The chapter contextualizes and reconstructs Walther’s theory of social acts. In her view a given act qualifies as social if it is performed in the name of or on behalf of a community. Interestingly, Walther’s understanding of that notion is patently at odds with the idea of a social act originally propounded by Reinach. According to Reinach, an act is social if it “addresses” other persons and if it, for its success, requires them to grasp it. We claim that to (...) explain Walther’s reconfiguration of this concept, one has to look into the use that Husserl makes of it. Husserl adopts this idea from Reinach to tackle a problem that is not discussed by the latter. This is the problem of how communities, by means of social acts, are “constituted” in consciousness. Walther shares with Husserl the concern about the constitution of communities and her radical revision of Reinach’s idea is presented as an attempt to offer an alternative solution to Husserl’s problem. (shrink)

Profit Sharing is one of the reinforcement learning methods. An agent, as a learner, selects an action with a state-action value and receives rewards when it reaches a goal state. Then it distributes receiving rewards to state-action values. This paper discusses how to set the initial value of a state-action value. A distribution function ƒ( x ) is called as the reinforcement function. On Profit Sharing, an agent learns a policy by distributing rewards with the reinforcement function. On Markov Decision (...) Processes (MDPs), the reinforcement function ƒ( x ) = 1/ L x is useful, and on Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs), ƒ( x ) = 1/ L w is useful, where L is the sufficient number of rules at each state, and W is the length of an episode. If episodes are always long, the value of the reinforcement function is little. So the differences of rule values become little, and the agent learns little by using the roulette selection as an action selection. This problem is called as Learning Speed Problem. If the value of the reinforcement function for an action is very higher than its state-action value, an agent will not select other action. There is a problem when its action is not a optimal action. This problem is called as Past Experiences Problem. This paper shows that both Learning Speed Problem and Past Experiences Problem are caused by the bad setting between the initial values of a state-action values and the function values of a reinforcement function. We propose how to set the initial values of a state-action values at each state. The experiment shows that an agent can learn correctly even if the length of episode is large. And shows the effectiveness on both MDPs and POMDPs. Our proposed method focuses on the initialization of state-action values and does not limit reinforcement functions. So it can apply to any reinforcement function. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider profit sharing that is one of the reinforcement learning methods. An agent learns a candidate solution of a problem from the reward that is received from the environment if and only if it reaches the destination state. A function that distributes the received reward to each action of the candidate solution is called the reinforcement function. On this learning system, the agent can reinforce the set of selected actions when it gets the reward. And the (...) agent should not reinforce the detour actions. First, we will propose a new constraint equation about reinforcement functions to distribute the reinforcement values on the non-detour actions. If we use the reinforcement function to satisfy the constraint equation, the agent can select the non-detour actions directing to the destination state. Next, it is shown that the reinforcement function can be constant after learning process to suppress the selection of detour actions. Lastly, in computer simulations for maze problems, we show that the learning performance of agents does not depend on the size of environment. (shrink)

Research ethics consultation services (RECS), which function as an advisory service to facilitate the resolution of complex ethical issues in clinical research, have been proliferating over the last decade. However, the qualification of an individual who provides RECS, or “a research ethics consultant,” has not been thoroughly investigated, in contrast to healthcare ethics consultants, whose core competencies have been discussed and clarified to a great extent. In this study, we investigated core competencies necessary for research ethics consultants, referring to the (...) core competency models of ethics consultants developed in the healthcare practice context, and propose a competency model for research ethics consultants. (shrink)

In this contribution we discuss Gallagher's and Zahavi's project of naturalization of phenomenology. In their book The Phenomenological Mind, they aim at intertwining the phenomenological method with a number of results from the field of cognitive sciences. Nevertheless, one could oppose that such a project is based upon a metaphysical assumption: indeed, if mental states belong to nature, they should be approached by natural sciences. This paper replies to this objection by emphasizing how Gallagher and Zahavi opt for a transcendental (...) perspective in order to avoid any ambiguity between their project of naturalization of phenomenology and a naturalistic theory of consciousness. (shrink)

This article studies the treatment effect models in which individuals are classified into unobserved groups based on heterogeneous treatment rules. By using a finite mixture approach, we propose a marginal treatment effect framework in which the treatment choice and outcome equations can be heterogeneous across groups. Under the availability of instrumental variables specific to each group, we show that the MTE for each group can be separately identified. On the basis of our identification result, we propose a two-step semiparametric procedure (...) for estimating the group-wise MTE. We illustrate the usefulness of the proposed method with an application to economic returns to college education. (shrink)

L’exposition d’art dans des paysages est devenu populaire au Japon, avec la multiplication récente de festivals d’art locaux. Dans ces festivals, qui attirent chacun des centaines de milliers de visiteurs, coexistent des œuvres hétérogènes. Certaines sont des sculptures autonomes, d’autres des installations qui se fondent dans le paysage, et d’autres encore sont des œuvres de type « art relationnel ». Bien que ces œuvres in situ affirment leur lien essentiel avec le site naturel rural et avec le corps du spectateur (...) — constituant un événement, une expérience, une rencontre éphémère —, les relations avec le site comme avec le visiteur sont complexes et ambigües. Il y a des œuvres in situ, mais parfois aussi in aliquo situ : des œuvres qui peuvent être installées n’importe où. Qu’est-ce qui attire les visiteurs dans ces expositions? Quels sont donc la nature et le mérite de leur localisation? Si les visiteurs apprécient de voir des œuvres dans ces paysages cela peut être en partie lié au principe japonais traditionnel d’expérience des lieux dit meisho-meguri, ou « pèlerinage vers des sites célèbres ». Cette pratique issue du Moyen Âge est associée historiquement au sacré. Aujourd’hui ce pèlerinage prend la forme du tourisme moderne mais conserve un sens traditionnel invisible car les visiteurs se déplacent à travers une série de lieux géographiques selon un jeu culturellement codé. Selon nous, dans le cas des visites d’œuvres d’art en zones rurales, l’appréciation des œuvres d’art participe à ce même jeu traditionnel de se déplacer physiquement dans une série de lieux. Cette dimension spirituelle implicite modifie à son tour la perception des œuvres. Ainsi on dira que la pratique japonaise de visiter ces expositions d’art in situ témoigne de la survivance d’une tradition, et constitue ainsi un système alternatif d’expérience esthétique. The installations of artwork in natural landscapes have become popular in Japan with the recent increase in local art festivals. In these art festivals where hundreds of thousands of visitors gather, heterogeneous installations coexist; some are autonomous sculptures, some are fused into the natural landscape, and some belong to “relational art”. Although most works assert the essential quality of their location, and the experience as “an event”, their relationships to the rural areas and to the body of the visitor are complex and ambiguous. Some works are really in situ, but some are in aliquo situ—that is, works that could be installed anywhere. What attracts visitors to these exhibitions? Hence what is the nature and merit of the location? What is the relation to the visitor’s bodily presence? If visitors enjoy the site-specificity of the artwork this may be linked to the traditional Japanese system of experiencing places as meisho-meguri—i.e. “a pilgrimage to a series of famous sites”. This practice comes from the Middle Ages and was by then spiritual. While today these pilgrimages appear as a form of modern tourism, they retain a culturally coded character because visitors’s journey is like “a game of visiting a series of geographical places”. According to me, in the case of the visit of artistic sites, the appreciation of the artwork participates in this same game of bodily displacement to a series of places. This implicit spiritual underpinning conversely modifies the visitor’s perception of the works. Thus I propose that visiting artistic sites in natural settings in Japan appears as informed by this Japanese particular tradition, and thus constitutes an alternative system of contemporary aesthetic experience. (shrink)

「戦前=戦後」だけでなく、昭和はつねに「二つの貌」を持っていた。皇国史観から安保・学生運動まで、相反する気分が対立しつつ同居する昭和の奇妙な精神風土の本質を、丸山眞男・平泉澄・西田幾多郎・蓑田胸喜らの 思想を元に解読する。.

There are three conceptions of expression in Husserl: (1) expression as a physical or sensible entity (expression-token), (2) expression as a repeatable entity (expression-type), and (3) expression as an act that connects token and type to each other (act of expressing). Only when all three notions are considered canHusserl's theory of expression and its meaning be correctly interpreted. However, such an interpretation does not ensure the correctness of Husserl’s theory itself. Rather, the distinctions of the three notions reveal implausibility in (...) the theory, because using an expression-token is nothing other than having a presentation(Vorstellung) of it. In his manuscript of 1914, Husserl attempts to overcome that implausibility but in a way that gives rise to another difficulty. (shrink)

L’ambition de cet article est de reformuler l’ontologie des propositions proposée par Husserl dans ses Prolegomena zur reinen Logik (1900). Dans cet ouvrage, Husserl affirme que les propositions, auxquelles a trait ce qu’il appelle la “logique pure”, sont des propriétés (des “species”) d’actes, mettons d’actes de jugement. En outre, il considère les propriétés comme circonscrivant toutes leurs instantiations possibles. Sur cette base, on comprend mieux en quel sens la réflexion de Husserl sur la nature de la logique dépend de son (...) ontologie des propositions. Dans cet article, les deux points suivants sont discutés dans cette perspective. D’abord, la structure de son argument négatif contre le psychologisme n’est dans son ensemble correctement comprise que si l’on prend en considération l’ontologie husserlienne des propositions. Cela explique pourquoi la conception de la logique comme une science normative a priori ne satisfait pas Husserl lorsqu’il vise à réfuter le psychologisme. Ensuite, sa conception positive des lois logiques serait aussi rendue plus intelligible par cette théorie. Celle-ci fournit tout ce qui est nécessaire pour réfuter le psychologisme sans renoncer pour autant à une conception globalement aristotélicienne de la logique, que Husserl tient pour indispensable mais qu’il serait particulèrement difficile de maintenir dans le cadre de la conception normative a priori. (shrink)