Lei Zhou

Interoception——the perception of internal bodily states such as heartbeat, respiration, and visceral feelings——has long been considered a natural, closed, and pre-reflective dimension of conscious experience. Wearable sensors, biofeedback algorithms, and continuous physiological monitoring are now turning the inner body into a digitally accessible and modifiable object. This article proposes Cyberinteroception as a subdiscipline within the Cyberism framework and argues that digital technologies do not merely measure interoception but re-constitute it by externalising, amplifying, and re-routing internal signals. Three theoretical propositions are advanced and linked to core issues in consciousness research: the Distalisation Thesis (how digital readouts reshape metacognitive access to interoceptive states), the Augmented Regulation Thesis (whether digital feedback loops constitute genuinely new forms of conscious emotional self-regulation), and the Body-Ownership Plasticity Thesis (how artificial interoceptive signals can reshape the minimal self). I conclude that interoception is becoming technically programmable, a development that invites systematic re-examination of bodily self-consciousness in the digital age.

Smart contracts execute without judicial override. Deceased individuals leave behind digital identities that function simultaneously as assets and as fragments of personality. Algorithms allocate opportunities yet resist traditional proof of causation. These three problems share a common structure: each arises from a mismatch between the operational logic of digital systems and the evidentiary logic of traditional law. Existing legal responses remain fragmented, addressing each domain in isolation without a systematic account of this structural mismatch. This article develops such an account through Cyberism, the systematic study of cyberspace as a fourth basic space of human existence. It proposes techno-legal mutualism as the core principle of a Cyberist cyberlaw. Mutualism operates through three mechanisms: embedding translates legal rules into code-level constraints; agency delegates legal functions to technical systems under accountability standards; feedback channels operational data back into legislative revision. The framework is applied to smart contracts, digital inheritance, and algorithmic discrimination, with comparative perspectives from the EU, the US, and China. The article demonstrates that when law and technology are understood as co-constitutive, a unified analytical vocabulary emerges. That vocabulary can ground proportionate and effective legal responses across jurisdictions.

The rapid expansion of cyberspace is fundamentally reshaping human existence, social relations, spatial structures, and mechanisms of order formation. These transformations pose significant theoretical challenges to Confucian philosophy, which has traditionally been grounded in embodied individuals, stable relational networks, and community-based ethical orders. Drawing on the framework of Cyberism, this paper re-examines Confucian philosophy through four foundational dimensions—human, relations, space, and order—and analyzes how emerging socio-technical conditions, including digital humans, algorithmic mediation, hybrid virtual–physical environments, and platform governance, destabilize its underlying assumptions. We argue that these transformations do not render Confucian ethics obsolete; rather, they call for its reinterpretation and reconstruction within a cyber-enabled context. Building on this analysis, the paper proposes three conceptual pathways for the transformation of Confucian ethics in the digital age: digital rituality as a framework for regulating interaction order in platform environments; algorithmic benevolence as a normative orientation for embedding human-centered values into technological decision-making; and platform-based community as a model for reconstituting public good under conditions of data-driven social organization. By articulating these concepts, the study contributes to bridging classical ethical traditions and contemporary digital governance, and offers a Confucian approach to addressing the ethical challenges of cyber civilization.

With the rapid expansion of cyberspace driven by electronic computing, networking technologies, and artificial intelligence, the human living environment has evolved from the traditional physical–social–cognitive structure into a coupled Cyber-Physical-Social-Thinking (CPST) space. This transformation has raised new challenges regarding the re-representation and governance of natural order. Against this backdrop, this study adopts Cyberism as its methodological foundation and draws upon the Daoist principles of Dao follows nature and wu wei (non-coercive action). Within the CPST framework, we reinterpret the natural laws and generative order implied by the Dao and integrate a contemporary cyber-theoretical understanding of wu wei to propose four guiding principles: compliance, limits, self-reflection, and co-governance. Furthermore, focusing on representative technological contexts such as digital twins and artificial general intelligence (AGI), the study formulates ten philosophical propositions—time, space, representation, embodiment, identity, ethics, governance, ecology, knowledge, and risk—to reveal the fundamental tensions through which digital technologies reshape the structure of natural experience, the boundaries of subjectivity, and the logic of governance. To bridge theory and practice, a three-layer conceptual framework for Dao–Cyber synergy is developed, consisting of representation, interaction, and value. Finally, a set of Dao-consistent design principles is proposed to support the coordinated development of Dao and nature, providing both theoretical guidance and methodological foundations. These principles also offer practical insights for applications such as digital twins, intelligent governance, and emerging technological ethics, demonstrating the contemporary relevance of Chinese philosophical wisdom in addressing challenges in digital transformation and technological governance.

Along with the rapid development of big data, artificial intelligence, and information technology, the relationship quality between short video applications and users is important for the sustainable development of short video applications. However, the existing studies have explored the mechanism of the role of RQ in a limited way. In order to respond to this critical issue, this study constructs a theoretical model based on attachment theory and combined with self-determination theory, with autonomy needs, competence needs, and relationship needs as influencing factors, emotional attachment as mediating variables and relationship quality as outcome variables, and the moderating role of attachment anxiety in which this study also analyzes the mechanism of short video applications users’ psychological needs on relationship quality by combining the moderating role of AA. In this study, a sample of 512 university students using short video applications was used. The results of the data analysis indicated that EA was significantly influenced by psychological needs that played a positive role in relationship quality and mediated the relationship between psychological needs and relationship quality. The results of further analysis also revealed that attachment anxiety plays a moderating role in the relationship between emotional attachment and relationship quality. This study examines the intrinsic mechanism by which psychological needs affect relationship quality through emotional attachment, reveals the practical effects of short video applications users’ sustained use behavior, and provides a reference for innovative management and business practices of short video applications.

Culture is the bloodline of the nation and the spiritual home of the people. Intangible cultural heritage belongs to the field of culture, and the transmission of ICH is a kind of human-based cultural transmission, which is the shaping of people’s morality, character, sentiment, will, ideals and beliefs, value orientation, humanistic cultivation, artistic taste, way of thinking, wisdom, and ability in the practice of production and life of various ethnic groups. Based on the status acquisition model, this study analyzed the human capital, social capital, and psychological capital of ICH bearers from three perspectives. In addition to the conventional socio-demographic factors such as gender, age, place of residence, and education level as control variables, status attainment was introduced as a dependent variable, and occupational identity, job satisfaction, and entrepreneurial ability were introduced as mediating variables to construct a conceptual model in the hope of exploring the multiple influencing factors of status attainment among ICH bearers. Interviews were used to gain, the feelings and knowledge of experts, scholars, and ICH bearers, to lay a solid qualitative research foundation for this study. A questionnaire survey was also conducted to obtain basic information and professional experiences of ICH bearers to provide real support for the research analysis and discussion. As per the results of this research, all the hypotheses were supported except, HC did not have any significant impact on JS. Furthermore, SC was not in a significant association with career identity. Moreover, career identity and status attainment did not have a significant relationship.

An interesting phenomenon called “hidden opportunity cost of time effect” was detected in intertemporal choices. The majority of our participants preferred the smaller but sooner (SS) option to the larger but later (LL) option if opportunity cost was explicit. However, a higher proportion of participants preferred the LL to SS option if opportunity cost was hidden. This shift violates the invariance principle and opens a new way to encourage future-oriented behavior. By simply mentioning the ‘obvious’ opportunity cost of alternatives, decision makers can be more informed in prioritizing their long-term goals rather than short-term goals.