Recently, agent technologies have attracted a lot of interest as an emerging programming paradigm. With such agent technologies, services are provided through collaboration among agents. At the same time, the spread of mobile technologies and communication infrastructures has made it possible to access the network anytime and from anywhere. Using agents and mobile technologies to realize ubiquitous computing systems, we propose a new framework based on KODAMA and VPC. KODAMA provides distributed management mechanisms by using the concept of community and (...) communication infrastructure to deliver messages among agents without agents being aware of the physical network. VPC provides a method of defining peer-to-peer services based on agent communication with policy packages. By merging the characteristics of both KODAMA and VPC functions, we propose a new framework for ubiquitous computing environments. It provides distributed management functions according to the concept of agent communities, agent communications which are abstracted from the physical environment, and agent collaboration with policy packages. Using our new framework, we conducted a large-scale experiment in shopping malls in Nagoya, which sent advertisement e-mails to users' cellular phones according to user location and attributes. The empirical results showed that our new framework worked effectively for sales in shopping malls. (shrink)

Throughout much of Chinese history, Mencius (372-289 BC) was considered the greatest Confucian thinker after Confucius himself. Following the enshrinement of the Mencius (an edited compilation of his thought by disciples) as one of the Four Books by Sung neo-Confucianists, he was studied by all educated Chinese. This book begins a reassessment of Mencius by studying his ethical thinking in relation to that of other early Chinese thinkers, including Confucius, Mo Tzu, the Yangists, and Hsün Tzu. The author closely examines (...) his ethical concepts and terms, showing how they were used in the Mencius and other texts. (shrink)

自己決定概念は、患者の自律やインフォームド・コンセント、プライバシー概念等の基礎にあり、生命倫理において核となる重要な概念である。しかし、その歴史的由来について、またその概念の意味するところについて、 これまで本巻のように主題的に扱われることはほとんどなかった。ここでの諸論考は、「自己決定権」や「自律」概念の理解にも大いに役立つはずである。.

The child objection is a major challenge for reductionism, which requires hearers to have positive reasons for testimonial justification. However, it has been pointed out that anti-reductionism, which requires only the absence of negative reasons, or defeaters, suffers from the same kind of problem. The child objection presupposes the empirical thesis that “children do not have the capacity to consider reasons,” but the plausibility of this assumption may be revealed by developmental psychology research on selective trust. This paper uses recent (...) epistemological studies as a guide to narrow down the types of defeaters that children are required to consider, and then clarifies what kind of reasons various experiments can be said to test the ability to consider, and in what sense children who pass the test can be said to be “considering” reasons. In doing so, we clarify the scope and limits of the implications that selective trust studies can have for reductionism and anti-reductionism. We then suggest what future psychological research is desired from an epistemological interest to go beyond the current limitations. (shrink)

Hegel, in his work _Philosophy of Right_, defines ownership through three elements: acquisition by occupation, use, and transfer. To own something involves mere acquisition and encompasses its appropriate use and potential transfer to others. Subsequently, the final aspect mentioned was the concept of infinite judgement. The acts of owning and transferring to others are diametrically opposed, and Hegel’s unique logic forcibly connects these opposing concepts. This form of infinite judgement was advocated by the young Hegel during the era of _Phenomenology (...) of Spirit_. There, he stated, “Spirit is a bone”. However, when he later wrote _Science of Logic_ or _Encyclopedia_, the formulation of infinite judgement changed to “Spirit is not something that is bone”. This shift was influenced by Kant. In _Logic_, the discourse advances into syllogism, inferential theory, leading to “Spirit is a bone for such-and-such reasons”. In essence, Hegel binarily connected spirit and bone in his youth and introduced a mediating term in this connection later in his life, establishing inferential links. However, the notion of forcibly connecting opposing concepts remains. Therefore, the statement “Ownership is transfer” represents an infinite judgement while simultaneously signifying syllogism that “I truly own this object if I can transfer it to others”. This contributes to the reasoning that “I and objects can be connected through the intermediary of others”, progressing to the inference that “I and others can be connected through objects”, thereby laying the foundation for society. (shrink)

The paper presents a perspective on our relation to our environment that is inspired by Confucian thought and that stands in contrast to certain common strands in contemporary philosophical discussions. It conceptualizes our relation to what we encounter on a day-to-day basis primarily in terms of the way we experience and respond to situations, rather than to the objects affected in the situations. From this perspective, the contemporary philosophical distinction between a first- and a third-person point of view is often (...) not suited for describing our responses to situations. Instead, our responses to situations can vary along different dimensions, including the way we direct our attention, our thoughts and sentiments, our motivations, etc., and these variations admit of degrees. Such variations depend on various factors, such as the different ways in which one relates to the object affected in a situation and the kind of person one is. and cannot be adequately described in terms of a shift from one point of view to another. The paper discusses two examples, anger and compassion, to illustrate this alternative perspective, but the discussion can be extended to other areas such as gratitude. (shrink)

With the emergence of environmental sustainability and green business management, increasing demands have been made on businesses in the areas of environmental corporate social responsibility. Furthermore, the influence of ECSR on green capital investment, environmental performance, and business competitiveness has also been the subject of attention from enterprises. However, in previous studies, the mediating role of green information technology capital in the relationship between ECSR, environmental performance, and business competitiveness, has not been investigated by researchers. In order to bridge this (...) gap in the ECSR literature, this study aims to examine the influence of ECSR on green IT capital, and the consequent effect of green IT capital on environmental performance and business competitiveness. Data were collected from 358 companies from the top 1000 manufacturers in Taiwan. The results confirmed that ECSR has significant positive effects on green IT human capital, green IT structural capital, and green IT relational capital. Green IT structural capital and green IT relational capital have positive effects on environmental performance and business competitiveness, and environmental performance has a positive effect on business competitiveness. In addition, green IT structural capital and green IT relational capital have partial mediating effects on ECSR, environmental performance, and business competitiveness. The implications and suggestions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

Nevin & Grace's primary argument against theory and research on behavioral momentum is that preference and resistance to change may not covary. The method for evaluating preference and resistance to change seems problematic. Moreover, the theory fails to account convincingly for effects of average overall time to primary reinforcement on choice and preference for unsegmented schedules.

Reprinted From Abstracts Of Theses, The University Of Chicago, Humanistic Series, V6, 1927-1928.

The Chinese ethical tradition has often been thought to oppose Western views of the self as autonomous and possessed of individual rights with views that emphasize the centrality of relationship and community to the self. The essays in this collection discuss the validity of that contrast as it concerns Confucianism, the single most influential Chinese school of thought. Alasdair MacIntyre, the single most influential philosopher to articulate the need for dialogue across traditions, contributes a concluding essay of commentary. This is (...) the only consistently philosophical collection on Asia and human rights and could be used in courses on comparative ethics, political philosophy and Asian area studies. (shrink)

Through an examination of the problematic forms of pride highlighted in early texts and the traits to which they are opposed, the paper identifies three main dimensions of humility in early Confucian thought. These include a deflated self-conception, caution and fearfulness, as well as seriousness and awe. It then shows that the term jing 敬 is closely related to all three dimensions, and hence that this is the term in early Confucian thought closest to encompassing all the different aspects of (...) humility understood in a broad sense. (shrink)

The Chinese are probably the most particular people in the world when it comes to their names. As the Chinese proverb says, “worse than being born under a bad star is to receive a bad name.” For this reason it is difficult, if not impossible, to evaluate the role of name signs in China without a certain knowledge of the Chinese tradition regarding the attribution of names. A legal Chinese name is made up of a family name, monosyllabic with some (...) exceptions, followed by a monosyllabic or disyllabic first name. Theoretically, the 50,000 characters that make up the Chinese lexicon are potential choices for the composition of a first name. Due to the great number of homophones included in the Chinese language, it is difficult to identify the graphic form of a Chinese name by its pronunciation alone. Hence the custom of specifying the characters by writing them in the air or by indicating their signification, or even by simply presenting a calling card. (shrink)

In this thesis, we study the least fixed point principle in a constructive setting. A constructive theory of functions and sets has been developed by Feferman. This theory deals both with sets and with functions over sets as independent notions. In the language of Feferman's theory, we are able to formulate the least fixed point principle for monotone inductive definitions as: every operation on classes to classes which satisfies the monotonicity condition has a least fixed point. This is called the (...) principle of monotone inductive definition. Furthermore, we may formulate this principle in a uniform way as: there is an operation which maps a monotone operation to its least fixed point. This is called the principle of uniform monotone inductive definition. Feferman raised the question of the strength of the principle of monotone inductive definition when adjoined to his theory . This question is our primary concern in this thesis. ;Our main results are the consistency of both the principle of monotone inductive definition and the principle of uniform monotone inductive definition adjoined to his theory, and the proof theoretical equivalence between the principle of monotone inductive definition with Feferman's system without the inductive generation axiom and the system of the Pi-one-one Comprehension Axiom. Determination of the proof-theoretical strength of the principle of monotone inductive definition adjoined to Feferman's theory still remains open. ;The consistency of both the principle of monotone inductive definition and the principle of uniform monotone inductive definition with Feferman's theory will be achieved by constructing their models in set theoretical sense. The proof theoretical equivalence between the principle of monotone inductive definition with Feferman's system without the inductive generation axiom and the system of the Pi-one-one Comprehension Axiom can be obtained by a careful examination of the model construction for the principle of monotone inductive definition with Feferman's system without the inductive generation axiom, which is parallel to the model construction for the principle of monotone inductive definition with his theory. (shrink)

This chapter presents two cross-linguistic studies of knowledge-how attributions that compare English and Japanese speakers. The first study investigates the felicity judgements of ordinary people about knowledge-how sentences, where we find a large difference in judgements about the sentences in which a person lacks an ability to perform a certain action but is nevertheless attributed the relevant knowledge of how to perform that action. The second study investigates the frequency of the natural occurrences of knowing-how constructions in English and Japanese (...) through Google search and corpora, where we find virtually no natural occurrence of Japanese knowing-how constructions. These results suggest that the attribution of knowledge-how in Japanese is radically different from the English counterpart in that it neither requires nor is required by the relevant physical ability. We then explore the philosophical implications of these radical differences in the use of knowing-how constructions between English and Japanese speakers for the debate between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. One such implication is that English “know how” sentences themselves may not delineate a philosophically significant category of knowledge. (shrink)

This paper analyses the concept of the Imagination of Henry Corbin (1903–1978) in relation to Daisetsu T. Suzuki (1870–1966). Besides being a renowned orientalist and scholar of Islamic thought, Corbin was a philosopher par excellence whose original thought deserves to be studied. So, I present this paper as a contribution to the evaluation of Corbin as a philosopher. In doing so, I shall shed light upon the philosophical affinity between Corbin and Suzuki, which has thus far rarely been discussed in (...) depth. Their ideas, in fact, resonate with each other—or Corbin is sympathetic to Suzuki—at a deep level, especially on the argument of Imagination, through Suwedenborgian thought, into whom both channel their interests. An exploration of this relationship of influence with Suzuki shall make a great contribution to a better understanding of Corbin’s own concept of Imagination, which could shake up our taken-for-granted idea of “imagination.”. (shrink)

The Dominican theologian Albert the Great was one of the first to investigate into the system of the world on the basis of an acquaintance with the entire Aristotelian corpus, which he read under the influence of Islamic philosophers. The present study aims to understand the core of Albert's natural philosophy. Albert's emblematic phrase, “every work of nature is the work of intelligence” , expresses the conviction that natural things are produced by the intellects that move the celestial bodies, just (...) as houses are made by architects moving their instruments. Albert tried to fathom the secret of generation of natural things with his novel notion of “formative power” , which flows from the celestial intellects into the sublunary elements. His conception of the natural world represents an alternative to the dominant medieval view on the relationship between the artificial and the natural. (shrink)

Comparative quantifiers, such as more than three books, cannot take scope over any quantifier in subject position if they occupy object position. This is clearly different from the behavior of other quantifiers (e.g., universal quantifiers). This paper argues that this scope puzzle is due to a more complex internal structure of comparative quantifiers than other quantifiers. In the decompositional approach that I pursue, comparative quantifiers are decomposed into two generalized quantifiers (i.e., in the case above, the comparative operator er than (...) three and the DP many books). In this approach, obligatory narrow scope of comparative quantifiers in object position is a consequence of the interplay of the independently motivated principles of grammar that also constrain other quantifiers. On the basis of the scope puzzle, I specifically argue for two constraints on Scope Shifting Operations (SSOs) a locality condition on SSOs and Scope Economy, proposed by Fox (2000), which prohibits SSOs that have no effect on semantic interpretation. Thus, I argue that the apparently peculiar facts of comparative quantifiers are, in fact, additional evidence for the core properties of SSOs. (shrink)

The use of the term hsing in the Meng-tzu is discussed, along with Mencius' views on jen-hsing. It is argued that while the use of hsing need not connote something unlearned and shared, Mencius did view jen-hsing in terms of certain unlearned emotional predispositions shared by all jen. He regarded jen as a species distinguished from other animals by its capability of cultural accomplishment, and felt that it is the presence of the emotional predispositions that makes this possible.

This chapter discusses the use of the term ming 命 in a number of key passages in the Mencius as well as the Analects, such as Mencius 5A8, 7A1 and 7A2. It proposes that the term is used primarily to convey a certain attitude toward occurrences which go against one’s wishes, to which one attaches significance, and which one cannot alter either literally or without conducting oneself improperly. In so responding, one is aware of the unavoidability of what has transpired (...) and is still emotionally affected by it, but one does not fixate on what has happened and is not overwhelmed by one’s emotional responses. One is not tempted to alter it by improper means, but at the same time one retains an active sense of engagement with one’s life, redirecting attention to other areas of life in which one can make worthwhile efforts. This attitude of acceptance is part of the self-cultivation process in that one should cultivate in oneself a general preparedness to so respond to such occurrences when they do arise. (shrink)

I am grateful to the commentators for their thoughtful comments. Space limitation prevents responding to many of these comments, and I will focus on some themes that clarify the nature of the proje...