The Priority of “Liberty” or “Ping An ”: Two Different Cultural Value Priorities and Their Impacts

“Liberty” is a core, prior value of modern Western culture, and particularly of Anglo-American political and economic discourse. For more than a century, the US and other Western countries have been doing their utmost to promote the value of liberty around the world. However, different nations and cultures have different value priorities. Considering “liberty” as the essential, unassailable prior value is an Anglo-American cultural particularity without universal applicability. In China, “liberty” as a high value is a new idea imported from the West at the beginning of the modern era which never enjoyed a very important position in ancient China. Generally speaking, in Chinese culture, the value of “ping an,” with its connotations of peace, safety, equality, health, harmony, and tranquility, is obviously a prior value. Different value priorities have different impacts on culture. This paper tries to compare the American value priority of “liberty” with the Chinese value priority of “ping an,” while discussing their different historical backgrounds and cultural impacts. It argues that values and value priorities are neither absolute nor universal, but that they are rather historical, situational, and dynamic. Value priority in a society should be based on that society’s particular social reality and on the stage of development and the life requirements of its people, rather than on an outside imperative. In the era of globalization, different and even sometimes contradictory human values may actually mutually complement and counterbalance one another.     

小学生学习坚持性和学习投入在效能感、内在价值与学业成就关系中的中介作用*

采用学习坚持性问卷、自我效能感问卷、内在价值问卷和学习投入量表,对407名四、五年级小学生施测,并收集学生期中考试成绩作为客观指标,建立结构方程模型以考察学习坚持性和学习投入在自我效能感、内在价值与学业成就关系中的中介作用。结果发现:(1)学习坚持性与自我效能感、内在价值、学习投入、学业成就均显著正相关;(2)学习坚持性可以部分中介自我效能感与学习投入、内在价值与学习投入之间的相关;(3)学习坚持性通过学习投入的中介作用影响学业成就。     

In Defense of Seeking Wisdom

Abstract: Steven Yates has criticized my claim that we need to bring about a revolution in the aims and methods of academic inquiry so that the aim becomes to promote wisdom rather than just acquire knowledge. Yates's main criticism is that the proposed revolution does not have a clear strategy for its implementation and is, in any case, Utopian, unrealizable, and undesirable. It is argued, here, that Yates has misconstrued what the proposed revolution amounts to; in fact it is realizable, is urgently needed, and involves exploiting the kind of strategies utilized so effectively by the philosophes of the eighteenth‐century French Enlightenment.     

Universities and the Promotion of Corporate Responsibility: Reinterpreting the Liberal Arts Tradition

The issue of corporate responsibility has long been discussed in relationship to universities, but generally only in an ad hoc fashion. While the role of universities in teaching business ethics is one theme that has received significant and rather constant attention, other issues tend to be raised only sporadically. Moreover, when issues of corporate responsibility are raised, it is often done on the presumption of some understanding of a liberal arts mandate of the university, a position that has come under much attack in recent years. The purpose of this article is to investigate more systematically the nature of the obligations that the university has to promote more responsible corporate behaviour. It does so on the basis of a reinterpretation of the liberal arts tradition from a critical theory perspective. This entails: (1) an initial conceptualization of the roles and functions of the university; (2) an examination of these functions at two formative periods of the liberal arts tradition, the medieval university and the rise of the modern university in Germany in the early 19th century; (3) an investigation of ruptures in the understanding and practices of the liberal arts tradition, resulting in large part from the rise of the bureaucratic state and the industrial capitalist economy; (4) a reinterpretation of the liberal arts tradition from a critical theory perspective; and (5) a systematic elaboration of the obligations of the university vis-à-vis corporations based upon the university's key functions of teaching, research, formation and professional development.     

Open Theism: An Answer to My Critics

Abstract :  Open theism is a version of historic free will theism which posits God as granting to human beings significant freedom to cooperate with or to resist the will of God for their lives. God's goal is to make possible relationships of mutual love between God and creatures and therefore set up a dynamic give and take situation in which God can even be said to risk failure to the degree permitted by the overall plan. A debate has broken out as to whether open theism goes too far in its revision. I myself see it as a mere adjustment to standard Arminian thinking on the point of understanding the divine foreknowledge. In this article, I argue that, despite a goodly number of objections, the position deserves to be viewed as a legitimate option for Christian theology, yea even for "evangelical" theology.     

History of the Association of Medical School Psychologists (AMSP), 1982–2005

This paper presents a brief history of the Association of Medical School Psychologists (AMSP) from the Association’s beginning in 1982 to the present day. Prior to 1982, there had been several unsuccessful efforts to form an association that would represent psychologists in academic medical centers. Attempts by psychiatry to limit the growing number and influence of psychologists in medical schools created a sense of threat among psychologists that catalyzed the formation of the Association. Membership was initially restricted to one senior psychologist from each medical school, a restriction that limited AMSP’s development, but AMSP later opened its doors to all academic medical center psychologists. The Association was rebuffed in initial efforts to join the Association of American Medical Colleges, and at a later date, to become a Division of the American Psychological Association (APA). In time, however, AMSP did establish formal ties to both of those organizations, and it has collaborated with APA in important surveys of academic medical center psychologists. Following a period in the late 1990’s when AMSP seemed likely to lose its way, the Association rebounded. AMSP now has an Administrative Director, a stable home base, and revised bylaws that assure greater stability and continuity of leadership. These developments, in conjunction with a strong working relationship with the Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings, have positioned AMSP to grow and more effectively serve the community of psychologists who work in academic medical centers.     

Correcting the Scholarly Record in the Aftermath of Plagiarism: A Snapshot of Current‐Day Publishing Practices in Philosophy

Individuals discovered to have engaged in serial plagiarism in philosophy are few, but the academic publishers falling victim to them are many. Some of the most respected publishing houses in philosophy have recently dealt with the problem of having published plagiarized material. The various responses by these publishers to an instance of serial plagiarism, one that involves forty‐three articles and book chapters, provides a real‐time snapshot of the practices for correcting the scholarly record. The analysis offered in this article yields a twofold conclusion: first, there is relatively little uniformity among publishers in philosophy for responding to plagiarism; and second, in comparison with the natural sciences the discipline of philosophy often falls short of the accepted practices for correcting the scholarly record. The article considers only public, documented cases of academic plagiarism in philosophy and makes no new allegations of plagiarism.     

Publish or Perish

Funds and positions in philosophy should be awarded through systems that are reliable, objective, and efficient. One question usually taken to be relevant is how many publications people have in a group of well‐respected journals. In the context of significant competition for jobs and funding, however, relying on quantity of publications creates a serious downside: the oft‐lamented demand that we publish or perish. This article offers a systematic review of the problems involved in contemporary academic philosophy, and argues that the resulting situation is bad not just for individual philosophers but also for philosophy itself: we are not working as a discipline to as high a standard as we might. The article then suggests some potential solutions, including some more detailed considerations around what seems a particularly promising option: a professional code of conduct for philosophers.     

Our inalienable ability to sin: Peter Olivi’s rejection of asymmetrical freedom

From the time of Augustine to the late thirteenth century, leading Christian thinkers agreed that freedom requires the ability to make good choices, but not the ability to make bad ones. If freedom required the ability to sin, they reasoned, neither God nor the angels nor the blessed in heaven could be free. This essay examines the work of Peter Olivi, the first medieval philosopher known to reject the asymmetrical conception of freedom. Olivi argues that the ability to sin is essential to creaturely freedom and remains even in heaven. While Anselm is the nominal target of Olivi’s arguments on this topic, they form part of a wider critique directed even more at Aquinas and his followers. Olivi faults them for misunderstanding the nature of the created will and for failing to provide a foundation for a particular kind of moral responsibility: personal merit.