The paper explores the logical strength of Isbell's zig‐zag theorem using the framework of reverse mathematics. Working in, we show that is equivalent to Isbell's zig‐zag theorem for countable monoids: If B is a monoid extension of A, then is dominated by A if and only if b has a zig‐zag over A. Our proof of Isbell's zig‐zag theorem avoids use of strong comprehension axioms common in traditional proofs. We also analyze the strength of theorems concerning binary relations.

Android robots capable of emotional interactions with humans have considerable potential for application to research. While several studies developed androids that can exhibit human-like emotional facial expressions, few have empirically validated androids’ facial expressions. To investigate this issue, we developed an android head called Nikola based on human psychology and conducted three studies to test the validity of its facial expressions. In Study 1, Nikola produced single facial actions, which were evaluated in accordance with the Facial Action Coding System. The (...) results showed that 17 action units were appropriately produced. In Study 2, Nikola produced the prototypical facial expressions for six basic emotions, and naïve participants labeled photographs of the expressions. The recognition accuracy of all emotions was higher than chance level. In Study 3, Nikola produced dynamic facial expressions for six basic emotions at four different speeds, and naïve participants evaluated the naturalness of the speed of each expression. The effect of speed differed across emotions, as in previous studies of human expressions. These data validate the spatial and temporal patterns of Nikola’s emotional facial expressions, and suggest that it may be useful for future psychological studies and real-life applications. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ōmori Shōzō and Kotodama Theory: How Can We Overcome the Need for Bodily Encounters?Maki SatoIntroductionŌmori Shōzō is known for his theory of tachi-araware monism. Tachiaraware monism is his attempted counter-argument to the Cartesian dualism of the object–subject divide, or in his words, a divide between physical (butsuri, mono, science, object) and non-physical consciousness (ishiki, koto, perception, incident), perception (chikaku, 知覚) and conception (shikō, 思考). His concept of Kasane-egaki is (...) also often cited as a core concept of his theory of time.1 The main aim of this paper is to first overview the works of Ōmori since there is only a limited amount of his translated work so far.2 Consecutively, the paper focuses on Ōmori’s theory of kotodama and its related arguments with an intention to expand his concept of Kowaburi into the ethics of online encounters during the pandemic.The world in 2020 was suddenly forced to face the pandemic caused by COVID-19. What COVID-19 alerted us to is tremendous, and there are countless problems that the invisible virus has revealed. Among those are the hidden problems of contemporary society, not limited to the discrimination among races, gender, and jobs (white-collars versus essential workers), the problem of zoonosis, and the related environmental problems (climate change and intrusion into wild nature) caused by over-exploitation of nature. In developed countries, most students and those serving as intellectual workers face their daily lives being overly occupied with online lectures and meetings. COVID-19 worked to normalize remote work, which further normalized and forced our everyday life to shift to cyberspace. [End Page 101]In introducing and overviewing Ōmori’s philosophy, this paper attempts to see the current situation through Ōmori’s philosophy to draw out some ethical implications related to non-physical online encounters and how we can perceive human interactions and relationships under such conditions. Under the constraints caused by COVID-19, humans’ limitless desires to interact with others are expanding more so to the sphere of cyberspace, leading to technological development, such as VR. In short, first, the paper overviews Ōmori’s philosophy. Second, through the overview of Ōmori’s philosophy, the paper seeks adaptable philosophy of his that may work as soft binding grounding ethics for cyberspace encounters where substantial bodily encounters are void. In doing so, the paper intends to draw out weak binding ethics implied in Ōmori’s philosophy that may work to empathetically engage with others in cyberspace where embodied encounters with others are dissolved.Ōmori Shōzō and His Philosophy: A Short Introduction and OverviewIn his short essay introducing the Japanese philosophy of the 1970s, Yasuo Kobayashi coined the term “Komaba quartet” by selecting four active eminent philosophers based on the Komaba campus at the University of Tokyo.3 Among them is Ōmori Shōzō (1921–97), aligning with Hiromatsu Wataru (1933–94), Sakabe Megumi (1936–2009), and Inoue Tadashi (1926–2014). Ōmori is the oldest of the Komaba quartet and received higher education before World War II. He served at the Naval Technology Institute Mitaka Laboratory during the war with his physics degree from the Tokyo Imperial University.4 After the war, he studied philosophy at the University of Tokyo with an interest in phenomenology, leading him to study at Harvard and Stanford in the United States.During his professorship at the University of Tokyo, he inspired countless students who are now leading the philosophy academy in Japan, such as Noe Keiichi (1949–) and Noya Shigeki (1954–). In the round-table discussion titled “Explanatory Round-Table on the Charm of Ōmori’s Philosophy,” four of his former students—Iida Takashi and Tanji Nobuharu, in addition to Noe and Noya—worked on selecting his works. It is impressive to read that all four [End Page 102] of them recall how exciting and inspiring it was to take his classes.5 Iida recalls that Ōmori’s classes were exceptional since philosophy courses were all about reading, with might and main, the texts written in a language other than Japanese at the University of Tokyo. However, Ōmori, with his postwar American education, welcomed discussion with the students and was keen on questioning... (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Investigating Extended Embodiment Using a Computational Model and Human Experimentation” by Yuki Sato, Hiroyuki Iizuka & Takashi Ikegami. Upshot: The target article’s findings on the focus of attention in extending an agent’s body schema are consistent with those in developmental psychology and neuroscience on goal-directed action. The consequences of these findings are that embodiment can be extended in a variety of ways, not all of which require direct physical manipulation.

Open peer commentary on the article “Investigating Extended Embodiment Using a Computational Model and Human Experimentation” by Yuki Sato, Hiroyuki Iizuka & Takashi Ikegami. Upshot: Sato and colleagues make use of an innovative method that combines robotics modeling and psychological experimentation to investigate how tool use affects our living and lived embodiment. I situate their approach in a general shift from robotics to human-computer interface studies in enactive cognitive science, and speculate about the necessary conditions for the (...) bodily incorporation of tools. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Investigating Extended Embodiment Using a Computational Model and Human Experimentation” by Yuki Sato, Hiroyuki Iizuka & Takashi Ikegami. Upshot: First, we comment on a potential weakness highlighted by the use of self-reporting in the human-coupled windmill experiment as described in the target article. Second, we suggest that the authors treat their windmill models as soft-assembled dynamical systems. This would allow them to investigate extended body schemes by looking for 1/f noise in the (...) interface between the agent and the windmills. (shrink)

This paper argues for a virtue-based account of questioning. First, it delineates the unreflective yet rational aspects of questioning and demonstrates that “good” questions – that is, properly focused, pertinent questions – can be obtained not only in reflective but also in unreflective processes. This paper then argues that the unreflective yet rational mode of inquirers in questioning can be characterized by an automatic response to good questions and cues for relevant doubt and further questions, the active and standby modes (...) of responsiveness, and emotional stress on cues for relevant doubt and further questions. Finally, this article outlines how these features can fully be explicated in terms of exercising a sensitivity to good questions as a virtue. (shrink)

Emotional processing without conscious awareness plays an important role in human social interaction. Several behavioral studies reported that subliminal presentation of photographs of emotional facial expressions induces unconscious emotional processing. However, it was difficult to elicit strong and robust effects using this method. We hypothesized that dynamic presentations of facial expressions would enhance subliminal emotional effects and tested this hypothesis with two experiments. Fearful or happy facial expressions were presented dynamically or statically in either the left or the right visual (...) field for 20 (Experiment 1) and 30 (Experiment 2) ms. Nonsense target ideographs were then presented, and participants reported their preference for them. The results consistently showed that dynamic presentations of emotional facial expressions induced more evident emotional biases toward subsequent targets than did static ones. These results indicate that dynamic presentations of emotional facial expressions induce more evident unconscious emotional processing. (shrink)

The number of competing-brands changes by new product's entry. The new product introduction is endemic among consumer packaged goods firm and is an integral component of their marketing strategy. As a new product's entry affects markets, there is a pressing need to develop market response model that can adapt to such changes. In this paper, we develop a dynamic model that capture the underlying evolution of the buying behavior associated with the new product. This extends an application of a dynamic (...) linear model, which is used by a number of time series analyses, by allowing the observed dimension to change at some point in time. Our model copes with a problem that dynamic environments entail: changes in parameter over time and changes in the observed dimension. We formulate the model with framework of a state space model. We realize an estimation of the model using modified Kalman filter/fixed interval smoother. We find that new product's entry (1) decreases brand differentiation for existing brands, as indicated by decreasing difference between cross-price elasticities; (2) decreases commodity power for existing brands, as indicated by decreasing trend; and (3) decreases the effect of discount for existing brands, as indicated by a decrease in the magnitude of own-brand price elasticities. The proposed framework is directly applicable to other fields in which the observed dimension might be change, such as economic, bioinformatics, and so forth. (shrink)

This article considers the implications of the early development of London Zoo. It gives insight into the differences between the ideal image of the zoo, the real situation under which the zoo was managed, and popular perceptions of the zoo. The discussion explores three areas: the heterogeneous audience of the zoo, the aestheticization of the zoo and its animal displays, and the pedagogy of observing nonhuman animals in the zoo. The zoo's ideals confronted various difficulties, while the pedagogy of zoo (...) visits, which developed within a frame of natural theology, was subject to various applications. The article argues that these differences were not evidence of the zoo's failure to consolidate its ideological backbone in Victorian society. It concludes that such divergence characterized the zoo's unique capacity both to evoke and to receive competing ideals, anxieties and criticism. (shrink)

We can easily discriminate self-produced from externally generated sensory signals. Recent studies suggest that the prediction of the sensory consequences of one’s own actions made by forward model can be used to attenuate the sensory effects of self-produced movements, thereby enabling a differentiation of the self-produced sensation from the externally generated one. The present study showed that attenuation of sensation occurred both when participants themselves performed a goal-directed action and when they observed experimenter performing the same action, although they clearly (...) reported that the tones were produced by other during action observation and by themselves during their own action. These results suggest that sensory prediction of action modulates ongoing auditory processing irrespective of who produces the sounds and that the explicit judgment of agency does not necessarily rely on the same mechanisms on which implicit perceptual measures such as sensory attenuation rely. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAnother individual’s gaze automatically shifts an observer’s attention to a location. This reflexive response occurs even when the gaze is presented subliminally over a short period. Another’s gaze also increases the preference level for items in the gaze direction; however, it was previously unclear if this effect occurs when the gaze is presented subliminally. This study showed that the preference levels for nonsense figures looked at by a subliminal gaze were significantly greater than those for items that were subliminally looked (...) away from. Targets that were looked at by a subliminal gaze were detected faster ; however, the participants were unable to detect the gaze direction. These results indicate that another individual’s gaze automatically increases the preference levels for items in the gaze direction without conscious awareness. (shrink)

Modal realism -- Time, space, world -- Existence -- Actuality -- Modal realism and modal tense -- Transworld individuals and their identity -- Existensionalism -- Impossibility -- Proposition and relief -- Fictional worlds -- Epistemology.

Molecular and biochemical analysis of the biogenesis of peroxisomes has made rapid progress in recent years. Research on the mechanism of targeting of peroxisomal proteins has revealed that many, but not all, peroxisomal proteins have a conserved tripeptide motif in their carboxy‐terminal portions which is required for entry into peroxisomes; the topogenic signal mechanism thus differs in these instances from those employed in mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum. Other factors involved in peroxisome biogenesis are also coming to light.

The paper attempts to construct a global model of a social contract using well-known metaphors of two great philosophers: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke. By modelling a global social contract, I mean the formulation of a social contract using two sets of data: one is global citizens' preferences about values and norms while the other is sovereign states' participation in multilateral treaties. Both Rousseau and Locke formulate their versions of social contract theories in the national context of eighteenth-century Europe. This (...) paper tries my hands on extending their theories to the global context. This paper attempts to link empirically the relationship between global citizens' preferences as gauged by the World Values Survey and sovereign states' participation in 120 multilateral treaties deposited to the United Nations. To see the link between citizens and treaties (quasi-legislative outcomes, sort of), dimensional similarities of the cosmos of citizens' preference and the cosmos of sovereign states' willingness to join multilateral treaties are examined. Once done, all the sovereign states are located in each of the two cosmoses, citizens and states, and the correlation coefficients between them are measured. Based on these empirical results, the nature of the global quasi-legislative process is clarified. Conclusions and implications are drawn. (shrink)

We introduce a new axiom called inductive dichotomy, a weak variant of the axiom of inductive definition, and analyze the relationships with other variants of inductive definition and with related axioms, in the general second order framework, including second order arithmetic, second order set theory and higher order arithmetic. By applying these results to the investigations on the determinacy axioms, we show the following. (i) Clopen determinacy is consistency-wise strictly weaker than open determinacy in these frameworks, except second order arithmetic; (...) this is an enhancement of Schweber–Hachtman separation of open and clopen determinacy into the consistency-wise separation. (ii) Hausdorff–Kuratowski hierarchy of differences of opens is faithfully reflected by the hierarchy of consistency strengths of corresponding parameter-free determinacies in the aforementioned frameworks; this result is valid also in second order arithmetic only except clopen determinacy. (shrink)

... because the thing-in-itself has no abnormality. Anything unusual will appear, after I myself see it: Abnormality belongs not to the thing-in-itself, but to myself. Kuo P'u (276-324), Shan-hai ching (Scriptures of the Mountains and the Seas).

Call a sentential context semantically transparent if and only if all synonymous expressions are substitutable for one another in it salva veritate. Nathan Salmon has boldly advanced a refreshingly crisp semantic theory according to which belief contexts are semantically transparent. If he is right, belief contexts are much better behaved than widely suspected. Impressive as it is, this author does not believe that Salmon’s theory is completely satisfactory. This article tries to show that Salmon’s theory, in conjunction with a number (...) of auxiliary but important claims he makes to buttress the theory, seems to lead to failure of semantic transparency of belief contexts. (shrink)

Genshi shiroku -- Hakurokudō Shoin keijimon.

1. Seikyō ronkō -- 2-3. Shibunrui -- 4-10. Rangai shorui -- 11-12. Genshi shiroku -- 13-14. Fukureki.