Table of Content

15 November 2023, Volume 40 Issue 6

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Return to“Xintai”: Shifting to the Perspective of a Community for Urban Shequ Governance

JIN Qiao

2023, 40(6):  1-14. 

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How to build a community of urban Shequ (neighborhood) governance is a hot research topic at present. The previous literature can be classified into two categories in the light of research approach: a community of governance and a community of Shequ. The former pays more attention to the structural relationship and functional match among entities of governance and focuses on how to facilitate effective cooperation between entities, thus following an analytic approach of“structure-cooperation orientation.”The latter inherits the tradition of exploring the essential attributes of“community,”and focuses on Shequ characteristics, residential entities, and the formation of a community of urban Shequ governance from the collective psychological and spiritual aspects, following an analytic approach of“psychology-solidarity orientation.”Overseas studies have their own research traditions, centered on such intertwined concepts as sense of community, community attachment, etc.. Overseas studies have a direct bearing on relevant domestic studies, but there is a risk of“fragmentation”of community spiritual life which should be regarded as a whole. As urban governance turns to be increasingly refined, it is necessary to return to the“Xintai”(mentality) perspective advocated by Fei Xiaotong, which explores the more secretive and inseparable residential “Xintai”that is not limited in certain communities, but deep rooted in traditions. It also explores the influence of“Xintai”on the construction of a community of urban Shequ governance based on detailed field investigations. Urban studies in the“Xintai”perspective are not new, so a more in-depth understanding of “Xintai”and comparative studies of different cities, neighborhoods and groups of people are needed. It is worth mentioning that in building a community of Shequ governance, megacities should be prioritized due to their special academic significance and strategic importance.

Digital Landscape: Media Generation and Aesthetic Reconstruction

CHEN Tao

2023, 40(6):  27-36. 

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In the history of visual art ranging from classical painting to mechanically copied images, landscape is a consistent theme. In addition, it defines itself as the visual mode of natural consciousness in both physical and symbolic way. Landscapes in the digital age, represented more as trans-media images, are constantly integrated into reality while transforming reality. Landscape has gone beyond the function of “representation”or“characterization”as a media in communication, thus creating a new visual and spatial form. Moreover, in pursuing“perceptual realism”“, spectacle”digital landscape has destroyed the“indexity”of mechanically reproduced photographs, and in presenting a“perceptual realism”by mixing what is true and what is false, it constantly reconstructs people’s cognitive and aesthetic experience.

The Legitimacy of Haptics and Haptic Theories: From Contemporary Art to Film Studies

ZHAO Bin , ZHANG Wei

2023, 40(6):  37-50. 

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The study of haptics in art has a long tradition. Among the critical theories of visual culture, haptic theory has grown into an emerging and generally influential new knowledge. On the one hand, it advocates that contemporary art, especially cross-media art, should make full use of the sense of touch other than the sense of vision to improve multidimensional aesthetic and meaning construction. As a result, relevant researches have been widely supported by phenomenological theories. On the other hand, in more special forms of visual art such as cinema, haptic research is no longer confined to aesthetic and meaning construction. Rather, it attempts to establish an ontology of film oriented to the sense of touch rather than vision. Benefiting from phenomenological theories, haptic theory tries to develop a new ontology completely different from subject/ language theories by resorting to such concepts as“film body,”“film skin,”and“haptic vision”. This attempt, hardly separated from the overall trend of anti-rationalism and anti-metaphysics, has a certain epistemological value in advancing the critique visual culture, but the fallacies, the defects of media analysis, and the limitations of interpretation in the theory make it difficult to undertake the task of reconstructing film ontology. There is no universal and consistent haptic phenomenon in art, so it is difficult for haptic theory to cross the boundaries between art categories and media, not to mention becoming an ontology of art with theoretical homogeneity.

Augmented Intelligence: Double Connotations and Implications

YANG Qingfeng

2023, 40(6):  51-62. 

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With the wide application of artificial intelligence (AI) in various practical fields, intelligent making-decision has become a prominent phenomenon, which in turn has made augmented intelligence a possible independent category. However, a limited understanding of augmented intelligence within the practical fields underestimates its impact on AI ethics. An extended understanding of AI ethics in the perspectives of philosophy and ethics reveals its dual connotations: auxiliary relation and symbiotic relation. Auxiliary relation is the continuation of instrument-oriented thinking which regards AI as a tool confined to a particular field, while symbiotic relation further explores the relationship between human beings and various species of intelligent machines.

ChatGPT: Mind, Implications, and Risks of GPT Language Models

JIAN Shengyu

2023, 40(6):  63-78. 

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GPT (Generative pre-training transformation) language models, represented by ChatGPT, show the ability to simulate human mind. Their continuous optimization and technological iterations makes it possible for them to become an indispensable part of people’s daily work and life. Once GPT language models start to have the human-like mind and obtain industrial application, they will bring new productivity like never before, and even reshape the basic pattern of human society. However, GPT language models not only promote productivity, but also incur such problems as job replacement and derivative risks resulting from extremely rapid technological upgrading. The integration of GPT language models and their derivative applications into social production and social life should be a gradual and steady process, so as to create buffer time and avoid excessive impact on society

Can AI Create Arts ?

ZHOU Feng

2023, 40(6):  79-90. 

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The differences between AI and human brain determines AI’s lack of subjectivity: the nature of computation and the first-order isomorphic information processing of machines means that in information processing, AI has only one information output port, but humans have both body and consciousness output ports, which are in proto-isomorphic relationship. Consciousness port is self-oriented and generating cognition or evaluation by working together with the body port. This is exactly what AI is missing. The nature of AI computation defines the mechanical nature of its art creation: the lack of knowledge or expressions of its own determines its absence of subjectivity. Therefore, AI works are not arts if judged from the traditional perspective of the art essence theory, but from the perspective of art system theory, they can create arts although the subject of its expressions is not AI, but the human operator behind it. In this sense, AI can only be a medium. It is possible that AI expresses subjectivity, but only under the prerequisite that we face up to AI’s predicaments of subjectivity so as to give full play to its advantages and artistic innovation as a medium.

The Influence of the Development of Digital Economy on Income Gap —From the Perspective of Skill-biased Technological Advancement

HE Shuquan, CHEN Jing

2023, 40(6):  91-106. 

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Digital economy has become the“accelerator”of China’s economic development. Whether or not it can narrow income gap is an issue that calls for attention in China’s development. If the advance of digital technology is skill-biased, then the development of digital economy will have the same characteristic, thus affecting income gap. The quantile regression model of Recentered Influence Functions (RIF) is employed here to study the influence of digital economy on income gap. The research data comes from the comprehensive indicators of urban digital economy based on Enterprise Research Data: Special Database of Digital Economy Sector and the individual microscopic data of China Labor-force Dynamic Survey (CLDS). The findings are as follows: (1) The development of digital economy in China has widened income gap on the whole. (2) The digital economy increases the skill premium of middle and high skilled workers and widens the income gap through skill-biased technological progress. (3) The skill-biased feature of digital economy does not have a significant influence on the low-income group, if not in favor of the low-skilled labor force. (4) The digital economy has a greater influence on women, rural residents and people engaged in capital-intensive sectors with a more obvious skill-biased tendency.

The Influence of Trade Mode on Trade in Service in Free Trade Ports —Taking Singaporean and Chinese Hongkong and Hainan Free Trade Ports as Examples

GAN Lu

2023, 40(6):  107-121. 

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The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) defines trade in service into four modes of supply: cross-border supply, consumption abroad, commercial presence, and movement of natural persons. Cross-border supply is mainly supported by digital technology to promote the expansion and efficiency of trade in service. Consumption abroad mainly expands the scale and optimizes the structure of trade in service through the effect of demand, system supply, and enterprise innovation. Commercial presence mainly enhances the competitiveness of trade in service through factor optimization effect. The movement of natural persons mainly aims at cost reduction and efficiency improvement of trade in service through the information effect and the spillover effect of technology. Drawing on experience from successful international free trade ports, we find that in the mode of cross-border supply, data flows freely and conveniently; in the mode of consumption abroad, cross-border funds flows freely and conveniently; in the mode of business presence, investment is free and convenient; and in the mode of movement of natural persons, people have relatively more freedom for entry and exit. All of this provides important reference for the development of trade in service in Hainan Free Trade Port.

On the Problem of Narrative Subject in the Semiotics of Passions

TU Youxiang, HOU Mingzhu

2023, 40(6):  122-138. 

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Greimassian semiotics has long been regarded as an“object semiotics”that ignores the problem of subject. Since the 1980s, the semiotics of passions has become one of the main research issues of the Paris School of Semiotics as represented by A.J. Greimas. Meanwhile, the problem of subject, which is closely related to the passional phenomenon, is brought into intensive discussion. In the research of the semiotics of passions, Greimas uses the“modes of semiotic existence”to describe the generative trajectory of subject’s state of being in the narrative. Furthermore, he defines“potentialization”as the mode of existence of the impassioned subject.“Semiotic existence”is essentially relational. In the perspective of the semiotics of action, the semiotic existence is used to characterize“the present”functional relationship between actants. While“potentialization” shows“the absent”intentional relationship between impassioned subject and its“goal image”. Impassioned subject and its“goal image”are mental entities whose relationship only depends on the subject’s intentionality and has nothing to do with the external reality. Thus, unlike the subject of action merely as a carrier of narrative functions, the impassioned subject is essentially a body with protensive intentionality and proprioception. The exploration of the subject’s“modes of semiotic existence”and the“potentialized”existence of the impassioned subject constitutes a unique entry of Greimassian semiotics into the problem of narrative subject.