In the chapter “Fit for Emperors and Kings,” the Chinese philosopher Chuang-tzu relates the myth of Hun-tun, the emperor of chaos, who died when the seven sense openings were bored into him. The story goes: Shu, the ruler of the Southern Sea, and Hu, the ruler of the Northern Sea, met in the realm of Hun-tun, the emperor of the Center, that is to say in the world of true reality that contradicted their own as being one of vast disorder. (...) Hun-tun received the two emperors warmly, and they both overcame their knowledge-based and conceptional consciousness, entirely forgot the evaluating, one-sided viewpoint of differentiation. Thus they enjoyed the world of true reality, the land of Hun-tun, Emperor Chaos. Subsequently the two guests wondered how they could possibly repay the kindness of Hun-tun. Concluding their consultation, they decided to present Hun-tun with seven openings — the sense doors of the eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. They duly proceeded to bore one opening into Hun-tun every day. However, on the seventh day, when he was finally becoming like a human being, Hun-tun died. (shrink)

Introduction: Masao Maruyama -- Analyzing the causes of the fifteen year war -- Creating modern man: the basis of national security -- Establishing political realism: guidance to national security -- Advocating unarmed neutrality -- Defending democracy: a prerequisite of national security -- Conclusion: predicting the second defeat.

This work contrasts Giovanni Sartor’s view of inferential semantics of legal concepts with a probabilistic model of theory formation. The work further explores possibilities of implementing Kemp’s probabilistic model of theory formation in the context of mapping legal concepts between two individual legal systems. For implementing the legal concept mapping, we propose a cross-categorization approach that combines three mathematical models: the Bayesian Model of Generalization, the probabilistic model of theory formation, i.e., the Infinite Relational Model first introduced by Kemp et (...) al. and its extended model, i.e., the normal-IRM proposed by Herlau et al.. We apply our cross-categorization approach to datasets where legal concepts related to educational systems are respectively defined by the Japanese- and the Danish authorities according to the International Standard Classification of Education. The main contribution of this work is the proposal of a conceptual framework of the cross-categorization approach that, inspired by Sartor, attempts to explain reasoner’s inferential mechanisms. (shrink)

Indigenous ecologies in industrial societies need immediate attention in light of the ongoing debate on indigenous resource rights and decreasing biodiversity. This paper examines the functions and meanings of hunting, fishing, and gathering activities among contemporary Nez Perce Indians in Idaho, USA. The collected data were analyzed with Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of “symbolic capital” and “practice” within the framework of political ecology. The results clearly demonstrate that hunting, fishing, and gathering practices play significant roles not only in social and religious (...) but also economic and political senses within the contemporary Nez Perce society. This study suggests that investigation of indigenous ecologies in industrial societies take a synthesized approach between idealist and materialist perspectives. (shrink)

S-Modulin is a frog homolog of recoverin. The function and the underlying mechanism of the action of these proteins are now understood in general. However, there remain some unsolved issues including; two distinct effects of S-modulin; Ca2+-dependent binding of S-modulin to membranes and a possible target protein; S-modulin-like proteins in other neurons. These issues are considered in this commentary.

Experiment with public deployment of the semantic service matchmaker to a UDDI registry for a year is described in this paper. UDDI is a standard registry for Web Services, but, its search functionality has been limited to a keyword search. Therefore, we propose an enhancement of UDDI, called Matchmaker, that supports semantic service capability discovery. Since September 2003, we have deployed the Matchmaker in one of four official UDDI registries operated by NTT-Communications. In this paper, we first introduce the Matchmaker, (...) and illustrate client tools which lower the threshold of use of semantics. Then, we evaluate this experiment by benchmarks in terms of its performance and functionality. Finally, we discuss user requirements obtained by two ways: questionnaire and observation of search behavior. (shrink)

This paper investigates how the reader of prose fiction fills in the blanks regarding a fictional character’s membership category, action, and reason for the action. Aligning with an ethnomethodological approach to texts and appropriating membership categorization analysis (MCA), we analyze how the readers of J. D. Salinger, an author whose works are well known for their ambiguity and ambivalence, would grasp the unwritten identities of characters and the meanings of their actions. Our analysis specifies two types of methods deployed for (...) the reader to understand the fictional texts. First, in an at-a-glance way, the reader can supply the missing categories and sequence of actions by turning to the commonsense knowledge and social norms regarding the association between the category and the activity. Second, the reader can construct various interpretations regarding the recognizably ambiguous scenes of the text by turning to the conceptual knowledge of the relevant social phenomena, the maxims specific to the act of storytelling, and the writer’s techniques peculiar to the fictional texts. The findings demonstrate the vast applicability of an MCA approach to the analysis of the work of reading prose fiction and shed light on the detailed operations of the author’s maxims and techniques in the textual configuration of prose fiction, thereby indicating the possibility of ethnomethodological analysis including the interwoven consideration of the reader’s activity and the textual organization. (shrink)

Die Arbeit verbindet in subtiler Weise begriffsgeschichtliche, quellengeschichtliche, kontextanalytische und kompositionsanalytische Fragestellungen, um die schwierigen Probleme, die die Freiheitsantinomie der Kritik der reinen Vernunft aufwirft, einer Losung naherzubringen. Dabei wird deutlich, wie sehr Kants Freiheitsantinomie in ihrer Formulierung von den Diskussionen abhangt, die in dem Zeitraum zwischen Wolff und Tetens gefuhrt worden sind. Auch Kants beruhmte Dissertation des Jahres 1770 erscheint so in neuem Licht. Kants Freiheitsantinomie erweist sich als Antwort auf Fragen seiner unmittelbaren Vorganger. This work combines issues pertaining (...) to the history of concepts, historical sources, context analysis and composition analysis in order to try to solve the problems posed by the antinomy of freedom in the Critique of Pure Reason. The study makes it clear how much the wording of Kant's antinomy of freedom depends on the discussions held during the time between Wolff and Tetens. Kant's famous dissertation of 1770 is thus also seen in a new light. Kant's antinomy of freedom is shown to be the answer to the questions posed by his direct predecessors. (shrink)

Der Leipziger Pietist Chr. A. Crusius setzt sich mit dem von Leibniz und Wolff festgelegten „Satz vom zureichenden Grund“ auseinander, nach dem nicht nur jedes Naturgeschehnis, sondern auch jede Handlung des Menschen a priori determiniert zu verstehen ist. Zunächst kritisiert Crusius die Vieldeutigkeit des Begriffs „Grund“, wo er zunächst zwischen „Realgrund“ und „Erkenntnisgrund“ unterscheidet, und weiterhin ersteren in „wirkende Ursache“ und „Existentialgrund“, und letzteren in „Erkenntnisgrund a priori“ und „Erkenntnisgrund a posteriori“ einteilt. Nach Crusius hat menschliche freie Handlung keinen eindeutig (...) determinierenden Grund, sondern nur wirkende Ursache, die jeder seinerseits ablehnen kann. Crusius gründet seinen Freiheitsbegriff auf die Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre, nach der freie Handlungen wegen der Endlichkeit des Menschen nur a posteriori erkannt werden. In meinem Beitrag versuche ich zu zeigen, dass im Freiheitsbegriff von Crusius, der „Grundtätigkeit der Freiheit“, ein Muster der Vereinbarkeit von der empirisch orientierten Freiheit und dem Determinismus einzusehen ist. (shrink)

According to the poetician Vāmana, a genitive ending can denote not only a direct relation but also an indirect relation. For example, in kamalasya kandaḥ ‘the bulb of the lotus flower’ the genitive ending Ṅas introduced after the word kamala denotes the indirect relation between the lotus flower and the bulb, the relation established through the intermediary of the lotus plant that has a direct relation with both of them. Is such a view acceptable to Pāṇinian grammarians? Careful scrutiny of (...) Patañjali’s discussions in the Mahābhāṣya concerning what the affix matUP signifies reveals that he does not accept that a genitive ending occurs to denote an indirect relation: he considers that Aṣṭādhyāyī 2.3.50: ṣaṣṭhī śeṣe, which provides for introducing a genitive ending, has for its domain a direct relation alone. For Vāmana, on the other hand, the poetic expression kamalasya kandaḥ and the like serve to testify to the fact that a genitive ending can be used to signify an indirect relation. What is important is that Aṣṭādhyāyī 2.3.50 as it stands does not exclude this. Just as Patañjali accepts a direct relation as the domain of Aṣṭādhyāyī 2.3.50 on the basis of the usage of model speakers, so does Vāmana accept an indirect relation as its further domain on the basis of the usage of great poets. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates an empirical analysis of the visual order of membership categories in a way consistent with both an early ethnomethodological research interest and recent arguments in membership categorization analysis. Early ethnomethodological studies have highlighted that we can infer and understand the membership categories of observed people about whom we have no information in advance, even without talking to them. Recent membership categorization analysts have argued the methodological importance of using video data. Given this, fictional films serve as video (...) data to advance the investigation into the visual order of membership categories since audiences do not know the fictional characters’ information in advance and cannot talk to them. We analyze how potential audiences understand fictional characters’ membership categories and how production crew members organize the visual and conversational order of membership categories. The analysis illustrates that our practical inferences of fictional characters’ membership categories are based on conversations among characters and visually available information. Such visually available information includes environments and lighting, as well as characters’ clothes, body orientations, facial expressions, and physical distance from each other. In other words, production crew members of fictional films design the visual and conversational order for remote audiences by arranging visually available information and fictional characters’ conversations. The findings provide insights into the “possible correctness” and “defeasibility” of membership categorization practices. Particularly regarding fictional characters’ membership categories, production crew members can employ the “possible correctness” and “defeasibility” of categorization practices to mislead audiences. (shrink)

. This paper presents Buddhism as a path theory in which the adherent practices mindfulness in order to see the world as‐it‐is. The world as presented in a human situation is an interdependently originating process to which one can bring meaning but in which meaning is not inherent. The conceptualizing process by which one concretizes reality is the foundation on which human frustrations and disease arise. However, it is by this conceptualizing process that one establishes a cosmological view of the (...) universe. The soteriological consideration in Buddhism is to realize that reality created by the mind is like an illusion, a concretization of an interdependently originating process into a substantive reality. Through this realization one can remove the delusion created by mind and see reality as‐it‐is. (shrink)

This paper studies information transmission between an uninformed decision maker and an informed agent who have asymmetric beliefs on the sender’s ability to observe the state of nature. We find that even when the material payoffs of the players are perfectly aligned, the sender’s over- and underconfidence on his information give rise to information loss in communication, although they do not by themselves completely eliminate information transmission in equilibrium. However, an underconfident sender may prefer no communication to informative communication. We (...) also show that when the sender is biased, overconfidence can lead to more information transmission and welfare improvement. (shrink)

Altering physical actions when responding to changing environmental demands is important but not always effectively performed. This ineffectiveness, which is an error of social behavior generated by mutual interactions, is not well understood. This study investigated mechanisms of a hesitant behavior that occurs in people walking toward each other, causing people to move in the same direction when attempting to avoid a collision. Using a motion capture device affixed to 17 pairs, we first confirmed the hesitant behavior by a difference (...) between the experimental task, which involved an indeterminate situation to assess the actions of another individual, and the control task, which involved a predetermined avoiding direction, in a real-time situation involving two people. We next investigated the effect of three external factors: long distance until an event, synchronized walking cycle, and different foot relations in dyads on the hesitant behavior. A dramatic increase in freezing and near-collision behavior occurred in dyads for which the avoiding direction was not predetermined. The behavior related with the combination of long distance until an event, synchronized walking cycle, and different foot relations in dyads. We found that the hesitant behavior is influenced by an interpersonal relationship under enough distance to predict other movement. The hesitant behavior has possibly emerged as an undesired by-product of joint action. These results contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms of adaptive control of perception-action coupling in mutual interaction. (shrink)

Recorded in Nirukta 1.15–16, the controversy between Kautsa and Yāska on whether the Vedic mantras are meaningful or not represents a turning point in the traditional interpretation of the Veda. While references to this controversy are often found in literature, a systematic discussion of the whole episode has not to our knowledge been undertaken. This paper offers a detailed analysis of this controversy. We first review previous scholarship and elucidate the structure and rationale of the controversy. Then, we provide an (...) annotated translation in which we propose new solutions to several philological and interpretive issues. (shrink)

We investigate computability of a self-similar set on a Euclidean space. A nonempty compact subset of a Euclidean space is called a self-similar set if it equals to the union of the images of itself by some set of contractions. The main result in this paper is that if all of the contractions are computable, then the self-similar set is a recursive compact set. A further result on the case that the self-similar set forms a curve is also discussed.

A challenge in human genome research is how to describe the populations being studied. The use of improper and/or imprecise terms has the potential to both generate and reinforce prejudices and to diminish the clinical value of the research. The issue of population descriptors has not attracted enough academic attention outside North America and Europe. In January 2012, we held a two-day workshop, the first of its kind in Japan, to engage in interdisciplinary dialogue between scholars in the humanities, social (...) sciences, medical sciences, and genetics to begin an ongoing discussion of the social and ethical issues associated with population descriptors. (shrink)

PurposeThis study aimed to investigate whether oxygenated hemoglobin generated during a motor imagery task is associated with the motor learning level of the task.MethodsWe included 16 right-handed healthy participants who were trained to perform a ball rotation task. Hemodynamic brain activity was measured using near-infrared spectroscopy to monitor changes in oxy-Hb concentration during the BR MI task. The experimental protocol used a block design, and measurements were performed three times before and after the initial training of the BR task as (...) well as after the final training. The BR count during training was also measured. Furthermore, subjective vividness of MI was evaluated three times after NIRS measurement using the Visual Analog Scale.ResultsThe results showed that the number of BRs increased significantly with training. VAS scores also improved with training. Furthermore, oxy-Hb concentration and the region of interest showed a main effect. An interaction was confirmed, and it was ascertained that the change in oxy-Hb concentrations due to training was different for each ROI. The most significant predictor of subjective MI vividness was supplementary motor area oxy-Hb concentration.DiscussionHemodynamic brain activity during MI tasks may be correlated with task motor learning levels, since significant changes in oxy-Hb concentrations were observed following initial and final training in the SMA. In particular, hemodynamic brain activity in the SMA was suggested to reflect the MI vividness of participants. (shrink)

Conquering print-sound mappings is vital for developing fluent reading skills. In neuroimaging research, this ability can be indexed by activation differences between audiovisual congruent against incongruent conditions in brain areas such as the left superior temporal cortex. In line with it, individuals with dyslexia have difficulty in tasks requiring print-sound processing, accompanied by a reduced neural integration. However, existing evidence is almost restricted to alphabetic languages. Whether and how multisensory processing of print and sound is impaired in Chinese dyslexia remains (...) underexplored. In this study, we applied a passive audiovisual integration paradigm with functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the possible dysfunctions in processing character-sound and pinyin-sound associations in Chinese dyslexic children. Unexpectedly, the dyslexic group did not show reduced neural integration compared with typically developing readers in either character or pinyin experiment. However, the results revealed atypical correlations between neural integration and different reading abilities in dyslexia. Specifically, while the neural integration in the left inferior frontal cortex in processing character-sound pairs correlated with silent reading comprehension in both children with and without dyslexia, it was associated with morphological awareness in controls but with rapid naming in dyslexics. This result indicates Chinese dyslexic children may not use the same grapho-semantic processing strategy as their typical peers do. As for pinyin-sound processing, while a stronger neural integration in the direction of “congruent > incongruent” in the left occipito-temporal cortex and bilateral superior temporal cortices was associated with better oral reading fluency in the control group, an opposite pattern was found in dyslexia. This finding may reflect dyslexia's dysfunctional recruitment of the regions in grapho-phonological processing, which further impedes character learning. (shrink)

Recent studies have provided evidence of associations between neurochemistry and reading (dis)ability (Pugh et al., 2014). Based on a long history of studies indicating that fluent reading entails the automatic convergence of the written and spoken forms of language and our recently proposed Neural Noise Hypothesis (Hancock et al., 2017), we hypothesized that individual differences in cross-modal integration would mediate, at least partially, the relationship between neurochemical concentrations and reading. Cross-modal integration was measured in 231 children using a two-alternative forced (...) choice cross-modal matching task with three language conditions (letters, words, and pseudowords) and two levels of difficulty within each language condition. Neurometabolite concentrations of Choline (Cho), Glutamate (Glu), gamma-Aminobutyric (GABA), and N- acetyl-aspartate (NAA) were then measured in a subset of this sample (n = 70) with Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS). A structural equation mediation model revealed that the effect of cross-modal word matching mediated the relationship between increased Glu (which has been proposed to be an index of neural noise) and poorer reading ability. In addition, the effect of cross-modal word matching fully mediated a relationship between increased Cho and poorer reading ability. Multilevel mixed effects models confirmed that lower Cho predicted faster cross-modal matching reaction time, specifically in the hard word condition. These Cho... (shrink)