The COVID-19 pandemic has forced higher education institutions to shift their teaching activities from traditional face-to-face to online learning. This brings a great challenge to the creativity training of vocational college students, who not only learn theoretical knowledge but also cultivate technical skills. Therefore, it is very important to explore the influencing factors of online learning on students’ creativity during the epidemic. By relying on the related literature review, an extensive model is developed by integrating the expectation confirmation model, technology (...) task fit model, and the technology acceptance model to illustrate key factors that influence creativity. Based on the proposed model, theory-based hypotheses are tested through structural equation modeling employing empirical data gathered through a survey questionnaire of 229 students from different vocational colleges in China. In addition, to extend the analysis results, this paper performs a comparative analysis based on gender. The findings demonstrate that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness significantly influence knowledge sharing; knowledge sharing significantly affects creativity. However, there is no substantial relationship between perceived usefulness and attitude, and no relationship between attitude and knowledge sharing. Moreover, a multi-group comparison shows that there is a significant gender difference between perceived ease of use and attitude. Based on the findings, theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

In order to alleviate the increasing employment pressure of vocational college students, the current study is an attempt to explore the factors of entrepreneurial intention affecting vocational college students. The study investigates whether entrepreneurial self-efficacy and attitude mediate this relationship between creativity and entrepreneurial intentions using the theory of planned behavior. In particular, this research also examines whether risk propensity moderates the relationship. An empirical survey is conducted and a total of 500 valid questionnaires are collected through online platforms. The (...) data is analyzed by employing Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling and SPSS20.0. The results indicate that self-efficacy is the strongest antecedent of entrepreneurial intention. Social support is found to directly influence entrepreneurial intention significantly, while the direct effect of creativity on intention is very marginal. Moreover, the results of the mediation analysis show that the relationship between creativity and entrepreneurial intention is fully mediated by self-efficacy and attitude, while the effect of social support on entrepreneurial intention is partially mediated. Specifically, the moderation effect of risk propensity on the relationship between creativity and entrepreneurial intention is acknowledged. Concrete suggestions are proposed for vocational colleges and governments to promote students’ entrepreneurial intentions. Finally, implications for the findings are provided. (shrink)

Movements of the Mind is about what it is to be an agent. Focusing on mental agency, it integrates multiple approaches, from philosophical analysis of the metaphysics of agency to the activity of neurons in the brain. Philosophical and empirical work are combined to generate concrete explanations of key features of the mind. The book should be relevant and accessible to philosophers and scientists interested in mind and agency.

I argue that when perception plays a guiding role in intentional bodily action, it is a necessary part of that action. The argument begins with a challenge that necessarily arises for embodied agents, what I call the Many-Many Problem. The Problem is named after its most common case where agents face too many perceptual inputs and too many possible behavioral outputs. Action requires a solution to the Many-Many Problem by selection of a specific linkage between input and output. In bodily (...) action the agent perceptually selects, and in this way perceptually attends to, relevant information so as to guide the execution of specific movements. Since perceptual attention is a necessary part of solving the Many-Many Problem, it is a necessary part of bodily action. Indeed, the process of implementing a solution to the Many-Many Problem, as constrained by the agent's motivational state, just is the agent's performing an intentional bodily action in the relevant way. (shrink)

Do self‐monitoring accounts, a dominant account of the positive symptoms of schizophrenia, explain auditory verbal hallucination? In this essay, I argue that the account fails to answer crucial questions any explanation of auditory verbal hallucination must address. Where the account provides a plausible answer, I make the case for an alternative explanation: auditory verbal hallucination is not the result of a failed control mechanism, namely failed self‐monitoring, but, rather, of the persistent automaticity of auditory experience of a voice. My argument (...) emphasizes the importance of careful examination of phenomenology as providing substantive constraints on causal models of the positive symptoms in schizophrenia. (shrink)

In Horton’s All or Nothing Problem, the agent has three options: a permissible act that saves no one, a wrongful act that saves only one child, or a supererogatory act that saves two children. Some may argue that if the agent is not going to save two children, she should save none rather than just one. However, this conclusion is counterintuitive. Although there are many proposed solutions to this problem, none of them provides a fully satisfactory answer. In this article, (...) I argue that it is plausible to accept the Individualist Obligation Principle according to which, the agent is morally permitted to fulfill a _prima facie_ obligation to save an individual in grave peril, provided that doing so demonstrates a substantial engagement with the individualized obligations to each individual involved. (shrink)

This article examines the ethical implications of embryo selection (ES) and gene editing (GE) in reproductive medicine through the lens of Pummer's Person-Affecting View (PAV). I argue that even if the edited embryo is not numerically identical to the unedited one, GE may still be ethically preferable to ES in certain scenarios. PAV assesses the moral permissibility of an action based on the balance of requiring reasons against and permitting reasons for it, from the perspective of particular individuals. I apply (...) PAV to ES/GE decisions, considering the expected happiness and suffering of potential future children. The permissibility of ES or GE depends on the nature of the genetic disorder and the balance of expected happiness and suffering in each case. (shrink)

Reflection on the fine-grained information required for visual guidance of action has suggested that visual content is non-conceptual. I argue that in a common type of visually guided action, namely the use of manipulable artefacts, vision has conceptual content. Specifically, I show that these actions require visual attention and that concepts are involved in directing attention. In acting with artefacts, there is a way of doing it right as determined by the artefact’s conventional use. Attention must reflect our understanding of (...) the function and appropriate ways to use these artefacts, understanding that requires possession of the relevant concept. As a result, we attend to the artefact’s relevant functional properties. In these cases, attention is structured by concepts. This discussion has a bearing on the dual visual stream hypothesis. While it is often held that the two visual streams are functionally independent, the argument of this essay is that the constraints on attention suggest a functional interaction between them. (shrink)

There is an ongoing debate about whether multifetal pregnancy reduction from twins to singletons (2-to-1 MFPR) is morally permissible. By applying the all or nothing problem to the cases of reducing twin pregnancies to singletons, Räsänen argues that an implausible conclusion seems to follow from two plausible claims: (1) it is permissible to have an abortion and (2) it is wrong to abort only one fetus in a twin pregnancy. The implausible conclusion is that women considering 2-to-1 MFPR for social (...) reasons ought to abort both fetuses rather than just one. To avoid the conclusion, Räsänen suggests that it is best to carry both fetuses to term and give one for adoption. In this article, I argue that Räsänen’s argument fails for two reasons: the inference from (1) and (2) to the conclusion rests on a bridge principle that does not work in certain circumstances, and there is good reason to reject the claim that it is wrong to abort only one fetus. (shrink)

Why should a lottery be used in the allocation of an indivisible good to which participants in the lottery have an equally strong claim? Stone argues that when indeterminacy arises, in which it is impossible to satisfy the equality condition requiring like cases to be treated alike, the impartiality principle suggests that the agent responsible for the allocation task should not intend to favor one over another on the basis of invalid reasons. In this article, I argue that the impartiality (...) principle is neither sufficient nor necessary to explain the fairness of lotteries. Instead, the fairness of lotteries is explained by the sanitizing effect that lotteries generate to screen out the reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation that claimants might otherwise have if they do not obtain the good in question. (shrink)

There is ongoing debate on how to fairly allocate scarce critical care resources to patients with COVID-19. The debate revolves around two views: those who believe that priority for scarce resources should primarily aim at saving the most lives (SML) or at saving the most life-years, and those who believe that public health should focus on health equity to address health disparities and social determinants of health. I argue that maximizing medical outcomes by saving the greatest number of patients is (...) not a plausible strategy for combating COVID-19. There are reasons of fairness to give each patient who can meet general eligibility requirements a chance of being saved. Rather than focusing on outcome maximization, a better solution would be the individualist lottery that takes account of probability of survival and duration of treatment. Although the individualist lottery allocates scarce resources in a fair way that is responsive to health equity concerns, it still gives considerable weight to the concern of SML. Thus, this procedure can be reasonably accepted by all key stakeholders. (shrink)

Collaboration requires agents to coordinate their behavior on the fly, sometimes cooperating to solve a single task together and other times dividing it up into sub‐tasks to work on in parallel. Underlying the human ability to collaborate is theory‐of‐mind (ToM), the ability to infer the hidden mental states that drive others to act. Here, we develop Bayesian Delegation, a decentralized multi‐agent learning mechanism with these abilities. Bayesian Delegation enables agents to rapidly infer the hidden intentions of others by inverse planning. (...) We test Bayesian Delegation in a suite of multi‐agent Markov decision processes inspired by cooking problems. On these tasks, agents with Bayesian Delegation coordinate both their high‐level plans (e.g., what sub‐task they should work on) and their low‐level actions (e.g., avoiding getting in each other's way). When matched with partners that act using the same algorithm, Bayesian Delegation outperforms alternatives. Bayesian Delegation is also a capable ad hoc collaborator and successfully coordinates with other agent types even in the absence of prior experience. Finally, in a behavioral experiment, we show that Bayesian Delegation makes inferences similar to human observers about the intent of others. Together, these results argue for the centrality of ToM for successful decentralized multi‐agent collaboration. (shrink)

In this article, I critique a moral argument developed in Frances Kamm’s Intricate Ethics: Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harm. The argument, which I label the Best Outcome Argument, aims to criticize the Taurekian idea that it is not worse if more people die than if fewer do in conflict situations, where it is hard to distinguish individuals from one another solely by reference to the relative strength of their claims. I argue that the Best Outcome Argument is flawed for three (...) reasons: the symmetry feature defined by the impartiality principle holds only in a limited class of conflict situations; individuals should be treated in a consistent way throughout the whole process of reasoning; comparative evaluations gained in different contexts, at least in some cases, cannot be used in one and the same argument. (shrink)

This paper studies two dual notions in module theory—namely, radicals and socles—from the standpoint of reverse mathematics. We first consider radicals of Z-modules, where the radical of a Z-module M is defined as the intersection of pM={px:x∈M} with p taken from all primes. It shows that ACA0 is equivalent to the existence of radicals of Z-modules over RCA0. We then study socles of modules over commutative rings with identity. The socle of an R-module M is the largest semisimple submodule of (...) M. We show that the existence of socles of modules over a commutative ring with identity is equivalent to ACA0 over RCA0. Vector spaces are semisimple modules over fields. In general, semisimple modules possess nice properties of vector spaces. Lastly, we study characterizations of semisimple modules over commutative rings using techniques of reverse mathematics. (shrink)

Autonomous vehicles have the potential to save tens of thousands of lives, but legal and social barriers may delay or even deter manufacturers from offering fully automated vehicles and thereby cost lives that otherwise could be saved. Moral philosophers use “thought experiments” to teach us about what ethics might say about the ethical behavior of AVs. If a manufacturer designing an AV decided to make what it believes is an ethical choice to save a large group of lives by steering (...) away from the large group towards a single individual, could the manufacturer be liable to that single individual? I believe the answer is yes. This article discusses famous “trolley problem” thought experiments in moral philosophy, which news articles have recently applied to AVs. After establishing a hypothetical case, applying product liability law to AV behavior may show a way, in some jurisdictions, that will permit a manufacturer to implement an ethical choice without triggering liability, but liability risk remains. I then turn to possible traditional defenses to see if they prevent liability for a manufacturer making what it believes is an ethical design choice—necessity, defense of self, and the sudden emergency doctrine. None of them provides an effective defense. Under current law, maximizing collision avoidance appears to minimize legal risk. I conclude that the only way to provide effective protection to a manufacturer seeking to implement ethical choices about AV behavior is through special legislation or regulation. (shrink)

In March 2010, China launched a pilot programme of deceased donor organ donation in 10 provinces and cities. However, the deceased donor donation rate in China remains significantly lower than in Spain and other Western countries. In order to provide incentive for deceased donor organ donation, five pilot provinces and cities have subsequently launched a financial compensation policy. Financial compensation can be considered to include two main forms, the ‘thank you’ form and the ‘help’ form. The ‘thank you’ form is (...) an expression of gratitude on behalf of the Red Cross Society of China for consenting to donation. The ‘help’ form is social welfare support for needy families. (shrink)

Grounded on the social exchange theory (SET), social cognitive theory (SCT), and self-determination theory (SDT), this study aims to explore the mediating role of self-efficacy (SE) and work engagement (WE) on the effect of social support (SS) on job satisfaction (JS) among Chinese ethnic minority kindergarten teachers (KTs). The results show that: (1) SS has a directly significant effect on JS; (2) WE mediates the relationship between SS and JS; and (3) SE mediates the relationship between SS and WE. Although (...) the mediation of SE on the relationship between SS and JS is not found, the posited multiple mediations of SE and WE on the relationship between SS and JS are totally accepted. The results reveal that SS mainland Chinese ethnic minority KTs received can not only have a direct effect on JS but also have an indirect impact through the one-path mediating role of WE and the chain mediating role of SE and WE. The results suggest that governments, supervisors, and sponsors should work together to provide ethnic minority KTs with more prioritized SS from both cultural psychology and financial material and opportunities for facilitating professional knowledge and skills in order to enhance their SE, inspire their WE, and eventually accumulate their JS. (shrink)

Three hundred and seventy-six middle school students in Wenchuan County were assessed three and one-half years after the Wenchuan earthquake to examine the effects of rumination on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and posttraumatic growth (PTG). The results revealed that recent intrusive ruminations partly mediated the relationship between intrusive rumination soon after the earthquake with PTSD but not with PTG. Recent deliberate rumination partly mediated the relationship between intrusive rumination soon after the earthquake and PTG but not PTSD. Moreover, recent deliberate (...) rumination also partly mediated the relationship between recent intrusive rumination with PTG but not with PTSD. Overall, intrusive rumination soon after the earthquake had an effect on PTSD but not on PTG through recent intrusive rumination and affected PTG but not PTSD through deliberate recent rumination. Furthermore, intrusive rumination soon after the earthquake affected PTG but not PTSD by recent deliberate rumination following recent intrusive rumination. More importantly, the present study also found that PTSD exhibited no relation to PTG. These results suggest that PTSD and PTG are influenced by different mechanisms, which further indicates that PTSD and PTG represent two separate dimensions of experience after adversity. (shrink)

This paper deals with the ethical perceptions of business people and the current state of business ethics in east China. After surveying 800 business people in 59 enterprises and interviewing 42 chief executive officers, chairs and senior managers among them, thefollowing conclusions can be drawn: First of all, business ethics has become a new and popular topic in east China. Second, quite a lotof business people are pessimistic about the ethical standards of their superiors and co-workers, and about the ethical (...) climate of theirenterprises. Third, more and more business leaders begin to realize the importance of business ethics. Finally, in east China, theestablishment of the market economy and the improvement of business ethics will depend on each other. In short, business peoplein east China have various ethical perceptions, and the current state of business ethics in east China is also complex and changeable. (shrink)

Only problems that cannot be solved without representational changes can be regarded as pure insight problems; others are classified as pseudo-insight problems. Existing studies using neuroimaging...

In his rich and provocative paper, Peter Carruthers announces two related theses: (a) a positive thesis that “central cognition is sensory based, depending on the activation and deployment of sensory images of various sorts” (Carruthers 2013) and (b) a negative thesis that the “central mind does not contain any workspace within which goals, decisions, intentions, or non-sensory judgments can be active” (Carruthers 2013). These are striking claims suggesting that a natural view about cognition, namely that explicit theoretical reasoning involves direct (...) operations over beliefs, is wrong. Our beliefs, on this natural view, interact with each other to yield new beliefs. If Carruthers is right, beliefs have only an indirect or mediated influence in cognition with sensory states playing the direct role. I think it an important feature of Carruthers’ discussion that he draws support from work on the neural circuits and mechanisms that subserve these processes. In what follows, I want to regis. (shrink)

Food safety problems in China, such as deadly tainted milk, have attracted growing attention from a corporate social responsibility perspective. To examine the forces that potentially drive CSR behavior within the Chinese food industry, our study is organized as follows. First, a review is conducted on the unique history of CSR in China as well as some of the major Chinese food scandals that have taken place. The primary drivers of CSR in China that have been suggested in the literature (...) are then summarized. Next, new institutional theory perspectives are drawn upon to analyze three forces that potentially affect the behavior of Chinese firms: coercive isomorphism, mimetic processes, and normative pressures. Based on a questionnaire survey of 164 Chinese managers and employees, the CSR behavior of firms operating in the Chinese food industry is found to only be significantly affected by the institutional factor of normative pressures. The study concludes with its limitations as well as the implications of the findings. (shrink)

The present study examined gender differences in the distribution of creative abilities through the lens of the greater male variability hypothesis, which postulated that men showed greater interindividual variability than women in both physical and psychological attributes. Two hundred and six undergraduate students in Hong Kong completed two creativity measures that evaluated different aspects of creativity, including: a divergent thinking test that aimed to assess idea generation and a creative problem-solving test that aimed to assess restructuring ability. The present findings (...) extended the research of greater male variability in creativity by showing that men generally exhibited greater variance than women in the overall distribution of the creativity scores in both divergent thinking and creative problem solving, despite trivial gender differences in mean scores. The findings further enriched the discourse of the greater male variability hypothesis by showing interesting domain-specific gendered patterns: greater male variability was more likely to occur in figural forms of creativity, with larger effect sizes, when compared to the variability in verbal forms of creativity; and mixed gendered patterns were found in the upper tails of the creativity score distribution with respect to the verbal domain but not the figural one, despite greater male representation being consistently observed in the lower tail of the distribution. Possible underlying mechanisms and implications were discussed. (shrink)

The Mohists develop the concept of yi 義 to denote what is morally right in a normative sense. We argue that this concept has, as one of its necessary conditions, a requirement to not harm others. Additionally, we will show that the motivation of developing this concept is that it can be both universalized and publicly agreed upon, thus serving the Mohists’ endeavor to overcome human conflicts that make the world chaotic and unlivable. We argue therefore that the Mohist notion (...) of gongyi 公義 is best captured by the requirement of “not harming.” Moreover, we shall show that the Mohists themselves committed to this requirement as the first principle of all their core doctrines. Finally, we argue that due to the justifiability and universalizability of the requirement of “not harming,” the Mohists’ commitment to it as a prerequisite normatively justifies their other values in a way that was unprecedented at the time. (shrink)

This study examines the relationship between principals’ leadership and student achievement. Based on the Programme for International Student Assessment 2015 United States data, a two-level...

Como forma de cuestionamiento social e ideológico, la modalidad parricida y alegórica se ha consolidado como una estética paradigmática en la narrativa contemporánea del Cono Sur. Caracterizadas por diversas posiciones identitarias, estas propuestas literarias dificultan la construcción de un lenguaje común. Bajo este contexto, el presente artículo realiza una revisión exhaustiva de las obras de autores como Andrés Neuman, Mauricio Electorat, Alejandra Costamagna, Lina Meruane y Patricio Pron, quienes exploran la reparación de los vínculos intersubjetivos. Como obra representativa de la (...) tendencia, Poeta chileno de Alejandro Zambra crea un denominador común y articula un espacio de consenso donde distintos sujetos se comunican poética y afectivamente. Con base en las tesis de teóricos como Jean-Luc Nancy, Laclau, Mouffe y Merleau-Ponty, se demuestra cómo esta novela configura una comunidad heterogénea y desbordada que encuentra sentidos universales a partir de las particularidades, lo que auspicia un consenso diferencial entre los sujetos a pesar de sus discrepancias. La relación entre el padrastro y el hijastro proyecta una mirada afectiva y empática hacia el Otro, al hallar lo trascendental en las experiencias fragmentarias, lo cual perpetúa la búsqueda de un sentido sólido en la posmodernidad. (shrink)

Hemodynamic response to motor execution (ME) and motor imagery (MI) was investigated using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). We used a 31 channel fNIRS system which allows non-invasive monitoring of cerebral oxygenation changes induced by cortical activation. Sixteen healthy subjects (mean-age 24.5 yeas) were recruited and the changes in concentration of hemoglobin were examined during right and left hand finger tapping tasks and kinesthetic MI. To suppress the systemic physiological interference, we developed a preprocessing procedure which prevents over-activated reporting in NIRS-SPM. (...) In the condition of ME, more activation was observed in the anterior part of the motor cortex including the pre-motor and supplementary motor area (pre-motor and SMA), primary motor cortex (M1) and somatosensory motor cortex (SMC; t (15) > 2.27), however, in the condition of MI, more activation was found in the posterior part of motor cortex including SMC ( t (15) > 1.81), which is in line with previous observations with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). (shrink)

Some researchers have recognized that privileged communities dominate the discourse on AI Ethics, and other voices need to be heard. As such, we identify the current ethics milieu as arising from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) contexts, and aim to expand the discussion to non-WEIRD global communities, who are also stakeholders in global sociotechnical systems. We argue that accounting for honor, along with its values and related concepts, would better approximate a global ethical perspective. This complex concept already underlies (...) some of the WEIRD discourse on AI ethics, but certain cultural forms of honor also bring overlooked issues and perspectives to light. We first describe honor according to recent empirical and philosophical scholarship. We then review “consensus” principles for AI ethics framed from an honor-based perspective, grounding comparisons and contrasts via example settings such as content moderation, job hiring, and genomics databases. A better appreciation of the marginalized concept of honor could, we hope, lead to more productive AI value alignment discussions, and to AI systems that better reflect the needs and values of users around the globe. (shrink)

Does context influence our appreciation of beauty? To answer this question, two experiments were conducted to determine the effect of contextual aesthetics on the recognition of moral behavior. Experiment 1 demonstrated that individuals in a high-aesthetic context had a quicker recognition time for moral behavior than those in a low-aesthetic context. In a low-aesthetic context, individuals recognize immoral behavior more quickly than in a high aesthetic context. Individuals showed greater recognition rates for moral behavior in a high aesthetic context and (...) higher recognition for immoral behaviors in a low aesthetic context for behavior with unclear information. Experiment 2 revealed that individual fixation counts were smaller under the conditions of high aesthetic context and moral behavior than under the conditions of low aesthetic context and moral behavior, indicating a correlation between low aesthetic context and immoral behavior. This study shows that high aesthetic context facilitates the recognition of moral behavior, which has implications for moral education. (shrink)

One prominent theory of fairness is John Broome's. This article identifies several problems with Broome's theory but defends Broome's claim that fairness requires the proportionate satisfaction of claims. This article also shows how Broome's conception of fairness is compatible with fairness as comparative desert.

Some of the authors of the essays on Chinese philosophers prefer the pin yin system of romanization for Chinese names and words, while others prefer the Wade‐Giles system. Given that both systems are in wide use today, important names and words are given in both their pin yin and Wade‐Giles formulations. The author's preference is printed first, followed by the alternative romanization within brackets.

Meiotic defects cause abnormal chromosome segregation leading to aneuploidy in mammalian oocytes. Chromosome segregation is particularly error‐prone in human oocytes, but the mechanisms behind such errors remain unclear. To explain the frequent chromosome segregation errors, recent investigations have identified multiple meiotic defects and explained how these defects occur in female meiosis. In particular, we review the causes of cohesin exhaustion, leaky spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC), inherently unstable meiotic spindle, fragmented kinetochores or centromeres, abnormal aurora kinases (AURK), and clinical genetic variants (...) in human oocytes. We mainly focus on meiotic defects in human oocytes, but also refer to the potential defects of female meiosis in mouse models. (shrink)

Drawing upon the General Learning Model, the present study developed a moderated mediation model to provide an in-depth understanding of whether and how adolescents’ reading prosocial content in books predicts their prosocial behavior. The target population in this study is Chinese adolescents, and we adopted a paper-based survey to collect data. The age range of the sample was from 12 to 19. Among all participants, 49.3% were female, and 50.7% were male. PROCESS SPSS Macro was used to analyze the proposed (...) moderated mediation model. The results showed that prosocial content reading was positively associated with adolescents’ prosocial behavior. The positive association included a direct relationship and an indirect relationship through the mediation of moral identity. Furthermore, this study revealed the moderation effect of age on the relationships among prosocial content reading, moral identity, and prosocial behavior. Specifically, as age increases, the effects of prosocial content reading on moral identity and prosocial behavior attenuate, and the mediation effect of moral identity also decreases. The study adds to the body of knowledge on the prosocial media effect by extending it to book reading. (shrink)

In The Pragmatics of Text Messaging: Making Meaning in Messages Michelle A. McSweeney seeks to explore the meaning to be found in the labyrinth of text messaging language, and offers explanations b...