The neural underpinnings of decision-making are critical to understanding and predicting human behavior. However, findings from decision neuroscience are limited in their practical applicability due to the gap between experimental decision-making paradigms and real-world choices. The present manuscript investigates the neural markers of buying decisions in a fully natural purchase setting: participants are asked to use their favorite online shopping applications to buy common goods they are currently in need of. Their electroencephalography is recorded while they view the product page (...) for each item. EEG responses to pages for products that are eventually bought are compared to those that are discarded. Study 1 repeats this procedure in three batches with different participants, product types, and time periods. In an explorative analysis, two neural markers for buying compared to no-buying decisions are discovered over all three batches: frontal alpha asymmetry peak and frontal theta power peak. Occipital alpha power at alpha asymmetry peaks differs in only one of the three batches. No further significant markers are found. Study 2 compares the natural product search to a design in which subjects are told which product pages to view. In both settings, the frontal alpha asymmetry peak is increased for buying decisions. Frontal theta peak increase is replicated only when subjects search through product pages by themselves. The present study series represents an attempt to find neural markers of real-world decisions in a fully natural environment and explore how those markers can change due to small adjustments for the sake of experimental control. Limitations and practical applicability of the real-world approach to studying decision-making are discussed. (shrink)

Abstract This paper studies Olivi's account of perceptual representation. It addresses two main questions: (1) how do perceptual representations originate? and (2) how do they represent their objects? Regarding (1), it is well known that Olivi emphasizes the activity of the soul in the production of perceptual representations. Yet it is sometimes argued that he overstresses the activity of the soul in a way that yields a philosophically problematic result. I argue that Olivi was well aware of the problem that (...) could be raised for his theory and that he sought to cope with it. Regarding (2), Pasnau argues that for Olivi, causal relationships with external objects determine the content of perceptual representations. I argue that, rather, perceptual representations are about their objects because they are their similitudes. This makes him an internalist about representational content. (shrink)

The metaphor of parasites or parasitism has dominated literary critical discourse since the 1970s, prominent examples being Michel Serres in France and J. Hillis Miller in America. In their writings the relationship between text and paratext, literature and criticism, is often likened to that between host and parasite, and can be therefore deconstructed. Their writings, along with those by Derrida, Barthes, and Thom, seem to be suggesting the possibility of a semiotics of parasitism. Unfortunately, none of these writers has drawn (...) enough on the biological foundation of parasitism. Curiously, even in biology, parasitism is already a metaphor through which the signified of an ecological phenomenon involving two organisms is expressed by the signifier of “[eating] food at another’s [side] table”. This paper will make some preliminary remarks on semiotics of parasitism, based on the notions of Umwelt (Jakob von Uexküll) and structural coupling (Maturana and Varela). It will look into the phenomenon of co-evolutionary process in community ecology. With reference to empirical history, the project will briefly surveythe literary and medical praxis of the 17th century England where large number of creative writings referred to the phenomenon of parasitism, which was deeply embedded in religious practice (e.g., the Eucharist) and political life (e.g., the courtier ecology in monarchy) of the times. Finally, it will touch upon the possible ‘parasitic’ relationship between language and biology. (shrink)

This study offers a new and stimulating interpretation of Theophrastus' "De sensibus, a treatise unique in content and method, as it reports and criticizes the ...

According to Kripke’s thesis of the necessity of origin, if an object has an origin, it necessarily has that origin. Kripke’s thesis has special cases that we may refer to as “origin theses” when applied to certain types of objects, such as humans and tables. While origin theses have intuitive plausibility, why they are true remains unclear. This paper addresses a prominent line of defense for origin theses. In a celebrated note in Naming and Necessity, Kripke briefly presented an incomplete (...) argument. Advocates of this line of defense attempt to establish origin theses by proposing additional principles with which to complete Kripke’s argument. I call these defenses “Kripkean defenses.” The usual debate in the literature regarding Kripkean defenses has focused on the justifiability of the proposed principles. In this paper, I highlight a neglected issue that arises for Kripkean defenders, even if the debate is assumed to be settled in their favor. I argue that, even if Kripke’s argument is sound, it falls short of establishing origin theses, leaving an inferential gap. How to close the gap is a new problem for Kripkean defenders. My goal in the paper is to offer a solution that I believe is their best hope. If I am right, Kripkean defenders should commit themselves to the Aristotelian view that individuals such as human beings and tables are, in a robust Aristotelian sense, substances with irreducible powers that emerge from the powers of their causal origin. (shrink)

In traditional Chinese literary criticism, textual strategies comparable to intertextuality have governed Chinese critics’ and poets’ reading and writing aboutliterature throughout the dynasties. Drawing on the intertextual theories of Kristeva and Riffaterre, the paper probes into the phenomenon of sign system-mutations in two highly influential ancient texts: the Confucian Classic of Changes of the fifth century B.C.E. and Liu Xie’s The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, an ars poetica in the third century. The transformation of sign systems from (...) nonverbal to verbal, in the case of the Changes, and from literate to literary or “creative” to “theoretical”, in the case of the Dragons, bears witness to the Hjelmslevian reciprocity of object-semiotic and meta-semiotic. (shrink)

Will a "Cultural Revolution" occur in the United States? What I mean is, will the American media employ political means of the type used during China's Cultural Revolution? Based on my understanding of the United States, the answer is yes.

As of the first week of February 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in over two million people dead across the globe. This essay argues that in order to fully understand the politics arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to focus on the individual and collective experiences of death, loss, and grief. While the emerging scholarly discourse on the pandemic, particularly in political science and international relations, typically considers death only in terms of its effects on formal state-level politics (...) and as a policy objective for mitigation, we argue that focusing on the particularities of the experience of death resulting from COVID-19 can help us fully understand the ways in which the pandemic is reordering our worlds. Examining the ambiguous sociopolitical meaning of death by COVID-19 can provide broader analytical comparisons with other mass death events. Ultimately, the essay argues that centering the impact of the pandemic on the experience of death and loss directly poses the question of how politics should value human lives in the post-pandemic world, helping us better formulate the normative questions necessary for a more ethical future. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue for the conclusion that the Chinese sentences that are regularly translated into subject-predicate sentences in English may be understood as all non-subject-predicate sentences. My argument is based on the premise that some grammatical features are crucial to yield the sense of contrast between the completeness of subject and the incompleteness of predicate. The absence of such grammatical features in Chinese makes it impossible to establish any criterion for the distinction between subject and predicate in Chinese.

activity” has been considered to play a major role in the short-term maintenance of memories. Many studies since then have provided support for this view and greatly advanced our knowledge of the effects of stimulus type and modality on delay activity and its temporal dynamics. In humans, working memory has also been a subject of intense investigation using scalp and intracranial electroencephalography as well as magnetoencephalography, which provide estimates of local population activity. The published findings include reports of systematic changes (...) in signal amplitude during working memory in the theta, alpha, beta. (shrink)

Despite the growing number of studies on the topic of guanxi in a work context, there is a paucity of research on supervisor-subordinate guanxi in the field of organisation and management. This article critically reviews the extant literature on guanxi in human resource management and organisational behaviour and applies an inductive approach to explore the perception of guanxi from both superior and subordinate perspectives in the People's Republic of China. The study reports positive and ethical features of guanxi as well (...) as unethical and negative practices in the Chinese workplace. On the positive side, guanxi comprises reciprocal exchange and perceived positive attributes, whereas its darker aspects include perceived unfairness and supervisor-targeted impression management. Managerial and research implications are discussed. (shrink)

This book uncovers and explores the constant tension between the historical and the transcendental that lies at the heart of Michel Foucault's work. In the process, it also assesses the philosophical foundations of his thought by examining his theoretical borrowings from Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, who each provided him with tools to critically rethink the status of the transcendental. Given Foucault's constant focus on the question of the possibility for knowledge, the author argues that his philosophical itinerary can be understood (...) as a series of attempts to historicize the transcendental. In so doing, he seeks to uncover a specific level that would identify these conditions without falling either into an excess of idealism or of materialism. The author concludes that, although this problem does unify Foucault's work and gives it its specifically philosophical dimension, none of the concepts successively provided manages to name these conditions without falling into the pitfalls that Foucault originally denounced as characteristic of the "anthropological sleep"--various forms of confusion between the historical and the transcendental. Although Foucault's work provides us with a highly illuminating analysis of the major problems of post-Kantian philosophies, ultimately it remains aporetic in that it also fails to overcome them. (shrink)

Different nations responded to the global spread of COVID-19 differently. How do people view the governance practices and effects of various countries? What factors affect their views? Starting from the three-dimensional model of cognitive-affective-media, this study examines how pandemic perception, the national feeling, which is the emotional preference of public for different countries, and media use affect the Chinese public views on the performance of other countries in controlling COVID-19. After performing regression analysis on the data of 619 Chinese public (...) samples collected by an online survey, it reveals the following: pandemic perception is negatively correlated with the evaluation of controlling-pandemic performance in different countries by Chinese residents, whereas national feeling is positively correlated with the evaluation of controlling-pandemic performance. The use of media has different characteristics in the evaluation of controlling-pandemic performance in different countries by Chinese residents. Television has a significant influence on the evaluation of controlling-pandemic performance in the United States, China, and Germany by Chinese residents. Collectivist cultural orientation has no significant impact on the evaluation of the anti-pandemic performance of different countries by Chinese residents, whereas virus perception only has a significant impact on the evaluation of the controlling-pandemic performance of the United States and Italy. Research has confirmed the existence of the cognitive-affective-media model in the evaluations by public on the governance of other countries, and prospects for the superimposed role of media in the cognitive-affective model. (shrink)

Using electromagnetic levitation in combination with the oscillating drop technique and drop calorimeter method, the surface tensions and specific heats of undercooled liquid Co-10 wt% Mo, Co-26.3 wt% Mo, and Co-37.6 wt% Mo alloys were measured. The containerless state during levitation produces substantial undercoolings up to 223 K , 213 K and 110 K respectively for these three alloys. In their respective undercooling ranges, the surface tensions were determined to be 1895 m 0.31, 1932 m 0.33, and 1989 m 0.34 (...) mN m m 1 . According to the Butler equation, the surface tensions of these three Co-Mo alloys were also calculated, and the results agree well with the experimental data. The specific heats of these three alloys are determined to be 41.85, 43.75 and 44.92 J mol m 1 K m 1 . Based on the determined surface tensions and specific heats, the changes in thermodynamics functions such as enthalpy, entropy and Gibbs free energy are predicted. Furthermore, the crystal nucleation, dendrite growth and Marangoni convection of undercooled Co-Mo alloys are investigated in the light of these measured thermophysical properties. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that in addition to the three generally recognized kinds of de re thought, i.e., perception-based, memory-based and communication-based thought, there is a kind of de re thought, which is based on image and cannot be assimilated to any of these recognized kinds of de re thought. I call it simply image-based de re thought. Although image-based thought shares some similarities with the other kinds of de re thought, it should and can be distinguished from each (...) of them. The focus of this paper is on the distinction between image-based thought and perception-based thought, as it is this distinction that is either overlooked or denied by philosophers who have no difficulty seeing the distinct role of images in our thinking about things in the world. (shrink)

What Heidegger means by “freedom” in Being and Time is somewhat mysterious: while the notion crops up repeatedly in the book, there is no dedicated section or study, and the concept is repeatedly connected to a new and opaque idea – that of the “choice to choose oneself.” Yet the specificity of Being and Time’s approach to freedom becomes apparent when the book is compared to other texts of the same period, in particular The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, The Fundamental (...) Concepts of Metaphysics, The Essence of Grounds, and The Essence of Freedom. Although there are some differences, the definition of freedom that can be found there identifies it with “existence” or “transcendence,” Dasein’s ek-static opening onto the world. Thus “being in the world must also be primordially bound up with or derived from the basic feature of Dasein’s existence, freedom… Dasein’s transcendence and freedom are identical! Freedom provides itself with intrinsic possibility: a being is, as free, necessarily in itself transcending” (GA 26: 238; Heidegger’s italics). Note the apodictic modality of the claim: it is not simply the case that Dasein, as transcending, is free. Anything that has the structure of being in the world must be free: freedom is co-extensive with Dasein. Yet Dasein is often pictured in Being and Time as anything but free: it “ensnares itself” (268), is “lost” (264), “alienated” (178), and needs to be “liberated” (264, 303). Thus comparison between Being and Time and other texts on freedom yields an important paradox: although by definition it transcends toward the world, the Dasein of Division I is deprived of freedom. It must be free, and yet phenomenological analysis shows that it is not free. To understand the specific meaning of freedom in Being and Time, one has to square this circle. (shrink)

This book uncovers and explores the constant tension between the historical and the transcendental that lies at the heart of Michel Foucault’s work. In the process, it also assesses the philosophical foundations of his thought by examining his theoretical borrowings from Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, who each provided him with tools to critically rethink the status of the transcendental. Given Foucault’s constant focus on the (Kantian) question of the possibility for knowledge, the author argues that his philosophical itinerary can be (...) understood as a series of attempts to historicize the transcendental. In so doing, he seeks to uncover a specific level that would identify these conditions without falling either into an excess of idealism (a de-historicized, subject-centered perspective exemplified for Foucault by Husserlian phenomenology) or of materialism (which would amount to interpreting these conditions as ideological and thus as the effect of economic determination by the infrastructure). The author concludes that, although this problem does unify Foucault’s work and gives it its specifically philosophical dimension, none of the concepts successively provided (such as the e;piste;mè, the historical a priori, the regimes of truth, the games of truth, and problematizations) manages to name these conditions without falling into the pitfalls that Foucault originally denounced as characteristic of the “anthropological sleep”—various forms of confusion between the historical and the transcendental. Although Foucault’s work provides us with a highly illuminating analysis of the major problems of post-Kantian philosophies, ultimately it remains aporetic in that it also fails to overcome them. (shrink)

We analyze the cognitive strategies underlying performance in the Number task, a Math game that requires both arithmetic fluency and mathematical creativity. In this game all elements in a set of numbers have to be used precisely once to create a target number with basic arithmetic operations. We argue that some instances of this game are NP complete, by showing its relation to the well-known Partition problem. We propose heuristics based on the distinction in forward and backward reasoning. The Number (...) Game is part of Math Garden, a popular online educational platform for practicing and monitoring math skills using innovations in computerized adaptive testing. These educational games generate enormous amounts of rich data on children's cognitive development. We found converging evidence for the use of forward proximity heuristics in the data of Math Garden, consisting of more than 20 million answers to 1,700 items. Item difficulties and the structure of correct answers were analyzed. (shrink)

Robert Desgabets has been described as a ‘radical Cartesian’. Drawing conclusions from Descartes's thought that Descartes himself had failed to see, Desgabets treated Cartesianism as a work in progress that awaited further enrichment and development. But, as scholars have recognized, Desgabets's writings also betray a significant indebtedness to scholastic tradition. In presenting his philosophy, Desgabets often appeals to traditional notions, breathing new life into scholastic concepts and ideas. This paper investigates what we are to make of the scholastic vestiges in (...) Desgabets's thought. It argues that Desgabets's relation to scholastic tradition is more complicated than Desgabets himself wants us to believe, or than his modern commentators have recognized. Scholastic echoes in Desgabets cannot be taken at face value. Sometimes, they reflect basic points of agreement with scholastic theories. But just as often, scholastic formulae in Desgabets are vehicles for expressing philosophical views.. (shrink)

Diagnostic tests allow better informed medical decisions when there is uncertainty about a patient’s health status and, therefore, about the desirability to undertake treatment. This paper studies the relation between the expected value of diagnostic information and a patient's risk aversion. We show that the ex ante value of diagnostic information increases with risk aversion for diseases with low prevalence, but decreases with risk aversion for diseases with high prevalence. On the other hand, the ex post value of diagnostic information (...) always increases with the patient's degree of risk aversion. (shrink)

Employing critical discourse analysis (CDA), this paper examines how medicalized concepts of mental illness and paternalistic views are framed and used in the legal case, Thompson and Empowerment Council v. Ontario (2013). The paper argues that the case utilizes a pathologized notion of mental illness to justify and defend the legality of involuntary treatment, specifically, the community treatment orders (CTOs) under Ontario’s Mental Health Act (MHA). This paper shows how the Thompson case relies on medical reductionism and binary notions of (...) capacity versus incapacity while failing to consider intersecting factors and contextual and social determinants of psychosocial disability. Following this, I suggest that a postmodernist relational theory of disability could change the legal discourses about the MHA. Challenging the medicalized view of mental illness through the relational approach to psychosocial disability could have strengthened the plaintiffs’ case and prompted legal reforms for better safeguards under the MHA. In doing so, this paper offers a basis and future direction for legal reforms that can lead to legal mandates for improved social and healthcare services to enhance the autonomy of individuals subjected to CTOs. (shrink)

This paper attempts to explain why and how the middle class in Korea decisively joined the democratic movement in 1987 by drawing special attention to the role played by the “middling grassroots” (MG). MG was formed out of the common experience of student activism and contesting subcultures, which were widely dispersed over Korean university campuses during the 1980s. In addition, this paper examines the contrasting views on the Korean democratic transition by Bruce Cumings and Adam Przeworski. This substantive analysis attempts (...) to show how such discord can be resolved by working out a mediating variable between action and social structure. It is suggested that the concept of MG is a good example of such a mediating variable. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the relation between phenomenology and anthropology by placing Foucault?s first published piece, Introduction to Binswanger?s?Dream and Existence? in dialectical tension with The Order of Things. I argue that the early work, which so far hasn?t received much critical attention, is of particular interest because while OT is notoriously critical of anthropological confusions in general, and of?Man? as an empirico-transcendental double in particular, IB views?existential anthropology? as a unique opportunity to establish a new and fruitful relation (...) between transcendental forms and empirical contents. This is because IB focuses on a specific object,?Menschsein?, which is neither the transcendental subject nor an empirical being. Thus for the young Foucault existential anthropology occupies a fertile methodological middle ground between transcendental approaches and empirical forms of analysis. I first interpret anthropology in the light of phenomenology and defend the view that Menschsein is neither a transcendental structure nor a concrete particular, but as the instantiation of the first in the second. I argue that for anthropology to yield the full theoretical benefits Foucault claims for it, the particular cases of Menschsein examined in existential analysis have to be regarded as exemplary. I then read phenomenology back in the light of anthropology and examine how, for Foucault, the analysis of Menschsein in dreams benefits fundamental ontology by affording us a clearer view of some of the main existentiale than the focus on everyday waking experience in Being and Time. Finally, I turn to the limits and difficulties of this early position and my reading of it, and to their consequences for Foucault?s later view. (shrink)

Wittgenstein uses the word "philosophy" in the Tractatus in three different senses: philosophy as experience (Erlebnis) aiming at solving the problem of the meaning of life and world, philosophy as elucidation (Erläuterung) aiming at determining the nature o f philosophy, clearly demarcating what can be said from what cannot, and philosophy as profession. The latter only consists in the work of analyzing the propositions brought about by philosophy as experience - which cannot be pursued professionally as well as philosophy as (...) elucidation - and in pointing out the nonsensicalness of these propositions. (shrink)

Job satisfaction, resilience, and teacher well-being, as the three major psychological variables emotioncy- based education, have received special attention among English as a foreign language researchers. To pursue the line of this inquiry, this particular study aimed to investigate the relationship between Chinese EFL teachers’ job satisfaction, resilience, and their well-being. To conduct the study, 343 Chinese EFL teachers with different academic qualifications, various academic degrees, and different majors voluntarily participated in this study. The results of the study showed that (...) job satisfaction and resilience could jointly predict 56.4 of the variance in psychological well-being. Both variables were the significant predictors of well-being, while job satisfaction was a better predictor, uniquely explaining 29.6 of well-being’s variance. Based on the findings, some pedagogical implication for administrators, educational institutions, and EFL teachers were discussed in the article. (shrink)

The multilevel model of meme diffusion conceptualizes how mediated messages diffuse over time and space. As a pilot application of implementing the meme diffusion, we developed the social media analytics and research testbed to monitor Twitter messages and track the diffusion of information in and across different cities and geographic regions. Social media analytics and research testbed is an online geo-targeted search and analytics tool, including an automatic data processing procedure at the backend and an interactive frontend user interface. Social (...) media analytics and research testbed is initially designed to facilitate searching and geo-locating tweet topics and terms in different cities and geographic regions; filtering noise from raw data ; analyzing social media data from a spatiotemporal perspective; and visualizing social media data in diagnostic ways. Social media analytics and research testbed provides researchers and domain experts with a tool that can efficiently facilitate the refinement, formalization, and testing of research hypotheses or questions. Three case studies are introduced to illustrate how the predictions of meme diffusion can be examined and to demonstrate the potentials and key functions of social media analytics and research testbed. (shrink)

China has undergone unprecedented changes since the Reform and Opening-up policy in 1978. Policy experimentation (PE) has been key in generating and catalysing reforms in the process. This study proposes a conceptual framework to describe the different pathways of PE-enabled reforms. Comparing two empirically informed case studies, this study demonstrates the functions of this policy tool plays within China’s higher education policy-making and development: generative, rhetorical and regulatory. The paper argues that PE can be a genuinely productive mechanism for producing, (...) identifying and negotiating new policy options while allowing the government to supervise and regulate institutional reform behaviours. However, under certain conditions, it assumes more of a symbolic role allowing the government to acquire or consolidate reform legitimacy without engaging substantial innovation. By highlighting those key roles of PE, this paper provides a distinctive perspective for understanding the policy-making and reform process in China’s higher education development. (shrink)

What we regard as real are the objects of the phenomenal world which we perceive. We regard those that we see objectively, as in the third person perspective, as real. What then is the mind that pe...