A considerable body of evidence now documents, beyond reasonable doubt, biological and health risk factors for crime and violence. Nevertheless, intervention and prevention efforts with offenders have avoided biological interventions, in part due to past misuses of biological research and the challenges that biological predispositions to crime raise. This article reviews the empirical literature on two biological intervention approaches, omega-3 supplementation and transcranial direct current stimulation. Emerging research on these relatively benign interventions suggests that increased omega-3 intake through dietary intervention (...) and prefrontal upregulation using non-invasive brain stimulation may show some initial promise in reducing antisocial behavior. The ethical issues related to mandated and offered biological interventions within the criminal justice system are discussed. (shrink)

Phosphoinositides modulate a plethora of functions including signal transduction and membrane trafficking. PtdInsPs are thought to consist of seven interconvertible species that localize to a specific organelle, to which they recruit a set of cognate effector proteins. Here, in reviewing the literature, we argue that this model needs revision. First, PtdInsPs can carry a variety of acyl chains, greatly boosting their molecular diversity. Second, PtdInsPs are more promiscuous in their localization than is usually acknowledged. Third, PtdInsP interconversion is likely achieved (...) through kinase-phosphatase enzyme complexes that coordinate their activities and channel substrates without affecting bulk substrate population. Additionally, we contend that despite hundreds of PtdInsP effectors, our attention is biased toward few proteins. Lastly, we recognize that PtdInsPs can act to nucleate coincidence detection at the effector level, as in PDK1 and Akt. Overall, better integrated models of PtdInsP regulation and function are not only possible but needed. Phosphoinositides are lipids that control many cellular functions. However, the field of PtdInsP signaling is dominated by several dogmatic notions. Here, we offer an updated glimpse on the current state of the field regarding molecular diversity, localization, organization of modifying enzymes, effector types, and effector organization. (shrink)

This paper presents syntactic and semantic rules for a fragment of English with mixed quotation. The fragment shows that quotation has a recursive and compositional structure. Quoted expressions turn out to denote characters, so the semantics of quotation simulates the pragmatics of speech, including dependence on utterance contexts and reference to mental entities. The analysis also accommodates varieties of unquotation, pure quotation, and causal reference.

This essay aims to show that republicanism does not necessarily preclude the notion of cosmopolitan citizenship. The first part challenges the belief that republican citizenship must be tied to a nationalist reading, therefore reducing its cosmopolitan extension to a mere metaphor. Having argued that the political attributes and philosophical account of the notion of citizenship evolve according to the historical transformation of political communities, our contemporary era renders the notion of cosmopolitan citizenship plausible. Far from being irreconcilable, liberal cosmopolitanism has (...) much to gain from republicanism since a thorough analysis of globalization reveals the limitations of the traditional liberal understanding of electoral and representative democracy. The second part of this article suggests that the republican theory of contestatory democracy enables us to better define the political attributes of cosmopolitan citizenship within a liberal conceptual framework. (shrink)

Might traditional Chinese thought regarding creativity not just influence, but also enrich, contemporary European thought about the same? Moreover, is it possible that traditional Chinese thought regarding creativity might enrich contemporary thought both in a more broad, holistic sense, and more specifically regarding the nature and role of creativity as it pertains to scientific inquiry? In this paper, I elucidate why the answer to these questions is: yes. I explain in detail a classical Chinese conception of creativity rooted in Zhuangist (...) philosophy and which centrally involves spontaneity engendered by embracing yóu遊, or “wandering”, rather than novelty or originality. I then illustrate how this conception of creativity can be used to enrich contemporary thought regarding the nature and role of creativity both in general and as it pertains to scientific inquiry in particular, as well as how to engender creativity, by arguing that it might allow us to: i) more easily remove what is frequently an obstacle to creativity, and; ii) better understand creative agents as being more intimately connected with, and as processes within and products of, their environments. Finally, I conclude by briefly remarking on how exploring various cultural perspectives on creativity promises to help us to better comprehend and promote creativity, by encouraging us to become more creative about creativity itself. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on firms' financial performance (CSR-effect). Two competing hypotheses, social impact hypothesis and shift of focus hypothesis, are proposed to investigate this issue, where the former suggests that CSR has a positive relation with performance and the latter are opposite. In order to ensure the CSR-effect is not contaminated by other faeton or samples are randomly drawn, we employ four matching methods, Nearest, Caliper, Mahala and Mahala Caliper to match (...) the samples of CSR (CSR-firms) and without CSR (NonCSR-firms) with similar characteristics. Although four methods yield slightly different results, firms engaging in CSR activities tend to obtain significantly higher values on pretax income to net sales and profit margin, and adopting CSR at the very least not deteriorate the performance of firms, making our con clusion favors the social impact hypothesis and against shift of focus hypothesis in Taiwan. Thus, ambition and conscience are not conflicting with each other. (shrink)

This paper is motivated by a question of naturalized epistemology of W. V. Quine and the question is how a naturalistic account gives rise to theoretical understanding with its realistic ontology. I concentrate on the possibility of the principle of reification by way of interpretation and the point is how we interpret interpretation in a naturalistic account. First, we must distinguish between Quine and Carnap based upon the distinction of interpretation versus reduction. Second, we should take seriously the function of (...) observation and the consequent interpretation with regard to reality and ontological understanding. This article also exams the positions of Descartes, Kant and recent philosophers Gadamer and Davidson. In doing so, some test cases of interpretation analyze in particular the case of “anomalous monism”. Finally, this paper makes effort to focus on quantum mechanics as an object of naturalistic interpretation, although it is itself a naturalistic interpretation of classical physics and relativity based upon observation of new features of reality. In conclusion, the Yijing philosophy of change is cited as a possible, useful and meaningful interpretation of quantum mechanics just as quantum mechanics could be a useful and meaningful interpretation of the Yijing’s onto-cosmology (which theory I had established two decades ago). (shrink)

Evolutionary game theory and public goods games offer an important framework to understand cooperation during pandemics. From this perspective, the COVID-19 situation can be conceptualized as a dilemma where people who neglect safety precautions act as free riders, because they get to enjoy the benefits of decreased health risk from others’ compliance with policies despite not contributing to or even undermining public safety themselves. At the same time, humans appear to carry a suite of evolved psychological mechanisms aimed at curbing (...) free riding in order to ensure the continued provision of public goods, which can be leveraged to develop more effective measures to promote compliance with regulations. We also highlight factors beyond free riding that reduce compliance rates, such as the emergence of conspiratorial thinking, which seriously undermine the effectiveness of measures to suppress free riding. Together, the current paper outlines the social dynamics that occur in public goods dilemmas involving the spread of infectious disease, highlights the utility and limits of evolutionary game-theoretic approaches for COVID-19 management, and suggests novel directions based on emerging challenges to cooperation. (shrink)

The grounds for global solidarity have been theorized and conceptualized in recent years, and many have argued that we need a global concept of solidarity. But the question remains: what can motivate efforts of the international community and nation-states? Our focus is the grounding of solidarity with respect to global inequities in health. We explore what considerations could motivate acts of global solidarity in the specific context of health migration, and sketch briefly what form this kind of solidarity could take. (...) First, we argue that the only plausible conceptualization of persons highlights their interdependence. We draw upon a conception of persons as ‘ecological subjects’ and from there illustrate what such a conception implies with the example of nurses migrating from low and middle-income countries to more affluent ones. Next, we address potential critics who might counter any such understanding of current international politics with a reference to real-politik and the insights of realist international political theory. We argue that national governments – while not always or even often motivated by moral reasons alone – may nevertheless be motivated to acts of global solidarity by prudential arguments. Solidarity then need not be, as many argue, a function of charitable inclination, or emergent from an acknowledgment of injustice suffered, but may in fact serve national and transnational interests. We conclude on a positive note: global solidarity may be conceptualized to helpfully address global health inequity, to the extent that personal and transnational interdependence are enough to motivate national governments into action. (shrink)

Part I. Hermeneutical theory and human experience. Interpretation and experience -- Interpretation and life connection -- Phenomenology and hermeneutics -- Understanding and linguistic existence -- Part II. Intercivilizational encounters : interpretation and ethical subject. Mediation : the hermeneutical self and moral self -- Interpretation and ethics of virtue : Aristotle revisited -- Intercivilizational encounters : the mean in Confucian ethics -- Thomas Aquinas : theological virtue ethics and analogy -- A comparative religious study of Aquinas and Mengzi -- Part III. (...) Aftermath of modernity : discourse reason and ethics of the other. Interpretation in long route and social location -- Discourse ethics and communicative rationality -- Neo-Aristotelian ethics and neo-Kantian framework -- Aesthetics of existence and ethics of alterity -- Part IV. Intercivilizational reconstruction in the aftermath of colonialism. Intercivilizational reconstruction and global-critical inquiry -- Engaging the Cave and the Butterfly : dialectics of Enlightenment and neo-Confucian self -- Interpretations as conflict and creativity : retrieval of Wang Yangming -- Concluding reflection : the hermeneutical self and an ethical difference -- Epilogue: Interpretive reason and postcolonial irregularity. (shrink)

Previous empirical research has found mixed results for the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) investments on corporate financial performance (CFP). This paper contributes to the literature by exploring in a two stage investor decision-making model the relationship between a firm’s innovation effort, CSR, and financial performance. We simultaneously examine the impact of CSR on both accounting-based (financial health) and market-based (Tobin’s Q) financial performance measures. From a sample of top corporate citizens, we find that: (1) a firm’s social responsibility (...) commitment (CSR) contributes to its financial performance; (2) after controlling for investment in innovation activities, CSR continues to have a positive impact on a firm’s financial performance; (3) the customer dimension of CSR has a positive effect on both CFP measures, whereas the employee dimension indicates a significant impact only on financial heath; and (4) the community relation dimension of CSR only affects the market-based CFP measure of firms with high innovation intensity. (shrink)

This study examines whether truth-telling in the form of honest reporting is associated with cognitive moral development. Conventional agency theory assumes that people are self-interested and willing to tell a lie to increase their personal payoffs, while recent empirical evidence shows that some people give up monetary rewards to tell the truth. The social psychology literature suggests that cognitive moral development influences individuals’ ethical decisions. We carried out an experiment whereby participants submitted managerial reports in which truth-telling decreased their monetary (...) payoff. Despite the fact that their decisions were not subject to monitoring, auditing, or reputation effects, some participants reported honestly or partially honestly. We find the relationship between honest reporting and cognitive moral development to be both positive and linear. Compared with those at lower stages of cognitive moral development, participants at higher stages of cognitive moral development were more likely to submit an honest report and give up potential monetary gains from lying. We further examine the economic impact of honest reporting on the firm’s profit. With the assumption of self-interest and profit maximization, Antle and Eppen suggest that a contract with a hurdle-rate feature reduces managers’ information rent. We find that in comparison with the expected outcome of a hurdle contract, the firm can yield higher profits with a trust contract by hiring managers with a P-score higher than 16.67. (shrink)

In English, a non-wh-question may have a disjunctive phrase explicitly providing the choices that the question ranges over. For example, in (1), the disjunction or not indicates that the the choice is between the positive and the negative polarity for the relevant proposition, as spelled out in the yes/no (yn)-question reading (2) and in the answers (2a,b). Another example is (3). The disjunction in (3) can be understood as providing the choices that the question ranges over, hence giving rise to (...) the alternative (alt-)reading in (4) and eliciting the answers in (4a,b). (Cf. Karttunen (1977) and Higginbotham (1993) for the semantics of yn/alt-questions). (shrink)

Inspired by impossibility theorems of social choice theory, many democratic theorists have argued that aggregative forms of democracy cannot lend full democratic justification for the collective decisions reached. Hence, democratic theorists have turned their attention to deliberative democracy, according to which “outcomes are democratically legitimate if and only if they could be the object of a free and reasoned agreement among equals” (Cohen 1997a, 73). However, relatively little work has been done to offer a formal theory of democratic deliberation. This (...) article helps fill that gap by offering a formal theory of three different modes of democratic deliberation: myopic discussion, constructive discussion, and debate. We show that myopic discussion suffers from indeterminacy of long run outcomes, while constructive discussion and debate are conclusive. Finally, unlike the other two modes of deliberation, debate is path independent and converges to a unique compromise position, irrespective of the initial status quo. (shrink)

The tropical rain-forest regions in Borneo Island have in place various tough environmental policies to manage the economic use of natural resources sustainably. Nevertheless, their biological landscapes are struggling against unprecedented ecological assault amid rapid industrial transformations which have involved massive and irreversible exploitation of land resources. The main reason behind this mismatch of sustainable resource management vis-à-vis unsustainable resource use is the failure on the part of the policy makers to act under the guidance of certain ethical virtues when (...) attempting to translate environmental rhetoric in print to concrete actions in reality. Ethical engagement with nature is pivotal in helping to stimulate genuine efforts in environmental conservation. Field research in the Borneo tropical rain-forest state of Sarawak, Malaysia is able to identify and evaluate the distinctive environmental attitudes, values, and practices of the indigenous communities, and their implications on Sarawak’s sustainable land-resource use and to reinforce the importance of ethical leadership in addressing a myriad of today’s environmental challenges. (shrink)

In earlier work, we developed an composition in which predicates can be composed with arguments by operations other than Function Application, and it makes a difference which composition operation is employed. Here we take our approach further by examining two nonsaturating operations that combine property contents: Restrict, which composes a predicate with the property content of an indefinite; and Modify, which is involved in predicate modification. Nonsaturating operations that combine property contents are often formalized in terms of predicate intersection, which (...) is commutative. Using Austronesian language Chamorro, we argue that Restrict and Modify are not ‘commutative’, but instead incorporate an asymmetry: they take one content to supply a domain that is narrowed further by combination with the other content. Syntactically, it is transparent which category’s content supplies the domain. But semantically, this information can be recovered only from the way in which the composition operation affects the contents that it composes, since—as we show—the same contents can be composed with distinct results. (shrink)

There is a prominent phenomenon in the religious life of Vietnam, which is the emergence of “new religions”. These phenomena have not only made the religious space of the nation more complex and multi-dimensional but also challenged stability and sustainable development within the religious communities in this key economic region. Having studied the new religious phenomenon in recent years, we have noted its progress and widespread characteristics within the ethnic communities. While it may appear that "new religion" is a simple (...) and gentle concept and practice, it is in fact, intrinsically related to and has significant implications on the social life of the community members. However, there is a growing concern, considerable suspicion and anxiety with regards to its impacts on individuals, families, social and cultural traditions, beliefs and religions; many have opined that it is radically changing the peaceful cohabitation of diverse religious traditions, revealing a potential for conflicts across groups. Based on the religious reality of the Southern region of Vietnam, the Center for Religion Studies has implemented a project regarding new religions in Ho Chi Minh City and the problems faced by the religious policy in Vietnam. This article is an overview of the results of this project. (shrink)

A number of studies in the extant literature report findings that suggest asymmetry in the way reflexive and pronoun anaphors are interpreted in the early stages of processing: that pronouns are less sensitive to structural constraints, as formulated by Binding Theory, than reflexives, in the initial antecedent retrieval process. However, in previous visual world paradigm eye-tracking studies, these conclusions were based on sentences that placed the critical anaphors within picture noun phrases or prepositional phrases, which have independently been shown not (...) to neatly conform to the Binding Theory principles. We present results from a visual world paradigm eye-tracking experiment that show that when critical anaphors are placed in the indirect object position immediately following a verb as a recipient argument, pronoun and reflexive processing are equally sensitive to structural constraints. (shrink)