Tanabe Hajime développa sa philosophie dans la perspective d’une « ontologie sociale » à travers la « logique de l’espèce » et la « logique de l’Amour ». La première, développée de 1934 à 1941, vise la rationalisation de la société japonaise en temps de guerre, la seconde le salut de la société japonaise après la Seconde Guerre mondiale dans le cadre d’une philosophie de la religion. Le but de cet article est de mettre au jour le développement de la (...) logique de l’espèce vers la logique de l’Amour et de présenter l’histoire de l’ontologie sociale tanabéenne dans le cadre de la « métanoétique ». (shrink)

Jecker and Au’s paper raises important issues concerning health equity in pandemic responses, and the importance of considering the long-term effects of pandemic strategy on population health and well-being.1 We welcome their focus on the experience of Asian countries, including Japan. However, we have some concerns with both the distinction which they draw between elimination and mitigation, and their account of the nature and origins of the Japanese response to the COVID-19 pandemic. First, we believe that the distinction between elimination (...) and mitigation is not fine grained enough to capture the various strategies which countries have taken towards the pandemic. Many of Jecker and Au’s criticisms of the elimination strategy relate to specific policies such as lockdowns, travel restrictions and restrictions on businesses, which have been employed by numerous countries irrespective of their end goal. By contrast to the simple elimination/mitigation dichotomy with which Jecker and Au work, Baker et al have identified five separate COVID-19 strategies, namely: exclusion, elimination, suppression, mitigation and no substantive strategy.2 Baker et al define an elimination strategy as ‘maximum action to exclude disease and eliminate community transmission’ with the goal of reaching ‘zero [disease] transmission in the community’. On this account, Japan’s strategy does …. (shrink)

Disaster planning challenges our morality. Everyday rules of action may need to be suspended during large-scale disasters in favour of maxims that that may make prudential or practical sense and may even be morally preferable but emotionally hard to accept, such as tsunami-tendenko. This maxim dictates that the individual not stay and help others but run and preserve his or her life instead. Tsunami-tendenko became well known after the great East Japan earthquake on 11 March 2011, when almost all the (...) elementary and junior high school students in one city survived the tsunami because they acted on this maxim that had been taught for several years. While tsunami-tendenko has been praised, two criticisms of it merit careful consideration: one, that the maxim is selfish and immoral; and two, that it goes against the natural tendency to try to save others in dire need. In this paper, I will explain the concept of tsunami-tendenko and then respond to these criticisms. Such ethical analysis is essential for dispelling confusion and doubts about evacuation policies in a disaster. (shrink)

As is well known, John Rawls opposes the idea and policy of basic income. However, this paper posits that his view of self-respect and activity could accommodate its implementation. Rawls lists the social basis of self-respect in social primary goods as the most important good, but does not assume that it is derived from wage labor alone. It appears that his theory of justice aims to criticize the work-centered (wage-labor) society and to overcome it. Besides, as Rawls desires, for our (...) work to be meaningful and our life worthwhile, we should institutionalize basic income because it can improve workers’ bargaining power and their attitude toward work, in addition to enhancing their leisure time. In this paper, by considering the normative relationship between meaningful work, worthwhile life, and self-respect from a Rawlsian perspective, I inquire into the potential of basic income in his well-ordered society. (shrink)

This article asks whether our moral duties are created by others’ non-compliance and whether we should fulfill them or not. For example, do we need to donate more of our income to eradicate world poverty because billionaires do not donate? If so, how much should we donate? In short, should we make up for others’ defaulting on their moral duties – and if so, how and to what extent? Such situations are called non-ideal circumstances in political philosophy. With the increasing (...) importance of non-ideal theories of justice and ethics, the question of how we should act in non-ideal situations has received more attention in the ethics literature in recent years. This article poses and addresses the question of whether we should take up the slack when others do not comply with their own moral duty. This article examines how consequentialism and contractualism might respond to non-ideal situations of taking up the slack and then defends a contractualist-constructivist approach to dealing with these situations. (shrink)

The present study examined the direct and indirect relationships between competitive work environments and subjective unhealthiness. It also examined the effects of adjusting for cognitive distortions in the relationship between a competitive work environment and subjective unhealthiness and between a competitive work environment and workaholism. Data were collected from 9,716 workers in various industries, occupations, and positions. The results show that competitive work environments were positively related to subjective unhealthiness, both directly and through workaholism. Furthermore, cognitive distortions moderated the positive (...) effect between a competitive work environment and workaholism, and the positive relationship was stronger when cognitive distortions were high. This study has important and practical implications for companies that are increasingly concerned about the health of their employees. (shrink)

In the Böhm theorem workshop on Crete, Zoran Petric called Statman’s “Typical Ambiguity theorem” the typed Böhm theorem. Moreover, he gave a new proof of the theorem based on set-theoretical models of the simply typed lambda calculus. In this paper, we study the linear version of the typed Böhm theorem on a fragment of Intuitionistic Linear Logic. We show that in the multiplicative fragment of intuitionistic linear logic without the multiplicative unit the weak typed Böhm theorem holds. The system IMLL (...) exactly corresponds to the linear lambda calculus with multiplicative pairing. The system IMLL also exactly corresponds to the free symmetric monoidal closed category without the unit object. As far as we know, our separation result is the first one with regard to these systems in a purely syntactical manner. (shrink)

Why is John Rawls less popular than other philosophers in Japan? In what follows, I explain how Rawls’ philosophy has been received in Japan, especially in relation to Japanese culture, politics, and economy. After giving an overview of the framework of Rawls’ philosophical view, I outline the background of the reception of Western philosophy in Japan . Then, I proceed to explain the reason why the early reception of Rawls’ work in Japan was mainly started not by ethicists and philosophers (...) but by economists and jurists . I discuss the first Japanese translation of A Theory of Justice , the publication of .. (shrink)

倫理学における『正義論』革命の全貌。「反照的均衡」という方法論を軸とした『正義論』は、規範倫理学・政治哲学の分野を活気づけた。しかしそれだけが『正義論』革命なのではない。ロールズの理論は、道徳の根本問 題を考える道徳哲学・倫理学の分野にも衝撃を与えたのである。 -/- This book explores the full story of A Theory of Justice revolution in ethics. A Justice of Theory, centered on the methodology of "reflective equilibrium," has energized the fields of normative ethics and political philosophy. However, this is not the only revolution in A Theory of Justice. Rawls's theory has also impacted the fields of moral philosophy and metaethics, which deal with fundamental questions of morality.

Sloppy identity under ellipsis is generally attributed to the pronoun in ellipsis being a bound variable. However, sloppy identity can be licensed in structural configurations in which variable binding is ordinarily blocked. This paper provides a solution for this mismatch by reanalyzing the pronouns with the unexpected sloppy readings as E-type pronouns. Under the proposed analysis, the distribution of such pronouns is correctly predicted. It will also be shown that the analysis is successfully extended to sloppy identity in association-with-focus cases.

Artificial agents, which are embedded in a virtual world, need to interpret a sequence of commands given to them adequately, considering the temporal structure for each command. In this paper, we start with the semantics of natural language and classify the temporal structures of various eventualities into such aspectual classes as action, process, and event. In order to formalize these temporal structures, we adopt Arrow Logic. This logic specifies the domain for the valuation of a sentence as an arrow. We (...) can connect, or give order to, arrows by defining inter-arrow operations, and can give different views for sentences. Thereafter we formalize the rules of aspectual shifts in situated inference, in the style of a logic programming language. Thus, we not only describe the static representation of temporal features, but also show the dynamic process to deduce how each eventuality is viewed. The rules are applied to the information flow through the sequence of commands; therefore, we consider how the temporal structure of a command affects the succeeding commands. (shrink)

The Fist-Edge-Palm task, a manual hand task, has been used to detect frontal dysfunctions in clinical situations: its performance failures are observed in various prefrontal cortex -related disorders, including schizophrenia. However, previous imaging studies reported that the performance of the FEP task activated motor-related areas, but not the PFC. Here, we aimed to investigate the relationships between the performance of the FEP task and PFC functions. Hemodynamic activity in the PFC, including the dorsolateral PFC and frontal pole, was recorded. Healthy (...) young subjects performed the FEP task as well as a palm tapping task three times. The subjects also completed a Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and Schizotypal Personality Scale questionnaire. We found that hemodynamic activity in the PFC increased in the first trial of the FEP task but decreased considerably in the second and third trials compared to the PT task. The number of performance errors in the FEP task also decreased in the second and third trials. Error reduction in the FEP task between the first and second trials was negatively correlated with schizotypal trait and the number of perseveration errors in the WCST. Furthermore, changes in the PFC hemodynamic activity between the first and second trials were positively correlated with error reduction in the FEP task between the first and second trials, and negatively correlated with the number of perseveration errors in the WCST. These results suggest that learning in the FEP task requires PFC activation, which is negatively associated with perseveration errors in the WCST. The results further suggest that the FEP task, in conjunction with near-infrared spectroscopy, may be useful as a diagnostic method for various disorders with PFC dysfunction. (shrink)

Since the beginning of Christianity, the understanding of Christ’s sonship has played an essential role in soteriology. According to the Church Fathers and to the medieval theologians, the human person can become a son of God by the grace of adoption through the sonship of Christ. However, the German Dominican, Meister Eckhart , uses the theological concept 'the Only-begotten Son', which stands for the divine sonship of Christ himself, to describe the human condition and demonstrates the equality between Christ and (...) the human person. This quite unusual understanding drew the attention of the Church authorities in his time, because it could be associated with the doctrines of heretics in the late Middle Ages who insisted on the perfect identity between Christ and the human person. In the end, Eckhart’s teaching including the understanding of the sonship was condemned by the papal bull In agro dominico together with his other teachings. The present article attempts to reconstruct this one of the most challenging teachings of Eckhart by the analysis of his text, mainly the text of his German homilies, and to examine how he understands the relationship between Christ and the human person regarding the sonship. (shrink)

A multilingual disaster information system (MLDI) has been developed to overcome the language barrier during times of natural disaster. MLDI is a web-based system that includes templates in nine languages so that translated texts can be made available immediately. Mobile phone e-mail with graphic text is a useful tool for delivering multilingual disaster information. The visibility of graphic text on mobile phones was measured and found to be equivalent to the built-in font. However, visibility deteriorates as the character size becomes (...) smaller, especially, on displays with poor resolution. This article also discusses the necessity of multilingual information and measures for a safe and barrier-free society. (shrink)

Scientific misconduct can jeopardize scientific progress and destroy the credibility and reputation of academic institutions and their faculty and students; ultimately it can compromise scientific integrity and result in a loss of confidence for the entire scientific community. Only recently in Japan has scientific misconduct become a central public topic. This increased attention to the topic, in turn, has highlighted a paucity of ethical standards within the Japanese scientific community and a lack of an apt process for conflict resolution. In (...) this brief report, we first provide an overview of several high-profile cases of scientific misconduct recently uncovered in Japan. Next we consider how a recent rise in competition within the academic and scientific communities is possibly related to a concurrent increase in reported cases of scientific misconduct. Last, after discussing what actions have already been taken, we recommend further actions needed to deal with the problem of scientific misconduct in Japan. (shrink)

Probably very few people today would believe that, prior to Japan's modernization during the Meiji period, the Japanese were not able to run. It seems commonsensical that human beings should be able to perform the same body movements such as running—since, of course, we are human beings regardless of whether we live in modern countries. However, it appears, in fact, that people in the Edo Period did not run in the sense of how we run today. There was no need, (...) for example, for farmers to run in the midst of their daily agricultural activities.In addition, it has been also pointed out that, although some premodern Japanese, such as samurai or official messengers... (shrink)

仏教における「業思想」は、倫理思想であり行為の哲学でもある。様々に変遷してきたこの思想の歴史と論理をスリリングに読み解く!

Previous studies have suggested that musical training in childhood is beneficial for sociability. However, it remains unclear how age of onset of group music lessons is associated with the late sociability of children from a long-term perspective. This study investigated associations between group music lessons conducted at a music school and children’s levels of sociability by focusing on the age of onset of the lessons. We conducted a survey of 276 children aged 4–5 years (M = 58.5 months) and 6–7 (...) years (M = 82.7 months) who commenced music lessons at ages 1, 2, 4, and 6 years. We found that (1) the empathy scores of children aged 6–7 years who began lessons when 1-year-old were greater than those who began lessons when 4-years-old, (2) the communication scores of children aged 4–5 years who began lessons when 1-year-old were greater than those who began lessons when older than 1 year, and (3) the empathy and extraversion scores were high in those aged 6–7 years who began lessons in that age range. The results suggest that early onset of music lessons could positively influence children’s sociability; in contrast, after about age 7 years, children who already had high sociability may be more inclined to select group music lessons. By focusing on the impact of regular group music lessons from a very young age on later levels of sociability, these results further elucidate the effects of musical lessons. In sum, participation in group music lessons 2–4 times per month can be effective social training for very young children and foster their later sociability. (shrink)