Painless civilization is a term I coined in my Japanese book of the same title, which was published in 2003. Contemporary civilization aims to provide pleasure and comfort and eliminate pain and suffering as much as possible. This is especially evident in advanced countries. Contemporary civilization is moving toward a painless civilization. However, in a painless civilization, we are deprived of the joy of life, which is considered a fundamental source of meaning in life, and we are led toward the (...) situation of drowning in a sea of pleasure. This is a kind of dystopia, and we cannot find an easy way to escape from it. It is important to pay special attention to this aspect of contemporary civilization when we think about the future of our planet. (shrink)

In this paper, the concept of birth affirmation is clarified in both the psychological dimension and the philosophical dimension. In the psychological dimension, we propose two interpretations: 1) Possible world interpretation: Even if I could imagine a possible world in which my ideal was realized or my grave sufferings were resolved, I would never think, at the bottom of my heart, that it would have been better to have been born to that possible world. 2) Anti-antinatalistic interpretation: I would never (...) think, at the bottom of my heart, that it would have been better not to have been born. In the philosophical dimension, we propose the following interpretation: The comparison of betterness or worseness between the actual world and a possible world and between my having been born and my not having been born should be impossible. In the final part of this paper, the differences from other related concepts and frequently asked questions are discussed. (shrink)

One prominent feature of belief is that a belief cannot be formed at will. This paper argues that the best explanation of this fact is that belief formation is a process that takes aim at the truth. Taking aim at the truth is to be understood as causal responsiveness of the processes constituting belief formation to what facilitates achieving true beliefs. The requirement for this responsiveness precludes the possibility of belief formation responding to intentions in a way that would count (...) as forming a belief at will. (shrink)

In this paper, I make two arguments: 1) There is a solipsistic layer in meaning in life, which I call the “heart of meaning in life” (HML). The bearer of the heart of meaning in life is the solipsistic being. The heart of meaning in life cannot be compared with anything else whatsoever. 2) The heart of meaning in life can be dynamically incorporated into the affirmation of having been born into this world, which I call “birth affirmation.” There can (...) be two interpretations of birth affirmation, the anti-anti-natalistic interpretation and the possible world interpretation. Birth affirmation can be an alternative to anti-natalism, which is destined to be frustrated in this universe. (shrink)

Abstract -/- In 1998, the Council for Science and Technology established the Bioethics Committee and asked its members to examine the ethical and legal aspects of human cloning. The Committee concluded in 1999 that human cloning should be prohibited, and, based on the report, the government presented a bill for the regulation of human cloning in 2000. After a debate in the Diet, the original bill was slightly modified and issued on December 6, 2000. In this paper, I take a (...) closer look at this process and discuss some of the ethical problems that were debated. Also, I make a brief analysis of the concept “the sprout of human life.” Not only people who object to human cloning, but also many of those who seek to promote research on human cloning admit that a human embryo is the sprout of human life and, hence, it should be highly respected. I also discuss the function of the language of utilitarianism, the language of skepticism, and religious language appeared in the discussion of human cloning in Japan. (shrink)

Determining the relationship between the entire brain structure and individual differences is important in extending healthy life expectancy, which can be affected by brain atrophy. The entire brain structure has been gradually known to be correlated not only with age but also with individual differences, such as quality of life, general intelligence, and lifestyle. However, little attention has been paid to the relationship between the entire brain structure and personal traits. We herein focused on one personal trait, namely spiritual growth, (...) and examined its relationship with the entire brain structure using two neuroimaging-derived measures, namely the gray matter Brain Healthcare Quotient, a measure of GM volume, and the fractional anisotropy Brain Healthcare Quotient, a measure of white matter integrity, in 229 healthy participants. The results indicated no significant relationship between the GM-BHQ and spiritual growth, but there was a significant positive correlation between the FA-BHQ and spiritual growth after controlling for age, sex, and body mass index with partial correlation analysis. Furthermore, multiple regression analysis revealed a significant positive correlation between the FA-BHQ and spiritual growth after controlling for physical characteristics, such as age, sex, and BMI, as well as other variables related to lifestyle that were collected using the Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile. These results support the idea that there is a relationship between the entire WM brain structure and spiritual growth. Further studies are required to clarify the causal relationship between the entire WM brain structure and spiritual growth with some interventions to improve spiritual growth. Such studies will help extend healthy life expectancy from a new perspective of personal trait. (shrink)

Self-discipline, ethics, character, and philosophy in Hindu poetry; criticism to Bhagavad Gita, Nītīśāstra, Sāra-samuccaya, etc.

We introduce the Easton collapse and show that the two-stage iteration of Easton collapses gives a model in which the successor of a regular cardinal carries a strongly saturated filter. This allows one to get a model in which many successor cardinals carry saturated filters just by iterating Easton collapses.

Mind attribution may be divided into the subcategories of attribution of agency, associated with moral agency, and attribution of experience and emotion, associated with moral concern and moral patiency (Gray et al. Science 315(5812):619, 2007; Gray et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108(2):477–479, 2011b; Robbins and Jack Philosophical Studies 127(1):59–85, 2006). In this paper I attend to social context and the different psychological needs influencing the different types of mind attribution. A (...) need for social connection drives the attribution of experiences and emotions. The individual’s capacity to regulate emotional reactions is crucial for empathic concern. I further relate differences of mind attribution, attention, and emotional processing, to two different modes of functioning: In an interactive state of mind (comparable to the “second-person perspective” described by Schilbach et al. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, in press), social and emotional cues are attended to; In a detached task-oriented state of mind it may be beneficial to predict the behaviors of others but emotional information may not be attended to. The complexity and plasticity of mind attribution, including the possibility to train attentional mechanisms and regulation of emotions, is promising for the field of moral enhancement. (shrink)

Many cultures have had knowledge imposed from outside, whether by force or for reasons of power, to the detriment of their own endogenous knowledge and the wisdom developed throughout their history. Would Japan’s acquisition of Western knowledge have led but to the development of a lesser know-how, devoid of meaning or sense, or even of knowledge which it might be better to ignore? Far from benefiting from an endogenous development or a modernization respectful of beings and of their environment, the (...) developing countries that superficially adopt this unilateral knowledge undergo a type of ‘self-colonization’. Although concurring with biologist Keiko Nakamura’s theory that scientific attitudes must be studied from within, Masahiro Hamashita considers that knowledge from outside allows for more solid internal reflection. He thus advocates the development of an integrated, hybrid knowledge, where external knowledge is mixed with internal knowledge in a spontaneous, harmonious way, as was the case with the traditional knowledge that Japan acquired from China. (shrink)

Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962), one of the most representative of Japanese folklorists, sees the different aspects of forests as a composite whole comprising customs, legends and way of life of the inhabitants. Yanagita looks at this in detail, wishing to understand how the forest is related to the life and customs of the people living there, an attitude that could be called an understanding from within. Given the complexity of the issue of the earth’s ecology, Yanagita suggests adopting the same attitude.

A change of gaze behavior at a small mistake moment is a natural response that reveals our own mistakes and suggests an apology to others with whom we are working or interacting. In this paper we investigate how robot gaze behaviors at small mistake moments change the impressions of others. To prepare gaze behaviors for a robot, first, we identified by questionnaires how human gaze behaviors change in such situations and extracted three kinds: looking at the other, looking down, and (...) looking away. We prepared each gaze behavior, added a no-gaze behavior, and investigated how a robot’s gaze behavior at a small mistake moment changes the impressions of the interacting people in a simple cooperative task. Experiment results show that the ‘looking at the other’ gaze behavior outperforms the other gaze behaviors and indicates the degrees of perceived apologeticness and friendliness. Keywords: Communication robots; gaze; mistake; mitigation. (shrink)

We show that every MALL proof-structure [9] satisfies the property of softness, originally a categorical notion introduced by Joyal. Furthermore, we show that the notion of hereditary softness precisely captures Girard’s algebraic restriction of the technical condition on proof-structures. Relying on this characterization, we prove a MALL+Mix sequentialization theorem by a proof-theoretical method, using Girard’s notion of jump. Our MALL+Mix correctness criterion subsumes the Danos/Fleury-Retoré criterion [6] for MLL+Mix.