Every year, the Vietnamese people reportedly burned about 50,000 tons of joss papers, which took the form of not only bank notes, but iPhones, cars, clothes, even housekeepers, in hope of pleasing the dead. The practice was mistakenly attributed to traditional Buddhist teachings but originated in fact from China, which most Vietnamese were not aware of. In other aspects of life, there were many similar examples of Vietnamese so ready and comfortable with adding new norms, values, and beliefs, even contradictory (...) ones, to their culture. This phenomenon, dubbed “cultural additivity”, prompted us to study the co-existence, interaction, and influences among core values and norms of the Three Teachings –Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism–as shown through Vietnamese folktales. By applying Bayesian logistic regression, we evaluated the possibility of whether the key message of a story was dominated by a religion (dependent variables), as affected by the appearance of values and anti-values pertaining to the Three Teachings in the story (independent variables). Our main findings included the existence of the cultural additivity of Confucian and Taoist values. More specifically, empirical results showed that the interaction or addition of the values of Taoism and Confucianism in folktales together helped predict whether the key message of a story was about Confucianism, β{VT ⋅ VC} = 0.86. Meanwhile, there was no such statistical tendency for Buddhism. The results lead to a number of important implications. First, this showed the dominance of Confucianism because the fact that Confucian and Taoist values appeared together in a story led to the story’s key message dominated by Confucianism. Thus, it presented the evidence of Confucian dominance and against liberal interpretations of the concept of the Common Roots of Three Religions (“tam giáo đồng nguyên”) as religious unification or unicity. Second, the concept of “cultural additivity” could help explain many interesting socio-cultural phenomena, namely the absence of religious intolerance and extremism in the Vietnamese society, outrageous cases of sophistry in education, the low productivity in creative endeavors like science and technology, the misleading branding strategy in business. We are aware that our results are only preliminary and more studies, both theoretical and empirical, must be carried out to give a full account of the explanatory reach of “cultural additivity”. (shrink)
As a generation of ‘digital natives,’ secondary students who were born from 2002 to 2010 have various approaches to acquiring digital knowledge. Digital literacy and resilience are crucial for them to navigate the digital world as much as the real world; however, these remain under-researched subjects, especially in developing countries. In Vietnam, the education system has put considerable effort into teaching students these skills to promote quality education as part of the United Nations-defined Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). This issue (...) has proven especially salient amid the COVID−19 pandemic lockdowns, which had obliged most schools to switch to online forms of teaching. This study, which utilizes a dataset of 1061 Vietnamese students taken from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s “Digital Kids Asia Pacific (DKAP)” project, employs Bayesian statistics to explore the relationship between the students’ background and their digital abilities. Results show that economic status and parents’ level of education are positively correlated with digital literacy. Students from urban schools have only a slightly higher level of digital literacy than their rural counterparts, suggesting that school location may not be a defining explanatory element in the variation of digital literacy and resilience among Vietnamese students. Students’ digital literacy and, especially resilience, also have associations with their gender. Moreover, as students are digitally literate, they are more likely to be digitally resilient. Following SDG4, i.e., Quality Education, it is advisable for schools, and especially parents, to seriously invest in creating a safe, educational environment to enhance digital literacy among students. (shrink)
The study of cultural evolution has taken on an increasingly interdisciplinary and diverse approach in explicating phenomena of cultural transmission and adoptions. Inspired by this computational movement, this study uses Bayesian networks analysis, combining both the frequentist and the Hamiltonian Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach, to investigate the highly representative elements in the cultural evolution of a Vietnamese city’s architecture in the early 20th century. With a focus on the façade design of 68 old houses in Hanoi’s Old Quarter (...) (based on 78 data lines extracted from 248 photos), the study argues that it is plausible to look at the aesthetics, architecture, and designs of the house façade to find traces of cultural evolution in Vietnam, which went through more than six decades of French colonization and centuries of sociocultural influence from China. The in-depth technical analysis, though refuting the presumed model on the probabilistic dependency among the variables, yields several results, the most notable of which is the strong influence of Buddhism over the decorations of the house façade. Particularly, in the top 5 networks with the best Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) scores and p<0.05, the variable for decorations (DC) always has a direct probabilistic dependency on the variable B for Buddhism. The paper then checks the robustness of these models using Hamiltonian MCMC method and find the posterior distributions of the models’ coefficients all satisfy the technical requirement. Finally, this study suggests integrating Bayesian statistics in the social sciences in general and for the study of cultural evolution and architectural transformation in particular. (shrink)
This study presents a description of an open database on scientific output of Vietnamese researchers in social sciences and humanities, one that corrects for the shortcomings in current research publication databases such as data duplication, slow update, and a substantial cost of doing science. Here, using scientists’ self-reports, open online sources and cross-checking with Scopus database, we introduce a manual system and its semi-automated version of the database on the profiles of 657 Vietnamese researchers in social sciences and humanities who (...) have published in Scopus-indexed journals from 2008 to 2018. The final system also records 973 foreign co-authors, 1,289 papers, and 789 affiliations. The data collection method, highly applicable for other sources, could be replicated in other developing countries while its content be used in cross-section, multivariate, and network data analyses. The open database is expected to help Vietnam revamp its research capacity and meet the public demand for greater transparency in science management. (shrink)
Folklore has a critical role as a cultural transmitter, all the while being a socially accepted medium for the expressions of culturally contradicting wishes and conducts. In this study of Vietnamese folktales, through the use of Bayesian multilevel modeling and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, we offer empirical evidence for how the interplay between religious teachings (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism) and deviant behaviors (lying and violence) could affect a folktale’s outcome. The findings indicate that characters who lie and/or commit (...) violent acts tend to have bad endings, as intuition would dictate, but when they are associated with any of the above Three Teachings, the final endings may vary. Positive outcomes are seen in cases where characters associated with Confucianism lie and characters associated with Buddhism act violently. The results supplement the worldwide literature on discrepancies between folklore and real-life conduct, as well as on the contradictory human behaviors vis-à-vis religious teachings. Overall, the study highlights the complexity of human decision-making, especially beyond the folklore realm. (shrink)
This research employs the Bayesian network modeling approach, and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, to learn about the role of lies and violence in teachings of major religions, using a unique dataset extracted from long-standing Vietnamese folktales. The results indicate that, although lying and violent acts augur negative consequences for those who commit them, their associations with core religious values diverge in the outcome for the folktale characters. Lying that serves a religious mission of either Confucianism or Taoism (but (...) not Buddhism) brings a positive outcome to a character. A violent act committed to serving Buddhist mission results in a happy ending for the committer. (shrink)
This research employs the Bayesian network modeling approach, and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, to learn about the role of lies and violence in teachings of major religions, using a unique dataset extracted from long-standing Vietnamese folktales. The results indicate that, although lying and violent acts augur negative consequences for those who commit them, their associations with core religious values diverge in the final outcome for the folktale characters. Lying that serves a religious mission of either Confucianism or Taoism (...) (but not Buddhism) brings a positive outcome to a character (βT_and_Lie_O= 2.23; βC_and_Lie_O= 1.47; βT_and_Lie_O= 2.23). A violent act committed to serving Buddhist missions results in a happy ending for the committer (βB_and_Viol_O= 2.55). What is highlighted here is a glaring double standard in the interpretation and practice of the three teachings: the very virtuous outcomes being preached, whether that be compassion and meditation in Buddhism, societal order in Confucianism, or natural harmony in Taoism, appear to accommodate two universal vices—violence in Buddhism and lying in the latter two. These findings contribute to a host of studies aimed at making sense of contradictory human behaviors, adding the role of religious teachings in addition to cognition in belief maintenance and motivated reasoning in discounting counterargument. (shrink)
A work of Vietnamese art crossed a million-dollar mark in the international art market in early 2017. The event was reluctantly seen as a sign of maturity from the Vietnamese art amidst the many existing problems. Even though the Vietnamese media has discussed the issues enthusiastically, there is a lack of literature from the Vietnamese academics examining the subject, and even rarer in from the market perspective. This paper aims to contribute an insightful perspective on the Vietnamese art market, and (...) hesitantly the Vietnamese art as well, through the lens of fake, forgery and copy artworks. 35 cases of fake, forgery and copy paintings were found on the news and from the experts' wisdom. Through the examples, we argue that the Vietnamese art market is a temporary reaction to the immaturely rising of the Vietnamese art and the economy. Therefore, the art market is unable to function healthily unless the Vietnamese art and the economy developed. (shrink)
Vietnam has seen fast-rising debts, both domestic and external, in recent years. This paperreviews the literature on credit market in Vietnam, providing an up-to-date take on the domesticlending and borrowing landscape. The study highlights the strong demand for credit in both therural and urban areas, the ubiquity of informal lenders, the recent popularity of consumer financecompanies, as well as the government’s attempts to rein in its swelling public debt. Given thehigh level of borrowing, which is fueled by consumerism and geopolitics, (...) it is inevitable that theamount of debt will soon be higher than the saving of the borrowers. Unlike the conventional wisdom that creditors have more bargaining power over the borrowers, we suggest that—albeitlacking a quantitative estimation—when the debts pile up so high that the borrowers could not repay, the power dynamics may reverse. In this new politics of debt, the lenders fear to lose the money's worth and continue to lend and feed the insolvent debtors. The result is a toxic lending/borrowing market and profound lessons, from which the developing world could learn. (shrink)
This study explores entrepreneurship research in Vietnam, a lower-middle-income country in Southeast Asia that has witnessed rapid economic growth since the 1990s but has nonetheless been absent in the relevant Western-centric literature. Using an exclusively developed software, the study presents a structured dataset on entrepreneurship research in Vietnam from 2008 to 2018, highlighting: low research output, low creativity level, inattention to entrepreneurship theories, and instead, a focus on practical business matters. The scholarship remains limited due to the detachment between the (...) academic and entrepreneur communities. More important are the findings that Vietnamese research on entrepreneurship, still in its infancy, diverges significantly from those in developed and emerging economies in terms of their content and methods. These studies are contextualized to a large extent to reflect the concerns of a developing economy still burdened by the high financial and nonfinancial costs. (shrink)
Vietnam, with a geographical proximity and a high volume of trade with China, was the first country to record an outbreak of the new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2. While the country was expected to have a high risk of transmission, as of April 4, 2020—in comparison to attempts to contain the disease around the world—responses from Vietnam are being seen as prompt and effective in protecting the interests of its citizens, (...) with 239 confirmed cases and no fatalities. This study analyzes the situation in terms of Vietnam’s policy response, social media and science journalism. A self-made web crawl engine was used to scan and collect official media news related to COVID-19 between the beginning of January and April 4, yielding a comprehensive dataset of 14,952 news items. The findings shed light on how Vietnam—despite being under-resourced—has demonstrated political readiness to combat the emerging pandemic since the earliest days. Timely communication on any developments of the outbreak from the government and the media, combined with up-to-date research on the new virus by the Vietnamese science community, have altogether provided reliable sources of information. By emphasizing the need for immediate and genuine cooperation between government, civil society and private individuals, the case study offers valuable lessons for other nations concerning not only the concurrent fight against the COVID-19 pandemic but also the overall responses to a public health crisis. (shrink)
The exponential growth of social data both in volume and complexity has increasingly exposed many of the shortcomings of the conventional frequentist approach to statistics. The scientific community has called for careful usage of the approach and its inference. Meanwhile, the alternative method, Bayesian statistics, still faces considerable barriers toward a more widespread application. The bayesvl R package is an open program, designed for implementing Bayesian modeling and analysis using the Stan language’s no-U-turn (NUTS) sampler. The package combines the ability (...) to construct Bayesian network models using directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation technique, and the graphic capability of the ggplot2 package. As a result, it can improve the user experience and intuitive understanding when constructing and analyzing Bayesian network models. A case example is offered to illustrate the usefulness of the package for Big Data analytics and cognitive computing. (shrink)
United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals 4 Quality Education has highlighted major challenges for all nations to ensure inclusive and equitable quality access to education, facilities for children, and young adults. The SDG4 is even more important for developing nations as receiving proper education or vocational training, especially in science and technology, means a foundational step in improving other aspects of their citizens’ lives. However, the extant scientific literature about STEM education still lacks focus on developing countries, even more so in (...) the rural area. Using a dataset of 4967 observations of junior high school students from a rural area in a transition economy, the article employs the Bayesian approach to identify the interaction between gender, socioeconomic status, and students’ STEM academic achievements. The results report gender has little association with STEM academic achievements; however, female students (αa_Sex[2] = 2.83) appear to have achieved better results than their male counterparts (αa_Sex[1] = 2.68). Families with better economic status, parents with a high level of education (βb(EduMot) = 0.07), or non-manual jobs (αa_SexPJ[4] = 3.25) are found to be correlated with better study results. On the contrary, students with zero (βb(OnlyChi) = -0.14) or more than two siblings (βb(NumberofChi) = -0.01) are correlated with lower study results compared to those with only one sibling. These results imply the importance of providing women with opportunities for better education. Policymakers should also consider maintaining family size so the parents can provide their resources to each child equally. (shrink)
The relationship between Vietnam and China could be captured in the Chinese expression of “同床异梦”, which means lying on the same bed but having different dreams. The two countries share certain cultural and political similarities but also diverge vastly in their national interests. This paper adds to the extant literature on this topic by analyzing the element of trust/mistrust in their interactions in trade-investment, tourism, and defense-security. The analysis shows how the relationship is increasingly interdependent but is equally fragile due (...) to the lack of trust on both sides. The mistrust or even distrust of Chinese subjects run deep within the Vietnamese mindset, from the skepticism of Chinese investment, Chinese tourists, discrimination against ethnic Chinese, to the caution against Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. The paper forecasts that, despite the deep-seated differences and occasional mistrust, going forward, neither side would risk damaging the status quo even when tensions peak. (shrink)
Trong những năm gần đây, mặc dù lĩnh vực KHXH&NV của Việt Nam mới đang ở giai đoạn đầu của quá trình hội nhập về công bố quốc tế và xuất bản học thuật, nhưng các con số thống kê được vẫn rất đáng khích lệ.
There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, we care about getting things right. On the other hand, we demand autonomy. We want appreciators to arrive at their aesthetic judgments through their own cognitive efforts, rather than deferring to experts. These two demands seem to be in tension; after all, if we want to get the right judgments, we should defer to the judgments of experts. The best explanation, I suggest, is (...) that aesthetic appreciation is something like a game. When we play a game, we try to win. But often, winning isn’t the point; playing is. Aesthetic appreciation involves the same flipped motivational structure: we aim at the goal of correctness, but having correct judgments isn’t the point. The point is the engaged process of interpreting, investigating, and exploring the aesthetic object. Deferring to aesthetic testimony, then, makes the same mistake as looking up the answer to a puzzle, rather than solving it for oneself. The shortcut defeats the whole point. This suggests a new account of aesthetic value: the engagement account. The primary value of the activity of aesthetic appreciation lies in the process of trying to generate correct judgments, and not in having correct judgments. -/- *There is an audio version available: look for the Soundcloud link, below.*. (shrink)
Should the existence of moral disagreement reduce one’s confidence in one’s moral judgments? Many have claimed that it should not. They claim that we should be morally self-sufficient: that one’s moral judgment and moral confidence ought to be determined entirely one’s own reasoning. Others’ moral beliefs ought not impact one’s own in any way. I claim that moral self-sufficiency is wrong. Moral self-sufficiency ignores the degree to which moral judgment is a fallible cognitive process like all the rest. In this (...) paper, I take up two possible routes to moral self-sufficiency.First, I consider Robert Paul Wolff’s argument that an autonomous being is required to act from his own reasoning. Does Wolff’s argument yield moral self-sufficiency? Wolff’s argument does forbid unthinking obedience. But it does not forbid guidance: the use of moral testimony to glean evidence about nonmoral states of affairs. An agent can use the existence of agreement or disagreement as evidence concerning the reliability of their own cognitive abilities, which is entirely nonmoral information. Corroboration and discorroboration yields nonmoral evidence, and no reasonable theory of autonomy can forbid the use of nonmoral evidence. In fact, by using others to check on my own cognitive functionality, an agent is reasoning better and is thereby more autonomous.Second, I consider Philip Nickel’s requirement that moral judgment proceed from personal understanding. I argue that the requirement of understanding does forbid unthinking obedience, but not discorroboration. When an agent reasons morally, and then reduces confidence in their judgments through discorroboration, they are in full contact with the moral reasons, and with the epistemic reasons. Discorroboration yields more understanding, not less. (shrink)
We respond to Stephen T. Davis’ criticism of our earlier essay, “Assessing the Resurrection Hypothesis.” We argue that the Standard Model of physics is relevant and decisive in establishing the implausibility and low explanatory power of the Resurrection hypothesis. We also argue that the laws of physics have entailments regarding God and the supernatural and, against Alvin Plantinga, that these same laws lack the proviso “no agent supernaturally interferes.” Finally, we offer Bayesian arguments for the Legend hypothesis and against the (...) Resurrection hypothesis. (shrink)
This article points out: “The combination of men and women in families is irrational.” Men and women are two different “species.” They only require sexual activities from each other, which are considered the less time-consuming activities during their lives. Sex must be treated as an enemy of marriage, due to its inferior and treacherous nature, and should not be included in marriage. Men and women should not live together in a family, since this institution must be understood as a permanent (...) place for all family members and is expected to have a solid structure. The traditional family model is the result of men‟s enslavement of women and the exaggeration of the role of sex. This model creates an overwhelming advantage for men in selecting partners, proposing marriage, and other family activities. This article indicates: (i) The prominent family models existing between the group-marriage period and now are sex-based family models. (ii) Technical and social conditions nowadays require a new and sustainable base for a family. The selected targets in this study are the consanguineous and sworn relationships among same-sex people in case they choose to be heterosexual, (and in turn, among opposite-sex persons when they engage in homosexuality). For example, a family can consist of two blood brothers (or sworn brothers or cousins) with their children, in case they are heterosexual. This family model is named the non-sex based family (NSBF) model, since the sexual needs will be met outside the family. The article also outlines a post-patriarchal society with the presence of NSBFs, and argues that the new model should be seen as an essential development trend of society. (shrink)
This paper draws together as many as possible of the clues and pieces of the puzzle surrounding T. S. Eliot’s “infamous” literary term “objective correlative”. Many different scholars have claimed many different sources for the term, in Pound, Whitman, Baudelaire, Washington Allston, Santayana, Husserl, Nietzsche, Newman, Walter Pater, Coleridge, Russell, Bradley, Bergson, Bosanquet, Schopenhauer and Arnold. This paper aims to rewrite this list by surveying those individuals who, in different ways, either offer the truest claim to being the source of (...) the term, or contributed the most to Eliot’s development of it: Allston, Husserl, Bradley and Bergson. What the paper will argue is that Eliot’s possible inspiration for the term is more indebted to the idealist tradition, and Bergson’s aesthetic development of it, than to the phenomenology of Husserl. (shrink)
No one is quite sure what happened to T.S. Eliot in that rose-garden. What we do know is that it formed the basis for Four Quartets, arguably the greatest English poem written in the twentieth century. Luckily it turns out that Martin Heidegger, when not pondering the meaning of being, spent a great deal of time thinking and writing about the kind of event that Eliot experienced. This essay explores how Heidegger developed the concept of Ereignis, “event” which, in the (...) context of Eliot’s poetry, helps us understand an encounter with the “heart of light” a little better. (shrink)
Three-dimensional material models of molecules were used throughout the 19th century, either functioning as a mere representation or opening new epistemic horizons. In this paper, two case studies are examined: the 1875 models of van ‘t Hoff and the 1890 models of Sachse. What is unique in these two case studies is that both models were not only folded, but were also conceptualized mathematically. When viewed in light of the chemical research of that period not only were both of these (...) aspects, considered in their singularity, exceptional, but also taken together may be thought of as a subversion of the way molecules were chemically investigated in the 19th century. Concentrating on this unique shared characteristic in the models of van ‘t Hoff and the models of Sachse, this paper deals with the shifts and displacements between their operational methods and existence: between their technical and epistemological aspects and the fact that they were folded, which was forgotten or simply ignored in the subsequent development of chemistry. (shrink)
Martin Heidegger defines the world as ‘the ever non-objective to which we are subject as long as the paths of birth and death . . . keep us transported into Being’. He writes that the world is ‘not the mere collection of the countable or uncountable, familiar and unfamiliar things that are at hand . . . The world worlds’. Being able to fully and richly express how the world worlds is the task of the artist, whose artwork is the (...) crystallization of this ‘worlding’. For Heidegger it is especially the poet who is attuned to this ‘worlding’, for the poet’s work is focussed on and happens within language itself. The poet is a ‘world-maker’, but this ‘worlding’ is not directed at creating a fictional world; rather it is aimed at revealing the world itself, drawing to the foreground the ‘ever non-objective’ nature of the world, the world happening and unfolding through and with us. This paper, using T.S. Eliot’s poetry, particularly Four Quartets as an example, will delve into how the language of the poet is able to articulate this seemingly invisible boundary between the everyday world and that same world revealed as a mysterious potential that ‘worlds’. The ‘religious imagination’ is central in how this transformation of reality, through poetic language, can manifest. Paul Ricoeur’s work on the poetic and religious dimensions of imagination, particularly the notion of ‘hope’ provides the theoretical underpinnings to explain this transformation. (shrink)
The problem of free will is deeply linked with the causal relevance of mental events. The causal exclusion argument claims that, in order to be causally relevant, mental events must be identical to physical events. However, Gibb has recently criticized it, suggesting that mental events are causally relevant as double preventers. For Gibb, mental events enable physical effects to take place by preventing other mental events from preventing a behaviour to take place. The role of mental double preventers is hence (...) similar to what Libet names free won’t, namely the ability to veto an action initiated unconsciously by the brain. In this paper I will propose an argument against Gibb’s account, the causal irrelevance argument, showing that Gibb’s proposal does not overcome the objection of systematic overdetermination of causal relevance, because mental double preventers systematically overdetermine physical double preventers, and therefore mental events are causally irrelevant. (shrink)
This papers discuss the place, if any, of Convention T (the condition of material adequacy of the proper definition of truth formulated by Tarski) in the truth-makers account offered by Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Barry Smith. It is argued that although Tarski’s requirement seems entirely acceptable in the frameworks of truth-makers theories for the first-sight, several doubts arise under a closer inspection. In particular, T-biconditionals have no clear meaning as sentences about truth-makers. Thus, truth-makers theory cannot be considered as (...) the semantic theory of truth enriched by metaphysical (ontological) data. The problem of truth-makers for sentences about future events is discussed at the end of the paper. (shrink)
This thesis explores, thematically and chronologically, the substantial concordance between the work of Martin Heidegger and T.S. Eliot. The introduction traces Eliot's ideas of the 'objective correlative' and 'situatedness' to a familiarity with German Idealism. Heidegger shared this familiarity, suggesting a reason for the similarity of their thought. Chapter one explores the 'authenticity' developed in Being and Time, as well as associated themes like temporality, the 'they' (Das Man), inauthenticity, idle talk and angst, and applies them to interpreting Eliot's poem, (...) 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'. Both texts depict a bleak Modernist view of the early twentieth-century Western human condition, characterized as a dispiriting nihilism and homelessness. Chapter two traces the chronological development of Ereignis in Heidegger's thinking, showing the term's two discernible but related meanings: first our nature as the 'site of the open' where Being can manifest, and second individual 'Events' of 'appropriation and revelation'. The world is always happening as 'event', but only through our appropriation by the Ereignis event can we become aware of this. Heidegger finds poetry, the essential example of language as the 'house of Being', to be the purest manifestation of Ereignis, taking as his examples Hölderlin and Rilke. A detailed analysis of Eliot's late work Four Quartets reveals how Ereignis, both as an ineluctable and an epiphanic condition of human existence, is central to his poetry, confirming, in Heidegger's words, 'what poets are for in a destitute time', namely to re-found and restore the wonder of the world and existence itself. This restoration results from what Eliot calls 'raid[s] on the inarticulate', the poet's continual striving to enact that openness to Being through which human language and the human world continually come to be. The final chapter shows how both Eliot and Heidegger value a genuine relationship with place as enabling human flourishing. Both distrust technological materialism, which destroys our sense of the world as dwelling place, and both are essentially committed to a genuinely authentic life, not the angstful authenticity of Being and Time, but a richer belonging which affirms our relationship with the earth, each other and our gods. (shrink)
Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, later founder and President of the Republic of Czechoslovakia, studied philosophy in the University of Vienna from 1872 to 1876, where he came under the powerful influence of Franz Brentano. We survey the role of Brentano’s philosophy, and especially of his ethics, in Masaryk’s life and work.
Even as dismissive of pursuing Comparative Philosophy for achieving East-West synthesis in philosophy, the author maintains the need for “open philosophizing.” “Open philosophizing” is one characterized by dialogical openness to culturally diverse philosophical traditions and thought-patterns.
The principle of Conditional Excluded Middle has been a matter of longstanding controversy in both semantics and metaphysics. According to this principle, we are, inter alia, committed to claims like the following: If the coin had been flipped, it would have landed heads, or if the coin had been flipped, it would not have landed heads. In favour of the principle, theorists have appealed, primarily, to linguistic data such as that we tend to hear ¬(A > B) as equivalent to (...) (A > ¬B). Williams (2010), provides one of the most compelling recent arguments along these lines by appealing to intuitive equivalencies between certain quantified conditional statements. We argue that the strategy Williams employs can be parodied to generate an argument for the unwelcome principle of Should Excluded Middle: the principle that, for any A, it either should be that A or it should be that not A. Uncovering what goes wrong with this argument casts doubt on a key premise in Williams’ argument. The way we develop this point is by defending the thesis that, like "should", "would" is a so-called neg-raising predicate. Neg-raising is the linguistic phenomenon whereby “I don’t think that Trump is a good president” strongly tends to implicate “I think that Trump is not a good president,” despite the former not semantically entailing the latter. We show how a defender of a Lewis-style semantics for counterfactuals should implement the idea that the counterfactual is a “neg-raiser”. (shrink)
People don't always speak the truth. When they don't, we do better not to trust them. Unfortunately, that's often easier said than done. People don't usually wear a ‘Not to be trusted!’ badge on their sleeves, which lights up every time they depart from the truth. Given this, what can we do to figure out whom to trust, and whom not? My aim in this paper is to offer a partial answer to this question. I propose a heuristic—the “Humility Heuristic”—to (...) help guide our search for trustworthy advisors. In slogan form, the heuristic says: people worth trusting admit to what they don't know. I give this heuristic a precise probabilistic interpretation, provide a Bayesian argument for it, and demonstrate its practical worth by showing how it can help address a number of difficult challenges in the relationship between experts and laypeople. (shrink)
Learner autonomy has gained particular attention in Vietnamese higher education since a major education reform launched in 2005. Although a number of studies have been conducted to investigate the concept in the Vietnamese higher education context, most of them have focused on exploring teachers’ and students’ perceptions and beliefs around the concept of autonomy (T. V. Nguyen, 2011; Dang, 2012; Humphreys & Wyatt, 2013; T. N. Nguyen, 2014), and on the possibility of promoting it in Vietnamese universities (Trinh, (...) 2005; L. T. C. Nguyen, 2009; Q. X. Le, 2013; Phan, 2015). There appear to be no studies on the demonstration of learner autonomy and the potential factors, including factors relating to assessment practice, that support or inhibit its demonstration in the Vietnamese higher education context. Building on a social constructivist paradigm and sociocultural theories of learning, this qualitative case study aims to investigate the demonstration of learner autonomy in the context of assessment in English as a foreign language (EFL) classes in a university in Vietnam, and the (potential) factors in assessment that facilitate or constrain the demonstration of learner autonomy in that context. The data were collected through participant observation of teachers’ and students’ practices in three EFL classes at the university during a complete semester, one-on-one semi-structured interviews with three teachers and sixteen students, and post-observation interviews with the three teachers and their students. Additional data which characterised the context of the study were gathered and included documents at the researched university relating to higher education policies, assessment policies, English teaching and learning policies, EFL curriculum and syllabus, test samples, and English teaching textbooks. The study found that students generally demonstrated a low level of autonomy in the classroom despite their positive attitude towards the concept and their awareness of its role in English learning. Primary contributing factors included negative washback of current assessment systems on teaching and learning practices, prescribed assessment practices in the class, teachers’ and learners’ limited and divergent understanding about the concept of learner autonomy, and their limited understanding about the role of assessment in learning in general and in learner autonomy promotion and development in particular. The study also found that students who stated that English was relevant to their personal needs were generally more autonomous outside of the classroom than inside it. Findings from this study support the view that learner autonomy reflects the relationship between learners and the learning environment, and is an emergent product of the interaction between learners and contextual factors including their teacher, their peers, the learning task, class rules and values, and university values and regulations. The study’s findings are significant, as they highlight the social dimension of learner autonomy and the importance of facilitating favourable conditions for teachers to provide learner autonomy and for learners to manifest it. The study also highlights the need to reconsider assessment practices to promote learner autonomy. (shrink)
This paper considers the foundation of self-realization and the sense of morality that could justify Arne Naess’s claim ‘Self-realization is morally neutral,’ by focusing on the recent debate among deep ecologists. Self-realization, the ultimate norm of Naess’s ecosophy T, is the realization of the maxim ‘everything is interrelated.’ This norm seems to be based on two basic principles: the diminishing of narrow ego, and the integrity between the human and non-human worlds. The paper argues that the former is an extension (...) of Plato’s idea of self-development or self-mastery while the latter is implicit in Aristotle’s holism. It defends that Self-realization is morally neutral only if the term ‘moral’ is considered in the Kantian sense. However, Naess reluctantly distinguishes between ethics and morality, which makes his approach less credible. The paper concludes that Aristotle’s notion of eudaimonia supports Self-realization to qualify as a virtue. (shrink)
At a 2011 meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers, N. T. Wright offered four reasons for rejecting the existence of soul. This was surprising, as many Christian philosophers had previously taken Wright's defense of a disembodied intermediate state as a defense of a substance dualist view of the soul. In this paper, I offer responses to each of Wright's objections, demonstrating that Wright's arguments fail to undermine substance dualism. In so doing, I expose how popular arguments against dualism fail, (...) such as dualism is merely an unwarranted influence of Greek culture on Christianity, and substance dualism is merely a soul-of-the-gaps hypothesis. Moreover, I demonstrate that Wright himself has offered a powerful reason for adopting substance dualism in his previous works. In conclusion I offer a view that explains why the human soul needs a resurrected body. (shrink)
According to Kant, the universalization of the maxim of false promising leads to a contradiction, namely, to everyone adopting the maxim of false promising which would in effect make promising impossible. I first propose a reconstruction of Kant’s reasoning in four steps and then show that each of these steps is highly problematic. In the second part I argue that attempts by several prominent contemporary philosophers to defend Kant fail because they encounter similar difficulties.
Musical works change. Bruckner revised his Eighth Symphony. Ella Fitzgerald and many other artists have made it acceptable to sing the jazz standard “All the Things You Are” without its original verse. If we accept that musical works genuinely change in these ways, a puzzle arises: why can’t I change Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony? More generally, why are some individuals in a privileged position when it comes to changing musical works and other artifacts, such as novels, films, and games? I give (...) a view of musical works that helps to answer these questions. Musical works, on this view, are created abstract objects with no parts. The paradigmatic changes that musical works undergo are socially determined normative changes in how they should be performed. Due to contingent social practices, Bruckner, but not I, can change how his symphony should be performed. Were social practices radically different, I would be able to change his symphony. This view extends to abstract artifacts beyond music, including novels, films, words, games, and corporations. (shrink)
The CRISPR system for gene editing can break, repair, and replace targeted sections of DNA. Although CRISPR gene editing has important therapeutic potential, it raises several ethical concerns. Some bioethicists worry CRISPR is a prelude to a dystopian future, while others maintain it should not be feared because it is analogous to past biotechnologies. In the scientific literature, CRISPR is often discussed as a revolutionary technology. In this paper we unpack the framing of CRISPR as a revolutionary technology and contrast (...) it with framing it as a value-threatening biotechnology or business-as-usual. By drawing on a comparison between CRISPR and the Ford Model T, we argue CRISPR is revolutionary as a product, process, and as a force for social change. This characterization of CRISPR offers important conceptual clarity to the existing debates surrounding CRISPR. In particular, conceptualizing CRISPR as a revolutionary technology structures regulatory goals with respect to this new technology. Revolutionary technologies have characteristic patterns of implementation, entrenchment, and social impact. As such, early identification of technologies as revolutionary may help construct more nuanced and effective ethical frameworks for public policy. (shrink)
The linguistic turn provided philosophers with a range of reasons for engaging in careful investigation into the nature and structure of language. However, the linguistic turn is dead. The arguments for it have been abandoned. This raises the question: why should philosophers take an interest in the minutiae of natural language semantics? I’ll argue that there isn’t much of a reason - philosophy of language has lost its way. Then I provide a suggestion for how it can find its way (...) again. (shrink)
The success of the Bayesian approach to perception suggests probabilistic perceptual representations. But if perceptual representation is probabilistic, why doesn't normal conscious perception reflect the full probability distributions that the probabilistic point of view endorses? For example, neurons in MT/V5 that respond to the direction of motion are broadly tuned: a patch of cortex that is tuned to vertical motion also responds to horizontal motion, but when we see vertical motion, foveally, in good conditions, it does not look at all (...) horizontal. This article argues that the best Bayesian approach to this problem does not require probabilistic representation. (shrink)
Fodor's thinking on modularity has been influential throughout a range of the areas studying cognition, chiefly as a prod for positive work on modularity and domain-specificity. In _The Mind Doesn't Work That Way_, Fodor has developed the dark message of _The Modularity of Mind_ regarding the limits to modularity and computational analyses. This paper offers a critical assessment of Fodor's scepticism with an eye to highlighting some broader issues in play, including the nature of computation and the role of recent (...) empirical developments in the cognitive sciences in assessing Fodor's position. (shrink)
Adverbialist theories of thought such as those advanced by Hare and Sellars promise an ontologically sleek understanding of a variety of intentional states, but such theories have been largely abandoned due to the ‘many-property problem’. In an attempt to revitalize this otherwise attractive theory, in a series of papers as well as his recent book, Uriah Kriegel has offered a novel reply to the ‘many-property problem’ and on its basis he argues that ‘adverbialism about intentionality is alive and well’. If (...) true, Kriegel will have shown that the logical landscape has long been unnecessarily constrained. His key idea is that the many-property problem can be overcome by appreciating that mental states stand in the determinable–determinate relation to one another. The present paper shows that this relation can’t save adverbialism because it would require thinkers to think more thoughts than they need be thinking. (shrink)
Sometimes analogy researchers talk as if the freshness of an experience of analogy resides solely in seeing that something is like something else -- seeing that the atom is like a solar system, that heat is like flowing water, that paint brushes work like pumps, or that electricity is like a teeming crowd. But analogy is more than this. Analogy isn't just seeing that the atom is like a solar system; rather, it is seeing something new about the atom, an (...) observation enabled by 'looking' at atoms from the perspective of one's understanding of solar systems. The question for analogy researchers then is this: Where does this new knowledge about atoms come from? How can an analogy provide new knowledge and new understanding? (shrink)
In a recent paper, Melchior pursues a novel argumentative strategy against the sensitivity condition. His claim is that sensitivity suffers from a ‘heterogeneity problem:’ although some higher-order beliefs are knowable, other, very similar, higher-order beliefs are insensitive and so not knowable. Similarly, the conclusions of some bootstrapping arguments are insensitive, but others are not. In reply, I show that sensitivity does not treat different higher-order beliefs differently in the way that Melchior states and that while genuine bootstrapping arguments have insensitive (...) conclusions, the cases that Melchior describes as sensitive ‘bootstrapping’ arguments don’t deserve the name, since they are a perfectly good way of getting to know their conclusions. In sum, sensitivity doesn’t have a heterogeneity problem. (shrink)
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