The global water crisis is being exacerbated by climate change, even in the United States. Recycled water is a feasible alternative to alleviate the water shortage, but it is constrained by humans’ perceptions. The current study examines how residents’ water scarcity awareness and climate change belief influence their willingness to use recycled water directly and indirectly. Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was employed on a dataset of 1831 residents in Albuquerque, New Mexico, an arid inland region in the US. We (...) discovered that residents’ willingness to use direct recycled potable water is positively affected by their awareness of water scarcity, but the effect is conditional on their belief in the impacts of climate change on the water cycle. Meanwhile, the willingness to use indirect recycled potable water is influenced by water scarcity awareness, and the belief in climate change further enhances this effect. These findings implicate that fighting climate change denialism and informing the public of the water scarcity situation in the region can contribute to the effectiveness and sustainability of long-term water conservation and climate change alleviation efforts. (shrink)

Thời trang bền vững là xu hướng được quan tâm hiện nay do ngày càng có nhiều người quan tâm đến các hoạt động bền vững trong xã hội. Nghiên cứu này tìm hiểu sự tác động của Ý định mua thời trang bền vững đối với Hành vi mua sắm thời trang bền vững và ảnh hưởng điều tiết của Rủi ro tài chính đối với mối quan hệ giữa Ý định và Hành vi mua sắm thời trang bền (...) vững, nhằm lý giải vì sao nhiều người có ý định mua sắm thời trang bền vững, nhưng lại không mua sắm thời trang bền vững. Thông qua khảo sát 213 người tại Việt Nam, kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy, Y định mua sắm thời trang bền vững tác động tích cực, thúc đẩy Hành vi mua sắm thời trang bền vững. Mặc dù vậy, Rủi ro tài chính là biến điều tiết làm suy yếu mối quan hệ nói trên. (shrink)

Trong bối cảnh chuyển đổi số mạnh mẽ, kỹ năng số không chỉ là lợi thế cạnh tranh mà đã trở thành yếu tố sống còn đối với người lao động Việt Nam. Dù sở hữu nguồn nhân lực trẻ, năng động và ham học hỏi, Việt Nam vẫn phải đối mặt với thách thức về thứ hạng kỹ năng số chưa cao. Việc triển khai đồng bộ và hiệu quả các giải pháp về thể chế, hạ tầng và nhân (...) lực sẽ giúp Việt Nam khai thác tối đa tiềm năng của nguồn nhân lực, biến thách thức thành cơ hội, đưa kỹ năng số trở thành động lực then chốt cho quá trình chuyển đổi số quốc gia. (shrink)

Vai trò quan trọng của lãnh đạo chiến lược gắn liền với hành vi lãnh đạo của nhà quản trị cấp cao trong doanh nghiệp không chỉ giới hạn trong phạm vi các doanh nghiệp lớn mà cả trong các doanh nghiệp nhỏ và vừa. Tuy nhiên, các nghiên cứu về lãnh đạo chiến lược tại các doanh nghiệp có quy mô nhỏ và vừa còn chưa được tập trung phân tích. Do đó, trên cơ sở làm rõ nền tảng (...) lý luận quan trọng về vai trò của lãnh đạo chiến lược tại các doanh nghiệp nhỏ và vừa, nghiên cứu này khám phá vai trò và thực trạng của lãnh đạo chiến lược theo tiếp cận hành vi của lãnh đạo cấp cao của nhóm doanh nghiệp tiềm năng và xuất sắc trong ngành công nghiệp phụ trợ. Từ đó, nghiên cứu đề xuất một số giải pháp nhằm nhân rộng thành công tại các doanh nghiệp phụ trợ nói riêng và tại các doanh nghiệp vừa và nhỏ nói chung thông qua việc phát huy vai trò của lãnh đạo cấp cao theo tiếp cận hành vi lãnh đạo chiến lược. -/- [The important role of strategic leadership is closely linked to the leadership behaviors of top leaders in enterprises, not only limited to large enterprises but also in small and medium-sized enterprises. However, researchers, however, have not paid much attention to studies on strategic leadership in small and medium-sized enterprises. Therefore, based on clarifying the important theoretical foundation of the role of strategic leadership in small and medium-sized enterprises, this study explores the role and current status of strategic leadership based on the behavioral approach of top leaders of the most potential and excellent firms in Vietnam supporting industry. As a result, the study proposes some solutions to expand the success in supporting enterprises in particular and in small and medium-sized enterprises in general through promoting the role of top leaders based on the approach of strategic leadership behaviours.]. (shrink)

Trong một nghiên cứu gần đây được công bố trên Tạp chí Scientific Reports, các nhà nghiên cứu đã lần đầu tiên ghi lại việc động vật hoang dã sử dụng một loại cây có dược tính để chữa lành vết thương.

Thông tin về việc điều chỉnh lợi nhuận của doanh nghiệp có vai trò quan trọng đối với các bên liên quan trong việc ra quyết định. Nghiên cứu này thực hiện nhằm đánh giá ảnh hưởng của kiệt quệ tài chính tới mức độ điều chỉnh lợi nhuận của doanh nghiệp ở Việt Nam trong giai đoạn 2015-2023. Kết quả phân tích dữ liệu bảng chỉ ra rằng, các doanh nghiệp có mức độ kiệt quệ tài chính càng cao (...) (khó khăn càng lớn), thì mức độ điều chỉnh lợi nhuận có xu hướng càng cao. Từ kết quả này, nghiên cứu đưa ra một số hàm ý chính sách giúp nhận diện các doanh nghiệp điều chỉnh mức độ lợi nhuận phù hợp, giảm thiểu nguy cơ kiệt quệ tài chính. (shrink)

Cuộc khủng hoảng 2007-2008 nổ ra ở Hoa Kỳ kéo theo sự lao dốc của các thị trường chứng khoán các nước cho thấy tồn tại tác động lan truyền từ thị trường này sang thị trường khác. Mục tiêu của bài nghiên cứu nhằm kiểm tra mức độ lan truyền trong tỷ suất lợi nhuận và độ biến động tỷ suất lợi nhuận từ các thị trường chứng khoán phát triển (Hoa Kỳ và Nhật Bản) đến tám thị trường (...) các nước mới nổi (Ấn Độ, Trung Quốc, Indonesia, Hàn Quốc, Malaysia, Philippines, Đài Loan, Thái Lan) và Việt Nam. Nghiên cứu sử dụng các biến ngoại sinh là cú sốc từ thị trường Mỹ và Nhật Bản và hiệu ứng ngày trong mô hình ARMA(1,1)-GARCH(1,1) trên dữ liệu của các nước mới nổi khu vực châu Á và Việt Nam nhằm đánh giá tác động lan truyền. Nghiên cứu đưa ra một số kết quả như sau. Thứ nhất, hiệu ứng ngày tồn tại trên sáu trong số chín thị trường chứng khoán được nghiên cứu, ngoại trừ Ấn Độ, Đài Loan và Philippines. Thứ hai, tồn tại tác động lan truyền trong tỷ suất lợi nhuận giữa các thị trường với mức độ khác nhau, trong đó, Hoa Kỳ có tác động mạnh hơn đến thị trường Malaysia, Philippines và Việt Nam; ngược lại, Nhật Bản có hiệu ứng lan truyền cao hơn đến thị trường Trung Quốc, Ấn Độ, Hàn Quốc và Thái Lan; đối với thị trường Indonesia, hiệu ứng lan truyền từ Hoa Kỳ và Nhật Bản là tương đương. Cuối cùng, nghiên cứu không tìm thấy bằng chứng về hiệu ứng lan truyền trong độ biến động từ thị trường Hoa Kỳ và Nhật Bản đến các thị trường mới nổi khu vực châu Á và Việt Nam... (shrink)

Giáo dục rác thải nhựa cho học sinh (HS) là một trong những chiến lược hiệu quả và lâu dài để ứng phó với thực trạng ô nhiễm rác thải nhựa ngày càng nghiêm trọng hiện nay. Trong bài viết này, chúng tôi đề cập đến việc tích hợp giáo dục rác thải nhựa cho học sinh trung học cơ sở (THCS) ở thành phố Hồ Chí Minh (Tp.HCM) thông qua các bài học địa lí. Trên cơ sở điều tra (...) khảo sát đã cho thấy thực trạng hiểu biết, nhận thức của học sinh vàcông tác giáo dục tuyên truyền về rác thải nhựa qua môn Địa lí trong các trường THCS ở Tp.HCM vẫn còn nhiều hạn chế. Từ đó, chúng tôi đã xác định mục tiêu giáo dục cụ thể, xây dựng quy trình 5 bước tích hợp, xác định hình thức giáo dục vàđề xuất 7 phương pháp dạy học tích cực trong giáo dục rác thải nhựa thông qua các bài học địa lí. (shrink)

Bài biết phân tích thực trạng quản lý tuyển dụng nhân sự khối tư vấn đầu tư, chỉ ra những thành tựu đã đạt được, cũng như những hạn chế cần khắc phục tại Công ty Cổ phần chứng khoán VPS (Công ty VPS). Trên cơ sở đó, nghiên cứu đề xuất các giải pháp nhằm nâng cao hiệu quả quản lý tuyển dụng nhân sự khối tư vấn đầu tư, góp phần nâng cao năng lực cạnh tranh và thúc (...) đẩy sự phát triển bền vững của Công ty trong thời gian tới. (shrink)

Working in academia is challenging, even more so for those with limited resources and opportunities. Researchers around the world do not have equal working conditions. The paper presents the structure, operation method, and conceptual framework of the SM3D Portal's community coaching method, which is built to help Early Career Researchers (ECRs) and researchers in low-resource settings overcome the obstacle of inequality and start their career progress. The community coaching method is envisioned by three science philosophies (cost-effectiveness, transparency spirit, and proactive (...) attitude) and established and operated based on the Serendipity-Mindsponge-3D knowledge (SM3D) management framework (i.e., mindsponge thinking and Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics serve as the coaching program's foundational theory and analytical tools). The coaching method also embraces Open Science's values for lowering the cost of doing science and encouraging the trainees to be transparent, which is expected to facilitate the self-correcting mechanism of science through open data, open review, and open dialogue. Throughout the training process, members are central beneficiaries by gaining research knowledge and skills, acquiring publication as the training's product, and shifting their mindsets from “I can't do it” to “I can do it,” and at the same time transforming a mentee to be ready for a future mentor's role. The coaching method is thus one of the members, for the member, by the members. -/- • The paper provides the structure, operation method, and conceptual framework of the SM3D Portal's community coaching method, which is built to help Early Career Researchers (ECRs) and researchers in low-resource settings overcome the obstacle of inequality and start their career progress. • The paper presents three major science philosophies envisioning the establishment and operation of scholarly community coaching. • The paper employs the mindsponge theory and BMF analytics to construct a conceptual framework explaining how an environment is created to help shift members’ mindsets from “I can't do it” to “I can do it.”. (shrink)

Many previous studies evaluated factors influencing entrepreneurial intention including psychological factors, social economic factors, family circumstance, etc. In contrast, there are very few studies examine the relationship between entrepreneurial competencies and entrepreneurial intention. Thus, this paper aim to identify the list of competencies that impact entrepreneurial intention among Southeast Asian students who influenced by Confucianism. The conceptual model was established based on the list of previous studies in this field with a sample size of 1000 students who study in University (...) of Economics-The University of Danang. The main finding indicated that (i) from eleven independent variables listed from previous studies, only six independent variables remain; (ii) there are no evidences to prove that risk management and tenacity/ perseverance were associated with entrepreneurship intention. These results have important values in developing entrepreneurship training programs to promote students' entrepreneurial intention among Southeast Asian Countries. (shrink)

Thông qua kết quả khảo sát đối với 315 sinh viên (SV) Khoa Quản trị kinh doanh, Trường Đại học Nguyễn Tất Thành, bài viết sử dụng thuyết Hành vi dự định (TPB) của Ajzen (1991) để xác định các nhân tố thuộc Vai trò của phương thức tư vấn học tập định hướng tác động đến Ý định định hướng nghề nghiệp của SV. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy, có sự khác biệt về ý định định hướng nghề (...) nghiệp của SV bước vào giai đoạn quyết định lựa chọn ngành/nghề so với khóa còn lại và cả 3 nhân tố thuộc Vai trò của phương thức tư vấn học tập định hướng: Thái độ, Chuẩn chủ quan và Nhận thức kiểm soát hành vi tác động tích cực đến Ý định định hướng nghề nghiệp của SV. (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)

Bài viết nhằm tìm hiểu các nhân tố ảnh hưởng đến kế toán quản trị chi phí tại doanh nghiệp sản xuất tỉnh Đồng Nai. Kết quả cho thấy, có 5 nhân tố tác động mạnh đến Kế toán quản trị chi phí tại các doanh nghiệp này, bao gồm: Mức độ cạnh tranh; Nhu cầu thông tin; Đặc điểm tổ chức sản xuất; Công nghệ thông tin; Trình độ của kế toán viên.

The subprime mortgage crisis in the United States (U.S.) in mid-2008 suggests that stock prices volatility do spillover from one market to another after international stock markets downturn. The purpose of this paper is to examine the magnitude of return and volatility spillovers from developed markets (the U.S. and Japan) to eight emerging equity markets (India, China, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand) and Vietnam. Employing a mean and volatility spillover model that deals with the U.S. and Japan shocks (...) and day effects as exogenous variables in ARMA(1,1), GARCH(1,1) for Asian emerging markets, the study finds some interesting findings. Firstly, the day effect is present on six out of nine studied markets, except for the Indian, Taiwanese and Philippine. Secondly, the results of return spillover confirm significant spillover effects across the markets with different magnitudes. Specifically, the U.S. exerts a stronger influence on the Malaysian, Philippine and Vietnamese market compared with Japan. In contrast, Japan has a higher spillover effect on the Chinese, Indian, Korea, and Thailand than the U.S. For the Indonesian market, the return effect is equal. Finally, there is no evidence of a volatility effect of the U.S. and Japanese markets on the Asian emerging markets in this study. (shrink)

The water scarcity crisis is becoming more severe across the globe and recycled water has been suggested as a feasible solution to the crisis. However, expanding the use of potable and recycled public water has been hindered by public acceptance. Previous studies suggest threat perception and trust of provided information have positive linear relationships with recycled water acceptance. However, given the complex filtering role of trust in the human mental process, we argue that the effects of threat perception and trust (...) may have non-linear relationships with acceptance of recycled water for drinking. To support and validate this argument, we employed Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics on 726 Spanish residents. We found that individuals more concerned about water shortage are less likely to accept using recycled water for drinking if their trust in the water quality and safety is low. Meanwhile, people more concerned about water shortage are more likely to accept using recycled water for drinking if they trust the water quality and safety. The findings suggest the non-linear relationships between threat perception, trust, and recycled water acceptance while validating mindsponge-based reasoning. Moreover, the results also highlight the importance of trust in influencing the mental process’s outcome: recycled water acceptance. (shrink)

Khi chúng ta nhìn nhận khả năng bền bỉ và phục hồi như một quá trình xử lý thông tin, chúng ta có thể hiểu được cách mà các yếu tố nội tại và ngoại vi tương tác để ảnh hưởng đến quá trình phục hồi ở mỗi cá nhân hoặc tổ chức. Từ đó, chúng ta có cơ hội hiểu rõ hơn về cách mà cá nhân và tổ chức phản ứng và thích ứng với căng thẳng và khả (...) năng phục hồi mà không bị ảnh hưởng bởi niềm tin và những quan điểm xã hội đa dạng. Điều này sẽ mang lại lợi ích lớn trong việc nghiên cứu và áp dụng các biện pháp hỗ trợ và can thiệp để tăng cường khả năng phục hồi và chống lại ảnh hưởng của căng thẳng trong xã hội. (shrink)

Nếu nhìn qua lăng kính lý thuyết mindsponge, thông tin trong thế giới vật lý là khách quan, nhưng cách mà con người hiểu và tận dụng thông tin đó sẽ bị ảnh hưởng bởi các yếu tố chủ quan. Trong thực tế, mức độ mà con người có thể hiểu và tận dụng một vật hoặc sự kiện phụ thuộc vào khả năng tư duy của họ để tưởng tượng các khả năng có thể xảy ra. Khả năng tư (...) duy này bị hạn chế bởi tập hợp thông tin tồn tại trong tâm trí, tạo ra một ranh giới chủ quan (subjective boundary) cho sự tưởng tượng. (shrink)

Hostile epistemology is the study of how environmental features exploit our cognitive vulnerabilities. I am particularly interested in those vulnerabilities arise from the basic character of our epistemic lives. We are finite beings with limited cognitive resources, perpetually forced to reasoning a rush. I focus on two sources of unavoidable vulnerability. First, we need to use cognitive shortcuts and heuristics to manage our limited time and attention. But hostile forces can always game the gap between the heuristic and the ideal. (...) Second, we need to trust others, and trust makes us vulnerable. In particular, we need to trust experts whose expertise lies beyond our individual ability to vet. So we must rely on various imperfect signals and proxies, like institutional affiliation, to manage our trust. We are forced to use these imperfect and exploitable forms of reasoning, in order to cope with a cognitively overwhelming world. I present the hostile epistemology framework as a counterbalance to vice epistemology, which tends to locate responsibility for bad beliefs in the character of the believer. I draw two conclusions from my analysis. First: suppose we accept that that only communities and institutions can know about the world. This deeply social approach doesn’t solve the problem of expert identification. The individual still faces a problem: given their incomplete understanding, how should the individual pick which group to trust? Second: we might have hoped to get some kind of static picture of the right principles of reasoning — but hostile epistemology presents a different picture. We have to use risky heuristics and shortcuts, which hostile forces can game and exploit. We can respond by shifting to a different set of heuristics, but this simply shifts the location of our vulnerabilities. These new heuristics are also exploitable. There is no end to this, only a constant struggle to adapt. Limited beings in a hostile epistemic environment are locked in an unending epistemic arms race. (shrink)

Đầu tư gián tiếp nước ngoài (FPI) có vai trò quan trọng đối với nền kinh tế nói chung, cũng như tăng trưởng kinh tế nói riêng. Để bổ sung sự thiếu hụt về nguồn vốn trong nước, thúc đẩy phát triển sản xuất, kích thích tăng trưởng kinh tế, giải quyết việc làm và cải thiện đời sống của người dân, thì thu hút đầu tư nước ngoài là một nhiệm vụ quan trọng đối với các nước đang phát (...) triển như Việt Nam. Bài viết làm rõ các tác động tích cực, cũng như những hạn chế của FPI đối với tăng trưởng kinh tế ở Việt Nam thời gian qua. Từ đó, đề xuất các giải pháp để tận dụng những tác động tích cực và hạn chế những rủi ro tiềm ẩn cho nền kinh tế trong việc thu hút FPI đối với tăng trưởng kinh tế Việt Nam. (shrink)

Recent conversation has blurred two very different social epistemic phenomena: echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Members of epistemic bubbles merely lack exposure to relevant information and arguments. Members of echo chambers, on the other hand, have been brought to systematically distrust all outside sources. In epistemic bubbles, other voices are not heard; in echo chambers, other voices are actively undermined. It is crucial to keep these phenomena distinct. First, echo chambers can explain the post-truth phenomena in a way that epistemic (...) bubbles cannot. Second, each type of structure requires a distinct intervention. Mere exposure to evidence can shatter an epistemic bubble, but may actually reinforce an echo chamber. Finally, echo chambers are much harder to escape. Once in their grip, an agent may act with epistemic virtue, but social context will pervert those actions. Escape from an echo chamber may require a radical rebooting of one's belief system. (shrink)

I propose to study one problem for epistemic dependence on experts: how to locate experts on what I will call cognitive islands. Cognitive islands are those domains for knowledge in which expertise is required to evaluate other experts. They exist under two conditions: first, that there is no test for expertise available to the inexpert; and second, that the domain is not linked to another domain with such a test. Cognitive islands are the places where we have the fewest resources (...) for evaluating experts, which makes our expert dependences particularly risky. -/- Some have argued that cognitive islands lead to the complete unusability of expert testimony: that anybody who needs expert advice on a cognitive island will be entirely unable to find it. I argue against this radical form of pessimism, but propose a more moderate alternative. I demonstrate that we have some resources for finding experts on cognitive islands, but that cognitive islands leave us vulnerable to an epistemic trap which I will call runaway echo chambers. In a runaway echo chamber, our inexpertise may lead us to pick out bad experts, which will simply reinforce our mistaken beliefs and sensibilities. (shrink)

Vietnam continuously liberalizes the financial market as a requirement for its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2007. This paper discusses the foreign investors’ expectation and their experience when penetrating into Vietnam’s market. The role of the foreign entrants is also assessed. By synthesizing and analyzing relevant research and reports, several important insights are discovered. Firstly, the presence of foreign investors and banks improves market competition, efficiency, and stability. Wholly and partly foreign-owned banks provide the spillover effects in management (...) quality, in the introduction of world standard banking products and services, and in the application of information technology. Secondly, by looking into the foreign owned banks, it is found that the banks’ foreign investors are not likely to play an influential role in managing the banks they invested in. The motive of the investors to control the invested companies leads to their decision of holdings withdrawing. (shrink)

Thông qua dữ liệu được thu thập thông qua khảo sát 356 đáp viên, nghiên cứu xác định các nhân tố ảnh hưởng tới niềm tin với chương trình học đại học trực tuyến của thế hệ Z tại Hà Nội. Kết quả chỉ ra, Nhận thức về tính hữu ích, Danh tiếng, Nhận thức về tính bảo mật và Chất lượng dịch vụ là 4 nhân tố có ảnh hưởng tới Niềm tin; đồng thời, Niềm tin và Nhận thức (...) về tính hữu ích là tiền đề của Ý định học đại học trực tuyến. Từ đó, một số khuyến nghị được đề xuất nhằm nâng cao niềm tin và ý định tham gia của người học đối với chương trình. (shrink)

Nghiên cứu nhằm xác định và đo lường các nhân tố tác động đến sự vận dụng hệ thống kế toán chi phí dựa trên cơ sở hoạt động (ABC) tại các doanh nghiệp sản xuất hoạt động trên địa bàn tỉnh Đồng Nai. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy, có tổng cộng 5 nhân tố tác động tích cực đến vận dụng hệ thống kế toán chi phí tại các doanh nghiệp sản xuất trên địa bàn tỉnh Đồng Nai, (...) gồm: Sự ủng hộ của ban lãnh đạo; Tầm quan trọng về thông tin chi phí; Trình độ nhân viên kế toán; Huấn luyện và đào tạo; Quy mô doanh nghiệp. (shrink)

Nghiên cứu này tìm hiểu mức độ nhận thức của người dân về ô nhiễm rác thải nhựa và xác định mức chi trả tự nguyện của họ cho quỹ môi trường để cải thiện chất lượng xử lý rác thải nhựa ở Việt Nam.

According to most accounts of trust, you can only trust other people (or groups of people). To trust is to think that another has goodwill, or something to that effect. I sketch a different form of trust: the unquestioning attitude. What it is to trust, in this sense, is to settle one’s mind about something, to stop questioning it. To trust is to rely on a resource while suspending deliberation over its reliability. Trust lowers the barrier of monitoring, challenging, checking, (...) and questioning. Trust sets up open pipelines between yourself and parts of the external world. Trust permits external resources to have a similar relationship to one as one’s internal cognitive faculties. This creates efficiency, but at the price of exquisite vulnerability. We must trust in this way because we are cognitively limited beings in a cognitively overwhelming world. Crucially, we can hold the unquestioning attitude towards objects and technologies. When I trust my climbing rope, I stop worrying about its reliability. When I trust my online calendaring system, I simply go to the events indicated, without question. But, one might worry, how could one ever hold such a normatively loaded attitude as trust towards mere objects? How could it ever make sense to feel betrayed by an object? Trust is our engine for expanding and outsourcing our agency — for binding external processes into our practical selves. Thus, we can be betrayed by our smartphones in the same way that we can be betrayed by our memory. When we trust, we try to make something a part of our agency, and we are betrayed when our part lets us down. To unquestioningly trust something is to let it in—to attempt to bring it inside one’s practical functioning. This suggests a new form of gullibility: agential gullibility, which occurs when agents too hastily and carelessly integrate external resources into their own agency. (shrink)

Games may seem like a waste of time, where we struggle under artificial rules for arbitrary goals. The author suggests that the rules and goals of games are not arbitrary at all. They are a way of specifying particular modes of agency. This is what make games a distinctive art form. Game designers designate goals and abilities for the player; they shape the agential skeleton which the player will inhabit during the game. Game designers work in the medium of agency. (...) Game-playing, then, illuminates a distinctive human capacity. We can take on ends temporarily for the sake of the experience of pursuing them. Game play shows that our agency is significantly more modular and more fluid than we might have thought. It also demonstrates our capacity to take on an inverted motivational structure. Sometimes we can take on an end for the sake of the activity of pursuing that end. (shrink)

What is a game? What are we doing when we play a game? What is the value of playing games? Several different philosophical subdisciplines have attempted to answer these questions using very distinctive frameworks. Some have approached games as something like a text, deploying theoretical frameworks from the study of narrative, fiction, and rhetoric to interrogate games for their representational content. Others have approached games as artworks and asked questions about the authorship of games, about the ontology of the work (...) and its performance. Yet others, from the philosophy of sport, have focused on normative issues of fairness, rule application, and competition. The primary purpose of this article is to provide an overview of several different philosophical approaches to games and, hopefully, demonstrate the relevance and value of the different approaches to each other. Early academic attempts to cope with games tried to treat games as a subtype of narrative and to interpret games exactly as one might interpret a static, linear narrative. A faction of game studies, self-described as “ludologists,” argued that games were a substantially novel form and could not be treated with traditional tools for narrative analysis. In traditional narrative, an audience is told and interprets the story, where in a game, the player enacts and creates the story. Since that early debate, theorists have attempted to offer more nuanced accounts of how games might achieve similar ends to more traditional texts. For example, games might be seen as a novel type of fiction, which uses interactive techniques to achieve immersion in a fictional world. Alternately, games might be seen as a new way to represent causal systems, and so a new way to criticize social and political entities. Work from contemporary analytic philosophy of art has, on the other hand, asked questions whether games could be artworks and, if so, what kind. Much of this debate has concerned the precise nature of the artwork, and the relationship between the artist and the audience. Some have claimed that the audience is a cocreator of the artwork, and so games are a uniquely unfinished and cooperative art form. Others have claimed that, instead, the audience does not help create the artwork; rather, interacting with the artwork is how an audience member appreciates the artist's finished production. Other streams of work have focused less on the game as a text or work, and more on game play as a kind of activity. One common view is that game play occurs in a “magic circle.” Inside the magic circle, players take on new roles, follow different rules, and actions have different meanings. Actions inside the magic circle do not have their usual consequences for the rest of life. Enemies of the magic circle view have claimed that the view ignores the deep integration of game life from ordinary life and point to gambling, gold farming, and the status effects of sports. Philosophers of sport, on the other hand, have approached games with an entirely different framework. This has lead into investigations about the normative nature of games—what guides the applications of rules and how those rules might be applied, interpreted, or even changed. Furthermore, they have investigated games as social practices and as forms of life. (shrink)

The current debate over aesthetic testimony typically focuses on cases of doxastic repetition — where, when an agent, on receiving aesthetic testimony that p, acquires the belief that p without qualification. I suggest that we broaden the set of cases under consideration. I consider a number of cases of action from testimony, including reconsidering a disliked album based on testimony, and choosing an artistic educational institution from testimony. But this cannot simply be explained by supposing that testimony is usable for (...) action, but unusable for doxastic repetition. I consider a new asymmetry in the usability aesthetic testimony. Consider the following cases: we seem unwilling to accept somebody hanging a painting in their bedroom based merely on testimony, but entirely willing to accept hanging a painting in a museum based merely on testimony. The switch in intuitive acceptability seems to track, in some complicated way, the line between public life and private life. These new cases weigh against a number of standing theories of aesthetic testimony. I suggest that we look further afield, and that something like a sensibility theory, in the style of John McDowell and David Wiggins, will prove to be the best fit for our intuitions for the usability of aesthetic testimony. I propose the following explanation for the new asymmetry: we are willing to accept testimony about whether a work merits being found beautiful; but we are unwilling to accept testimony about whether something actually is beautiful. (shrink)

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)

Games have a complex, and seemingly paradoxical structure: they are both competitive and cooperative, and the competitive element is required for the cooperative element to work out. They are mechanisms for transforming competition into cooperation. Several contemporary philosophers of sport have located the primary mechanism of conversion in the mental attitudes of the players. I argue that these views cannot capture the phenomenological complexity of game-play, nor the difficulty and moral complexity of achieving cooperation through game-play. In this paper, I (...) present a different account of the relationship between competition and cooperation. My view is a distributed view of the conversion: success depends on a large number of features. First, the players must achieve the right motivational state: playing for the sake of the struggle, rather than to win. Second, successful transformation depends on a large number of extra-mental features, including good game design, and social and institutional features. (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)

Games occupy a unique and valuable place in our lives. Game designers do not simply create worlds; they design temporary selves. Game designers set what our motivations are in the game and what our abilities will be. Thus: games are the art form of agency. By working in the artistic medium of agency, games can offer a distinctive aesthetic value. They support aesthetic experiences of deciding and doing. -/- And the fact that we play games shows something remarkable about us. (...) Our agency is more fluid than we might have thought. In playing a game, we take on temporary ends; we submerge ourselves temporarily in an alternate agency. Games turn out to be a vessel for communicating different modes of agency, for writing them down and storing them. Games create an archive of agencies. And playing games is how we familiarize ourselves with different modes of agency, which helps us develop our capacity to fluidly change our own style of agency. (shrink)

This is a reply to Elisabeth Camp's and Elijah Millgram's probing discussions of "Games and the Art of Agency", in a symposium in Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy. Millgram argues that games cannot function as a guide to life, because they are too different from life. Games are limited in a special way: in life, we deliberate about what goals we want to take on, but in games, the goals are fixed and given to us. Camp argues that there (...) is nothing particularly special about games, because the fluidity of agency is all over ordinary life too - games are just like ordinary life. I respond to Millgram: we do deliberate about our ends, in games, when we aesthetically reflect on which games to play. And I respond to Camp: games are distinctive in the way they regulate how our reasons flow across the game/life border. To respond to these criticisms, I add some substantial new features to my account of the motivational structure of game-play. (shrink)

Twitter makes conversation into something like a game. It scores our communication, giving us vivid and quantified feedback, via Likes, Retweets, and Follower counts. But this gamification doesn’t just increase our motivation to communicate; it changes the very nature of the activity. Games are more satisfying than ordinary life precisely because game-goals are simpler, cleaner, and easier to apply. Twitter is thrilling precisely because its goals have been artificially clarified and narrowed. When we buy into Twitter’s gamification, then our values (...) shift from the complex and pluralistic values of communication, to the narrower quest for popularity and virality. Twitter’s gamification bears some resemblance with the phenomena of echo chambers and moral outrage porn. In all these phenomena, we are instrumentalizing our ends for hedonistic reasons. We have shifted our aims in an activity, not because the new aims are more valuable, but in exchange for extra pleasure. (shrink)

I propose an account of aesthetic value, where aesthetic value lies in the process of aesthetic engagement: in our activity of perceiving, guiding our attention, interpreting, and otherwise wrestling with aesthetic objects. It also includes our social activities of engagement: arguing with each other, writing criticism, making top-ten lists. (This is a short summary of a view developed in greater detail elsewhere.).

What could ground normative restrictions concerning cultural appropriation which are not grounded by independent considerations such as property rights or harm? We propose that such restrictions can be grounded by considerations of intimacy. Consider the familiar phenomenon of interpersonal intimacy. Certain aspects of personal life and interpersonal relationships are afforded various protections in virtue of being intimate. We argue that an analogous phenomenon exists at the level of large groups. In many cases, members of a group engage in shared practices (...) that contribute to a sense of common identity, such as wearing certain hair or clothing styles or performing a certain style of music. Participation in such practices can generate relations of group intimacy, which can ground certain prerogatives in much the same way that interpersonal intimacy can. One such prerogative is making what we call an appropriation claim. An appropriation claim is a request from a group member that non-members refrain from appropriating a given element of the group’s culture. Ignoring appropriation claims can constitute a breach of intimacy. But, we argue, just as for the prerogatives of interpersonal intimacy, in many cases there is no prior fact of the matter about whether the appropriation of a given cultural practice constitutes a breach of intimacy. It depends on what the group decides together. (shrink)

In her BBC Reith Lectures on Trust, Onora O’Neill offers a short, but biting, criticism of transparency. People think that trust and transparency go together but in reality, says O'Neill, they are deeply opposed. Transparency forces people to conceal their actual reasons for action and invent different ones for public consumption. Transparency forces deception. I work out the details of her argument and worsen her conclusion. I focus on public transparency – that is, transparency to the public over expert domains. (...) I offer two versions of the criticism. First, the epistemic intrusion argument: The drive to transparency forces experts to explain their reasoning to non-experts. But expert reasons are, by their nature, often inaccessible to non-experts. So the demand for transparency can pressure experts to act only in those ways for which they can offer public justification. Second, the intimate reasons argument: In many cases of practical deliberation, the relevant reasons are intimate to a community and not easily explicable to those who lack a particular shared background. The demand for transparency, then, pressures community members to abandon the special understanding and sensitivity that arises from their particular experiences. Transparency, it turns out, is a form of surveillance. By forcing reasoning into the explicit and public sphere, transparency roots out corruption — but it also inhibits the full application of expert skill, sensitivity, and subtle shared understandings. The difficulty here arises from the basic fact that human knowledge vastly outstrips any individual’s capacities. We all depend on experts, which makes us vulnerable to their biases and corruption. But if we try to wholly secure our trust — if we leash groups of experts to pursuing only the goals and taking only the actions that can be justified to the non-expert public — then we will undermine their expertise. We need both trust and transparency, but they are in essential tension. This is a deep practical dilemma; it admits of no neat resolution, but only painful compromise. (shrink)

We offer an account of the generic use of the term “porn”, as seen in recent usages such as “food porn” and “real estate porn”. We offer a definition adapted from earlier accounts of sexual pornography. On our account, a representation is used as generic porn when it is engaged with primarily for the sake of a gratifying reaction, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with the represented content. We demonstrate the usefulness of the concept of generic (...) porn by using it to isolate a new type of such porn: moral outrage porn. Moral outrage porn is representations of moral outrage, engaged with primarily for the sake of the resulting gratification, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with morally outrageous content. Moral outrage porn is dangerous because it encourages the instrumentalization of one’s empirical and moral beliefs, manipulating their content for the sake of gratification. Finally, we suggest that when using porn is wrong, it is often wrong because it instrumentalizes what ought not to be instrumentalized. (shrink)

Our life with art is suffused with trust. We don’t just trust one another’s aesthetic testimony; we trust one another’s aesthetic actions. Audiences trust artists to have made it worth their while; artists trust audiences to put in the effort. Without trust, audiences would have little reason to put in the effort to understand difficult and unfamiliar art. I offer a theory of aesthetic trust, which highlights the importance of trust in aesthetic sincerity. We trust in another’s aesthetic sincerity when (...) we rely on them to fulfill their commitments to act for aesthetic reasons — rather than for, say, financial, social, or political reasons. We feel most thoroughly betrayed by an artist, not when they make bad art, but when they sell out. This teaches us something about the nature of trust in general. According to many standard theories, trust involves thinking the trusted to be cooperative or good-natured. But trust in aesthetic sincerity is different. We trust artists to be true to their own aesthetic sensibility, which might involve selfishly ignoring their audience’s needs. Why do we care so much about an artist’s sincerity, rather than merely trusting them to make good art? We emphasize sincerity when wish to encourage originality, rather than to demand success along predictable lines. And we ask for sincerity when our goal is to discover a shared sensibility. In moral life, we often try to force convergence through coordinated effort. But in aesthetic life, we often hope for the lovely discovery that our sensibilities were similar all along. And for that we need to ask for sincerity, rather than overt coordination. (shrink)

The theory and culture of the arts has largely focused on the arts of objects, and neglected the arts of action – the “process arts”. In the process arts, artists create artifacts to engender activity in their audience, for the sake of the audience’s aesthetic appreciation of their own activity. This includes appreciating their own deliberations, choices, reactions, and movements. The process arts include games, urban planning, improvised social dance, cooking, and social food rituals. In the traditional object arts, the (...) central aesthetic properties occur in the artistic artifact itself. It is the painting that is beautiful; the novel that is dramatic. In the process arts, the aesthetic properties occur in the activity of the appreciator. It is the game player’s own decisions that are elegant, the rock climber’s own movement that is graceful, and the tango dancers’ rapport that is beautiful. The artifact’s role is to call forth and shape that activity, guiding it along aesthetic lines. I offer a theory of the process arts. Crucially, we must distinguish between the designed artifact and the prescribed focus of aesthetic appreciation. In the object arts, these are one and the same. The designed artifact is the painting, which is also the prescribed focus of appreciation. In the process arts, they are different. The designed artifact is the game, but the appreciator is prescribed to appreciate their own activity in playing the game. Next, I address the complex question of who the artist really is in a piece of process art — the designer or the active appreciator? Finally, I diagnose the lowly status of the process arts. (shrink)

The feeling of clarity can be dangerously seductive. It is the feeling associated with understanding things. And we use that feeling, in the rough-and-tumble of daily life, as a signal that we have investigated a matter sufficiently. The sense of clarity functions as a thought-terminating heuristic. In that case, our use of clarity creates significant cognitive vulnerability, which hostile forces can try to exploit. If an epistemic manipulator can imbue a belief system with an exaggerated sense of clarity, then they (...) can induce us to terminate our inquiries too early — before we spot the flaws in the system. How might the sense of clarity be faked? Let’s first consider the object of imitation: genuine understanding. Genuine understanding grants cognitive facility. When we understand something, we categorize its aspects more easily; we see more connections between its disparate elements; we can generate new explanations; and we can communicate our understanding. In order to encourage us to accept a system of thought, then, an epistemic manipulator will want the system to provide its users with an exaggerated sensation of cognitive facility. The system should provide its users with the feeling that they can easily and powerfully create categorizations, generate explanations, and communicate their understanding. And manipulators have a significant advantage in imbuing their systems with a pleasurable sense of clarity, since they are freed from the burdens of accuracy and reliability. I offer two case studies of seductively clear systems: conspiracy theories; and the standardized, quantified value systems of bureaucracies. (shrink)

Nghiên cứu này điều tra mối quan hệ giữa thực hành kế toán quản trị và hiệu quả hoạt động của các công ty dệt may tại Việt Nam thông qua thu thập 228 phiếu khảo sát bằng hình thức trực tuyến. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy, Thực hành kế toán quản trị có ảnh hưởng tích cực đến Hiệu quả hoạt động doanh nghiệp ở cả khía tài chính và phi tài chính. Những phát hiện này cung cấp (...) cái nhìn rõ hơn về thực hành kế toán quản trị trong bối cảnh thị trường mới nổi như Việt Nam. (shrink)

Thông qua kết quả khảo sát 254 sinh viên (SV) Trường Đại học Nguyễn Tất Thành có ý định du học bán phần, nghiên cứu nhằm xác định các yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến ý định du học bán phần của SV Trường Đại học Nguyễn Tất Thành. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy, có 2 yếu tố có ảnh hưởng cùng chiều đến Ý định du học bán phần, được sắp xếp theo mức độ ảnh hưởng giảm dần là: (...) Chuẩn chủ quan; Nhận thức về kiểm soát hành vi. Riêng yếu tố Nhận thức rủi ro có ảnh hưởng trái chiều đến Ý định du học bán phần của SV Trường Đại học Nguyễn Tất Thành. (shrink)

In The Great Endarkenment, Elijah Millgram argues that the hyper-specialization of expert domains has led to an intellectual crisis. Each field of human knowledge has its own specialized jargon, knowledge, and form of reasoning, and each is mutually incomprehensible to the next. Furthermore, says Millgram, modern scientific practical arguments are draped across many fields. Thus, there is no person in a position to assess the success of such a practical argument for themselves. This arrangement virtually guarantees that mistakes will accrue (...) whenever we engage in cross-field practical reasoning. Furthermore, Millgram argues, hyper-specialization makes intellectual autonomy extremely difficult. Our only hope is to provide better translations between the fields, in order to achieve intellectual transparency. I argue against Millgram’s pessimistic conclusion about intellectual autonomy, and against his suggested solution of translation. Instead, I take his analysis to reveal that there are actually several very distinct forms intellectual autonomy that are significantly in tension. One familiar kind is direct autonomy, where we seek to understand arguments and reasons for ourselves. Another kind is delegational autonomy, where we seek to find others to invest with our intellectual trust when we cannot understand. A third is management autonomy, where we seek to encapsulate fields, in order to manage their overall structure and connectivity. Intellectual transparency will help us achieve direct autonomy, but many intellectual circumstances require that we exercise delegational and management autonomy. However, these latter forms of autonomy require us to give up on transparency. (shrink)

As the current COVID-19 pandemic lingers on with its fallout agonizing several economies on the globe, a number of policy instruments have been summoned by governments to cope with the looming recession. Among those instruments is the contentious “helicopter money”, which has received the endorsement of multiple economists while many others consider it a too risky tactic to follow. This paper is going to discuss the suitability of implementing “helicopter money” in the context of Vietnam during economic crises, particularly with (...) a focus on the ongoing novel coronavirus-induced economic downturn. The author also makes an attempt to clarify certain challenges that Vietnamese legislators should better study carefully if “helicopter money” is ever to be deployed, as well as the circumstances and extent of such deployment. (shrink)

We are often confronted with attempts to debunk our aesthetic tastes, like: “You only like jazz because you’re a pretentious hipster,” or, “Your love of the Western canon is just colonialism speaking.” Such debunking arguments often try to give a socio-historical accounting, intended to de-legitimize our tastes by showing that they arise from processes uninterested in real aesthetic value. One common version is the Art Populist debunk: that claims of aesthetic expertise in esoteric arts are really just elitist gatekeeping. Then (...) we have its mirror twin, the Art Expert debunk: that the populist love of simple arts serves the interests of profiteering entertainment corporations dispensing simplified slop. Suppose we accept one of these debunking argument. How are we supposed to got on? Are we supposed to not like the things we like, or force ourselves to choke down food we don’t enjoy? And suppose we accept both of these debunking arguments — what then? Are we supposed to simply give up our grip on beauty altogether? This is hard to imagine. Aesthetic debunking arguments have a harder time getting a grip on us, because aesthetic life involves a distinctively tight relationship between our felt aesthetic phenomena and our aesthetic judgments. Aesthetic life gives us phenomenal resistance to debunking arguments, when our felt loves lag behind our endorsed beliefs. I suggest a way through that offers a livable accommodation. We may be able to treat such debunking arguments, not as targeting the positive content of our taste, but as targeting the boundaries and limitations on our taste. That is, a Populist may not be able to debunk my deep felt love of opera, but they may be able to debunk my dismissal of dance-pop. In this case, we can take onboard both the Art Expert’s and the Art Populist’s debunking arguments, as targeting different varieties of narrowness and dismissal. These debunkings, then, move us, not towards aesthetic nihilism, but aesthetic expansionism. (shrink)

Art can be addressed, not just to individuals, but to groups. Art can even be part of how groups think to themselves – how they keep a grip on their values over time. I focus on monuments as a case study. Monuments, I claim, can function as a commitment to a group value, for the sake of long-term action guidance. Art can function here where charters and mission statements cannot, precisely because of art’s powers to capture subtlety and emotion. In (...) particular, art can serve as the vessel for group emotions, by making emotional content sufficiently public so as to be the object of a group commitment. Art enables groups to guide themselves with values too subtle to be codified. (shrink)

Rapid urbanization in Vietnam significantly impacts the environment and human well-being. Public parks are crucial for enhancing social and environmental sustainability in urban areas, yet their establishment and expansion require substantial funding. This study investigates the factors influencing Vietnamese urban residents’ willingness to donate to planting projects in public parks, utilizing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF), which combines Mindsponge Theory’s informational entropy-based notion of value with Bayesian analysis. Analyzing data from 535 residents in major Vietnamese cities, we found that while (...) men visit public parks more frequently, they are less willing to donate to planting projects. Older residents visit parks more often and are more willing to donate, while higher-income individuals show greater willingness to donate. Most motivations—such as relaxation, physical activities, nature enjoyment, socializing, and family time—are positively linked to park visit frequency and indirectly to donation willingness. However, only relaxation and enjoyment of nature are directly associated with willingness to donate. Interestingly, higher education levels and visiting parks for children’s educational activities are associated with lower donation willingness. These findings hint at the possible existence of the free-riding problem, gender inequality, ineffective environmental education, and lack of awareness of public parks’ natural value, as well as opportunities to cultivate an eco-surplus culture through nature interactions in public parks. (shrink)