This paper aims to examine the evolution of Japanese studies of international relations since the end of World War II. In so doing, in particular, this paper first looks at the dominant trends and characteristics of Japanese scholarship in this field, and, second, the correlations between the scholarship and Japan's experiences in real international relations. In discussing the evolution of Japanese studies of international relations, I shall divide the years since 1945 into three separate periods: (1) 194589, and (3) 1990 (...) and after. Then, taking the current US–Japan relationship as a case study, I will examine the contemporary characteristics of Japanese scholarship in this field. (shrink)

La figure du chat fait son apparition dans la littérature japonaise au ixe siècle, mais son image évoluera de manière inattendue à l’époque médiévale. Des témoignages littéraires du xie et du xiie siècle, tels que les Notes de chevet de Sei Shônagon et Le Dit du Genji de Murasaki Shikibu, montraient clairement l’intérêt porté aux chats par les dames de cour. Pourtant, à partir du xiiie siècle, le félidé fera au contraire l’objet d’une forme de « diabolisation », et c’est (...) cette dimension plus inquiétante du chat que nous aimerions évoquer ici, à travers trois exemples tirés du Kokon chomon-jû, vaste recueil de contes et légendes. Cette œuvre méconnue en Europe est attribuée à Tachibana no Narisue et achevée en 1254. The figure of the cat made its appearance in Japanese literature in the 9th century, but its image evolved unexpectedly in medieval times. Literary evidence from the 11th and 12th centuries, such as the Bedside Notes by Sei Shônagon and The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu clearly showed the interest of court women in cats. However, from the 13th century, the feline became the object of a form of “demonization”, and it is this more disturbing dimension of the cat that we would like to describe here, through three examples taken from Kokon chomon-Jû, a vast collection of tales and legends. This work, unknown in Europe, has been attributed to Tachibana no Narisue and was completed in 1254. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that a distinction ought to be drawn between two ways in which a given world might be logically impossible. First, a world w might be impossible because the laws that hold at w are different from those that hold at some other world (say the actual world). Second, a world w might be impossible because the laws of logic that hold in some world (say the actual world) are violated at w. We develop a novel (...) way of modelling logical possibility that makes room for both kinds of logical impossibility. Doing so has interesting implications for the relationship between logical possibility and other kinds of possibility (for example, metaphysical possibility) and implications for the necessity or contingency of the laws of logic. (shrink)

Discovery of representative Web pages regarding specific topics is important for assisting users' information retrieval from the Web. Researches on Web structure mining, whose goals are to discover or to rank important Web pages based on the graph structure of hyperlinks, have been very active recently. A complete bipartite of Web graph, which is composed of centers (containing useful information regarding specific topic) and fans (containing hyperlinks to centers), can be regarded as a Web community sharing a common interest. Although (...) Murata's method for discovering Web communities is a simple method for finding related Web pages, it has the following weaknesses: (1) since the number of centers increases monotonously, pages irrelevant to the members of Web communities may be added in the process of discovery, and (2) since the number of fans decreases monotonously according as the number of centers increases, the method may suffer topic drift. This paper describes an improved method for refining Web communities in order to acquire representative Web pages of the topics of input Web communities. The method is based on the assumption that most of the fans contain hyperlinks pointing to representative pages regarding their topic, and that hyperlinks to the pages of the same quality often co-occur. In our new method, both fans and centers are renewed iteratively by the result of the majority vote of the members of previous Web community. Results of our experiments show that the new method has abilities of finding desirable pages for several topics. (shrink)

This paper proposes a method for discovering Web communities. A complete bipartite graph K i, j of Web pages can be regarded as a community sharing a common interest. Discovery of such community is expected to assist users’ information retrieval from the Web. The method proposed in this paper is based on the assumption that hyperlinks to related Web pages often co-occur. Relations of Web pages are detected by the co-occurrence of hyperlinks on the pages which are acquired from a (...) search engine by backlink search. In order to find a new member of a Web community, all the hyperlinks contained in the acquired pages are extracted. A page which is pointed by the most frequent hyperlinks is regarded as a new member of the community. We have build a system which discovers complete bipartite graphs based on the method. Only from a few URLs of initial community members, the system succeeds in discovering several genres of Web communities without analyzing the contents of Web pages. (shrink)

Feinberg and Mallatt, in their presentation of neurobiological naturalism, have suggested that visual consciousness was acquired by early vertebrates and inherited by a wide range of descendants, and that its neural basis has shifted to nonhomologous nervous structures during evolution. However, their evolutionary scenario of visual consciousness relies on the assumption that visual consciousness is closely linked with survival, which is not commonly accepted in current consciousness research. We suggest an alternative idea that visual consciousness is linked to a specific (...) class of agency, consequently justifying their phylogenetic claim. We also examine the implication of their phylogenetic claim: visual consciousness is homologous across vertebrates, but its neural basis is not. This apparent incongruence illustrates a general phenomenon of homology, and that the resulting hierarchical view of visual consciousness and its neural basis can be straightforwardly accommodated by neurobiological naturalism. Throughout these discussions, we aim to address the potential theoretical issues in neurobiological naturalism and refine the picture illustrated by Feinberg and Mallatt regarding phylogenetic distribution and trajectories of visual consciousness. (shrink)

There was a time when 'logic' just meant classical logic. The climate is slowly changing and non-classical logic cannot be dismissed off-hand. However, a metatheory used to study the properties of non-classical logic is often classical. In this paper, we will argue that this practice of relying on classical metatheories is problematic. In particular, we will show that it is a bad practice because the metatheory that is used to study a non-classical logic often rules out the very logic it (...) is designed to study. (shrink)

Against the Newtonian view of color, according to which the world is colorless and colors are subjective sensations, phenomenologists keep insisting that colors are in the world. In order to defend this view of the “being in the world” of colors, this paper tries to elucidate the essential spatiality of colors on the basis of James’s thesis of the intrinsic spatiality of sensation, Katz’s phenomenological description of various spatial characters of color, and Gibson’s ecological optics. The noticeable correspondence between Katz’s (...) phenomenology and Gibson’s ecological optics indicates to us a possible way to an ecological phenomenology of colors. (shrink)

PurposeThis paper aims to deal with the attitudes towards and social impact of Edward Snowden’s revelations in Japan, taking the Japanese socio-cultural and political environment surrounding privacy and state surveillance into account.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire survey of 1,820 university students and semi-structured follow-up interviews with 56 respondents were conducted, in addition to reviews of the literature on privacy and state surveillance in Japan. The outcomes of the survey were statistically analysed, and qualitative analyses of the interview results were also performed.FindingsSnowden’s revelations have (...) had little influence over Japanese youngsters’ attitudes towards privacy and state surveillance, mainly due to their low level of awareness of the revelations and high level of confidence in government agencies.Practical implicationsThe study results imply a need for reviewing educational programmes for civic education in lower and upper secondary education.Social implicationsThe results of this study based on a large-scale questionnaire survey indicate an urgent necessity for providing Japanese youngsters with opportunities to learn more about privacy, liberty, individual autonomy and national security.Originality/valueThis study is the first attempt to investigate the social impact of Snowden’s revelations on Japanese youngsters’ attitudes towards privacy and state surveillance as part of cross-cultural analyses between eight countries. (shrink)

It has been an open question whether or not we can define a belief revision operation that is distinct from simple belief expansion using paraconsistent logic. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of meeting the challenge of defining a belief revision operation using the resources made available by the study of dynamic epistemic logic in the presence of paraconsistent logic. We will show that it is possible to define dynamic operations of belief revision in a paraconsistent setting.

We propose a new information sharing system, named ``BisNet'', which automatically gathers information about the bookmarks stored in users' web browsers and helps the users exchange URIs of possibly interesting web pages with others who have similar interest with them. Being different from other typical agent services that gather and provide information according to pre-registered user profiles, BisNet is expected to share more relevant information because of its use of web browser bookmarks that are actively selected and ordered by many (...) humans. To enhance the relevance of information being shared, we developed a novel algorithm for directory evaluation. This algorithm only looks at the local referential structure between bookmark directories and URIs and calculates for each directory the ``order index'' that represents how well its content URIs are put in order with a focus on specific areas of interest. Then each directory receives new URIs from other related directories with large order indexes. The repetition of such URI exchanges makes the whole directory-URI networks dynamically form directory groups according to the commonness of the URIs they refer to. Our method is unique in that it pays no attention to the actual contents of web pages, and thus is much simpler and faster than other methods based on the result of content analysis. We carried out a field trial that involved 45 people who used a prototype version of BisNet clients. The result indicated that the relevance of shared URIs positively correlated with the ``order index'' of surrounding related directories, demonstrating the effectiveness of the method we proposed. (shrink)

Over the past century, six studies – the most recent data from 2000 – and one review have comprehensively examined the content of medical oaths and oath-taking practices, all focusing on North Amer...

A sense of agency (SoA) is the experience of subjective awareness regarding the control of one’s actions. Humans have a natural tendency to generate prediction models of the environment and adapt their models according to changes in the environment. The SoA is associated with the degree of the adaptation of the prediction models, e.g., insufficient adaptation causes low predictability and lowers the SoA over the environment. Thus, identifying the mechanisms behind the adaptation process of a prediction model related to the (...) SoA is essential for understanding the generative process of the SoA. In the first half of the current study, we constructed a mathematical model in which the SoA represents a likelihood value for a given observation (sensory feedback) in a prediction model of the environment and in which the prediction model is updated according to the likelihood value. From our mathematical model, we theoretically derived a testable hypothesis that the prediction model is updated according to a Bayesian rule or a stochastic gradient. In the second half of our study, we focused on the experimental examination of this hypothesis. In our experiment, human subjects were repeatedly asked to observe a moving square on a computer screen and press a button after a beep sound. The button press resulted in an abrupt jump of the moving square on the screen. Experiencing the various stochastic time intervals between the action execution button-press) and the consequent event square jumping caused gradual changes in the subjects' degree of their SoA. By comparing the above theoretical hypothesis with the experimental results, we concluded that the update (adaptation) rule of the prediction model based on the SoA is better described by a Bayesian update than by a stochastic gradient descent. (shrink)

One of the prime characteristics of the increasingly technological and interconnected world is the disappearance of analogue experience in all aspects of life. Due to technological invention, we are exposed to a variety of news and information, checking emails in private and business accounts for a significant amount of time each day. Our information-driven minds are constantly occupied by the desire to seek out more information. The ways we engage in music also have changed. We now download mp3 files and (...) listen to music on iPods. People are used to web-based, digitalized music listening.1 It is in this context that many people in the modern world are turning to indigenous forms of music that allow them to.. (shrink)

Through expanded access protocols, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows patients with serious or immediately life-threatening diseases access to experimental drugs outside the clinical trial setting when no satisfactory alternative treatment is available. While the FDA has established a mechanism for providing patients with unapproved drug access, the regulations do not require the pharmaceutical company to provide the drug. The drug company’s permission to use its experimental drug is a necessary prerequisite to using the FDA’s expanded access mechanism. Increasingly, (...) drug companies are coming under scrutiny regarding the programs governing that decision-making power. Historically, disclosing whether a company has an expanded access program, and whether or how it would respond to an expanded access request, has been left to discretion of the drug companies themselves. Few manufacturers publish adequate expanded access protocols. As a result, patients were provided with little insight into how companies evaluate expanded access requests and are naturally skeptical as to the ethical integrity of the process. The recently passed 21st Century Cures Act changes that practice by requiring drug companies to have, and make publically available, their expanded access procedures including criteria for evaluating and responding to patient requests. In this article, we contend that complying with the new transparency provisions will require drug companies to respond to several unresolved expanded access issues. Namely, how to reconcile a patient’s desire to access lifesaving experimental therapies alongside the company and society’s interest in the efficient development of new drugs. Even more challenging, how can companies devise practices for evaluating and processing expanded access requests that also fairly and equitably acknowledge those concerns? In addressing these questions, this article explores the legal, regulatory, business, and societal influences that have shaped expanded access policies and practices. From there, we provide companies a framework that balances appropriately the desires of individuals and gaining the requisite approvals ensure access not just for one person but for society. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe a collaborative information retrieval method among personal repositorie and an implementation of the method on a personal agent framework. We propose a framework for personal agents that aims to enable the sharing and exchange of information resources that are distributed unevenly among individuals. The kernel of a personal agent framework is an RDF(resource description framework)-based information repository for storing, retrieving and manipulating privately collected information, such as documents the user read and/or wrote, email he/she exchanged, (...) web pages he/she browsed, etc. The repository also collects annotations to information resources that describe relationships among information resources and records of interaction between the user and information resources. Since the information resources in a personal repository and their structure are personalized, information retrieval from other users' is an important application of the personal agent. A vector space model with a personalized concept-base is employed as an information retrieval mechanism in a personal repository. Since a personalized concept-base is constructed from information resources in a personal repository, it reflects its user's knowledge and interests. On the other hand, it leads to another problem while querying other users' personal repositories; that is, simply transferring query requests does not provide desirable results. To solve this problem, we propose a query equalization scheme based on a relevance feedback method for collaborative information retrieval between personalized concept-bases. In this paper, we describe an implementation of the collaborative information retrieval method and its user interface on the personal agent framework. (shrink)

This paper points out an error of Parigot’s proof of strong normalization of second order classical natural deduction by the CPS-translation, discusses erasing-continuation of the CPS-translation, and corrects that proof by using the notion of augmentations.

Proof-theory has traditionally been developed based on linguistic (symbolic) representations of logical proofs. Recently, however, logical reasoning based on diagrammatic or graphical representations has been investigated by logicians. Euler diagrams were introduced in the eighteenth century. But it is quite recent (more precisely, in the 1990s) that logicians started to study them from a formal logical viewpoint. We propose a novel approach to the formalization of Euler diagrammatic reasoning, in which diagrams are defined not in terms of regions as in (...) the standard approach, but in terms of topological relations between diagrammatic objects. We formalize the unification rule, which plays a central role in Euler diagrammatic reasoning, in a style of natural deduction. We prove the soundness and completeness theorems with respect to a formal set-theoretical semantics. We also investigate structure of diagrammatic proofs and prove a normal form theorem. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse incidents of personal information leakage in Japan based on Japanese socio‐cultural characteristics of information privacy and to consider how best to develop an effective personal information protection policy that conforms to Japanese situations as well as to the global requirement of personal information protection.Design/methodology/approachAfter describing recent incidents of personal information leakage in Japan, the paper examines the defects of the Act on Protection of Personal Information that permit these incidents to continue. Subsequently, (...) these incidents and the responses of the Japanese people in a manner that reflects the unique Japanese socio‐cultural characteristics of information privacy are analysed. Finally, the paper proposes a revision of APPI that conforms to these Japanese socio‐cultural characteristics as well as to the global requirement for personal information protection.FindingsPersonal information leakage cases and social responses in Japan reflect three Japanese socio‐cultural characteristics: Uchi/Soto awareness, insular collectivism and Hon'ne/Tatemae tradition. An effective law protecting personal information in Japan's cultural environment cannot be made simply by copying the privacy protection laws in western nations. Instead, legal protection of personal information should be drafted that reflects and takes into account these socio‐cultural characteristics.Originality/valueThis paper conducts analysis of incidents of personal information leakage in Japan based on Japanese socio‐cultural characteristics. A revision of APPI is proposed on the basis of the analysis. The paper's analysis and proposal would provide a good clue to develop effective measures to protect personal information and the right to information privacy in the global, multicultural information society. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to introduce a cross-cultural study of the views and implications of Snowden’s revelations about NSA/GCHQ surveillance practices, undertaken through surveys administered in eight countries. The aims and academic and social significance are explained, and justification is offered for the methods used. Design/methodology/approach Pilot surveys were deployed in two countries, following which revised versions were deployed in eight countries. Quantitative analysis of suitable answer sets and quantitative analysis were performed. Findings Through the pilot survey studies conducted in (...) Japan and Spain, the academic significance and meaningfulness, as well as social significance of the project, were confirmed. Practical implications The results of the cross-cultural study are expected to contribute not only to the advance of surveillance study but also to the enhancement of ordinary, non-technical people’s awareness of state surveillance and their proactive approach to protecting their own rights and dignity from covert intrusion by government agencies. Originality/value This paper clarifies the importance and methodologies of investigating the social impact of Snowden’s revelations on youngsters’ attitudes toward privacy and state surveillance in a cross-cultural analysis framework. Although a few other studies have assessed the impact of Snowden’s revelations, these have mostly focussed on the USA, so this is the only study to date considering that impact on a broad international scale, using highly similar surveys to ensure comparability. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to investigate how Snowden’s revelations are viewed by young people in the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan through questionnaire surveys of and follow-up interviews with university students in the two countries, taking into account the histories and current status of state surveillance in these countries and the current complicated and delicate cross-strait relationships. Design/methodology/approach Questionnaire surveys of 315 PRC and 111 Taiwanese university students and semi-structured follow-up interviews with 16 master’s course students from the PRC (...) and one from Taiwan were conducted, in addition to reviews of the literature on privacy and state surveillance in the PRC and Taiwan. The outcomes of the survey were statistically analysed and qualitative analyses of the interview results were also performed. Findings Youngsters living in the PRC had greater interest in and more knowledge about Snowden’s revelations than those living in Taiwan, and the revelations were positively evaluated in both countries as serving public interest. However, PRC students indicated they were less likely to emulate Snowden than those from Taiwan did. Originality/value This study is the first attempt to investigate the social impact of Snowden’s revelations on PRC and Taiwanese youngsters’ attitudes towards privacy and state surveillance as part of cross-cultural analyses between eight countries. (shrink)

What does it mean for the laws of logic to fail? My task in this paper is to answer this question. I use the resources that Routley/Sylvan developed with his collaborators for the semantics of relevant logics to explain a world where the laws of logic fail. I claim that the non-normal worlds that Routley/Sylvan introduced are exactly such worlds. To disambiguate different kinds of impossible worlds, I call such worlds logically impossible worlds. At a logically impossible world, the laws (...) of logic fail. In this paper, I provide a definition of logically impossible worlds. I then show that there is nothing strange about admitting such worlds. (shrink)

In this essay I will put forward an account of the emotion of shame that draws from Bernard Williams’ groundbreaking work on Shame and Necessity. The main novelty will be a distinction between two senses of shame, “basic shame” and “complex shame”. Basic shame is related to what Williams refers to as a “loss of power” in relation to others that can be real or imaginary spectators and is a sense of diminishment towards those others. Complex shame, in turn, appears (...) when this diminishment is felt in relation to an “internalised other” that embodies the values she recognises as her own as well as other values she respects. Borrowing a page from Cheshire Calhoun, I argue that many accounts of shame face what I call the “challenge of unrespected judgments”: people are vulnerable to shame even when they do not endorse or respect the judgments of those shaming them. I claim that the proposed Williamsian account of the emotion can dissolve the challenge, because for one to feel basic shame there is no need for any further attitude of the ashamed person towards the shamer besides a sense of diminishment caused by the perception of loss of power. In addition to that, oppression can influence the internalised other of marginalised people in a way that makes them vulnerable to complex shame. I will conclude with some brief remarks about how moral education in the Aristotelian sense can help us to deal with the morally problematic instances of shame. (shrink)

Neurorights, as “new human rights,” have been increasingly recognized in the literature. In the Neurorights Initiative, these rights are supposed to be directed toward mental privacy, free will, pe...

CETTE THESE SE VEUT UNE CONTRIBUTION A LA COMPREHENSION DE LA DERNIERE PHILOSOPHIE DE MERLEAU-PONTY, EN PRENANT COMME FIL CONDUCTEUR LA NOTION D'INSTITUTION. NOUS ESSAYONS D'ABORD DE DELIMITER LE CHAMP D'INTERROGATION DE LA NOTION D'INSTITUTION, TELLE QU'ELLE EST PRESENTEE DANS SES DEUX PREMIERS OUVRAGES. DEUXIEMEMENT, LA DESCRIPTION DE QUATRE ORDRES DE L'INSTITUTION SYMBOLIQUE (ANIMALITE ET VIE; STYLE ARTISTIQUE; LANGUE ET IDEALITE; SYSTEME SOCIAL) QUE NOUS NOUS EFFORCONS DE RECONSTITUER A L'AIDE DES MANUSCRITS INEDITS CONDUIT A DEVOILER LES MOTIVATIONS DE LA (...) RADICALISATION DE LA QUESTION PHENOMENOLOGIQUE. ENFIN, NOTRE PROBLEMATIQUE SE PRESENTE DANS LE DERNIER OUVRAGE COMME UN PROJET DE L'INSTITUTION DE LA PHILOSOPHIE ELLE-MEME. CE PROJET A SA PORTEE HISTORIQUE, SE PROPOSANT DE METTRE EN EVIDENCE LES MOMENTS FECONDS DANS L'HISTOIRE DE LA PHILOSOPHIE, DE MANIERE A LEVER LES DIFFICULTES DE L'ONTOLOGIE ACTUELLE. (shrink)

In this article I want to focus on a specific function that promises fulfil in our lives: their role as a way of shaping our character. To make my case, I will present an account of truth-telling based on Bernard Williams’ work on genealogy and on the virtues of truth. This account will highlight how our selves (or characters) are not static entities in time, that they are not immediately transparent to us. Nonetheless, we seem to have what I call (...) a drive to be someone, to have a character. We need ways to ‘steady the mind’, that is, ways of shaping our selves to whom we are or want to be. The argument I will put forward is that promises are one of the resources we have for doing so. By making promises, we commit ourselves to acting in a certain way and by doing that we also shape our selves. The argument will help us to answer some philosophical challenges raised against promises, notably about their rationality and about their relationship with vows and resolutions. Additionally, it will impact our thinking about contract law. What emerges from this article is an account of an important role played by promises that has been often neglected by the literature. (shrink)

In his book review of Graham Priest's The Fifth Corner of Four, Mark Siderits, while criticising Priest's philology, suggests that Priest's work is 'of considerable interest' for two reasons. First, 'when two independent traditions use similar methods to work on similar issues, it is always possible that one may have hit on approaches that the other missed'. Second, 'the decentering that can be induced by looking at another tradition may trigger fresh insights, even if those insights are not ones that (...) were actually developed by the tradition marked 'other''. The main task of this paper is to unpack Siderits' thought. By analysing some of Priest's work, I will suggest a decentering that must have taken place in China when Buddhism was 'exported to China in Buddhist shipping containers'. For anyone familiar with the forms of Buddhist philosophy developed in India, various forms of Chinese Buddhism can often look strange. Some ideas that were debated and defended by Indian Buddhists do not appear anywhere in Chinese Buddhism and some assumptions have been quietly added to Buddhism by Chinese Buddhists. By showing that Priest's work brings out the 'innovation' that Chinese Buddhists gave to Buddhism, I will suggest that it is this decentering that Siderits suggests Priest makes use of. (shrink)

A logic is said to be paraconsistent if it does not allow everything to follow from contradictory premises. There are several approaches to paraconsistency. This paper is concerned with several philosophical positions on paraconsistency. In particular, it concerns three ‘schools’ of paraconsistency: Australian, Belgian and Brazilian. The Belgian and Brazilian schools have raised some objections to the dialetheism of the Australian school. I argue that the Australian school of paraconsistency need not be closed down on the basis of the Belgian (...) and Brazilian schools’ objections. In the appendix of the paper, I also argue that the Brazilian school’s view of logic is not coherent. (shrink)

In the 1958-1959 Collège de France course, Merleau-Ponty expounds a detailed commentary on the last paragraphs of the Einleitung from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. We examine in what sense this course has developed the notions that he was in the process of defining, notions such as “chiasm,” “reversibility,” “depth,” and “flesh.” What seems crucial in this course is to clearly define good ambiguity as opposed to bad ambiguity, that is, to the simple mixture of finitude and universality, of interiority and (...) exteriority. It is a question then of revealing, even within Hegelian thought, the operation, although unstable, of good ambiguity and of instituting it beyond the distinction between anthropology and logic without a return to naturalism. It should first be noted that consciousness is for Hegel violence against itself, it gives itself its measure, such that the distinction between measuring and measured is internal to it. By insisting on this “reversibility” of the measuring and the measured, Merleau-Ponty comes to emphasize that the self-relation of consciousness is simultaneously its opening onto a transcendent – an opening whereby it learns something. This leads him to define “the new ontological milieu” which is the depth of the life of consciousness. It is within this depth that the interrogative experience winds on itself. Secondly, if there truly must be a moment where the Hegelian Zweideutigkeit becomes good ambiguity, it will not suffice to explore preobjective depth; it would still be necessary to discern “the hinge” which is “solid, unwavering” and which “remains irremediably hidden.” It is this unwavering hinge that supports phenomena and that, in simultaneously decentering and recentering the fields of appearances, opens a place where one can follow the genesis of sense. Finally, we note that this discovery of the new ontological milieu can be considered as the recovery of the notion of institution that Merleau-Ponty had proposed in 1954-1955: on the one hand, the notion of chiasm invites us to reveal the hinge which at once decenters and recenters the fields of appearances. This hinge is free from the alternative of nature and culture, of subjective and objective spirit; it is the rootedness of our interrogative experience in brute being, which is not object but starts an indefinite search of self. But, on the other hand, the notion of institution, which is essentially descriptive and factual, makes us better feel the weight of the instituted that is also irremediably hidden. It makes us feel the inertia of the instituting event, as well as its fecundity and its cumulativity. (shrink)

Purpose A survey of the attitudes of students in eight countries towards the revelations of mass surveillance by the US’ NSA and the UK’s GCHQ has been described in an introductory paper and seven country-specific papers. This paper aims to present a comparison of the results from these countries and draws conclusions about the similarities and differences noted. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire was deployed in Germany, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, The People’s Republic of China, Spain, Sweden and Taiwan. The original survey (...) was in English, translated into German, Japanese and Chinese for relevant countries. The survey consists of a combination of Likert scale, Yes/no and free-text responses. The results are quantitatively analysed using appropriate statistical tools and the qualitative answers are interpreted. Findings There are significant differences between respondents in the countries surveyed with respect to their general privacy attitudes and their willingness to follow Snowden’s lead, even where they believe his actions served the public good. Research limitations/implications Owing to resource limitations, only university students were surveyed. In some countries, the relatively small number of respondents limits the ability to make meaningful statistical comparisons between respondents from those countries and from elsewhere on some issues. Practical implications Snowden’s actions are generally seen as laudable and having had positive results, among the respondents surveyed. Such results should give pause to governments seeking to expand mass surveillance by government entities. Originality/value There have been few surveys regarding attitudes to Snowden’s revelations, despite the significant press attention and political actions that have flowed from it. The context of attitudes to both the actions he revealed and the act of revelation itself is useful in constructing political and philosophical arguments about the balance between surveillance activity for state security and the privacy of individual citizens. (shrink)

One of the most important tasks of engineering ethics is to give engineers the tools required to act ethically to prevent possible disastrous accidents which could result from engineers’ decisions and actions. The space shuttle Challenger disaster is referred to as a typical case in almost every textbook. This case is seen as one from which engineers can learn important lessons, as it shows impressively how engineers should act as professionals, to prevent accidents. The Columbia disaster came seventeen years later (...) in 2003. According to the report of the Columbia accident investigation board, the main cause of the accident was not individual actions which violated certain safety rules but rather was to be found in the history and culture of NASA. A culture is seen as one which desensitizedmanagers and engineers to potential hazards as they dealt with problems of uncertainty. This view of the disaster is based on Dian Vaughan’s analysis of the Challenger disaster, where inherent organizational factors and culture within NASA had been highlighted as contributing to the disaster. Based on the insightful analysis of the Columbia report and the work of Diane Vaughan, we search for an alternative view of engineering ethics. We focus on the inherent uncertainty of engineers’ work with respect to hazard precaution. We discuss claims that the concept of professional responsibility, which plays a central role in orthodox engineering ethics, is too narrow and that we need a broader and more fundamental concept of responsibility. Responsibility which should be attributed to every person related to an organization and therefore given the range of responsible persons, governments, managers, engineers, etc. might be called “civic virtue”. Only on the basis of this broad concept of responsibility of civic virtue, we can find a possible way to prevent disasters and reduce the hazards that seem to be inseparable part of the use of complex technological systems. (shrink)

One of the most important tasks of engineering ethics is to give engineers the tools required to act ethically to prevent possible disastrous accidents which could result from engineers’ decisions and actions. The space shuttle Challenger disaster is referred to as a typical case in almost every textbook. This case is seen as one from which engineers can learn important lessons, as it shows impressively how engineers should act as professionals, to prevent accidents. The Columbia disaster came seventeen years later (...) in 2003. According to the report of the Columbia accident investigation board, the main cause of the accident was not individual actions which violated certain safety rules but rather was to be found in the history and culture of NASA. A culture is seen as one which desensitizedmanagers and engineers to potential hazards as they dealt with problems of uncertainty. This view of the disaster is based on Dian Vaughan’s analysis of the Challenger disaster, where inherent organizational factors and culture within NASA had been highlighted as contributing to the disaster. Based on the insightful analysis of the Columbia report and the work of Diane Vaughan, we search for an alternative view of engineering ethics. We focus on the inherent uncertainty of engineers’ work with respect to hazard precaution. We discuss claims that the concept of professional responsibility, which plays a central role in orthodox engineering ethics, is too narrow and that we need a broader and more fundamental concept of responsibility. Responsibility which should be attributed to every person related to an organization and therefore given the range of responsible persons, governments, managers, engineers, etc. might be called “civic virtue”. Only on the basis of this broad concept of responsibility of civic virtue, we can find a possible way to prevent disasters and reduce the hazards that seem to be inseparable part of the use of complex technological systems. (shrink)

The construction of a secure and safe society using information and communication technology is recognised as an urgent issue in Japan. This recognition is based on public fear about crime related to manufactured risk caused by modernisation or industrial civilisation. This fear has created a social atmosphere that has led to the rapid development and implementation of security systems using ICT, such as security cameras, smart IC cards and mobile phones, to establish security and safety in Japanese society. However, the (...) never-ending quest for social security and safety with ICT will inevitably cause further manufactured risk, which could lead to serious problems in the future. We have to recognise such risk and control it appropriately. (shrink)

There are few things in our lives we dislike or hate so strongly as pain. On the other hand, the symptoms of the patients suffered from so-called congenital analgesia teach us that if we are deprived of the ability to feel pain, our lives would be unbelievably miserable and disastrous. In this way, if we try to understand the meaning and the value of pain, it seems we immediately find a paradox. The paradoxical character of pain is reflected in philosophical (...) discussions between subjectivist’s and objectivist’s view of pain. In this paper, I try to show that the seemingly paradoxical character emerges because we are obsessed by groundless prejudice that the concept of pain must have one definite single meaning and that if phenomena of pain can be understood as multidimensional, the various characteristics of pain can be interpreted as various aspects of multi-dimensional pain experiences.Hay pocas cosas en nuestras vidas que nos desagraden u odiemos tan fuertemente como el dolor. Por otro lado, los síntomas de los pacientes que padecen la llamada analgesia congénita nos enseñan que, si nos privamos de la capacidad de sentir dolor, nuestras vidas serían increíblemente miserables y desastrosas. De esta manera, si tratamos de comprender el significado y el valor del dolor parece que encontramos inmediatamente una paradoja. El carácter paradójico del dolor se refleja en discusiones filosóficas entre la visión del dolor subjetivista y objetivista. En este trabajo, trato de mostrar que el carácter aparentemente paradójico surge porque estamos obsesionados por el prejuicio infundado de que el concepto de dolor debe tener un único significado definido; y que, si los fenómenos de dolor pueden entenderse como multidimensionales, las diversas características del dolor pueden ser interpretadas como varios aspectos de expe-riencias de dolor multidimensionales.Palabr. (shrink)