An Institute of Medicine panel charged with reviewing the system for overseeing research involving children concluded in 2004 that Institutional Review Boards, institutions engaged in research, and study sponsors should “adopt explicit written policies on acceptable and unacceptable types and amounts of payments related to [children’s] research participation.” We previously reported data on practices and policies in the U.S. regarding payments to children who participate in research and their parents. Here, we report additional results from our study and identify some (...) of the decisions that must be made in developing payment plans and on which payment policies will be expected to offer guidance. We conclude that further conceptual analysis and empirical research are necessary before IRBs, institutions, and sponsors can develop specific rules on numerous aspects of payment. Nevertheless, payment policies that promote the ethical treatment of children in research and their parents can be developed. We propose a structure for such policies. (shrink)

Moral appraisals are found to be associated with a person’s individual differences (e.g., political ideology), and the effects of individual differences on language use have been studied within the framework of the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT). However, the relationship between one’s moral concern and the use of language involving morality on social media is not self-evident. The present exploratory study investigated that relationship using the MFT. Participants’ tweets and self-reported responses to the questionnaire were collected to measure the degree of (...) their appraisals according to the five foundations of the MFT. The Japanese version of the Moral Foundations Dictionary (J-MFD) was used to quantify the number of words in tweets relevant to the MFT’s five moral foundations. The results showed that endorsement of the Fairness and Authority foundations predicted the word frequency in the J-MFD across all five foundations. The findings suggest that the trade-off relationship between the Fairness and Authority foundations plays a key role in online language communication. The implications and future directions to scrutinize that foundation are discussed. (shrink)

Shweder et al. (1997) proposed the three domains of morality: Autonomy, Community, and Divinity. This study used situation sampling to explore how people from Japan and the U.S. interpret moral transgressions provided in their own and another cultural context. Specifically, the analysis tested whether participants with one cultural background recognize culturally congruent moral transgressions as violations more frequently and feel more harshly towards them than culturally incongruent domains. Furthermore, the extent of evocation caused by the home and another culture was (...) investigated. This study asked 102 Japanese and 168 U.S. participants to judge which domain would be primarily involved in each transgression and to rate their wrongness. Participants showed a higher perceived magnitude of transgressions in culturally valued domains provided by in-group than outside members. Cross-cultural differences in morality and future directions are discussed. (shrink)

The moral foundations theory (MFT) proposes that there are five moral foundations that work as the standard to make moral judgments. Among them, the purity foundation is a complex concept. It is considered to be a distinctive foundation compared with the other ones partly because it involves religious beliefs. The assumption underlying the purity foundation is Christian beliefs, so the MFT was developed and made prevalent mostly in the Western cultures. However, because of that assumption, cultural differences in perceiving the (...) purity foundation should be observed with a non-Western sample, such as Japan. It would be important to discuss and clarify the Japanese unique aspect of their orientation toward the pure and impure. We constituted a scale to measure people's tendency toward purity orientation–pollution avoidance (POPA), based on the purity/sanctity subscale of the MFT. For validation, we administered several scales along with POPA. In Study 1, we developed the scale and measured the relationship between the degree of one's POPA, disgust, and animism. We identified four factors as POPA subscales. In Study 2, we investigated the test–retest reliability of POPA and conducted questionnaire surveys to measure attitudes toward paranormal phenomena and the degree of concern for each of the moral foundations. The results showed the validity of the scale, based on the moderate correlations with other scales. The POPA can be a promising tool to better understand the phenomena involving the purity foundation in a Japanese context. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the concept of pilgrimage provides a unifying trope for the otherwise seemingly unfocused travel accounts of Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Interior and Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland’s Voyage aux régions equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent. I begin with a brief description of debates regarding the notion of pilgrimage. After that I show how pilgrimage as trope may be applied to the texts of these authors. This is followed by an application of the classical (...) stages of pilgrimage to particular phases of Bashō’s and Humboldt’s recounted experiences. I conclude that pilgrimage offers an illuminating new way to understand the travel accounts of these two writers. (shrink)

This article explores how the notion ofordinary aestheticscan stem, as well as the one ofordinary ethics, from thatrevolution of the ordinarystarted by Wittgenstein and further developed by philosophers like Cavell and Diamond. The idea ofordinary ethicsemphasizes the importance of everyday life and the particular details of our experiences. This concept can be extended to aesthetics, forming the basis of a modality of aesthetic appreciation that recognize values and importance in the details and nuances of everyday experience. One example of suchordinary (...) aestheticscan be found in thehaikupoetry of Bashō. Bashō’s poetry often focuses on the ordinary and mundane aspects of life, such as the changing of seasons, the sound of rain, or the sight of a bird in flight, but also on that lower world made of insects, rotten foliage, and excrements. Bashō conveys in poetry the core ofZenphilosophy, emphasizing the interconnectedness of all things and the value of living in the present moment. This approach to aesthetics offers an alternative to more traditional modes of aesthetic appreciation, which tend to prioritize grandeur, spectacle, and formal perfection. Ultimately, the concept of ordinary aesthetics invites us to find the intrinsic importance in the simple things that surround us and to cultivate a deeper appreciation for the richness of our everyday lives. (shrink)

This volume gathers together for the first time are all the key texts in a crucial debate in modern philosophy, centered on Leibniz's famous 1695 essay, the "New System of the Nature of Substances and their Communication," in which he introduced his strikingly original theory of metaphysics. His "system" became increasingly famous and drew him into discussion and development of these ideas, both in public and in private, with a variety of thinkers, most notably the great French philosopher Pierre Bayle. (...) Woolhouse's and Francks's new English edition gives the only full representation of this debate, and will therefore be essential reading for anyone who wishes to gain a proper understanding of Leibniz's philosophy and its intelletual context. All the texts are newly translated and extensively annotated; many appear in English for the first time. (shrink)

This chapter offers a proceduralist argument against capital punishment. More specifically, it contends that the possibility of irrevocable mistakes precludes the just administration of the death penalty. At stake is a principle of political morality: legal institutions must strive to remedy their mistakes and to compensate those who suffer from wrongful sanctions. The incompatibility of remedy and execution is the crux of the irrevocability argument: because the wrongly executed cannot enjoy the morally required compensation, execution is impermissible. Along with defending (...) his key premises, Yost explains the complicated role that sentencing uncertainty plays in the argument. He concludes by noting some of the flaws in substantive consequentialist and retributivist justifications of capital punishment. (shrink)

Plato's dialogues frequently criticize traditional Greek myth, yet Plato also integrates myth with his writing. Daniel S. Werner confronts this paradox through an in-depth analysis of the Phaedrus, Plato's most mythical dialogue. Werner argues that the myths of the Phaedrus serve several complex functions: they bring nonphilosophers into the philosophical life; they offer a starting point for philosophical inquiry; they unify the dialogue as a literary and dramatic whole; they draw attention to the limits of language and the limits of (...) knowledge; and they allow Plato to co-opt cultural authority as a way of defining and legitimating the practice of philosophy. Platonic myth, as a species of traditional tale, is thus both distinct from philosophical dialectic and similar to it. Ultimately, the most powerful effect of Platonic myth is the way in which it leads readers to participate in Plato's dialogues and to engage in a process of self-examination. (shrink)

Machine learning, deep learning and neural networks are extensively applied for the development of many fields. Though their technologies are improved greatly, they are often said to be opaque in terms of explainability. Their explainable neural functions will be essential to realization in the networks. In this paper, it is shown that the bio-inspired networks are useful for the explanation of tracking and classification of features. First, the asymmetric network with nonlinear functions is created based on the bio-inspired retinal network. (...) They have orthogonal properties useful for the tracking of features compared with the conventional symmetric networks, which is also proposed on the biological functions. Next, the analysis for the independence of the subspaces between the Fourier bases and the asymmetric network bases is performed. It was that the asymmetric networks have better performances in the classification compared with the symmetric ones. Further, the layered asymmetric networks generate the higher dimensional orthogonal bases that improve the classification accuracies by the replacements of bases. Finally, we classified Reuters collections data applying the explainable processing steps, which consist of the linear discriminations and the sparse coding with nearest neighbor relation for classification. (shrink)

AimTo examine the association of body mass index (BMI) [kg/m2] and its classifications (underweight [BMI < 18.5], normal [18.5 ≤ BMI < 25], overweight [25 ≤ BMI < 30], and obese [BMI ≥ 30]) with brain structure in individuals with a wide range of BMI group.Materials and methodsThe participants included 382 right-handed individuals (mean age: 46.9 ± 14.3 years, 142 men and 240 women). The intelligence quotient was assessed using the Japanese Adult Reading Test. Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and diffusion tensor (...) imaging (DTI) were performed to analyze the association of BMI and its classifications with gray and white matter structures, respectively.ResultsAccording to VBM, BMI was significantly and negatively correlated with the bilateral cerebellum exterior volumes. In group comparisons, the right cerebellum exterior volume was significantly lower in the overweight or obese group than in the underweight or normal group, while the bilateral cuneus and calcarine cortex, left cuneus, and left precuneus volume was significantly lower in the underweight group than in the non-underweight group. Sex-related stratification analyses for VBM revealed that BMI was significantly and negatively correlated with the bilateral cerebellum exterior volumes only in women. In group comparisons, the left cerebellum exterior volume was significantly lower in obese women than in non-obese women. The left thalamus proper and the right cerebellum exterior volumes were significantly lower in overweight or obese group than in underweight or normal group in men and women, respectively. The bilateral cuneus and calcarine cortex, left cuneus and carcarine cortex, and bilateral cuneus volume was significantly lower in underweight men than in non-underweight men. In contrast, there were no notable findings on DTI.ConclusionOur results suggest association of continuous BMI, being overweight or obese, and being underweight with decreased gray matter volume in individuals with a wide range of BMI group. Furthermore, sex-related differences are seen in the association of BMI and its classifications with regional gray matter volume reductions. Abnormally high or low BMIs may have a negative influence on regional gray matter volumes. (shrink)

Many books explain what is known about the universe. This book investigates what cannot be known. Rather than exploring the amazing facts that science, mathematics, and reason have revealed to us, this work studies what science, mathematics, and reason tell us cannot be revealed. In The Outer Limits of Reason, Noson Yanofsky considers what cannot be predicted, described, or known, and what will never be understood. He discusses the limitations of computers, physics, logic, and our own thought processes. Yanofsky describes (...) simple tasks that would take computers trillions of centuries to complete and other problems that computers can never solve; perfectly formed English sentences that make no sense; different levels of infinity; the bizarre world of the quantum; the relevance of relativity theory; the causes of chaos theory; math problems that cannot be solved by normal means; and statements that are true but cannot be proven. He explains the limitations of our intuitions about the world -- our ideas about space, time, and motion, and the complex relationship between the knower and the known. Moving from the concrete to the abstract, from problems of everyday language to straightforward philosophical questions to the formalities of physics and mathematics, Yanofsky demonstrates a myriad of unsolvable problems and paradoxes. Exploring the various limitations of our knowledge, he shows that many of these limitations have a similar pattern and that by investigating these patterns, we can better understand the structure and limitations of reason itself. Yanofsky even attempts to look beyond the borders of reason to see what, if anything, is out there. (shrink)

We propose a formal framework for interpretable machine learning. Combining elements from statistical learning, causal interventionism, and decision theory, we design an idealised explanation game in which players collaborate to find the best explanation for a given algorithmic prediction. Through an iterative procedure of questions and answers, the players establish a three-dimensional Pareto frontier that describes the optimal trade-offs between explanatory accuracy, simplicity, and relevance. Multiple rounds are played at different levels of abstraction, allowing the players to explore overlapping causal (...) patterns of variable granularity and scope. We characterise the conditions under which such a game is almost surely guaranteed to converge on a optimal explanation surface in polynomial time, and highlight obstacles that will tend to prevent the players from advancing beyond certain explanatory thresholds. The game serves a descriptive and a normative function, establishing a conceptual space in which to analyse and compare existing proposals, as well as design new and improved solutions. (shrink)

From the concrete experience of war, Michael S. Yandell constructs a phenomenology of “negative revelation” in which false or distorted claims of goodness and justice disintegrate and become meaningless, adding depth to the term moral injury.