Selfhood and Fiduciary Community: A Smithian Reading of Tu Weiming’s Confucian Humanism

Tu Weiming, as a leading spokesman for contemporary New Confucianism, has been reinterpreting the Confucian tradition in the face of the challenges of modernity. Tu takes selfhood as his starting point, emphasizing the importance of cultivating the human mind-and-heart as a deepening and broadening process to realize the anthropocosmic dao. He highlights the concept of a “fiduciary community” and advocates that, because of it, Confucianism remains a dynamic “inclusive humanism.” Tu’s mode of thinking tallies well with Wilfred C. Smith’s vision of religion, specifically the latter’s exposition of faith as a universal human quality and proposal of “corporate critical self-consciousness.” This article details the theories of both scholars, highlights their similarities, and contrasts their differences. It argues that Smith’s world theology provides a heuristic framework through which one understands how Tu has advanced his Confucian humanism from a Chinese philosophical or cultural tradition to the midst of world religions.     

How Incidental Confidence Influences Self‐Interested Behaviors: A Double‐Edged Sword

The present research investigates how incidental confidence influences self‐interested behaviors. It is well established that being in a psychological state of lower confidence causes people to experience psychological aversion that they are motivated to reduce. We study the transfer effect of confidence; people strive to compensate for lower confidence in one domain by obtaining higher status in other unrelated domains. Prior research has linked money with status and suggested that money can increase confidence. Building on this research, we proposed and showed in four experiments that lower incidental confidence increased self‐interested behaviors that brought financial gains. Drawing on research on competitive altruism, we also predicted and found that when altruism, rather than money, was seen as the primary source of status, the effect of incidental confidence reversed such that lower incidental confidence decreased self‐interested behaviors. Data ruled out alternative explanations and provided consistent evidence for the proposed compensatory mechanism. We also discussed theoretical and practical implications of the present research. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Attitudes Towards Prenatal Genetic Counseling,Prenatal Genetic Testing,and Termination of Pregnancy among Southeast and East Asian Women in the United States

Recognizing the heterogeneity of the Asian population with regards to acculturation, education, health awareness, and cultural values is vital for tailoring culturally sensitive and appropriate care. Prior studies show that cultural values influence perceptions of genetics within Asian populations. The reputation of the family unit factors into decisions such as pregnancy termination and disclosure of family medical history, and the nondirective model of American genetic counseling may conflict with the historical Asian model of paternalistic health care. Previous studies also provide conflicting evidence regarding correlations between education, acculturation, age, and awareness and perceptions of genetic testing. The aims of this study were to describe attitudes towards prenatal genetics among Southeast and East Asian women living in the United States for varying amounts of time and to explore sociocultural factors influencing those attitudes. Twenty-three Asian women who were members of Asian cultural organizations in the United States were interviewed via telephone about their attitudes towards prenatal genetic counseling, prenatal genetic testing, and termination of pregnancy. Responses were transcribed and coded for common themes using a thematic analysis approach. Four major themes emerged. In general, participants: (1) had diverse expectations for genetic counselors; (2) tended to weigh risks and benefits with regards to genetic testing decisions; (3) had mixed views on termination for lethal and non-lethal genetic conditions; and (4) identified cultural factors which influenced testing and termination such as lack of available resources, societal shame and stigma, and family pressure. These findings may allow prenatal genetic counselors to gain a richer, more nuanced understanding of their Asian patients and to offer culturally tailored prenatal genetic counseling.     

A multilevel investigation of antecedents of employee positive affective displays: the roles of customer negative affective displays and employee perceived supervisory support

Much past research on employee positive affective displays have explored their antecedents using a single level of analysis. The present study extends previous research by capturing the complex phenomenon of employee affective displays from a multilevel perspective. We used an event-sampling methodology to address a gap in the literature by examining affective displays at the intra-individual level and inter-individual level. Results based on 67 postal clerks completing 420 transactions in post offices in Taiwan show that customer negative affective displays were negatively correlated with employee positive affective displays. Moreover, employee perceived instrumental supervisory support had a cross-level moderating effect on the within-individual relationship between customer-displayed negative emotions and employee-displayed positive emotions. Specifically, those with perceived higher levels of instrumental supervisory support tended to express friendlier emotions while interacting with unhappy or angry customers than those with perceived lower levels of instrumental supervisory support. At the inter-individual level, results show that employee perceived emotional supervisory support was positively related to their affective displays at the aggregated employee level.     

The metaepistemology of knowing-how

Knowing-how is currently a hot topic in epistemology. But what is the proper subject matter of a study of knowing-how and in what sense can such a study be regarded as epistemological? The aim of this paper is to answer such metaepistemological questions. This paper offers a metaepistemology of knowing-how, including considerations of the subject matter, task, and nature of the epistemology of knowing-how. I will achieve this aim, first, by distinguishing varieties of knowing-how and, second, by introducing and elaborating the concept of hybrid knowing-how, which entails a combination of a ground-level ability and a meta-level perspective on that ability. The stance I wish to advocate is that the epistemology of knowing-how is a normative discipline whose main task is to study the nature and value of human practical intelligence required to do things in a particular manner.     

Sublexical ambiguity effect in reading Chinese disyllabic compounds

For Chinese compounds, neighbors can share either both orthographic forms and meanings, or orthographic forms only. In this study, central presentation and visual half-field (VF) presentation methods were used in conjunction with ERP measures to investigate how readers solve the sublexical semantic ambiguity of the first constituent character in reading a disyllabic compound. The sublexical ambiguity of the first character was manipulated while the orthographic neighborhood sizes of the first and second character (NS1, NS2) were controlled. Subjective rating of number of meanings corresponding to a character was used as an index of sublexical ambiguity. Results showed that low sublexical ambiguity words elicited a more negative N400 than high sublexical ambiguity words when words were centrally presented. Similar patterns were found when words were presented to the left VF. Interestingly, different patterns were observed for pseudowords. With left VF presentation, high sublexical ambiguity psudowords showed a more negative N400 than low sublexical ambiguity pseudowords. In contrast, with right VF presentation, low sublexical ambiguity pseudowords showed a more negative N400 than high sublexical ambiguity pseudowords. These findings indicate that a level of morphological representation between form and meaning needs to be established and refined in Chinese. In addition, hemispheric asymmetries in the use of word information in ambiguity resolution should be taken into account, even at sublexical level.     

On the Epistemology of Language

Epistemology of language, a branch of both epistemology and the philosophy of language, asks what knowledge of language consists in. In this paper, I argue that such an inquiry is a pointless enterprise due to its being based upon the incorrect assumption that linguistic competence requires knowledge of language. However, I do not think the phenomenon of knowledge of language is trivial. I propose a virtue‐theoretic account of linguistic competence, and then explain the phenomenon from a virtue‐semantic point of view.     

Modelling intransitive preferences: A random-effects approach

Current models for individual-level paired comparison data are based on the three assumptions that (1) pairwise judgments are independent, (2) the utility of an item remains invariant across trials, and (3) pair-specific variability can account for intransitive choice behaviour. All three assumptions seem strong and likely to be violated in empirical applications. This paper introduces a new framework for the analysis of paired comparison data which relaxes these three assumptions and considers the utilities associated with the same item across trials to be neither independent nor identical, but related. The proposed approach provides new insights about the reliability and consistency of paired comparison judgments and can account for systematic violations of transitivity. An application, based on a replication of Tversky's [(1969). Intransitivity of preference. Psychological Review, 76, 31-48] gamble study, illustrates the usefulness of the new approach in modelling both transitive and intransitive preferences.