Background: Critically ill patients often require complex clinical care by highly trained staff within a specialized intensive care unit (ICU) with advanced equipment. There are currently limited data on the costs of critical care in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). This study aims to investigate the direct-medical costs of key infectious disease (tetanus, sepsis, and dengue) patients admitted to ICU in a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam, and explores how the costs and cost drivers can vary between the (...) different diseases. -/- Methods: We calculated the direct medical costs for patients requiring critical care for tetanus, dengue and sepsis. Costing data (stratified into different cost categories) were extracted from the bills of patients hospitalized to the adult ICU with a dengue, sepsis and tetanus diagnosis that were enrolled in three studies conducted at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in HCMC from January 2017 to December 2019. The costs were considered from the health sector perspective. The total sample size in this study was 342 patients. -/- Results: ICU care was associated with significant direct medical costs. For patients that did not require mechanical ventilation, the median total ICU cost per patient varied between US$64.40 and US$675 for the different diseases. The costs were higher for patients that required mechanical ventilation, with the median total ICU cost per patient for the different diseases varying between US$2,590 and US$4,250. The main cost drivers varied according to disease and associated severity. -/- Conclusion: This study demonstrates the notable cost of ICU care in Vietnam and in similar LMIC settings. Future studies are needed to further evaluate the costs and economic burden incurred by ICU patients. The data also highlight the importance of evaluating novel critical care interventions that could reduce the costs of ICU care. (shrink)

Sustainable economic growth is not only the ultimate goal of business corporations but also the primary target of local governments as well as regional and global economies. One of the cornerstones of sustainable economic growth is ethics. Ethical leaders and employees have great potential for positive influence on decisions and behaviors that lead to sustainability. Ethical behavior, therefore, is expected of everyone in the modern workplace. This paper argues that ethics in the business is the most important sector in leading (...) to profits and being successful in the long run, an organization needs to be driven by strong ethical values, not only profit. (shrink)

The water scarcity crisis is becoming more severe across the globe and recycled water has been suggested as a feasible solution to the crisis. However, expanding the use of potable and recycled public water has been hindered by public acceptance. Previous studies suggest threat perception and trust of provided information have positive linear relationships with recycled water acceptance. However, given the complex filtering role of trust in the human mental process, we argue that the effects of threat perception and trust (...) may have non-linear relationships with acceptance of recycled water for drinking. To support and validate this argument, we employed Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics on 726 Spanish residents. We found that individuals more concerned about water shortage are less likely to accept using recycled water for drinking if their trust in the water quality and safety is low. Meanwhile, people more concerned about water shortage are more likely to accept using recycled water for drinking if they trust the water quality and safety. The findings suggest the non-linear relationships between threat perception, trust, and recycled water acceptance while validating mindsponge-based reasoning. Moreover, the results also highlight the importance of trust in influencing the mental process’s outcome: recycled water acceptance. (shrink)

This viewpoint provides an explanation from the public health policies of Vietnamese government to contain the contagious disease with regard to COVID-19 pandemic. A combination of an early lockdown, increase in “virality” of the health information, encouragement in health declaration, regulation for wearing mask in the public, and country’s unity have been the effective ways to cope with this deadly virus in Vietnam, a developing country, which became the first country to halt the SARS spread successfully in 2003.

This study aims to determine driving factors significantly influencing the purchase intention and to identify impediments creating the intention –behavior gap regarding organic food consumption in Vietnam. The chosen driving factors affecting the organic food purchase intention in this study are health benefits, environmental awareness, and social norms, whereas trust, price, and convenience as well as availability are investigated as deterrent factors of the link between intention and behavior. A structured online questionnaire with snow-balling sampling method was distributed to collect (...) a representative sample of 466 Vietnamese consumers nationwide. A five-point likert scale was used for the level of approval for 36 statements. Statistical tools of SPSS 22.0 including descriptive analysis, principal component analysis, and multiple regression analysis models were used for data analysis. The results showed that health benefits, environmental awareness, and social norms were facilitators of organic food purchase intention. Although high intention to purchase organic foods was identified in Vietnam, it was not translated into actual purchase behavior. The main barriers for the inconsistency were premium price and low availability of organic products or inconvenience to buy in the market. Lack of trust insignificantly impacted on organic food choices among Vietnamese consumers in this study. These empirical findings and suggestions are beneficial for all players across supply chains. (shrink)

This research investigates whether the non-market economy status of NMEs such as Vietnam disadvantages exporters in anti-dumping investigations and proceedings. The research analyses legal, procedural and other issues relating to the non-market economy status of NMEs in general and Vietnam in particular, in anti-dumping investigations and proceedings conducted by the US and the EU.

‘Dumping’ is a practice in international trade whereby a product is introduced into the commerce of another country at less than its ‘normal value,’ which might cause or threaten material injury to the domestic industry of the importing country. To address the practice of dumping and provide rules to deal with it, the World Trade Organization (WTO) adopted the Agreement on Implementation of Article VI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (1994), known as the Anti-Dumping Agreement (ADA). -/- (...) The ADA sets out anti-dumping investigation procedures that importing countries must follow if they wish to impose anti-dumping measures, which are determined by comparing the normal value and the export price of the goods in question. However, not all countries are treated equally under these arrangements. Countries that are non-market economies (NMEs) are accorded special treatment provided by specific rules, including the option for investigating authorities to resort to surrogate prices in a third country for the purpose of establishing normal value. This application of surrogate prices is referred to as ‘NME treatment’. In the absence of an internationally recognised definition of an NME, each WTO Member has adopted its own definition and/or a list of NMEs. Vietnam, a WTO Member whose economy is moving from being centrally planned to being market-based, is considered an NME by both the United States (US) and the European Union (EU). This research investigates whether the non-market economy status of NMEs such as Vietnam disadvantages exporters in anti-dumping investigations and proceedings. The research analyses legal, procedural and other issues relating to the non-market economy status of NMEs in general and Vietnam in particular, in anti-dumping investigations and proceedings conducted by the US and the EU. The research uses a qualitative methodology design, by which data was collected primarily using desk-based study, supplemented by interviews with anti-dumping experts, Vietnamese exporters and government officials. It involves the examination of international law pertaining to anti-dumping, the US and EU anti-dumping laws and investigation procedures, analysis of the WTO anti-dumping dispute settlement procedures and related jurisprudence, as well as the analysis of Vietnam’s transition to a market economy. -/- The research has found that both the US and EU treat Vietnam as a NME and have developed their own specific methodologies for anti-dumping investigations on exports from Vietnam. Furthermore, it highlights the wide discretion of the US and the EU under their domestic laws in many stages of anti-dumping investigations. -/- The findings also show that the WTO Dispute Settlement Body generally considers the US and the EU practices to be consistent with the ADA provisions. However, certain US and EU practices were found to be inconsistent with the ADA, including ‘zeroing’, limited examination, surrogate country selection, and the imposition of the ‘entity-wide rate.’ Further, by applying these practices, investigating authorities might establish unpredictable normal values that may inflate the estimated dumping margins and ultimately lead to the imposition of a higher than appropriate anti-dumping duty. The analysis concludes that the NME status of countries such as Vietnam disadvantages them when facing claims of dumping. Finally, this thesis provides recommendations for Vietnamese exporters that will serve to improve their competence as defendants/respondents in anti-dumping investigations and proceedings and more effectively demonstrate the degree to which their operations are based on market-based principles. Recommendations are also provided to the Vietnam Government on ways in which it can support Vietnamese exporters in anti-dumping investigations and proceedings. (shrink)

In the trust-health relationship, how trusting other people in society may promote good health is a topic often examined. However, the other direction of influence – how health may affect trust – has not been well explored. In order to investigate this possible effect, we employed Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics to go deeper into the information processing mechanisms underlying the expressions of trust. Conducting Bayesian analysis on a dataset of 1237 residents from Cali, Colombia, we found that general health (...) status is positively associated with generalized trust, but recent experiences of illnesses/injuries have a negative moderating effect. Personalized trust is largely unchanged across different general health conditions, but the trust level becomes higher with recent experiences of illnesses/injuries. Psychophysiological mechanisms of increasing information filtering intensity toward unfamiliar sources during a vulnerable state of health is a plausible explanation of found patterns in generalized trust. Because established personal relationships are reinforced information channels, personalized trust is not affected as much. Rather, the results suggest that people may rely even more on loved ones when they are in bad health conditions. This exploratory study shows that the trust-health relationship can be examined from a different angle that may provide new insights. (shrink)

Hậu quả và ảnh hưởng của biến đổi khí hậu, mất đa dạng sinh thái, và suy thoái môi trường đang dần trở nên rõ ràng hơn. Điều này cũng kéo theo sự gia tăng nhanh chóng các mâu thuẫn và xung đột xã hội. Chính vì thế, trong những năm gần đây, việc kiện tụng liên quan đến môi trường đang ngày trở nên nhiều hơn, và quy mô cũng lớn hơn, đặc biệt là giữa các công ty và (...) nhà hoạt động môi trường. Những vụ kiện này thường xoay quanh các vấn đề quan trọng như biến đổi khí hậu, ô nhiễm, khai thác tài nguyên hủy hoại môi trường sống, gây rối loạn hệ sinh thái, hủy diệt đa dạng sinh học, và tiêu diệt nguồn sinh kế của người dân. Để đạt được các mục tiêu giảm biến đổi khí hậu, bảo vệ môi trường và môi sinh, đồng thời đảm bảo sự phát triển bền vững, cũng như là công lý cho cả con người và thiên nhiên, chính quyền và hệ thống tư pháp cần hiểu rõ bản chất bản chất của các mâu thuẫn dẫn đến cuộc chiến pháp lý về môi trường. Bài viết này có mục đích tìm hiểu bối cảnh phức tạp của các cuộc chiến pháp lý về môi trường, làm sáng tỏ tầm quan trọng và kết quả tiềm tàng của chúng, từ đó chỉ ra một số lỗ hổng pháp lý và khiếu kiện môi trường tại Việt Nam. (shrink)

Cuộc khủng hoảng 2007-2008 nổ ra ở Hoa Kỳ kéo theo sự lao dốc của các thị trường chứng khoán các nước cho thấy tồn tại tác động lan truyền từ thị trường này sang thị trường khác. Mục tiêu của bài nghiên cứu nhằm kiểm tra mức độ lan truyền trong tỷ suất lợi nhuận và độ biến động tỷ suất lợi nhuận từ các thị trường chứng khoán phát triển (Hoa Kỳ và Nhật Bản) đến tám thị trường (...) các nước mới nổi (Ấn Độ, Trung Quốc, Indonesia, Hàn Quốc, Malaysia, Philippines, Đài Loan, Thái Lan) và Việt Nam. Nghiên cứu sử dụng các biến ngoại sinh là cú sốc từ thị trường Mỹ và Nhật Bản và hiệu ứng ngày trong mô hình ARMA(1,1)-GARCH(1,1) trên dữ liệu của các nước mới nổi khu vực châu Á và Việt Nam nhằm đánh giá tác động lan truyền. Nghiên cứu đưa ra một số kết quả như sau. Thứ nhất, hiệu ứng ngày tồn tại trên sáu trong số chín thị trường chứng khoán được nghiên cứu, ngoại trừ Ấn Độ, Đài Loan và Philippines. Thứ hai, tồn tại tác động lan truyền trong tỷ suất lợi nhuận giữa các thị trường với mức độ khác nhau, trong đó, Hoa Kỳ có tác động mạnh hơn đến thị trường Malaysia, Philippines và Việt Nam; ngược lại, Nhật Bản có hiệu ứng lan truyền cao hơn đến thị trường Trung Quốc, Ấn Độ, Hàn Quốc và Thái Lan; đối với thị trường Indonesia, hiệu ứng lan truyền từ Hoa Kỳ và Nhật Bản là tương đương. Cuối cùng, nghiên cứu không tìm thấy bằng chứng về hiệu ứng lan truyền trong độ biến động từ thị trường Hoa Kỳ và Nhật Bản đến các thị trường mới nổi khu vực châu Á và Việt Nam... (shrink)

Hậu quả và ảnh hưởng của biến đổi khí hậu, mất đa dạng sinh thái, và suy thoái môi trường đang dần trở nên rõ ràng hơn. Điều này cũng kéo theo sự gia tăng nhanh chóng các mâu thuẫn và xung đột xã hội. Chính vì thế, trong những năm gần đây, việc kiện tụng liên quan đến môi trường đang ngày trở nên nhiều hơn, và quy mô cũng lớn hơn, đặc biệt là giữa các công ty và (...) nhà hoạt động môi trường. Những vụ kiện này thường xoay quanh các vấn đề quan trọng như: biến đổi khí hậu, ô nhiễm, khai thác tài nguyên hủy hoại môi trường sống, gây rối loạn hệ sinh thái, hủy diệt đa dạng sinh học, và tiêu diệt nguồn sinh kế của người dân. (shrink)

The study aims to determine the socio-demographic and debt profile of the public-school teachers in the Schools Division of Aklan, Philippines, their reasons on acquiring debt and perceived ways to avoid debts. This study utilized descriptive correlational research design utilizing a researcher-made instrument on socio-demographic profile, pattern of expenditures, debt profile covering the type of debts, total cost of debts, reasons for having debts and perceived ways to manage debts. The data gathered were tabulated and analyzed using the IBM Statistical (...) Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 26. The take-home pay of the teachers was only more than half of their gross income. Most of the spouses of the married teachers were employed but many of them have relatively lower income. Their monthly family income was higher than the reported average family income for 2022 and their expenditures are also relatively higher than the average family expenditures in provinces for 2022. Almost one-half of the income of the teachers was used to pay their debts – both thru automatic payroll deduction and thru personal transactions. The bigger the household size, the higher the expenditure because there were more needs and there were many people consuming commodities. The higher the family income, the bigger the expenditure since lifestyle often adjusts with income. Young; married teachers; those occupying higher position and longer tenure have higher cumulative debts. Increase in family expenditure could cause increase in the number of debts as linked to the Theory of Reasoned Action and Theory of Planned Behavior. High regard for education, health, and safety triggered teachers to have debts, which can only be avoided thru better money and lifestyle management and having additional source of income. (shrink)

Along with the development of new technologies applied to a smartphone, the frequency that users interact with their phones also increased, leading to more impacts on human behaviors.

Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers.[1] With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre open access, barriers to copying or reuse are also reduced or removed by applying an open license for copyright.

Ngày 26/7, ông Phạm Minh Chính, lần thứ hai trong vòng hơn 100 ngày có lẻ, đã tuyên thệ nhậm chức Thủ tướng. Lần đầu ông làm điều này là ngày 5/4/2021, trong phiên họp cuối cùng của Quốc hội khóa trước, chuẩn bị cho ngày bầu cử Quốc hội khóa mới.

La reseña se traduce de su original "A novel perspective on thinking about thinking: Review of Mindsponge Theory".

The book consists of 16 chapters divided into three main parts, emphasizing the market system and financial-monetary control mechanisms. The book provides readers with significant economic advances. Thanks to a relatively extensive system of materials collected, chosen and computed over a long period of time from various domestic and international sources since Vietnam's independence. The book has highlighted the unresolved concerns and proposals based on examinations of the changing process of mechanisms and policies in general and for the financial industry, (...) banks and markets in particular. The study also focuses on Vietnam's real estate market, gold, stock market and US dollar market. (shrink)

The nationwide economic reform in 1986 transformed Vietnam from a centrally planned economy to a socialist-oriented market economy. Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial spirits within the populace are suggested to fuel the structural changes. Despite the importance of entrepreneurship in Vietnam’s economy, studies in Vietnam mainly pay attention to the practical aspects of entrepreneurial activities and neglect the cognitive and theoretical aspects of entrepreneurship. Thus, the current study employs the information-processing perspective of the Mindsponge Theory to explore how entrepreneurs’ knowledge accumulation can (...) affect their perceived likelihood of business success. Bayesian analysis indicates that business-related experience positively affects entrepreneurs’ business success likelihood. Greater willingness/readiness to transform thinking, acting, and beliefs can improve the business success of entrepreneurs who study others’ failures carefully. However, for entrepreneurs who perceive learning from others’ failures as unnecessary, higher willingness/readiness to transform diminishes their chance of success. Based on these findings, we recommend Vietnamese entrepreneurs accumulate knowledge through experience, learning, and an open mind for better decision-making and innovation creation capabilities. However, the learning process should be selective. (shrink)

The analysis shows that poor internet connection, lack of ICT skills, and psychological issues are associated with lower online learning comfort among secondary school students. Among these effects, the impact of psychological problems, like concentration difficulties, is the strongest (see Figure 1). We also find that learning comfortability is positively associated with learning effectiveness (see Figure 2).

The analysis shows that inviting students to answer questions and responding to their questions are two oral communication strategies that can improve students’ concentration and active interactions with teachers during online learning (see Figures 1 and 2, respectively). Both these strategies have almost equivalent effect magnitudes on students’ concentration and active interactions with teachers. We also find that students’ sex does not affect their concentration and active interactions with teachers.

[Book review] Kinh tế Việt Nam: Thăng trầm và đột phá Phạm Minh Chính and Vương Quân Hoàng National Political Publishing House 2nd edition Published in 2021 554pp. ISBN 978-604-57-6947-8.

Thị trường carbon toàn cầu đã trở thành một yếu tố quan trọng trong cuộc chiến chống biến đổi khí hậu, cung cấp cơ hội cho các chính phủ, doanh nghiệp và tổ chức giảm lượng khí thải khí nhà kính. Tuy nhiên, với sự gia tăng về tầm quan trọng của thị trường carbon, sự phức tạp trong quản lý nó cũng tăng lên. Một trong những thách thức lớn mà thị trường carbon phải đối mặt là sự tồn (...) tại của nhiều tiêu chuẩn đa dạng và đôi khi xung đột với nhau. Mặc dù các tiêu chuẩn này được phát triển để phục vụ các bên liên quan cho mục tiêu khác nhau, nhưng chúng cũng tạo ra sự hỗn loạn, làm giảm hiệu suất và gây ra các vấn đề tiềm ẩn. Bài viết này sẽ xem xét các vấn đề xung quanh sự tồn tại quá nhiều tiêu chuẩn trên thị trường carbon và thảo luận về sự cần thiết của việc hài hòa hóa chúng một cách hợp lý hơn. (shrink)

Ngụ ngôn về ông bói cá cho biết ông là nhân vật khá tinh nghịch, có lúc ngớ ngẩn như trẻ con, nhưng nhiều khi không thiếu những lời triết lý cũng ra gì phết! Vậy nên tác giả bình sách N. P. Tri cho rằng, chuyện của ông dành cho cả trẻ em lẫn người đã trưởng thành cũng rất có lý. Ở một góc nhìn khác, tác giả D. T. M. Phượng lại nhận thấy một dịp để người (...) đọc đồng hành, phiêu lưu cùng với ông “triết gia Xóm Chim” để có thể đánh giá xem ông ấy ngẩn ngơ thật hay không. (shrink)

Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those values; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Re-tweets, citation rates, ranked lists of best schools, and Grade Point Averages. We are vulnerable to value capture because of the competitive advantage that such crisp and clear expressions of value have in (...) our private reasoning and our public justification. There is, however, a price. In value capture, we take a central component of our autonomy — our ongoing deliberation over the exact articulation of our values — and we outsource it. And the metrics to which we outsource usually engineered for the interests of some external force, like a large-scale institution’s interest in cross-contextual comprehensibility and quick aggregability. That outsourcing cuts off one of the key benefits to personal deliberation. In value capture, we no longer adjust our values and their articulations in light of own rich experience of the world. Our values should often be carefully tailored to our particular selves or our small-scale communities, but in value capture, we buy our values off the rack. In some cases – like decreasing CO2 emissions – the costs of non-tailored values are outweighed by the benefit of precise collective coordination. In other cases, like in our aesthetic lives, they are not. This suggests that we should want different values suited to different scales. We should want value federalism. Some values are perhaps best pursued at the largest-scale level, others at smaller scales. The problem occurs when we exhibit an excess preference for the largest-scale values – when we consistently let the universal metrics swamp our quieter interests. (shrink)

Games may seem like a waste of time, where we struggle under artificial rules for arbitrary goals. The author suggests that the rules and goals of games are not arbitrary at all. They are a way of specifying particular modes of agency. This is what make games a distinctive art form. Game designers designate goals and abilities for the player; they shape the agential skeleton which the player will inhabit during the game. Game designers work in the medium of agency. (...) Game-playing, then, illuminates a distinctive human capacity. We can take on ends temporarily for the sake of the experience of pursuing them. Game play shows that our agency is significantly more modular and more fluid than we might have thought. It also demonstrates our capacity to take on an inverted motivational structure. Sometimes we can take on an end for the sake of the activity of pursuing that end. (shrink)

There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, we care about getting things right. On the other hand, we demand autonomy. We want appreciators to arrive at their aesthetic judgments through their own cognitive efforts, rather than deferring to experts. These two demands seem to be in tension; after all, if we want to get the right judgments, we should defer to the judgments of experts. The best explanation, I suggest, is (...) that aesthetic appreciation is something like a game. When we play a game, we try to win. But often, winning isn’t the point; playing is. Aesthetic appreciation involves the same flipped motivational structure: we aim at the goal of correctness, but having correct judgments isn’t the point. The point is the engaged process of interpreting, investigating, and exploring the aesthetic object. Deferring to aesthetic testimony, then, makes the same mistake as looking up the answer to a puzzle, rather than solving it for oneself. The shortcut defeats the whole point. This suggests a new account of aesthetic value: the engagement account. The primary value of the activity of aesthetic appreciation lies in the process of trying to generate correct judgments, and not in having correct judgments. -/- *There is an audio version available: look for the Soundcloud link, below.*. (shrink)

I propose to study one problem for epistemic dependence on experts: how to locate experts on what I will call cognitive islands. Cognitive islands are those domains for knowledge in which expertise is required to evaluate other experts. They exist under two conditions: first, that there is no test for expertise available to the inexpert; and second, that the domain is not linked to another domain with such a test. Cognitive islands are the places where we have the fewest resources (...) for evaluating experts, which makes our expert dependences particularly risky. -/- Some have argued that cognitive islands lead to the complete unusability of expert testimony: that anybody who needs expert advice on a cognitive island will be entirely unable to find it. I argue against this radical form of pessimism, but propose a more moderate alternative. I demonstrate that we have some resources for finding experts on cognitive islands, but that cognitive islands leave us vulnerable to an epistemic trap which I will call runaway echo chambers. In a runaway echo chamber, our inexpertise may lead us to pick out bad experts, which will simply reinforce our mistaken beliefs and sensibilities. (shrink)

Tháng 9-2017, trang thông tin The Scottish Wildlife Trust đăng một bài tin ảnh vừa thú vị, vừa kích thích trí tò mò về chim bói cá ở Montrose Basin, Scotland. Bài viết kể về việc nhiếp ảnh gia Ron Mitchell tình cờ nhiều lần bắt gặp cả anh cả chị bói cá “ghim” con mồi lên cành cây! Con mồi ở đây là loài cá gai (tên tiếng Anh: stickleback).

In her BBC Reith Lectures on Trust, Onora O’Neill offers a short, but biting, criticism of transparency. People think that trust and transparency go together but in reality, says O'Neill, they are deeply opposed. Transparency forces people to conceal their actual reasons for action and invent different ones for public consumption. Transparency forces deception. I work out the details of her argument and worsen her conclusion. I focus on public transparency – that is, transparency to the public over expert domains. (...) I offer two versions of the criticism. First, the epistemic intrusion argument: The drive to transparency forces experts to explain their reasoning to non-experts. But expert reasons are, by their nature, often inaccessible to non-experts. So the demand for transparency can pressure experts to act only in those ways for which they can offer public justification. Second, the intimate reasons argument: In many cases of practical deliberation, the relevant reasons are intimate to a community and not easily explicable to those who lack a particular shared background. The demand for transparency, then, pressures community members to abandon the special understanding and sensitivity that arises from their particular experiences. Transparency, it turns out, is a form of surveillance. By forcing reasoning into the explicit and public sphere, transparency roots out corruption — but it also inhibits the full application of expert skill, sensitivity, and subtle shared understandings. The difficulty here arises from the basic fact that human knowledge vastly outstrips any individual’s capacities. We all depend on experts, which makes us vulnerable to their biases and corruption. But if we try to wholly secure our trust — if we leash groups of experts to pursuing only the goals and taking only the actions that can be justified to the non-expert public — then we will undermine their expertise. We need both trust and transparency, but they are in essential tension. This is a deep practical dilemma; it admits of no neat resolution, but only painful compromise. (shrink)

We offer an account of the generic use of the term “porn”, as seen in recent usages such as “food porn” and “real estate porn”. We offer a definition adapted from earlier accounts of sexual pornography. On our account, a representation is used as generic porn when it is engaged with primarily for the sake of a gratifying reaction, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with the represented content. We demonstrate the usefulness of the concept of generic (...) porn by using it to isolate a new type of such porn: moral outrage porn. Moral outrage porn is representations of moral outrage, engaged with primarily for the sake of the resulting gratification, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with morally outrageous content. Moral outrage porn is dangerous because it encourages the instrumentalization of one’s empirical and moral beliefs, manipulating their content for the sake of gratification. Finally, we suggest that when using porn is wrong, it is often wrong because it instrumentalizes what ought not to be instrumentalized. (shrink)

What is a game? What are we doing when we play a game? What is the value of playing games? Several different philosophical subdisciplines have attempted to answer these questions using very distinctive frameworks. Some have approached games as something like a text, deploying theoretical frameworks from the study of narrative, fiction, and rhetoric to interrogate games for their representational content. Others have approached games as artworks and asked questions about the authorship of games, about the ontology of the work (...) and its performance. Yet others, from the philosophy of sport, have focused on normative issues of fairness, rule application, and competition. The primary purpose of this article is to provide an overview of several different philosophical approaches to games and, hopefully, demonstrate the relevance and value of the different approaches to each other. Early academic attempts to cope with games tried to treat games as a subtype of narrative and to interpret games exactly as one might interpret a static, linear narrative. A faction of game studies, self-described as “ludologists,” argued that games were a substantially novel form and could not be treated with traditional tools for narrative analysis. In traditional narrative, an audience is told and interprets the story, where in a game, the player enacts and creates the story. Since that early debate, theorists have attempted to offer more nuanced accounts of how games might achieve similar ends to more traditional texts. For example, games might be seen as a novel type of fiction, which uses interactive techniques to achieve immersion in a fictional world. Alternately, games might be seen as a new way to represent causal systems, and so a new way to criticize social and political entities. Work from contemporary analytic philosophy of art has, on the other hand, asked questions whether games could be artworks and, if so, what kind. Much of this debate has concerned the precise nature of the artwork, and the relationship between the artist and the audience. Some have claimed that the audience is a cocreator of the artwork, and so games are a uniquely unfinished and cooperative art form. Others have claimed that, instead, the audience does not help create the artwork; rather, interacting with the artwork is how an audience member appreciates the artist's finished production. Other streams of work have focused less on the game as a text or work, and more on game play as a kind of activity. One common view is that game play occurs in a “magic circle.” Inside the magic circle, players take on new roles, follow different rules, and actions have different meanings. Actions inside the magic circle do not have their usual consequences for the rest of life. Enemies of the magic circle view have claimed that the view ignores the deep integration of game life from ordinary life and point to gambling, gold farming, and the status effects of sports. Philosophers of sport, on the other hand, have approached games with an entirely different framework. This has lead into investigations about the normative nature of games—what guides the applications of rules and how those rules might be applied, interpreted, or even changed. Furthermore, they have investigated games as social practices and as forms of life. (shrink)

Vào ngày 19/4/2024 vừa qua, Tuyên bố New York về Ý thức của Động vật đã được công bố tại một hội nghị "Khoa học Mới nổi về Ý thức của Động vật" được tổ chức tại Đại học New York. Tuyên bố New York là một nỗ lực để thể hiện sự đồng thuận của giới khoa học về sự tồn tại trải nghiệm ý thức ở tất cả các loài có xương sống (bao gồm tất cả các loài (...) bò sát, lưỡng cư và cá) và nhiều loài không xương sống (bao gồm, ít nhất là, các loài mực ống, giáp xác mười chân và côn trùng). Về mặt khoa học, Tuyên bố New York là một bước tiến bộ lớn cho nhân loại, nhưng nó cũng sẽ khiến cho nhiều người có ý thức hơn về các thách thức đạo đức liên quan đến động vật có trải nghiệm ý thức. Bài viết này sẽ bàn về các cách tiếp cận triết học đối với vấn đề đạo đức của việc giết các sinh vật có tri giác để từ đó chỉ ra nan đề đạo đức đang hiện hữu trong xã hội loài người: Để duy trì sự tồn tại của con người, loài được xem là có đạo đức, thì chúng ta lại vi phạm đạo đức của chính chúng ta, là sát sinh các loài có giá trị nội tại, ý thức, hay tri giác khác. Nan đề đạo đức này đã tồn tại trong xã hội loài người từ rất lâu trước đây. Nhiều giải pháp đã được đề xuất và ứng dụng vào thực tế nhầm giải quyết nan đề này, như cách tiếp cận bất bạo lực và ăn chay của Phật giáo, việc áp dụng luật Hồi giáo và các nghi lễ thiêng liêng đối với động vật trong Hồi giáo, các phòng trào đòi quyền cho động vật và thực hiện tuyệt chủng tự nguyện ở các nước phương Tây, hay chế biến thịt sử dụng tế bào động vật. Tuy nhiên, dù cách nào đi nữa thì hiện nay chúng ta vẫn chưa thể hoàn toàn giải quyết được nan đề đạo đức, đó là các sinh vật có tri giác vẫn tiếp tục bị giết vì sự sinh tồn của con người. Chúng tôi cho rằng giải pháp khả thi nhất hiện nay đó là thay đổi văn hóa tiêu dùng thực phẩm ở hiện tại, xây dựng các giá trị văn hóa thặng dư sinh thái, và thúc đẩy các giải pháp hòa bình. (shrink)

Games have a complex, and seemingly paradoxical structure: they are both competitive and cooperative, and the competitive element is required for the cooperative element to work out. They are mechanisms for transforming competition into cooperation. Several contemporary philosophers of sport have located the primary mechanism of conversion in the mental attitudes of the players. I argue that these views cannot capture the phenomenological complexity of game-play, nor the difficulty and moral complexity of achieving cooperation through game-play. In this paper, I (...) present a different account of the relationship between competition and cooperation. My view is a distributed view of the conversion: success depends on a large number of features. First, the players must achieve the right motivational state: playing for the sake of the struggle, rather than to win. Second, successful transformation depends on a large number of extra-mental features, including good game design, and social and institutional features. (shrink)

The current debate over aesthetic testimony typically focuses on cases of doxastic repetition — where, when an agent, on receiving aesthetic testimony that p, acquires the belief that p without qualification. I suggest that we broaden the set of cases under consideration. I consider a number of cases of action from testimony, including reconsidering a disliked album based on testimony, and choosing an artistic educational institution from testimony. But this cannot simply be explained by supposing that testimony is usable for (...) action, but unusable for doxastic repetition. I consider a new asymmetry in the usability aesthetic testimony. Consider the following cases: we seem unwilling to accept somebody hanging a painting in their bedroom based merely on testimony, but entirely willing to accept hanging a painting in a museum based merely on testimony. The switch in intuitive acceptability seems to track, in some complicated way, the line between public life and private life. These new cases weigh against a number of standing theories of aesthetic testimony. I suggest that we look further afield, and that something like a sensibility theory, in the style of John McDowell and David Wiggins, will prove to be the best fit for our intuitions for the usability of aesthetic testimony. I propose the following explanation for the new asymmetry: we are willing to accept testimony about whether a work merits being found beautiful; but we are unwilling to accept testimony about whether something actually is beautiful. (shrink)

Recent conversation has blurred two very different social epistemic phenomena: echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Members of epistemic bubbles merely lack exposure to relevant information and arguments. Members of echo chambers, on the other hand, have been brought to systematically distrust all outside sources. In epistemic bubbles, other voices are not heard; in echo chambers, other voices are actively undermined. It is crucial to keep these phenomena distinct. First, echo chambers can explain the post-truth phenomena in a way that epistemic (...) bubbles cannot. Second, each type of structure requires a distinct intervention. Mere exposure to evidence can shatter an epistemic bubble, but may actually reinforce an echo chamber. Finally, echo chambers are much harder to escape. Once in their grip, an agent may act with epistemic virtue, but social context will pervert those actions. Escape from an echo chamber may require a radical rebooting of one's belief system. (shrink)

Art can be addressed, not just to individuals, but to groups. Art can even be part of how groups think to themselves – how they keep a grip on their values over time. I focus on monuments as a case study. Monuments, I claim, can function as a commitment to a group value, for the sake of long-term action guidance. Art can function here where charters and mission statements cannot, precisely because of art’s powers to capture subtlety and emotion. In (...) particular, art can serve as the vessel for group emotions, by making emotional content sufficiently public so as to be the object of a group commitment. Art enables groups to guide themselves with values too subtle to be codified. (shrink)

According to most accounts of trust, you can only trust other people (or groups of people). To trust is to think that another has goodwill, or something to that effect. I sketch a different form of trust: the unquestioning attitude. What it is to trust, in this sense, is to settle one’s mind about something, to stop questioning it. To trust is to rely on a resource while suspending deliberation over its reliability. Trust lowers the barrier of monitoring, challenging, checking, (...) and questioning. Trust sets up open pipelines between yourself and parts of the external world. Trust permits external resources to have a similar relationship to one as one’s internal cognitive faculties. This creates efficiency, but at the price of exquisite vulnerability. We must trust in this way because we are cognitively limited beings in a cognitively overwhelming world. Crucially, we can hold the unquestioning attitude towards objects and technologies. When I trust my climbing rope, I stop worrying about its reliability. When I trust my online calendaring system, I simply go to the events indicated, without question. But, one might worry, how could one ever hold such a normatively loaded attitude as trust towards mere objects? How could it ever make sense to feel betrayed by an object? Trust is our engine for expanding and outsourcing our agency — for binding external processes into our practical selves. Thus, we can be betrayed by our smartphones in the same way that we can be betrayed by our memory. When we trust, we try to make something a part of our agency, and we are betrayed when our part lets us down. To unquestioningly trust something is to let it in—to attempt to bring it inside one’s practical functioning. This suggests a new form of gullibility: agential gullibility, which occurs when agents too hastily and carelessly integrate external resources into their own agency. (shrink)

Twitter makes conversation into something like a game. It scores our communication, giving us vivid and quantified feedback, via Likes, Retweets, and Follower counts. But this gamification doesn’t just increase our motivation to communicate; it changes the very nature of the activity. Games are more satisfying than ordinary life precisely because game-goals are simpler, cleaner, and easier to apply. Twitter is thrilling precisely because its goals have been artificially clarified and narrowed. When we buy into Twitter’s gamification, then our values (...) shift from the complex and pluralistic values of communication, to the narrower quest for popularity and virality. Twitter’s gamification bears some resemblance with the phenomena of echo chambers and moral outrage porn. In all these phenomena, we are instrumentalizing our ends for hedonistic reasons. We have shifted our aims in an activity, not because the new aims are more valuable, but in exchange for extra pleasure. (shrink)

Separation of powers is one of the ideas with profound theoretical and practical significance, especially in the field of political science. The birth of the theory of separation of powers marked the transition from the barbaric use of power in authoritarian societies to the exercise of civilized power in democratic societies. Therefore, separation of powers is considered an objective necessity in democratic states, a condition to ensure the promotion of liberal values, and a criterion for assessing the existence and development (...) of the Rule of Law where people's sovereignty plays a paramount role. On the way to perfecting political thinking, the theory of separation of powers has developed into a complete system in the main philosophy of John Locke. Within the scope of the article, the author focuses on analyzing Locke's ideology of separation of powers in terms of the nature of separation of powers, the basis and some principles of power division, and the roles of the different parts of government power and the relationship between them. (shrink)

The feeling of clarity can be dangerously seductive. It is the feeling associated with understanding things. And we use that feeling, in the rough-and-tumble of daily life, as a signal that we have investigated a matter sufficiently. The sense of clarity functions as a thought-terminating heuristic. In that case, our use of clarity creates significant cognitive vulnerability, which hostile forces can try to exploit. If an epistemic manipulator can imbue a belief system with an exaggerated sense of clarity, then they (...) can induce us to terminate our inquiries too early — before we spot the flaws in the system. How might the sense of clarity be faked? Let’s first consider the object of imitation: genuine understanding. Genuine understanding grants cognitive facility. When we understand something, we categorize its aspects more easily; we see more connections between its disparate elements; we can generate new explanations; and we can communicate our understanding. In order to encourage us to accept a system of thought, then, an epistemic manipulator will want the system to provide its users with an exaggerated sensation of cognitive facility. The system should provide its users with the feeling that they can easily and powerfully create categorizations, generate explanations, and communicate their understanding. And manipulators have a significant advantage in imbuing their systems with a pleasurable sense of clarity, since they are freed from the burdens of accuracy and reliability. I offer two case studies of seductively clear systems: conspiracy theories; and the standardized, quantified value systems of bureaucracies. (shrink)

Cuốn sách do TS. Vương Quân Hoàng biên tập làm rõ hơn bản chất, quá trình khởi sinh, và cơ chế của hiện tượng serendipity hay khả năng dẫn đến những đổi mới mang lại cho các cá nhân hoặc tập thể những lợi thế cạnh tranh.

The theory and culture of the arts has largely focused on the arts of objects, and neglected the arts of action – the “process arts”. In the process arts, artists create artifacts to engender activity in their audience, for the sake of the audience’s aesthetic appreciation of their own activity. This includes appreciating their own deliberations, choices, reactions, and movements. The process arts include games, urban planning, improvised social dance, cooking, and social food rituals. In the traditional object arts, the (...) central aesthetic properties occur in the artistic artifact itself. It is the painting that is beautiful; the novel that is dramatic. In the process arts, the aesthetic properties occur in the activity of the appreciator. It is the game player’s own decisions that are elegant, the rock climber’s own movement that is graceful, and the tango dancers’ rapport that is beautiful. The artifact’s role is to call forth and shape that activity, guiding it along aesthetic lines. I offer a theory of the process arts. Crucially, we must distinguish between the designed artifact and the prescribed focus of aesthetic appreciation. In the object arts, these are one and the same. The designed artifact is the painting, which is also the prescribed focus of appreciation. In the process arts, they are different. The designed artifact is the game, but the appreciator is prescribed to appreciate their own activity in playing the game. Next, I address the complex question of who the artist really is in a piece of process art — the designer or the active appreciator? Finally, I diagnose the lowly status of the process arts. (shrink)

Trong một nghiên cứu gần đây được công bố trên Tạp chí Scientific Reports, các nhà nghiên cứu đã lần đầu tiên ghi lại việc động vật hoang dã sử dụng một loại cây có dược tính để chữa lành vết thương.

The importance of focusing on long-term sustainability in pollinator conservation and sustainable ecosystem management cannot be underestimated. Cultivating an eco-surplus culture plays a key role in maintaining ecosystem health, particularly by protecting pollinator species essential for ecosystem functioning and agricultural productivity. This cultural approach emphasizes environmental stewardship and conserving and generating surplus resources beyond immediate human needs, which is vital for future nature-based innovations. Additionally, ecological surplus culture highlights the resilience necessary to address significant environmental challenges such as habitat loss (...) and climate change, illustrating how nurturing pollinators can contribute to ecosystem resilience in the face of these challenges. (shrink)

This is a reply to Elisabeth Camp's and Elijah Millgram's probing discussions of "Games and the Art of Agency", in a symposium in Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy. Millgram argues that games cannot function as a guide to life, because they are too different from life. Games are limited in a special way: in life, we deliberate about what goals we want to take on, but in games, the goals are fixed and given to us. Camp argues that there (...) is nothing particularly special about games, because the fluidity of agency is all over ordinary life too - games are just like ordinary life. I respond to Millgram: we do deliberate about our ends, in games, when we aesthetically reflect on which games to play. And I respond to Camp: games are distinctive in the way they regulate how our reasons flow across the game/life border. To respond to these criticisms, I add some substantial new features to my account of the motivational structure of game-play. (shrink)

I propose an account of aesthetic value, where aesthetic value lies in the process of aesthetic engagement: in our activity of perceiving, guiding our attention, interpreting, and otherwise wrestling with aesthetic objects. It also includes our social activities of engagement: arguing with each other, writing criticism, making top-ten lists. (This is a short summary of a view developed in greater detail elsewhere.).

This research employs the Bayesian network modeling approach, and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, to learn about the role of lies and violence in teachings of major religions, using a unique dataset extracted from long-standing Vietnamese folktales. The results indicate that, although lying and violent acts augur negative consequences for those who commit them, their associations with core religious values diverge in the final outcome for the folktale characters. Lying that serves a religious mission of either Confucianism or Taoism (...) (but not Buddhism) brings a positive outcome to a character (βT_and_Lie_O= 2.23; βC_and_Lie_O= 1.47; βT_and_Lie_O= 2.23). A violent act committed to serving Buddhist missions results in a happy ending for the committer (βB_and_Viol_O= 2.55). What is highlighted here is a glaring double standard in the interpretation and practice of the three teachings: the very virtuous outcomes being preached, whether that be compassion and meditation in Buddhism, societal order in Confucianism, or natural harmony in Taoism, appear to accommodate two universal vices—violence in Buddhism and lying in the latter two. These findings contribute to a host of studies aimed at making sense of contradictory human behaviors, adding the role of religious teachings in addition to cognition in belief maintenance and motivated reasoning in discounting counterargument. (shrink)

Five years ago, on May 24, 2019, the computer program ‘bayesvl’ was officially published on R under the name “bayesvl: Visually Learning the Graphical Structure of Bayesian Networks and Performing MCMC with ‘Stan’”. This program (or package) was developed by two founders of the SM3D Portal, Vuong Quan Hoang and La Viet Phuong, to improve the productivity of conducting social research. The package was designed with a pedagogical orientation, supporting users in familiarizing themselves with Bayesian statistical methods, MCMC simulation, and (...) visualization of technical diagnoses and results. (shrink)

Public parks play important roles in conserving biodiversity, promoting environmental sustainability, fostering community engagement, and enhancing the overall well-being of residents in urban areas. Nevertheless, finance is needed to maintain and expand the greenspaces in the parks. The current study aims to examine how perceptions of biodiversity loss consequences and park visitation frequency influence the residents’ willingness to contribute financially to tree-planting projects in public parks. Employing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics on a dataset of 535 Vietnamese urban residents, we (...) discovered that perceived health loss and knowledge erosion as consequences of biodiversity loss and park visitation frequency are directly positively associated with financial donation willingness. Meanwhile, the perceived economic growth loss was found to be indirectly positively associated with donation willingness through park visitation frequency, whereas the perceived loss of nature-based recreation opportunities exhibits the opposite indirect association. Based on these results, communication strategies focusing on the multifaceted benefits of biodiversity preservation and investments in public parks are recommended to improve urban residents’ financial support to park panting initiatives, accessibility to greenspaces, and connections with nature. These are crucial for promoting an eco-surplus culture that enhances biodiversity conservation and human well-being. (shrink)