Writing Chinese Laws: The Form and Function of Legal Statutes Found in the Qin Shuihudi Corpus. By Ernest Caldwell. Routledge Studies in Asian Law. New York: Routledge, 2018. Pp. x + 202. $149.24 ; $24.98.

A group of Qin documents inscribed on bamboo slips was acquired by the Yuelu Academy on the antique market in Hong Kong in 2007. Four of these manuscripts are criminal case records dated from the final decades before the unification of China by the state of Qin in 221 B.C. These texts shed light not only on the administration of justice on the eve of imperial unification but also on various aspects of social, economic, and cultural history and historical geography. (...) The present article reviews the recently published English translation of the Yuelu case records by Ulrich Lau and Thies Staack and discusses the value of these texts as historical source material. (shrink)

Chinese Annals in the Western Observatory: An Outline of Western Studies of Chinese Unearthed Documents. By Edward l. Shaughnessy. Library of Sinology, vol. 4. Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2019. Pp. xx + 485. $69 ; open access: https://www.degruyter.com/document/ doi/10.1515/9781501516948/html?lang=en.

Zusammenfassung Die Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie findet in insbesondere der deutschen Sportsoziologie fast keine Verwendung. Der Artikel plädiert für die Ausschöpfung ihrer sportsoziologischen Potenziale. Er argumentiert, dass das Potenzial der ANT insbesondere darin besteht, dass sie eine spezifische Sensibilität für die Instabilität bzw. für die Unwahrscheinlichkeit sozialer Ordnungsbildung aufweist: Indem sie erstens die Materialität des Sozialen und zweitens die beständige Dynamik des (materiellen) Sozialen berücksichtigen kann, kann die ANT nicht nur materiell basierte Ordnungsbildung, sondern in besonderer Weise auch die Unwahrscheinlichkeit (auch) materiell basierter (...) Ordnungsbildung in den Blick bekommen – und damit intersituative, materialitätsbasierte Herstellungen des Sozialen besonders gut nachverfolgen. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Mixed Martial Arts hat sich global und auch in Deutschland sukzessive zu einem sportkulturellen Mainstream-Phänomen entwickelt. Vorliegender Artikel untersucht die diskursiven und praktischen Logiken, nach denen sich das Feld des MMA organisiert. Der soziologische Blick auf MMA-Wettkämpfe zeigt, dass diese über körperlich relativ ungefährliche Performanzen eine Ästhetik körperlicher Gefährdung und darüber Vorstellungen von kämpferischer Authentizität herstellen. Basierend auf empirischem Material erweitert der Artikel den soziologischen Blick, indem er das MMA-Training untersucht. Auch hier finden, insbesondere in der Trainingspraxis des Sparrings, (...) praktische Konstruktionen von Vorstellungen kämpferischer Authentizität statt. Einerseits erfolgt dies darüber, dass die Praxiskonfiguration des Sparrings die kontrollierte Herstellung eines Erlebnisses kämpferischer Unkontrolliertheit ermöglicht. Andererseits erfolgt es darüber, dass die Praxiskonfiguration die Trainierenden ihr Kampftraining in spezifischer Weise als kämpferisch besonders radikal und endgültig erleben lässt. (shrink)

Demokratisierungsvorhaben sind auf Konzepte angewiesen, die Demokratieideale nicht leichtfertig preisgeben und alternative Möglichkeiten nicht grundsätzlich blockieren. Dabei sollten sie an bestehende Strukturen anknüpfen und die Entscheidungsfähigkeit politischer Gremien sowie die Zurechenbarkeit von Verantwortung erhalten können. Zugleich sollten sie die Qualität und den Einfluss öffentlicher Deliberation stärken und mobilisierbares politisches Engagement richtig einschätzen, ohne vorhandene Defizite als notwendige festzuschreiben. Auf der Grundlage einer Durchsicht von Gesellschafts-, Organisations-, Steuerungs- und Demokratietheorien skizziert Björn Thies ein solches Konzept, das an Arbeiten amerikanischer, britischer (...) und deutscher Autoren anknüpft. (shrink)

Ethics and dhamma for life based on Buddhist principles.

Rapid urbanization in Vietnam significantly impacts the environment and human well-being. Public parks are crucial for enhancing social and environmental sustainability in urban areas, yet their establishment and expansion require substantial funding. This study investigates the factors influencing Vietnamese urban residents’ willingness to donate to planting projects in public parks, utilizing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF), which combines Mindsponge Theory’s informational entropy-based notion of value with Bayesian analysis. Analyzing data from 535 residents in major Vietnamese cities, we found that while (...) men visit public parks more frequently, they are less willing to donate to planting projects. Older residents visit parks more often and are more willing to donate, while higher-income individuals show greater willingness to donate. Most motivations—such as relaxation, physical activities, nature enjoyment, socializing, and family time—are positively linked to park visit frequency and indirectly to donation willingness. However, only relaxation and enjoyment of nature are directly associated with willingness to donate. Interestingly, higher education levels and visiting parks for children’s educational activities are associated with lower donation willingness. These findings hint at the possible existence of the free-riding problem, gender inequality, ineffective environmental education, and lack of awareness of public parks’ natural value, as well as opportunities to cultivate an eco-surplus culture through nature interactions in public parks. (shrink)

On Gautama Buddha in relation to other religious founders.

Impacts of the economic development to the socio cultural changes in Vietnam.

Babygirl, You’ve Got This! Experiences of Black Girls and Women in the English Education System by April-Louise Pennant is a thought-provoking book that presents the narratives of Black British wom...

On the aesthetic tastes of the youth in Ho Chi Minh City.

In this collection of her provocative essays on Third World art and culture, award-winning filmmaker and theorist Trinh Minh-ha offers new challenges to Western regimes of knowledge. Bringing to her subjects an acute sense of the many meanings of the marginal, Trinh examines Asian and African texts, the theories of Barthes, questions of spectatorship, the enigmas of art, and the perils of anthropology. In one essay, taking off from ideas raised earlier by Zora Neale Hurston, Trinh considers with astonishment the (...) search by Western "experts" for the hidden values of a person or culture, a process of legitimized voyeurism that, she argues, ultimately equates psychological conflicts with depth , while inner experience is reduced to mere personal feeling. When the Moon Waxes Red is an extended argument against reductive analyses, even those that appear politically adroit. Feminist struggle is heterogeneous. The multiply-hyphenated peoples of color are not simply placed in a duality between two cultural heritages; throughout, Trinh describes the predicament of having to live "a difference that has no name and too many names already." She argues for multicultural revision of knowledge so that a new politics can transform reality rather than merely ideologize it. By rewriting the always emerging, already distorted place of struggle, such work seeks to "beat the master at his own game.". (shrink)

This study is an attempt to construct a quantitative link for international regimes with global leadership. The country's willingness to lead in solving global issues as the first mover in the formation of an international regime is measured and characterized by analyzing their ratification behavior in multilateral conventions deposited to the United Nations which shape of the global community. For this purpose, a set of quantitative indicators, the Index of Global Leadership Willingness and the Global Support Index, was defined and (...) calculated for each country based on its actual ratification year data for 120 multilateral conventions covering global issues such as peace and security, environment, commerce, communication, intellectual property protection, human rights, and labor. By proposing a framework of global leadership analysis, the study seeks to provide an empirical testing of the transformation of global governance towards cooperation without hegemony paradigm. The paper analyses changes in the leadership willingness indices of selected country groups, such as the G3, G7/8, and G20, over the century and finds that the will to drive the international agenda of these groups of leaders is in decline. Moreover, our study provides evidence to argue that our current world is actually without consistent global leadership across domains of the world affairs. Although several countries still show visible leadership in specific policy domains, such as environment and intellectual property, neither the G7/8 nor the G20 was playing a comparable role to those performed by the G3 a hundred years ago. (shrink)

This study aims to determine whether political connections and foreign investments influence the level of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosure among listed firms. To empirically explore these relationships, we utilized a novel dataset of 111 listed manufacturing firms on the HOSE stock exchange in Vietnam, covering the period from 2015 to 2022. Content analysis was conducted to assess the levels of ESG disclosure, while ordered logit and random effect estimators, along with several robustness checks, were applied to quantify the (...) impacts of political connections and foreign investments. Our findings reveal that foreign connections are positively correlated with higher levels of ESG disclosure, whereas politically connected firms are associated with negative impacts and lower levels of ESG disclosure compared to those with foreign connections. These results address the research questions effectively and contribute to the literature by offering an updated view of current ESG practices in Vietnam, an emerging economy with evolving ESG norms. The findings provide both theoretical and practical contributions to the understanding of ESG disclosure, with important implications for policy-makers and business leaders. (shrink)

In this note, we consider a Merton model for default risk, where the firm’s value is driven by a Brownian motion and a compound Poisson process.

This article provides a rationale for adopting the critical realism instead of pragmatism paradigm when researching skilled migrants' workplace integration in Australia. While the extant...

Recent conversation has blurred two very different social epistemic phenomena: echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Members of epistemic bubbles merely lack exposure to relevant information and arguments. Members of echo chambers, on the other hand, have been brought to systematically distrust all outside sources. In epistemic bubbles, other voices are not heard; in echo chambers, other voices are actively undermined. It is crucial to keep these phenomena distinct. First, echo chambers can explain the post-truth phenomena in a way that epistemic (...) bubbles cannot. Second, each type of structure requires a distinct intervention. Mere exposure to evidence can shatter an epistemic bubble, but may actually reinforce an echo chamber. Finally, echo chambers are much harder to escape. Once in their grip, an agent may act with epistemic virtue, but social context will pervert those actions. Escape from an echo chamber may require a radical rebooting of one's belief system. (shrink)

Games may seem like a waste of time, where we struggle under artificial rules for arbitrary goals. The author suggests that the rules and goals of games are not arbitrary at all. They are a way of specifying particular modes of agency. This is what make games a distinctive art form. Game designers designate goals and abilities for the player; they shape the agential skeleton which the player will inhabit during the game. Game designers work in the medium of agency. (...) Game-playing, then, illuminates a distinctive human capacity. We can take on ends temporarily for the sake of the experience of pursuing them. Game play shows that our agency is significantly more modular and more fluid than we might have thought. It also demonstrates our capacity to take on an inverted motivational structure. Sometimes we can take on an end for the sake of the activity of pursuing that end. (shrink)

Hostile epistemology is the study of how environmental features exploit our cognitive vulnerabilities. I am particularly interested in those vulnerabilities arise from the basic character of our epistemic lives. We are finite beings with limited cognitive resources, perpetually forced to reasoning a rush. I focus on two sources of unavoidable vulnerability. First, we need to use cognitive shortcuts and heuristics to manage our limited time and attention. But hostile forces can always game the gap between the heuristic and the ideal. (...) Second, we need to trust others, and trust makes us vulnerable. In particular, we need to trust experts whose expertise lies beyond our individual ability to vet. So we must rely on various imperfect signals and proxies, like institutional affiliation, to manage our trust. We are forced to use these imperfect and exploitable forms of reasoning, in order to cope with a cognitively overwhelming world. I present the hostile epistemology framework as a counterbalance to vice epistemology, which tends to locate responsibility for bad beliefs in the character of the believer. I draw two conclusions from my analysis. First: suppose we accept that that only communities and institutions can know about the world. This deeply social approach doesn’t solve the problem of expert identification. The individual still faces a problem: given their incomplete understanding, how should the individual pick which group to trust? Second: we might have hoped to get some kind of static picture of the right principles of reasoning — but hostile epistemology presents a different picture. We have to use risky heuristics and shortcuts, which hostile forces can game and exploit. We can respond by shifting to a different set of heuristics, but this simply shifts the location of our vulnerabilities. These new heuristics are also exploitable. There is no end to this, only a constant struggle to adapt. Limited beings in a hostile epistemic environment are locked in an unending epistemic arms race. (shrink)

Background: School meal programs are not only government initiatives but also community-driven efforts. Aiming to combat food insecurity among school-aged children effectively, these programs are executed in conjunction with food bank initiatives. Various community groups play a crucial role in the success of both food security initiatives. There is a need to improve community engagement to successfully link school meal programs with food banks to build program synergy, combating food insecurity through a two-sided approach. Aim: This study aims to examine (...) community engagement in school meals program by analyzing its purposeful focus on creating jobs and income-generating opportunities for different community groups, i.e., youths, women, and others. Methods: The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework, combining the reasoning strengths of Mindsponge theory and inference advantages of Bayesian analysis, was employed on a dataset of 126 government representatives who manage large-scale school meal programs in 126 different countries. Results: Findings showed that the school meals program’s purposeful focus on creating jobs and income-generating opportunities for women in the community was positively associated with community engagement, thereby supporting the linkage between the programs and food banks. In contrast, providing jobs and income-generating opportunities for youths and other community groups had an ambiguous association with community engagement in school meal programs. Conclusions: Findings underscore the importance of creating jobs and income-generating opportunities for women to improve community engagement in school meal programs. Formulating strategies that empower woman’s entrepreneurship may foster their involvement and engagement in school meal programs, promising to successfully link these programs with food bank initiatives among implementing countries. (shrink)

Tourism education plays a key role in shaping students’ engagement with sustainability by providing them with the knowledge and skills to address environmental challenges and encouraging them to promote sustainable practices in the industry. This study explores how four years of tourism education at Prince of Songkla University in Phuket, Thailand, influence students’ knowledge, attitudes, and intentions toward sustainability. Despite gaining theoretical knowledge of sustainability principles, the findings reveal a decline in students’ willingness to adopt environmental sustainability practices as their (...) years of education increase. This may reflect a disconnect between classroom lessons and practical application, potentially due to limited practical learning experiences and the prevalent “eco-deficit culture” within the tourism industry, which often prioritizes profit over environmental responsibility. As a result, students may filter out information regarding environmental sustainability despite their sustainability education at the university. To support long-term engagement in sustainability, the paper recommends revising curricula to include more experiential learning opportunities, interdisciplinary collaboration, and stronger partnerships with industry stakeholders. (shrink)

According to most accounts of trust, you can only trust other people (or groups of people). To trust is to think that another has goodwill, or something to that effect. I sketch a different form of trust: the unquestioning attitude. What it is to trust, in this sense, is to settle one’s mind about something, to stop questioning it. To trust is to rely on a resource while suspending deliberation over its reliability. Trust lowers the barrier of monitoring, challenging, checking, (...) and questioning. Trust sets up open pipelines between yourself and parts of the external world. Trust permits external resources to have a similar relationship to one as one’s internal cognitive faculties. This creates efficiency, but at the price of exquisite vulnerability. We must trust in this way because we are cognitively limited beings in a cognitively overwhelming world. Crucially, we can hold the unquestioning attitude towards objects and technologies. When I trust my climbing rope, I stop worrying about its reliability. When I trust my online calendaring system, I simply go to the events indicated, without question. But, one might worry, how could one ever hold such a normatively loaded attitude as trust towards mere objects? How could it ever make sense to feel betrayed by an object? Trust is our engine for expanding and outsourcing our agency — for binding external processes into our practical selves. Thus, we can be betrayed by our smartphones in the same way that we can be betrayed by our memory. When we trust, we try to make something a part of our agency, and we are betrayed when our part lets us down. To unquestioningly trust something is to let it in—to attempt to bring it inside one’s practical functioning. This suggests a new form of gullibility: agential gullibility, which occurs when agents too hastily and carelessly integrate external resources into their own agency. (shrink)

There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, we care about getting things right. On the other hand, we demand autonomy. We want appreciators to arrive at their aesthetic judgments through their own cognitive efforts, rather than deferring to experts. These two demands seem to be in tension; after all, if we want to get the right judgments, we should defer to the judgments of experts. The best explanation, I suggest, is (...) that aesthetic appreciation is something like a game. When we play a game, we try to win. But often, winning isn’t the point; playing is. Aesthetic appreciation involves the same flipped motivational structure: we aim at the goal of correctness, but having correct judgments isn’t the point. The point is the engaged process of interpreting, investigating, and exploring the aesthetic object. Deferring to aesthetic testimony, then, makes the same mistake as looking up the answer to a puzzle, rather than solving it for oneself. The shortcut defeats the whole point. This suggests a new account of aesthetic value: the engagement account. The primary value of the activity of aesthetic appreciation lies in the process of trying to generate correct judgments, and not in having correct judgments. -/- *There is an audio version available: look for the Soundcloud link, below.*. (shrink)

Using an institutional perspective, this paper investigates how consumers in Western developed and Southeast Asian emerging markets respond to fashion brands’ moral transgressions and how consumers’ moral rationalization tendencies vary across the two markets. The study employs multimethod analyses, including cross-national secondary data from 12 countries and experimental data from 940 German and Vietnamese consumers. In a non-transgression context, the multivariate analyses show that Western developed-market consumers embrace higher ethical standards (Study 1A), tend to seek collective action against prevalent immoral (...) behaviors in society (Study 1B), and are more critical in evaluating fashion brand ethicality than Southeast Asian emerging-market consumers (Study 2). However, in a transgression context, the moderated mediation analyses reveal that consumers largely do not differ in their direct devaluation of fashion brand ethicality and subsequent price considerations (Study 3) across six transgression scenarios (i.e., worker abuse, child labor, racist advertising, weight discrimination, climate change, and environmental pollution). Interestingly, moral rationalization processes appear to be more frequent and consequential in the Southeast Asian emerging market, while they either do not occur or are significantly weaker in the Western developed market. The results provide theoretical and practical implications for ethical business practices in the fashion industry based on market differences in regulatory frameworks, cognitive considerations, and social norms. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to ascertain the impact of data collecting awareness on perceived information security concerns and information-sharing behavior on social networking sites. Design/methodology/approach Based on communication privacy management theory, the study forecasted the relationship between information-sharing behavior and awareness of data collecting purposes, data collection tactics and perceived security risk using structural equation modeling analysis and one-way ANOVA. The sample size of 521 young social media users in Vietnam, ages 18 to 34, was made up of 26.7% men (...) and 73.3% women. When constructing the questionnaire survey method with lone source respondents, the individual’s unique awareness and experiences with using online social networks (OSNs) were taken into account. Findings The results of the investigation demonstrate a significant relationship between information-sharing and awareness of data collecting, perceptions of information security threats and behavior. Social media users have used OSN privacy settings and paid attention to the sharing restriction because they are concerned about data harvesting. Research limitations/implications This study was conducted among young Vietnamese social media users, reflecting specific characteristics prevalent in the Vietnamese environment, and hence may be invalid in other nations’ circumstances. Practical implications Social media platform providers should improve user connectivity by implementing transparent privacy policies that allow users to choose how their data are used; have clear privacy statements and specific policies governing the use of social media users’ data that respect users’ consent to use their data; and thoroughly communicate how they collect and use user data while promptly detecting any potential vulnerabilities within their systems. Originality/value The authors ascertain that the material presented in this manuscript will not infringe upon any statutory copyright and that the manuscript will not be submitted elsewhere while under Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society review. (shrink)

I propose to study one problem for epistemic dependence on experts: how to locate experts on what I will call cognitive islands. Cognitive islands are those domains for knowledge in which expertise is required to evaluate other experts. They exist under two conditions: first, that there is no test for expertise available to the inexpert; and second, that the domain is not linked to another domain with such a test. Cognitive islands are the places where we have the fewest resources (...) for evaluating experts, which makes our expert dependences particularly risky. -/- Some have argued that cognitive islands lead to the complete unusability of expert testimony: that anybody who needs expert advice on a cognitive island will be entirely unable to find it. I argue against this radical form of pessimism, but propose a more moderate alternative. I demonstrate that we have some resources for finding experts on cognitive islands, but that cognitive islands leave us vulnerable to an epistemic trap which I will call runaway echo chambers. In a runaway echo chamber, our inexpertise may lead us to pick out bad experts, which will simply reinforce our mistaken beliefs and sensibilities. (shrink)

Twitter makes conversation into something like a game. It scores our communication, giving us vivid and quantified feedback, via Likes, Retweets, and Follower counts. But this gamification doesn’t just increase our motivation to communicate; it changes the very nature of the activity. Games are more satisfying than ordinary life precisely because game-goals are simpler, cleaner, and easier to apply. Twitter is thrilling precisely because its goals have been artificially clarified and narrowed. When we buy into Twitter’s gamification, then our values (...) shift from the complex and pluralistic values of communication, to the narrower quest for popularity and virality. Twitter’s gamification bears some resemblance with the phenomena of echo chambers and moral outrage porn. In all these phenomena, we are instrumentalizing our ends for hedonistic reasons. We have shifted our aims in an activity, not because the new aims are more valuable, but in exchange for extra pleasure. (shrink)

Food security is one of the major concerns in the Philippines. Although livestock and poultry production accounts for a significant proportion of the country’s agricultural output, smallholder households are still vulnerable to food insecurity. The current study aims to examine how livestock production and selling difficulties affect smallholder households’ food-insecure conditions. For this objective, Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was employed on a dataset of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Data in Emergencies Monitoring (DIEM) system. We found that production and (...) selling difficulties significantly adversely affect food insecurity in the Philippines. However, their effects vary according to the severity of food insecurity. In particular, production and selling difficulties affect the households’ likelihood of eating less healthy and nutritious food equally. However, the production difficulties have more negligible impacts on the possibility of skipping meals and even ambiguous impacts on the likelihood of not eating for a whole day compared to the effects of selling difficulties. Moreover, we also found that the market plays a crucial role in facilitating not only livestock trading but also livestock production (e.g., purchase of feed and medicines). Based on these findings, we suggest that the livestock market needs to be expanded and regulated to maintain the balancing prices between livestock products and products and services used for livestock production, and facilitate the product-exchanging mechanism. (shrink)

In her BBC Reith Lectures on Trust, Onora O’Neill offers a short, but biting, criticism of transparency. People think that trust and transparency go together but in reality, says O'Neill, they are deeply opposed. Transparency forces people to conceal their actual reasons for action and invent different ones for public consumption. Transparency forces deception. I work out the details of her argument and worsen her conclusion. I focus on public transparency – that is, transparency to the public over expert domains. (...) I offer two versions of the criticism. First, the epistemic intrusion argument: The drive to transparency forces experts to explain their reasoning to non-experts. But expert reasons are, by their nature, often inaccessible to non-experts. So the demand for transparency can pressure experts to act only in those ways for which they can offer public justification. Second, the intimate reasons argument: In many cases of practical deliberation, the relevant reasons are intimate to a community and not easily explicable to those who lack a particular shared background. The demand for transparency, then, pressures community members to abandon the special understanding and sensitivity that arises from their particular experiences. Transparency, it turns out, is a form of surveillance. By forcing reasoning into the explicit and public sphere, transparency roots out corruption — but it also inhibits the full application of expert skill, sensitivity, and subtle shared understandings. The difficulty here arises from the basic fact that human knowledge vastly outstrips any individual’s capacities. We all depend on experts, which makes us vulnerable to their biases and corruption. But if we try to wholly secure our trust — if we leash groups of experts to pursuing only the goals and taking only the actions that can be justified to the non-expert public — then we will undermine their expertise. We need both trust and transparency, but they are in essential tension. This is a deep practical dilemma; it admits of no neat resolution, but only painful compromise. (shrink)

This anthology is based on a symposium in the series "Young Philosophy of Religion," jointly organized by the Catholic Academy in Berlin and the Research Institute for Philosophy Hanover. German text.

Today, many people have realized that the climate change and biodiversity loss issues lie in how and to what extent humans consume products for their lives in the Anthropocene era. Consumerism has pushed natural resource exploitation to its peak, and the depletion of resources is becoming increasingly prevalent. The beauty and personal care industry has a large market and high profits, especially in the high-income segment. However, this advantage also carries the risk of facing scrutiny, investigations, and criticism from civil (...) society organizations, environmental activists, and consumers. More than anyone else, the industry is vulnerable to the perils of unfavourable societal assessments, particularly the repercussions of consumer-led boycott actions. In this discourse, we suggest that, given the current circumstances, it is imperative for multinational beauty corporations to take a proactive role in allocating resources towards the development of sustainable agriculture practices. This entails not only advocating for the widespread adoption of environmentally conscious production methods but also dedicating efforts towards conducting research and innovation in the area of nature-friendly manufacturing techniques. Doing so will help demonstrate their commitment to the environment and actively provide convincing evidence to consumers of their social responsibility through emission reduction and biodiversity conservation activities. (shrink)

Buddhism is a typical example of “successful integration” in Vietnam in tradition and now it is considered as a candidate in the tendency of globalization. Buddhism is a part of the “three traditional religions” of Vietnam. This paper tries to explain the philosophical foundation for Vietnamese Buddhism together with the nation to enter globalization through three points: 1) Vietnamese Buddhism in multicultural tradition; 2) Religious-philosophy of Buddhism as sustainablepotential for integration in globalization; and 3) Buddhist potential with Vietnam in the (...) context of globalization. (shrink)

Games occupy a unique and valuable place in our lives. Game designers do not simply create worlds; they design temporary selves. Game designers set what our motivations are in the game and what our abilities will be. Thus: games are the art form of agency. By working in the artistic medium of agency, games can offer a distinctive aesthetic value. They support aesthetic experiences of deciding and doing. -/- And the fact that we play games shows something remarkable about us. (...) Our agency is more fluid than we might have thought. In playing a game, we take on temporary ends; we submerge ourselves temporarily in an alternate agency. Games turn out to be a vessel for communicating different modes of agency, for writing them down and storing them. Games create an archive of agencies. And playing games is how we familiarize ourselves with different modes of agency, which helps us develop our capacity to fluidly change our own style of agency. (shrink)

Real business cycle theory, as exemplified by Fischer Black's Business Cycles and Equilibrium, posits that business cycles are due to random?technology shocks,? and not to monetary, fiscal or other government policies. Rational expectations and complete markets are supposed to enable decision makers to avoid the costly mistakes that would otherwise result from policies that distort incentives to borrow and invest. This paper questions the assumptions of rational expectations and complete markets from an Austrian?school perspective. It argues that decision makers economize (...) on information costs by basing their plans at least in part on the actual prices observed in the course of doing business, and that government regulations have impinged on the evolution of markets, leaving them far from complete. (shrink)

Cet article se présente comme un questionnement sur l'attitude à prendre, de la part d'un pays francophone tel que le Vietnam, « lourd » de son passé colonial, et attentif à « rattraper » le train en marche de l'humanité entière, après tant de péripéties et de retard connus durant et à cause de ses temps de guerre. Attitude à adopter envers soi-même, envers l'Autre et l'autre culture. Pour ce, il s'appuie sur les quelques notions de l'interculturel, analyse la façon (...) dont le Vietnam a su gérer ses rapports à soi et à l'Autre, d'hier à aujourd'hui, et propose une attitude à adopter pour chaque pays, dans l'espace francophone et face à la mondialisation. Ce questionnement se veut d'être une voix parmi d'autres et non la seule voix représentative du VietnamThis article’s aim is to ask questions about the attitude that should be adopted by Vietnam, a French-speaking country bearing its "heavy" colonial past. After so many events and delays caused by the war, the country is now interested in catching up with the train represented by the rest of mankind which is moving forward. The question is thus to define the attitude Vietnam could adopt towards itself, towards the Other and the other culture. Thus, this article has made use of certain notions of interculturality, analyzed the way in which Vietnam has managed relations with itself and with the Other, and proposes an attitude for each country to adopt in the French-speaking Community and in reaction to globalization. The author wishes to be a voice among others and not the only voice representing Vietnam. (shrink)

Barth, K. Ludwig Feuerbach.--Löwith, K. L. Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie.--Bloch, E. Keim und Grundlinie; zu den Elf Thesen von Marx über Feuerbach.--Lorenz, R. Zum Ursprung der Religionstheorie Ludwig Feuerbachs.--Löwith, K. Vermittlung und Unmittelbarkeit bei Hegel, Marx und Feuerbach.--Glasse, J. Barth zu Feuerbach.--Barth, H.-M. Glaube als Projektion.--Sass, H.-M. Argumentationsfiguren in der Kritik an Ludwig Feuerbachs Religions- und Metaphysikkritik.--Bayer, O. Gegen Gott für den Menschen.--Kosing, A. Ludwig Feuerbachs materialistische Erkenntnistheorie.--Finger, O. Von der anthropologisch-materialistischen Religionskritik zur historisch-materialistischen Ideologieanalyse.--Rotenstreich, N. (...) Anthropologie und Sinnlichkeit.--Arvon, H. Feuerbach und die Theologie.--Schmidt, A. Feuerbachs Stellung in der Geschichte des Materialismus.--Thies, E. Philosophie und Wirklichkeit; die Hegelkritik Ludwig Feuerbachs.--Rohrmoser, G. Warum sollen wir uns für Feuerbach interessieren? (shrink)