This paper investigates the relationship between ethics and income among individuals of different religions in the HKSAR of China. The presence of both traditional Chinese religion and Christianity from the West makes our study particularly interesting. The content of ethical beliefs varies with religion and thus the effect of ethics on income may also vary across religion. Furthermore, a reverse causal relationship may run from income to ethics. Since culture and taste affect the consumption behavior of a person, depending on (...) the religion of the person, a person with a higher income may or may not like to ‘acquire’ more ethics. Our empirical results find that there is indeed a simultaneous relationship between income and being ethical so that a single equation estimation of income on ethics and vice versa generates biased estimates. Using a two-stage instrumental variable estimation, our study finds that being ethical contributes to higher income for Christians and the non-religious group, but lowers it for people of traditional Chinese religion. On the other hand, an increase in income increases the likelihood of a person’s being ethical for both Christians and the people of traditional Chinese religion, but reduces it for the non-religious group. (shrink)

Before COVID-19, dementia singing groups and choirs flourished, providing activity, cognitive stimulation, and social support for thousands of people with dementia in the UK. Interactive music provides one of the most effective psychosocial interventions for people with dementia; it can allay agitation and promote wellbeing. Since COVID-19 has halted the delivery of in-person musical activities, it is important for the welfare of people with dementia and their carers to investigate what alternatives to live music making exist, how these alternatives are (...) delivered and how their accessibility can be expanded. This community case study examines recent practice in online music-making in response to COVID-19 restrictions for people with dementia and their supporters, focusing on a UK context. It documents current opportunities for digital music making, and assesses the barriers and facilitators to their delivery and accessibility. Online searches of video streaming sites and social media documented what music activities were available. Expert practitioners and providers collaborated on this study and supplied input about the sessions they had been delivering, the technological challenges and solutions they had found, and the responses of the participants. Recommendations for best practice were developed and refined in consultation with these collaborators. Over 50 examples of online music activities were identified. In addition to the challenges of digital inclusion and accessibility for some older people, delivering live music online has unique challenges due to audio latency and sound quality. It is necessary to adapt the session to the technology's limitations rather than expect to overcome these challenges. The recommendations highlight the importance of accessibility, digital safety and wellbeing of participants. They also suggest ways to optimize the quality of their musical experience. The pandemic has prompted innovative approaches to deliver activities and interventions in a digital format, and people with dementia and their carers have adapted rapidly. While online music is meeting a clear current need for social connection and cognitive stimulation, it also offers some advantages which remain relevant after COVID-19 restrictions are relaxed. The recommendations of this study are intended to be useful to musicians, dementia care practitioners, and researchers during the pandemic and beyond. (shrink)

This paper endeavors to investigate how we can understand creativity concerning computation by rearticulating imagination in artistic practices. Drawing on Yuk Hui’s concept of artificial imagination and Bernard Stiegler’s thinking on organology, the paper uses the Choi Hung Estate project as a case study demonstrating the potential of Gaussian splatting as a supplement for the imagination in producing dynamic, interactive digital artworks that open the path for conceiving collective memories. By thinking of creativity and beyond computation, the paper unpacks (...) the possibilities for re-grounding the philosophical foundation of Gaussian splatting from an organological perspective. (shrink)

El estudio examina mediante una revisión sistemática la literatura científica. La metodología se basó en la aplicación de los principios de la declaración PRISMA. Los resultados indicaron que la mayor producción de estudios fue en 2021, con predominancia de idioma inglés, España como el mayor productor, Reino Unido con el mayor número de revistas y el uso de realidad aumentada como la estrategia más estudiada. La producción científica en educación, y más particularmente en metodologías aplicada a la educación, ha generado (...) una serie de estudios bibliométricos, los cuales han demostrado la evolución de las mismas en lapsos de tiempo diversos. (shrink)

"Esencia y Modalidad" es un clásico moderno, donde Kit Fine defiende la irreducibilidad de la esencia a la necesidad. Bajo la égida de autores como Saul Kripke, Ruth Barcan o David Lewis, la metafísica analítica se había desarrollado hasta entonces en el marco de la lógica modal cuantificada. En esta conferencia, Kit Fine cuestiona el orden explicativo tradicional mediante contraejemplos que ya forman parte del arsenal argumentativo de la disciplina, y luego sugiere ponerlo de cabeza, mediante una propuesta que hoy (...) constituye una de las teorías más importantes sobre la naturaleza de la necesidad. Al darle prioridad a las nociones explicativas más finas sobre las distinciones puramente modales, este texto se ha convertido en una piedra fundacional de lo que ahora se conoce como el giro hiperintensional de la metafísica analítica. (shrink)

Se presenta en este trabajo la traducción comentada del primer capítulo del Kitâb al-Zahra de Ibn Dâwûd de Ispahán (m. 909), recopilación poética y teoría sobre la concepción amatoria del pensamiento neoplatónico bagdadí. El texto supone una adecuación a la tradición islámica de las teorías de origen aristotélico y platónico sobre el amor, aunque fundamentada en la tradición poética de los árabes y en la preceptiva moral atribuida a Mahoma. En él se aborda, desde un punto de vista ontológico, la (...) contemplación de la belleza como objeto de afectación sensual, que es el origen de la dolencia de amor. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the semantics for a given language should be taken to be given by a body of semantic requirements — in contrast to the two standard conceptions of a semantics, under which it is taken either to be an assignment of semantic values to the expressions of the language or to be a theory of truth for the sentences of the language.

In a literature review in this journal ten years ago,1 I observed that, whilst analytical thinking about unjust enrichment law had reached something of a c.

Cuestionado el protagonismo que han acaparado los procedimientos de división y reunión en los estudios sobre la dialéctica del Platón tardío, nos proponemos echar luz sobre una herramienta que, funcionando a la par de aquellos, ha sido soslayada. Nos referimos a la metretiké y al rol clave que ella cumple en los diálogos Político y Filebo. Además, partiendo de ese estudio, sugeriremos que el método filosófico ideal opera como un variado kit de herramientas sin circunscribirse a ninguna de ellas.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese TextAerin CaleyHuang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Text. By Paul Unschuld. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. ix + 520. $75.00.As a student in my final year of formal training in Zen Shiatsu, I am looking to my future. While I will soon begin (...) my practice, I also intend to continue my studies, particularly with respect to the history of Chinese and Japanese medicine. My biggest [End Page 130] challenge will be that I don't understand either of these languages, leaving me at the mercy of translators, in a field where meaning is often dependant on nuance.I was, therefore, very interested to read Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Text by Paul Unschuld. Although it is considered a seminal text, the Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen is not a unified manual of medicine but the accumulation of writing and experience that predated its compilation. In his efforts to translate this book, Unschuld attempted to take into consideration the broad variety of influences that would affect its intent and meanings.The body of work that is known by this name underwent many revisions through the years, attaining the form we recognize today approximately twelve hundred years ago. Even working within the original language this presents several challenges. The first is that language and meanings change, and this sometimes obscures the intended connotation even for a scholar conversant in the original language. Unschuld also took into consideration the fact that the book had many editors, each working within a different social, political, and religious milieu. Medical knowledge grew with each generation, based on and referring to the writings of the time, many of which are no longer extant but are assumed to have been available to readers of the Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen.If one were to postulate that this work was perfectly understood in Chinese, Unschuld would still face a challenge in his attempt to translate it into English. There are concepts in Chinese that have no equivalent in English and therefore present a challenge for someone trying to remain true to the original intent. He explains that this difficulty begins with the title itself, which is normally given as "The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Chinese Medicine." Although Huang Di is usually translated as Yellow Emperor, there are implications of the word emperor that are not part of huang, and, in fact, Unschuld prefers to leave the word untranslated, as there is no English option that does not alter the intent of the original.Like most important books, the Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen cannot be fully grasped in one reading. I expect to revisit it many times throughout my life, as my experience in life and my practice leaven my understanding. I truly believe that texts such as Unschuld's will be an important part of my developing perception. Knowledge that is examined divorced from its formative circumstances loses the heart of its meaning, and Unschuld has made important progress in revealing the keys to the essence of the Su Wen.Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Text is a dense but fascinating read. Unschuld has done a good job of providing the information needed to be clear and thorough without getting bogged down in what are probably intriguing details. The layperson in Chinese history and textual analysis will likely find it occasionally rough going, but I found it an inspiration to learn more. Overall, I believe Paul Unschuld's work to shows him to be a worthy disciple of Wang Bing, one of the Su Wen's editors, who wrote: "I hope to elucidate the message of the sages and to make their mysterious sayings shine. They should resemble the stellar constellations hung up on high.... [T]hey should resemble the crystalclear water in a deep spring where scales and shells can be distinguished." [End Page 131]Copyright © 2005 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

The Abrahamic tradition that the Arabs value most was ḥajj. The ḥajj, which means to visit Kaʿba was the greatest means of getting closer to Allāh. The Kaʿba was the house of Allāh. And the visitors of the Kaʿba were Allāh’s guests. For this reason, the Arabs used to great respect to the visitors and they never used to attack a man in the ḥarem (the area around the Kaʿba). The same respect included visitors’ travels to the Kaʿba. There were (...) two Abrahamic traditions that ensured the safety of visitors and sacrifices: Ḥaram months and qalāid. Ḥaram months were Dhū l-Qaʿdah, Dhū l-Ḥijjah, Muḥarram and Rajab. And the Arabs did not used to attack anyone in those months. For visits outside the ḥaram months, the visitors used to use the qalāid as a primitive visa. Qalāid is the plural of the word qilāda, meaning necklace. The Arab, who saw the qilādas, used to understand that the person who wore the qilāda wanted to go to the Kaʿba or had returned home from the Kaʿba. Qilādas used to be knitted from wool ropes and they used to be hung on animals’ neck or humps. Sometimes horseshoes used to hang on these qilādas. On the way back from Kaʿba, the barks of the ḥarem trees used to hang on the qilādas instead of the horseshoes. The Qurʾān orders Muslims not to disrespect the qilādas. This order also reveals that the Qurʾān recognizes the qilāda tradition. Allāh’s Apostle (sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) and Ṣaḥāba are also known to continue this tradition.Summary: Ḥajj was the most important worship of the Arabs in the pre-Islamic period. Human and commodity mobility in the ḥajj had an important place in the life of the Meccans who lived in land unfit for agriculture. This fact is expressed as follows in Abraham’s (Ibrāhīm al-Khalīl) prayer: “Our Lord! Lo! I have settled some of my posterity in an uncultivable valley near unto Thy holy House, our Lord! That they may establish proper worship; so incline some hearts of men that they may yearn toward them, and provide Thou them with fruits in order that they may be thankful.” (Ibrahim 14:37) The Arabs who lived in various parts of the Arabian Peninsula used to come to Mecca during the ḥajj season and present their sacrifices. They also used to buy their needs from nearby markets. These markets were also places where traders had the opportunity to sell their products.Because the Arabian Peninsula is unfavorable in terms of climate and soil, many Arab tribes used to raid and attack other tribes to sustain their existence. It is even known that some Arabs proud of their raids. The attacks only used to stop in the ḥaram months (Dhū l-Qaʿdah, Dhū l-Ḥijjah, Muḥarram and Rajab). Because of the prohibition of fighting in the ḥaram months, the visitors used to visit the Kaʿba with confidence. Thanks to this truce, the trade goods carried by visitors used to reach to Mecca with confidence.It was possible that the visits outside of the ḥaram months were safe. However, it was necessary to follow some traditions in order to achieve this confidence. Visitors to the Kaʿba used to use some signs that they were visitors to the Kaʿba. One of these signs was qilāda (necklace) hanging on the neck or hump of the animal. The person wearing qilāda was Allāh’s guest, and his sacrifice was the property of Allāh. For this reason, no Arab would to dare to attack these visitors and property. Because of the Arab reverence for the Kaʿba, visitors wearing qilādas used to come to the Kaʿba and present their sacrifices throughout the year. The sacrifices had an important place in the livelihood of the poor.Qilādas were mostly used for visits outside the ḥaram months. The qilādas used to hang on the necks of the animals shipped to the Kaʿba as sacrifice. However, it is also known that qilādas are sometimes hung on hump. People who did not deliver sacrifices (animals) to the Kaʿba used to hang the qilāda his neck to show that he was a visitor to the Kaʿba. Similarly, it is known that people who sacrificed their animals on the Kaʿba hang the qilāda their neck on the way back. The qilādas fitted on the way to the Kaʿba were made of ropes spun from wool or hair. Sometimes horseshoes used to hang on these qilādas. Ḥarem plants (grass, tree bark) used to use in the qilādas on the way back.The Qurʾān orders Muslims not to disrespect the qilādas. This order also reveals that the Qurʾān recognizes the qilāda tradition. The word qalāid is mentioned twice in the Qurʾān: “O ye who believe violate not the sanctity of the symbols of Allāh, nor of the sacred month, nor of the animals brought for sacrifice, nor the qalāid, nor the people resorting to the sacred house, seeking of the Bounty and good pleasure of their Lord.” (Al Māʼidah 5:2), “Allāh made the Kaʿba, the sacred house, an asylum of security of men as also the sacred months, the animals for offerings, and the qalāid.” (Al Māʼidah 5:97) Considering the practices of the qilāda, it is understood that qilādas are a kind of visa. It is understood that all practices related to the visit to the Kaʿba, especially the ḥajj, have an aim to satisfy the material-spiritual needs of those who come there for the purpose of visiting and trading, as well as those who reside in the Kaʿba. Therefore, it will not be far away to say that qilādas can be used today for the same purpose. For example, labels, banderols, visas and passports can be used instead of ropes, horseshoes and plants. On the other hand, the meaning of the āyāt (verse) in which the word qalāid is mentioned is not limited to the Arabs. The same āyāt declare that qilādas are a development (qiyām) instrument for people. Therefore, the qilāda has a meaning potential beyond the 7th century and the inhabitants of this century. (shrink)

DI.1 On everything that lives, if one looks searchingly, is limned the shadow line of an idea – an idea, dead or living, sometimes stronger when dead, with rigid, unswerving lines that mark the living embodiment with the stern immobile cast of the non living. Daily we move among these unyielding shadows, less pierceable, more enduring than granite, with the blackness of ages in them, dominating living, changing bodies, with dead, unchanging souls. And we meet, also, living souls dominating dying (...) bodies – living ideas regnant over decay and death. Do not imagine that I speak of human life alone. The stamp of persistent or of shifting Will is visible in the grass blade rooted in its clod of earth, as in the gossamer web of being that floats and swims far over our heads in the free world of air. DI.2 Regnant ideas, everywhere! Did you ever see a dead vine bloom? I have seen it. Last summer I trained some morning glory vines up over a second story balcony; and every day they blew and curled in the wind, their white, purple dashed faces winking at the sun, radiant with climbing life. Higher every day the green heads crept, carrying their train of spreading fans waving before the sun seeking blossoms. Then all at once some mischance happened, some cutworm or some mischievous child tore one vine off below, the finest and most ambitious one, of course. In a few hours the leaves hung limp, the sappy stem wilted and began to wither; in a day it was dead, – all but the top which still clung longingly to its support, with bright head lifted. I mourned a little for the buds that could never open now, and tied that proud vine whose work in the world was lost. But the next night there was a storm, a heavy, driving storm, with beating rain and blinding lightning. I rose to watch the flashes, and lo! the wonder of the world! In the blackness of the mid NIGHT, in the fury of wind and rain, the dead vine had flowered. Five white, moon faced blossoms blew gaily round the skeleton vine, shining back triumphant at the red lightning. (shrink)

El control efectivo de la calidad y seguridad de los ali­mentos requiere de métodos analíticos que garanticen la deter­minación fiable de cualquier sustancia potencialmente perjudicial para el consumidor que pueda estar presente en el alimento antes de su distribución y comercialización. Una de las aproximaciones analíticas que contribuye a garantizar este objetivo engloba una serie de técnicas que tienen en común la utilización de anticuerpos como elementos esenciales para la detección del analito diana, y que en conjunto reciben el nombre (...) de métodos inmunoquímicos. Este artículo pretender aportar una visión básica de los principios bioquímicos subyacentes a estas tecnologías y cuáles son sus venta­jas y limitaciones en la determinación de contaminantes químicos, residuos y aditivos en matrices alimentarias. En la última parte se comentan algunas de nuestras iniciativas en este ámbito que han dado lugar a kits rápidos disponibles comercialmente tras haber transferido la tecnología correspondiente al sector industrial. (shrink)

This book review symposium aims to open a space for discussions and questions responded to the book Education between Speech and Writing: Crossing the Boundaries of Dao and Deconstruction, which is...

Hung Yao-hsün (1903–1986) is one of the most creative, albeit long overlooked, thinkers in Japanese-ruled Taiwan (1895–1945). This paper’s aim is threefold. It first argues that while Hung’s early philosophy was rooted in the Kyoto school, he is a key founder of the Sit-chûn movement of Taiwanese philosophy. It next shows that during Taiwan’s martial law (1949–1987), Hung’s thought features a “Buddhist turn,” in which Zen is incorporated within existentialism. Third, while this turn is a sharp contrast (...) to his prewar philosophical activism, Hung’s last work stressed Abraham Kaplan’s (1918–1993) view that philosophy should be connected to one’s life experience, echoing Hung’s prewar usage of fūdo in justifying Taiwan’s cultural subjectivity. In other words, there is an implicit continuity between his early and late philosophy. (shrink)

This book is the first edited collection of papers on the work of one of the most seminal and profound contemporary philosophers. Over the last five decades, Kit Fine has made thought-provoking and innovative contributions to several areas of systematic philosophy, including philosophy of language, metaphysics, and the philosophy of mathematics, as well as to a number of topics in philosophical logic. These contributions have helped reshape the agendas of those fields and have given fresh impetus to a number of (...) perennial debates. Fine's work is distinguished by its technical sophistication, philosophical breadth, and independence from current orthodoxy. A blend of sound common-sense combined with a virtuosity in argumentation and constructive thinking is part and parcel of Kit Fine's lasting contributions to current trends in analytic philosophy. Researchers and students in philosophy, logic, linguistics, and cognitive science will benefit alike from these critical contributions to Fine's novel theories on meaning and representation, arbitrary objects, essence, ontological realism, and the metaphysics of modality, and will come away with a better understanding of the issues within contemporary analytic philosophy with which they deal. (shrink)

A short intellectual biography of Kit Fine, provided by himself.

Kit Fine; XIV*—Ontological Dependence, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 95, Issue 1, 1 June 1995, Pages 269–290, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristote.

A number of philosophers have recently become receptive to the idea that, in addition to scientific or causal explanation, there may be a distinctive kind of metaphysical explanation, in which explanans and explanandum are connected, not through some sort of causal mechanism, but through some constitutive form of determination. I myself have long been sympathetic to this idea of constitutive determination or ‘ontological ground’; and it is the aim of the present paper to help put the idea on a firmer (...) footing - to explain how it is to be understood, how it relates to other ideas, and how it might be of use in philosophy. (shrink)

It is my aim in this paper to show that the contemporary assimilation of essence to modality is fundamentally misguided and that, as a consequence, the corresponding conception of metaphysics should be given up. It is not my view that the modal account fails to capture anything which might reasonably be called a concept of essence. My point, rather, is that the notion of essence which is of central importance to the metaphysics of identity is not to be understood in (...) modal terms or even to be regarded as extensionally equivalent to a modal notion. The one notion is, if I am right, a highly refined version of the other; it is like a sieve which performs a similar function but with a much finer mesh. (shrink)

Introducing a new and ambitious position in the field, Kit Fine’s _Semantic Relationism_ is a major contribution to the philosophy of language. Written by one of today’s most respected philosophers Argues for a fundamentally new approach to the study of representation in language and thought Proposes that there may be representational relationships between expressions or elements of thought that are not grounded in the intrinsic representational features of the expressions or elements themselves Forms part of the prestigious new _Blackwell/Brown Lectures (...) in Philosophy_ series, based on an ongoing series of lectures by today’s leading philosophers. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes two kinds of realist issue -- the issue of whether the propositions of a given domain are factual and the issue of whether they are fundamental. It criticizes previous accounts of what these issues come to and suggests that they are to be understood in terms of a basic metaphysical concept of reality. This leaves open the question of how such issues are to be resolved; and it is argued that this may be done through consideration of (...) what grounds the facts of a given domain, when fundamentality is in question, and what grounds our engagement with the putative facts, when factuality is in question. (shrink)

This paper deals with the truth-Conditions and the logic for vague languages. The use of supervaluations and of classical logic is defended; and other approaches are criticized. The truth-Conditions are extended to a language that contains a definitely-Operator and that is subject to higher order vagueness.

Kit Fine develops a Fregean theory of abstraction, and suggests that it may yield a new philosophical foundation for mathematics, one that can account for both our reference to various mathematical objects and our knowledge of various mathematical truths. The Limits ofion breaks new ground both technically and philosophically.

This book is collection of the the author’s previously published papers on the philosophy of modality and tense and it also includes three unpublished papers. The author provides an exposition and defence of certain positions for which he is well-known: the intelligibility of modality de re; the primitiveness of the modal; and the primacy of the actual over the possible. He also argues for some less familiar positions: the existence of distinctive forms of natural and normative necessity, not reducible to (...) any form of metaphysical necessity; the need to make a distinction between the worldly and unworldly, analogous to the distinction between the tensed and the tenseless; and the viability of a nonstandard form of realism about tense, which recognizes the tensed character of reality without conceding there is any privileged standpoint from which it is to be viewed. (shrink)

“Mathematical objects are not exactly of our own making, but we actually have to do something to get them. There’s something out there which we prod, but there’s the prodding that’s also required. Numbers are not exactly out there or in us, but somehow in between.”.

I lay down a system of structural rules for various notions of ground and establish soundness and completeness.

In this chapter, Kit Fine develops a theory of partial truth within the framework of truthmaker semantics. The notion of partial truth is meant to convey the idea that the facts can favor the truth of a proposition without thereby making it true. Beyond its intrinsic interest, the theory of partial truth is of help in understanding the related notions of partial content and verisimilitude. The theory Fine develops is hyperintensional in that it does not always treat classically equivalent propositions (...) as identical, and it also makes truth simpliciter neither necessary nor sufficient for partial truth—a partially true proposition need not be true, and a true proposition need not be partially true. In addition to the notion of partial truth, the resources of the truthmaker framework permit Fine to define several related notions, including what he calls part-wise truth (a proposition is part-wise true if the facts favor its truth as opposed to its falsity) and partial lack of falsity. (shrink)

I describe some paradoxes of ground and relate them to the semantic paradoxes.

Contents: Preface VII; Introduction 1; 1. The General Framework 5; 2. Some Standard Systems 61; 3. Systems in General 147; 4. Non-Standard Systems 177; Bibliography 210; General Index 215; Index of Symbols 219-220.

It is argued that there are three main forms of necessity --the metaphysical, the natural and the normative--and that none of them is reducible to the others or to any other form of necessity. In arguing for a distinctive form of natural necessity, it is necessary to refute a version of the doctrine of scientific essentialism; and in arguing for a distinctive form of normative necessity, it is necessary to refute certain traditional and contemporary versions of ethical naturalism.

There is a well-known argument from Leibniz's Law for the view that coincident material things may be distinct. For given that they differ in their properties, then how can they be the same? However, many philosophers have suggested that this apparent difference in properties is the product of a linguistic illusion; there is just one thing out there, but different sorts or guises under which it may be described. I attempt to show that this ‘opacity’ defence has intolerable consequences for (...) the functioning of our language and that the original argument should therefore be allowed to stand. (shrink)

I propose a new semantics for intuitionistic logic, which is a cross between the construction-oriented semantics of Brouwer-Heyting-Kolmogorov and the condition-oriented semantics of Kripke. The new semantics shows how there might be a common semantical underpinning for intuitionistic and classical logic and how intuitionistic logic might thereby be tied to a realist conception of the relationship between language and the world.

There is a common form of problem, to be found in many areas of philosophy, concerning the relationship between our perspective on reality and reality itself. We make statements (or form judgements) about how things are from a given standpoint or perspective. We make the statement ‘it is raining’ from the standpoint of the present time, for example, or the statement‘it is here’ from the standpoint of where we are, or the statement ‘I am glad’ from the standpoint of a (...) subject. In each of these cases, the statement has a certain ‘aspect’ or perspectival character in virtue of which its truth is capable of varying from one standpoint to another. Thus the statement ‘it is raining’ is tensed, the statement ‘it is here’ is ‘spatiocentric’ and the statement ‘I am glad’ is first-personal. The problem we then face is to determine whether this aspect is a feature of the reality which is described or merely a feature of the statement by which it is described. Is reality itself somehow tensed or spatiocentric or firstpersonal or is it merely that we describe a tenseless or spatially uncentered or impersonal reality from a tensed or spatiocentric or first-personal point of view? (shrink)

Immortality has recently become a prominent topic of discussion, particularly in light of advancing technologies aimed at enhancing human life expectancy. Proposed scenarios encompass improved treatments for various diseases and the development of longevity medicine. In this essay, I examine the theory of the self and the concept of immor‑ tality as presented in Heshanggong’s commentary on the Daodejing. This analysis serves as a case study aimed at illuminating a unique perspective on the self that contributes to contemporary discussions of (...) immortality. I argue that Heshanggong’s commentary em‑ phasizes the significance of jing 精, qi 氣, and shen 神, positing that our essential property is to have the essential spirits (jingshen 精神). Furthermore, it suggests the possibility of a disembodied form of immortality without a physical human body. This interpretation of immortality offers a novel understanding of how immortality may be achievable. (shrink)

While humans have developed universal capacities for detecting unfair behaviours, the nature of equity and how to achieve it remain debated. This paper examines equity from a less common perspective, that of Marxist Buddhism, a philosophy first developed in Asia in the 1920s that incorporates socialist ideas into the Mahayana tradition. It therefore (i) demonstrates that Marxist Buddhism’s emphasis on the altruism of equity reflects a virtue ethics approach that contrasts with deontology and anti-deontological traditions, adding novelty to the field (...) and (ii) shows that unlike the Western theorists who assume the state is a guarantor of fair distribution, Marxist Buddhists distribute the responsibility of achieving equity to each society member. This decentralized approach is thus more feasible for most developing countries that lack stable governments. Moreover, Marxist Buddhism (iii) facilitates analysis by and for powerless individuals, which better prevents hermeneutical lacunae, such as linguistic injustice, than other theories of equity. Finally, this discussion of Marxist Buddhism (iv) sheds new light on the debate over intervention types in the current literature on implicit bias. (shrink)