This paper introduces Simone Weil’s notion of reading and some of its implications to education. Weil’s philosophy, in particular her notion of attention has caught interest of some education scholars; however, the existing studies are still underdeveloped. Introducing Weil’s notion of reading, which has not been studied almost at all by educationists but its significance is well-recognized by Weil scholars, I intend to set forth a more nuanced understanding of Weil’s attention that is necessary to further discuss Weil’s potential contribution (...) to education research. Attention to other people, hence love of others, is reframed as “reading better.” We read better not simply by purifying our reading through detachment and self-negation, which is how the notion of attention is often understood and thus found problematic, but by incorporating multiple perspectives and finding balance among them. Learning to read better, then, is not merely inward effort of detachment done through introspection, but it also necessarily involves outward effort of working with other people and the world. It is through interacting with others, we may learn our own readings, recognize others’ readings, and seeking for just balance among them. This latter element which has been greatly dismissed is indispensable for any serious discussions of Weil’s philosophy in education. (shrink)

Motor skills of professional musicians can be regarded as a model to investigate human skill acquisition after prolonged practice. Although rhythmic tapping skills of musicians such as drummers and pianists were investigated previously, the tapping performance of hand percussionists is still largely unknown. In this study, we investigated the tapping performance of professional and amateur darbuka players. Three tapping tasks were performed: single-, double-, and triple-finger tapping tasks. The participants were asked to tap as fast as possible for 12 s (...) in the single-finger tapping task while they tapped as fast and alternate/even as possible in the double- and triple-finger tapping tasks. The tapping speed and variability of inter-tap interval and tapping amplitude were assessed for each task. In the single-finger and triple-finger tapping tasks, there was no significant difference in the tapping speed between the professional and amateur darbuka players. In the double-finger tapping task, the tapping speed was significantly faster in the professional players than the amateur players. Interestingly, the professional players showed faster tapping speed in both familiar and unfamiliar patterns of finger coordination. The tapping speed of the double-finger tapping task was significantly correlated with the duration and the age of commencement of darbuka training. The professional players also showed less variability of ITI and tapping amplitude compared to the amateur players. These results suggest that prolonged practice of the hand percussion increases the performance stability and coordination speed of both familiar and unfamiliar patterns. (shrink)

This book, Emerson, the Philosophy of Obedience, attempts to trace Emerson who sought to integrate Western and Eastern thoughts to found a new philosophy in the new world. An ardent admirer of Plato, he is at the same time an enthusiast of Eastern philosophy. "Memory," for example, is one of his last lecture series, "Natural Method of Mental Philosophy," in which men are all taken as the halves, because men have aftersight, but not aforesight. Memory is, to Emerson, not only (...) to call forth the past knowledge to the present, but also there is something related to the future, because some past things memorized in the mind are changed into "a possession of its law." This is called "a mutation in quality," by which past things in the mind come into "a possession of its law," obeying the law, just as, in Phaedo, "all the apparent equals strive to attain absolute equality." The Platonic method of Analogy works doubtlessly in Emerson. Men obey this law, because "Nature and [Man] are from one source, and that he, when humble and obedient, is nearer to the source." The mind is such a movement, as he finds that "The mind yields sympathetically to the tendencies or laws which stream through things." The idea of "humble and obedient," or humility and obedience, comes originally from the Chaldæan Oracles and the Heetopades, which have a decisive influence on Emerson, through "the light-armed arrive at the summit," and "the flower of the mind." Because of this profound Eastern thought and ideas, he is called "this student of Eastern philosophy.". (shrink)

Kripke bundle and C-set semantics are known as semantics which generalize standard Kripke semantics. In [4] and in [1, 2] it is shown that Kripke bundle and C-set semantics are stronger than standard Kripke semantics. Also it is true that C-set semantics for superintuitionistic logics is stronger than Kripke bundle semantics . Modal predicate logic Q-S4.1 is not Kripke bundle complete of the present paper). This is shown by using difference of Kripke bundle semantics and C-set semantics. In this paper, (...) by using the same idea we show that incompleteness results in Kripke bundle semantics which are extended versions of [2]. (shrink)

The problem of artificial intelligence and human being has always raised questions about possible interactions among them and possible effects yielded by the introduction of such un-human subject. Dreyfus deeply connects intelligence and body based on a phenomenological viewpoint. Thanks to his reading of Merleau-Ponty, he clearly stated that an intelligence must be embodied into a body to function. According to his suggestion, any AI designed to be human-like is doom to failure if there is no tight bound with a (...) human-like body. Today, we are facing the pervasive introduction of robots into our everyday life, and the problem of this co-existence raises again with new vigor since they are not mere speculations, but there are already products sold to the public. We will highlight how vulnerability has to be taken into consideration in the design of robots to create entities which are able to relate to human beings taking into consideration mainly the positions of Sartre, Habermas, Levinas, and Marleau-Ponty. A first part will focus on the vulnerability of the robots. Robots are going to be among us, but a real interaction is possible only the moment they have a “same” body of ours. Therefore, only through the realization of a “fragile” body we can achieve a cohabitation between equals. Thanks to Merleau-Ponty we will show how the vulnerability of a body is one of the most important element to found any social interaction. The second part will focus on how the robots will affect the vulnerability of the human subjects. To produce vulnerable robots is not a mere neutral introduction, but it shapes how the subjects are constituted. Thanks to Levinas, we will study how the vulnerable robots will shape the subjects. Thanks to Sartre, we will show how the creation of a different gaze in the robot changes the vulnerabilities of the human subjects. Introducing vulnerable robots is a way to shape ourselves. (shrink)

This work focuses on augmented reality glasses and its aim is to analyse the knock-on effects on our everyday world and ourselves yielded by this kind of technology. Augmented reality is going to be the most diffused technology in our everyday life in the near future, especially augmented reality mounted on glasses. This near future is not only possible, but it seems inevitable following the vertiginous development of AR. There are numerous kinds of different prototypes that are going to come (...) out next year. Therefore, a study on how these modifications yield knock-on effects on the constitution of the object and subject is mandatory. This work tackles the topic starting from a phenomenological and post-phenomenological point of view and it analyses the modification yielded by such technology from a perceptual point of view using the analysis of the horizons of the object made by Husserl. We need this analysis because it is not only the hypothetical future that may never come, but it is the likely future very close to us that is putting pressure on us. (shrink)

Phenomenology of the body and the third generation of cognitive science, both of which attribute a central role in human cognition to the body rather than to the Cartesian notion of representation, face the criticism that higher-level cognition cannot be fully grasped by those studies. The problem here is how explicit representations, consciousness, and thoughts issue from perception and the body, and how they cooperate in human cognition. In order to address this problem, we propose a research program, a cognitive (...) phenomenology of the body, which is basically motivated by the perspective of Merleau-Ponty. We find a substantial clue in developmental psychological studies on the body and language. (shrink)

This multidisciplinary subject in clinical anthropology was started in April 1996 among 206 students distributed over all Colleges and Schools in the University of Tsukuba with the exception of School of Medical Sciences. After every class students write down their comments on a compulsory attendance slip, and these comments were examined. Female students agreed with the surrogate mothers and homosexuality more than male students. Male students denied childcare by homosexual parents more than female students. Sex selection insemination with the exception (...) for disease prevention was denied by female students significantly more than male students. (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)

The aim of the present paper is to suggest an alternative view to the conventional distinction between ontology and epistemology, thereby reconstituting the relationship between the cognitive self and the real world. More specifically, we will criticize the distinction by shedding light on a peculiar character of the body, which can provide a critical perspective against Cartesian dualism. Furthermore, we will give a sketchy description of the philosophy of touch, and propose the notion of skin-self, or self-manifesting self, as a (...) radical alternative to the modern conception of self. (shrink)

Opera is a performing art in which music plays the leading role, and the acting of singers has a synergistic effect with the music. The mirror neuron system represents the neurophysiological mechanism underlying the coupling of perception and action. Mirror neuron activity is modulated by the appropriateness of actions and clarity of intentions, as well as emotional expression and aesthetic values. Therefore, it would be reasonable to assume that an opera performance induces mirror neuron activity in the audience so that (...) the performer effectively shares an embodied performance with the audience. However, it is uncertain which aspect of opera performance induces mirror neuron activity. It is hypothesized that although auditory stimuli could induce mirror neuron activity, audiovisual perception of stage performance is the primary inducer of mirror neuron activity. To test this hypothesis, this study sought to correlate opera performance with brain activity as measured by electroencephalography in singers while watching an opera performance with sounds or while listening to an aria without visual stimulus. We detected mirror neuron activity by observing that the EEG power in the alpha frequency band was selectively decreased in the frontal-central-parietal area when watching an opera performance. In the auditory condition, however, the alpha-band power did not change relative to the resting condition. This study illustrates that the audiovisual perception of an opera performance engages the mirror neuron system in its audience. (shrink)

Young children often treat robots as social agents after they have witnessed interactions that can be interpreted as social. We studied in three experiments whether four-year-olds from three cultures and adults from two cultures will attribute ownership of objects to a robot that engages in social gaze with a human. Participants watched videos of robot-human interactions, in which objects were possessed or new objects were created. Children and adults applied the same ownership rules to humans and robots – irrespective of (...) whether the robot engaged in social gaze or not. However, there was cultural variation in the types of ownership rules used. In Experiment 3, we removed further social cues, finding that just showing a pair of self-propelled robot-arms elicited ownership attributions. The role of social gaze in social attributions to robots and cross-cultural differences in ownership understanding are discussed. (shrink)