To investigate how bereaved families felt about the explanation received before and after forensic autopsies, the authors conducted a cross-sectional survey of the bereaved families whose next of kin underwent a forensic autopsy at the two Departments of Forensic Medicine and a few bereaved families of crime victims. Of 403 questionnaires sent, 126 families responded. Among 81.5% of the respondents who received an explanation from policemen before the autopsy, 78.8% felt that the quality of the explanation was poor or improper. (...) In Japan, the law has restricted disclosure of information from a forensic autopsy. Despite legal restrictions, 82% wanted to hear from the person who conducted the autopsy. However, police explained the results of autopsy to 65.2% of respondents. Among the families whose frustration and anger increased after autopsy, 86.4% had not been satisfied with the explanation before the autopsy. Additionally, 57.7% had not been informed on the autopsy findings at the time of the questionnaire when more than 2 years had passed after the autopsy. These results reminded us of the importance of an explanation before and shortly after a forensic autopsy for a better understanding and acceptance by bereaved families. (shrink)

In the by now well known talks he gave at Princeton, Saul Kripke claimed that “[t]heoretical identities … are generally identities involving two rigid designators and therefore are examples of the necessary a posteriori.” 253-355; A rigid designator is an expression that designates the same object in all possible worlds when it is used. So Kripke is claiming that ‘Water is H20’ and ‘Heat is the motion of molecules’ are generally identities involving expressions like ‘water’ and ‘the motion of molecules’ (...) which designate the same objects in all possible worlds. If the identity statement is true, both sides designate the same object rigidly, i.e., in all possible worlds, and therefore the statement is necessarily true. On the other hand, whether it is true is determined ultimately by appeal to experience. It follows that if true, the identity is necessary a posteriori. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected the exhibition of artworks in museums and galleries. Many have displayed their collection online. In this context, experiencing an online exhibition is essential for visitors to appreciate and understand the artwork. Compared with offline exhibitions, visitors to online exhibitions are often unable to communicate their experiences with other visitors. Therefore, in this study, by facilitating communication via Zoom call, we established a system that allows two people to visit the museum together through the Google (...) Arts and Culture website. To reduce the psychological distance between online visitors and help increase user engagement, we designed and developed a media device based on moiré pattern visualization of electroencephalography signals. The participants were divided into two groups to visit the online museum, communicating remotely through Zoom. The objective of this study was to test whether a real-time EEG signal visualization device could help close the psychological distance between participants and whether it could increase user engagement with the online exhibition. Participants were randomly assigned to either the normal online exhibition experience group or EEG signal visualization device group. Participants in the NOEE group experienced four online exhibitions together. The conditions for participants in the ESVD group remained the same, apart from adding a media device to enable them to visualize EEG signals. A total of 40 university students participated in this study. Independent samples t-tests revealed that participants in the ESVD group perceived a significantly closer psychological distance between themselves and the participants on the opposite side than those in the NOEE group. A one-way ANOVA revealed that participants experienced Task3 with significantly closer psychological distance assessments than Task1, Task2, and Task4. Repeated ANOVAs revealed that participants in the ESVD group had higher overall user engagement than those in the NOEE group, with marginal significance. Thus, this study shows that EEG visualization media devices can reduce the psychological distance between two participants when experiencing an online exhibition. Moreover, it can increase user engagement to some extent. (shrink)

篤胤において死の問題は、死後の存在としての霊魂の問題となり、さらには霊魂の行き場所の問題となる。もし人が死後に霊魂となることが確実であり、霊魂の行き着く場所が特定されるのであれば、先に現在の私たちに即 して述べたような死の問題は、「解決」されるに違いない。篤胤はまさにそのことを『霊の真柱』において試み、「幽冥界」という観念を提示することになる。.

新資料から、現代にも通ずる日本独自の豊かな死生観を探求した、江戸後期を代表する思想家としての新たな篤胤像を描き出す意欲作。.

儒教・仏教という知的伝統と、西洋哲学という新たな知が出会った明治。近代化と伝統の間で花開く新たな知の深層を明らかにする!

「近代の超克」から「近代の止揚」への“燎爛たる分裂”。西田幾多郎、三木清、戸坂潤の哲学を「個人‐市民‐大衆」形成論として捉える。.

As I have pointed out in a series of papers, which appeared about fifteen years ago in the Revue de l'histoire des religions, there are numerous resemblances between the ancient myths of the Indo-Europeans, on the one hand, and those of Japan, on the other. These resemblances, relating both to the fundamental structures of the two mythological systems and to a number of curious details, constitute an assemblage which seems too conspicuous to be regarded as either accidental or the result (...) of a similitude of human mentalities, manifesting itself, so it seems, through the creation of a great many similar myths and legends throughout the length and breadth of the surface of our planet. (shrink)

The literature on human and animal learning suggests that individuals attend to and act on cues differently based on the order in which they were learned. Recent studies have proposed that one specific type of learning outcome, the highlighting effect, can serve as a framework for understanding a number of early cognitive milestones. However, little is known how this learning effect itself emerges among children, whose memory and attention are much more limited compared to adults. Two experiments were conducted using (...) different versions of the general highlighting paradigm: Experiment 1 tested 3 to 6 year olds with a newly developed image-based version of the paradigm, which was designed specifically to test young children. Experiment 2 tested the validity of an image-based implementation of the highlighting paradigm with adult participants. The results from Experiment 1 provide evidence for the highlighting effect among children 3–6 years old, and they suggest age-related differences in dividing attention among multiple cues during learning. Experiment 2 replicated results from previous studies by showing robust biases for both image-based and text-based versions of the highlighting task. This study suggests that sensitivity to learning order emerges early through the process of cued attention, and the role of the highlighting effect in early language learning is discussed. (shrink)