This article describes research to build an embodied conversational agent as an interface to a question-and-answer system about a National Science Foundation program. We call this ECA the LifeLike Avatar, and it can interact with its users in spoken natural language to answer general as well as specific questions about specific topics. In an idealized case, the LifeLike Avatar could conceivably provide a user with a level of interaction such that he or she would not be certain as to whether (...) he or she is talking to the actual person via video teleconference. This could be considered a extended version of the seminal Turing test. Although passing such a test is still far off, our work moves the science in that direction. The Uncanny Valley notwithstanding, applications of such lifelike interfaces could include those where specific instructors/caregivers could be represented as stand-ins for the actual person in situations where personal representation is important. Possible areas that come to mind that might benefit from these lifelike ECAs include health-care support for elderly/disabled patients in extended home care, education/training, and knowledge preservation. Another more personal application would be to posthumously preserve elements of the persona of a loved one by family members. We apply this approach to a Q/a system for knowledge preservation and dissemination, where the specific individual who had this knowledge was to retire from the US National Science Foundation. The system is described in detail, and evaluations were performed to determine how well the system was perceived by users. (shrink)

Humans are moral creatures. Among all life on Earth, we alone experience rich moral emotions, follow complex rules governing how we treat one another, and engage in moral dialogue. But how did human morality evolve? And can humans become morally evolved? -/- In A Better Ape, Victor Kumar and Richmond Campbell draw on the latest research in the biological and social sciences to explain the key role that morality has played in human evolution. They explore the moral traits that (...) humans share with chimpanzees; how a more complex moral mind enabled Homo sapiens to arise and out-compete other human species; and the place of morality alongside historic revolutions in technology and social organization. Throughout the book, Kumar and Campbell argue that morality co-evolved with intelligence and complex sociality. Morality prevents societal collapse and enables complex knowledge. -/- After unearthing the ancient origins of human morality, Kumar and Campbell use evolutionary theory to deliver profound insights about how to advance moral progress and resist moral regress, such as reducing animal suffering on industrial farms; capitalizing on the recent revolution in gay rights to foster a nascent revolution in transgender rights; opposing intersectional inequality that impacts women and people of color in lower socioeconomic classes; and addressing major problems of global inequality, especially impending crises of injustice caused by anthropogenic climate change. Understanding how we evolved--and how we continue to evolve--can help us become a better ape. (shrink)

Tu Weiming Tu Weiming is one of the most famous Chinese Confucian thinkers of the 20th and 21st centuries. As a prominent member of the third generation of “New Confucians,” Tu stressed the significance of religiosity within Confucianism. Inspired by his teacher Mou Zongsan as well as his decades of study … Continue reading Tu Weiming →.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1898 Edition.

The article presents a methodological update on the lexical profile of informal spoken English with the emphasis on movies, television programs, and soap operas. The study analyzed Mark Davies’s mega-corpora with data containing approximately 625 million words and employed Paul Nation’s comprehensive and up-to-date British National Corpus/Corpus of Contemporary American English wordlists. Data from the analyses showed that viewers would need a vocabulary knowledge at 3,000 and 5,000 words frequency levels to understand 95 and 98% of the words in scripted (...) dialogs, respectively. Soap operas were found to be less lexically demanding compared to TV programs and movies. Findings are expected to fill in the methodological gaps between vocabulary assessment and vocabulary profiling research. (shrink)

Local item dependence is one of the most critical assumption in the Rasch model when it comes to the validity of a test. As the field of vocabulary assessment is calling for more clarity and validity for vocabulary tests, such assumption becomes more important than ever. The article offers a Rasch-based investigation into the issue of LID with the focus on the two popular formats of Vocabulary Levels Tests : multiple-choice and matching. A Listening Vocabulary Levels Test and an Updated (...) Vocabulary Levels Test were given to a single cohort of 311 university students in an English as a Foreign Language context. The analyses of raw score and standardized residuals correlations were conducted. The findings found no relationship between the 4-option, multiple-choice format of the LVLT and item local dependence. However, results from score and standardized residuals correlations analyses showed a strong link between the 3-item-per-cluster, matching format and item local dependence. The study calls for greater attention to the format of future vocabulary tests and support the use of meaning-recall formats in vocabulary testing. (shrink)

It is not uncommon for business institutions to position themselves as stakeholder-caring companies or organizations. However, there is little research on conceptualizing stakeholder-caring as a component of brand image. Through a theoretical lens of brand-consumer interactions, this paper introduces a new construct—stakeholder-caring image—and proposes a model that examines stakeholder-caring’s antecedents (integrity and courtesy) and its consequence (customer satisfaction). The two antecedents—integrity and courtesy—capture intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of brand-consumer interaction practice, respectively, while the consequence (customer satisfaction) is one important behavioral (...) outcome in marketing. The proposed model was tested with Hong Kong customers (n = 296) via a systematic survey. The data were analyzed using LISREL. Several measurement and structural models were constructed to test the proposed hypotheses. The findings reveal that the effect of integrity on customer satisfaction is mediated by a stakeholder-caring image. However, contrary to the conventional wisdom, we surprisingly find that courtesy is not effective to build a stakeholder-caring image. Managerially, this research offers guidance on how to develop stakeholder-caring image and subsequently increase customer satisfaction. In addition, we discuss the nuanced distinction between a stakeholder-caring image and related brand constructs, such as “sincerity” in Aaker’s (1997) brand personality framework. (shrink)

El texto combina una mirada sobre algunos elementos filosóficos y aspectos anecdóticos que ligan a Heidegger, el ser, el pensar y la pregunta por la metafísica con un eventual curso de “Lógica” dictado en 1934 y cuyo contenido es la relación ética entre el hombre y el Estado. Al final aparece la figura del Führer, sus manos y el destino de la humanidad.

The present article delves into the extension of Knuth’s fundamental Boolean logic table to accommodate the complexities of indeterminate truth values through the integration of neutrosophic logic (Smarandache & Christianto, 2008). Neutrosophic logic, rooted in Florentin Smarandache’s groundbreaking work on Neutrosophic Logic (cf. Smarandache, 2005, and his other works), introduces an additional truth value, ‘indeterminate,’ enabling a more comprehensive framework to analyze uncertainties inherent in computational systems. By bridging the gap between traditional boolean operations and the indeterminacy present in various (...) real-world scenarios, this extension redefines logic tables, introducing neutrosophic operators that capture nuances beyond the binary realm. Through a thorough exploration of neutrosophic logic's principles and its implications in computational paradigms, this study proposes a novel approach to logic design that accommodates uncertain, imprecise, and incomplete information. This paradigm shift in logic tables not only broadens the spectrum of computing methodologies but also holds promise in fields such as decision-making systems and data analytics. This article amalgamates insights from over twelve key references encompassing seminal works in boolean logic, neutrosophic logic, and their applications in diverse scientific and computational domains, aiming to pave the way for a more robust and adaptable logic framework in computation. (shrink)

For long time, especially in the West, there is old paradigm that is strong separation between science and theology/religion matters. Especially, such a diverging path started from Galileo persecution, and also other patterns where religious authority seem to hold the last word on scientific issues. Other area of this World, seems to not hold such a diverging path, for instance it can be read in the works of physicist turned to religious philosopher, for instance Pavel Florensky and Nesteruk. That is (...) why we also discuss shortly about those scientists in this book. In the last chapter, we discuss about eureka, an experience which for a long time was attributed to divine spark or “God’s favor to an artist or to a scientist, such luminaries like Newton, Pascal, Leibniz etc.” Nonetheless, new methodology appears to be able to be generated once we accept balanced brain approach, where left brain and right brain hemispheres of humans can work together. (shrink)

What am I? There are a number of possible answers: I am a person, a mind, a human animal, a soul, part of a human being (e.g., a brain), I do not exist, and even more. Philosophers have been asking this for thousands of years and were not satisfied. In the contemporary analytic tradition, philosophers are attracted to a naturalistic, scientific ontology hence a materialistic personal ontology that matches the huge success in scientific discoveries. They think that we are material (...) objects. However, their views do not match our intuition about some cases regarding our survival. Also, the possibility of an afterlife is eliminated. In my thesis, I explain the shortcomings of current philosophical theories, and develop a better account. I propose the Conscious Subject View, according to which (1) I am a subject of experience, a mental entity whose essential property is to be conscious, and (2) Subjects have haecceities, a property that makes an object a different object from other objects even if they are qualitatively identical with it. I provide two arguments for the claim that we are essentially subjects. The first is the Essentiality Argument. I first define an egoistic concern as one such that necessarily, my concern about X can be egoistic if and only if I exist and persist as X. Furthermore, I argue that necessarily, I can be egoistically concerned with an entity E if and only if E is numerically identical with my subject of experience. I then conclude that we are essentially subjects of experience. My second argument, which I call the Argument of Persistence, is that we have the intuition that we persist only when there is the gradual replacement of the brain. I argue that the best candidate to explain this intuition is that we persist as subjects of experience. I further offer a conceivability argument for the claim that haecceity of the subject determines its persistence. I defend a mentally-oriented proposal regarding our nature by examining the essential properties of our existence. It solves most of the problems with the materialistic personal ontology and shows the theoretical advantages of a long-neglected approach. (shrink)

This paper aims at revealing the various meanings of schools as more than built physical environments from a geographical‐phenomenological (or ‘geo‐phenomenological’) perspective. This paper consists of five sections: the first explicates the meaning of ‘geo‐phenomenology’; the second reveals the meaning of ‘environment’ and a dialectics of strangeness and intimacy through geo‐phenomenological analysis; the third examines the meanings of environment as ‘space’ and ‘place’ and the act of naming as the process of constructing meaning between humans and environment; the fourth section (...) attempts to explore the meaning of conceiving school as a particular environment; and the final is the conclusion. (shrink)

J. L. Mackie famously argued that a commitment to non-existent objective values permeates ordinary moral thought and discourse. According to a standard interpretation, Mackie construed this commitment as a universal and indeed essential feature of moral judgments. In this paper I argue that we should rather ascribe to Mackie a form of semantic pluralism, according to which not all moral judgments involve the commitment to objective values. This interpretation not only makes better sense of what Mackie actually says, but also (...) renders his error theory immune to a powerful objection. (shrink)

In this article I give a unified account of three phenomena: bullshit, pseudoscience and pseudophilosophy. My aims are partly conceptual, partly evaluative. Drawing on Harry Frankfurt's seminal analysis of bullshit, I give an account of the three phenomena and of how they are related, and I use this account to explain what is bad about all three. More specifically, I argue that what is defective about pseudoscience and pseudophilosophy is precisely that they are special cases of bullshit. Apart from raising (...) interesting philosophical issues, gaining a clearer understanding of these phenomena is also of practical importance, in that it bears on how best to tackle the threat that they pose. (shrink)

Insanity is identified with irrationality, while rationality is considered to be the mark of sanity. Yet we want to say that rationality could be the cause of insanity. We can see a subtle kind of insanity inherent in an institution believed to be highly rational. Rationality in an ideological belief also turns into rational insanity when the ideology itself works for the interest of the advantaged as a tool of deception. We believe in the rationality of open communication. We believe (...) that information technology has given us the most rational means for open communication. The Internet revolution or Internet democracy is expected to become the most rational means for the institutional goal of democracy. However the rationality of Internet communication has demonstrated a serious tendency to cause Internet insanity. We have been proud of being 'rational animals'. But now we are concerned because 'rational animal' could mean 'rational but animal-like' or 'rational but impulsive', which in turn could mean 'rational but violent' or 'rational but mad and insane'. Perhaps it is time for us to think seriously about the possibility of mass insanity through rational insanity, and seek the way beyond such rational insanity. (shrink)

Hawking, in his book, A Brief History of Time, concludes with a conditional remark: If we find a complete theory to explain the physical world, then we will come to understand God’s mind. With Goedel in mind, we can raise questions about the completeness of our scientific understanding and the nature of our understanding with regard to God’s mind. We need to ask about the higher order of our understanding when we move to knowing God’s mind. We go onto develop (...) these problems with Nietzsche’s thoughts on the death of God, and the emergence of super human intelligences. Then, we come to Buddha, a logical genius, to see how the Buddhistic enlightenment exemplifies the super human intelligence, as well as the higher order understanding in our knowledge of God’s mind. (shrink)

Parsa-Parsi et al systematically discuss and elucidate contentious and non-controversial ethical issues that emerged during the ICoME (International Code of Medical Ethics) revision process and the consensus they achieved. The ethical issues discussed include the physician’s duty to act in the best interests of patients and to ensure they are protected from the unjustifiable risk of harm, respect for patient autonomy and the duties of physicians during emergencies, among others. This paper examines paragraph 26, which requires doctors to provide only (...) medically justified remote treatment, ensure patients offer informed consent and adequately protect their confidentiality.1 At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries in Europe and America implemented remote-by-default healthcare policies. At that time, the policy aimed to ensure that patients enjoyed continued access to care while protecting healthcare professionals’ health and well-being. After the COVID-19 pandemic, this policy remained in place. Regardless of the nature of their ailment, patients have consistently preferred in-person care out of concern that their health issues might not be accurately diagnosed and that they may not receive quality care …. (shrink)

A core tenet of metanormative non-naturalism is that genuine or robust normativity—i.e., the kind of normativity that is characteristic of moral requirements, and perhaps also of prudential, epistemic and even aesthetic requirements—is metaphysically special in a way that rules out naturalist analyses or reductions; on the non-naturalist view, the normative is sui generis and metaphysically discontinuous with the natural. Non-naturalists agree, however, that the normative is modally as well as explanatorily dependent on the natural. These two commitments—discontinuity and dependence—at least (...) initially pull in opposite directions, and one of the central challenges to non-naturalism is how to reconcile them. In this paper I spell out the most pressing version of this discontinuity problem, as I propose to call it, and I go on to offer a novel solution. Drawing on the ideology of reasons-firstism, I formulate an account of normative explanation which reconciles the two commitments, and I argue that competing accounts either do not solve the problem or are implausible on independent grounds. (shrink)

Non-naturalists about normativity hold that there are instantiable normative properties which are metaphysically discontinuous with natural properties. One of the central challenges to non-naturalism is how to reconcile this discontinuity with the supervenience of the normative on the natural. Drawing on J. L. Mackie’s seminal but highly compressed discussion in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, this paper argues that the supervenience challenge as usually conceived is merely a symptom of a more fundamental challenge in the vicinity.

In some recent papers (G. ‘t Hooft and others), it has been argued that quantum mechanics can arise from classical cellular automata. Nonetheless, G. Shpenkov has proved that the classical wave equation makes it possible to derive a periodic table of elements, which is very close to Mendeleyev’s one, and describe also other phenomena related to the structure of molecules. Hence the classical wave equation complements Schrödinger’s equation, which implies the appearance of a cellular automaton molecular model starting from classical (...) wave equation. The other studies show that the microworld is constituted as a tessellation of primary topological balls. The tessellattice becomes the origin of a submicrospic mechanics in which a quantum system is subdivided to two subsystems: the particle and its inerton cloud, which appears due to the interaction of the moving particle with oncoming cells of the tessellattice. The particle and its inerton cloud periodically change the momentum and hence move like a wave. The new approach allows us to correlate the Klein-Gordon equation with the deformation coat that is formed in the tessellatice around the particle. The submicroscopic approach shows that the source of any type of wave movements including the Klein-Gordon, Schrödinger, and classical wave equations is hidden in the tessellattice and its basic exciations – inertons, carriers of mass and inert properies of matter. We also discuss possible correspondence with Konrad Zuse’s calculating space. (shrink)

The present study analyzed the vocabulary profile of the News on the Web corpus, which contained 12 billion words from online newspapers and magazines in 20 countries to determine the vocabulary knowledge needed to reasonably understand online newspaper and magazine articles. The results showed that, in general, knowledge of the most frequent 4,000 word families in the British National Corpus/Corpus of Contemporary American English wordlist plus proper nouns, marginal words, transparent compounds and acronyms was necessary to gain 95% coverage for (...) the NOW corpus. However, when it came to the 98% coverage, online newspaper and magazine articles from different countries had relatively distinct lexical demands. In-depth analyses were carried out and the findings offered comprehensive insights into the issue. Implications for teaching and learning were also provided. (shrink)

This book examines the thought of scholasticism’s Doctor eximius in its entirety: both philosophically and theologically. Many of the most distinctive features of Suárez’s thought are identified and evaluated in light of his immediate historical context. What emerges from the studies contained in this volume is the picture of a thinker who is profoundly steeped in the riches of divergent schools of thought and yet who manages to find his own unique voice to add to the chorus of scholasticism.

As such "Essay on Exoticism" is essential reading for both cultural theorists or those with an interest in the politics of difference and diversity.

Samuel Phillips Huntington was an influential American political scientist. He was also a consultant to various America government agencies. He upholds the idea of conservative realism in politics. His research covers several areas of political science, such as civil-military relations, modernization and political development, comparative politics, and international relations. Regarding the role of military, he argues for autonomous military professionalism. In discussing about modernization of developing countries, he emphasizes the priority of political order over democracy. In the case of America, (...) as well as other democratizing countries, he worries that the excess of political participation would diminish the authority and effectiveness of state governance, enhancing political instability, and, at worst, leading to the reverse of democratization. After the end of the Cold War, Huntington characterizes the international order as multicivilizational, in which the clash of civilizations will direct the development of global politics. In such a multicultural situation, Huntington urges Americans to affirm their unique national identity by revitalizing Anglo-Protestant culture and its religiosity which has defined America since its founding. (shrink)

In recent years, it becomes clear that ITER project in France, as one of the largest experimental fusion reactors underway, is far away from achieving net energy production. In this review article, we presented a short communication this week with Robert Neil Boyd, a senior physicist who happens to have his own working design of fusion reactor in the past. We hope that this transcript of our communication with him (as per 15-17th Nov. 2021) may be found useful for younger (...) scientists. (shrink)

In today’s global higher education environment, international students represent not only an important source of external income for universities: the degree of cross-border student mobility also reflects the internationalization of higher education sector. Universities have engaged in efforts to sell themselves to prospective students and promotional videos are among the most widely used marketing tools for this purpose. This study reports the results of a study analyzing the content of 140 higher education promotional videos from 14 countries available on YouTube. (...) The results reveal that while the pattern of use of YouTube for two-waycommunication with viewers, information contents and appeal messages among sampled universities is fairly homogenous, some marked differences emerge when cultural background and global position ranking of the university are taken into account. The implications of these findings are that, although, transnational higher education has been profoundly globalized, culture still plays a significant role in marketing practice for the recruitment of mobile students. In addition, different universities have various student-targeted segments. These findings provide the basis of a series of recommendations for universities looking to optimize their use of YouTube and promotional video design to market to international students. (shrink)

Collective apologies on behalf of governments to historically mistreated minorities have become more common. It is unclear, however, how we should respond to these apologies and other practices that invoke collective responsibility for oppression (chapter 1). I review the current literature on collective responsibility to better understand the obstacles facing an account of collective responsibility for oppression (chapter 2). I then argue that we can make sense of these practices by holding powerful organized collectives (chapter 3) and privileged disorganized collectives (...) (chapter 4) responsible for oppression. These practices then can be what I call “morally legitimate” if they are confessions of self-blame, and this self-blame contains an element of collective-self protest (chapter 5). (shrink)

Contributed articles presented at a National seminar.

Contributed articles presented at a National Seminar on "Teaching Philosophy in India: a Vision for the Twenty-First Century Education", held at Andhra University, during 9-11 March 1998 and sponsered by Indian Council of Philosophical Research, New Delhi.

This paper explores the metaethical ramifications of a coarse-grained criterion of property identity, sometimes referred to as Hume's dictum. According to Hume's dictum, properties are identical if and only if they are necessarily co-extensive. Assuming the supervenience of the normative on the natural, this criterion threatens the non-naturalist view that there are instantiable normative properties which are distinct from natural properties. In response, non-naturalists typically point to various counterintuitive implications of Hume's dictum. The paper clarifies this strategy and defends it (...) against objections by Bart Streumer and Ralf Bader. In addition, it is argued that proponents of naturalist and supernaturalist views, along with proponents of a certain kind of nihilism, should also reject Hume's dictum. This shows that non-naturalists can also attack the criterion indirectly, by pointing to partners in guilt. Also, it shows that not just any opponent of non-naturalism can appeal to Hume's dictum. Only certain nihilists can. (shrink)

In this work, originally published in 1986, Victor Seidler explores the different notions of respect, equality and dependency in Kant’s moral writings. He illuminates central tensions and contradictions not only within Kant’s moral philosophy, but within the thinking and feeling about human dignity and social inequality which we take very much for granted within a liberal moral culture. In challenging our assumption of the autonomy of morality, Seidler also questions our understanding of what it means for someone to live (...) as a person in his or her own right. The autonomy of individuals cannot be assumed but has to be reasserted against relationships of subordination. This involves a break with a rationalist morality, so that respect for others involves respect for emotions, feelings, desires and needs, and establishes a fuller autonomy as a basis for freedom and justice. (shrink)

The book outlines the contribution of passivity to the constitution of phenomena as diverse as temporal syntheses, perceptual associations, memory fulfillment and cross-cultural communication.

In an earlier paper published in a neutrosophic math journal (IJNS), we discussed a new approach to technology, which may be called as ‘opti-realism’ or ‘pess-optimism’ as alternative to utopianism based on technocracy, which may lead the world into global technototalitarianism. In this article, we submit a new approach to Nature and technology, which is more modest and humble, rather than a techno-utopianism version of reality that most futurists argue for. Our proposed approach resembles more to Myer-Briggs 16 types of (...) personality, including IJNS, IFNS etc. In our scheme, there are 8 characters of approach toward technology which can lead to many variations or we call it ‘Permutation.” Of course, if the readers ask one variation that we prefer, we would answer: Small Tech, High Touch. (shrink)

This study proposed and examined a conceptual framework on the influence of real estate brokers’ personalities, psychological empowerment, social capital, and knowledge sharing on their innovation performance, and used moral hazard as a moderating variable. We used structural equation modeling for data analysis and estimation. The participants were real estate brokers in Kaohsiung City. A total of 1,000 questionnaires were administered to 100 branch offices of real estate companies, 571 of which were later recovered from 80 branch offices. After removing (...) 52 for being invalid, we were left with 519 valid questionnaires, indicating a 51.9% recovery rate. The empirical results suggest that the real estate brokers’ personalities and psychological empowerment positively and significantly influence social capital; personality and psychological empowerment also positively and significantly influence their innovation performance; and social capital significantly influences knowledge sharing, which in turn positively and significantly influences the brokers’ innovation performance. In environments with higher levels of moral hazard, the influence of social capital on the brokers’ knowledge sharing is significantly diminished. (shrink)

This new Encyclopedia of Postmodernism is structured with biographical entries on all the key contributors to the postmodernism debate, including Mikhail Bakhtin, Pierre Bourdieum, Jacques Derrida, Jurgen Habermas and Wittgenstein. Providing an all-encompassing and welcome addition to the field, the Encyclopedia contains entries on foundational concepts of postmodernism which have revolutionized thinking in every intellectual discipline. This new Encyclopedia is the first to provide comprehensive A-Z coverage of the key individuals and concepts of postmodernism. The 300+ entries include: * African (...) American studies * Roland Barthes * binary opposition * Buddhism * comparative literature * cyberculture * death of God * Gilles Deleuze * desire * digital culture * end of history * globalization * grand narrative * improvisation * jouissance * logocentrism * metalanguage * sadism * theatre arts * trope * visuality * Cornell West * and much more. Fully cross-referenced and indexed, with suggestionsfor further reading. (shrink)