This article considers the reach of arguments for saving the greater number without interpersonal aggregation, and argues that interpersonal aggregation is useful to encompass the proper respect due to each separate person. I first give a precise definition of interpersonal aggregation, which many non-utilitarians try to avoid. Then, I show that consequentialism and Scanlon can justify the case for the greater number without interpersonal aggregation. However, I propose the Aggregation Approach, which justifies the case for the greater number in some (...) cases and the case for tossing a fair coin in other cases. I conclude that interpersonal aggregation does not disrespect the separate person. (shrink)

This paper examines the question of how so-called indeterminate phrases in Japanese (Kuroda 1965) associate with relevant particles higher in the structure. In the universal construction in Japanese, the restrictor (provided by an indeterminate phrase) sometimes appears to be separate from the universal particle mo. It is proposed that quantification at a distance is only apparent, and that the restriction is in fact provided locally by the sister constituent of mo as a whole. The proposal leads us to a straightforward (...) uniform picture of the syntax-semantics mapping of the universal construction and wh-questions, building upon Hamblin’s (1973) semantics for wh-phrases as sets of alternatives. It allows for a switch of perspective on a long-standing puzzle regarding locality effects in the indeterminate–particle association by deriving the locality pattern from the way indeterminate phrases are interpreted and associated with particles, without any stipulations. (shrink)

Value theory, or axiology, looks at what things are good or bad, how good or bad they are, and, most fundamentally, what it is for a thing to be good or bad. Questions about value and about what is valuable are important to moral philosophers, since most moral theories hold that we ought to promote the good. This Handbook focuses on value theory as it pertains to ethics, broadly construed, and provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary debates pertaining not only (...) to philosophy but also to other disciplines-most notably, political theory and economics.The Handbook's twenty-two newly commissioned chapters are divided into three parts. Part I: Foundations concerns fundamental and interrelated issues about the nature of value and distinctions between kinds of value. Part II: Structure concerns formal properties of value that bear on the possibilities of measuring and comparing value. Part III: Extensions, finally, considers specific topics, ranging from health to freedom, where questions of value figure prominently. (shrink)

Some people believe that the equality of people's well-being makes an outcome better, other things being constant. Call this Telic Egalitarianism. In this paper I will propose a new interpretation of Telic Egalitarianism, and compare it with the interpretation that is proposed by Derek Parfit 1995 and widely accepted by many philosophers. I will argue that my proposed interpretation is more plausible than Parfit's. One of the virtues in my interpretation is that it shows his Levelling Down Objection does not (...) undermine Telic Egalitarianism. I also believe that my interpretation better explains the important similarity and difference between Telic Egalitarianism and his proposed Priority View. (shrink)

Since 1993, coalition governments have replaced the 38-year-long, one-party dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (the LDP) in Japan. Except for one year, from 1993 to 1994, the LDP has remained a key party in successive governing coalitions, but the dynamics of party competition has been completely transformed since the period of the LDP's dominance. Although the LDP has survived to form a variety of coalitions ranging from a minority to an over-sized majority, since 1998 the Democratic Party of Japan (...) (DPJ) has continued to counter the LDP governments. The transformation of party systems in Japan accompanies the party switching of legislators and the mergers, breakups, extinctions, and formations of parties. In this regard, the Japanese case provides an interesting example to show how parties attempt to change the dynamics of policy competition by switching and reorganizing. Parties also attempt to shift their policy positions to attract public support and to gain a competitive edge in government formation. Using expert survey data about the policy positions of parties, this study explicates the dynamics involved in the reorganization of parties and the formation of governments. (shrink)

Should organ transplants be given to patients who have waited the longest, or need it most urgently, or those whose survival prospects are the best? The rationing of health care is universal and inevitable, taking place in poor and affluent countries, in publicly funded and private health care systems. Someone must budget for as well as dispense health care whilst aging populations severely stretch the availability of resources. The Ethics of Health Care Rationing is a clear and much-needed introduction to (...) this increasingly important topic, considering and assessing the major ethical problems and dilemmas about the allocation, scarcity and rationing of health care. Beginning with a helpful overview of why rationing is an ethical problem, the authors examine the following key topics: What is the value of health? How can it be measured? What does it mean that a treatment is "good value for money"? What sort of distributive principles - utilitarian, egalitarian or prioritarian - should we rely on when thinking about health care rationing? Does rationing health care unfairly discriminate against the elderly and people with disabilities? Should patients be held responsible for their health? Why does the debate on responsibility for health lead to issues about socioeconomic status and social inequality? Throughout the book, examples from the US, UK and other countries are used to illustrate the ethical issues at stake. Additional features such as chapter summaries, annotated further reading and discussion questions make this an ideal starting point for students new to the subject, not only in philosophy but also in closely related fields such as politics, health economics, public health, medicine, nursing and social work. (shrink)

This paper looks at one area of potential crosslinguistic variation in comparatives. It has recently been claimed that Japanese clausal comparatives lack degree abstraction structures in the complement of yori ‘than’. Based on data from several empirical domains such as predicative adjectival comparatives, intensional contexts, and negative islands, this paper shows that Japanese clausal comparatives do not in general contrast with their English counterparts in the way predicted by the above claim. The syntactic and semantic phenomena observed in Japanese clausal (...) comparatives receive straightforward accounts if we assume that they do involve degree abstraction and degree comparison, along the lines familiar from analyses of their English counterparts. (shrink)

「権利」概念に対する「義務」、「人格主義」に対する「非人格」を基盤にした思考など、近代的人間観の矛盾を根底的に問うたヴェイユの思想と核心とその現代的意義を鮮やかに示す気鋭の野心作。第5回「河上肇賞」本 賞受賞作。.

Spirituality and religiosity have a significant impact on one's well-being. Although previous studies have indicated that the neuropeptide hormone oxytocin is associated with spirituality/religiosity, existing findings remain inconsistent. Some studies have reported a positive relationship between oxytocin and spirituality/religiosity, while other studies have reported a negative association. Herein, we examined the association between endogenous oxytocin and spirituality/religiosity in 200 non-Abrahamic Japanese individuals by measuring the level of salivary oxytocin and spiritual/religious faith. We found that the level of salivary oxytocin was (...) negatively associated with spiritual/religious faith. Individuals with higher levels of salivary oxytocin tend to have more negative spiritual/religious faith compared with those with low oxytocin levels. Moreover, this tendency was only significant in individuals who were not interested in a specific religion. The uniqueness of spirituality/religiosity in Japan could help interpret the current findings. (shrink)

This paper reports the results of the latest in a series of expert surveys of party policy positions in Japan and considers some of the implications of these results for our understanding of party competition and government formation in recent Japanese politics.

生命倫理、環境倫理などの諸問題に目を据えながら、さらに「真に人間として生きることはいかなることであろうか」という私たちにとって永遠の究極的な問題に迫る。現在、世界的に見れば、飢えと戦乱に苦しむ地域もあ るのに、日本では、物質的な豊かさに溢れ、経済的効率性に社会が支配されている。その中に見失われた人間性の取り戻しこそ、いま、何よりも必要なことである。内面的な豊かさとしての生の充実を求めて、改めて、自己 自身に対して、意識を深く向けなおすべき時であろう。.

This book contains a detailed description of philosophical trends in Japan since 1868, with a chronological table of relevant Japanese publications and an index of names.

The present study investigates the ways in which Japanese speakers negotiate their opinions in conversational interaction. On the one hand, speakers are apt to exaggerate a particular aspect of a given issue in asserting their opinion, on the other hand, they may also incorporate a self-qualification admitting a potential problem in their claim. By expressing their awareness of the problem before it is pointed out by the co-participants, the speakers seem to get license to proffer an exaggerated or overgeneralized claim (...) and to increase their chance of receiving an affiliative response. This study explicates the mechanism through which such a self-qualifying clause emerges in the development of opinion-negotiation sequences. Further, as a contribution to a growing body of research on "interaction and grammar" (Ochs, Schegloff, and Thompson, 1996), this study explores the use of "contrastive" markers, -kedo and demo, in constructing turns and sequences in opinion-negotiation. The data demonstrate these two structurally different types of markers play distinct roles in differentiating and yet conjoining the speakers' assertion and self-qualification. (shrink)

This book elucidates the theoretical structure and scope of interpersonal and intra-personal aggregation--a trade-off between benefits to a group of individuals and losses to another group of individuals--and defends a form of aggregation -- formal aggregation -- that resolves a variety of outstanding problems arising from the conventional understanding of aggregation, including the Number Problem concerning the moral relevance of the number of individuals.

Many critics of utilitarianism claim that we should reject interpersonal aggregation because aggregative principles do not take the separateness of persons seriously. In this article, I will reject this claim. I will first elucidate the theoretical structure of aggregation. I will then consider various interpretations of the notion of the separateness of persons and clarify what exactly those critics are trying to reject by appealing to the notion of the separateness of persons. I will argue that none of these interpretations (...) can serve as the ground for rejecting aggregation. (shrink)

Some people are worse off than others. Does this fact give rise to moral concern? Egalitarianism claims that it does, for a wide array of reasons. It is one of the most important and hotly debated problems in moral and political philosophy, occupying a central place in the work of John Rawls, Thomas Nagel, G. A. Cohen and Derek Parfit. It also plays an important role in practical contexts such as the allocation of health care resources, the design of education (...) and tax systems, and the pursuit of global justice. Egalitarianism is a superb introduction to the problem of contemporary egalitarian theories. It explains how rival theories of egalitarianism evaluate distributions of people’s well-being, and carefully assesses the theoretical structure of each theory. It also examines how egalitarian theories are applied to the distribution of health and health care, thus bringing a deceptively complex philosophical debate into clear focus. Beginning with a brief introduction to basic terminology, Iwao Hirose examines the following topics: Rawlsian egalitarianism luck egalitarianism telic egalitarianism prioritarianism sufficientarianism equality and time equality in health and health care. Including chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary, this is an ideal starting point for anyone studying distributive justice for the first time, and will also be of interest to more advanced students and researchers in philosophy, economics, political theory, public policy, and public health. (shrink)

The recent Covid-19 pandemic has brought a broad range of ethical problems to the forefront, raising fundamental questions about the role of government in response to such outbreaks, the scarcity and allocation of health care resources, the unequal distribution of health risks and economic impacts, and the extent to which individual freedom can be restricted. In this clear introduction to the topic Iwao Hirose explores these ethical questions and analyzes the central issues in the ethics of pandemic response and (...) preparedness such as: The general nature of pandemics and the ethics of preparedness Ethical questions about general goals of pandemic response and preparedness The distribution of scarce resources, e.g., ventilators, hospital beds, antiviral drugs and vaccines Restrictions on individual freedom Ethical questions in the wake of pandemics, including contact-tracing, vaccine passports and socioeconomic inequalities. With the use of real-life examples and a clear philosophical approach, The Ethics of Pandemics is a much-needed introduction to some of the most important ethical issues surrounding pandemics. It is essential reading for students of ethics, bioethics, and political philosophy and will also be of interest to those working in related areas such as public policy, public health, health law, nursing and life sciences. (shrink)

Faced with a choice between saving one stranger and saving a group of strangers, some people endorse weighted lotteries, which give a strictly greater chance of being saved to the group of strangers than the single stranger. In this paper I attempt to criticize this view. I first consider a particular version of the weighted lotteries, Frances Kamm's procedure of proportional chances, and point out two implausible implications of her proposal. Then, I consider weighted lotteries in general, and claim (1) (...) that the correct thing to distribute is not the chance of being saved but the good of being saved, (2) that assigning some chance to the single stranger is not the only way to give a positive (and equal) respect to the people concerned, and (3) that the weighted lottery appears to be deceptive since it would show the respect to the single stranger in a negligible way. (shrink)

This article considers the reach of arguments for saving the greater number without interpersonal aggregation, and argues that interpersonal aggregation is useful to encompass the proper respect due to each separate person. I first give a precise definition of interpersonal aggregation, which many non-utilitarians try to avoid. Then, I show that consequentialism and Scanlon can justify the case for the greater number without interpersonal aggregation. However, I propose the Aggregation Approach, which justifies the case for the greater number in some (...) cases and the case for tossing a fair coin in other cases. I conclude that interpersonal aggregation does not disrespect the separate person. (shrink)

This collection of essays analyzes relations of social inequality that appear to be logical extensions of a "natural order," and in the process demonstrates that a revitalized feminist anthropology of the 1990s has much to offer the field of feminist theory. Fashioned as a response to the lack of cultural analysis in feminist scholarship, the contributors question the category of gender within the inclusive context of the structural dynamics of inequality. They also examine how cultural identities, domains and institutions affect (...) our perception of gender in society. The first selection of essays addresses how ideas of family and kinship have fostered society's hierarchies and legitimized the status quo. In part two, the essays show how several dimensions of inequality are implicit in the construction of identities that are based upon ideas of social solidarity. Contributors: Susan McKinnon, University of Virginia; Kath Weston, Arizona State West; Rayna Rapp, New School for Social Research; Janet Dolgin, Hofstra University; Harriet Whitehead, Duke University; Carol Delaney, Stanford University; Brackette Williams, University of Arizona; Sylvia Yanagisako, Stanford University; Phyllis Chock, Catholic University; Sherry Ortner, University of Michigan; Anna Tsing, University of California, Santa Cruz. (shrink)

Value theory, or axiology, looks at what things are good or bad, how good or bad they are, and, most fundamentally, what it is for a thing to be good or bad. Questions about value and about what is valuable are important to moral philosophers, since most moral theories hold that we ought to promote the good. This Handbook focuses on value theory as it pertains to ethics, broadly construed, and provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary debates pertaining not only (...) to philosophy but also to other disciplines-most notably, political theory and economics.The Handbook's twenty-two newly commissioned chapters are divided into three parts. Part I: Foundations concerns fundamental and interrelated issues about the nature of value and distinctions between kinds of value. Part II: Structure concerns formal properties of value that bear on the possibilities of measuring and comparing value. Part III: Extensions, finally, considers specific topics, ranging from health to freedom, where questions of value figure prominently. (shrink)

This paper tackles the main changes that have taken place in the mechanical worldview of simple, self-regulating and intelligent machines, and studies their repercussions at the ethical and organisational level. These views of machines agree with the scientific, human-relations and postmodern proposals in organisation theory, in that they are in fact reflections on human nature which depend on metaphorical devices within which the machine metaphor is central.

Phenomenology of the body and the third generation of cognitive science, both of which attribute a central role in human cognition to the body rather than to the Cartesian notion of representation, face the criticism that higher-level cognition cannot be fully grasped by those studies. The problem here is how explicit representations, consciousness, and thoughts issue from perception and the body, and how they cooperate in human cognition. In order to address this problem, we propose a research program, a cognitive (...) phenomenology of the body, which is basically motivated by the perspective of Merleau-Ponty. We find a substantial clue in developmental psychological studies on the body and language. (shrink)

In Global Health Impact: Extending Access to Essential Medicines, Nicole Hassoun argues that the concept of a minimally good life grounds the human right to health, which in turn implies the human right to access essential medicines in developing countries. This article argues that Hassoun's argument must be revised. If the temporal unit of a minimally good life is identified, her argument faces a substantive problem, which undermines an important part of her argument. This article then proposes a solution to (...) this problem. If this proposed solution is accepted, Hassoun's project turns out to be more radical than her argument is supposed to be. (shrink)

This study addressed the question of whether L2 learners are able to utilize verb’s argument structure information in online structural analysis. Previous L2 research has shown that L2 learners have difficulty in using verb’s intransitive information to guide online syntactic processing. This is true even though L2 learners have grammatical knowledge that is correct and similar to that of native speakers. In the present study, we contrasted three hypotheses, the initial inaccessibility account, the intransitivity overriding account, and the fuzzy subcategorization (...) frame account, to investigate whether L2 learner’s knowledge of intransitive verbs is in fact ignored in L2 online structural analysis. The initial inaccessibility account and the fuzzy subcategorization frame account predicted that L2 learners cannot access intransitivity information in building syntactic structures in any situation. The intransitivity overriding account predicted that intransitivity information is accessed in L2 parsing, but this process is overridden by the strong transitivity preference when a verb is followed by a noun phrase. Importantly, the intransitivity overriding account specifically predicted that L2 learners would be able to use intransitive information in online syntactic processing when a noun phrase does not appear immediately following a verb. We tested the three accounts in an eye-tracking reading experiment using filler-gap dependency structures. We manipulated verb’s transitivity information and lexically based plausibility information and tested English native speakers as a control L1 group and Japanese-English L2 participants. The results showed that L2 learners as well as native speakers processed sentences differently depending on the subcategorization information of the verb, and adopted transitive analysis only when the verb was optionally transitive, providing support for the intransitivity overriding. The results further demonstrated that L2 learners had strong expectations for the transitive structure, which is consistent with the view proposed by the hyper-active gap-filling hypothesis. In addition, the results showed that the semantic mismatch in the incorrect transitive analysis facilitated native speaker’s processing but caused difficulty for L2 learners. Together, the current study provides evidence that L2 learners use intransitive information of the verbs to guide their structural analysis when there are no overriding constraints. (shrink)

The Genesis of the Social and the Carnal Donation of the Non-Presentable. The Range of the Notion of Institution in Merleau-PontyThis article examines the range of the notion of institution that Merleau-Ponty proposes in his course at the Collège de France (1954-55), by notably insisting on the importance of the question of the genesis of the social for the deepening of his thought. By broadening his investigative domains in two complementary directions (that is, lateral passivity and socio-historical institution), Merleau-Ponty aims (...) in this course to grasp in a better way the lateral relations of our Urstiftung (originary institution) and the instituting subject who obliquely goes beyond the institution towards its sense. That leads him to introduce the perceptual field as being essentially lacunary, because it marks a place where the consciousness is present at the divergence in relation to consciousness. It is certain that the Phenomenology of Perception addressed this question by considering the social as a place where “I am given to myself”. However, the psychological starting point of this work, as well as the originary temporal and unilateral character of radical reflection, prevented one from really grasping the institutional junction of the concrete event and the symbolic matrix. One was not able to thematize an auto-articulation which appears suddenly between radical reflection and the unreflective. This is why Lévi-Strauss’ structuralist thought, by considering the social as symbolism, allows for a better understanding of this institutional nexus. But this idea does not lead to the dogmatic positing of the reality and the autonomy of the social. Instead, it encourages us to practice “the perception of history,” which consists in guessing, in the very process of sociological idealization, the carnal and wild donation of the non-presentable. Far from returning to psychologism, this perception aims at actively achieving the movement internal to the symbolic, that is, its incarnation.La genesi del sociale e la donazione carnale del non-presentabile. La portata della nozione di istituzione in Merleau-PontyQuesto articolo esamina la portata della nozione d’istituzione che Merleau-Ponty propone nel suo corso al Collège de France del 1954-1955, insistendo in particolare sull’importanza della questione della genesi del sociale per l’approfondimento del suo pensiero.Estendendo i propri domini di ricerca in due direzioni complementari (la passività laterale e l’istituzione socio-storica), Merleau-Ponty si propone in questo corso di cogliere meglio i rapporti laterali della nostra Urstiftung (l’istituzione originaria) e del soggetto istituente che la supera obliquamente in direzione del suo senso. Ciò induce a presentare il campo percettivo come essenzialmente lacunoso, poiché manca di un luogo dove la coscienza possa assistere allo scarto rispetto a se stessa.È certo che la Fenomenologia della percezione affrontava questa questione considerando il sociale come un luogo dove “io sono donato a me stesso”. I presupposti psicologici di quest’opera, così come il carattere originariamente temporale e unilaterale della riflessione radicale, impedivano tuttavia di cogliere in maniera adeguata il legame istituzionale dell’evento concreto e della matrice simbolica, e di tematizzare un’autoarticolazione che sorgesse tra la riflessione radicale e l’irriflesso.È per questo motivo che il pensiero strutturalista di Lévi-Strauss, che considerava il sociale come simbolismo, permette di comprendere meglio questo nesso istituzionale. Quest’idea non conduce però a porre dogmaticamente la realtà e l’autonomia del sociale, essa incita piuttosto a praticare “la percezione della storia” che consiste nell’individuare, nel processo stesso dell’idealizzazione sociologica, la donazione carnale e selvaggia del non-presentabile. Lungi dal rappresentare un ritorno allo psicologismo, questa nozione di percezione mira a completare attivamente il movimento interno al simbolico, ovvero la sua incarnazione. (shrink)

The Genesis of the Social and the Carnal Donation of the Non-Presentable. The Range of the Notion of Institution in Merleau-PontyThis article examines the range of the notion of institution that Merleau-Ponty proposes in his course at the Collège de France (1954-55), by notably insisting on the importance of the question of the genesis of the social for the deepening of his thought. By broadening his investigative domains in two complementary directions (that is, lateral passivity and socio-historical institution), Merleau-Ponty aims (...) in this course to grasp in a better way the lateral relations of our Urstiftung (originary institution) and the instituting subject who obliquely goes beyond the institution towards its sense. That leads him to introduce the perceptual field as being essentially lacunary, because it marks a place where the consciousness is present at the divergence in relation to consciousness. It is certain that the Phenomenology of Perception addressed this question by considering the social as a place where “I am given to myself”. However, the psychological starting point of this work, as well as the originary temporal and unilateral character of radical reflection, prevented one from really grasping the institutional junction of the concrete event and the symbolic matrix. One was not able to thematize an auto-articulation which appears suddenly between radical reflection and the unreflective. This is why Lévi-Strauss’ structuralist thought, by considering the social as symbolism, allows for a better understanding of this institutional nexus. But this idea does not lead to the dogmatic positing of the reality and the autonomy of the social. Instead, it encourages us to practice “the perception of history,” which consists in guessing, in the very process of sociological idealization, the carnal and wild donation of the non-presentable. Far from returning to psychologism, this perception aims at actively achieving the movement internal to the symbolic, that is, its incarnation.La genesi del sociale e la donazione carnale del non-presentabile. La portata della nozione di istituzione in Merleau-PontyQuesto articolo esamina la portata della nozione d’istituzione che Merleau-Ponty propone nel suo corso al Collège de France del 1954-1955, insistendo in particolare sull’importanza della questione della genesi del sociale per l’approfondimento del suo pensiero.Estendendo i propri domini di ricerca in due direzioni complementari (la passività laterale e l’istituzione socio-storica), Merleau-Ponty si propone in questo corso di cogliere meglio i rapporti laterali della nostra Urstiftung (l’istituzione originaria) e del soggetto istituente che la supera obliquamente in direzione del suo senso. Ciò induce a presentare il campo percettivo come essenzialmente lacunoso, poiché manca di un luogo dove la coscienza possa assistere allo scarto rispetto a se stessa.È certo che la Fenomenologia della percezione affrontava questa questione considerando il sociale come un luogo dove “io sono donato a me stesso”. I presupposti psicologici di quest’opera, così come il carattere originariamente temporale e unilaterale della riflessione radicale, impedivano tuttavia di cogliere in maniera adeguata il legame istituzionale dell’evento concreto e della matrice simbolica, e di tematizzare un’autoarticolazione che sorgesse tra la riflessione radicale e l’irriflesso.È per questo motivo che il pensiero strutturalista di Lévi-Strauss, che considerava il sociale come simbolismo, permette di comprendere meglio questo nesso istituzionale. Quest’idea non conduce però a porre dogmaticamente la realtà e l’autonomia del sociale, essa incita piuttosto a praticare “la percezione della storia” che consiste nell’individuare, nel processo stesso dell’idealizzazione sociologica, la donazione carnale e selvaggia del non-presentabile. Lungi dal rappresentare un ritorno allo psicologismo, questa nozione di percezione mira a completare attivamente il movimento interno al simbolico, ovvero la sua incarnazione. (shrink)