ABSTRACT This study investigated the influence of different emotions and social consensus on moral decision-making using a mixed 2 × 2 experimental design. The results showed that the main effect of social consensus was significant: the moral decision-making level of participants under the condition of low social consensus was lower than that of participants under the condition of high social consensus, while no main effect of emotion emerged. Second, the results showed that emotion and social consensus have interactive effects on (...) moral decision-making. When social consensus was high, there was no significant difference in moral decision-making between individuals with positive emotions and individuals with negative emotions. When social consensus was low, individuals with negative emotions were more likely to make immoral decisions than individuals with positive emotions. These results reveal that emotion and social consensus work together in affecting moral decision-making. (shrink)

Reprint of Volume XVII in Probsthain's Oriental Series. With a Chinese index and an index of names and references. The Book of Lord Shang was probably compiled sometime between 359 and 338 BCE. Along with the Han Fei-Tzu, it is one of the two principal sources of Legalism, a school of Chinese political thought. Legalism asserts that human behavior must be controlled through written law rather than through ritual, custom or ethics because people are innately selfish and ignorant. The (...) law is not effective when it is based on goodness or virtue; it is effective when it compels obedience. This is essential to preserve the stability of the State. Roscoe Pound recommended this book for the study of old Chinese law in Outlines of Lectures on Jurisprudence (5th ed.) 235. (shrink)

Shang, Yang. The Book of Lord Shang. A Classic of the Chinese School of Law. Translated from the Chinese with Introduction and Notes by Dr. J.J.L. Duyvendak.

Compiled in China in the fourth-third centuries B.C.E., The Book of Lord Shang argues for a new powerful government to penetrate society and turn every man into a diligent tiller and valiant soldier. Creating a "rich state and a strong army" will be the first step toward unification of "All-under-Heaven." These ideas served the state of Qin that eventually created the first imperial polity on Chinese soil. In this new translation, The Book of Lord Shang's intellectual boldness and (...) surprisingly modern-looking ideas shine through, underscoring the text's vibrant contribution to global political thought. The Book of Lord Shang is attributed to the political theorist Shang Yang and his followers. It epitomizes the ideology of China's so-called Legalist School of thought. In the ninety years since the work's previous translation, major breakthroughs in studies of the book's dating and context have recast our understanding of its messages. This edition applies these advances to a whole new reading of the text's content and function in the sociopolitical life of its times and subsequent centuries. This fully annotated translation is ideal for newcomers to the book while also guiding early Chinese scholars and comparatists in placing the work within a timeline of influence. It highlights the text's practical success and its impact on the political thought and political practice in traditional and modern China. (shrink)

In this paper, drawing on Husserl, as well as on certain other phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty and Richir, I claim that the phenomenon of the apprehension of the perspectives and emotions of literary characters deserves to be called literary empathy. In order to support this claim, I’ll firstly argue that empathy is principally an act of presentification closely related with perception, memory and imagination. Secondly, I’ll argue that literary empathy with literary characters is an imaginative reproduction of the reader’s bodily (...) sedimentations under the instruction offered by the literary text. Thirdly, I’ll argue that through literary empathy, a reader forms a peculiar intersubjective link with the literary character. The subjects in play are thus the real existential “I” and the imagined Other. Asymmetry of existence-positing and lack of interaction do not prevent the imagined characters from exerting an effective influence upon the reader and reconfiguring her actual life. (shrink)

This paper provides an account of the experience of empathizing with the fictional characters of literary works, through the lens of Husserl's theory of presentification. Via a critical analysis of Husserl and other phenomenologists, I argue that fictional characters, though lacking embodied presence, can be presentified to the reader in the mode of "as if." Moreover, I claim that imaginative empathy is a guided creative reproduction of sedimented past bodily experiences. This explains why, motivated by imaginative empathetic presentification, not only (...) aesthetic feelings, but also "as if" existential feelings come to the fore. Finally, it shows to what extent presentation and the different modes of presentification are interwoven and function together. (shrink)

Some bioethicists argue that a doctor may frame treatment options in terms of effects on survival rather than on mortality in order to influence patients to choose the better option. The debate over such framing typically assumes that the survival and mortality frames convey the same numerical information. However, certain empirical findings contest this numerical equivalence assumption, demonstrating that framing effects may in fact be due to the two frames implying different information about the numerical bounds of survival and mortality (...) rates. In this paper, I use these findings to argue that framing is presumptively wrong because it violates the duty of proper disclosure. Along the way, I highlight morally relevant features affecting the permissibility of framing, tackle three objections and draw some general lessons for the ethics of nudging. (shrink)

Debunking arguments use empirical evidence about our moral beliefs - in particular, about their causal origins, or about how they depend on various causes - in order to reach an epistemic conclusion about the trustworthiness of such beliefs. In this thesis, I investigate the scope and limits of debunking arguments, and their implications for what we should believe about morality. I argue that debunking arguments can in principle work - they are based on plausible epistemic premises, and at least some (...) of them avoid putative problems concerning regress and redundancy. However, I also argue that some debunking arguments fall short because they are insufficiently supported by the empirical evidence. By considering different objections, analyses, and a case study, I explore the conditions for a successful debunking argument. (shrink)

Today, more corporations disclose information about their environmental performance in response to stakeholder demands of environmental responsibility and accountability. What information do corporations disclose on their websites? This paper investigates the environmental management policies and practices of the 200 largest corporations in the world. Based on a content analysis of the environmental reports of Fortune’s Global 200 companies, this research analyzes the content of corporate environmental disclosures with respect to the following seven areas: environmental planning considerations, top management support to (...) the institutionalization of environmental concerns, environmental structures and organizing specifics, environmental leadership activities, environmental control, external validations or certifications of environmental programs, and forms of corporate environmental disclosures. (shrink)

_Uses the concept of religiosity to challenge traditional views of Nietzsche and Zhuangzi as nihilistic and anti-religious._.

Digitized information and network have made an enormous impact on the music and movie industries. Internet piracy is popular and has greatly threatened the companies in these industries. This study tests Hunt-Vitell’s ethical decision model and attempts to understand why and how people share unauthorized music files with others in the peer-to-peer (P2P) network. The norm of anti-piracy, the ideology of free software, the norm of reciprocity, and the ideology of consumer rights are proposed as four deontological norms related to (...) using P2P systems. The model is tested using a scenario survey with four alternatives; the results indicate that the deontological norm of anti-piracy is not a main factor in affecting P2P users’ ethical considerations regarding sharing files with others. This finding suggests that to protect their property rights, record companies should try to realize the consumer benefits brought via new digital and network technology, instead of simply declaring their intellectual property and resisting the innovations resulting from new technologies. (shrink)

This research probes the influence of the construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor on the tourism development behavior of local residents. By applying social exchange theory, this study examines the impact of the community dimension on tourism development behavior through overall attitude. In addition, this study also examines the use of social media as a moderator in the relationship between overall attitude and tourism development. A survey tool has been used to obtain data from the people of Gilgit-Baltistan. Hypotheses were (...) examined using the structural equation method on 417 survey responses. The findings indicated community satisfaction and an overall positive attitude to the effects of development, although a negative attitude regarding concerns about community resources. Overall, attitude has a significant impact on tourism development behavior. Additionally, the use of social media strengthens the relationship between overall attitude and behavior that favors tourism development. (shrink)

In ‘Measuring the Consequences of Rules’, Holly Smith presents two problems involving the indeterminacy of compliance, which she takes to be fatal for all forms of rule-utilitarianism. In this reply, I attempt to dispel both problems.

Myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein antibody-associated disease is an immune-mediated demyelinating disease of the central nervous system that is present in both adults and children. The most common clinical manifestations are optic neuritis, myelitis, acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, and brainstem syndrome. Cerebral cortical encephalitis is a rare clinical phenotype of myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein antibody-associated disease, which usually begins with seizures, headaches, and fever, and may be misdiagnosed as viral encephalitis in the early stages. Herein, we report two typical MOG antibody -positive patients presenting (...) with CCE, both of whom presented with headache, fever, seizures, and who recovered completely after immunotherapy. In addition, we performed a systematic review of the present literature from the perspectives of population characteristics, clinical symptoms, MRI abnormalities, treatments, and prognosis. Among the patients reported in 25 articles, 33 met our inclusion criteria, with the age of onset ranging from 4 to 52 years. Most of the patients had seizures, headache, fever, and unilateral cortical lesions on brain MRI. For acute CCE, 30 patients were treated with high-dose intravenous methylprednisolone, and the symptoms of most patients were completely relieved after immunotherapy. This study reported our experience and lessons learned in the diagnosis and treatment of MOG-Ab-positive CCE and provides a systematic review of the literature to analyse this rare clinical phenotype. (shrink)

It has long been suggested that emotion, especially threatening emotion, facilitates early visual perception to promote adaptive responses to potential threats in the environment. Here, we tested whether and how fearful emotion affects the basic visual ability of visual acuity. An adapted Posner’s spatial cueing task was employed, with fearful and neutral faces as cues and a Vernier discrimination task as the probe. The time course of the emotional attention effect was examined by varying the stimulus onset asynchrony of the (...) cue and probe. Two independent experiments consistently demonstrated that the brief presentation of a fearful face increased visual acuity at its location. The facilitation of perceptual sensitivity was detected at an SOA around 300 ms when the face cues were presented for both 250 ms and 150 ms. This effect cannot be explained by physical differences between the fearful and neutral faces because no improvement was found when the faces were presented inverted. In the last experiment, the face cues were flashed very briefly, and we did not find any improvement induced by the fearful face. Overall, we provide evidence that emotion interacts with attention to affect basic visual functions. (shrink)

This study explorers whether the relative impacts of brand identification and identification with other users of brand pages on brand loyalty vary according to consumers’ regulatory focus. By integrating social identification theory with regulatory focus theory, this study adopts a dual identification framework to compare the differential impacts of promotion regulatory fit and prevention regulatory fit on brand loyalty. Besides, the moderating effects of product type on the relationship between promotion/prevention regulatory fit and brand loyalty are further investigated. Finally, this (...) study uses different combinations of information technology affordances in order to examine their influences on each identification target. The current study adopts a qualitative methodology and involved conducting semi-structured interviews with 27 brand page users in regard to IT affordances and their subdimensions. The research model was empirically tested using a cross-country comparison of data collected from surveys conducted in China and the United States. The results support our hypotheses and confirm the differential effects of promotion and prevention regulatory fit on brand loyalty. Theoretically, our study enhances our understanding of the relative effect of dual identification on brand loyalty on social media. Practically, our study delivers insights for companies into how social media brand pages can be used as a strategic tool to achieve brand values. (shrink)

Improving the resilience of urban road networks suffering from various disruptions has been a central focus for urban emergence management. However, to date the effective methods which may mitigate the negative impacts caused by the disruptions, such as road accidents and natural disasters, on urban road networks is highly insufficient. This study proposes a novel adaptive signal control strategy based on a doubly dynamic learning framework, which consists of deep reinforcement learning and day-to-day traffic dynamic learning, to improve the network (...) performance by adjusting red/green time split. In this study, red time split is regarded as extra traffic flow to discourage drivers to use affected roads, so as to reduce congestion and improve the resilience when urban road networks are subject to different levels of disruptions. In addition, we utilize the convolution neural network as Q-network to approximate Q values, link flow distribution and link capacity are regarded as the state space, and actions are denoted as red/green time split. A small network is utilized as a numerical example, and a fixed time signal control and other two adaptive signal controls are employed for the comparisons with the proposed one. The results show that the proposed adaptive signal control based on deep reinforcement learning can achieve better resilience in most of the cases, particularly in the scenarios of moderate and severe disruptions. This study may shed light on the advantages of the proposed adaptive signal control dealing with major emergencies compared to others. (shrink)

Previous studies have shown that Chinese speakers and non-Chinese speakers exhibit different patterns of cross-modal congruence for the lexical tones of Mandarin Chinese, depending on which features of the pitch they attend to. But is this pattern of language-specific listening a conscious cultural strategy or an automatic processing effect? If automatic, does it also apply when the same pitch contours no longer sound like speech? Implicit Association Tests (IATs) provide an indirect measure of cross-modal association. In a series of IAT (...) studies, conducted with participants with three kinds of language backgrounds (Chinese-dominant bilinguals, Chinese balanced bilinguals, and English speakers with no Chinese experience) we find language-specific congruence effects for Mandarin lexical tones but not for matched sine-wave stimuli. That is, for linguistic stimuli, non-Chinese speakers show advantages for pitch-height congruence (high-pointy, low-curvy); no congruence effects were found for Chinese speakers. For non-linguistic stimuli, all participant groups showed advantages for pitch-height congruence. The present findings suggest that non-lexical tone congruence (high-pointy, low-curvy) is a basic congruence pattern, and the acquisition of a language with lexical tone can alter this perception. (shrink)

ObjectivesIndividuals with irregular physical activity participation are defined as fluctuators. This study aimed to comprehend how fluctuators’ perceived barriers and motivators in their subjective theories are exhibited and cognitively represented in relation to their everyday PA practices and lapses.MethodsThe design of “Research Program Subjective Theories” was used to explore and present fluctuators’ cognition concerning PA participation. Thirty fluctuators were invited to a semi-structured interview. By inductive and deductive coding, fluctuators’ verbal data were converted into word categories for extracting commonalities and (...) comparing differences. By retaining the remaining word categories of high frequency and exploring the interrelationships among the remained word categories using statistical analyses, a superstructure including fluctuators’ main PA motivators, barriers, and behavioral outcomes was compiled.ResultsFluctuators face common motivators as barriers, such as lack of time, lack of willpower, lack of social support, and physical reasons. Fluctuators’ subjective theories primarily differed in motivational configurations. The physically motivated fluctuators were more linked with low PA level, while the mixed motivated fluctuators were more likely associated with moderate PA level. The exemplars of the three typical fluctuators were also demonstrated to reveal their real experiences and situations in the daily life context.ConclusionDue to the fact that fluctuation research is still in its infancy, this study represents a significant opportunity to promote knowledge growth in this area. Future studies are recommended to convert findings of the present study into interventions that benefit fluctuators in overcoming perceived barriers and enhancing motivations to eventually participate in regular PA. (shrink)