In recent years, copyright governance for short videos has become a hot issue of common concern in the academic community and the industry. Therefore, this study intends to explore the economic aspect of copyright governance in relation to the proliferation of infringing short videos. The short video industry of China has been taken as a case to demonstrate the copyright governance issue. Transaction cost theory has been applied to analyze the economic aspect of copyright governance in terms of four dimensions: (...) bounded rationality, opportunism, environmental uncertainty, and asset specificity. From the perspective of transaction cost economics, the problem of short video infringement is observed to be essentially a market failure due to high transaction costs. In the short video market, substantial transaction costs are incurred in the legal transaction of copyright with these costs considered to be too high. This is especially the case when transaction costs exceed the net proceeds initially expected by short video users from the authorization, making it impossible to carry out the transaction and leading to infringement. To effectively control the copyright infringement of short videos, it is necessary to build a cross-platform information-sharing mechanism to reduce search costs, establish a unified copyright management platform to reduce coordination costs, and give full attention to the role of technical support to reduce regulatory costs. (shrink)

Forgiveness interventions benefit victims’ mental health, reduce levels of anger, and promote forgiveness. However, forgiveness interventions are rarely used to improve the offender’s anger and mental health, especially in specific situations such as juvenile correctional facilities. The offender is often also a victim, and reducing the offender’s excessive anger may prevent or decrease the likelihood of future interpersonal violence. This study examined the effects of forgiveness interventions on anger, forgiveness, empathy, and harmony of juvenile delinquents with high levels of trait (...) anger. Eighteen adolescents with trait anger in a juvenile correctional facility volunteered to participate in group counseling. A pretest–posttest method of quasi-experimental design was used, with 8 participants in the intervention group and 10 in the control group; the intervention group received forgiveness group counseling, and the control group did not. The results revealed that the intervention group had significantly higher scores for forgiveness, empathy, and harmony than the control group, although no significant differences in the scores of state and trait anger were found. The forgiveness intervention had significantly improved the levels of forgiveness toward specific perpetrators of childhood victimization for the juvenile delinquents with high levels of trait anger, raising their levels of empathy and harmony; there was no significant increase in trait anger. The findings indicated that forgiveness intervention provides an effective way to improve the positive mental strength of adolescents with high levels of trait anger. (shrink)

Hormonal changes across the menstrual cycle have been shown to influence reward-related motivation and impulsive behaviors. Here, to compare neural mechanisms of cognitive impulse control during the mid-luteal phase (LP) versus during the late follicular phase (FP), we employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with an event-related monetary delay discounting (EMDD) behavioral task (study 1) and then employed resting state (RS)-fMRI (study 2). The imaging data were analyzed and related to behavior-associated neural activation. In study 1, women in the late (...) FP showed a preference for sooner rewards while exhibiting enhanced activity in the dorsal striatum (DS), whereas women in the mid-LP showed a preference for delayed, higher-value rewards with enhanced activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). Discount rate (transformed k) in the EMDD task correlated with functional connectivity (FC) of the DS-dlPFC circuitry, consistent with the possibility that DS-dlPFC circuitry may regulate impulsivity. In study 2, the right dlPFC was significantly more active in mid-LP than in late FP, and this effect was sensitive to estradiol (E2) and relative E2 levels during mid-LP. The magnitude of DS-dlPFC FC correlated negatively with psychometric impulsivity scores during the late FP. These results replicated findings from study 1 and further indicated that relative E2 levels may play an important role in increasing cognitive control during the mid-LP, which provides new insight into the treatment of conditions characterized by hyper-impulsivity, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, Parkinson disease, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In conclusion, our results suggest that cyclical gonadal hormones affect cognitive control on impulsive behavior periodically, possibility via DS-dlPFC circuitry. (shrink)

Studies have shown that performance‐dependent monetary rewards facilitate visual perception. However, no study has examined whether such a positive effect is limited to the rewarded task or may be generalized to other tasks. In the current study, two groups of people were asked to perform two visual perception tasks, one being a reward‐relevant task and the other being a reward‐irrelevant task. For the reward‐relevant task, the experimental group received performance‐dependent monetary rewards, whereas the control group did not. For the reward‐irrelevant (...) task, both groups were not rewarded. The two tasks were randomly intermixed trial by trial (Experiment 1) or presented block by block (Experiment 2) or session by session (Experiments 3a, 3b, and 3c). Results showed that performance‐dependent monetary rewards improved participants' performance on the relevant task in all experiments and impaired their performance on the irrelevant task in Experiments 2, 3a, 3b, and 3c. These results suggested that monetary rewards might incur a cost on reward‐irrelevant tasks. Finally, the benefit of monetary rewards disappeared when they were no longer provided during the final session. This is the first study that reveals both the bright and dark sides of the performance‐dependent monetary rewards in visual perception. (shrink)

This study explores the characteristics of forgiveness in the aging cohorts, which is regarded to be associated with healthy outcomes. Data were drawn from a sample of 308 older adults who completed the forgiveness questionnaire: forgiving others of The Heartland Forgiveness Scale to examine explicit forgiveness, and among the participants, 44 older adults were administrated on the variant single category of implicit association test to examine the implicit forgiveness. The results revealed that there is no correlation between explicit forgiveness and (...) implicit forgiveness of older adults. The result of explicit forgiveness is relatively high while that of implicit forgiveness is relatively low. There was no significant correlation between explicit forgiveness and age, but there was significant difference between age groups, as forgiveness tendency of the elderly had a trough in the age group of 70–79 and then rebounded. Implicit forgiveness was significantly correlated with age, and the difference between age groups was marginal. The forgiveness tendency of the elderly over 80 years old was significantly higher than that of the other two age groups. Gender differences are found in both explicit and implicit forgiveness. The findings indicated that explicit and implicit measures in this study have assessed independent and complementary aspects of forgiveness tendency in older adults. Implicit forgiveness falls behind explicit forgiveness, and true internal forgiveness is difficult and rare in older adults according to data analysis. The trend of explicit forgiveness with age is not obvious, because explicit forgiveness in the middle old age group presents an inflection point. However, implicit forgiveness increases slowly with age. Women excel men in scores obtained with both explicit and implicit measures for forgiveness. (shrink)

A debunking argument contends that some target moral judgments were produced by unreliable processes and concludes that such judgments are unjustified. Debunking arguments face a regress challenge: to show that a process is unreliable at tracking the moral truth, we need to rely on other moral judgments. But we must show that these relied-upon judgments are also reliable, which requires yet a further set of judgments, whose reliability needs to be confirmed too, and so on. Some argue that the debunker (...) faces an insurmountable regress, which disables the debunking conclusion. In this paper, I explore and defuse this regress challenge. (shrink)

A discussion on antiquity with Anthony A. Long, one of the most distinguished scholars in the field of ancient philosophy, would be engaging in any case. All the more so, since his two recently published works, Greek Models of Mind and Self and How to be Free: An Ancient Guide to the Stoic Life, provide the opportunity to revisit key issues of ancient philosophy. The former is a lively and challenging work that starts with the Homeric notions of selfhood, (...) and leads the reader all the way through classical and Hellenistic philosophical psychology; the latter is a profound analysis of the Stoic ethics that focuses in particular on its foundation and principles, followed by Long’s re-worked translation of Epictetus’ Encheiridion and carefully selected parts of his Discourses. Anthony Long kindly accepted the invitation to discuss several issues that are in the core of scholarly concern, sharing interpretations and thoughts that originate from his long acquaintance with the ancient literary tradition. (shrink)

Responsibility is often thought of as primarily a legal concept. Even when it is moral responsibility that is at issue, it is assumed that it is above all in moralities based on law-centered patterns and models that responsibility takes center stage, so that responsibility is a legal concept at its core, and is applicable to the realm of private morality only by extension and analogy.

We began with three propositions: that people have a right not to be treated as mere means to the ends of others, that a woman who voluntarily becomes pregnant nevertheless has the right to an abortion, and that a woman who voluntarily gives birth does not have a right to abandon her child until she finds a substitute caretaker. These propositions initially seemed inconsistent, for the prohibition on treating others as mere means appeared to rule out the possibility of positive (...) rights, thus making it impossible to countenance the right to abort or the right not to be abandoned . But we have seen that the prohibition on treating people as mere means to the ends of others is best understood as ruling out basic positive rights while permitting derivative ones. Since a willing mother is responsible for bringing her child into the world in the first place, she cannot abandon it without violating its negative right not to be killed, and so such a child has a derivative positive right not to be abandoned. A pregnant woman, on the other hand, has a negative right not to have her body invaded, and from this negative right derives a positive right to abort her fetus, so long as doing so is not disproportionate to the seriousness of the threat . Therefore, far from being in conflict, propositions , , and have been shown to be in harmony with one another, the latter two being plausibly grounded in the first. Insofar as we have reason to accept , then, we have reason to accept and . Moreover, we have seen that a proper understanding of allows us to embed and in a larger moral perspective in which the limits of compulsory altruism are firmly drawn: enforceable rights to the use or assistance of others may be allowed into the moral domain only if they are “sponsored” by some negative right. Every putative positive right must find such a sponsor, or perish. (shrink)

Libertarianism needs a theory of class. This claim may meet with resistance among some libertarians. A few will say: “The analysis of society in terms of classes and class struggles is a specifically Marxist approach, resting on assumptions that libertarians reject. Why should we care about class?” A greater number will say: “We recognize that class theory is important, but libertarianism doesn't need such a theory, because it already has a perfectly good one.”.

J. S. Mill's distinction between higher and lower pleasures is often thought to conflict with his commitment to psychological and ethical hedonism: if the superiority of higher pleasures is quantitative, then the higher/lower distinction is superfluous and Mill contradicts himself; if the superiority of higher pleasures is not quantitative, then Mill's hedonism is compromised.

I answer Alvin Plantinga's challenge to provide a ‘proper’ de jure objection to religious belief. What I call the ‘sophisticates’ evidential objection' concludes that sophisticated Christians lack epistemic justification for believing central Christian propositions. The SEO utilizes a theory of epistemic justification in the spirit of the evidentialism of Richard Feldman and Earl Conee. I defend philosophical interest in the SEO against objections from Reformed epistemology, by addressing Plantinga's criteria for a proper de jure objection, his anti-evidentialist arguments, and the (...) relevance of ‘impulsional evidence’. I argue that no result from Plantinga-style Reformed epistemology precludes the reasons I offer in favour of giving the SEO its due philosophical attention. (shrink)

Philosophy of Religion for a New Century represents the work of nineteen scholars presented at a conference in honor of Eugene T. Long at the University of South Carolina, April 5-6, 2002. This volume is a good example of philosophy in dialogue; there is both respect and genuine disagreement. First, an account of our present situation in the Philosophy of Religion is given, leading to a discussion of the very idea of a 'Christian Philosophy' and the coherence of the (...) traditional concept of God. The implications of science and a concern for the environment in our concepts of God are carefully examined. A discussion follows on the possibility of speech about God and silence about God. Since much of modern European philosophy is concerned with the `Death of God' theme, the positions of Nietzsche and some of his twentieth-century interpreters are presented. There are presentations on Feminist Approaches to Philosophy of Religion, and Comparative Religion is examined in relation to cultures and the demands of rationality. The volume concludes with a critical dialogue on the relation of Religious Discourse to the Public Sphere. Developing global awareness has led to significant change in the Philosophy of Religion. One-dimensional approaches have given way to honest dialogue. The traditional boundaries between the secular and the religious have shifted, and new approaches to traditional problems are required. This volume presents examples of these new approaches. (shrink)

The philosophy of Epictetus, a freed slave in the Roman Empire, has been profoundly influential on Western thought: it offers not only stimulating ideas but practical guidance in living one's life. A. A. Long, a leading scholar of later ancient philosophy, gives the definitive presentation of the thought of Epictetus for a broad readership. Long's fresh and vivid translations of a selection of the best of Epictetus' discourses show that his ideas are as valuable and striking today as (...) they were amost two thousand years ago. This is a book for anyone interested in what we can learn from ancient philosophy about how to live our lives. (shrink)

Volume 1 presents the texts in new translations by the authors, and these are accompanied by a philosophical and historical commentary designed for use by all readers, including those with no background in the classical world. With its glossary and indexes, this volume can stand alone as an independent tool of study.

A. A. Long, one of the world's leading writers on ancient philosophy, presents eighteen essays on the philosophers and schools of the Hellenistic and Roman periods--Epicureans, Stoics, and Sceptics. The discussion ranges over four centuries of innovative and challenging thought in ethics and politics, psychology, epistemology, and cosmology.

For the past three decades A. A. Long has been at the forefront of research in Hellenistic philosophy. In this book he assembles a dozen articles on Stoicism previously published in journals and conference proceedings. The collection is biased in favour of Professor Long's more recent studies of Stoicism and is focused on three themes: the Stoics' interpretation of their intellectual tradition, their ethics and their psychology. The contents of the book reflect the peculiarly holistic and systematic features (...) of Stoicism. The papers are printed here in their original form for the most part, but the author has made some minor corrections and stylistic or bibliographical changes. He has also added a postscript to three papers whose topics have been the subject of much discussion during the years since they first appeared. (shrink)

A. A. Long’s study of Greek notions of mind and human selfhood is anchored in questions of universal interest. What happens to us when we die? How is the mind or soul related to the body? Are we responsible for our own happiness? Can we achieve autonomy? Long shows that Greek thinkers’ modeling of the mind gave us metaphors that we still live by.

I offer a novel analysis of the relations between Aristotle's three species of desire – appetite, temper, and wish – and the three things he says in EN 2.3 lead to pursuit – the pleasant, the beneficial, and the noble. It has long been tempting to think that these trios line up with one another in some way, ideally relating their members in one-to-one fashion. One account, by John Cooper, has gathered prominent adherents, but other authors, notably Giles Pearson, (...) have argued we should give up on even trying to correlate the two trios. I attempt to show that the two trios do relate in interesting ways, but not in a way that correlates their members in a one-to-one fashion. Instead, I argue that both appetite and temper are ultimately for the pleasant, while all things that an agent takes as objects of wish are conceived of as either pleasant, beneficial, or noble. This account conflicts with a dominant understanding of the species of desire as differentiated by their objects. I defend the view by showing that there is a second criterion for differentiating the species of desire. (shrink)

As machine learning informs increasingly consequential decisions, different metrics have been proposed for measuring algorithmic bias or unfairness. Two popular “fairness measures” are calibration and equality of false positive rate. Each measure seems intuitively important, but notably, it is usually impossible to satisfy both measures. For this reason, a large literature in machine learning speaks of a “fairness tradeoff” between these two measures. This framing assumes that both measures are, in fact, capturing something important. To date, philosophers have seldom examined (...) this crucial assumption, and examined to what extent each measure actually tracks a normatively important property. This makes this inevitable statistical conflict – between calibration and false positive rate equality – an important topic for ethics. In this paper, I give an ethical framework for thinking about these measures and argue that, contrary to initial appearances, false positive rate equality is in fact morally irrelevant and does not measure fairness. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to trace the main developments in Greek philosophy during the period which runs from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.c. to the end of the Roman Republic. These three centuries, known to us as the Hellenistic Age, witnessed a vast expansion of Greek civilization eastwards, following Alexander's conquests; and later, Greek civilization penetrated deeply into the western Mediterranean world assisted by the political conquerors of Greece, the Romans. But philosophy throughout this (...) time remained a predominantly Greek activity. The most influential thinkers in the Hellenistic world were Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics. This book gives a concise critical analysis of their ideas and their methods of thought. The last book in English to cover this ground was written sixty years ago. In the interval the subject has moved on, quite rapidly since the last war, but most of the best work is highly specialized. There is a clear need for a general appraisal of Hellenistic philosophy which can provide those who are not specialists with an up-to-date account of the subject. Hellenistic philosophy is often regarded as a dull product of second-rate thinkers who are unable to stand comparison with Plato and Aristotle. This book will help to remove such misconceptions and arouse wider interest in a field which is fascinating both historically and conceptually. (shrink)

A. G. Long presents a new account of the importance of conversation in Plato's philosophy.

This comprehensive sourcebook makes available in the original Latin and Greek the principal extant texts required for the study of the Stoic, Epicurean and sceptical schools of philosophy. The material is organized by schools, and within each school topics are treated thematically. The volume presents the same texts (with some additional passages) as are translated in The Hellenistic Philosophers, Volume 1. The authors provide their own critical apparatus, and also supply detailed notes on the more difficult texts. This volume is (...) equipped with a large annotated bibliography. (shrink)

This study examined the relationship between CEO ethical leadership and corporate social responsibility by focusing on the mediating role of organizational ethical culture and the moderating role of managerial discretion. Based on a sample of 242 domestic Chinese firms, we found that CEO ethical leadership positively influences corporate social responsibility via organizational ethical culture. In addition, moderated path analysis indicated that CEO founder status strengthens while firm size weakens the direct effect of CEO ethical leadership on organizational ethical culture and (...) its indirect effect on corporate social responsibility. Theoretical and managerial implications of these results are discussed. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is to further a discussion of codes of ethics as institutionalized organizational structures that extend some form of legitimacy to organizations. The particular form of legitimacy is of critical importance to our analysis. After reviewing various theories of legitimacy, we analyze the literature on how legitimacy is derived from codes of ethics to discover which specific form of legitimacy is gained from their presence in organizations. We content analyze a sample of codes to consider the (...) question of whether a strategic, self-interested rationale lies behind the adoption of a code of ethics. We propose that the process of employing codes of ethics in this strategic manner has become, through isomorphism, an institutionalized practice that itself confers a cognitive form of legitimacy to the organization and further distances the codes from their moral foundation. (shrink)

A 1999 Companion to Greek philosophy, invaluable for new readers, and for specialists.

Responsible innovation (RI), also termed Responsible Research and Innovation, has emerged due to increasing concern over how to integrate ethical and societal values into research and innovation policy and governance (Von Schomberg 2013), in response to questioning of the societal role of science as well as populist resurgence in some countries (Long and Blok 2017a). Within a RI approach, innovators must consider three dimensions of responsibility, including the dimensions of (1) ‘avoiding harm’ to people and the planet, (2) ‘doing (...) good’ through the offering of innovations that foster sustainable development, and (3) the development of facilitative global governance schemes (Voegtlin and Scherer 2017). (shrink)

The original publication was an important spur to the subsequent renewal of interest in the study of stoicism, and is here reprinted not only because literature on the subject is still scarce, but because it has continued to be heavily referred to long after it had gone out of print. The ten essays were presented at a seminar at the University of London. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Berkeley, Hume, and Russell rejected the traditional analysis of substances in terms of qualities which are supported by an "unknowable substratum." To them the proper alternative seemed obvious. Eliminate the substratum in which qualities are alleged to inhere, leaving a bundle of coexisting qualities--a view that we may call the Bundle Theory or BT. But by rejecting only part of the traditional substratum theory instead of replacing it entirely, Bundle Theories perpetuate certain confusions which are found in the Substratum Doctrine. (...) I examine two major types of BT developed by Russell and by G. F. Stout with the intention of showing that (1) the seemingly innocuous concept of "a quality" employed by these versions cannot be used to state their theories coherently, and (2) the fatal problems that the BT encounters point to a more satisfactory and interesting alternative to both the Substratum Doctrine and the BT. This is a view that I call the Qualified Particulars Theory. In a final section I draw morals from this discussion that apply to the analogous Humean view that a mind is a "bundle of perceptions and sensations.". (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The ubiquity of family dominated firms in economies worldwide suggests that inquiry into the nature of the ethical frames of these types of firms is increasingly important. In the context of a social exchange approach and the norm of reciprocity, this manuscript addresses social cohesion in a dominant family firm coalition. It is argued that the factors underlying this cohesion, direct versus indirect reciprocity, shape unique attributes of family firms such as intentions for transgenerational sustainability, the pursuit of non-economic goals, (...) and strong interpersonal ties. Exchange structures, represented by direct and indirect reciprocity, lead family and non-family firms toward development of distinctive ethical frames of reference. (shrink)

A. A. Long; VI*—The Logical Basis of Stoic Ethics, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 71, Issue 1, 1 June 1971, Pages 85–104, https://doi.org/10.10.

Ethical consumption is on the rise, however little is known about the degree and the implications of the sometime conflicting sets of values held by the broad category of consumers who report consuming ethically. This paper explores convergence and divergence of ethical consumption values through a study of organic, fair trade, and local food consumers in Colorado. Using survey and focus group results, we first examine demographic and attitudinal correlates of ethical consumption. We then report evidence that while many organic, (...) fair trade, and local food consumers converge around similar values, some Colorado consumers support only local food, while opposing the consumption of organic and fair trade products. Next, we investigate how ethical consumers who converge and diverge frame their commitment to consuming ethically. The discussion and conclusion suggest that community development planners of projects that focus on ethical consumption will need to successfully traverse issues stemming from convergence and divergence to enjoy long-term sustained success. (shrink)

Responsible innovation (RI), also termed Responsible Research and Innovation, has emerged due to increasing concern over how to integrate ethical and societal values into research and innovation policy and governance (Von Schomberg 2013), in response to questioning of the societal role of science as well as populist resurgence in some countries (Long and Blok 2017a). Within a RI approach, innovators must consider three dimensions of responsibility, including the dimensions of (1) ‘avoiding harm’ to people and the planet, (2) ‘doing (...) good’ through the offering of innovations that foster sustainable development, and (3) the development of facilitative global governance schemes (Voegtlin and Scherer 2017). (shrink)

Death and immortality played a central role in Greek and Roman thought, from Homer and early Greek philosophy to Marcus Aurelius. In this book A. G. Long explains the significance of death and immortality in ancient ethics, particularly Plato's dialogues, Stoicism and Epicureanism; he also shows how philosophical cosmology and theology caused immortality to be re-imagined. Ancient arguments and theories are related both to the original literary and theological contexts and to contemporary debates on the philosophy of death. The (...) book will be of major interest to scholars and students working on Greek and Roman philosophy, and to those wishing to explore ancient precursors of contemporary debates about death and its outcomes. (shrink)

Jeremy Bentham was a British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer. He is regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism.

Three times in Book 1 chapter 13 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says desire partakes of reason in a way. There is a consensus view in the literature about what that claim means: desire has no intrinsic rationality, but can partake of reason by being blindly obedient to the commands of reason. I argue this consensus view is mistaken: for Aristotle, adult human desire has its own intrinsic rationality, and while it is to be obedient to reason, it is not (...) blind obedience, for when reason tells desire to obey, it includes an explanation supporting its order which desire can at least potentially understand. Thus, the nature of human desire, and also of the characteristic interaction of desire and reason, is much different than it is standardly taken to be. (shrink)