Temporal Changes in Ovarian Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone mRNA Levels by Gonadotropins in the Rat Sung Ho Lee, Eun-Seob Song, Sun Kyeong Yu, Changmee Kim, Dae Kee Lee, Wan Sung Choi l and Kyungjin Kim* Department of Molecular Biofogy and SRC for Cell Differentiation, Seoul National University, Seoul 150-742, Korea; IDepartment of Anatomy, College of Medicine, Gyeongsanf; National University, Chinju 660-280, Korea (Recei·. cd on December 29, 1993) The present study examines whether gonadotropins are involved in the regulation of ovarian (...) GnRH gene expression and how ovarian GnRH gene expression temporalJy correlates with alterations in hypothalamic GnRH, pituitary LH~ gene expression in respons to gonadotropins. Hypothalamic and ovarian GnRH mRNA and pituitary LH~ mRNA levels were determined by respective RNA-blot hybridizations, and ovarian GnRH and estradiol contents and serum LH levels were measured by respective radioimmunoassays. Three animal models such as 1) PMSG-treated, 2) PMSG and heG-treated immature rats and 3) proestrous stage of adult rats were used. Immature rats (25-days old) were administered with PMSG (10 iu) at 10:00 hand 48 h later with heG (10 iu) to induce ovulation. In the PMSG-injected model, hypothalamic GnRH mRNA levels were markedly augmented about 9-fold at 50 h, and pituitary LH mRNA 3-fold at 52 h after PMSG administration. Serum LH levels were increased to the preovulatory surge levels at 56 h, and ovarian GnRH mRNA levels were augmented 4-fold at 60 h after PMSG injection. Administration of heG also induced a marked enhancement in ovarian GnRH mRNA levels in comparison to the values shown in both intact and PMSGtreated rats at 52 hand 54 h, respectively. In the proestrous stage of normal adult rats, pituitary LH~ mRNA levels were peaked at 16:00 h. The preovulatory LH surge was evident at 4 h before increment in ovarian GnRH mRNA levels as shown in PMSG-treated rats. The present study clearly showed the sequential increase in hypothalamic GnRH mRNA, pituitary LH~ mRNA and ovarian GnRH mRNA levels, indicating that ovarian GnRH may play a possible role in the control of follicular maturation and the ovulation process. (shrink)

This paper summarizes the evolution of analytic philosophy in Taiwan, examines its impact within and beyond academia, and discusses the future of the discipline. The roots of modern philosophy in Taiwan can be traced back to the Japanese colonial era, and analytic philosophy was introduced to the country in the late 1940s when many intellectuals in China moved to Taiwan. However, massive curbs were imposed on philosophy during Chiang Kai-shek’s dictatorship, and the discipline began to thrive again only after Taiwan’s (...) democratization in the late 1980s. Nonetheless, since its introduction in the colonial era, modern philosophy has made significant contributions in Taiwan, encouraging interdisciplinary engagements, advancing civic education, and promoting the spirit of democracy and political liberation. Philosophy has played a key role in Taiwan’s remarkable transformation from an island colonized for hundreds of years to a country that recognizes democracy, freedom, and human rights. The themes of anti-colonialism and anti-domination seen in the works of modern Taiwanese philosophers not only reflect the discipline’s political and historical underpinnings but also signal how Taiwanese philosophy can acquire a distinct identity despite being influenced by many other philosophical traditions. While still at a nascent stage, Taiwanese philosophy has the potential to join forces with other philosophical traditions in advancing the vision of decolonizing philosophy. (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.

Sự phát triển nhanh chóng của các nền tảng thương mại điện tử đã làm thay đổi hành vi mua sắm của người tiêu dùng, đặc biệt thông qua tính năng phát trực tiếp (livestream). Nghiên cứu này xác định và đo lường các yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến hành vi mua sắm ngẫu hứng của sinh viên đại học thông qua phiên livestream trên các nền tảng thương mại điện tử tại TP. Hồ Chí Minh. Khảo sát được thực (...) hiện với 192 sinh viên và dữ liệu được phân tích bằng phần mềm SPSS 22.0. Kết quả chỉ ra 5 yếu tố chính ảnh hưởng đáng kể đến quyết định mua sắm ngẫu hứng, bao gồm: Trực quan, Tương tác, Chiêu thị, Cảm xúc và Thuận tiện. Kết quả nghiên cứu này cung cấp những hiểu biết quan trọng cho các nhà tiếp thị và doanh nghiệp nhằm tăng cường sự tương tác và doanh số bán hàng thông qua livestream trên các nền tảng thương mại điện tử. (shrink)

Vậy thì người vẽ đã đưa hoa súng vào bức tranh, hay là hoa từ trong tranh mọc ra trên bể cá?!

Nghiên cứu này tập trung vào việc xác định và đo lường các yếu tố hạn chế sự tham gia của sinh viên vào thương mại điện tử (TMĐT) tại TP. Hồ Chí Minh. Sử dụng lý thuyết hành vi dự định, lý thuyết rủi ro nhận thức và lý thuyết năng lực cá nhân, nghiên cứu đã xây dựng mô hình bao gồm các biến: Năng lực cá nhân, Nhận thức sự sở hữu từ TMĐT, Giao hàng chặng cuối, (...) Rủi ro về kỹ thuật và công nghệ, Rủi ro về sản phẩm và Bảo mật thông tin. Kết quả cho thấy, các yếu tố này có tác động đáng kể đến quyết định tham gia TMĐT của sinh viên, từ đó đề xuất các giải pháp nhằm thúc đẩy sự phát triển TMĐT trong nhóm đối tượng này. (shrink)

Bài viết tìm hiểu các yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến ý định định hướng nghề nghiệp của sinh viên Trường Đại học Công nghiệp Việt Trì. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy, có 4 yếu tố tác động cùng chiều đến ý định định hướng nghề nghiệp của sinh viên Trường Đại học Công nghiệp Việt Trì là: (1) Tư vấn và hỗ trợ của cố vấn học tập; (2) Ảnh hưởng của những người xung quanh; (3) Sự tiếp xúc (...) nghề nghiệp; (4) Niềm đam mê. Trong đó, yếu tố “Sự tiếp xúc nghề nghiệp” có ảnh hưởng mạnh nhất đến ý định định hướng nghề nghiệp của sinh viên. Từ kết quả nghiên cứu, tác giả đưa ra một số khuyến nghị nhằm nâng cao hiệu quả định hướng nghề nghiệp cho sinh viên Trường Đại học Công nghiệp Việt Trì trong thời gian tới. (shrink)

Ngành dầu khí là tiền đề quan trọng hỗ trợ phát triển nền kinh tế, vì thế, nhiều doanh nghiệp dầu khí đang từng bước phát triển mạnh. Nghiên cứu tìm hiểu và đo lường hiệu quả quản lý tài sản của 8 doanh nghiệp dầu khí tại Việt Nam từ năm 2019 tới năm 2023 dựa theo mô hình hiệu quả cao (Super Slacked-based mearesure - SBM) sử dụng phương pháp phân tích bao hàm dữ liệu (Data envelopment analysis (...) - DEA). Kết quả nghiên cứu đã tìm ra được điểm số hiệu quả về quản lý tài sản đối với từng doanh nghiệp trong từng năm và gợi ý ra giải pháp nâng cao hiệu quả trong tương lai. (shrink)

Mặc dù Việt Nam đã tiến những bước dài so với mình trong quá khứ, nhưng thách thức vẫn còn rất lớn khi so sách về sự phát triển với các quốc gia láng giềng. Một nước Việt Nam hùng mạnh là giấc mơ ngàn xưa của dân tộc Việt Nam, và trên con đường đến tương lai có thể “sánh vai được với các cường quốc năm châu” ấy, như lời Bác Hồ dạy, chúng ta đôi lúc cũng nên (...) nhìn lại chặng đường đã trải qua, để tự tin hơn, để rút được kinh nghiệm, và để tự hào với những gì cha ông đã làm được. Đây là việc rất cần thiết vì có câu: Nếu chúng ta bắn vào quá khứ bằng súng lục thì tương lai sẽ bắn vào chúng ta bằng đại bác. Để đánh giá được bất cứ một cá nhân hay tập thể nào, người ta đều phải xem lại quá trình, xem lại điểm xuất phát và các yếu tố liên quan. Đó là phép tư duy biện chứng - nền tảng cho khoa học và kỹ thuật của loài người. (shrink)

This essay analyses the Confucian conception of xin, an attribute that broadly resembles what we would ordinarily call trustworthiness. More specifically, it provides an analysis of the psychology of someone who is xin and highlights a feature of the Confucian conception of trustworthiness: the trustworthy person has to ensure that there is a match between her self-presentation and the way she is. My goal is not to argue against any of the existing accounts of trustworthiness but to draw on Confucian (...) insights so as to shed light on features of trustworthiness that are overlooked in current discussions. I hope to show that the Confucian conception of trustworthiness puts more emphasis on the way a trustworthy person actively tries to make sure another’s dependency on her is not unwarranted than on how the trustworthy person responds to the one who gives trust. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyse the nature of a particular form of theoretical reasoning—ratiocination. Ratiocination is purposeful, self-conscious, deliberatively controlled reasoning. I will argue that ratiocination concludes when the ratiocinator believes that she ought to believe p. In Section 1, I suggest that the way a reasoner’s mind moves in ratiocination is different from the way her mind moves in non-ratiocinative reasoning. Such a difference should motivate an analysis that focuses just on ratiocination. In Section 2, I provide a general (...) characterisation of ratiocination and distinguish it from non-ratiocinative reasoning. I draw a distinction between non-deliberative rational control and deliberative rational control. I then argue that the ratiocinator always exercises the latter. Since theoretical reasoning is a norm-governed activity and since ratiocination involves deliberatively controlled reasoning, the ratiocinator necessarily tries to control her mental movements in a way that is in line with the normative requirements of this activity. In Section 3, I argue that ratiocination ends when the ratiocinator believes that she ought to believe p. I further explain the nature of the ‘ought’ in the ratiocinator’s belief that she ought to believe p. In Section 4, I address possible objections to the account on offer and explain why my account does not undermine our general understanding of the nature of theoretical reasoning. I explain that my claim is compatible with the claim that reasons to be rational are transparent to reasons to believe p. I also discuss why the ratiocinator’s belief that she ought to believe p is not an intermediate stage in ratiocination. Finally, I argue that ratiocination, as described, is compatible with the claim that belief is truth-governed. (shrink)

The placebo effect has puzzled scientists for centuries. Philosopher Dien Ho argues that we now know how it works, and that this should transform our understanding of the relationship between mind and body. We must stop thinking of improvements in health due to placebo as somehow less real than those due to other medicines: there can no longer be a clean distinction between ill-health that’s “all in the head” and ill-health that involves a malfunctioning body. Ho argues that our improved (...) understanding of placebos means that doctors should now harness their power in treatment, especially since research shows that they can be effective even when patients are told that they’re taking a placebo. (shrink)

Bài mới xuất bản vào ngày 19-5-2020 với tác giả liên lạc là NCS Nguyễn Minh Hoàng, cán bộ nghiên cứu của Trung tâm ISR, trình bày tiếp cận thống kê Bayesian cho việc nghiên cứu dữ liệu khoa học xã hội. Đây là kết quả của định hướng Nhóm nghiên cứu SDAG được nêu rõ ngay từ ngày 18-5-2019.

Recently, several philosophers have argued that, when faced with moral uncertainty, we ought to choose the option with the maximal expected choiceworthiness (MEC). This view has been challenged on the grounds that it is implausibly demanding. In response, those who endorse MEC have argued that we should take into account the all-things-considered choiceworthiness of our options when determining the maximally choiceworthy option. In this paper, I argue that this gives rise to another problem: for the most part, acts that we (...) consider to be supererogatory are rendered impermissible, and acts that we consider to be suberogatory are rendered obligatory, under MEC. This problem arises because, when we factor in prudential reasons, we often have most reason, or most expected reason, to act in accordance with our interests. I suggest a way to reformulate MEC so that prudential reasons only make acts permissible or non-obligatory, without ever making acts obligatory or wrong under moral uncertainty. (shrink)

Hồ Mạnh Tùng và Hồ Mạnh Toàn đều là các nhà nghiên cứu trẻ trong lĩnh vực khoa học xã hội ở độ tuổi dưới 30. Mặc dù mới tham gia nghiên cứu khoa học chưa lâu, nhưng 2 anh em nhà họ Hồ đã có thành tích khoa học ấn tượng.

A number of analytical philosophers have recently endorsed the view that the world itself is indeterminate in some respect. Intriguingly, ideas similar to the view are expressed by thinkers from Chinese Madhyamaka Buddhism, which may shed light on the current discussion of worldly indeterminacy. Using as a basis Chinese Madhyamaka thought, together with Jessica Wilson’s account of indeterminacy, I develop an ontological conception of indeterminacy, termed ontic indeterminacy, which centres on two complementary ideas—conclusive indeterminability and provisional determinability. I show that (...) OI is well-equipped to tackle several issues of worldly indeterminacy. My overarching aim is to present a viable and sustainable perspective on the subject of indeterminacy to enrich analytical philosophers’ insights into the intricate nature of reality. (shrink)

This article synthesizes the current theoretical attempts to understand human-machine interactions and introduces seven premises to understand our emerging dynamics with increasingly competent, pervasive, and instantly accessible algorithms. The hope that these seven premises can build toward a social theory of human-AI cocreation. The focus on human-AI cocreation is intended to emphasize two factors. First, is the fact that our machine learning systems are socialized. Second, is the coevolving nature of human mind and AI systems as smart devices form an (...) indispensable part of our cognitive scaffolds, thus, shaping how we perceive the world and ourselves. The seven premises include: primacy of social structures; human’s desire for freedom and autonomy; AI systems will form inseparable parts of our cognitive/affective scaffolds and can change our self-understanding; philosophy and humanistic foundations on human flourishing as a guide to human-AI interaction; mindsponge information-filtering process; acculturative process of how values change and emerge from human-AI interaction; overlapping Venn diagram of the human-human, human-nature, and human-machine interactions. This article concludes with a discussion on human agency in our entanglements with socialized machines and the illusoriness of the Cartesian agent view of the mind. (shrink)

This book examines the legal and moral theory behind the law of evidence and proof, arguing that only by exploring the nature of responsibility in fact-finding can the role and purpose of much of the law be fully understood. Ho argues that the court must not only find the truth to do justice, it must do justice in finding the truth.

In his essay “Things Do Not Move,” Sengzhao (374?−414 CE), a prominent Chinese Buddhist philosopher, argues for the thesis that the myriad things do not move in time. This view is counter-intuitive and seems to run counter to the Mahayana Buddhist doctrine of emptiness. In this book chapter, I assess Sengzhao’s arguments for his thesis, elucidate his stance on the change/nonchange of things, and discuss related problems. I argue that although Sengzhao is keen on showing the plausibility of the thesis, (...) he actually views the myriad things as both changing and unchanging and upholds the nonduality of motion and rest. In fact, the nonmoving thesis follows from the discernment that things change from moment to moment without there being any enduring stuff in the process. Among philosophical works that confer a higher ontological status on nonchange over change, Sengzhao’s essay is unique and well worth pondering. (shrink)

In “Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions”, Weinberg, Nichols and Stich famously argue from empirical data that East Asians and Westerners have different intuitions about Gettier -style cases. We attempted to replicate their study about the Car case, but failed to detect a cross - cultural difference. Our study used the same methods and case taken verbatim, but sampled an East Asian population 2.5 times greater than NEI’s 23 participants. We found no evidence supporting the existence of cross - cultural difference about (...) the intuition concerning the Gettier car case. Taken together with the failures of both of the existing replication studies, our results provide strong evidence that the purported cross - cultural difference in Gettier intuitions does not exist. (shrink)

Nhật Bản thường được biết đến là một cường quốc khoa học không chỉ ở Châu Á mà trên toàn thế giới với rất nhiều giải thưởng khoa học cao quý và sản lượng khoa học ổn định ở mức cao nhiều thập niên qua. Tuy nhiên, trong khoảng 10 năm trở lại đây, thế giới đã thường xuyên ghi nhận những vụ bê bối về đạo đức nghiên cứu tại Nhật Bản. Xem xét kĩ lưỡng nội dung chi tiết (...) các vụ bê bối có thể thấy Nhật Bản đang gặp phải những thách thức nan giải trong việc ngăn chặn và kiểm soát vi phạm đạo đức nghiên cứu. Một phần quan trọng của thách thức này là sự xung đột giữa một bên là những yếu tố có tính lịch sử và văn hóa, và bên kia là sự phát triển của công nghệ thông tin và xu hướng hợp tác quốc tế mở rộng. Nghiên cứu trường hợp của Nhật Bản có thể mang lại những bài học quan trọng trong việc xây dựng khả năng đào tạo và quản lí đạo đức nghiên cứu tại một nền khoa học mới hội nhập như Việt Nam. (shrink)

Satirical cartooning in Vietnam is subject to a complex dynamic: an increasingly liberalised and internationalised economy, and the rise of social media in a one-party state. This article examines what state-sanctioned satirical cartoons can reveal about the representation and management of political criticism in such a context. We find a growing trend of depicting corruption as a systemic problem, which is present in 45 per cent of the sample and in 70 per cent of the 20 most-viral cartoons in one (...) of Vietnam’s most popular magazines, Tuoi Tre Cuoi (Youth Humour). This trend can be interpreted as a change in the sensibility of audiences and a shift toward a more tolerant media landscape. The trend, however, may also be a worrying sign of the dual dangers of cynicism in Vietnamese politics: the development of apathy among audiences and the cynical use of art by authorities. Despite these concerns, we argue, political cartoons in Vietnam provide an important public avenue for collective political reflection and everyday social solidarity. (shrink)

This paper endeavors to understand the research landscape of finance research in Vietnam during the period 2008 to 2020 and predict the key defining future research directions. Using the comprehensive database of Vietnam’s international publications in social sciences and humanities, we extract a dataset of 314 papers on finance topics in Vietnam from 2008 to 2020. Then, we apply a systematic approach to analyze four important themes: Structural issues, Banking system, Firm issues, and Financial psychology and behavior. Overall, there have (...) been three noticeable trends within finance research in Vietnam: (1) assessment of financial policies or financial regulation, (2) deciphering the correlates of firms’ financial performances, and (3) opportunities and challenges in adopting innovations and ideas from foreign financial market systems. Our analysis identifies several fertile areas for future research, including financial market analysis in the post-COVID-19 eras, fintech, and green finance. (shrink)

Tại thị trường Châu Âu, Springer Nature cho biết có đến 4 quốc gia có hơn 70% tác giả đang lựa chọn công bố mở. Tuy nhiên, để đạt được 30% còn lại thì các nhà xuất bản như Springer Nature cần đưa ra các lựa chọn hấp dẫn và thuyết phục hơn là ép buộc các tác giả phải lựa chọn Open Access như yêu cầu hiện nay.

The hypergrowth and hyperconnectivity of networks of artificial intelligence (AI) systems and algorithms increasingly cause our interactions with the world, socially and environmentally, more technologically mediated. AI systems start interfering with our choices or making decisions on our behalf: what we see, what we buy, which contents or foods we consume, where we travel to, who we hire, etc. It is imperative to understand the dynamics of human-computer interaction in the age of progressively more competent AI. This essay presents five (...) premises to serve as starting points for building our understanding of the “interactions’ in human-computer interactions. (shrink)

The aims of this book is clear and straightforward. It was motivated to convert an inhumane or insipid experience with the various sources of global ranking into the kind of humanly and cultural experience within our daily lifestyle. Their outlook from presentation is masked with the number purely and perhaps through a myriad of complicated data or ranking information. The concept or self-identification within the experience or exposure would be less substantial or hard to get palpable. My attempt to improve (...) this aspect of contemporary practice certainly will fall short, but you can sense in some paragraphs or titles. I wrote this small piece of book in the end to take care of human integrity and stories for advancing the inherence and liveliness of interested actors or consumers despite all the wind-heads from the turf of existing ranking sources. The idea hopefully might be compatible with brand personification for the people interested in this area of world phenomenon. The structure of book was organized in less complete way, but might look cursory and spontaneous. The dealings obviously are never exhaustive unlike the major commercial providers, rather more akin to the consulting webs primarily in direct contact with the customers. Nevertheless, the ranking results finalized through this book is original in its methodology or in terms of data collection although the presentation is little in scope and mainly suggestive as a kind of ranking philosopher. Given my status as a college professor, it would be an unusual chemistry or brought me to shimmer at some point of meditation on how I could rank fairly and meaningfully. I merely hope that the readership can generously take this attempt as a pilot work or as the kind of post-modern work Avant Gardo or civilization strolls from understanding, criticism. It might be even through a bootstrap with the universal constitutionalism or communicative democracy. The book had been prepared mainly by editing into each section the previous work of articles and flowing through each of my brief pertaining to the purported ranking. Nevertheless, I am presenting an up-to-date elaboration on the graduate or post-graduate study and KIOSK on research doctorates. As followed by section four, the conventional spectrum of global CU rankings was discussed with a new attempt to measure them. Lastly, a reflection and piece of thought were wrought through little pages titled Epilogue at the end of this booklet. (shrink)

Virtue epistemology maintains that epistemic normativity is a kind of performance normativity, according to which evaluating a belief is like evaluating a sport or musical performance. I examine this thesis through the objection that a belief cannot be evaluated as a performance because it is not a performance but a state. I argue that virtue epistemology can be defended on the grounds that we often evaluate a performance through evaluating the result of the performance. The upshot of my account is (...) that when a belief is evaluated under performance normativity, what we evaluate is not belief, but cognitive performance. My account of virtue epistemology offers a simple explanation of why knowledge is more valuable than true belief. (shrink)

Many Perdurantists have been drawn to the “Conventionalist” idea that our person-directed attitudes can determine whether or not we survive events such as teletransportation. In this paper, I suggest a novel “Contextualist Conventionalism” according to which Conventionalism is true with respect to some, but not all, contexts in which we ask “will I survive?”—instead in “reflexive” contexts, “I” reflexively refers to a thinker whose persistence conditions are mind-independent. Unlike one form of Conventionalism which implies that the reference of “I” is (...) never constrained to reflexively referring to the thinker, Contextualist Conventionalism instead implies that there are some important contexts where the “I” is so constrained. And unlike another form of Conventionalism that secures such reflexive reference by holding that the survival of the thinker is a mind-dependent matter, Contextualist Conventionalism secures reflexive reference while avoiding such a radical metaphysical commitment. (shrink)

Conventionalists hold that the sorts of events that one survives—such as teletransportation, or a brain transplant—is at least partly determined by our attitudes. But if Conventionalism is true, whose attitudes directly determine whether one survives? Do the individual's attitudes do all the work as Private Conventionalists hold, or do the community's attitudes also factor in as Public Conventionalists hold? There has recently been a greater push towards Private Conventionalism, while explicit arguments for Public Conventionalism are difficult to come by. In (...) this paper, I attempt to rectify the situation by presenting my case for Public Conventionalism. (shrink)

Xenophobia is conceptually distinct from racism. Xenophobia is also distinct from nativism. Furthermore, theories of racism are largely ensconced in nationalized narratives of racism, often influenced by the black-white binary, which obscures xenophobia and shelters it from normative critiques. This paper addresses these claims, arguing for the first and last, and outlining the second. Just as philosophers have recently analyzed the concept of racism, clarifying it and pinpointing why it’s immoral and the extent of its moral harm, so we will (...) analyze xenophobia and offer a pluralist account of xenophobia, with important implications for racism. This analysis is guided by the discussion of racism in recent moral philosophy, social ontology, and research in the psychology of racism and implicit attitudes. (shrink)

For Jizang (549−623), a prominent philosophical exponent of Chinese Madhyamaka, all things are empty of determinate form or nature. Given anything X, no linguistic item can truly and conclusively be applied to X in the sense of positing a determinate form or nature therein. This philosophy of ontic indeterminacy is connected closely with his notion of the Way (dao), which seems to indicate a kind of ineffable principle of reality. However, Jizang also equates the Way with nonacquisition as a conscious (...) state of freedom from any attachment and definite understanding whatsoever. The issue then becomes pressing as to how we are to understand Jizang's notion of the Way. Does it indicate some metaphysical principle or reality? Is it actually a skilful expedient to lead one to the consummate state of complete spiritual freedom? How is this issue related to Jizang's conception of ontic indeterminacy? In this book chapter, I examine Jizang's key writings in an attempt to clarify his ontological position. (shrink)

For Bhartrhari, a fifth-century Indian grammarian-philosopher, all conscious beings—beasts, birds and humans—are capable of what he called pratibha, a flash of indescribable intuitive understanding such that one knows what the present object “means” and what to do with it. Such an understanding, if correct, amounts to a mode of knowing that may best be termed knowing-what, to distinguish it from both knowing-that and knowing-how. This paper attempts to expound Bhartrhari’s conception of pratibha in relation to the notions of meaning, understanding, (...) and knowing. First, I touch briefly on Bhartrhari’s views of consciousness and language, and examine at some length his indescribability thesis concerning the intuitive meaning of a sentence. Then, I delineate the general features of pratibha as intuitive understanding and discuss its probable range in relation to expert intuition and sense perception. Thereafter, I relate pratibha to the notion of knowing-what and show why these two notions are to be differentiated from knowing-that and knowing-how. The paper concludes with some remarks on the contemporary relevance of Bhartrhari’s conception of pratibha. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that many criticisms of McDowell’s naturalism of second nature are based on what I call ‘the orthodox interpretation’ of McDowell’s naturalism. The orthodox interpretation is, however, a misinterpretation, which results from the fact that the phrase ‘the space of reasons’ is used equivocally by McDowell in Mind and World. Failing to distinguish two senses of ‘the space of reasons’, I argue that the orthodox interpretation renders McDowell’s naturalism inconsistent with McDowell’s Hegelian thesis that the conceptual (...) is unbounded. My interpretation saves McDowell from being inconsistent. However, the upshot of my interpretation is that what is really at work in McDowell’s diagnosis of the dualism between nature and reason is the Hegelian thesis, not the naturalism of second nature. (shrink)

This paper is to propose a new form of Kant’s anti-skepticism argument in light of John McDowell’s works on disjunctivism. I first discuss recent debates between McDowell and Crispin Wright on disjunctivism. I argue that Wright wrongly downplays McDowell’s disjunctivism, whose metaphysical claim that our perceptual faculties directly engage in the world has an epistemological implication that should be able to dismiss the skeptic’s imagery as fictitious. However, McDowell does not clearly offer such an argument. I will show that we (...) can derive from Kant’s Fourth Paralogism of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason—which many scholars regard as Kant’s implicit commitment to phenomenalism—the requisite argument that makes us able to dismiss skepticism. (shrink)

In recent decades, the intertwining ideas of self-determination and well-being have received tremendous support in bioethics. Discussions regarding self-determination, or autonomy, often focus on two dimensions—the capacity of the patient and the freedom from external coercion. The practice of obtaining informed consent, for example, has become a standard procedure in therapeutic and research medicine. On the surface, it appears that patients now have more opportunities to exercise their self-determination than ever. Nonetheless, discussions of patient autonomy in the bioethics literature, which (...) focus on individual patients making particular decisions, neglect the social structure within which health-care decisions are made. Looking through the lens of disability and informed by the feminist conception of relational autonomy, this essay argues that the issue of autonomy is much more complex than the individualist model suggests. The social system and the ableist ideology impose various forms of pressure or oppressive power that can affect people’s ability to choose according to their value system. Even if such powers are not directly coercive, they influence potential parents’ decisions indirectly—they structure their alternatives in such a way that certain options are never considered as viable and other decisions must be made. This paper argues that, instead of only focusing on the individual act of decision-making, we need to pay attention to the social structure that frames people’s decision. (shrink)

Virtue epistemology argues that knowledge is more valuable than Gettierized belief because knowledge is an achievement, but Gettierized belief is not. The key premise in the achievement argument is that achievement is apt (successful because competent) and Gettierized belief is inapt (successful because lucky). I first argue that the intuition behind the achievement argument is based wrongly on the fact that ‘being successful because lucky’ implicates ‘being not competent enough’. I then offer an argument from moral luck to argue that (...) virtue epistemologists should maintain that knowledge is no more valuable than Gettierized belief. (shrink)

An observation of Hume’s has received a lot of attention over the last decade and a half: Although we can standardly imagine the most implausible scenarios, we encounter resistance when imagining propositions at odds with established moral (or perhaps more generally evaluative) convictions. The literature is ripe with ‘solutions’ to this so-called ‘Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance’. Few, however, question the plausibility of the empirical assumption at the heart of the puzzle. In this paper, we explore empirically whether the difficulty we (...) witness in imagining certain propositions is indeed due to claim type (evaluative v. non-evaluative) or whether it is much rather driven by mundane features of content. Our findings suggest that claim type plays but a marginal role, and that there might hence not be much of a ‘puzzle’ to be solved. (shrink)

Thứ hạng của quyển sách trên Amazon và phản hồi tích cực gần đây đã cho thấy rằng, cuốn sách mang cho độc giả quốc tế cơ hội để tìm hiểu về văn hóa Việt Nam qua những câu chuyện “được chế tác một cách điêu luyện".

It is widely agreed that more is true in a work of fiction than explicitly said. In addition to directly stipulated fictional content (explicit truth), inference and background assumptions give us implicit truths. However, this taxonomy of fictional truths overlooks an important class of fictional truth: those generated by literary formal features. Fictional works generate fictional content by both semantic and formal means, and content arising from formal features such as italics or font size are neither explicit nor implicit: not (...) explicit since formal features don’t say anything; and not implicit since content generated from formal features doesn’t rely on other truths or background assumptions. In addition to showing that our current classification is incomplete, the new class of fictional truths provides four further upshots for definitions of fictional truth, story and work identity conditions, and the relationship between literary interpretation and fictional truth. (shrink)

This article offers a novel solution to the problem of material constitution: by including non-concrete objects among the parts of material objects, we can avoid having a statue and its constituent piece of clay composed of all the same proper parts. Non-concrete objects—objects that aren’t concrete, but possibly are—have been used in defense of the claim that everything necessarily exists. But the account offered shows that non-concreta are independently useful in other domains as well. The resulting view falls under a (...) ‘nonmaterial partist’ class of views that includes, in particular, Laurie Paul’s and Kathrin Koslicki’s constitution views; ones where material objects have properties or structures as parts respectively. The article gives reasons for preferring the non-concretist solution over these other non-material partist views and defends it against objections. (shrink)

There has been a growing charge that perdurantism—with its bloated ontology of very person-like objects that coincide persons—implies the repugnant conclusion that we are morally obliged to be feckless. I argue that this charge critically overlooks the epistemic situation—what I call the ‘veil of ignorance’—that perdurantists find themselves in. Though the veil of ignorance still requires an alteration of our commonsense understanding of the demands on action, I argue for two conclusions. The first is that the alteration that is required (...) isn’t a moral one, but rather an alteration of prudential reasoning. Second, and more importantly, this alteration isn’t necessarily a repugnant one. In fact, given that it prudentially pushes one towards greater impartiality, it may be seen as a point in favor of perdurantism. (shrink)

Imagination comes with varying degrees of sensory accompaniment. Sometimes imagining is phenomenologically lean (cognitive imagining); at other times, imagining involves or requires sensory presentation such as mental imagery (sensory imagining). Philosophers debate whether contradictions can obtain in fiction and whether cognitive imagining is robust enough to explain our engagement with fiction. In this paper, I defend the Principle of Poetic License by arguing for the Permissive View of fictional truth: we can have fictions in which a contradiction is true, everything (...) is true, or nothing is true. I show that imagination-based worries about impossible, unlimited, and empty fictions can be shown to be about sensory imagination and that sensory imagination isn’t necessary for fictional truth. (shrink)

I develop a new reading of Frege’s argument for the indefinability of truth. I concentrate on what Frege literally says in the passage that contains the argument. This literal reading of the passage establishes that the indefinability argument is an arguably sound argument to the following conclusion: provided that the Fregean conception of judgment—which has recently been countered by Hanks—is correct and that truth is a property of truth-bearers, a vicious infinite regress is produced. Given this vicious regress, Frege chooses (...) to reject that truth is a property of truth-bearers. Frege’s choice leads to a unique version of the Fregean conception of judgment. His unique conception of judgment can cope with Hanks’s recent criticisms against the Fregean conception. (shrink)

Selim Berker argues that epistemic consequentialism is pervasive in epistemology and that epistemic consequentialism is structurally flawed. is incorrect, however. I distinguish between epistemic consequentialism and epistemic instrumentalism and argue that most putative consequentialists should be considered instrumentalists. I also identify the structural problem of epistemic consequentialism Berker attempts to pinpoint and show that epistemic instrumentalism does not have the consequentialist problem.

Philosophical orthodoxy holds that pains are mental states, taking this to reflect the ordinary conception of pain. Despite this, evidence is mounting that English speakers do not tend to conceptualize pains in this way; rather, they tend to treat pains as being bodily states. We hypothesize that this is driven by two primary factors—the phenomenology of feeling pains and the surface grammar of pain reports. There is reason to expect that neither of these factors is culturally specific, however, and thus (...) reason to expect that the empirical findings for English speakers will generalize to other cultures and other languages. In this article we begin to test this hypothesis, reporting the results of two cross-cultural studies comparing judgments about the location of referred pains between two groups—Americans and South Koreans—that we might otherwise expect to differ in how they understand pains. In line with our predictions, we find that both groups tend to conceive of pains as bodily states. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I motivate ‘Origin Conventionalism’—the view that which facts about one’s origins are essential to one’s existence depends partly on our person-directed attitudes. One important upshot is that the view offers a novel and attractive solution to the Nonidentity Problem. That problem typically assumes that the sperm-egg pair from which a person originates is essential to that person’s existence; in which case, for many future persons that come into existence under adverse conditions, had those conditions not been realized, the individuals (...) wouldn’t have existed. This is problematic because it delivers the counter-intuitive conclusion that it’s not wrong to bring about such adverse conditions since they don’t harm anyone. Origin Conventionalism, in contrast, holds that whether a person’s sperm-egg origin is essential to their existence depends on their person-directed attitudes. I argue that this provides a unique and attractive way of preserving the intuition that the actions in the ‘nonidentity cases’ are morally wrong because of the potential harm done to the individuals in question. (shrink)

It is widely maintained that doxastic norms that govern how people should believe can be explained by the truism that belief is governed by the correctness norm: believing p is correct if and only if p. This approach fails because it confuses two kinds of correctness norm: (1) It is correct for S to believe p if and only p; and (2) believing p is correct qua belief if and only if p. Only can (2) be said to be a (...) truism about belief, but it cannot ground doxastic norms. (shrink)

In the Essay, Locke refers to the ordinary-sized natural things as ‘particular sorts of Substances’ (2.23), whereas the ‘three sorts of Substances’ (2.27) are more metaphysically laden sorts: God, finite spirits, and fundamental material particles. He posits the much-contested ‘substratum’ in each particular sort of substance but not any of the three sorts. It should also be noted that his list of the particular sorts includes ‘men’. In regard to this nobler sort, he refers to a further classification – viz., (...) ‘the Substance of spirit’ and ‘the Substance of the body’ – only in terms of their nominal essence. A naturalistic, nominalist approach is deeply entrenched in his account of the human-related sorts as well. In this chapter, I shall explore how Locke develops a theory of substance in the Essay that is less metaphysical, more naturalistic, and epistemically humbler than those of his rationalist contemporaries. (shrink)