described, and thus largely opens up new horizons for an interculturally oriented aesthetics. (shrink)

This perspective paper analyzes the rising threat of retracted scientific works and the challenges of preventing the continued spreading and use of the retracted science; further, a framework is proposed for research and actions to effectively manage retractions in the information ecosystem. The precipitous increase in retractions of scientific publications is real and the complexity of retracting publications challenges current IR systems and people's information behaviors. Retracting published, especially peer-reviewed, papers in prestigious venues is a complex phenomenon involving various entities (...) through often time-consuming processes. These publications may be accessible from the original venues, digital archives, or free-access databases, but these systems differ in retrievability and output. Many systems do not identify the retractions or reasons for retractions; most systems do not treat the retracted paper and its related notices (retraction or correction) as an integrated entity. Studies found that many retracted publications continue to be cited post-retraction as valid science. A new threat is the widely spread of retracted publications on social media. Retracting invalid scientific publications has serious implications in the real world. Based on current findings, we propose (1) a framework for further research; (2) a DOI resolution to integrate the documents related to retraction/correction; (3) a structured facet taxonomy for representing and indexing the retracted, corrected, or republished publications in databases; (4) a retraction registry or database with personalized AI helper for researchers to tract retracted publications; (5) an approach for understanding how retracted publications are circulated on social media. (shrink)

Despite a growing interest in and sympathy with Confucianism, there remains a stereotyped conception of Confucian civil order as a form of authoritarian hierarchy that is responsible for various oppressions in ancient China and is reprehensible from a modern egalitarian perspective. One central target of this modern criticism is the Confucian maxim of sangang 三綱, whose underlying idea is essential for regulating the relationship between sovereign and subject, father and son, and husband and wife in traditional Confucian society. Tu Wei-ming (...) translates sangang as the “Three Bonds” and argues that it is the “least defensible legacy of Confucian ethics” from the “modern egalitarian and liberal perspective.” For Tu.. (shrink)

The current discussions of conceptual schemes and related topics are misguided; for they are based on a tacit assumption that the difference between two schemes consists in the different distributions in truth-values. I argue that what should concern us, in the discussions of conceptual schemes and related issues, is not truth-values of assertions, but rather the truth-value-status of the sentences used to make the assertions. This is because the genuine conceptual innovation between alternative theories or languages does not lie in (...) differences in determining truth-values of their sentences, but turns on whether these sentences have truth-values when considered within the context of a competing one. This new interpretation of the notion of conceptual schemes, which I refer to as presuppositional languages, is not only good in itself—for establishing the intelligibility and tenability of the notion—but quite beneficial in its effect on other related issues. (shrink)

斯特劳逊 （Strawson）的语义预设概念在语义学和语言哲学研究上颇有建树。尽管如此，语义预设概念一直遭受来自各方面的批判。概要说来，对语义预设概念之批判主要来自两个方面：其一，试图抽去语义预设概念的逻辑基础 ，即非真值概念 (the notion of truthvaluelessness)，从而达到间接地拒斥语义预设概念之目的。其二，直接批判语义预设概念本身。他们或者论证此概念在理论上不自恰或微不足道，或者断定即使此概念本身在理论上自恰，但实为一空 洞无物之概念。因为我们根本找任何一个语义预设的具体例证。所以，语义预设概念不具任何真正的哲学意义。它只是一个当代神话，理应拒斥。 -/- 玻尔(S. Ber)和莱肯(W. Lycan)对语义预设概念的批判集中代表了以上两个方面。据我所知，迄今不曾有人对他们的批判予以全面和公正的反驳，以致于许多人人云亦云，使得他们的论点至今颇有影响。给予玻尔和莱恩的批判以全面反驳乃本文初 衷。于此相关，我以为很有必要澄清对语义预设概念的诸多误解，从而确立一个理论上自恰，实际上可行，和确有实质性内容的语义预设概念。基于以上考虑，我对语义预设概念批判之反驳包括正 反两个方面。在第二节，我试图建立一个自恰，完备，非庸俗的语义预设概念。基于这一概念，第三节对玻尔和莱恩反对语义预设的两个核心批判予以全面反驳。第四节着重辩护非真值概念。本文的最后结论是：各种批判并未损 伤斯特劳逊的语义预设概念的精髓。语 义预设概念非但不是一个当代神话，而且具有重大哲学意义。 .

People inhabit a vast and intricate social network nowadays. In addition to our own decisions and actions, we confront those of various groups every day. Collective decisions and actions are more complex and bewildering compared to those made by individuals. As members of a collective, we contribute to its decisions, but our contributions may not always align with the outcome. We may also find ourselves excluded from certain groups and passively subjected to their influences without being aware of the source. (...) We are used to being in overlapping groups and may switch identities, supporting or opposing the claims of particular groups. But rarely do we pause to think: What do we talk about when we talk about groups and their decisions? At the heart of this dissertation is the question of collective agency, i.e., in what sense can we treat a group as a rational agent capable of its action. There are two perspectives we take: a philosophical and logical one. The philosophical perspective mainly discusses the ontological and epistemological issues related to collective agency, sorts out the relevant philosophical history, and argues that the combination of a relational view of collective agency and a dispositional view of collective intentionality provides a rational and realistic account. The logical perspective is associated with formal theories of groups, it disregards the psychological content involved in the philosophical perspective, establishes a logical system that is sufficiently formal and objective, and axiomatizes the nature of a collective. The first topic that is addressed is the ontology of collective agency, i.e., the question what exactly is collective agency. The philosophical discussion of collective agency centres around the reduction problem of the concept of a collective. Individualism and Cartesian internalism have long influenced orthodox theories and made them face the choice between an irreducible concept of a collective and ontological reductionism. Heterodox theories such as functionalism and interpretationism reinterpret the concept of agency and accept it as also realized on the level of a collective. To adequately explain social phenomena that are essentially relational in nature, we propose a relational, holistic account of collective agency and argue that functionalism and interpretationism can be integrated into such an account. While acknowledging the irreducibility of the concept of a collective, we find that there is a deep incompatibility between the concept of a collective and the concept of intentionality as the mark of the mental. To explain how collective intentionality nevertheless is possible and why we tend to use it analogously to how we use the concept of individual intentionality, we explore a dispositional account of intentionality which enables us to give an account of the concept of intentionality at both the individual and collective level. Specifically, we subdivide the dispositional account into three aspects: behavioral, purely mental, and cognitive. We then argue that collective intentionality is real by analyzing different forms of attributive judgments of intentionality and by introducing the perspective of indispensable collective responsibility. We also analyze how philosophical theories about collective agency relate to central features of formal theories about collective decisions, such as game theory. Although the two fields are both concerned with collectives, there are also differences that need to be addressed. For example, game theory is clearly anti-psychologistic since its aim is a formal and objective analysis. However, from the relational and dispositional perspective, intentionality at the individual level and collective intentionality as we analyze it, inevitably involve mental content. In order to explain this difference and identify where the boundary is, we analyze the relationships between the three basic concepts involved, namely intentionality, preference, and dependency, so as to provide a unified picture of collective theory across philosophical and formal theories. After paving the nexus between philosophical and formal perspectives, the logical perspective becomes the theme of our discussion. To be able to express game theoretical concepts and to connect them to our philosophical perspective, We present a logic of preference and functional dependence and its hybrid extension, and provide an axiomatization which is sound and strongly complete. The decidability of this logic is also proved. Its application to modeling non-cooperative and cooperative games in strategic form is explored. The resulting framework provides a unified view of Nash equilibrium, Pareto optimality, and the core. The philosophical relevance of these game-theoretical notions to discussions of collective agency is made explicit. Finally, we conclude and clarify the position of our theory in the broader field of research on the topics addressed in the thesis. Also, we point out many new questions and directions suggested by our analysis, including philosophical and logical open problems. (shrink)

What the authors attempt to address in this paper is a Kantian question: not whether, but how is cross -cultural understanding possible? And specifically, what is a more effective approach for cross -cultural understanding? The answer lies in an analysis of two different models of cross -cultural understanding, that is, propositional and hermeneutic understanding. To begin with, the author presents a linguistic interpretation of culture, i.e., a culture as a linguistically formulated and transmitted symbolic system with its conceptual core as (...) a scheme of basic cultural presuppositions, which it referred to as a cultural language. After exploring the essential role of cultural presuppositions in cross -cultural understanding, the author discusses the traditional model of cross -cultural understanding, namely, the propositional model. Through critically examining the two popular versions of the propositional model, i.e., the projective approach and the adoptive approach to cross -cultural understanding, it is found that cross -cultural propositional understanding is doomed to failure. To move us beyond the absolutism -relativism trap embedded within propositional understanding, the author first introduces and discusses Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutic understanding, and then applies Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutic model of understanding to cross -cultural understanding. It is finally concluded that cross -cultural understanding is essentially hermeneutic—including the case of cultural learning, not propositional. Therefore, cross -cultural understanding is hermeneutically possible. (shrink)

D. Davidson argues that the existence of alternative conceptual schemes presupposes the Kantian scheme-content dualism, which requires a scheme-neutral empirical content and a fixed, sharp schemecontent distinction. The dismantlement of such a Kantian scheme-content dualism, which Davidson calls “the third dogma of empiricism”, would render the notion of alternative conceptual schemes groundless. To counter Davidson’s attack on the notion of alternative conceptual schemes, I argue that alternative conceptual schemes neither entail nor presuppose the Kantian scheme-content dualism. On the contrary, it (...) is exactly the abandonment of the concept-neutral content and the denial of a fixed, absolute scheme-content distinction that turns the Kantian conceptualabsolutism upside down and thus makes alternative conceptual schemes possible. Proposing common-sense experience as the empirical content of alternative schemes, I construct and defend a non-Kantian scheme-content dualism based on a non-fixed, relative scheme-content distinction. The proposed non-Kantian scheme-content dualism is not only “innocent” enough to be immune from Davidson’s charge of the third dogma of empiricism, but also “solid” enough to be able to sustain alternative conceptual schemes. I conclude that in terms of our conceptual schemes, we are connected to the world as closely as possible; only through conceptual schemes can we be connected to the world. (shrink)

On the basis of PM2.5 data of the national air quality monitoring sites, local population data, and baseline all-cause mortality rate, PM2.5-related health economic benefits of the Air Improvement Action Plan implemented in Wuhan in 2013–2017 were investigated using health-impact and valuation functions. Annual avoided premature deaths driven by the average concentration of PM2.5 decrease were evaluated, and the economic benefits were computed by using the value of statistical life (VSL) method. Results showed that the number of avoided premature deaths (...) in Wuhan are 21,384 (95% confidence interval (CI): 15,004 to 27,255) during 2013–2017, due to the implementation of the Air Improvement Action Plan. According to the VSL method, the obtained economic benefits of Huangpi, Wuchang, Hongshan, Xinzhou, Jiang’an, Hanyang, Jiangxia, Qiaokou, Jianghan, Qingshan, Caidian, Dongxihu, and Hannan District were 8.55, 8.19, 8.04, 7.39, 5.78, 4.84, 4.37, 4.04, 3.90, 3.30, 2.87, 2.42, and 0.66 billion RMB (1 RMB = 0.1417 USD On 14 October 2019), respectively. These economic benefits added up to 64.35 billion RMB (95% CI: 45.15 to 82.02 billion RMB), accounting for 4.80% (95% CI: 3.37% to 6.12%) of the total GDP of Wuhan in 2017. Therefore, in the process of formulating a regional air quality improvement scheme, apart from establishing hierarchical emission-reduction standards and policies, policy makers should give integrated consideration to the relationship between regional economic development, environmental protection and residents’ health benefits. Furthermore, for improving air quality, air quality compensation mechanisms can be established on the basis of the status quo and trends of air quality, population distribution, and economic development factors. (shrink)

This paper explores Kant’s account of propositional content and its implications for the relationship between his notions of knowledge (Wissen) and cognition (Erkenntnis). While previous commentators commonly read Kant as holding a Fregean theory of propositional content, in this paper I argue that Kant’s theory of propositional content aligns more closely with Peter Hanks’ recent account. According to my reading, Kant holds that individual acts of judging are both ontologically and explanatorily prior to propositions or Kantian judgments (Urteil). Furthermore, on (...) my reading, acts of judging for Kant are acts of assertively predicating a property of an object rather than merely acts of neutral predication. This reading challenges the lately popular view that Kant’s notions of knowledge and cognition are not only distinct but also disjunct. I instead suggest that we should regard Kantian knowledge that requires cognitions as its grounds as a species of Kantian cognitions. (shrink)