This article aims to introduce the recent movements regarding philosophical practice in Japan. In order to understand them in a better way, the historical development and background of philosophical practice shall be shown briefly in the first part. In the second part, three cases of relatively popular philosophical practices in Japan, that is, philosophy cafe, philosophy for/with children and philosophical consulting in the business settings are described as successful practices.

The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count Dictionary 2015 is a standard text analysis dictionary that quantifies the linguistic and psychometric properties of English words. A Japanese version of the LIWC2015 dictionary has been expected in the fields of natural language processing and cross-cultural research. This study aims to create the J-LIWC2015 through systematic investigations of the original dictionary and Japanese corpora. The entire LIWC2015 dictionary was initially subjected to human and machine translation into Japanese. After verifying the frequency of use (...) of the words in large corpora, frequent words and phrases that are unique to Japanese were added to the dictionary, followed by recategorization by psychologists. The updated dictionary indicated good internal consistency, semantic equivalence with the original LIWC2015 dictionary, and good construct validity in each category. The evidence suggests that the J-LIWC2015 dictionary is a powerful research tool in computational social science to scrutinize the psychological processes behind Japanese texts and promote standardized cross-cultural investigations in combination with LIWC dictionaries in different languages. (shrink)

In this study, we propose the Ankle-Worn Sensor Sleeve to help people maintain their health. Furthermore, our approach uses this sensor sleeve to improve walking motivation by making the walking motion more sensible. In this research, we pursue the design of a wearable device that users can wear as a “shoe accessory,” with the aim of promoting people’s walking motivation. This device is ankle-worn and generates electricity using the physical flexion and extension of the ankle, detects and acquires the amount (...) of electricity generated, and uses the resulting power to produce sound and light feedback while walking. The Sleeve is designed to support health problems, such as locomotive syndrome and dementia, which are caused by physical inactivity. This article presents the results of a questionnaire survey conducted on 172 people who experienced or observed the device during exhibitions. The results reveal that this device increased people’s interest and motivation to walk, including those who did not like to walk. (shrink)

Neukantianismus, Phanomenologie und Kulturphilosophie: Die Forschungsinteressen Christian Mockels sind vielfaltig. Seine Arbeiten zu Max Adler, Edmund Husserl und Ernst Cassirer sowie seine editorische Tatigkeit als Herausgeber des Cassirer-Nachlasses haben dazu beigetragen, eine Vielfalt von Themenbereichen und philosophischen Kreisen miteinander zu verknupfen. Eine Philosophie der Kultur und der Gesellschaft als systematische Einheit auszufuhren und sie in der pragmatischen Richtung einer politischen Philosophie auszubauen: darin sieht Christian Mockel die Relevanz einer Philosophie, die sich zwar als Wissenschaft versteht, doch uber die theoretische Dimension (...) hinaus das Projekt der Aufklarung als Selbstverstandnis des freien Menschen zu verwirklichen anstrebt. In seiner jahrzehntelangen Tatigkeit als Hochschullehrer an der Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin hat Christian Mockel viele Wissenschaftler*innen aus allen Kontinenten beraten und bei ihren Recherchen unterstutzt. Diese Festschrift greift die Themen seiner Forschung auf und zeigt zugleich die Diversitat der Interessen seiner Schuler*innen und Kolleg*innen, die ihm mit diesem Band Dank aussprechen und seine Arbeit wurdigen mochten. (shrink)

Temporal expectation is the ability to focus attention at a particular moment in time to optimize performance, which has been shown to be driven by regular rhythms. However, whether the rhythm-based temporal expectations rely upon automatic processing or require the involvement of controlled processing has not been clearly established. Furthermore, whether the mechanism is affected by tempo remains unknown. To investigate this research question, the present study used a dual-task procedure. In a single task, the participants were instructed to respond (...) to a visual target preceded by a regular or an irregular visual rhythm under a fast or slow tempo. The dual-task simultaneously combined a working memory task. The results showed temporal expectation effects in which the participants responded faster to the regular than to the irregular conditions in a single task. Moreover, this effect persisted under dual-task interference in the fast tempo condition but was impaired in the slow tempo condition. These results revealed that rhythmic temporal expectation induced by fast tempo was dependent on automatic processing. However, compared with the faster tempo, temporal expectation driven by a slower tempo might involve more controlled processing. (shrink)

Land Tenure, Fiscal Policy, and Imperial Power in Medieval Syro-Egypt. By Daisuke Igarashi. Chicago Studies on the Middle East, vol 10. Chicago: Middle East Documentation Center, University of Chicago, 2015. Pp. vi + 264. $79.