In the field of philosophy, the common view of philosophy as an essentially Western discipline persists even today, while non-Western philosophy tends to be undervalued and not investigated seriously. In the field of Japanese studies, in turn, research on Japanese philosophy tends to be reduced to a matter of projecting existing stereotypes of alleged Japanese cultural uniqueness through the reading of texts. In Nothingness in the Heart of Empire: The Moral and Political Philosophy of the Kyoto School in Imperial Japan, (...) Harumi Osaki resists both these tendencies. She closely interprets the wartime discourses of the Kyoto School, a group of modern Japanese philosophers who drew upon East Asian traditions as well as Western philosophy. Her book lucidly delves into the non-Western forms of rationality articulated in such discourses, and reveals the problems inherent in them as the result of these philosophers' engagements in Japan's wartime situation, without cloaking these problems under the pretense of "Japanese cultural uniqueness." In addition, in a manner reminiscent of the controversy surrounding Martin Heidegger's involvement with Nazi Germany, the book elucidates the political implications of the morality upheld by the Kyoto School and its underlying metaphysics. As such, this book urges dialogue beyond the divide between Western and non-Western philosophies, and beyond the separation between "lofty" philosophy and "common" politics. (shrink)

Comparisons of non-Western and Western philosophers often adopt a nation-based framework that has tended to posit difference entirely between national cultures while presuming unity and homogeneity within them. There are a number of problems with such a framework. First, the assumption that national cultures are unitary and homogeneous is demonstrably false. Second, the framework of comparison frequently shifts to Western philosophy versus non-Western philosophy, sometimes articulated at the level of nations, and sometimes civilizations. As Naoki Sakai has shown, insofar as (...) such a framework presupposes the unity, homogeneity, and.. (shrink)

世界が大きな時代の変動期を迎えている現在、科学技術は何をよりどころとし、どこへ向かうべきなのか。洋を越えて多様な文化の源流から探る、科学の未来。.

3部11章にわたって日英語における話し手の捉え方・心的態度とモダリティ・言語行為の観点から意味解釈を考察したものである。.

Product recommendation system is realized by applying business rules acquired by data maining techniques. Business rules such as demographical patterns of purchase, are able to cover the groups of users that have a tendency to purchase products, but it is difficult to recommend products adaptive to various personal preferences only by utilizing them. In addition to that, it is very costly to gather the large volume of high quality survey data, which is necessary for good recommendation based on personal preference (...) model. A method collecting kansei information automatically without questionnaire survey is required. The constructing personal preference model from less favor data is also necessary, since it is costly for the user to input favor data. In this paper, we propose product recommendation system based on kansei information extracted by text mining and user's preference model constructed by Category-guided Adaptive Modeling, CAM for short. CAM is a feature construction method that can generate new features constructing the space where same labeled examples are close and different labeled examples are far away from some labeled examples. It is possible to construct personal preference model by CAM despite less information of likes and dislikes categories. In the system, retrieval agent gathers the products' specification and user agent manages preference model, user's likes and dislikes. Kansei information of the products is gained by applying text mining technique to the reputation documents about the products on the web site. We carry out some experimental studies to make sure that prefrence model obtained by our method performs effectively. (shrink)

Futabatei Shimei (1864-1909) was an early modern Japanese novelist, translator, and critic. He wrote what is now generally conceived of as the first Japanese ‘modern’ novel, Drifting Clouds (1887-89). He translated works by Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Garshin, Gorky, and others. He also published a number of critical essays, treatises on literary theory, political papers, and so forth. His early translation of Turgenev’s short stories: Aibiki (Rendevous, 1888) and Meguriai (Three Trysts, 1889) were extremely influential on the contemporary literati, who were (...) amazed at the fresh, poetic prose used in stark contrast to the traditional Japanese fiction in the pre-Reformation period. These translations, seen in the light of the present-day readers, were unique in what we might term today ‘foreignizing translation’. Lawrence Venuti in Invisibility of the Translator argues that the ideal of (English) translation has been to conceal itself as a translation, i.e. to present itself as an original text (chap I and passim). In that sense, Futabatei’s translations, scandalously presenting itself as a translation, that is to say, as an alien text, is extremely ‘foreignizing’. (shrink)

Spontaneous actions are preceded by brain signals that may sometimes be detected hundreds of milliseconds in advance of a subject's conscious intention to act. These signals have been claimed to reflect prior unconscious decisions, raising doubts about the causal role of conscious will. Murakami et al. (2014. Nat Neurosci 17: 1574–1582) have recently argued for a different interpretation. During a task in which rats spontaneously decided when to abort waiting, the authors recorded neurons in the secondary motor cortex. The (...) neural activity and relationship to action timing was parsimoniously explained using an integration-to-bound model, similar to those widely used to account for evidence-based decisions. In this model, the brain accumulates spontaneously occurring inputs voting for or against an action, but only commits to act once a certain threshold is crossed. The model explains how spontaneous decisions can be forecast (partially predicted) by neurons that reflect either the input or output of the integrator. It therefore presents an explicit hypothesis capable of rejecting the claim that such predictive signals imply unconscious decisions. We suggest that these results can inform the current debate on free will but must be considered with caution. (shrink)

Parties are back, and many are cheering. Party polarization has voters seeing stark differences between Democrats and Republicans and demonstrating more ideological constraint than previous generations. But these signs of a more “responsible” electorate are an illusion, because the public is no more knowledgeable than ever about the type of “information” it needs if it is to exercise effective control over the public‐policy outcomes it cares the most about. Indeed, polarization has produced a political environment where both voters and policy (...) makers may be less likely to learn about the potential consequences of their governing choices. The result is that holding elected politicians to account for policies treated as divisive ends in themselves has become easier—but that holding them accountable for policies intended as means to the achievement of consensual ends has become harder. (shrink)

頽廃に至っても、いまだ発現する偶然への希望はある。しかし、頽廃、すなわち消尽に至るならば、無と慨嘆の現実しかありえない。希望の存立自体、五分の可能性に生きる偶然なのである。.

This paper generalizes the simple regret model by Bell in Operations Research 30(5), 961-981 and Loomes and Sugden in The Economic Journal 92(368), 805-824 to cope with the situation in which decision outcomes are multi-attributed. We propose a model that combines the simple regret model for ex ante preferences and the additive difference representation for ex post preferences. We first present a necessary and sufficient axiomatization of our model in Savage’s framework. The proposed model is composed of three types of (...) functions. One is a value function for each attribute. The others are attribute-dependent and holistic regret-rejoicing functions that capture trade-offs among value-differences of chosen and forgone outcomes for each attribute and among all attributes, respectively. We then provide constructive procedures for those functions and methods for consistency checks of the procedures. We, finally, conduct an experiment to estimate those functions in the two attributes case by means of the constructive procedure and give an application of the model and our findings. (shrink)

The chromosomes of eukaryotic cells possess many potential DNA replication origins, of which a subset is selected in response to the cellular environment, such as the developmental stage, to act as active replication start sites. The mechanism of origin selection is not yet fully understood. In this review, we summarize recent observations regarding replication origins and initiator proteins in various organisms. These studies suggest that the DNA‐binding specificities of the initiator proteins that bind to the replication origins and promote DNA (...) replication are primarily responsible for origin selection. We particularly focus on the importance of transcription factors in the origin selection process. We propose that transcription factors are general regulators of the formation of functional complexes on the chromosome, including the replication initiation complex. We discuss the possible mechanisms by which transcription factors influence the selection of particular origins. BioEssays 27:1107–1106, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

A real but typical case of identity fraud is used to open up the complex web of identification systems in Brazil. It is argued that identification has two poles related to the nature of citizenship—repression and inclusion—and that reactions from citizens to new identification schemes can be attributed to how they view the purpose of the cards in these terms. In Brazil, a sense of inclusion and citizenship based on a fear of anonymity and exclusion predominates leading to widespread support (...) amongst even critics of state activities. However, this may be undermined by the lack of state preparation for an information society, particularly the absence of meaningful data protection laws. (shrink)

Do people tend to disagree over political issues because of conflicting values? Or do they disagree about which policies will most effectively promote shared values? In a previous article, I argued that the issues most people think are most important tend to fall into the latter category. On the issues of greatest importance to the mass public, most citizens agree about the ends that are desirable, but disagree about which policy means would best effectuate those ends. Consequently, disputes about facts—disputes (...) about the actual effects of proposed public policies—lie at the heart of the most important divisions in contemporary American public opinion. However, people do not necessarily interpret their political disagreements this way. If they fail to recognize that facts that they see as self-evident are disputed by their opponents, they may see their opponents as having different values, since there could be few other explanations for their opponents' disagreement with them. However, evidence that disagreements about facts are really driving public opinion can be found by using conditional surveys, which ask respondents if they would support a given policy if they believed that it would cause specific negative consequences. (shrink)