The time-lag argument seems to put some pressure on naïve realism to agree that seeing must happen simultaneously with what is seen; meanwhile, a wide-accepted empirical fact suggests that light takes time to transmit from objects at a distance to perceivers—which implies what is seen happened before seeing, and, accordingly, naïve realism must be false. In this paper, I will, first of all, show that the time-lag argument has in fact involves a misunderstanding concept of simultaneity: according to Special Relativity, (...) simultaneity is a matter of convention rather than a matter of fact, so, in principle, we can stipulate a perceptual conception of simultaneity, according to which what is seen is simultaneous with seeing. Secondly, the generalized time-lag argument has a mistaken view on the perceived events and perceiving; it has a doubtful assumption that these events are momentary in the mathematical sense. Such idealization is the main reason why we have the intuition that the time-lag effect of perceiving is in conflict with our ordinary perceptual experiences. Finally, I argue that the naïve realist account of the perceptual relation is a nontemporal constitutive relation; and hence naïve realism is compatible with the claim that we can perceive things as they were, and it should not be weakened by the time-lag argument. (shrink)

The argument from appearance for the content view or intentionalism attracts a lot of attention recently. In my paper, I follow Charles Travis to argue against the key premise that representational content can be ‘read off’ from a certain way that a thing looks to a subject. My arguments are built upon Travis’s original objection and a reinterpretation of Rodrick Chisholm’s comparative and noncomparative uses of appearance words. Byrne, Schellenberg and others interpret Travis’ ‘visual looks’ as Chisholm’s comparative use, and (...) appeal to the noncomparative use as an alternative to avoid Travis’s objection. I demonstrate that they misunderstand both Chisholm and Travis. Both the comparative use and the noncomparative use are semantic notions, while ‘visual looks’ is a metaphysical one. Although Chisholm’s appearance objectivism –– that appearance expressions attribute appearances to ordinary objects –– is close to ‘visual looks’, appearance objectivism is not exceptional to the noncomparative use as Byrne interprets. In the end, I also show that Byrnean’s conception of distinctive visual gestalt cannot exclude contrary representational contents, because a distinctive visual gestalt can be shared by different kinds of things. Besides, Byrne and others do not explain why a distinctive visual gestalt should be presented as ‘being instantiated’. Therefore, I conclude that representational content cannot be read off from a certain way that a thing looks to a subject; the argument from appearance thus fails. (shrink)

I argue that the mainstream formulation of the argument from illusion is invalid, and the Uniqueness Assumption which makes the argument valid is suspicious because the intuition of the assumption stems from common sense which is challenged by the argument from illusion. I show that even if sense data were admitted as objects in illusions, the subject can still perceive something real; she can perceive a composite. This means that the sense-datum account of illusion need not apply to perception.

Temporal Externalism posits the counterintuitive claim that the semantic properties of terms are influenced not only by present and past linguistic practices but also by future linguistic practices. In this paper, I primarily introduce a new challenge to Temporal Externalism, arguing that it presupposes a meta-belief about future linguistic practices but fails to explain how this belief relates to future properties. I then briefly highlight that Jussi Haukioja’s recent defense of Temporal Externalism still does not address the challenges posed by (...) this meta-belief. Therefore, I conclude that Temporal Externalism is untenable. (shrink)

The diabetic foot is a global threat to public health because it can result in infection and amputation, as well as cause the patient to experience considerable pain and incur financial costs. The condition of patients with diabetic foot in North China is distinguished by more severe local ulcers, a worse prognosis, and a longer duration of disease than that of patients with diabetic foot in the south. Through appropriate preventive measures, the diabetic foot can be effectively avoided. This study (...) assesses the existing knowledge, attitudes and practices associated with diabetic foot prevention among adults with diabetes living in rural areas of North China. (shrink)

Adam Ferguson’s imperial thought casts new light on the age-old republican dilemma of the tension between empire and liberty. Generations of republican writers had been haunted by this issue as the decline of Rome proved that imperial expansion would eventually ruin the liberty of a state. Many eighteenth-century Scottish thinkers regarded this as an insoluble conundrum and thus became critics of empire. Ferguson shared their basic views but, paradoxically, was still able to defend the British Empire in the debates over (...) the American Revolution. His argument effectively offered a viable solution to the republican dilemma, which distinguished him from his contemporaries. In light of this, I argue that political representation was the pivotal conception for Ferguson to make empire and liberty compatible. It was on this ground that he could advocate the union with Ireland, which he believed would lead to a lasting balance of power in Europe. -/- ; British Empire; liberty; balance of power; political representation; American Revolution; Anglo-Irish Union. (shrink)

This paper examines the fortunes of non-European philosophies in histories of philosophy written by European and American philosophers from the 17th century to the present day. It charts the shift from inclusive histories of philosophy, which included non-European philosophies, to exclusive histories of philosophy, which excluded and/or marginalized non-European philosophies, at the end of the 18th century. This shift was motivated by racial Eurocentrism, which cast a long shadow over histories of philosophy written during the 19th and 20th centuries. The (...) paper also considers recent attempts to produce a more inclusive history of philosophy. By examining the history of the inclusion and exclusion of non-European philosophies in histories of philosophy, this paper seeks to challenge the assumption that philosophy began and has been practised exclusively by European or western thinkers. (shrink)

The issue of how to identify the liability of subjects after a traffic accident takes place remains a puzzle regarding the SAE classification system. The SAE system is not good at dealing with the problem of responsibility evaluation; therefore, building a new classification system for self-driving cars from the perspective of the subject's liability is a possible way to solve this problem. This new system divides automated driving into three levels: i) assisted driving based on the will of drivers, ii) (...) automated driving based on the will of the manufacturers, and iii) fully automated driving based on social will. The corresponding responsible subjects for level one, level two, and level three are the drivers, the manufacturers, and society, respectively. (shrink)

We investigate the association between controlling shareholders' ownership (CS_Own) and firms' leverage decisions in the Singaporean context. We examine whether the impact of ownership concentration on leverage differs across excess and lower control. We report that shareholders with excess control prefer leverage financing for an optimal capital structure and focus on value maximisation rather using leverage as a tool of minority shareholders' expropriation. Our analysis shows that firms capital structure significantly influences by the coalition of shareholders particularly decisions about leverage (...) financing in addition to the firms' specific characteristics and institutional arrangements. Our empirical evidence shows that controlling shareholders with a lower fraction of equity are more concerned about limited holding thus prefer leverage over equity financing to inflate their equity stake to protect them from the potential takeovers and mergers. We report that capital structure decisions in Singapore are linked with the trade-off between the controlling shareholders' target of mitigating firm risk and their non-dilution entrenchment needs. Further, we found an inverted U-shaped association between control ownership and leverage financing. In terms of moderating effect of family-controlled ownership, our findings exhibit that leverage financing is less pronounced for family firms in Singapore due to the under-diversified investment portfolio. (shrink)

A review essay on Jonathan Israel, The Expanding Blaze: How the American Revolution Ignited the World, 1775-1848 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017) and Richard D. Brown, Self-Evident Truths: Contesting Equal Rights from the Revolution to the Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).

Scottish philosophy and intellectual history have become the increasingly fashionable fields of academic studies. Alexander Broadie, one of the pioneers and an accomplished scholar of the Scottish Enlightenment, returns to the basic question, namely, “what is Scottish philosophy?”, and presents a comprehensive work on the history of Scottish philosophy. Broadie successfully elucidates the nature and significance of Scottish philosophy both historically and philosophically. He argues that Scottish philosophy must be studied in its historical context, for it is not only a (...) philosophical enterprise but also a persistent tradition which has united the Scottish nation for centuries. The advancements in science, literature, politics, and culture in Scotland would be extremely unlikely, if not impossible, without such an intellectual culture established by thinkers in that tradition. This article is intended as a review of Broadie’s A History of Scottish Philosophy in the background of his shifting academic interests from philosophy to history while he holds the professorship in University of Glasgow. His commitment to Scottish philosophical culture deserves the attention of contemporary historians and philosophers, for his work opens up a space for dialogue between intellectual history and history of philosophy, an issue addressed at the end of this paper. (shrink)

Introduction: The development of advanced sewage technologies empowers the industry to produce high-quality recycled water, which greatly influences human’s life and health. Thus, this study investigates the mechanism of individuals’ adoption of recycled water from the technology adoption perspective. -/- Methods: Employing the mixed method of structural equation modeling and artificial neural network analysis, we examined a research model developed from the extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) framework. To examine the research model, this study employs (...) a leading web-survey company (Sojump) to collect 308 valid samples from the residents in mainland China. -/- Results: The structural equation modeling results verified the associations between the six predictors (performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, environmental motivation, and price value), individuals’ cognitive and emotional attitudes, and acceptance intention. The artificial neural network analysis validates and complements the structural equation modeling results by unveiling the importance rank of the significant determinants of the acceptance decisions. -/- Discussion: The study provides theoretical implications for recycled water research and useful insights for practitioners and policymakers to reduce the environmental hazards of water scarcity. (shrink)

Suicide among college students is a major public health problem. Research has confirmed that negative focused disposition had a significant effect on suicidal ideation. This study aims to evaluate somatic anxiety, general distress and depression as mediators of the relationship between negative focused disposition and suicidal ideation.

The Protein Ontology (PRO; http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/pr) formally defines and describes taxon-specific and taxon-neutral protein-related entities in three major areas: proteins related by evolution; proteins produced from a given gene; and protein-containing complexes. PRO thus serves as a tool for referencing protein entities at any level of specificity. To enhance this ability, and to facilitate the comparison of such entities described in different resources, we developed a standardized representation of proteoforms using UniProtKB as a sequence reference and PSI-MOD as a post-translational modification (...) reference. We illustrate its use in facilitating an alignment between PRO and Reactome protein entities. We also address issues of scalability, describing our first steps into the use of text mining to identify protein-related entities, the large-scale import of proteoform information from expert curated resources, and our ability to dynamically generate PRO terms. Web views for individual terms are now more informative about closely-related terms, including for example an interactive multiple sequence alignment. Finally, we describe recent improvement in semantic utility, with PRO now represented in OWL and as a SPARQL endpoint. These developments will further support the anticipated growth of PRO and facilitate discoverability of and allow aggregation of data relating to protein entities. (shrink)

In the 16th century, western science made a great leap. Meanwhile, in China, the development of textual criticism (including scholars Gu Yanwu 1613-1682, Dai Zhen 1724-1777, Duan Yucai 1735-1815, Wang Niansun 1744-1832) also facilitated the development of scientific factors (Hu Shi 1967).This paper argues that Qian-Jia scholars爷work represented a new era of traditional research that the value of scholarships and intellectual work (starting from Gu Yanwu 1613-1682, Dai Zhen 1724-1777, Duan Yucai 1735-1815, Wang Niansun 1744-1832, etc.) is essentially based on (...) what they created and believed, overtly or overtly, the principle of logic certainty—a newly developed indigenous rationalism in the Chinese intellectual history. (shrink)