Recent studies have demonstrated neural overlap between resting state activity and self-referential processing. This “rest-self” overlap occurs especially in anterior cortical midline structures like the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (PACC). However, the exact neurotemporal and biochemical mechanisms remain to be identified. Therefore, we conducted a combined electroencephalography (EEG)-magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) study. EEG focused on pre-stimulus (e.g., prior to stimulus presentation or perception) power changes to assess the degree to which those changes can predict subjects’ perception (and judgment) of subsequent (...) stimuli as high or low self-related. MRS measured resting state concentration of glutamate, focusing on PACC. High pre-stimulus (e.g., prior to stimulus presentation or perception) alpha power significantly correlated with both perception of stimuli judged to be highly self-related and with resting state glutamate concentrations in the PACC. In sum, our results show (i) pre-stimulus (e.g., prior to stimulus presentation or perception) alpha power and resting state glutamate concentration to mediate rest-self overlap that (ii) dispose or incline subjects to assign high degrees of self-relatedness to perceptual stimuli. (shrink)

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

The deceptive clues in the impossible puzzle film confirm the viewer’s internal expectations and allow retrospective attributing. In the film, a transcendental object negates an internal expectation, causing a retrospective blockage. Retrospectivity does not stop there; the transcendental object reinterpreting deceptive clues in the associative area leads to repeated attribution. This article consists of three parts. First, it discusses impossible puzzle films in the context of complex narrative classification. The following section introduces the Jungian concept of synchronicity and illustrates how (...) it works. The article concludes with a case study of Long Day’s Journey into Night (2018), which contains more complicated puzzles and explains how mind-game narrative techniques create deceptive clues and induce deceptive retrospective attribution. (shrink)

Sudden enlightenment is awakening to be attained all at once. Hyun-Eung, a Korean Buddhist monastic, has proposed a new interpretation that sudden enlightenment is the revolutionary awakening of the dynamical and indivisible structure of cognitive subject and objects. I argue that Hyun-Eung’s ‘revolutionary enlightenment’ is achieved through a ‘paradigm shift’ in Thomas Kuhn’s sense as presented in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Enlightenment is obtained when one’s essentialist and realist worldview is replaced, through a revolutionary change of paradigm shift, (...) by a new perspective based on the Buddhist teaching of dependent arising and emptiness. Prior to enlightenment, each person views oneself as a separate and independent individual who has her own essence. However, when our perspective on self and the world changes with the understanding of dependent arising and emptiness, it becomes clear that no one and nothing can exist independently of conditions. Everything comes into existence, abides, and passes out of existence only in dependence on conditions. Sudden enlightenment requires a revolutionary change in one’s perspective of self and the world. I conclude that this concept of revolutionary enlightenment aptly explains the features of sudden enlightenment. (shrink)

In the film “Kaili Blues” by Bi Gan, intricate clues create complex connections between the plots steered by various characters. This relationship manifests in splitting time and alternating between dream and reality. This article analyzes Bi Gan’s approach to temporality and dreams by focusing on how he employs various film metaphors to deal with poetic narratives in his films. The article consists of three sections: First, it introduces the (puzzle) storytelling form of “Kaili Blues” as a promising area in many (...) Chinese films. Second, it examines how puzzle films contribute to the ambiguity (plots) between characters from the perspective of infinite games. Moreover, third, the article discusses the two levels of metaphors in “Kaili Blues” that result from the condensation and displacement of metaphors, including the mutual projection of roles caused by the time-forking effect and the audience’s associations caused by the significance of dreams in Chinese tradition (or local) culture. (shrink)

COVID-19 often manifests with different outcomes in different patients, highlighting the complexity of the host-pathogen interactions involved in manifestations of the disease at the molecular and cellular levels. In this paper, we propose a set of postulates and a framework for systematically understanding complex molecular host-pathogen interaction networks. Specifically, we first propose four host-pathogen interaction (HPI) postulates as the basis for understanding molecular and cellular host-pathogen interactions and their relations to disease outcomes. These four postulates cover the evolutionary dispositions involved (...) in HPIs, the dynamic nature of HPI outcomes, roles that HPI components may occupy leading to such outcomes, and HPI checkpoints that are critical for specific disease outcomes. Based on these postulates, an HPI Postulate and Ontology (HPIPO) framework is proposed to apply interoperable ontologies to systematically model and represent various granular details and knowledge within the scope of the HPI postulates, in a way that will support AI-ready data standardization, sharing, integration, and analysis. As a demonstration, the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework were applied to study COVID-19 with the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO), leading to a novel approach to rational design of drug/vaccine cocktails aimed at interrupting processes occurring at critical host-coronavirus interaction checkpoints. Furthermore, the host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) relevant to COVID-19 were predicted and evaluated based on prior knowledge of curated PPIs and domain-domain interactions, and how such studies can be further explored with the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework is discussed. (shrink)

“Non-Self from the perspective of the Gene” September 2021, Buddhism and Culture (a Korean-language Buddhist magazine sponsored by the Foundation for the Promotion of Korean Buddhism), Korea.

“Non-Self from the perspective of the Gene” November 2021, Buddhism and Culture (a Korean-language Buddhist magazine sponsored by the Foundation for the Promotion of Korean Buddhism), Korea.

“Impermanent Biological Phenomena” July 2021, Buddhism and Culture (a Korean-language Buddhist magazine sponsored by the Foundation for the Promotion of Korean Buddhism), Korea.

죽고 다시 태어나는 반복의 과정을 논하는 불교의 윤회설은 끊임없이 변화하는 생명현상의 본래 모습을 그대로 보여준다. 어느 생명체도 변하지 않고 영구한 것은 없다. 오래된 개체의 삶이 끝나고 새로운 삶이 시작되는 반복의 자연현상이 윤회이다. 본고는 윤회를 생명과학적으로 해석하며 삼라만상에서 일어나는 윤회란 개체들뿐만 아니라 세포와 분자선상에서도 일어나는 자연스런 생명현상임을 밝히겠다.

“Stem Cells Dependently Arising and Empty” May 2021, Buddhism and Culture (a Korean-language Buddhist magazine sponsored by the Foundation for the Promotion of Korean Buddhism), Korea.

“Buddhism Evolving” December 2021, Buddhism and Culture (a Korean-language Buddhist magazine sponsored by the Foundation for the Promotion of Korean Buddhism), Korea.

Gilles Deleuze demonstrated the key role of flashback in dealing with the relationship between actual image and recollection-image when interpreting the temporality of images. He established two criteria for judging whether a flashback implies a recollection-image by stating that: (1) it serves as some kind of prompt in the narrative to make the viewer perceive that the scene has entered a flashback; (2) it relies on fate or forking time. But Deleuze also mentioned that, if the context or condition disappears, (...) the recollection-image represented by the flashback will lose its support, at which point, the pure recollection will also disappear. In this case, the actual image no longer forms a connection with the sensor-motor, but is suspended, which produces a fantasmatic effect. Bi Gan extends this suspension in his film “Long Day’s Journey into Night” by removing the character being referred to in the flashback, stripping it from figure and confining it in the voice-over. The film features an extreme use of several effects in the sensory-motor situations and the flashbacks, as described in Deleuze’s “Cinema 2: Time-Image,” namely recollection, dream, and falsification. Thus, the boundary between flashback and reality is completely broken. In addition, Bi Gan uses doppelgangers in the second part of the film to reconstruct the ambiguity of actual images and recollection-images in the first part, turning them into pure fantasies. This essay will analyze issues relating to the images and characters in “Long Day’s Journey into Night” and show how this film constitutes a typical case of recollection-images transformed into fantasies through the power of falsification. (shrink)

Connecting research and production, art research represents a breaking of the barrier between creation and academia. However, there is also a contradiction contained in this kind of research deriving from its methods, since the process of art-based practice must, by its very nature, involve the subjectivity of the artist. I use my own studies as the research object to discuss this issue, and this article presents the problems I encountered during my artistic practice and research of ambiguous roles. This paper (...) has two main points of focus. First, I explore how the fallacy of self-referentiality is presented in paintings and films, and, second, I draw on my short film practice during my master’s study period to explain how the shots present a continuum in relation to the “absent one” and produce interface effects. However, the second point is not necessarily the result of the first one. This kind of connection and contradiction between practice and cognition in the process of art research is that I will analyse and discuss here. (shrink)

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

The history of European civilization is a clear evidence of cultural split into two parts: scientific-technical and humanitarian, which are determined by two types of thinking – mind and intellect. The development of natural and technical sciences, which are based on reasonable thinking, has resulted in rapid development of techniques and various technologies for the past 500 years. Whereas humanitarian sciences with their intellectual thinking fell behind the demands of time for hundreds of years. The precipice, which occurred between two (...) parts of a single culture, could be surmounted only with the aid of improving humanitarian thinking, moving it up into the position of mind and alongside the development of ethics as a strict theoretical science about morale. This in general outline can be presented with the example of mind-intellect interrelation in the history of antique philosophy and their influence on morale development. Distinguishing feature of ancient Greek philosophy is discovery of mind comprehended not so much as the ability to think but rather as ability to cognize the world from objective, identical for everyone, points of view, as resolution to consider knowledge, received by these means, as the highest instance in debates. Neither religion, nor intellectual subjective opinion of wisdom-fanciers was put into the first place by ancient Greek culture, but rather the knowledge, received in its rational-scientific form and radically different from opinion. However, contemporary humanitarians are unable to see the difference between mind and intellect, as far as their thinking does not exceed the limits of mind. The reason of created thesis is that philosophy yet in ancient times lost the essence of intellectual development trend and gave the way to intellectual thinking. Platon and Socrates had already taken intellect for the manifestation of mind. The last, who made an attempt to ground the difference between these two forms of thinking, was Aristotle who made it possible to identify the laws of formal logic, formulated by him, with laws of mind. Whereas in fact these were the laws of intellectual thinking. Since then humanitarians have not returned to the path of mind, paved by the first Greek Ionic thinkers. While possessing intellectual thinking and getting mixed up in the notions of «intellect» and «mind», caused by logical and causative-effective relations, contemporary humanitarians are unable to lead their sciences out of a dead-end, where ancient Greek philosophy got into after Heraclitus. (shrink)

This paper develops a new class of justification logic, the logic of epistemic entitlement. The logic of epistemic entitlement invokes the notion of epistemic entitlement in epistemology, and interprets a justification formula in the form of???? ∶???? as follows: the warrant???? entitles the agent to believe????. In the logic of epistemic entitlement, the formula???? ∶???? is true if and only if???? is true in all possible worlds entitled to be conceived by????. In contrast to the standard epistemic semantics of justification (...) logic, the formula???? ∶???? in Fitting’s model is true if and only if???? is true in all possible worlds that can be conceived of and satisfies the evidential condition: the epistemic state???? ∈ ℰ(????,????) that the epistemic agent is in. Thus, if???? is not a dead point in the model, the point model of???? cannot satisfy both formulas of the form???? ∶???? and????′∶ ¬????. Thus standard justification logic cannot characterize the conflicting beliefs of agents for different warrants. Instead, the logic of epistemic entitlement solves this problem by entitling agents to believe???? and ¬???? on two disjoint sets of possible worlds on????,???? and????′, respectively. ℳ,???? ⊩???? ∶???? if and only if ℳ,???? ⊩???? for every???? ∈????????????(????,????) with????????????. Such an epistemic entitlement in the paper is axiomatized into the logic J_???????????? and the validity of its axioms is verified. And a canonical model of J_???????????? is established to prove its completeness. Finally, extensions of J_???????????? are attempted to explore the logic of entitlement of belief J_EntD4 and logic of entitlement of knowledge J_EntT4. (shrink)

Starting from the many-world interpretation of quantum mechanics, this work gives a holistic view of consciousness. The entirety is complete and does not possess any particular physical properties or subjective experience. It is the superposition of all possibilities. Its partition, however, gives rise to physical properties and subjective experience simultaneously. They play complementary roles to each other. The latter cannot be conveyed to a third person, and cannot be reduced to the former. It in fact fills the informational gap which (...) is impossible for the former to fill. The casual effect and the privilege of subjective experience are related to the role it plays, which is to identify the subject's self location. (shrink)

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

Machery et al. presented data suggesting the existence of cross-cultural variation in judgments about the reference of proper names. In this paper, we examine a previously overlooked confound in the subsequent studies that attempt to replicate the results of Machery et al. using East Asian languages. Machery et al. and Sytsma et al. claim that they have successfully replicated the original finding with probes written in Chinese and Japanese, respectively. These studies, however, crucially rely on uses of articleless, ‘bare noun (...) phrases’ in Chinese and Japanese, which according to the linguistic literature are known to be multiply ambiguous. We argue that it becomes questionable whether the extant studies using East Asian languages revealed genuine cross-cultural variation when the probes are reevaluated based on a proper linguistic understanding of Chinese and Japanese bare noun phrases and English definite descriptions. We also present two experiments on native Japanese speakers that controlled the use of ambiguous bare noun phrases, the results of which suggest that the judgments of Japanese speakers concerning the reference of proper names may not diverge from those of English speakers. (shrink)

Purpose: Although psychopathy is characterized by amoral behavior, literature on the association between psychopathy and moral judgment pattern is mixed. Recent evidence suggests that this may be due to the moderation effect of anxiety (Koenigs, Kruepke, Zeier, & Newman, 2011). The current study aims to examine the psychopathy-utilitarian judgment association in college students. Method: In this study, a group of 302 college students completed a moral judgment test involving hypothetical dilemmas. Their psychopathic traits were assessed by the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (...) – Short Form (PPI-SF) (Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996). Results: Individuals with higher psychopathic traits were more likely to make utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas. Furthermore, the association between utilitarian responses and psychopathy was more salient for the behavioral factor of psychopathy (PPI-II), and this association was mediated by self-reported aggression. However, the moderating effect of anxiety was not found. Conclusions: These results build upon work on utilitarian moral judgment in psychopathic individuals in a non-incarcerated, non-institutionalized sample, and have important implications for the behavioral correc- tion system. (shrink)

The paper explores the influence of greenwash on green trust and discusses the mediation roles of green consumer confusion and green perceived risk. The research object of this study focuses on Taiwanese consumers who have the purchase experience of information and electronics products in Taiwan. This research employs an empirical study by means of the structural equation modeling. The results show that greenwash is negatively related to green trust. Therefore, this study suggests that companies must reduce their greenwash behaviors to (...) enhance their consumers’ green trust. In addition, this study finds out that green consumer confusion and green perceived risk mediate the negative relationship between greenwash and green trust. The results also demonstrate that greenwash is positively associated with green consumer confusion and green perceived risk which would negatively affect green trust. It means that greenwash does not only negatively affect green trust directly but also negatively influence it via green consumer confusion and green perceived risk indirectly. Hence, if companies would like to reduce the negative relationship between greenwash and green trust, they need to decrease their consumers’ green consumer confusion and green perceived risk. (shrink)

This paper connects the hard problem of consciousness to the interpretation of quantum mechanics. It shows that constitutive Russellian pan(proto)psychism (CRP) is compatible with Everett’s relative-state (RS) interpretation. Despite targeting different problems, CRP and RS are related, for they both establish symmetry between micro- and macrosystems, and both call for a deflationary account of Subject. The paper starts from formal arguments that demonstrate the incompatibility of CRP with alternative interpretations of quantum mechanics, followed by showing that RS entails Russellian pan(proto)psychism. (...) Therefore, CRP and RS are mutually supportive. It then provides a unified ontological picture by combining CRP and RS. The challenge faced by CRP, the combination problem, can be resolved by adopting a RS version of quantum mechanics. Technically, this is achieved by a co-consciousness relation capable of explaining the difference between first-person and third-person perspectives. The hierarchical structure of the relation removes any concern on the structural mismatch between the physical and the phenomenal. (shrink)

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

The second law of thermodynamics is traditionally interpreted as a coarse-grained result of classical mechanics. Recently its relation with quantum mechanical processes such as decoherence and measurement has been revealed in literature. In this paper we will formulate the second law and the associated time irreversibility following Everett’s idea: systems entangled with an object getting to know the branch in which they live. Accounting for this self-locating knowledge, we get two forms of entropy: objective entropy measuring the uncertainty of the (...) state of the object alone, and subjective entropy measuring the information carried by the self-locating knowledge. By showing that the summation of the two forms of entropy is a conserved and perspective-free quantity, we interpret the second law as a statement of irreversibility in knowledge acquisition. This essentially derives the thermodynamic arrow of time from the subjective arrow of time, and provides a unified explanation for varieties of the second law, as well as the past hypothesis. (shrink)

Background— Although one of the main characteristics of psychopaths is a deficit in emotion, it is unknown whether they show a fundamental impairment in appropriately recognizing their own body sensations during an emotion-inducing task. Method— Skin conductance and heart rate were recorded in 138 males during a social stressor together with subjective reports of body sensations. Psychopathic traits were assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist – Revised (PCL-R) 2nd edition (Hare, 2003). Results— Nonpsychopathic controls who reported higher body sensations showed higher (...) heart rate reactivity, but this verbal-autonomic consistency was not found in psychopathic individuals. This mind-body disconnection is particularly associated with the interpersonal-affective factor of psychopathy. Conclusions— Findings are the first to document this body sensations– autonomic mismatch in psychopaths, and suggest that somatic aphasia the inaccurate identification and recognition of one‘s own somatic states may partly underlie the interpersonal-affective features of psychopaths. (shrink)

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

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

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

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

The current COVID-19 pandemic and the previous SARS/MERS outbreaks of 2003 and 2012 have resulted in a series of major global public health crises. We argue that in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs and to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechenisms it is necessary to integrate the large and exponentially growing body of heterogeneous coronavirus data. Ontologies play an important role in standard-based knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. Accordingly, we initiated the (...) development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology in early 2020. -/- As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. CIDO is aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology and Viral Infectious Disease Ontology. CIDO has imported terms from over 30 OBO ontologies. For example, CIDO imports all SARS-CoV-2 protein terms from the Protein Ontology, COVID-19-related phenotype terms from the Human Phenotype Ontology, and over 100 COVID-19 terms for vaccines (both authorized and in clinical trial) from the Vaccine Ontology. CIDO systematically represents variants of SARS-CoV-2 viruses and over 300 amino acid substitutions therein, along with over 300 diagnostic kits and methods. CIDO also describes hundreds of host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and the drugs that target proteins in these PPIs. CIDO has been used to model COVID-19 related phenomena in areas such as epidemiology. The scope of CIDO was evaluated by visual analysis supported by a summarization network method. CIDO has been used in various applications such as term standardization, inference, natural language processing (NLP) and clinical data integration. We have applied the amino acid variant knowledge present in CIDO to analyze differences between SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants. CIDO's integrative host-coronavirus PPIs and drug-target knowledge has also been used to support drug repurposing for COVID-19 treatment. -/- CIDO represents entities and relations in the domain of coronavirus diseases with a special focus on COVID-19. It supports shared knowledge representation, data and metadata standardization and integration, and has been used in a range of applications. (shrink)

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

Current COVID-19 pandemic and previous SARS/MERS outbreaks have caused a series of major crises to global public health. We must integrate the large and exponentially growing amount of heterogeneous coronavirus data to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechanisms, in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs. Ontologies have emerged to play an important role in standard knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. We have initiated the development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO). (...) As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is an open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. In this article, the general architecture and the design patterns of the CIDO are introduced, CIDO representation of coronaviruses, phenotypes, anti-coronavirus drugs and medical devices (e.g. ventilators) are illustrated, and an application of CIDO implemented to identify repurposable drug candidates for effective and safe COVID-19 treatment is presented. (shrink)

Desire is an important philosophical topic that deeply impacts everyday life. Philosophical practice is an emerging trend that uses philosophical theories and methods as a guide to living a eu‐ daimonic life. In this paper, we define desire philosophically and compare different theories of desire in specific Eastern and Western traditions. Based on the Lacanian conceptual–terminological triad of “Need‐Demand‐Desire”, the research of desire is further divided into three dimensions, namely, the subject of desire, the object of desire, and the desire (...) itself. The concept of desire is then an‐ alyzed from this triad and these three dimensions through different philosophical theories. This paper selects Buddhism as the representative of Eastern tradition, and Stoicism as the representative of the West, paying special attention to Stoicism’s “spiritual exercises” following Pierre Hadot. By exploring and comparing the Buddhist paths to liberation from suffering (i.e., the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path) and the two theoretical pillars in Stoicism (i.e., the notions of “living according to nature” and “the dichotomy of control”), practical guidance is then provided for un‐ derstanding and regulating desire in times of crisis. This understanding and regulation of desire constitutes a philosophical therapy for today’s troubles, particularly those caused by excessive or irrational desires. (shrink)

Ontological realism aims at the development of high quality ontologies that faithfully represent what is general in reality and to use these ontologies to render heterogeneous data collections comparable. To achieve this second goal for clinical research datasets presupposes not merely (1) that the requisite ontologies already exist, but also (2) that the datasets in question are faithful to reality in the dual sense that (a) they denote only particulars and relationships between particulars that do in fact exist and (b) (...) they do this in terms of the types and type-level relationships described in these ontologies. While much attention has been devoted to (1), work on (2), which is the topic of this paper, is comparatively rare. Using Referent Tracking as basis, we describe a technical data wrangling strategy which consists in creating for each dataset a template that, when applied to each particular record in the dataset, leads to the generation of a collection of Referent Tracking Tuples (RTT) built out of unique identifiers for the entities described by means of the data items in the record. The proposed strategy is based on (i) the distinction between data and what data are about, and (ii) the explicit descriptions of portions of reality which RTTs provide and which range not only over the particulars described by data items in a dataset, but also over these data items themselves. This last feature allows us to describe particulars that are only implicitly referred to by the dataset; to provide information about correspondences between data items in a dataset; and to assert which data items are unjustifiably or redundantly present in or absent from the dataset. The approach has been tested on a dataset collected from patients seeking treatment for orofacial pain at two German universities and made available for the NIDCR-funded OPMQoL project. (shrink)

Nelson Goodman (1906-2007) approached the arts and other kinds of knowledge as forms of symbolism. His principal aim in philosophy was to advance understanding and remove confusions by verbal analysis and logical constructions. Goodman's philosophical theories encompass nominalism, constructivism and a version of radical relativism. In his Languages of Art, Goodman sets forth distinctions among the various art according to differences in the forms of symbols employed. He contributed as well to arts education and to philosophy of the museum. His (...) performance work, "Hockey Seen: A Nightmare in Three Periods and Sudden Death embodies his aesthetic theories. (shrink)

This article explores the profound impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the realm of religion, exploring the potential for AI to catalyze the birth of new world religions and break the "Solomon's Cycle." Drawing inspiration from King Solomon's timeless declaration, "There is nothing new under the sun," the article examines the challenges faced by new religions in a world dominated by established faiths and traditions. By leveraging the transformative capabilities of AI to inspire creativity, foster cross-cultural dialogue, provide ethical guidance, (...) build virtual communities, and personalize spiritual experiences, individuals are empowered to transcend historical barriers and forge new paths of spiritual exploration. The fusion of AI and human ingenuity holds the promise of birthing diverse, inclusive, and dynamic belief systems that resonate with the complexities of our contemporary world. (shrink)

"Sapiolatry," the excessive reverence and idolization of historical figures renowned for their wisdom, poses a significant challenge to critical thinking and innovation. In the article "Say Goodbye to Plato," we delve into the concept of sapiolatry and its implications for our engagement with the teachings of revered figures like Plato. By exploring the roots, consequences, and the case of Plato, we highlight the necessity of moving beyond uncritical adoration towards a more dynamic and contextual interpretation of ancient wisdom. The article (...) advocates for a balanced and critical approach to studying the teachings of revered figures, emphasizing the importance of adapting their wisdom to address contemporary issues and foster innovation. (shrink)

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

This article delves into the concept of "Egocloism," a term that amalgamates an inflated sense of self-importance ("ego") with a disposition towards isolation and resistance to external influences ("cloister"). It explores how this mindset manifests not only in individuals but also at the communal level, leading to insularity and a reluctance to embrace diversity and progress. Drawing inspiration from Anton Chekhov's narrative of "The Man in a Case," the article introduces the metaphor of "The Race in a Case" to critique (...) communities entrenched in their historical narratives and cultural identities to the detriment of inclusivity and growth. Through historical examples such as the Spanish Inquisition, the Tokugawa Shogunate’s Sakoku Policy, the Ottoman Empire’s late reforms, and the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the article illustrates the adverse effects of Egocloism. It concludes with strategies for individuals and communities to overcome this mindset, advocating for a shift towards an open horizon that embraces diversity, inclusivity, and global interconnectedness. (shrink)

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

La Revista chilena de salud publica de la Universidad de Chile se interesa en la genesis de Neuroartes. Entrevista.

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

This report presents the features of the organisation and the main ideas of the international scientific conference “‘No Right of Sedition’. Kant and the Problem of Revolution in the 18th—21st Century Philosophy.” The conference was held at the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (IKBFU) in Kaliningrad on November 9—10, 2017 and was dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The event was organised by the Academia Kantiana — a research unit on comparative studies on Russian and Western philosophy (...) at the IKBFU’s Institute for the Humanities. The reports presented at the conference focused on the analysis of the phenomenon of revolution from Kant to the present day as well as the conceptions of revolution that appeared around the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917. The report summarises all the presentations and discussions that took place at the confe­rence in accordance with the thematic clusters. The conference confirmed that Kant’s ideas on the state and the revolution are still relevant today. (shrink)

This paper presents five studies on the development and validation of a scale of intellectual humility. This scale captures cognitive, affective, behavioral, and motivational components of the construct that have been identified by various philosophers in their conceptual analyses of intellectual humility. We find that intellectual humility has four core dimensions: Open-mindedness (versus Arrogance), Intellectual Modesty (versus Vanity), Corrigibility (versus Fragility), and Engagement (versus Boredom). These dimensions display adequate self-informant agreement, and adequate convergent, divergent, and discriminant validity. In particular, Open-mindedness (...) adds predictive power beyond the Big Six for an objective behavioral measure of intellectual humility, and Intellectual Modesty is uniquely related to Narcissism. We find that a similar factor structure emerges in Germanophone participants, giving initial evidence for the model’s cross-cultural generalizability. (shrink)

This commentary challenges Railton’s claim that the affective system is the key source of control of action. Whilst the affective system is important for understanding how acting for a reason is possible, we argue that there are many levels of control of action and adaptive behaviour and that the affective system is only one source of control. Such a model seems to be more in line with the emerging picture from affective and movement neuroscience.

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

Reluctance to adopt mask-wearing as a preventive measure is widely observed in many Western societies since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemics. This reluctance toward mask adoption, like any other complex social phenomena, will have multiple causes. Plausible explanations have been identified, including political polarization, skepticism about media reports and the authority of public health agencies, and concerns over liberty, amongst others. In this paper, we propose potential explanations hitherto unnoticed, based on the framework of epistemic injustice. We show how (...) testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice may be at work to shape the reluctant mask adoption at both the societal and individual levels. We end by suggesting how overcoming these epistemic injustices can benefit the global community in this challenging situation and in the future. (shrink)

A scarcity mindset is considered to impact consumer behaviors. Our research aimed to examine the moderating effect of the scarcity mindset on the relationship between mental accounting and hedonic (vs. utilitarian) consumption. We conducted an online experimental design (mental accounting: windfall gains vs. hard-earning gains; consumption: hedonic products vs. utilitarian products) and verified our hypotheses in two distinct samples: a student sample and an adult sample. Our results showed that consumers who received windfall gains tended to use it for hedonic (...) consumption rather than utilitarian consumption. Intriguingly, such an effect was insignificant under a high level of a scarcity mindset but significant under a low level of the scarcity mindset. Moreover, consumers who received hard-earning gains tended to spend the money on utilitarian (vs. hedonic) consumption. However, we did not detect the impact of the scarcity mindset on such effects. Our research suggested an asymmetric effect of the scarcity mindset on hedonic (vs. utilitarian) consumption under two different mental accounts. It highlights the important role of the scarcity mindset in consumer behaviors, which leaves avenues for future research to understand marketing promotion strategies for distinct products. (shrink)